“Studious and serious,” my father answered. “Disciplined.”
“And that’s the atmosphere you want at Chatham School?”
“Yes,” my father replied firmly. “It is.”
Miss Channing said nothing more on the subject, but sitting across from her, I sensed that there was more she might have said, thoughts that were in her head, bristling there, or firing continually, like small explosions.
At the end of the meal my father led Miss Channing and my mother into the little parlor at the front of the house for a cup of tea. I lingered at the table, watching Sarah clear away the dishes after she’d served them. Though my father had closed the French doors that separated the parlor from the dining room, it was still possible for me to see Miss Channing as she sat listening quietly to my father.
“So, what do you think of the new teacher?” I asked Sarah as she leaned over my shoulder and plucked a bowl from the table.
Sarah didn’t answer, so I glanced up at her. She was not looking at me, but toward the parlor, where Miss Channing sat by the window, her hands held primly in her lap, the Joan Crawford hat sitting firmly on her head.
“Such a fine lady,” Sarah said in an almost reverential tone. “The kind folks read about in books.”
I looked back toward Miss Channing. She was taking a sip from her cup as my father went on, her blue eyes peering just over the rim, sharp and evaluating, as if her mind ceaselessly sifted the material that passed through it, allowing this, dismissing that, her sense of judgment oddly final, a court, as it would prove to be, from which there could be no appeal.
I was in my room an hour later, perusing the latest issue of Grady’s Illustrated Magazine for Boys, when my father summoned me downstairs.
“It’s time to take Miss Channing home,” he told me.
I followed him out the door, then down the front stairs to where Miss Channing was already waiting in the car.
“It’s only a short drive,” my father said to her as he pulled himself in behind the wheel. “Perhaps I can get you there ahead of the rain.”
But he could not, for as we drove toward the cottage, the overhanging clouds suddenly disgorged their burden, thunderously and without warning, as if abruptly being called to account.
Once outside the village center, my father turned right, onto the coastal road, past the great summer houses that rose along the shore, then on toward the marsh, with its shanties and fishermen’s houses, their unkempt yards scattered with stacks of lobster traps and tangled piles of gray netting.
Given the torrent, the drive was slow, the old Ford sputtering along, battered from all directions by sudden whipping gusts, the windshield wipers squeaking rhythmically as they swept ineffectually across the glass.
My father kept his eyes on the road, of course, but I noticed that Miss Channing’s attention had turned toward the landscape of Cape Cod, its short, rounded hills sparsely clothed in tangles of brush and scrub oak, wind ripping through the sea grass that sprouted from the dunes.
“The Cape’s pretty, don’t you think, Miss Channing?” my father said cheerfully.
Her reply must have startled him.
“It looks tormented,” she said, staring out the window on the passenger side, her voice suddenly quite somber, as if it came from some darker part of her mind.
My father glanced toward her. “Tormented? What do you mean?”
“It reminds me of the islands of the Florida Keys,” she answered, her eyes still concentrated on the landscape. “The name the Spanish gave them.”
“What name was that?”
“Los Martires,” Miss Channing answered. “Because they looked so tormented by the wind and the sea.”
“Forgive my ignorance,” my father said. “But what does ‘Los Martires’ mean?”
Miss Channing continued to gaze out the window. “It means ‘the martyrs,’” she said, her eyes narrowing somewhat, as if she were no longer looking at the dunes and the sea grass beyond her window, but at the racked and bleeding body of some ancient tortured saint.
My father drew his attention back to the road. “Well, I’ve never thought of the Cape as looking like that,” he said. Then, to my surprise, I saw his eyes lift toward the rearview mirror, fix on mine. “Have you ever thought of the Cape like that, Henry?”
I glanced out the window at my right, toward a landscape that no longer seemed featureless and inert, but beaten and bedeviled, lashed by gusts of wind and surging waters. “Not until just now,” I said.
At about a mile beyond town we swung onto a stretch of road bordered on all sides by dense forest and covered with what had once been a layer of oyster shells, but which past generations of hooves and feet and wagon wheels had since ground into little more than a fine powder.
The woods had encroached so far into the road that I could hear the surrounding vegetation slap and scrape against the side of the car as we bumped along the road.
“It gets pretty deserted out this way,” my father said. He added nothing else as we continued in silence until the road forked, my father taking the one to the right, moving down it for perhaps a quarter mile, until it widened suddenly, then came to an abrupt dead end before a small white cottage.
“There it is,” my father said. “Milford Cottage.”
It was tiny compared to our house on Myrtle Street, so dwarfed by the surrounding forest that it appeared to crouch fearfully within a fist of green, a dark stretch of water sweeping out behind it, still and lightless, its opaque depths unplumbed, like a great hole in the heart of things.
“That’s Black Pond,” my father said.
Miss Channing leaned forward slightly, peering at the cottage very intently through the downpour, like a painter considering a composition, calculating the light, deciding where to put the easel. It was an expression I would see many times during the coming year, intense and curious, a face that seemed to draw everything into it by its own strange gravity.
“It’s a simple place,” my father told her. “But quite nice. I hope you’ll at least find it cozy.”
“I’m sure I will,” she said. “Who lived here?”
“It was never actually lived in,” my father answered. “It was built as a honeymoon cottage by Mr. Milford for his bride.”
“But they never lived there?”
My father appeared reluctant to answer her but obligated to do so. “They were both killed on the way to it,” he said. “An automobile accident as they were coming back from Boston.”
Miss Channing’s face suddenly grew strangely animated, as if she were imagining an alternative story in her mind, the arrival of a young couple who never arrived, the joys of a night they never spent together, a morning after that was never theirs.
“It’s not luxurious, of course,” my father added quickly, determined, as he always was, to avoid disagreeable things, “but it’s certainly adequate.” His eyes rested upon Miss Channing for a moment before he drew them away abruptly, and almost guiltily, so that for a brief instant he looked rather like a man who’d been caught reading a forbidden book. “Well, let’s go inside,” he said.
With that, my father opened the door and stepped out into the rain. “Quickly now, Henry.” He motioned for me to get Miss Channing’s valises and follow him into the cottage.
He was already at the front door, struggling with the key, his hair wet and stringy by the time I reached them. Miss Channing stood just behind him, waiting for him to open the door. As he worked the key, twisting it right and left, he appeared somewhat embarrassed that it wouldn’t turn, as if some element of his authority had been called into question. “Everything rusts in this sea air,” I heard him murmur. He jerked at the key again. It gave, and the cottage door swung open.
“There’s no electricity out this way,” my father explained as he stepped into the darkened cottage. “But the fireplace has been readied for winter, and there are quite a few kerosene lamps, so you’ll have plenty of light.” He walked to the window, parted the curtains, and looked out into the darkening air. “Just as I explained in my letter.” He released the curtain and turned back to her. “I take it that you’re accustomed to things being a little … primitive.”