The Callender Papers Page 16

  “Let her go!” Mac said, breathless. He raised his fists. Mr. Thiel—my father—grabbed at his hands and spun Mac around until his arms were crossed across his chest. Mac struggled with his feet to free himself. “Jean!” he panted. “Do something, you can get away from her, she’s too old to run, get to our house. Tell my father. Jean!” he urged me. “Tell him the nurse is back, he’ll know what to do. Go on!”

  I burst out laughing. I knew I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help it. Mac stopped struggling and looked over his shoulder at my father.

  “May I ask who is this—friend of yours?” Aunt Constance asked me. She stood up again and pushed her hood off her head. Mac’s jaw fell.

  “Oliver McWilliams, better known as Mac. Let me introduce Miss Constance Wainwright,” I said.

  Mac’s face turned beet red. “You can let me go now, sir,” he said. “I seem to have—made a mistake.”

  “But for good reasons,” my father, Mr. Thiel, told him. His dark eyes were laughing, but he did not allow the rest of his face to reveal that. “If I understand your curious attack correctly, you were trying to protect my daughter.”

  “What happened to your face, Mac?” I asked.

  “I had a run-in with Joseph,” he told me. His eyes gleamed. “I found out, Dad told me, they had been sick; Mrs. Callender finally came down to fetch him but she had to wait until her husband was out of the house. She was worried about her children, they’d all been ill, and so had she. But Mr. Callender told her not to call the doctor. He hadn’t been sick, of course. I came to warn you. But I’d given my word to stay off your property, sir.” He tugged the ripped sleeve of his shirt, looking proud. “Joseph tried to stop me.”

  Then his mouth fell open again. “Your daughter?”

  “I do have to go, to get your father, and you’d better come down to the house and put on dry clothes. I’ll explain on the way. Mr. Callender has had an accident,” he explained. He turned Mac by the shoulder, and Mac obeyed without protest, but he asked again as they moved out of earshot, “Your daughter?”

  When we were alone, Aunt Constance stood back of me, studying me. Then she hugged me, once, hard, and let me go again. We sat down facing each other. Aunt Constance looked tired, but at ease. “I don’t know where to begin,” she said.

  At a sudden thought I interrupted her. “You were the nurse, the one who disappeared!” I cried.

  Her smile lit her face in the way I remembered so well. “Of course. Your mother had asked me to take you, if Daniel thought it best. If anything happened to her.”

  “Did she know?”

  “About Enoch? I think so. She would never admit it, of course. She didn’t care so much for herself, I think, but you—she cared for you. She knew Enoch well. She must have known more of what he was capable of than the rest of us suspected. At first, after her death, Daniel thought he could stay in Marlborough and keep you with him. But there were a couple of occasions when odd things happened. There was even a snake once, that somehow got into your crib, or your toy box.” She hesitated before going on, remembering something I could not guess at. “He wrote to ask me to come up, as secretly as possible. I came at night, cloaked. We talked it over, and determined that the best thing was for you to disappear.”

  “Why?”

  “You were in danger. I am your godmother, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t. How could I?”

  She smiled again. “I am, even so. We had no choice, if you think of it. If he could have, Daniel would have given everything to Enoch and supported you himself. Then you would have been safe. But he couldn’t. The will gave him no power to disburse the fortune. He wasn’t sure what you would want, when you grew up. You are a rich child, you know.”

  “Am I?” That wasn’t important. “Tell me what happened.”

  “Daniel and I decided that the best possible thing was for everything to be in a sort of limbo, until you were old enough. So for a few weeks, I acted the part of a nurse. That way, one of us was always with you. One night, he drove me to Worcester. You traveled in a basket, sleeping. I walked into the railway station that morning carrying only what seemed to be a rather large picnic for a single lady, and we arrived back in Boston that afternoon. Miss Constance Wainwright and a two-year-old orphan whom she had agreed to raise.”

  “And nobody here would have known that he had even left the house,” I said, “because there would have been nobody in the house to know.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Mr. Callender hired detectives.”

  “We thought he might. We weren’t sure of it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me before I came here?” I asked.

  “I thought of it. Daniel didn’t want me to.”

