The Accursed

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Why, this was a rebuke! Such rage coursed along my veins, I could wish that I had recourse to the Prince of Darkness & his quick ways of revenge; if only Andrew West were a close friend of Horace’s, & a confidant of poor Puss!

  As well as rebuke, something in Lieutenant Bayard’s gaze frightened me. For the Lieutenant, too, seemed frightened—for just a moment. & when he left escorting his doddering elders I felt very faint, & Henriette Slade, who had lingered behind in sympathy with me, ministered a dollop of snuff—Ladies’ Snuff, it is called—much milder than Gentlemen’s—& badly needed—out of her little crystal snuff bottle, carried concealed in her sleeve & wrapt in a lace handkerchief; a delicious fit of sneezes to clear the head, I might have wept with relief.

  _____ . Horace kisses my brow & says that I am feverish. He says that Dr. Boudinot must be obeyed—no undue excitement in Puss’s life! Warns me against the swirl of local gossip, which resembles a windstorm of dirt, sand, chaff, bits of manure—it is very dangerous to breathe! When I inquired after Lieutenant Bayard, that there has been said something to the effect that, at West Point, the young man was chastised for a violation of—is it the honor code, so-called?—yet not expelled, for his family influence—Horace at once pressed his forefinger to his lips frowning—No, Adelaide! This is nothing of which I have ever heard & it must go no farther.

  _____ . Later assuring me, I am well protected in this house; all of the inhabitants of Hodge Road & vicinity are well protected; it is not after all Camden, New Jersey!—which drew from me a quick response, Why do you speak of Camden?—& Horace seemed confused for just a moment, as if he had misspoke. As if to weary my curiosity then, he went on to speak at length of Mr. Harrison our investment attorney, & matters of Wall Street, & Mr. Depew, & Mr. Hill—& Mr. Roosevelt—(which livened me just a bit for the exploits of “Teddy” are always amusing in the papers). Yet, talk of the unions & strikes continues to weary—no more do I care for such sordid matters as Madame Blavatsky herself might have cared for them—recoiling from talk of rabble-rousers who have begun to plague society with demand for HIGHER WAGES & their crude threat of STRIKES. Horace grows livid, says they are but criminals; Pinkerton’s must be hired, if the U.S. Army will not help our cause; the anarchists must be kept down, that Justice be served. Such craven greed, to wish only HIGHER WAGES, as if there is not a HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS to which we must all strive.

  Did the rabble & their leaders not ever learn—man must not live by bread alone?

  _____ . B O R E D O M through the week; & on Monday, an ambitious tea, & Puss was feeling strong & gay, & most of the ladies looking very well.

  Frances Cleveland came, a very pleasant surprise; at her dashing best, all plumes & jewels & high-colored complexion—(for it is whispered, the ex–First Lady has a touch of Indian blood, which throws Grover into a fit of fury if the gutter press pursue it); & Cousin Mandy in good spirits, despite her health; & the angelic Annabel Slade, our reigning Princeton debutante & bride-to-be; & her tedious mother Henrietta who is so damned good; & handsome Johanna van Dyck, tho’ dressed just a bit shabbily it seemed to me; & old Mrs. Washington Burr, Horace’s mother whom I did not recall having invited; & little Ellen Wilson in an unfortunate outfit, not at all flattering to her plain horsey features & stolid figure. (I am most angered, “Willy” sent regrets! Her excuse was so feeble, I did not even listen to it uttered by her silly aunt.)

  Poor Ellen Wilson, invited to Maidstone House out of a sense of obligation & courtesy; & because her husband is president of the university, & cannot be avoided. A naïve woman, allowing herself to be drawn out by us in the matter of Dean West & the Graduate College, stammering that the dean & his supporters would “be very regretful if Woodrow’s wrath is finally aroused, & his health threatened”—& we ladies sat startled into silence. Is the woman vulgar, or merely gauche?—is this how the company at Prospect common talks? Cousin Mandy discreetly changed the conversation by inquiring of Lenora Slade her recipe for the coconut meringues she had brought us, which were delicious. Thus, some embarrassment was curtailed, & Mrs. Wilson spared further folly.

