The Callender Papers (19 page)

That was as much of a lie as I could manage. Of course, I did know. I would do just as Irene Thiel had done: I would be troubled and uneasy, I would be as
generous as I thought sensible, but I would be unable to trust him. I would have to love him, but I would not trust him. It was a terrible thought.

But Mr. Callender insisted that I answer fully. “You're not being truthful with me.”

I looked at him and felt tears fill my eyes. He was, possibly, a wonderful man, a man with many gifts, with grace and wit, an informed mind, a man who might make joyful any place where he lived. What did he lack that made me know he was not to be trusted?

“I would take care of such a brother,” I said. “I would do everything I could to help him be the best sort of man he could be.”

He laughed then. “Do you know? Good people are all alike, their minds cast from a single mold.”

“I don't understand,” I said.

“You don't need to, and I don't think you ever can,” he told me.

“I've made you angry,” I said. “I don't want to make you angry.”

“How could you make me angry by telling me the truth?” he asked me. “I was thinking of other things, I'm afraid, taking advantage of your company. You know, you must learn to put yourself forward more, or nobody will ever notice you, quiet in your corner.
You'll never make heads turn, but you do have a great deal of character. You could use that to advantage, to make up—Now I've hurt your feelings, and I didn't mean to. But you'll need a thicker skin for life, my dear. But I'm forgetting—sometimes I'm so selfish I appall even myself,” and he smiled at me affectionately. “You've been ill, didn't you say? And you were troubled. Have I diverted you from your troubles, at least a little bit?”

I turned back from where I stood at the streams edge. “Yes,” I said, hearing the surprise in my own voice. He sat watching me, amusement on his face.

“Then I've succeeded, haven't I? It's exactly what I hoped. I've been a comfort, which is just what you needed.”

By the time I crossed the stream he had risen and gone.

I lingered over my stockings and shoes so that I would be sure to be alone as I made my way back down by the brook. Mr. Callender
had
succeeded in diverting me and perhaps it was for that reason that he told me his long story. The story saddened me, not because I felt sorry for him but because of the man he revealed himself to be. That a man could speak so fair and be so fair, yet not be honest, nor even kind, I now suspected; that I found distressing. Also distressing was the question he raised in my mind: if a man lied, then owned that he lied, was he still lying in quite the same way? If a man said frankly that he did not care to be good, was he deceptive? Poor Irene Thiel, I thought, who had spent all her life caring for her brother. No wonder she had been attracted to Mr. Thiel, who, for all his drawbacks, was at least completely honest. Or had she been
deceived in Mr. Thiel too, I wondered, had she been as cruelly disappointed in her husband as she must have been in her brother?

I thought then of Aunt Constance, of her cool and thoughtful presence. Irene Thiel should never have married. She should have lived with Aunt Constance and worked with her, as I had; then at least she might have had some peace.

By the time I reached the glade by the falls, I was properly angry at both of those men. I stumped along the path, my eyes on the ground. That she had been devoted to her husband I felt sure. But whether he had loved her in return, I doubted. I doubted whether he could even feel affection. My footsteps thumped in my ears.

Mac waited for me just down the path. “He told me to fetch you back. Where'd you go?”

“To see Mr. Callender.”

“Why?”

I didn't know the answer to that so I did not reply.

“You better hurry,” Mac warned me.

I did not increase my speed.

Mr. Thiel waited for us in the library. He stood before the fireplace. His dark face was made darker by anger. He didn't give either Mac or me a chance to speak. He addressed himself only to me.

“You will of course return to Cambridge,” he said. The words were cold, but his anger was hot. I could feel the force of it. “Until you are out of my care, you are to stay in this house. Is that understood? You will return to Miss Wainwright on the Friday train. I will telegraph your aunt tomorrow.”

I just stared at him. He had no right to talk to me like that. His employee I might be, but I was not his creature. I would not obey him unless I chose to; but I would not stoop to a lie. I kept my mouth firmly shut. He could not force me to answer. Also, I'll admit it, I didn't have the courage to argue with him.

“But sir—” Mac said.

Mr. Thiel turned on him. “And you, young man, will keep yourself off this property until Jean has left. I don't blame you. However, I can't feel that at this time you are a good influence on her. She will get into less mischief alone. Do you give me your word?”

“Yes sir,” Mac said. His voice sounded shaky, but he held himself straight enough.

I walked Mac to the front door. “He sure gets angry,” Mac said, letting his breath out as soon as we were in the hallway, out of Mr. Thiel's sight. “I thought my dad's lecturing was bad, but this . . .” He shook his head and then grinned at me. “He sure gets angry,” he said again.

“I don't care,” I said. “So do I.”

“What a pair you two are,” Mac remarked. “I don't see how you lasted in the same house this long.” His grin had not faded, and I began to see the humor of it myself. The two of us, dark and stubborn, both furiously angry. I knew the complex reasons for my own anger, my distress at the hopelessness of Mr. Callender's character, my sense of the way the two men had taken advantage of Irene Thiel's nature, my anger that Mr. Thiel should speak to me so, and beneath it all the fear that blew about me like a dark wind, fear for myself. But what right had Mr. Thiel to be so angry. All he had to do was dismiss me as an unsatisfactory employee.

Dinner that night started off in uncomfortable silence. We ate trout, with potatoes and green beans from Mrs. Bywall's garden. The only sound was the clatter of knives and forks on china. I barely glanced at my employer. Had I been older I would have asked for dinner on a tray in my room.

At last Mr. Thiel broke the silence. “I did not think your aunt would have raised a sullen child.”

I could not judge his tone, so I looked at his face. I could not judge his face. I went back to my food.