  “Why not?”

  “He can probably tell you better than I,” Aunt Constance protested.

  “No, I doubt that,” I contradicted.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” she said, after a long thoughtful hesitation. “He didn’t know you, remember, not as I do. I think, perhaps, he was afraid of the power of money, and he didn’t want you to be told until he was certain it wouldn’t corrupt you.”

  “Like Mr. Callender?”

  “Yes. Also—although this is only my suspicion, he’s never said anything about this to me—he wanted to know if you could like him, for himself. He isn’t the easiest man, and if you disliked him he didn’t want to force himself on you. He said it wouldn’t be fair to you if I told you before you came here. But I wasn’t sure. You weren’t very old, after all. I didn’t want to let you go.”

  “I’m old enough,” I said.

  “I hope so,” she answered. “When you wrote, and he wrote, that you were seeing so much of Enoch—I can’t tell you how I worried.”

  “He never forbade it.”

  “Of course not. He wanted you to choose freely.”

  “That wasn’t very sensible—considering what he knew,” I pointed out.

  “Perhaps not,” Aunt Constance answered. “I suspect he needed to be sure of you. He has his pride.”

  “Oh!” I said, impatiently. Then, as I thought of how poorly I had managed, even though I had in the end not been deceived by Mr. Callender, I understood what Mr. Thiel had tried to do. And after that, I realized something else: “It’s my fault.”

  “What is?” Aunt Constance was listening to the woods. “It’s so peaceful here, isn’t it? I always loved the mountains. What’s your fault, my love?”

  “Mr. Callender. I did to him just what he did to her.”

  Aunt Constance looked at me sternly. “No,” she said. “No, you did not. Think carefully for a minute.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt him. But he said he didn’t mean to hurt his sister,” I protested.

  “Can you believe him?” Aunt Constance asked gently. “I never thought he really knew what he was doing, just as nobody could ever be sure of what he would do. Enoch never considered consequences. I suspect that he chose to do just what he did do, but could not tell even himself the truth. Think, Jean.”

  I thought. “I see,” I said. “Still, I am responsible.”

  “For the consequences, yes, I think you are. But you are not guilty. We will talk to your father about it, shall we?”

  “My father,” I said. “How strange.”

  “You’ll get used to it.” Aunt Constance took my hand. “Your mother loved him dearly.”

  “I know,” I said. But had he so loved her, I wondered. Or his child, me. He had, after all, it seemed, protected me after his own fashion. But I had, I knew, seen nothing of his heart; I could not deceive myself about that.

  For a long time nothing happened. We sat silent together. Aunt Constance went occasionally to the edge of the falls to be sure that nothing had changed down there. I did not look. I could not. Aunt Constance assured me there was no need. “He hasn’t moved. His body is mostly out of the water. He knows we are here and that Daniel will bring help. There is nothing you can do.”

  She talked
quietly to me. She told me about her friend, my mother. I spoke a little about the work I had done on the papers. When I started to tell her about the last week, all the events crowding in, she would not let me. “Wait until your mind is clearer. You’ve had several shocks, Jean. Now you must relax.”

  After a long time, or what seemed a long time Mr. Thiel—my father—called from across the falls. “Constance? Jean? The doctor is down with Enoch now. Mrs. Bywall expects you at the house for luncheon. Mac is waiting there. Impatiently.”

  As we turned to go, I saw Mr. Callender’s family approaching. Victoria had her arm around her mother. Benjamin was first, striding ahead. Joseph looked as if he had been rolling in dirt. It is the last I have seen of them.

  Back at the house, we all sat down to luncheon, Mrs. Bywall included. Mac wore a pair of men’s overalls and his face had been washed.

  “It’s all right, Miss, isn’t it?” Mrs. Bywall asked Aunt Constance, who nodded yes. “I’ve been that worried.” To me, she said, “If I’d known what you were thinking about . . . well, I’d have told you some things. Mr. Thiel told me I wasn’t to gossip to you, so I didn’t, of course, but if I’d known, I’d have gone ahead, whatever he said. When I think . . . Is it true? Are you the little girl?”

  “Yes,” I said. I couldn’t say any more.

