The Callender Papers

by Cynthia Voigt

  I sounded as cheerful as I could: “We can but try. How often have you told me that women must learn that they are as brave as men?”

  “Men can be foolhardy.”

  “Well, we will not fall into that trap, will we? I am not helpless, you know.”

  She laughed. “To think that you are comforting me. No, you are not helpless. You are strong, healthy, able to amuse yourself, and you have a bold mind. Forgive me, my dear, for the megrims. Men, and women too, are unpredictable creatures. You have seen little of this. I wonder now if your innocence is enough protection for you.”

  Aunt Constance accompanied me into Boston and helped me find a seat in the railway coach of the Boston and Maine Railroad. My one portmanteau and the basket that held my lunch were placed on the seat next to me.

  “I shall think of you,” I told Aunt Constance.

  “You will do well,” she assured me.

  Despite the grime of the locomotive and the steam rising along its sides, I leaned out the window and looked back to her, waving, until she had dwindled out of sight. Then I sat back, to attempt to think cheerfully. The journey, more than a hundred miles, was longer than any I had ever taken, and I hoped I would enjoy it. I determined to forget about my destination and what awaited me there.

  The train made its noisy way through the outskirts of Boston, then through the farmlands much like those I had always known. Gradually, the towns grew farther apart. In the early afternoon, the landscape became hilly. Trees were in full foliage. The rivers we crossed, the lakes we chugged beside, sparkled in sunlight. Often farmers’ children would stand at the side of the tracks to watch the train go by, their eyes staring into the coaches.

  We arrived at North Adams as the sun set. Twilight shadows made the air chilly. I disembarked with as much confidence as I could muster. I had reason not to be concerned, should Mr. Thiel not be there. I knew what I was to do—I would cross over to the hotel and sleep the night there. Were he not to come at all, I would merely return to Cambridge the next day.

  No such difficulty faced me. He stood waiting in a shadow, a wide hat hiding his eyes. He let me stand before him for a moment before he reached down to take my portmanteau.

  “So. You came,” he said. He was taller than I had remembered.

  “Yes,” I said. I could think of nothing else to say.

  “I thought you might change your mind at the last minute.”

  “As you can see, sir, I did not, for here I am.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. We stood thus a long moment. “I have in mind to go straight to Marlborough.” He did not ask me if I were too tired for a journey of several hours nor if I would prefer to rest the night at the hotel before going on.

  “I can make the journey,” I said. He turned and led the way to an open carriage that stood before the station. He placed my portmanteau in it, helped me into a seat and then climbed up to the driver’s seat.

  Then he turned around and spoke to me out of the darkness. “Have you dined?”

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “You should have spoken up,” he grumbled.

  We ate at the hotel; or, more truthfully, I ate and he watched me. He had, he told me, eaten while waiting for the train. It is not easy to eat while you are being closely watched by a silent and impatient stranger. I felt awkward and hurried. I declined the dessert I wanted for the sake of his impatience.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” he remarked as we walked back to the carriage along the dark and silent street.

  “Do what?”

  “Go without something you want for somebody else’s convenience.”

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized without thinking. Then I grew angry. “It was obvious that you were eager to be on your way,” I pointed out to him.

  “I am, of course,” he said. “But that should make no difference to you. Your Aunt Constance wouldn’t have done it.”

  “Perhaps not,” I agreed. “However, she might have. If it had been she, she would have contrived it so cleverly that you would not have noticed it.”

  “True,” he agreed. He said no more to me.

  At the start of that dark ride, I could see only the back of the man as he kept the horses to a comfortable trot. In the darkness he could have been anyone, taking me anywhere, the devil himself, hurrying me to some dismal destination. He made no sound, neither talked nor whistled. I, too, said nothing. I felt oddly helpless, a feeling new to me. Fortunately, I also felt a little angry still, and it was this that kept back the tears so near the surface. What, after all, was I doing here, with this unfriendly and forbidding man? As my eyes grew accustomed, I could pick out the shapes of trees passing along beside us, growing thick overhead, and even the back of the horse steadily pulling the carriage down the dark road. The sound of the horse’s hooves on the packed road was steady, monotonous. At last, exhausted by the long day, I fell asleep.

