A to E 1885 locket

The A to E 1885 locket is a hidden family keepsake whose meaning emerges across generations. First discovered among Elizabeth Harte’s possessions, it gives Emma Harte a material clue to her mother’s concealed connection with Adam Fairley; years later, its history becomes part of the reconciliation between the Harte and Fairley families.

Discovery and appearance

Emma finds the locket beneath the loose velvet lining of a small wooden box containing her mother’s jewelry. Unlike the familiar garnets and other pieces Elizabeth wore on special occasions, this object is unfamiliar to her. It is old, finely worked gold, and proves difficult to open: Emma fetches scissors from her sewing box and carefully prises it apart.

Inside is a photograph of Elizabeth as a young woman and, opposite it, a small lock of fair hair beneath glass. Emma cannot identify whose hair it is, and the evidence leaves its owner unknown. The locket’s concealed position, unfamiliarity, and nearly worn-away engraving establish it as a remnant of a past Elizabeth kept separate from the jewelry Emma knew.

The cave and the initials

The locket acquires an unsettling possible meaning when Emma and Edwin Fairley explore a cave and Emma notices faint writing on a smooth stretch of wall. There, a column lists forms of Elizabeth’s name, including Elizabeth, Elizabetta, Isabella, Lilibeth, Beth, Betty, Bess, Eliza, Liza, and Lisa. Beside them, Adam is carved in large capitals; below it, a heart pierced by an arrow encloses the initials A E.

The wall’s inscription brings the locket back to Emma’s mind. She connects the initials with her mother and Adam, recognizing a possible intimacy between them rather than treating the piece as an unexplained heirloom. The scene does not yet supply the locket’s full history, but it places its concealed evidence beside a public trace of the same relationship and makes Emma’s suspicion part of the object’s meaning.

Explanation and transfer to Paula

Much later, Emma tells Paula that she found the locket among Elizabeth’s things and identifies its engraving as A to E 1885. She says Adam gave it to Elizabeth, Paula’s great-grandmother, and offers the locket to Paula. Paula accepts it as something she will keep always, turning a private clue from Emma’s childhood into an heirloom passed to a later generation.

The gift follows Jim Fairley’s account of a painted stone that Adam had left for Emma. Adam had believed the portrait on the stone depicted Olivia Wainright; Jim explains that it was instead a painting of Elizabeth. He also recounts Adam’s wish that the old pattern of Harte women and Fairley men being crossed in love should end, and that Emma should allow Paula and Jim’s generation happiness. The locket and the stone are distinct objects, but together they carry Adam’s hidden history into the present and support the families’ movement toward reconciliation.

Emma also produces a gentleman’s gold tie-pin found with the locket and asks whether it belonged to Adam. Jim connects it to a photograph of Adam in riding clothes, in which he believes Adam is wearing the pin. The identification is presented as his strong belief, while the locket’s connection to Elizabeth and Adam is stated directly.

Family memory and significance

The locket’s importance lies not in its material value but in how it preserves a story that the older generation withheld. Its hidden placement, the initials that Emma later reads as A to E, and its eventual explanation make it a physical link between Elizabeth and Adam, Emma’s discovery of their past, and Paula’s inheritance of that knowledge. Passed on at the moment Emma approves Paula and Jim’s marriage, it becomes more than evidence of an old attachment: it accompanies the possibility that a love once thwarted by family circumstances need not determine the next generation’s fate.