The Callender Papers (14 page)

“Not really, no. I think I can understand,” I said.

“But it is selfish, in its way. It wouldn't do for you and me not to be honest with one another, I want to be careful of that in itself. But when I think of children, my own as well as others, and what the world is like even for my own, who have at least a solid roof and regular meals. The poor creature—my sister's child—might be anywhere, living under who knows what circumstances.”

I felt pity for him, and admiration too. He carried this sorrow in his heart, but didn't inflict it on others.

“So you see me as I am,” he said, his voice briefly solemn, before it switched again to contain an undercurrent of humor, “such as I am. There are so many things I could do here. I can read your mind a little, and I too regret that I lack the power of character to occupy myself usefully. I could study, even become a scholar. Or farm. I could write novels in the long mornings; my imagination is certainly up to that I think, don't you?”

Laughing, I agreed.

“Or at least memorize the names of all the kings of England, starting with Ethelred. I could do something—learn card tricks?—instead of letting old wounds trouble me, make me gloomy . . .” His voice trailed off, wistfully, it seemed.

“Are you gloomy now?” I wondered. He was a hard person to understand, I thought, more mercurial in his nature than anyone I'd ever met.

“How could I be, in such good company, on such a temperate afternoon?”

“I don't know,” I told him. “But are you?”

We were at the falls by then and he stopped so I could look at him. “You tell me, Miss Jean Wainwright. You tell me and I will believe you.”

I studied him, his bright, open countenance, the
brightness of his golden head and white suit. “I don't know,” I told him honestly. “I can't imagine it, but I don't have much imagination.”

“Then you'll have to get to know me better. You'll enjoy that—I flatter myself. I know I will, because you will come back to see us again, won't you? Next week?”

I hesitated, thinking of that unhappy family and the brave appearance they put on for my sake.

“You did enjoy yourself, just a little, didn't you?” he asked me.

“Yes I did, but you will have to promise me something.”

“Anything,” he declared extravagantly, his hand over his heart.

“Mrs. Callender worked so hard, that was clear, and I think you eat more simply when you are not entertaining. Will you promise me not to treat me as a guest, that she will go to no extra trouble for me?”

Mr. Callender looked deeply into my eyes. “Such a thoughtful young lady,” he said. “How fortunate for us. I make the promise gladly, and gratefully too.”

He lowered the board down over the falls and gestured me onto it with a bow like that Raleigh must have used when he laid his jeweled cape over a puddle
for his sovereign queen. I did not let him see how frightened I was of crossing the steep falls on that narrow board. I stepped over with what I hoped was convincing confidence. It had, of course, occurred to me that this secret bridge might explain Irene Callender Thiel's otherwise inexplicable fall.

It was in the late afternoon when I got back to Mr. Thiel's house. I found my employer in the kitchen preparing a dinner. A fowl roasted in the oven, potatoes boiled in a pan on the stove. He was shelling peas.

“So you're back,” he said, looking at me briefly, sharply. “You can set the table. We'll eat in here.” His hands were deft, splitting the pods open and letting the peas fall into a stoneware bowl. “I thought you'd be hungry.”

“I am,” I said. I had not eaten much at the lunch, despite having cleaned my plate. The servings were small at the Callender house.

“Young McWilliams brought us a pheasant,” Mr. Thiel said.

“Where is Mrs. Bywall?”

“She'll return after dark,” he said. “She likes to stay as long as she can with her family.”

The meal tasted good to me. In fact, it was delicious. “You cook well,” I said, partly to thank him, partly because I was surprised.

“I lived alone for many years and taught myself to cook. It isn't hard.”

“Why do you employ Mrs. Bywall?”

“The house must be kept as well,” he reminded me. “How did you find the Callenders? Did you enjoy yourself?”

“They have invited me to return next Sunday,” I said, not answering either of his questions.

“What did you say to that?”

“I accepted.”

He nodded.

“They went to a great deal of trouble for me,” I explained. Somehow, he made me feel that I should not have accepted.

“Enoch Callender has ambitions,” Mr. Thiel answered. “His wife—has trouble meeting his notions of what is necessary in life.”

“She has no help,” I defended her.

“The villagers have long memories. It's her own fault, as I see it. They made their beds.”

“Was it only because of Mrs. Bywall?” I asked. “Mr. Callender said he had little money, and I think they cant afford servants. They are very unhappy, I think.”

“Do you,” he said coldly.

“Yes, I do.” I was a little angry. “They can't seem to manage housework well, and yet they dress so beautifully, just for themselves. They have no friends. You, at least, have some friends.”

“So they're even worse off than I am,” he said. He uttered a harsh laugh. “They seem to have made a friend of you.”

I didn't contradict him, although I could have. After all, I did like Mr. Callender. He spoke to me as if I were an adult, and he listened to me when I spoke. “Mr. and Mrs. Callender were accustomed to a more social life, weren't they? In New York? Something gayer, more civilized, more exciting. It's clear they've lost a great deal. Yes, I sympathize with them.”

“So I see,” Mr. Thiel said. He would have liked to drop the subject, I could tell that. But I continued. “Did Mr. Callender's father deny him his inheritance?” I asked. “Is that what happened? Mr. Callender doesn't speak respectfully of his father. Was it because of Mrs. Bywall?”

Mr. Thiel looked angry, but he answered me. “Mrs. Bywall was only the last straw. But those two never got along. They never would have. They were two different kinds of people. Josiah preferred his daughter to his son.”

“Why?” I asked. For a minute, I thought he would refuse to answer me, but at last he did, speaking unemotionally.

