The Callender Papers Page 6

  “Now,” Mr. Callender said, with an air of mystery, like a magician about to perform some sleight-of-hand, “I am going to show you something only known to one living person. Myself. It was a secret between Irene and me. I must tell you about Irene someday. You’ve got a gift for listening, you must know that.”

  He reached high up into an old beech tree and pulled down a long gray board. “Did you ever see anything like this?” he asked.

  “It looks like a jumping board,” I said. “We have one in our garden. The little girls bounce on it.”

  “You can do that with this too,” Mr. Callender said. He lifted it over his head and, standing close to the edge of the ravine, let it fall to the other side. “We used it for a bridge, Irene and I. Mr. Thiel was not one of my most ardent admirers, shall we say? So Irene and I met secretly sometimes. I enjoyed the game, as I enjoy all games. It will make a handy bridge for you, won’t it?”

  The board was narrow. The falls, beneath it now, looked dangerous.

  “I’ll steady it with my weight on this side,” Mr. Callender said. He stood on the end of the board, near the edge of the ravine. “It’s secure now. Here, you steady it and I’ll cross. It’s not nearly as hazardous as it looks.”

  I stood on the end. He walked out to the middle, surefooted as a cat. At the center, where the drop was long enough to require extra caution, he began to bounce gently, his arms outstretched for balance. The board under my feet responded. “Isn’t that dangerous?” I called.

  He turned around and walked back to where I stood, his eyes mischievous. “Life is dangerous. How tedious life would be without some danger to wake us up. I wouldn’t have taken you for a coward,” he said.

  Of course, at that I had to walk across boldly, as if my heart were not in my throat, as if I were not frightened of falling off the narrow board into the water below, which foamed around boulders beneath me. It was with relief that I stepped off onto the other side; I disguised it as best I could.

  Mr. Callender drew the board back and replace it in the same tree. “Will you come dine with us on a Sunday?” he called.

  “I would like that,” I called back.

  “That’s good, because I know someone who won’t.” Mr. Callender grinned. “Until we meet again, Jean Wainwright.” He raised his hat to me.

  I waved and made my way across the glade. Mr. Callender became quickly invisible among the trees opposite, and even though I listened well I could hear no sound of his footsteps. I was recalling to myself our long walk and the conversation, when an unbidden memory came to my mind: this man, whom I had been so easily making friends with, was responsible for sending Mrs. Bywall to prison.

  The idea was unpleasant to me. I determined to find out more about what had happened. I knew little about either of the people concerned, except that of the two, Mr. Callender seemed more frank, less secretive.

  Chapter 6

  As I was returning to the house, trying to recall a turn of phrase Mr. Callender used, trying to determine what it was about him that made him so easy to converse with, I met with Mr. Thiel walking back from some pasture; burly and strong he looked, like a countryman not a painter. His boots were coated with mud, his hair matted with sweat.

  “Look at you,” he said. I could have said the same to him but refrained. His presence cast shadows over my mood, but I would not let that dominate my spirits. “Mrs. Bywall made the dress for me.” I thought he might remark on the alteration in my appearance, but he chose not to. He waited without speaking for me to catch up with him.

  “I’ve just come from her father’s house. They farm this property for me, her parents and the two brothers.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “It looks to be a good year,” he went on. “The corn is coming up nicely. I hear you’ve been to the village this afternoon.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “Young McWilliams told me.”

  “It would be hard to keep a secret around here,” I observed.

  He thought about that. “Some secrets seem impossible to keep. Others, no. I told Mac to come calling tomorrow. It’s going to rain. I advised him to bring his Latin book.”

  I was silent.

  “You’re not going to get angry at me again, are you? You have no cause.”

  I supposed he was right. I had, after all, told him I wanted to know Mac. “No. I did see him in the village but we didn’t speak.” Apparently, though, he had come running up to find Mr. Thiel, when it had looked to me as if he were settling in to fish all afternoon. I didn’t care for that at all. “How do you know it will rain?” I asked, to change the subject.