  “Imagine that,” she said. “Imagine. I can’t imagine it.”

  “What happened?” Mac asked me.

  “Aunt Constance was the nurse,” I told him. I admit, I said it smugly. “The old, wrinkled witch,” I reminded him.

  “I told you that was only gossip.”

  “And why didn’t you come up through Mr. Thiel’s, through my father’s property. It was important enough, you should have known that. If Aunt Constance hadn’t taken the night train—and met him on the road—and you were busy tussling with Joseph—”

  Mac opened his mouth to argue, then shut it. “You’re right. It wasn’t smart of me. I was a fool.”

  His simple honesty made me ashamed of myself. “There were two of us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Me,” I admitted.

  “Did you go out on that board again?” Mac demanded.

  “He did too.”

  “You ninny!”

  “How was I to know?” I defended myself. “He pretended he’d hurt his ankle, I thought he needed help. How could I tell he was just pretending?”

  “I told you he’s a snake,” Mac reminded me.

  “It seems to me,” Aunt Constance said peacefully, “that neither of you has behaved with good sense. So perhaps we should let that matter drop.”

  It was a relief to be where Aunt Constance would correct me in her schoolroom voice. Nothing could have shown me as clearly as that how chaotic the last few days had been.

  “Is he dead?” Mac asked. Mrs. Bywall gasped and put her hand over mine.

  “No,” Aunt Constance said. “Injured badly, I suspect, but not dead.” Then she surprised me utterly by putting her head down on her hands and weeping.

  “Don’t do that, Aunt Constance,” I said. “Please don’t cry.”

  “Hush you now, let her,” Mrs. Bywall said. “You two have been enough to make anyone cry.”

  Aunt Constance raised her head and smiled. “It’s not only that, thank you,” she said. She blew her nose on her handkerchief and continued to weep as she spoke. “I’ve been so worried, all summer long. And it brings the past back so clearly.”

  “Tears clear the air,” Mrs. Bywall announced. “And a pot of tea after, to settle the spirits. Mr. Thiel won’t be back for a while is what I’m thinking. I’ll keep him a lunch. It will give me something to do with my hands. You might want to wait in the library. I’ve built a fire, I don’t know why, but the house seemed so cold to me this morning, and I couldn’t think of anything else to do. A nice fire, a nice pot of tea.”

  “Would you excuse me for a moment?” I asked Aunt Constance’s permission.

  “Aren’t you going to tell us what happened?” Mac asked.

  “I will, I promise, but in a little while. There’s something I want to see,” I explained to Aunt Constance.

  She looked at me puzzled. I couldn’t say more. At last, she nodded her head. “Mac and I will wait for you in the library. Perhaps Mac might like to show me how far he has come with Latin.”

  Mac groaned, then caught her eye and agreed. “We haven’t done much for the last few days,” he said.

  “Never make excuses,” Aunt Constance advised him.

  I slipped through the kitchen and out the back door. I crossed the garden and went over to the studio. What I was looking for, precisely, I did not know. I knew only that I needed some glimpse into Mr. Thiel’s heart, into my father’s heart. I knew, by then, the external man, knew also that I could not expect him to change. But I wanted to see into him, to know whether the true man had been revealed by my mother’s words in her affectionate note, or by Mr. Callender’s tales of him. That Mr. Callender had lied, I was aware; but he had not lied about everything. If I was to be Jean Thiel and not Jean Wainwright—surely I would have something to say in the matter—I wanted to know the real nature of the man who was my father. I thought that I would be more likely to see that in his paintings than anywhere else.

  I saw it as soon as I stepped through the door: a large oil painting hung where it dominated the bright room—a portrait of a woman and a child. The child was learning to walk, the woman’s arms were held out to her. They were at the glade by the falls, and behind them the beeches seemed to sway in a gentle wind, beyond them the mountains circled protectively. Out of a clear sky, sunlight washed down over them, in benediction. The dark-eyed child, the dark-haired woman, they leaned toward one another; I could almost hear the woman’s soft laughter. The scene had caught a moment of movement, so that it could not have been painted from life. The child’s foot was raised off the ground, and she might tumble over or step successfully. Either one was possible. It was a portrait done from memory, and in every line, in every brush stroke, in every tiny detail, the painter’s heart was visible.