  From thence, discussion of the upcoming wedding: Annabel’s gown which will be a “vision,” Mrs. Slade promises, in the new Directoire style, & her maid of honor & bridesmaids so very thrilled; & the many distinguished guests journeying to Crosswicks Manse, from various parts of the country including Washington, D.C.; & the honeymoon trip, to Venice, Florence & Rome; & Josiah’s plan to study German idealist philosophy at Heidelberg, or, it may be, to join a Polar expedition to the Klondike!— & all matter of chattering, pleasing at the time if forgettable a half-hour later. Ladies!—so I wanted to cry, rising from my chaise longue like a Valkyrie—ladies! Does not one of you know that an UNSPEAKABLE crime has been perpetrated here in Princeton, that it involves a female & is very serious & mysterious, & no notice has appeared in the local papers, & the men conspire to know nothing, that they might shield us from evil? But of course Puss said nothing, except to ask if Hannah might serve more tea.

  _____ . Here is a surprise. Amid gales of laughter Frances Cleveland confides in me, the latest development of the Wilson/West feud: each gentleman is courting the 99-yr-old dowager Mrs. Horatio Pyne, of Baltimore; her late husband Horatio Pyne, Class of ’22, having earmarked some 6 or 7 million dollars for Princeton. The nut to crack, as Frances says with a flash of her fine white teeth, is whether the money goes to the university with no specific instruction, or will it go to the canny Dean West, that he might exercise its use and build his Graduate School empire upon a high hill, some distance from campus? (For so it appears, Dean West wishes to establish a counter-campus of his own, to rival that of the president of the university who would preside over undergraduates, from Nassau Hall.) Mrs. Cleveland reports charges to me of “occultism” & “mesmerism” leveled against West by the Wilsons; while the tub-size dean remarks that he has experienced of late “uncanny vibrations of harm & ill-will” emanating from the president’s house at Prospect; which foolishness caused the ex–First Lady & me to fall into fits of laughter. Frances is very handsome; very full-bodied; beside her, Puss feels scarcely female.

  A striking woman who has been young in the eyes of her countrymen for so long, having married at 21 in the White House, Frances Cleveland is at last beginning to show the ravages of time; as a consequence, no doubt, of the bereavement of last year; the sudden death of her daughter Ruth; & the daily & nightly task of wife-ing, as she calls it, the bejowled old 300-lb. Grover.

  Ah, what it must be, Puss wonders suddenly, fearful—to be truly a wife?

  _____ . One of my weak-minded days when I dare not venture downstairs. Scarcely the energy to change from bedclothes to negligee.

  & have Hannah brush out my hair, & arrange my shawls. Already by 11 a.m. quite exhausted.

  Recalling the old, ghastly days as a girl when I was obliged to be corseted-up, that I might gasp for breath, & stagger in mere walking. Those days long past, for Puss does not venture out, & is thus spared the whalebone torture all others of my sex must endure, save the tribe of invalids.

  & this evening Horace knocked softly at my door, as he had heard from Hannah & others that Puss was feeling poorly. & brought me a small vase of bluets & wild columbine & a bowl of blueberries purchased from the Stockton farmers’ market. & so we had a light tea together. & so it seems we have never been happier despite the Tragedy of 14 yrs before. As the windows darkened with rain Horace tried to cheer me singing snatches of nonsense tunes & lullabies & one of the sweet songs of our courtship days:

  Ah! May the red rose live always

  To smile upon earth & sky!

  Why should the beautiful ever weep?

  Why should the beautiful ever die?

  _____ . Poor Puss naively wished a friendship with Mrs. Cleveland & now regrets her folly for it is in very questionable taste, such sudden revelations & unwanted confidences!—I am sick & headachey all this morning, & have swallowed too many of Dr. Boudinot’s chalky white
pills, recalling yesterday’s exchange. For the ex–First Lady wrenched our conversation onto the topic of her (exceedingly boring) husband Grover, & asked of me if I had heard of a “collapse” at the Craven House, while they were visiting there two weeks ago this past Sunday; & what had Horace reported to me, & what was being said in town? “Adelaide, I must know what is being said of us. I cannot abide people whispering behind my back.” For the first time I saw a shadowy down on her upper lip. Yet she is no less handsome to me. I assured her that nothing was being said & that no one in Princeton was more respected than Mr. Cleveland & she. This she seemed to wish to believe; & plunged on further, inquiring about what had been reported to me of the “ghostly visitation” & most curious of all, if I had, in my boudoir, at any time recently during the day or the night, imagined that I had seen the deceased Ruth?