  If you have ever awakened in a room that was not familiar, you can imagine how I felt. For a moment, looking around the plain room, with its one window facing east (the sun on my face had woken me), its whitewashed walls, its narrow dresser, its one chair and writing table beside the empty stone fireplace, I was sure I was still asleep and that when the dream was finished I would find myself in my own accustomed room. I closed my eyes to await that second awakening and only then noticed that I was still fully clothed, except for my shoes. I began to remember where I might be. Someone—Mr. Thiel himself—must have carried me in and put me to bed.

  It is a fearful thing to realize you are alone in a strange place, among strangers.

  I got out of bed and went to the window. I could see a red barn, with a carriage standing before it. Beyond that, to one side, was another, smaller outbuilding. What was probably a vegetable garden was also visible. My bedroom must be at the back of the house, I thought. All around, as far as I could tell, were trees, and hills tall enough to be called mountains.

  While I unpacked my suitcase, changed into fresh clothes, and washed my face and hands at the basin on the dresser, I considered what to do next. I opened the door and listened. I could hear nothing.

  The hallway was narrow and only dimly lit. It seemed to lead toward the front of the house. I passed a few closed doors and came to an intersection of hall and stairs. There, a tall window looked out over the lawns and driveway to more forest and hills. The house seemed to be set at the top of one of the smaller hills. I could see the green commons and some rooftops of a town, set some distance below the house. There should, I remember, be at least one other house quite near here, the house Josiah Callender had built for his son. There was no sign of it. I descended the staircase.

  All the floors were deeply polished wood, and the stair boards creaked under my feet. I hoped somebody would hear me and come forward, but nobody did. On the main floor I looked through large open double doors to the dining room and saw that the long table had one place set at it. I would have preferred to go out onto the porch, which stretched along the front of the house and thence onto the lawn, but I decided it was necessary to first find whoever was in the house. So I crossed the dining room to enter what I thought must be the kitchen.

  There I saw a woman sitting at a table drinking from a cup and reading a periodical. She was engrossed in her reading. Her arms, with the sleeves of her dress rolled up, showed heavy. Her face was round and pale. She wore an apron. Her colorless hair was simply done, pulled back to the top of her head, to be out of the way, I thought. Her face was expressionless as she read, her lips moved forming the words silently.

  “Excuse me,” I said. She started and looked up at me. She struggled clumsily to her feet.

  “You must be Mrs. Bywall,” I said, walking up to her and holding out my hand. She wiped hers on her stained apron and shook mine firmly. Mrs. Bywall was a short, stout body. She looked both hardy and strong.

  “I am Jean Wainwright,” I said.

  “I know that. I was listening for you. But I didn’t hear you. You’re a quiet th
ing.”

  “I hope I didn’t frighten you.”

  “It would take more than a child to do that,” she said. Then she closed her pale lips over whatever else she might have wanted to say and waited, considering me, for a long moment before she spoke again. When she did, the words came hastily stumbling out. “You must be hungry. Mr. Thiel said I wasn’t to waken you. I said as how it might be easier on you, in this strange place, to breakfast with him, but he said no, you were to sleep. I don’t argue with him. Now he’s gone off to his studio and won’t be in until lunch. He’s not to be interrupted when he’s working.” Again she paused, again resumed speech: “He said you were to eat and then to walk about the place. What will you like for your breakfast? Mr. Thiel said I was to sit with you.” The pale lips closed. There was no expression on her face or in her eyes as she spoke, as if she were a child rehearsing a set piece.

  I was bewildered. I waited to see if she would stumble into speech again. I didn’t know what I was supposed to say.

  “What will you have for breakfast, Miss Wainwright?”

  “Must you call me that?” I asked.

  “Miss Jean then. What will you have, Miss Jean? Egg, sausage, porridge, cocoa, rolls, milk, wheatcakes? I don’t know what they serve in the city for breakfast. Mr. Thiel never tells me such things.” The lips closed again.

  “Ordinarily I have an egg and toast, with a glass of milk. Would that be all right?”