“Josiah and his daughter shared concerns, for education and better living conditions for working people. They fought the injustice of the world whenever they could. Enoch was different: even as a child he was different, Irene said. She blamed herself, but I always thought he would have been as he was even if he had been raised differently. He got everything he wanted, but nothing satisfied him, there was never enough for him. And he didn't care about learning or law or people. He cared only about pleasure, his own pleasure, and his own comfort. Many young men do, and like many young men he gambled, he was in debt, he purchased on credit and did not pay his bills. He not only had no concern for the things his father and sister cared about, he also never missed a chance to quarrel with them.

“His sister, my wife, loved him, she always loved
him. It was a failing in her, a blind spot. She said he was different from the rest of the world and should not be treated in the same way. She said he was a wild thing, not to be tamed, not to be thought of as good or bad. She indulged all his whims and yet more often than not he made her weep. Sometimes he made her angry. But she did love him. His father—couldn't. Josiah felt guilty about that, of course, so Enoch could often get his own way with his father as well as Irene. Enoch tried to talk Josiah out of selling the factory and moving here. In that, at least, his father was firm. At first, Enoch simply refused to move out here, but Josiah forced him to.

“They hoped that when he married he would settle down. His wife brought him some money, but that didn't last long. So he had to move here and he resented it. He said he was wasting himself here and quarreled constantly with his father. He never let up, always asking to return to the city, never missing an opportunity to denigrate his father's hopes, choices. When I married his sister—well, he has never liked me. To answer your question then, no, I don't think Mrs. Bywall was to blame. The years before, if anything, were to blame. Yes, Josiah cut him out of the will, unless there was no one else. Enoch does have a
generous allowance. But nothing will ever be enough for him, unless he has everything. There are many people like that.”

I thought about this, and how strongly Mr. Thiel apparently felt about Mr. Callender. I had never heard him make such a speech before, not even in his arguments with Aunt Constance.

“Did
you
inherit the fortune?” I asked.

“That is impertinent,” he said. He was right, and I apologized.

Still, I had more questions. I didn't know how long Mr. Thiel would continue the conversation. He did not look at me as he spoke, and his voice was cold; but he did continue speaking. So I persisted. “If Mr. Callender didn't like his son, couldn't he have tried to change him?”

Mr. Thiel sighed patiently and explained in the voice of a teacher talking to a rather dull child: “He did try. He didn't succeed. Irene was the only one who could talk sense to her brother, and even she couldn't talk him into being what he did not want to be. Maybe she loved him too much. She tried to protect him from his father. She tried to protect his father from him. She tried to bring the two together. There was nothing she could do, but she wouldn't admit that.”

I considered all of this. Then I said, “If you look at it from his point of view, there is much to pity him for. Mr. Callender, that is.”

Then Mr. Thiel did look at me with his steady dark eyes. His eyes seemed to probe into my mind. It was uncomfortable. “Of course,” he said, “that is true. However, if you believe that, then you must also believe that there is no importance to the question of right and wrong.” I understood what he was driving at. But he went on as if I needed to have things more clearly explained. “If you believe that you must also think that there is not Truth, beyond all of us human creatures.”

“Do you mean God?”

“No, I mean something human. God is in the realm of good and evil. Truth, the simple truth, the clear truth—
that
is for human beings.”

“I don't understand,” I said.

“I mean,” he spoke carefully and even more slowly, “that if, for example, you feel sympathy for Mr. Callender because of what he has lost, as he sees it; if you take his point of view about things; if it is a right thing for Enoch to want to spend money for his own transient pleasures rather than for schools for poor children; then, you could have such a sympathy
for everyone, in every situation, couldn't you? And then everyone could be excused for anything, however cruel or destructive it is.”

I understood what he meant. “But you felt sympathy for Mrs. Bywall,” I argued. “You saw things from her point of view.”

“That was different,” he said.

“Why?” I insisted. “She stole, didn't she? That's not right.”

“She didn't lie about what she'd done,” Mr. Thiel said. “She accepted her punishment.”

Reluctantly, I found myself switching sides: “And she did it for the good of somebody else, there is that, too.”

Mr. Thiel thought about that. “No, that can't be a good excuse, can it? Anybody could say they were doing a good deed for the sake of somebody else. John Wilkes Booth shot Mr. Lincoln for the sake of freedom for all men, he said.”

“You think that the whole difference is in telling the truth,” I said slowly, thinking aloud now. “Did Mr. Callender lie?”

Mr. Thiel didn't answer this question. Instead he said, “The important thing is to find the truth. To be honest with yourself. Take slavery. Say a man has
always owned slaves and always believed that they were not humans. So he treats a slave as if he were a cow or chicken, buys and sells, disciplines, even slaughters sometimes. You could understand how that slave owner felt and how he came to believe what he believed, couldn't you?” I nodded. He continued, “But there is another man, a black man, equally a man. If you sympathize with the slave owner, you must accept slavery itself. Unless the most important thing is the truth.”

“But you wouldn't go to war, you were a Hider,” I protested. I thought I had gone too far, but after a long moment he did answer me.

“Any use I have in the world is in these—” he held out his hands. “So yes, I did do that, I ran away. Had my family been able to buy my way out as Josiah Callender's father did for him, I'd have done that instead. I would
not
risk my own death, not until I had painted. It was a miserable life I led, except for the painting. Most people despised me. They were right in that. I despised myself. I would do the same thing again, however.”

“Would you despise yourself again?”

“Yes, that too.”

That did not make sense to me. It seemed, from
the way he described his choices, that there was no right decision Mr. Thiel could make. That confused me, because I was accustomed to the solutions arrived at by careful thought; but in this discussion, careful thought led me further from the solution. Mr. Thiel sat and watched me and said no more. I wondered why he had allowed the conversation to go on as long as it had. I did not flatter myself that he was growing interested in my character, so I wondered what his purpose was in talking with me.