  “Matt Jenkins told me, and he’s seldom wrong. He says we’re in for two or three days of it.”

  I looked up at a blue sky between thickly leaved branches of trees. A few white puffy clouds blew across it. “It doesn’t look like rain to me.”

  I don’t know why I put off telling Mr. Thiel that I had met Enoch Callender, whether it was some instinct that it would not please my employer, or some desire to hold a secret to myself a little while. I did tell him at dinner. When he heard, he looked at me sharply. “How did you like him?” he asked at last, as if he knew he should say something but was reluctant to talk on the subject.

  “I liked him very much,” I began, and then went on to relate our conversation about New York. I made quite a little speech. Mr. Thiel sat listening, watching me darkly without moving. I did not tell him that Mr. Callender had guessed at my name and guessed correctly, amusing as that was. That seemed the kind of frivolity of which Mr. Thiel would not approve. But I did ask him if he would tell me what had happened, when Mrs. Bywall had been imprisoned.

  “I can’t see why you need to know that,” he said, and said no more. I deduced that he had refused my request and put it out of my mind. I was therefore quite surprised when he instructed me to join him in his sitting room as we rose from the table.

  It was Mr. Thiel’s habit to retire to his sitting room and to stay there until after I had gone upstairs. I spent the evenings washing up with Mrs. Bywall, then reading in my own room upstairs. I could not tell what this change in the ordinary course of things meant.

  Mr. Thiel’s room, at the rear of the house, was still lit by the setting sun and filled with pink-gold bars of light. It was a small room, furnished with only a drawing table and two armchairs drawn up beside the small fireplace. The walls were paneled. One oil painting hung over the fireplace. Mrs. Bywall brought me in a pot of tea, with a pitcher of milk, a bowl of sugar, and a cup, on a tray. On another tray, already waiting by one of the chairs, a bottle of brandy and a snifter and a cigar box were set out. The most interesting thing in the bare room was the painting. I was not sure if I was supposed to notice it, or if I was not allowed to look. I tried to ignore it.

  “Go ahead,” Mr. Thiel said, apparently noticing my curiosity. So I walked up to the fireplace to study it closely. As I suspected, it was his own work, signed in the lower corner: D. Thiel, 1887. I don’t know how to describe it. It was a strong painting, beautiful but also harsh. It was clear in color and line, but not an exact pictorial representation.

  Mr. Thiel apparently knew my glade by the falls. He had painted it in the light of a setting sun, and I recognized it as much by its mood as its physical appearance. He understood the serenity of it, as I understood it. But in the shadows of the trees, in the dark water, something frightening hid itself. It was as if the growing darkness groped to take over the peaceful beauty of the scene. I stood a long time before that painting.

  “You know the place?” he asked finally.

  “Yes,” I said. “Do you ever paint people?”

  “Seldom,” he said. “I cant paint them as I understand them. Once or twice I’ve tried, without much success. There are contradictions, ambiguities. . . .”

  I stood, looking at him, looking back to the picture. For the first time in all the years I’d known him, he sounded unsure of exactly what he thought.<
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  “You don’t have to say anything,” he said.

  “I like it,” I said, knowing what a meaningless remark it was.

  “That doesn’t matter, does it?” he asked abruptly.

  “Perhaps not,” I said. “It’s very—strong.”

  “Yes. However, sit down now. Maybe another time you’d like to look around the studio. Maybe another time I’d like to allow you.”

  That was not exactly a warm invitation. I sat in a chair, poured myself a cup of tea, sweetened it and waited. He picked out a cigar and leaned back. “So you like Mr. Enoch Callender,” he said at last.

  “Yes.” I couldn’t think of any reason to deny the truth.

  “And you want to find excuses for him,” he said. I did not answer that, although it was equally true. “I’ll tell you what I know, which you can believe or not, as you choose.”

  There was no reason for me to respond; he left me with nothing to say.