  “Of course it will be all right.” She turned abruptly from me and went into a pantry at the back of the kitchen. I had a minute to look around at the large low-ceilinged room. It was a room with a warm feeling to it, with bright yellow wooden cupboards and scoured wooden countertops. Sunlight poured into it, and the door to the back was opened onto a small porch, showing also the barn and the garden.

  When Mrs. Bywall returned, carrying eggs and a loaf of bread as well as a pitcher, I stood where I had.

  “You just go sit down and wait then. It won’t take but a minute,” Mrs. Bywall told me, without a smile, turning to the old-fashioned wood stove.

  She served the meal on plain stoneware. There was much more food than I was accustomed to. Mrs. Bywall had scrambled several eggs and brought me a basket of sliced bread, three kinds of jam, and a bowl of butter. Milk was poured from the pitcher, and the pitcher left on the table. Mrs. Bywall sat down opposite me, heavily. She watched me eat. I tried to pay no attention.

  “It’s too much,” I apologized when I had eaten as much as I could.

  “I’ll learn your appetite,” she said. “I’m not sure what girls eat, so I tried to remember what my brothers ate at your age. They were always hungry. But then, I don’t imagine you’ve ever gone short of food, so perhaps it’s different.”

  “It is all delicious,” I said. It was, fresh and light, the eggs hot, the milk cool.

  Mrs. Bywall looked at me sharply and began to speak, apparently a painful task. “I’ve been in jail,” she announced abruptly. Her eyes were on her hands, clasped together on the tabletop. “I spent ten years in there. There are people would say I’m not fit company for a child. Not Mr. Thiel, not him, but you might think that yourself—” I wanted to answer her then but her voice went on, as if the words had been memorized. “You should know that, Mr. Thiel says. I was sixteen at the time, and my brother was sick, a lung infection, my brother Horace. He needed medicines and a long stay at a spa in Virginia. My parents were tenant farmers. The farm was small and there had been two bad years. My husband—newly wed I was, to Charlie Bywall, also a farming man—he had nothing to help us with. I went to work at the other house,” she pointed with her chin, down the hill. “And I stole six silver spoons. Sterling silver, they were, from London. I knew it was wrong. But Horace coughed all night. We had to have the money. It was old Dr. Carter, who would give farmers no credit, nor charity.

  “Mr. Callender prosecuted—Mr. Enoch that is. And I went to jail.” She looked at me then, without really seeing me. “They are terrible places, cruel, unclean. I don’t think of that. It was a long time, ten years. . . . My husband, my Charlie, he left. I never heard from him again. Horace died. My father came to see me, once or twice, but it was too cruel so I asked him to stay away. When I came out—people stayed away from me. I thought of leaving the village. My family. But where would I go? Until Mr. Thiel hired me here. He had had his troubles too, I learned, although I wasn’t here during those years. He knows what it is like. He knows what it is to have people stare at you and talk about you and pretend you aren’t there. There was his wife, first, and then the child—and I never believed what people said about either of them.” At this point she stopped, and looked at me, just a brief glance. She waited before beginning again. “Mr. Thiel asked me to come and keep house here, so I did. Of course I did. Where else could I have gotten work? So now you know what I am.”

  “I knew you had been in jail,” I said. “My Aunt Constance told me before. She didn’t think it was important, that you had been—” I couldn’t say the word again.

  “Then she must be an unusual woman. Sending you here, too, to him.”

  With her story told, Mrs. Bywall became almost at ease. I could understand how hard it must have been for her to tell that to an unknown girl. She told me what time luncheon would be served and advised me to go about outside, instructing me what I would and would not want to see. “You won’t want to walk down to the village your first day. They’ll know you’re here, of course, they always know everything. I can’t think they’ll be so cruel to a child—although come to think of it, you’re not so much younger than I was when my troubles came. But you won’t want to go there yet.” Between each piece of advice she hesitated, as if to be sure not to give anything away. “And you mustn’t go near Mr. Thiel’s studio. He’d fair frighten you back to Boston if you did that. That’s the small building, beyond the barn, with the great glass windows. A glazier from Albany put those in, but that was when Mr. Thiel’s wife was alive and her father. They spent money, those Callenders. Mr. Callender—” she stopped. I waited. “Mr. Thiel said I wasn’t to talk your ear off,” she said uneasily. “He said you were a silent little creature—and that you certainly are. Can you do this work?”

