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—
I couldn’t, even in my mind, say the word.
But if that were true, why would Aunt Constance have let me come up to Marlborough? And why should Mr. Thiel have asked for me? And why should somebody try to poison me? Of course, thinking carefully, I realized that unless I were in Marlborough it would be difficult to get rid of me; if somebody wanted to. Because if I was Irene Thiel’s daughter—and she was my mother—then I had inherited the Callender fortune.
I determined to ask Aunt Constance outright when I returned to Cambridge. I could, I knew, have asked Mr. Thiel. But if he was my—father—and he had chosen not to say anything about that, then he had tricked me into coming to Marlborough after having given me up for years; and I didn’t want to make him admit to being my father, if he didn’t want to claim me.
Who was it, I wondered, who wanted the Callender fortune badly enough to murder Irene Thiel? Her brother Enoch—but he loved her. Her husband—but he profited most if the child was never identified. Or if the child was dead. Joseph? Victoria? Benjamin? Was their dislike of me, which I had attributed to jealousy over their father’s favor, based on knowing I had what they so badly wanted?
But I didn’t have it. I didn’t even want it. I wanted to belong to Aunt Constance, tied close by the bonds loving years had made between us. I didn’t want to be the daughter of a man who, as far as I had seen, had no warm and loving feelings toward his wife and child, who shut them absolutely out of his mind. Whatever his reasons for giving me away, I didn’t want to be Jean Thiel. Jean Thiel, the name repeated itself in my mind, Jean Thiel.
A voice, outside my inner thoughts called, “Jean Thiel!”
I looked up, startled. Mr. Callender stood on the other side of the falls. He wore a white linen suit and a panama hat. His hands were casually resting in the pocket of his trousers, as if he were about to begin a stroll down a city street. The blue of his eyes was visible across the distance, so intensely did he look into my face.
“I wondered if I had given it all away, old Dan’s little game. Did you know it all along?”
“Know what?” I stood up.
“You cant fool me, Jean Thiel. No, don’t run away, it’s time we had an honest talk. I know that expression. It’s one I’ve seen often enough on your mother’s face. You won’t run away from me, will you? You don’t have to run away from me.”
He turned around to get the board down from its hiding place. His hat fell off and his hair shone in the sunlight. He carried the board over to the stream and gently lowered it, to make a bridge.
I watched mesmerized. I wanted to run, but could not. I could not believe he would have killed his sister. I went to stand by the board: if he started to cross over I would lift it aside and prevent him. I would trust nobody. “Stay there,” I ca
lled.
“You can trust me,” he called back. “Think about it, it’s obvious you have the intelligence to figure out what’s been going on. He won’t get away with it, I promise you. I won’t let him. I won’t sit quiet and wait for his move, not this time.”
“How long have you known?” It is odd how once you have hit on the truth, however shocking it may be, you accept it entirely.
“Since the first day I saw you up here. You didn’t see me. You’re very like her, your mother. I couldn’t miss that. Old Dan couldn’t have known how like her you are, could he? How it would give his game away. And then, you don’t know Dan Thiel; he’s not the man to take an interest in a school for girls without some personal reason. When you so obligingly told me all about yourself, you confirmed my opinion. I wasted money on those detectives, I should have risked finding you myself, years ago.”
“Why?”
“You’re too intelligent to need that question answered,” he called.
“Money,” I answered myself. “But you haven’t been poor.”
“Say I’ve been poorer than I should, by right, have been. But this yelling is ridiculous.” He lifted a booted foot to step across.
“Stay over there,” I said. I bent down to hold the other end of the board in my hands. He stared at me for a minute, then shrugged his shoulders and smiled. “As you wish. Let me ask you, how long have you known?”
“Just now, I just figured it out; I wasn’t even sure,” I told him.
“Then you’re not as clever as I had thought. You’re remarkably like your mother, intelligent up to a point and then you let your feelings take over. You should guard against that, my dear. Look where it got your mother.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Everything was fine until she married Dan Thiel. Father was old, he was bound to die soon. I knew that. I asked her to leave Dan and bring you, of course, and we could live as we had before. I would take care of you both, but not her husband. Father had shown me the will, I think he hoped I would mend my ways. She knew Dan would be all right—but he had taken her away from me and she wouldn’t even admit that. She was blind.”
He moved quickly forward and I lifted the board just off the ground, then I dropped it when I saw him fall. He curled up on the ground, clutching his ankle. His shoulders hunched in. His face was twisted with pain. Both of his hands were wrapped around his ankle.
“What have you done?” he groaned. This time his voice cut under the rushing sound of water.
“I’ll get help, it won’t be long. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
“Not that way, get my wife—Joseph can run to the doctor’s faster than you can. Jean, please.” Pain was in his voice, try as he would to disguise it.
He was right, I knew. Mr. Thiel was not at home, he had taken the carriage. I stepped out onto the board, going as fast as I could without risking losing my balance. I kept my eyes down on my bare feet.
And that was why it wasn’t until I felt the board move under me that I saw Mr. Callender, erect now, and smiling at me. He stood at the other end. “Just like your mother,” he told me. “I ask you, how can a man in stiff boots twist his ankle?”
I put my chin up and did not show how frightened I was. I tried to think carefully: I was younger than Irene Thiel, lighter; I might survive a fall better than she had. Unbidden, I looked down to the boulders below, where water swirled. The weather is warmer than it was then, I told myself, trying not to ask myself how long it would be before I was missed, before Mr. Thiel returned from sending the telegram. Or Mac, if he came to visit—but Mac had given his word to stay off the property.
At that memory, I thought angrily to myself that it would serve Mr. Thiel right.
