 | William's Wedding |  |
WILLIAM'S WEDDING
BY SARAH ORNE JEWETT
[After the publication of 'A Dunnet Shepherdess' in the Atlantic for December, 1899, and its subsequent appearance in a volume of collected stories, Miss Jewett received many appeals to bring William Blackett's lifelong love of Esther Hight, 'the shepherdess,' who had given the better part of her days to the care of her stricken mother, to a happy termination. The story of 'William's Wedding' was written, but the manuscript was mislaid, and has only just been found. Miss Jewett had hoped to give to it an hour or two of final revision to make it conform more perfectly to her fastidious taste, but few lovers of her work will find any flaw.
The two chief characters are thus described in earlier stories:—
'I turned, startled in the silence of the wide field, and saw an elderly man, bent in the shoulders as fishermen often are, gray-headed and clean-shaven, and with a timid air. It was William. . . . He was about sixty, and not young-looking for his years. Yet so undying is the spirit of youth, and bashfulness has such a power of survival, that I felt all the time as if one must try to make the occasion easy for some one who was young and new to the affairs of the social world.' (The Country of the Pointed Firs.) 'As for Esther, she might have been Jeanne d'Arc returned to her sheep, touched with age, and gray with the ashes of a great remembrance. She wore the simple look of sainthood and unfeigned devotion. My heart was moved by the sight of her plain sweet face, weather-worn and gentle in its looks, her thin figure in its close dress, and the strong hand that clasped a shepherd's staff. . . . She had lived in sunshine and rain among her silly sheep, and been refined instead of coarsened, while her touching patience with a ramping old mother, stung by the sense of defeat, and mourning her lost activities, had given back a lovely self-possession and habit of sweet temper. . . . I love to remember her worn face and her young blue eyes.' ('A Dunnet Shepherdess,' in The Queen's Twin)
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