In my mind I saw Miss Channing as she’d rushed from the lighthouse hours before, the red scarf trailing after her, Mr. Reed left behind, his head bowed, his hand clutching his cane. They had never appeared more tragically romantic to me than at that moment, more deserving to be together, to find the sort of happiness that only people like themselves, so fierce and passionately driven, can find, or even deserve to find.
I turned onto Plymouth Road with little specific intention in mind, recalling the many times I’d strolled down it with Sarah to find Miss Channing sitting on the steps of Milford Cottage or standing beside the pond. I remembered the snowy day in November when we’d all walked to the top of a nearby hill, how happy everyone had been that day, how open all our lives had briefly appeared, how utterly and permanently closed they now
I reached Milford Cottage with no prior determination to go there. Had I found the lights off, I would have turned away. Had a car been parked in the drive, I would have retreated back into the darkness and returned to Myrtle Street. But the lights were on, and no car blocked my path. Perhaps even more important, it began to rain. Not softly, but with a deafening burst of thunder, so that I knew it would be over quickly, that I would need the shelter of Milford Cottage only just long enough for the storm to pass, and then be on my way.
When she opened the door, I saw a face unlike any I had ever seen, her eyes so pale they seemed nearly colorless, two black dots on a field of white, dark crescents beneath them, her hair thrown back and tangled as if she had been shaken violently, then hurled against a wall. Never had anyone looked more cursed by love than Miss Channing did at that dreadful instant.
“Henry,” she said, squinting slightly, trying to bring me into focus, her voice a broken whisper. “What are you doing here?”
“I was just out walking,” I explained, speaking rapidly, already stepping back into the night, aware that I had come upon her in a grave moment. “Then it started to rain and so …”
She drew back into the cottage, opening the door more widely as she did so. “Come in,” she told me.
Candles were burning everywhere inside the cottage, but there was also a fire in the hearth, a stack of letters on the mantel, some of them, as I could see, already burning in the flames. The air inside was thick and overheated, a steam already gathering in the corners of the windows.
“I was just getting rid of a few things,” Miss Channing told me, her voice tense, almost breathless, beads of sweat gathered on her forehead and along the edge of her upper lip, her long fingers toying distractedly at the collar of her blouse. “Before I leave,” she added. Her eyes shot toward the window, the rain that could be seen battering against it. “Things I don’t want,” she said as she glanced back to me.
I didn’t know what to say, so I said only, “What can I do to help?”
Her gaze was directed toward me with a terrible anguish, all her feeling spilling out. “I can’t go on,” she said, her eyes now glistening in the candlelight.
I stepped toward her. “Anything, Miss Channing,” I said. “I just want to help.”
She shook her head. “There’s nothing you can do, Henry,” she told me.
I looked at her imploringly. “There must be something,” I insisted.
I saw a strange steeliness come into her face, a sense of flesh turning into stone, as if, in that single instant, she had determined that she would survive whatever it was that love had done to her. With a quick backward step she drew away from me and walked into the adjoining bedroom. For a moment she stood beside the bookshelf near her bed, staring down at it with a cold, inflexible glare. Then she plucked a necklace from its top shelf, her fingers clutching it like pale talons as she returned to me. “Get rid of this,” she said.
“But, Miss Channing …”
She grabbed my hand, placed the necklace in its open palm, and closed my fingers around it. “That’s all I want you to do, Henry,” she said.
The rain had stopped when I left Milford Cottage a few minutes later, Miss Channing standing in the door, framed by the interior light. She was still there when I rounded the near bend and, with that turn, swept out of her view.
I walked on in darkness, moving slowly over the wet ground, thinking of what I’d glimpsed in Miss Channing’s face, shaken by what I’d seen, the awful ruin of the passions she’d once shared with Mr. Reed, unable to imagine anything that might return her to its earlier joy save for the one that had always presented itself, the two of them in Mr. Reed’s boat, a high wind sweeping through its white sails, propelling them around Monomoy Point and into the surging, boundless sea.
For a time I was locked in pure fantasy, as if I were with them, sweeping southward, a Caribbean wind whipping the tropical waters off the coast of Cuba, Miss Channing’s face radiantly tanned, her black hair flying free in warm sea breezes, Mr. Reed at the helm, miraculously cured of his limp, the scar erased forever from his face, the winters of New England, with all their frozen vows, unable to reach them now or call them back to anything.
It was the headlights of an approaching car that brought my attention back to Plymouth Road. They came forward slowly, almost stalkingly, like two yellow eyes, covering me in so bright a shaft of blinding light that it was only after the car had come to a halt beside me that I saw Mr. Reed behind the wheel, his eyes hidden beneath the shadows of his hat.
“Get in,” he said.
I got in and he pulled away, continuing down Plymouth Road, but turning to the left at the fork, moving toward his house on the other side of the pond rather than Milford Cottage.
“What are you doing out here, Henry?”
“Just walking.”
He kept his eyes trained on the road, his fingers wrapped tightly around the wheel. “Were you with Miss Channing?”
“Yes,” I told him.
“Why?”
“I was out walking and it started to rain. I went there to get out of the rain.”
The car continued forward, two shafts of yellow light dimly illuminating the glistening road ahead.
“What did she tell you?” Mr. Reed asked.
“Tell me?”
His eyes swept over to me. “About this afternoon. At the lighthouse.”
I shook my head. “Nothing,” I answered.
For a moment he seemed not to believe me. We sped on for a few seconds, his attention held on the road ahead. Then I saw his shoulders fall slightly, as if a great weight had suddenly been pressed down upon them. He lifted his foot from the accelerator and pressed down on the brake, bringing the car to a skidding halt. In the distance I could see the lights of his house glowing softly out of the darkness. “Sometimes I wish that she were dead,” he whispered. Then he turned to me, his face nearly as gray and lifeless as the masks of Miss Channing’s column. “You’d better get home now, Henry” was all he said.
I did as he told me, then watched as he pulled away, the taillights of his car glaring back toward me like small mad eyes.
Mr. Reed did not come to school the next day, but Miss Channing did, her mood very somber, the agitation of the night before now held within the iron grip of her relentless self-control.
It was the Friday before final examinations, and we all knew that since she was leaving Chatham School, it would be the last class we would ever have with her. Other departing teachers, those who had retired or found better posts, even the few whose abilities my father had found unacceptable and sent packing, had always taken a moment to say good-bye to us, usually with a few casual words about how much they had enjoyed being with us and hoped we’d stay in touch. I suppose that as the class neared its final minutes that day, we expected Miss Channing to do something similar, perhaps give a vague indication of what she intended to do after leaving Chatham School.