The Callender Papers (15 page)

The next few weeks passed quietly. I worked every morning, studied with Mac in the afternoons, or explored the woods with him. Sometimes I helped Mrs. Bywall in the garden. I wrote letters to Aunt Constance and received letters from her. I told her everything, everything except my curiosity about the death of Mrs. Thiel and my determination to see if the papers held a clue to that mystery. It was not that I wanted to keep it a secret from her. No, I just wanted to spare her the pain that the memory would bring. I simply did not mention my thoughts about the chain of events of earlier years.

Every Sunday I was taken to luncheon at the Callenders. I saw little of the children of the house,
and it was soon apparent that I was Mr. Callender's guest. Mrs. Callender never again spoke to me as she had that first time. She seldom spoke at all. The two boys and their sister managed not often to be present either before the meal or after, so that as a rule we were together only for the meal itself. Mr. Callender still insisted that they had an unusual fondness for me, but I could not agree. However, since the idea seemed to please him and there was no good to be accomplished by disabusing him, I did not point out the truth. Then, after washing up with Mrs. Callender and Victoria, who always joined us after that first week, I would walk with Mr. Callender. Those were the best parts of the afternoons.

He must have had a wild streak as a young man. He could talk about gambling houses and the dockside area of New York in a way that brought them alive before me. I would never know those worlds for myself, but he enabled me to see into them, for a brief while. He made me understand what is called the “Underside of Life,” a world inhabited by ne'er-do-wells and actresses, by men and women who live a secret nighttime life. These were bold characters, some of them, with a lack of concern for their own safety, a love of the dramatic and daring and a disregard for the
tenets of society. Others he spoke of were ruined by drink or addiction to gambling, and to worse things I gathered, but he only hinted at those. The society he described had its own aristocracy, as well as peasantry. He spoke of casinos, lit by crystal chandeliers and attended by handsome men with beautiful, bejeweled women on their arms. He spoke of the excitement of the cards, of men made rich or ruined by a turn of a wheel. He spoke of cutthroats, pickpockets, burglars and sharpers. “These desperate people commit illegal crimes,” he said. “And on the whole I prefer them to those who commit legal crimes, the moneylenders, the men who manipulate paper fortunes or who have lawyers to find out loopholes in the laws. These criminals I speak of risk it all,” he said, “and do not talk hypocritically about respectability. I'm a romantic, I know you're thinking that, but you musn't let your own rightness blind you to the rightness of others.” And he put his hands over his eyes, stumbling comically, to illustrate his point.

But Enoch Callender was also well acquainted with respectable life in New York and could talk of balls and teas, of summer homes in Watch Hill and Newport. Sometimes he made mock of the respectable people, but he made them vivid, too; the
old women sitting and watching each other like jealous monarchs, the debutantes and their esquires, the yacht racing and lawn tennis, operas and plays.

Once, to my confusion, he insisted on teaching me to waltz. He said every young lady should know how to dance properly and would not attend me when I pointed out that dancing and balls could have little place in my life. He showed me the steps and then, singing the melody, held out his hands to me. It was as if he had read my secret wishes. We danced around and around the grassy dell. Gradually, I sang the tune with him and felt my legs, as they became accustomed to the steps, grow more confident, more quick. At last, dizzy, we stopped, and he gravely clapped his palms softly together, as if we had been at a ball. I laughed and did the same.

“You have a light foot, Jean,” he said to me. I knew, but did not say so because I was still out of breath, that I danced well because he led me well, just as in singing there are some voices with which your own sounds truer, stronger. “You take me back to my youth,” he said. “Oh, there were balls I have danced at—with nobody more appealing than my present partners, I must own it—but let me tell you what it was like then.”

He showed me worlds I would never inhabit. But after speaking with him, I knew more than I could have learned myself by living in them. His words stirred my imagination. They made me understand how large and various the world outside Cambridge was. “Don't you want to see it, Jean?” he would exclaim. “Don't you want to be out there? You can admit it to me, you can be sure I'll understand.”

