Chapter 4 – A Midsummer's Night Dream

Summer 1922

He stood in the doorway leading to the servants' entrance, watching the small figure of one of the scullery maids retreating upstairs, to her bed, where she belonged, at least for the next few hours. She ought to be sacked, by rights, he thought, musing on the rather cozy tableau he'd caught the tweenie in with one of the village lads not two minutes prior.

The pair of them weren't engaged in anything untoward, not exactly, in the bluish shadows and light of the yard, but he determined that he'd missed such inappropriate behavior by minutes on either side of his arrival. He'd merely cleared his throat pointedly, raised an eyebrow. They'd scurried away from him, in opposite directions, before he could utter a single syllable.

And now that boy and girl had disappeared, he took a moment to gaze up at the scattering of stars above, the perfect disc of moon. The warm Yorkshire air was heavy with the smell of grass and roses and pollen. Yes, the little maid should be dismissed, but somehow, he couldn't manage the appropriate amount of outrage sufficient enough to send the girl back to her family farm, head hanging in shame.

His mind wandered to the framed photo of Alice on his desk. He sighed. Elsie Hughes had told him putting the photo on his desk would make him seem more human to the rest of the staff. Now, he wondered if she knew it would remind him of the same. He considered it likely. There wasn't another person in this house, in his life, who prodded him to confront, even if it was only to himself, his own foibles, the things that made up his humanity.

He'd been rather put out with her over the entire business with Charlie Grigg. She'd…pushed in…where she shouldn't have. From the outset, she made it her concern when it simply wasn't. And she hadn't let it go, had she? She'd taken Charlie's letter out of the bin, found him, gotten Mrs. Crawley involved! It was so utterly inappropriate he wasn't sure how to take it all in. And she'd been relentless, or, at least, it had seemed that way to him at the time.

And he'd been so angry with her, with Charlie, with himself, he'd waited until it was nearly too late: he'd only just made it to the train station on time, right before his old friend had boarded, likely, never to be seen again. What had made him finally grab his hat and coat, dash as quickly as he could to the station?

He'd finally realized something, and it was one of those sorts of revelations that knocked him back a second or two, as it was so obvious once it'd been spotted:

She was trying to help him. This wasn't about Charlie Grigg, not really; it was about him. Not…not trying to force his hand, not really; what had she said, when she'd told him Charlie was leaving for Edinburgh?

That…that whatever had happened, years ago, was like a wound, and it wouldn't heal, not without some sort of reconciling. And she'd been so calm, and so kind…but firm in her resolve. He wouldn't even look at her, not in the moment, so finally, she'd left.

And it wasn't a matter of minutes, before the whole thing had come crashing down around him, and in his solitude he'd gone and nearly collapsed into his chair. He'd sat there, closed his eyes, all of the fight knocked out of him.

Because she was right, of course. Behind all of his anger, his stonewalling: there was a wounded young man, very tall and not yet grown into himself. With a lovely, rich baritone voice and an uncertain look about him. His heart broken. He'd nearly forgotten about him, this past half century, or, when he did think of him, it was with vague, mild embarrassment. But there he was. Elsie Hughes was insisting that he not ignore that young man, that besotted boy he'd been. Even if she didn't know all of the details. She'd felt him, lurking there, needing to be recognized.

Now, standing in the moon-drenched yard, he thought again of that framed photo of Alice. How lovely she had been, the dove half of The Lark & the Dove. Yes, she had been pretty, her long nose and wide smile, taller than most girls he knew. And perhaps it had been that smile that had turned his head. But it had been her gentleness, her sweetness, which had stopped his heart, had made him want to offer it up to her.

She had been so easy for him to love, that twenty-year-old version of himself. And yes, as he'd admitted to Elsie Hughes, he'd wanted to marry her, with everything he had. And yes, he'd walked her from the theater to the corner, where she and her sister would pick up the street car, dozens of times. And though that was usually the long and the short of it, there were a handful of times, right before she began stepping out with Charlie Grigg on their own, that she'd brushed her lips, so quickly it was nearly as if they'd not been there, at a spot along his jawline.

And then she belonged to Grigg, so he'd tried to hide her away, bury her in a drawer. He was grudgingly grateful to his old friend, for admitting the truth: Alice regretted him, regretted the choice she had made in love.

Something he never would have known, had it not been for Elsie Hughes.

Charlie, Alice – they'd been there, all along, inside of him, shameful secrets, stored away but never quite forgotten. Now, fifty years later, he'd shaken his old friend's hand, wished him well. Alice's photo, framed and smiled at him, sat on his desk.

He took another long gaze up at the clear, vast expanse of summer night sky, turned and went back inside. He walked down the hall towards his study, stepped just inside the door to turn off the lights. Then walked over, picked up Alice's picture, ran his thumb over the image of her face.

He placed the photo back on his desk, thought about the young maid and the village lad, standing close together in the summer moonlight.

Thought about how he'd never felt the smoothness of Alice's actual cheek under his thumb, and that a photograph was a poor substitute.

Finally, as he extinguished the light and headed up to his bed, he thought about Elsie Hughes. About her steadfast insistence that he needed to face Charlie, face his past, to truly heal the wounds he still carried from it.

And, his heart skipped a little, at the thought of the housekeeper. Of what her face might look like, in the blue summer moonlight. What her cheek might feel like, as he rubbed his thumb across it, without a barrier of glass between them.