  “The Jenkinses, Mrs. Bywall’s family, have always lived in Marlborough. They had three sons and five daughters. Mrs. Bywall is the oldest daughter, the third child. They were not poor, but they had no money to spare. Jenkins did not own his own land, but farmed that of other people as a tenant. The entire family worked hard to keep things going. Two of the sons married and moved away, one younger daughter went into service in Northampton, and Mrs. Bywall went to work for the Enoch Callenders. This was when she had just married their young farmhand, Charlie Bywall.” He bit off the end of a cigar, then lit it. He stared at his own picture as he spoke.

  “Now the Callenders were the great family hearabouts. They were rich. They lived well. They weren’t natives to the area so the villagers saw them—still see them—as outsiders, untrustworthy, unknown. But their coming made the village more prosperous so everyone was eager to please them. The Jenkinses didn’t want their daughter working for the Callenders, but they had no choice. Mrs. Bywall could earn more money there than in any other way, little as it was. She worked as a housemaid, which meant she did everything: taking care of the children, cleaning, laundering, serving at table, kitchen chores. They overworked her, of course, and took advantage of her need for the work.

  “Mrs. Bywall had a genuine need. Her young brother was ill, probably with consumption, and there were medicines that needed to be bought and the doctor to be paid.”

  “Dr. Carter,” I said.

  “Yes. A fool and a grasping man. For the poorer folk he had a unique system of payment: pay first, then get medical service. He was well hated. He had made too many mistakes: not recognizing appendicitis or setting a broken arm so that it left a man permanently crippled. But he was the only doctor available. Nobody went to him unless they were desperate. The Jenkinses were desperate. The boy coughed blood.”

  I nodded my head.

  “Jenkins could have gone elsewhere for help but he was proud. He had friends who would have helped out gladly, if they had known.”

  He was off the subject so I asked, “But what did Mrs. Bywall do?”

  “She stole some silver teaspoons. At the trial there was no question of that, she never lied about her guilt.”

  “But they caught her. So they had the spoons back, didn’t they?”

  “Enoch Callender insisted on prosecuting the case.”

  “Why?”

  “He never confided in me. His father and his sister tried to dissuade him. That may be why. He argued that when respect for property declines, the legal and social shape of the world is endangered. He said he must do the right thing. He said it caused him pain to do so.”

  Mr. Thiel’s face was hidden in shadows. “You don’t sound as if you believed that,” I said. Those struck me as good reasons.

  “Doing the right thing,” he answered. “I don’t know about a phrase like that. My own history . . . I wonder if I can be said to have done the right thing.”

  “You mean during the war?”

  “Your aunt told you? Of course she would. I still think I did the only possible thing, but was it the right thing? In any case, Enoch Callender did the right thing, and Mrs. Bywall was sent to prison. That was 1880 and she was sixteen. The year before I had married Irene Callender, which is how I come to know a little more about the affair.”

  “What more?” I asked.

  “That Josiah Callender, my father-in-law, argued with his son about his actions. That when Enoch wouldn’t change his mind, his father paid for a defense attorney from Boston. That afterwards he did everything possible to help the Jenkins boy. To no avail.” So the Callenders had helped after all, as Enoch Callender must have known they would.

  “But I’m a native here myself,” Mr. Thiel said, interrupting my thoughts. “I had known Florence Bywall since she was a girl, a child. So I know what prison did to her.” His voice was so cold I felt a sudden chill.

  “She is only thirty years old,” I said. I had been working it out.

  “The life aged her. Prisons,” he said, and then stopped. Of course when Charlie ran away—”

  “How long after was that?”

  “Almost a year.”

  “He certainly didn’t wait very long.” I was indignant.

  “The boy died,” Mr. Thiel continued.

  “Poor Mrs. Bywall,” I said.

  “And of course, since she had been in prison, people would have little to do with her when she returned. They sympathized with her, but from a safe distance.”

  “What a terrible thing. What about you? What did you do?”