“No,” I said. “No, I don't think so. But I enjoy hearing about it from you.”

“Why don't you want to live it yourself?”

“It would not suit me,” I said, I think correctly. “I am not at my best at gaiety. I am at my best in a sedate life. When things happen too quickly—”

He shook his head and smiled at me with satisfaction. “You underestimate yourself, I suspect. I am willing to take your good opinion of Aunt Constance, that famous woman, but I don't believe she appreciates the whole of you. You must not let yourself become too respectable. Keep yourself a little wild. What is life for, if not for the living of it?”

His enthusiasm was contagious, and he could see it in my face. “Wouldn't you like to see the world? Japan,” he said, “Tahiti, Rome, Kashmir, Madagascar.”

“Of course,” I said. This did not seem to me related to what had gone before. “But one cannot do everything, one cannot have everything.”

“Why not?” he asked with a laugh. “And even so, even if it is so, why shouldn't the imagination want everything?”

I enjoyed those times. My own tongue was loosened, and although he listened to what I said, he did not always take my words seriously, so that I came, myself, to take them less seriously. But somehow, I never spoke to him about his own family, and I never mentioned the unhappy events of ten years ago, thoughts of which occupied so much of the rest of my time. He occasionally mentioned his father, bitter references. His sister he seldom spoke of, as if it were too painful for him to do so. I did not want to increase his burden of sorrow by bringing up my own questions.

Yes, I liked Mr. Callender. He was so many things—quick and experienced, a man of adventures who knew strange and sometimes unsavory places and could make those places live in my imagination. It was exciting to be with him. He had, besides, a grace of his own. None of his gestures was awkward. He seemed a Renaissance man, able to do everything well and widely informed. Despite this, he did not make me
feel awkward or clumsy or childish, as he so easily might have. He made me feel as graceful as himself, as rich in imagination, by including me in his memories, by talking with me so naturally. In his presence, I became more clever, less stiff and childishly ill at ease, as if some of his worldly charm could rub off and become part of my own being. And yet it was not a shallow friendship, I thought. I understood that a deep sorrow lay beneath his gaiety, and I admired the gallantry with which he went on with his life.

Mr. Callender made me joyful. I looked forward eagerly to our meetings.

I was aware, during the time, that I was earning Mr. Thiel's respect. As he was, I must own, earning mine. We were not companionable, and I certainly did not feel I knew him well, but as long as the conversation stayed away from personal subjects he was willing to continue it. I myself had some interest in learning how his mind worked, and moreover, it seemed to me that if I listened carefully I might glimpse something of what he kept so carefully hidden. Sundays, when I returned from the Callenders', Mr. Thiel and I would sit in the kitchen over a dinner he had prepared and talk about education, art, the nature of man. These conversations did not bubble or
flow, they were halting, serious affairs. Most often, they began with a question I would ask. “Why do people give alms to beggars?” or “Did any of the African missionaries speak the language of the people among whom they went?” Mr. Thiel's concern was not for the specific question, although he answered it thoughtfully as a rule, but for the general principle behind it. Often we had a fundamental disagreement and would find ourselves arguing the point from opposite sides. He assumed not only superior knowledge, but also superior understanding, which galled me. Often, I would be lying in my own bed before the proper response came to me; sometimes I even came to agree with him. I never told him this, of course; it wouldn't have been wise, I knew instinctively, to let him feel he was winning me over. I needed to be as wary with him as he was with me.

Between those two, Sundays went quickly by, in anticipation, memory and enjoyment. I wrote to Aunt Constance about those days more than any others.

Mr. Thiel and I did have dinner with the McWilliams family, which I recall in colors of warm kerosene lamps and tones of ordinary voices, talking, laughing, quarreling. In that sprawling village house, the children dominated a room, although they obeyed
their elders quickly enough. Mac had four younger sisters, each of whom claimed part of my attention. The adults sat quietly, talking in lazy tones of unimportant matters. In that house, I was one among many children, which I found restful. I ran about among the rooms, took part in silly games and enjoyed myself. Mac sometimes played with us, and sometimes sat beside his father, silently listening.

