The Accursed. Joyce Carol Oates

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СКАЧАТЬ Woodrow breathless. His stiff-laundered white cotton collar, that had been spotless that morning when he had arrived in his office in Nassau Hall, was visibly wilted; a faint glisten of perspiration shone on his furrowed brow.

      Winslow said, in an even voice, like one who feigns a tactful kind of deafness, “Well! Let me pour you some brandy, Woodrow, to soothe your nerves, and then I will ask Henry to drive you home. I think you’re not quite yourself—and Ellen must be awaiting you.”

      Hotly Woodrow said: “Thank you, Dr. Slade, but I do not drink brandy—as you must know. And I am not in any womanish state of ‘nerves.’ My dear wife has not the slightest idea where I am—she has retired to bed by ten p.m. and would assume that I am working in my study as usual. I find it upsetting—and baffling—that you, Winslow Slade, with your thorough grounding in Calvinist theology, and the practical experience of being a Presbyterian minister, should take so lightly the possibility of ‘diabolism’ in our midst . . . I wonder whether West himself hasn’t sought you out, in this very room, to poison you against me, who has long been your devoted friend—and to influence your thoughts!”

      Woodrow spoke with such adolescent sarcasm, his friend was taken aback.

      It was then, the little accident occurred.

      Though the men certainly could not have been described as struggling together, in any sense of the phrase, it somehow happened that, as Winslow Slade sought to take hold of Woodrow Wilson’s (flailing) arm, to calm him, the younger man shrank from him as if in fright; causing the jade snuffbox to slip from his fingers onto a tabletop, and a cloud of aged snuff was released, of such surprising potency both men began to sneeze; very much as if a malevolent spirit had escaped from the little box.

      Unexpectedly then, both Woodrow Wilson and Winslow Slade suffered fits of helpless sneezing, until they could scarcely breathe, and their eyes brimmed with tears, and their hearts pounded with a lurid beat as if eager to burst.

      And the austere old grandfather clock against a farther wall softly chimed the surprising hour of one—unheard.

POSTSCRIPT: “ASH WEDNESDAY EVE, 1905”

      It is not generally acknowledged to the reader that much is left out of any complex account. A reader must be trusting, and assume that what has been included is all that is necessary; what has been left out is extraneous.

      But I am troubled, in assembling the previous chapter—for so much has been left out that might have been of interest, and might even be essential to a reader’s fullest understanding.

      Therefore, I suggest: the reader who wants to know a little more of my chronicle should read this postscript, as well as the others to follow. (I am sure that there will be other postscripts to follow!) Readers who are satisfied that they know enough of Dr. Wilson and Dr. Slade should simply proceed to “Narcissus”—a total change of scene, I promise!

      Here is a miscellany of details regarding Woodrow Wilson that could not find their way into the narrative.

      —WOODROW’S “WIND-BUFFETED” walk to Crosswicks Manse was in fact an ordeal for the troubled man, who had not fully recovered from what he would recall as the unprovoked attack of his (alleged) kinsman from the hills of rural, western Virginia.

      For, in leaving Prospect House, without telling his wife or daughters, all of whom (he assumed) were in bed, Woodrow Wilson was obliged to walk alone across the darkened Princeton University campus, and to pass close by undergraduate residences; though friendly to students by day, smiling his wide grimace of a presidential smile at virtually everyone he encountered, which never failed to enlist boys’ startled smiles and greetings, Woodrow quite dreaded being sighted at such a time; for a nocturnal journey, by foot, on the part of the president of the university, would seem suspicious—would it not?

      So, Woodrow walked quickly, and furtively; more than once he ducked into a doorway, or around a corner, to avoid being seen by late-carousing undergraduates, returning from the Alchemist & Barrister pub on Witherspoon, or the rowdy taproom of the Nassau Inn.

      The darkened tunnel of evergreens and rhododendron leading from Prospect to the inner campus was fraught with a kind of childish dread, which Woodrow recognized as unwarranted; but the deep, somehow writhing shadows behind the most Gothic of buildings, Pyne, gave him pause; nor did his fluttering heartbeat subside, at the rear of Alexander Hall with its fantastical towers, turrets, arches, walkways, and ornamental windows on all floors that, though darkened, seemed to wink with an extra-terrestrial light. (Did a voice faintly cry out from one of these high windows? Did a spectral face appear fleetingly? The hurrying man could not take time to pause, and did not dare to glance back.)

      It was a sore point among the Princeton University administrators, that a high percentage of their undergraduate population were inveterate carousers for whom “clubs” were of more significance than academic studies, and persons of questionable repute of more significance than their revered professors. Indeed, an alarming number of carousers kept mistresses in rented rooms on Witherspoon, Bank, and Chambers streets, an old and seeming inextricable tradition at the university, despite its Presbyterian affiliation; as, at one time, Southern boys from slaveholding families were allowed to keep their personal slaves in the residence halls. (It had come to be a tradition among these boys, at least among the more affluent, that they would “free” their slaves upon graduation: with the result that many ex-slaves lived in the ramshackle neighborhood of lower Witherspoon, and swelled the local workforce with capable workers willing to work at very reasonable wages. Dr. Wilson’s house servants Clytie and Lucinda were descendants of freed slaves.)

      Woodrow felt some relief when he left the university campus, and made his way southward along Nassau Street, quite deserted at this hour of the night; and past Bank, and Chambers; taking note of the forlorn cries of nighthawks, that made his skin shiver; and of the gauzy-masked moon overhead, like a face glimpsed out of the past. At the shadowy junction of Nassau and Stockton there came noisily a handsome ebony brougham drawn by a matched team of horses, that swung smartly past Woodrow to continue along Bayard Lane.

      Woodrow recognized the carriage as belonging to ex-President Grover Cleveland. Quickly he calculated that the Clevelands had been dining at the palatial home of the Morgans on Hibben Road; they were returning to Westland, their own palatial home on Hodge Road, absurdly named for Andrew Fleming West, who was an intimate friend of Grover Cleveland. (Who can comprehend such perversities? Woodrow would not even try.)

      “O God! If I am seen! They will know.”

      Fortunately, Frances Cleveland was so absorbed with her fretting, elderly and obese husband, who was suffering a bout of dyspepsia following a lavish four-hour dinner, that the usually sharp-eyed woman failed to notice Woodrow Wilson’s shadowy figure on the sidewalk; if she had recognized him, Mrs. Cleveland would have guessed at once that he was on a mission to Crosswicks Manse, and the tale would have spread through the village of Princeton by teatime of the following day.

      Note. As a disinterested and fair-minded historian it isn’t my place to delve into old local feuds and squabbles; to stir up old misunderstandings, slanders, and hatreds, dating back to the turn of the century; to evoke once again a time in our peaceful community in which everyone, not excepting schoolchildren, felt obliged to take sides in the dispute between Woodrow Wilson and Andrew Fleming West; and a good portion of the congregation of the First Presbyterian Church chose not to speak to the remainder.

      I hope I won’t compromise my objectivity as an historian, as to whether Woodrow Wilson ought to have been obeyed, as he wished, in every particular concerning major issues at the university; or whether his opponent, the strong-willed dean СКАЧАТЬ