  (How desperate the poor woman, & how unsightly in her distress! If this be a grieving mother, I thank God that I had not ever given birth to any child, & never shall.)

  Stammering I assured the distraught woman that I had not; nor had I dreamt of the child. All that I have heard, Mrs. Cleveland, is that your daughter was a most beautiful angelic child. Beyond that, I know nothing.

  At this moment my little French clock prettily chimed the hour. I hoped Mrs. Cleveland might rise, & shake out her skirts, & leave; for her carriage awaited at the curb. (Had Puss the energy to walk, so short & idyllic a walk as that between Maidstone House & Westland, scarcely a quarter-mile, would be a great reward for the airlessness of this life; but such, unfortunately, is not for poor Puss.) Yet, Mrs. Cleveland did not leave. Instead, in a lowered voice she pursued the dread subject—explaining that since the morning of April 20, when Ruth (it seemed) appeared to her father, several persons had told Frances that they had seen, or dreamt of, her poor daughter: among them the Wilsons’ youngest daughter, Eleanor, who had claimed to see Ruth’s face pressed against her window pane on the second floor of Prospect House, in the middle of the night; her eyes “huge as a owl’s” & her lips parted as if she sought to draw breath yet could not. The poor dead child had craved admittance to the Wilson daughter’s room but Eleanor Wilson was too affrighted to act in any sensible way, & hid beneath her covers. “Of course it is only a dream,” Frances Cleveland said bitterly, “yet it is very rude & vulgar of the Wilson’s girl, to make such a claim for our Ruth; who never, in life, was a friend of hers; as Grover & I are not ‘friends’ of the Wilsons—hardly! Yet”—and here Mrs. Cleveland’s tone softened—“Annabel Slade has reported a similar experience, in a lovely handwritten note to me, which I received just yesterday; & Lenora Slade’s son Todd, that queer child, claims to being chased from room to room in his sleep by a girl with ‘large staring eyes’—it must be our Ruth! I had thought, dear Adelaide, I know it may be foolish & hopeless, yet I thought to beg you, for all of Princeton marvels at your sensitivity: if Ruth comes to you, you will not deny her—but bid her, if you will, to come to me, her grieving mother, who loves her with all her heart, & has not forgotten her.”

  & so on, & so forth: some very awkward minutes passed before I roused my courage, & explained that I am a Christian woman, & did not believe in such phenomena as “spirits.”

  _____ . (I know, Madame Blavatsky would be distressed with me, to recoil in so conventional a way from one who had enlisted my solicitude; yet, it seemed to me then, I could not have the dead Cleveland child haunting my sleep, that was troubled enough most nights, & left me wrack’d with exhaustion in the morning. In life, I did not know Ruth Cleveland; scarcely do I know the Clevelands, & Horace did not at all approve of Mr. Cleveland’s second-term presidency, which was something of a disaster & a scandal.)

  (Unless: could the dead child be a devi?)

  _____ . Feeling out of sorts & mean. Scolded Hannah, & made the girl cry. I fear that I have lost Frances Cleveland’s friendship; & so rarely see dear Willy; & care for no one. (As for cousin Wilhelmina—I let drop in a greedy gossip’s ear this afternoon that my young cousin is helplessly in love with Josiah Slade, while Josiah feels only “brotherly” toward her; this, Wilhelmina’s secret, which sharp-eyed Puss has found out.)

  _____ . (Another Princeton rumor, told to me by Caroline FitzRandolph, with a plea for secrecy: it seems that, his first year as a cadet at West Point, Lieutenant Bayard was chastised for violating one or another principle of the honor code; whether “cheating” in the usual manner, or in another, more ambiguous manner; or “plagiarizing” written material; or “intimidating”—“threatening”—another cadet: such details are not known. When reported by me to Horace the response was scarcely friendly: Do not speak of it, Adelaide. The young man was not expelled, & will soon marry into the Slade family.)

