The Accursed. Joyce Carol Oates

& 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.

      _____ . 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