The Accursed. Joyce Carol Oates

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ . 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, СКАЧАТЬ