  _____ . Confided in Caroline all that Mrs. C. had told me & begged me not to repeat; thus we shivered, & gripped each other’s chill hands, & giggled in fright, over the “phenomena” of ghosts, spirits & apparitions that surround us. Throughout the visit Caroline was behaving strangely I thought—as if, when I was not observing, she were rocking an invisible baby in her arms—a most distracting sight; for almost, I could see the infant in its swaddling clothes, its eyes queerly pale & lacking in focus & lips wetly slack; a pathetic little creature, perhaps lacking a soul. & in this way I came to understand that Caroline had “had” such a baby, sometime in her life; & had “lost” it; & was now childless as Puss, but not nearly so content as Puss in this condition.

  Though laughing with me, too—for Caroline is no fervent admirer of our ex–First Lady—then breaking off & clasped her (invisible) baby to her bosom saying chidingly Adelaide! It is wicked for us to mock, we must pray to God for forgiveness.

  _____ . Horace who reads most voraciously in scientific journals as in the Atlantic & Harper’s has said, the invisible spirit world is akin to the pathogene-world as hypostatized by Joseph Lister some decades ago, to account for disease. As you would not voluntarily venture into the pathogene-world for fear of great harm, so you would not voluntarily venture into the spirit-world.

  _____ . Lower Witherspoon Street it is being said—a wild uninhabited area said to be a marsh—a most snaky, evil place—where the body was discovered. A young girl—it is said—& how horrific the words, that leave me faint—Where the body was discovered. This was several nights ago, it is being revealed at last. & all of Princeton whispers of nothing else save of course we ladies of the West End, & in particular we invalid Ladies above all, who are spared.

  _____ . News has come to me, through Mandy & Caroline, of a “most ambitious if indiscriminate” tea at Pembroke House where Mrs. Strachan evidently spoke of the “new man” in Princeton—one Axson Mayte—whom it seems that everyone has met, for President Wilson has been introducing him to favored members of the faculty. Mrs. Strachan praised the man as “impressive, with a strong intellect”—especially for the law; Mrs. van Dyck thinks the man “cold & studied & not altogether a gentleman”; though my aunt Jennifer was adamant in declaring him a most judicious young man, in his verdict on the duel of Alexander Hamilton & Aaron Burr, Jr.—a legitimate duel in all ways, fought on New Jersey soil. (Our poor ancestor Aaron, Jr., whom the world condemns as having shot down “in cold blood” the revered Founding Father & Federalist Hamilton, Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury! Yet it was Hamilton who had hoped to “rig” the dueling pistols, thus to allow him to shoot Aaron, Jr., through the heart; as fortune would have it, Hamilton fired quickly, & first; yet not accurately; so that, taking his time, the grievously insulted Aaron, Jr., could return his shot accurately. For which, why is Aaron, Jr., to be blamed? Had Hamilton shot him, would the world mourn? We Burrs have suffered enough calumny I think! It is time to defend our good name.) Praise to the stranger Axson Mayte who spoke quite reasonably along these lines, without the slightest knowledge, it is believed, that there were descendants of Aaron Burr in the company. I dearly regret I have not met this man, said to be a “most distinguished lawyer” from south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

&nbs
p; _____ . Sickly & faint-headed & suffering from palpitations. Dr. Boudinot has prescribed another medication, that leaves my mouth quite dry & my heartbeat quickened. Read Mrs. Corelli’s The Sorrows of Satan & felt quite strange afterward—as if the fever’d voice of the author were murmuring in my ears; grew quite restless with Mrs. Wharton’s The Decoration of Houses; could not make sense of a single paragraph of The Secret Doctrine. VERY NAUGHTY PUSS slipped into Horace’s library to take up the receiver of the “telephone”—our very new Bell ’phone—dialed the number of the Princeton police department & asked in a hoarse whisper if they had apprehended the “murderer in our midst” but quickly then slipped the heavy receiver into the cradle panting & gasping for air—my poor heart hammering. (For by this time I am reasonably certain, there was a murder, & doubtless worse perpetrated upon the body; & the body found in the marsh of lower Witherspoon, unless the wilds of Kingston by the canal & Millstone River; & the victim was female—but am not certain as to her age or other details of her life; having been still as a churchmouse overhearing the Negro servants chattering, as they will when they do not believe we are around. Horace must not know.