And so the years passed as they always do, faster than we can grasp where we have been or may be going to. New buildings replaced older ones. Streets were paved, new lights hung. And high above the sea, the great bluff crumbled in that slow, nearly undetectable way that our bodies crumble before time, and our dreams before reality, and the life we sought before the one we found.
Then, in December of the final year of Miss Channing’s imprisonment, when I was home for the Christmas break of my freshman year in Princeton, a letter came, addressed to my father, in an envelope sent from Hardwick Women’s Prison, and which he later slipped into the little brown folder that became his archive of the Chatham School Affair.
The letter read:Dear Mr. Griswald:I write concerning one of my prisoners, Elizabeth Rockbridge Channing, and in order to inform you that she has fallen ill. Her file lists neither relatives nor friends who, under such circumstances, should be contacted. However, in conversations with Miss Channing, I have often heard mention of your name, of her time in, I take it, your employ, and I wonder if you could provide me with the names and addresses of any relatives or other close associates who should be informed of her condition.Best regards,
Mortimer Bly
Warden, Hardwick Women’s Prison
My father replied immediately, sending the name and address of Miss Channing’s uncle in British East Africa. But he did more than that as well, did it with an open heart and against the firmly stated wishes of my mother, who seemed both shocked and appalled by the words he said to her that same night over dinner:
Four days later, on a cold, rainy Saturday, my father and I arrived at the prison in which Miss Channing had been kept for the last three years. We were greeted by Warden Bly, a small, owlish man, but whose courtly manner seemed almost aristocratic. He assured us that Miss Channing was slated to be taken to the prison hospital as soon as a bed was available, and thanked us for coming. “I’m sure it will brighten her spirits,” he said.
After that, my father and I were directed into the heart of the prison, walking down a long corridor, the bars rising on either side, our ears attuned to the low murmur of the women who lived behind them, dressed in gray frocks, smelly and unkempt, their bare feet padding softly across the concrete floor as they shuffled forward to stare at us, their faces pressed against the bars, their eyes following us with what seemed an absolute and irreparable brokenness.
“She’s at the back, all by herself,” the guard said, the keys on the metal ring jangling as he pulled it from his belt. “She ain’t one for mixing.”
We continued to walk alongside him, our senses helplessly drawn toward the cells that flowed past us on either side, the dank odor that emanated from them, the faces that peered at us from behind the steel bars, women in their wreckage.
Finally, we reached the end of the corridor. There the guard turned to the left and stopped, his body briefly blocking our view into the cell. While we waited, he inserted the key, gave it a quick turn, and swung open the door. “In here, gentlemen,” he said, waving
With that, he drew away, and my father and I saw her for the first time since the trial, so much smaller than I remembered her, a figure sitting on the narrow mattress of an iron bed, her long hair now cut short, but still blacker than the shadows that surrounded her, her pale eyes staring out from those same shadows like two small blue lights.
“Miss Channing,” I heard my father murmur.
Standing together, silent and aghast, we saw her rise and come toward us, her body shifting beneath the gray prison dress, her hand reaching out first to my father, then to me, cold when he took it, no warmer when I let
“How good of you to come, Mr. Griswald,” she said, her voice low and unexpectedly tender, her eyes still piercingly direct, yet oddly sunken now, as if pressed inward by the dungeon’s leaden air. “And you, Henry,” she said as she settled them upon me.
“I’m so sorry I never came before,” my father told her, expressing what I recognized as a true regret.
For an instant she glanced away, a gray light sweeping over her face, revealing the purple swell of her lips, the weedy lines that had begun to gather at her eyes. “I had no wish to trouble you,” she said as she turned back to us.
My father smiled delicately. “You were never a trouble to me, Miss Channing,” he said.
She nodded softly, then said, “And how are things at Chatham School?”
My father shot me a pointed look. “Just fine,” he said quickly. “Quite back to normal, as you can imagine. We think we may beat New Bedford come next spring. Several of the new boys are very good at the game.”
I watched her silently as my father went on, noting the ragged cut of her hair, oily and unwashed, a nest of damp black straw, remembering how she’d looked at Chatham School and laboring to make myself believe that there was some part of her fate that she deserved.
For the next few minutes they continued to talk together, and at no time did my father let slip the true state of our affairs, or of what had happened to Chatham School. Instead, he spoke of things that had long passed, a school that had once existed, a marriage for a time not frozen in a block of ice, villagers who never whispered of his poor judgment from places safe behind his back.
Finally, we heard a watchman call out to us, and rose to leave her.
“It was good seeing you, Miss Channing,” I said as lightly as I could.
“You too, Henry,” she replied.
My father draped his arm over my shoulder. “Henry won a scholarship to Princeton, you know. All he does is study now.”
She looked at me as if nothing had changed since our first meeting. “Be a good man, Henry,” she told me.
“I will try, Miss Channing,” I said. Though I knew that it was already too late for so high a word as goodness ever to distinguish me.
She nodded, then turned to my father. “I so regret, Mr. Griswald, that you and the school were ever brought into my—”
My father lifted his hand to silence her. “You did nothing wrong, Miss Channing. I have never doubted that.”