  “What I had to do with it needn’t concern you,” he said sharply. It was as if I had reminded him of who he was, and who I was. “That is the story you’ve asked to hear. I don’t know what you will make of it.”

  “I will have to think carefully about it,” I told him. I did not think the Enoch Callender who had been so entertaining and so kind to me would have acted with the capricious cruelty Mr. Thiel hinted at. I wondered if my employer had kept silent about something he preferred to keep secret. His dark face gave me no clue.

  The next day it rained, just as Mr. Thiel had predicted. The rain poured down out of a gray sky, pounding on the roof, splashing on the ground. It was a steady, hard, stubborn rain. As was my custom, I worked during the morning. I was beginning to understand what a difference there was between Josiah Callender and his father Enoch. Enoch had sent Josiah to Paris while the War Between the States was raging. Josiah had not wanted to go, but had not been able to successfully oppose his father. The old man had an iron will, it seemed. Josiah was thirty-five at the time, widowed, the father of two children, and still his father had packed him off to Europe like a boy. “I’ll square things here,” the old man had written, “and you just be sure to hire a competent nurse for my grandchildren. Hire a British woman, not a foreigner. I’ll hear no more of your plaints, do you understand that? If I can deal with what people say here, then surely, at such a distance, your delicate conscience can survive. Most won’t blame you, I daresay.” When Josiah wrote from London to protest again, his father answered “Anything you could do would be useless. You had better face that. You wouldn’t fight. How would it serve your children for you to be in jail? You are my heir, Josiah, and you have a duty to me.”

  After that exchange, Josiah’s monthly letters concerned only the various capitals of Europe, the children, and the scenery. His father’s rare answers dealt with the difficulties of running a munitions factory, restrictive government regulations and unreliable employees. This series of letters was most curious, like two people, each talking to himself, but both calling it a conversation.

  After luncheon, Mac arrived, rain dripping off his hair, his Latin book kept dry by layers of newspaper. Mrs. Bywall showed him into the library. We had laid a small fire to take the damp chill out of the air. Even in July it can be chilly up in the Berkshires. I must admit I was glad to see Mac. I had worked hard all morning and felt the need of some diversion from the unfriendly relation between father and son and the endless household accounts.
The Callenders, at that time, had returned to New York City. The war was over.

  Mac looked around the room. His eyes traveled from the papers on the table to the twelve boxes ranged about the floor and returned to me where I sat behind the large desk. “This must be hard work,” he said. “It looks like you though.”

  “Whatever do you mean by that?” I asked. Sitting behind the desk, I reminded myself of Aunt Constance. Mac could have been a misbehaving student sent to me for correction.

  “It’s so tidy.”

  “Tidy?” I looked around at the awful mess.

  “No, it is. I bet you know what is in every pile.” He was right, I did. “And I bet you have done an awful lot of work already. How many of these boxes have you got through?”

  “Two and a half,” I said. It did not seem like many.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Nearly two weeks,” I said. Odd, it felt longer.

  “Do you really want to help me with my Latin?” he asked. “I’m pretty hopeless.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said, echoing Aunt Constance, “nobody is hopeless.”

  Together, we moved two boxes to clear a place before the fire. We sat on the floor there. He kept looking behind him.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I probably couldn’t do this job.”

  I discovered that I didn’t like Mac to be humble. “No more could I work in the fields all day,” I said. “Which is no credit to either of us.”

  He grinned then, and relaxed. “It’ll rain tomorrow, too, and I’ll take you to the falls. When it’s rained for a day, they’re . . . bigger,” he finished lamely.

  “I’d like that,” I said. “Is the river swollen?”

  “It’s starting. By tomorrow it might flood a little, if it keeps up like this.”

  We went to work on the Latin. He was not hopeless, but he was woefully confused. We went over and over the early forms. Mac had a poor memory, that was true. He was also easily discouraged. So I encouraged him and helped him, just as if I were teaching one of Aunt Constance’s youngest pupils to read.