  I smiled. “I don’t know. My aunt thinks I can, and so apparently does Mr. Thiel.”

  Mrs. Bywall did not answer my smile.

  “Imagine being so educated and still so young. I did learn how to read in jail, there was that. A spinster woman came to teach us, all Bible and sin, some minister’s daughter I don’t doubt. But I did learn that.”

  There were questions I wanted to ask Mrs. Bywall, which I did not dare to voice. What she said, the words she spoke, were not unfriendly; but her face never showed any expression, as if—she were afraid of what she might say, or of somebody who was listening to everything she said, somebody who had told her what to say and what not to say. So I merely thanked her and excused myself from the table.

  I spent the rest of the morning exploring. First I looked briefly at the downstairs rooms. The house seemed old, plain but comfortable. A large library, opposite to the dining room, took up most of the ground floor. Books lined the walls, and the floor had two faded oriental rugs on it. Besides the usual fireplace and chairs for reading, there was a huge desk, a long table and a grand piano.

  Next to the dining room I found a small parlor, never used by the looks of it. Its chairs and table, lamps and windows, were shrouded with sheets. The air smelled musty. By then I wanted only to go outside. The house was too dark, too silent. I felt as though I were an intruder, out of place. I feared to go somewhere I shouldn’t. So I ignored the last closed door and went back down the hall to the open front door.

  Outside, the sky shone blue and the sun shone warm. Trees and mountains surrounded the house, protectively it seemed. I turned back from the driveway to look at the place where I was to live for the next months, if all went well. The main house, with the long kitchen wing, like a capital P laid on its back, was entirely
built of gray stone. The roof was made of slate shingles. Two tall stone chimneys marked the ends of the main house, while a smaller chimney emerged from the kitchen wing. It was simple, plain and rather handsome.

  I wandered down the driveway, a dirt road leading away from the house. Soon trees closed over my head, their full foliage providing cool shade. Beyond the bird and insect noises, I heard water running. I turned off the road to the right and found a small river. Near the banks the water was shallow and clear, merry indeed, as it passed quickly over stones, running down the steep hill. I took off my shoes and stockings to wade in it. The mud bottom oozed between my toes, the water ran around my ankles, and it was altogether delightful. I kept carefully back from the deep center as I followed the bank down, listening to the brief songs of birds overhead, and a faint rustle of leaves at the tops of the overgrowing trees. I held my skirts high so that the water that played around my ankles would not dampen them. The cool water felt delicious. It is not surprising that I followed the river too far. I almost walked into view of the green lawn of another house, built of gray stone like Mr. Thiel’s.

  I was stopped from actually walking into view by the sound of voices. I stepped back into the protecting trees on the bank. For a short time (just until my conscience got the better of me) I spied on a group of people who were out on that green lawn.

  A woman sat under a tree in one of three lawn chairs with a tall glass on the table beside her and a parasol held open to protect her face from the sun. Two boys, one almost a man, it seemed, played at croquet with a young lady. All of these people were finely dressed, the boys in crisp white suits and the ladies in white gowns. The only conversation that drifted down to my ears had to do with quarrels about the rules of the game. Then a man wearing a white suit emerged from the house. All conversation stopped.

  He was a handsome figure, with golden hair and a bold, free stride as he crossed the lawn. Tall, graceful, a golden man—he was unlike any man I had seen before. The men I had seen wore somber clothing and moved as if they were always thinking of their dignity. This man broke into a run as he hurried to join the young people at croquet. He picked up a mallet and whirled it around over his head, turning in circles but never the least off balance. The young people gathered up their balls to start a new game. One by one, he let them start before him, the youngest first. He bowed and gestured with an arm to each in turn. When his own turn came he went easily to place the ball then planted his feet as carefully and precisely as a circus acrobat before making his play.