“I came up here with them,” I said. “To the top of this same hill. Sarah came with us too.” My eyes settled on the very place where we’d stood together and looked out over the pond. “It all seemed harmless at the time.”
I remembered Miss Channing and Mr. Reed strolling through Chatham, pausing to gaze in shop windows, or standing beside the fence at London Livery, Miss Channing stroking the muzzle of one of the horses. Once I’d come upon them in Warren’s Sundries, Mr. Reed with a model boat in his hand, turning it at various angles, pointing out its separate parts, the mast, the spinnaker, the fluttering sail, his words spoken quietly, bearing, at the time, no grave import. It wouldn’t be hard to do it.
My father’s eyes searched the near rim of the pond. The thick summer foliage blocked the spot I knew he was looking for.
“Why did you go to Milford Cottage so often?” he asked, still peering down the hillside.
“Because of Sarah. I went to her reading lessons.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know.”
My father kept his tone matter-of-fact, but I knew how charged his feelings were, how many questions still plagued him. At last he asked one he’d kept inside for a long time. “Were you in love with her, Henry?”
I remembered the night I’d gone to her room, how gently she’d received me, her eyes shy and downcast, her Body beneath a white nightgown, a satin ribbon dangling just above her chest. “She was a lovely girl,” I said. “And living in our house the way she did, I might have—”
“I wasn’t talking about Sarah,” my father said, interrupting me. “I was talking about Miss Channing.”
I heard rain batting against the windowpanes of Milford Cottage as it had that night, wind slamming at the screen door, saw candles burning in her bedroom, a yellow light pouring over her, the stillness in her eyes when she spoke. Will you do it, Henry? Then my reply, obedient as ever, Yes.
“I always thought that was the reason you took it so hard,” my father added. “Because you had a certain … feeling for Miss Channing.”
Her face dissolved in a haze of yellow light, and I saw her as she’d appeared the day we’d stood there on the hill, snow clinging to her hair and gathered along the shoulders of her long blue coat. “I wanted her to be free,” I said.
“To do what?”
“Live however she wanted to.”
He shook his head. “It didn’t turn out that way.”
“No, it didn’t.”
I felt my father’s arm settle on my shoulders, embrace me like a child. “Never forget, Henry,” he said, offering his final comment on the Chatham School Affair, “never forget that some part of it was good.”
I’m not sure I ever fully believed that, though I couldn’t deny that there’d been good moments, especially at the beginning. One of those moments had been the very day we’d all gone up the hill and stood together in the first snow of the season.
Sarah and I had walked to Milford Cottage that November morning, Sarah eager to get on with her lessons, confident that she would soon master the skills she needed to “better” herself, childlike in her enthusiasm, adult in her determination.
Not long after we’d left Chatham it had begun to snow, so that by the time we’d finally reached Milford Cottage we were cold and wet.
As we neared the cottage, I saw Miss Channing part the plain white curtains of one of its small windows and peer out. She was wearing a white blouse, the sleeves rolled up to the elbow, and her hair fell loosely over her shoulders. From the look on her face, I could tell that she was somewhat surprised to see us.
“You didn’t have to come, you know,” she called to us as she opened the door. “I would have understood that the weather—”
Sarah shook her head vigorously. “Oh, no, Miss Channing,” she said, “I wouldn’t think of missing a lesson.”
Miss Channing eased back into the cottage and motioned us inside. “Well, come in quickly, then,” she said. “You must be frozen stiff.”
We walked into the cottage, and I realized that it looked considerably different from when I’d last been inside. Some of Miss Channing’s older sketches had been replaced by more recent ones, quiet village scenes, along with intricate line drawings, beautifully detailed, of various leaves and vegetation she’d found in the surrounding woods, some of which now rested in a large glass vase on her mantel.
“You’ve made it very cozy inside the house here,” Sarah said. She glanced about the room, taking in other changes, the hooked rug in front of the fireplace, the bookshelf in the far corner, the small red pillows that rested against the wooden backs of the room’s two chairs. “You’ve made it look like a regular house,” she added, drawing her scarf from her head. “It’s quite grand, Miss Channing.” She lifted the basket she’d brought with her from Myrtle Street. “I brought a fruitcake for you. There’s a bit of spirits in it though.” Her mischievous smile flickered. “So we shouldn’t be having too much of it, or we won’t stay clearheaded, you know.”
Miss Channing took the cake and deposited it on the small table by the window. “We’ll have some after the lesson,” she said.
They got down to their lessons right away, Miss Channing opening the notebook Sarah had brought along, peering at the writing inside, evaluating it closely before commenting. “Good,” she said warmly. “Very good, Sarah.”
After that they went to work in the usual way, Miss Channing writing short, simple sentences which Sarah then read back to her. From my place in a chair not far away, I could see how well they got along, how much Sarah admired Miss Channing, perhaps even dreamed of being like her, “a fine lady,” as she’d always said.
I suppose it was something in that “fineness” that made me take out my sketchbook that morning and begin to draw Miss Channing, concentrating on the way she leaned forward, her head cocked slightly, her hair falling in a dark wave across her shoulders. I found that I could capture her general appearance, but that there was something else I couldn’t get, the way her eyes sometimes darkened, as if a small light had gone off behind them, and which Mr. Parsons later described as “sinister,” the very word he used at her trial.
She was still working with Sarah when I heard a car coming down Plymouth Road, its engine rattling chaotically as it slid to a halt in the driveway of the cottage.
Miss Channing rose, walked to the window, and looked out.
“We have a guest,” she said. There was a hint of excitement in her voice, something Sarah must have heard too, for her eyes swept over to me with a quizzical expression in them.
By then Miss Channing had walked to the door and opened it, a gust of wind sweeping her black hair across her face.
“Well, good morning,” she called, waving her arm. She turned toward Sarah and me. “It’s Mr. Reed,” she said.
I walked to the window. At the edge of the yard I could see Mr. Reed as he got out of his car. He was wearing a heavy wool coat, brown boots, and a gray hat he’d pulled somewhat raffishly to the left. He waved to Miss Channing, then came tramping down the walkway, the snow nearly an inch deep by then.
“You’re just in time for fruitcake,” Miss Channing told him as he neared the door.
“Fruitcake,” Mr. Reed said. “Well, it’s certainly the right weather for it.” For a moment he stood on the threshold of the cottage, facing Miss Channing from the bottom of the stairs, his eyes lifted toward her, gazing at her. “I wanted to—” he began, then stopped when he saw Sarah and me inside the cottage. “Oh, I see you have company,” he said, his manner now stiffening slightly.
“Yes, I do,” Miss Channing said. “Sarah’s here for her reading lesson. She made the fruitcake I mentioned.”