The Callender Papers (21 page)

“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.