“Or maybe not so like,” Mr. Callender said. “There is something of your father in you, isn’t there. Something of his hardness. Do you know what Irene told me? She said”—he laughed as if the idea was preposterous—“that I was trying to force her to choose between us, between Dan and me. Well, what is there to choose? I asked her that. She didn’t answer me.” He stepped out along the board, approaching.
“Then, I don’t know. I thought I’d scare her. Women are so easy to scare. Priscilla is. So I jumped on the board. ‘Enoch, stop that,’ she said, just like when I was little. But I wasn’t little any more. Once again, and she fell. It was dark. I couldn’t see. I called to her and she didn’t answer. What would you have thought? I thought she was dead. It was an accident, it was all an accident, don’t you see?”
At that moment I couldn’t see anything, for the tears that were rolling down my cheeks. “You knew where she was? All the time you knew, when everybody was looking. You were looking too. . . .”
“I thought she was dead. You’re sensible, think of it from my side. I thought she was dead, how could I know she wasn’t? Then, according to the will, I would inherit at least half. But if I was the one to find her—in this unlikely spot—who would believe I had nothing to do with it? I couldn’t be the one to find her. Later, when I heard she hadn’t been dead—it was terrible for me.”
He looked as if he meant that.
“They said she could have lived. But by then it was too late. How could I have known? Could anyone have known? It’s not as if I wanted to kill her. If she had just answered me, I’d have saved her. She loved me.”
I felt pity for him then, for what he might have been. And I hated him, at the same time, for what he had done. And I was frightened of him, for what he might do.
“That’s just how she looked, Irene, the last time,” he said. There was no emotion in his voice, no laughter, no grief. Nothing there at all. “Come home with me now, Jean. We’ll be happy. We’ll move to New York, or if you prefer we’ll travel. You’ll be just like one of my own children. I’ll take care of you.” He stepped along toward me, one hand held out to me.
Instinctively, I stepped back. He moved forward again, out over the falls. Graceful and handsome as a circus acrobat, he came closer. I did not have the will or courage I needed.
The board gave way slightly under my feet, then bounded up again. He held my eyes with his. He smiled into my eyes. “It’s the fittest who survive,” he told me gently. “Every time.”
The board moved again and my arms flew out to give me any kind of balance.
A harsh and ugly sound cracked through the silence, like the snapping of a whip. A voice, that said my name, angry, demanding obedience. “Jean! Turn—now!”
Mr. Callender looked into the glade behind me, his eyes burning.
“Now! Jump!” the voice ordered.
I turned and jumped. My bare feet touched down on the board before I was flung off toward the edge of the ravine. It was too far for a clear leap, but two strong hands grabbed my wrists painfully and dragged me up to the edge of the clearing. I looked back over my shoulder to see Mr. Callender, gleaming gold and white in the sunlight, trying to balance on the board, which rocked from my own leap. He fell. The board spun down after him.
Chapter 15
Mr. Thiel held me there, in his arms, until I stopped trembling. “Are you all right?” he asked, as his hands stroked my head. “You’re all right now. You can stop that wailing. I should have told you, I admit it. Child, child, you’re safe now.”
“He killed her,” I said.
“I know,” Mr. Thiel said, impatient.
“He didn’t mean to,” I said. I don’t know how he could hear what I was saying, for the strength with which I was holding on to him, my face buried in his coat.
“I thought not,” Mr. Thiel said. “He did love her.”
“You’re my father,” I said.
“Yes, I am,” he said. A laugh rumbled in his chest. “Wasn’t that painfully obvious at dinner last night?”
“Daniel?” A voice I knew, Aunt Constance’s voice, spoke breathlessly from behind Mr. Thiel’s head. “Somebody had better look to Enoch. He moves, but seems unable to speak.”
I sat up then. Aunt Constanc
e showed the ravages of a run uphill through the woods. “Aunt Constance,” I said in surprise. She stooped under the branches as she ran, and her cloak outlined her bent figure.
“You’ve been foolish,” she said to me. Her breath came in gasps as she straightened up, one hand against her heart. “I’m very glad to see you. But Daniel, hadn’t you better look to Enoch?”
“Yes,” he said. We both stood up. Aunt Constance kept me by her side while he climbed down to the stream. “Better not to look,” she said.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. I was not, I know, thinking clearly.
“As soon as I received Daniel’s last letter I came out,” she said. “I’d been worried. I hired a carriage at North Adams this morning, and we met on the road. Otherwise . . .”
That, I could not think of yet.
“Enoch can move his arms but not his legs apparently,” Mr. Thiel, my father, reported. “He can’t seem to speak. I’ll fetch Dr. McWilliams. It’s probably better not to move him until we know what is wrong. I’ll go on down, if that’s all right?”
Aunt Constance approved of the plan. Mr. Thiel, my father, looked at me. I smiled slightly at him, unexpectedly shy.
“Yes. Well. That’s good enough,” he said, briefly, clumsily, but it seemed to me happily. “Perhaps better than I should expect. Can you two wait here? He shouldn’t be left alone.”
We stood, the three of us, in the glade. Aunt Constance protectively bent over me, held one of my hands. Mr. Thiel put his hands on my shoulders. I stood between them, unable to think clearly.
With a stumbling noise, like a deer breaking cover, Mac appeared across the falls. He looked briefly over at us then ran on, slightly upstream. He charged into the water. “Hey!” he yelled across, splashing wildly. “You better not do that!” he yelled.
We stood amazed. Aunt Constance bent toward me. Mac pushed his way through water up to his thighs. He had cuts on his face, his shirt was ripped. He pulled himself up onto the bank and hurtled toward us. With his head lowered, he slammed into Mr. Thiel, my father, forcing him backward.