Those weeks were a happy time for me. As Aunt Constance had predicted, I was doing well. I could feel my mind and spirits expanding, not physically, but in experience. I realized that I had led a sheltered life until then, and—while I did not resent the narrowness of my Cambridge life—I was glad to learn more, to broaden my knowledge of the world. And to expand it in so many different ways at the same time.

During that time, too, I went through more and more of the boxes, with increased efficiency and curiosity. In the second week of August, I began on the final box. There had been no repetition of the nightmare. I suspect that was because I felt I was doing something about the problem. My mind was at ease because I was dealing with it. Thus, the terror of it was put into a place where I could manage it, and it did not need to creep out in dreams. I had determined
to work steadily, confident of my ability to recognize whatever it was Mr. Thiel intended me to find, or not to find, when I saw it.

As if to reward my careful, patient work (and I felt I deserved a reward because I
had
been so impatient to get to the final box), I found a note from Irene to her father. There was no date on it, but it must have been written after Mrs. Bywall's theft:

Dear Father [she wrote]

I am writing this late at night. I know you will read and think about it carefully, and you know that I will abide by your decision. I ask you, this last time, to reconsider the changes in your will. You must disapprove of Enoch's determination to prosecute; I understand that. However, whatever you will think of him, he is your son and entitled to benefit from our wealth. Whatever he is, you and I are responsible for him, and responsible to him. I don't think we can avoid the truth of that. For myself, you know how little I need. Enoch needs more, whether for good or ill I will not judge. My only concern is for our baby, you know that, and you know what steps I have taken for the child's care and safety. I
beg you to think once more what good will come from your proposed will? And think further, what evil?

I studied this note. Its firm handwriting sloped forward without curlicues and fanciness. Mr. Callender had said something about a will. Mr. Thiel had said that he, Mr. Callender, received an allowance. I wondered what the will had actually said, what provisions it made. I decided to ask Aunt Constance about it, not immediately, of course, but at a time when she might be disposed to answer. But there might be ways to find out what the will said. Somebody had to know that.

Poor Irene, poor Mrs. Thiel, so sure that she had taken good care for her child. I was glad she did not know what had happened. But I wondered why she had been worried about her child's safety.

It was after one of those pleasant Sundays, toward the middle of August, that I awoke in the dead still of night. For a moment, or even less time, I lay bewildered. A dream? A noise? What had wakened me?

I was seized by pain, as if a fire scorched my stomach. The sharp pain caused me to turn over in bed and gasp. Flaming waves of pain passed across my stomach, one following the other, and then, finally, they abated. For a time I lay back in my bed, exhausted, panting.

I thought at first, while I could still think clearly, that I would stay in bed and let whatever the illness was run its course. I did not want to waken Mr. Thiel. I was embarrassed. I thought that if it became necessary I would find Mrs. Bywall. A woman is always less of a stranger than a man. I wished I could have been in Cambridge, with Aunt Constance next door.

Two more attacks of this pain left me weak and almost weeping. Pain, I discovered, is terrible. It can change your ideas. Now I wanted only someone, anyone, just any relief. All of my attention was devoured by the pain. I no longer cared for being embarrassed, or for anything else. And the attacks seemed to be getting worse, not better.

I forced myself out of bed and into the hallway. There I called out, softly at first, then loudly. That is the last thing I remember clearly. After that there was only the pain itself and voices around me. Mr. Thiel's face, Mrs. Bywall's face and her arms holding me down in my bed while her voice said something about “just a little while” as she bathed my forehead with a damp cloth.

Dr. McWilliams's round head appeared above my bed, but he was not smiling. He forced me to swallow something. I vomited. Then I fainted or slept or did both in that order—I cannot remember.

It was late morning when I awoke for the second time. Mrs. Bywall sat by my bed. The room was filled with sunlight. She was knitting something shapeless. Her face looked tired, but she actually smiled at me. “Awake, are you? How do you feel?”