  I stood before it, and I wept. Whether from joy, sorrow, or simple admiration, I could not say.

  My father stood suddenly beside me. He passed me a handkerchief. “Blow your nose,” he instructed me.

  “You told me you didn’t paint portraits,” I said to him.

  “I told you, if you remember, that I didn’t paint what I didn’t understand,” he corrected me. “Children are relatively simple to understand.”

  “I’m not a child,” I reminded him.

  He looked at me without answering.

  “And she isn’t.” I indicated the woman in the portrait.

  “No,” he agreed.

  I looked up at him in surprise: had I made my point so easily? His dark eyes studied me. For a long time we looked at one another so. At last, “All right, in some respects I am a child,” I admitted. “But I am twelve, almost thirteen.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “I couldn’t paint you now.”

  “Of course,” I said, “at some later date you might want to.”

  That caused him to smile, and I had to smile back at him. We turned to go into the house, where there was so much that needed settling.

  Chapter 16

  What is left to tell? All the important things are left, it seems. What is important changes when the disastrous events have completed themselves. Or maybe Aunt Constance is right, that it is the consequences of what you do that matter most.

  Mr. Callender, my uncle, never spoke again. The doctors said there was no reason for his loss of speech, no medical reason. He could have spoken, had he wanted to, but he refused. Perhaps it was because he could no longer move his legs and so he sullenly refused to help himself in any way. Perhaps it was because he had hoped for so much, gambled for it and then lost. He was confined to a wheelchair. Dr. McWilliams said he always would be, until he died. The specialists in Boston agreed, as did those in London and
Vienna. As I said, I never saw any of them again, but my father and I have taken care for them.

  When Mr. Callender was well enough, he and his family journeyed to Europe. They live now at a small hotel in Germany, near an Alpine spa, the mineral waters of which are supposed sometimes to produce miracles. We send money to Mrs. Callender, more than enough, through a bank in Munich. She writes once or twice a year, to say all is well with them. Joseph has become responsible for the family and manages the properties they decided to purchase with their half of the Callender estate. Victoria attends concerts and balls and has several suitors. Benjamin has been apprenticed to a bank in Munich. With each letter, Mrs. Callender sounds clearer in mind, happier, stronger. One letter, sent over a year and a half after the accident, closed with a strange remark. The second accident at the bridge, she said, had been the first good thing to happen for her family.

  She is right, I think. I can see it now, although I couldn’t at the time. Mr. Callender’s presence was like a distorting mirror to his children and his wife. He twisted them, somehow, altered them. He was like a dark cloud holding them in its shadow. They were all afraid of him, especially his wife. When he became helpless, they all emerged into a kind of sunlight. Mrs. Callender more and more returned to the character she must once have had, not particularly clever or able, but kind and generous and loving. Although she keeps the children from him, she will never leave him. She loves him. Even now, I can understand that.

  Mac has learned to pass Latin and has decided to study medicine when he finishes Harvard. He has not changed, except to grow taller. His voice is deeper. He is still a little wild at heart and probably always will be.

  I have not grown accustomed to being an heiress. My father says he hopes I never will. At the end of that summer, Aunt Constance and I returned to Cambridge. My father moved there during the winter. I lived with him then, but missed my life at school. I missed the little girls, my garden, my Saturday walks, and the quiet conversations in Aunt Constance’s study. I missed the close companionship of my aunt. We did not live far from the school, and I continued my attendance there, so I wasn’t separated from her. And I did enjoy the new life I was leading, the new companionship with my father. It is, sometimes, as if he and I have always been together, as if those ten years apart lasted no more than a day. Sometimes, of course, when one or the other of us has been especially cross or difficult, I catch him looking at me as if the ten years’ separation was not nearly long enough. I know I sometimes look at him that way—sometimes. He paints, and his fame grows. We go back to the Berkshires each summer. I have grown accustomed to him, and he has grown accustomed to me. We do well together, as Mrs. Bywall says. She has reason to know, because she keeps both houses for him.