The Chatham School Affair

For a moment she peered back inside it, Mrs. Abercrombie said, then she turned and walked away. A few seconds later Mr. Taylor, a local banker who lived in the one great house on Myrtle Street, saw her standing beside the column on the front lawn of Chatham School, her fingers lightly touching one of its faces. And finally, just before nightfall, with a line of storm clouds advancing along the far horizon, my father came out of the front door of the school, glanced idly to the left, and saw her standing on the bluff, the tall white lighthouse to her back, her long black hair tossing wildly in the wind as she stared out over the darkening sea.

During the next day, Saturday, May 28, 1927, no one saw Miss Channing at all. The local postman said the cottage was deserted when he delivered her mail at eleven o’clock, and a hunter by the name of Marcus Lowe, caught in the same sort of sudden thunderstorm that had swept over the Cape two nights before, later said that he’d stood for nearly half an hour on the small porch of Milford Cottage and heard no stirring inside it. Nor had any of its lamps been lighted, he added, despite the gloom that had by then settled along the outer reaches of Black Pond.

CHAPTER 25

It’s quite possible that from the time Miss Channing left Chatham School on that last Friday before final exams, no one at all saw her until the following Sunday morning, when Sarah arrived for her final reading lesson.

The storm of the previous evening had passed, leaving the air glistening and almost sultry as we walked down Plymouth Road that morning. Sarah appeared hardly to have remembered the sharp words I’d said to her as we’d sat at the edge of the playing field two days before. Once she even took my arm, holding it lightly as we continued down the road, her whole manner cheerful and confident, the timid girl of a year before completely left behind.

“I’ll miss Miss Channing,” she told me. “But I’m not going to stop studying.”

She had mastered the basics of reading and writing by then, and from time to time during the past few weeks I’d seen her sitting in the kitchen, an open book in her lap, her beautiful eyes fiercely concentrated on the page, getting some of the words, clearly stumped by others, but in general making exactly the sort of progress I would have expected in one so dedicated and ambitious and eager to escape the life she might otherwise have been trapped in.

She released my arm and looked at me determinedly. “I’m not going to ever give up, Henry,” she said.

She’d dressed herself quite formally that morning, no doubt in a gesture of respect toward Miss Channing. She wore a white blouse and a dark red skirt, and her hair fell loosely over her shoulders and down her back in a long, dark wave. She’d made something special as well, not merely cookies or a pie, but a shawl, dark blue with a gold fringe, the colors of Chatham School.

“Do you think Miss Channing will like it?” she asked eagerly as she drew it from the basket.

I shrugged. “I don’t know,” I answered, recalling how distant and unhappy Miss Channing had seemed in her final class on Friday, the way she’d only nodded to us as we’d left her room. But even that distance seemed better than the torment I’d seen two nights before, the look in her eyes as she’d placed the necklace in my hand, the cold finality of the words she’d said, Get rid of this.

But I hadn’t gotten rid of it, so that by the time Sarah and I reached the fork in Plymouth Road, I could feel it like a small snake wriggling in my trouser pocket, demanding to be set free.

I stopped suddenly, knowing what I would do.

“What’s the matter, Henry?” Sarah asked.

I felt my hand slide into my pocket, the glass necklace curl around my fingers. “I have to go over to Mr. Reed’s for a minute,” I told her.

“Mr. Reed’s? Why?”

“I have to give him something. I’ll come to Miss Channing’s after that.”

Sarah nodded, then turned and headed on down the road, taking the fork that led to Milford Cottage while I took the one that led to Mr. Reed’s.

I arrived at his house a few minutes later. His car was sitting in the driveway, but the yard was deserted, and I heard no sounds coming from the house.

Then I saw her, Mrs. Reed walking toward me from the old gray shed that stood in the distance, her body lumbering heavily across the weedy ground, so deep in thought she did not look up until she’d nearly reached the front steps of the house.

“Good morning, Mrs. Reed,” I said.

She stopped abruptly, startled, her hand rising to shield her eyes from the bright morning sun, gazing at me with a strange wariness, as if I were a shadow she’d suddenly glimpsed in the forest or something she’d caught lurking behind a door.

“I’m Henry Griswald,” I reminded her. “The boy you—”

“I know who you are,” she said, her chin lifting with a sudden jerk, as if in anticipation of a blow. “You helped him with the boat.”

I could hear the accusation in her voice, but decided to ignore it. “Is Mr. Reed home?”

The question appeared to throw her into distress. “No,” she answered in a voice now suddenly more agitated. “He’s out somewhere, walking.” Her eyes shot toward the pond, the little white cottage that rested on its far bank. “I don’t know where he is.”

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“No, I don’t,” she answered, her manner increasingly tense, brittle, a single reddish eyebrow arching abruptly, then lowering slowly, like a dying breath. “Why are you here?” she asked, peering at me with a grave distress, as if I were diving toward her from a great height, a black bird in fatal descent. “What did you come here for?”

“I just wanted to see Mr. Reed.”

Another thought appeared to strike her, her mind now twisting in a new direction.

“Is he running away?” she demanded, her eyes upon me with a savage spite, her voice very thin, a cutting wire drawn taut. “Leaving me and Mary?” She tilted her head to the left, toward the pond. “Running away with her?”