“I am sorry you have not been happy here,” he said, the anger back in his voice.

“It matters little. I've done the work asked of me.”

“Yes, you have,” he said, as if the admission pained him.

“Perhaps you would prefer me to spend my remaining time in Marlborough elsewhere,” I suggested. “I might go over to the Callenders' until it is time for me to leave.”

“You'll do no such thing—I forbid it,” he said.

I lay down my utensils silently. I looked silently at him.

“Haven't you thought that it was probably there that you ate poison?” he demanded. “Can you be so careless and unthinking, child?”

That he should accuse me of being unthinking was the final straw. But I sounded calm enough, I heard with pleasure how cool my voice was. “No, sir, it seemed just as likely that I might have been given poison here. I have, as you might guess, thought rather carefully on the question—if I had been given poison at all, of course, which is only a conjecture. No, sir, I am not unthinking, if you will forgive me the self-praise. Since you see fit to accuse me of that, I will tell you what I am thinking right now. I think you are jealous of Mr. Callender.”

He laughed, once, sharply, not with any humor. “Jealous? Why should I be jealous of him?”

The mans cold and unsympathetic nature increased my fury. “He is so much that you are not,” I pointed out. “He, at least, would not take an ignorant girl and place her into a position of danger with no warning, no warning at all.” To my dismay, I heard my voice crack.

Mrs. Bywall removed the dinner plates.

After she had gone, Mr. Thiel spoke. His voice was oddly gentle. “You're right, Jean; I know nothing of children.” I looked up in surprise and saw how tired he was. His face looked pale; his eyes were the only signs of life in his face. “You're too young, I expected too much of you. You're right, you're much better off with your Aunt Constance.”

His gentleness would have melted me, except for the lie he told. “You're lying,” I accused him. I don't know why I should have been so disappointed to catch him out. “You had a child, I know it, even though you keep it like some dark, guilty secret.”

His face came alive then. I watched him struggle to control his expression.

“I don't know why you're lying, but you'd better not think you can fool me,” I said.

Mrs. Bywall stood by the table, a brown betty in her hands, her face pale and frightened, her eyes riveted to Mr. Thiel's face.

“At least Mr. Callender hired detectives, at least he tried,” I continued. “You didn't do anything.” I waited to hear what the man had to say in his own defense.

But Mr. Thiel simply glared at me from across the table.

“Sir,” Mrs. Bywall said, “don't you—”

“Silence!” he roared. “Take that thing back into the kitchen. Not a word. We'll eat it tomorrow.”

Despite her fear she tried again. “But sir—” I knew now who was the puppetmaster Mrs. Bywall obeyed, although I did not know why.

“Not a word.” He cut her off. “Miss—Wainwright will be leaving us soon. She looks very tired and should probably go right up to bed. A rich dessert will only give her bad dreams.”

Once again I left the table, but this time in stony silence. He might have Mrs. Bywall terrified, he might be able to control the tongues of the villagers, he might have broken his wife to his will, but he would not break me. “I'll bid you a good-night,” I said from the doorway.

“Good-night.” He looked up at me from his seat. He no longer looked angry, only tired. “I'll be gone when you wake up. You're not to leave the house.”

I did not answer by gesture or word. He held my eyes with his until I turned away.

As you can imagine, I slipped out of the house the next morning after a breakfast during which Mrs. Bywall resisted all my efforts at conversation. She, poor woman, had no idea that I would disobey Mr. Thiel.

I took a book and went up to the glade by the falls. There I sat on the long grass trying to read. It was a warm, sun-drenched morning. The stream rushed over the falls filling the air with its sound. I sat cross-legged in the sunlight and did not open my book.

Recalling our quarrel—I couldn't dignify it with any other name—I was no longer so sure that I had acted as Aunt Constance would have wished. Certainly I had been as disrespectful to my employer as he had to me. Moreover, however badly he had acted, that did not excuse my own ill behavior. Especially in regard to dragging the child into the quarrel, even as a means of proving that Mr. Callender was in some ways the better man. That, I knew, was inexcusable. I could excuse myself—hadn't Mr. Callender said he alone had tried to trace her—but I owed Mr. Thiel an apology.

A rush of air filled my lungs.

It was an impossible idea.

Then I laughed, a sharp and mirthless sound. And Mr. Callender said I had no imagination.

But in the solitude of the glade and beneath the rushing water, I heard how my laugh echoed the unhappy sound Mr. Thiel had made at dinner, when I had accused him of jealousy.

It was a ridiculous idea.

I had to think carefully, very carefully, because if I was correct, everything made sense. I was sure Mr. Callender said he had tried to trace
her
. A girl.

Irene Thiel had said her child would be safe. What safer place than with her old friend, Constance Wainwright? How the nurse had managed to get the child there, I couldn't guess. I could guess at the age, however, since Irene Thiel had been married for four years, and the child had been getting big, as Mr. Callender told me: the child was probably born in 1881 or 1882, and would now be almost thirteen.

As I was. But I had no memory of a witchlike figure; although I did have a shrouded, dark figure in my dreams.

J: Janet or Jessica. Or Jean. I had never thought of that.

Aunt Constance said I was a babe in arms when
she got me. For how long could a child be considered a babe in arms? It was impossible. Except that Mr. Callender had guessed my name, which was at least as impossible. He had guessed it in a game he had set up, which was certainly ridiculous—unless my age and my appearance made him suspect. Certainly it explained not only his flattering behavior toward me, but also the trouble to which he had put his family on my account. If I was Irene Thiel's daughter. If Mr. Thiel, for whom he harbored such a bitter dislike was—