The Accursed. Joyce Carol Oates

a grand luncheon at the Nassau Club in honor of President Teddy Roosevelt; an event that exasperated, frustrated, and finally maddened the sensitive president of the university, who could not bear to hear such fulsome boasting, and such lurid accounts of animal-slaughter in the West; as the distraught Ellen Wilson hovers over him, administering what medicines the suffering man will take, and praying that her husband will not die!—all this, nearly on the eve of the Slade-Bayard nuptials of 4 June, in which their dear daughter Jessie will play so prominent a role. Mutters Mr. Wilson through tight-clenched teeth: “He is crass. He is vulgar. He is a buffoon—a bully. He does not respect me. He condescends to me—in Princeton of all places! It is insupportable.” (Thus the president of Princeton University, on his ill treatment by the President of the United States.) As elsewhere, a sorry scene unfolds:

      “Mr. Ruggles, I am sorry. The contract was for one year, as you know. It will not be renewed.”

      “But—why not?”

      Somberly the chair of Classics shakes his head.

      Why? Why not? Questions impossible to be answered, it seems.

      “But—I’d thought—I mean, I was led to believe . . .”

      The young man appears to be genuinely shocked. He has had a lively and productive teaching experience, he believes, as a preceptor in Latin; indeed, Yaeger Ruggles has devoted much of his time to act as a kind of personal tutor for a number of his undergraduate students, grievously deficient in Latin.

      “The boys have all learned a great deal. Several have told me, particularly . . .”

      “Mr. Ruggles, thank you.”

      “ . . . even their parents have expressed gratitude, and have sought me out . . .”

      “Unfortunately the contract will not be renewed, as I have tried to explain—we’re so very sorry.”

      “But—who is ‘we’?”

      Somberly still the white-haired chair of Classics shakes his head, with a look of muted pain. As if to inform the astonished and deeply wounded young man Do not ask. You will not be told. You are being expelled from our great university and there is no re-entry.

      “Sir, how can you treat me so unjustly?—so unreasonably? On what grounds are you firing me?”

      “Mr. Ruggles, you are not being ‘fired.’ Your contract is not being renewed, that is a very different matter. There have been anonymous reports, you see.”

      “ ‘Anonymous reports’—but—”

      “Mr. Ruggles, please close the door on your way out, I beg you.”

      Shortly thereafter, in another scene of ignominy, Yaeger Ruggles is summoned to the austere book-lined office of the head of the Princeton Theological Seminary, Reverend Thaddeus Shackleton, who informs him, in much the same somber and implacable tone as the chair of Classics, that it is believed to be “for the best of all concerned” if Mr. Ruggles departs the seminary at the conclusion of the spring term, which is the following Monday.

      “But, Reverend Shackleton—why?” Yaeger Ruggles demands. “What is the reason? How have I failed? You must point out to me the ways in which I have failed.”

      Ruggles’s first year at the seminary had gone “exceptionally well”—his instructor in Ancient Languages of the Bible had been fulsome in his praise for the young scholar, and his instructor in Ministerial Duties had predicted that he would make a “very attentive and responsible” minister one day soon. In his second year, academic reports had continued strong until March, when there was reported to be a “decided falling-off” of his work at the seminary, including even a number of unexplained absences.

      “The seminary is confronted with many more applicants than there are openings in our school. We have a waiting list of more than one dozen—who are quite as ‘deserving.’ And so, unfortunately, Mr. Ruggles . . .”

      “But, I don’t understand . . .”

      “It is not given to us, Mr. Ruggles, to ‘understand.’ We must have faith, and we must prevail.”

      In a haze of incomprehension the young man staggers away. So wounded, an observer from a short distance away might have discerned a limp in his walk.

      He would not have betrayed me—would he? My cousin Woodrow . . .

      At Nassau Hall, Yaeger is curtly informed that President Wilson is not in his office. And that his appointment schedule is so filled for the remainder of the week, it will not be possible to see him.

      Yaeger protests: “But—I am a cousin of Mr. Wilson’s, from Virginia. He knows me. He would want to speak with me.”

      His name is taken, by the president’s secretary.

      “Please tell Mr. Wilson—there has been some terrible misunderstanding. He will know what I mean, I hope. Tell him—Yaeger will not give up!”

      A mile away, at Maidstone House, Mrs. Adelaide Burr has fallen asleep reading The Secret Doctrine, and wakes from a light and unsatisfying nap to see, or to imagine that she sees, a face pressed against her bedroom window: a dark-skinned child-wraith, bold, impetuous, with features distended by rage, or by hunger; a stranger to Mrs. Burr, for she bears no relationship to anyone Mrs. Burr has ever seen. Yet, before Mrs. Burr can draw breath to scream, the creature vanishes, with the unspoken hint, that she will return soon.

      And here in the nursery at Mora House, at 44 Mercer Street, a half-mile from Maidstone, Mrs. Burr’s young cousin Amanda FitzRandolph is interrupted in the midst of nursing her infant son Terence, disturbed by a footfall, or a sigh, or a shadow, or—could it be?—the diaphanous figure of a man gliding by a mirror on the wall. Turning, and hugging her baby to her bosom, Mandy sees nothing, and hears nothing; knows herself alone with Terence, except for servants in another part of the house; yet is so beset by a fit of trembling, she must lay her baby back in his cradle, to prevent dropping him, or hurting him—for there is a moment of confusion when it seems to Mandy that her baby is no longer Terence but another, stranger’s baby—his nose broader than Terence’s dear little nose, his lips fleshier, his thin dark baby-hair coarser, and the very tincture of his baby-skin cloudier. A fit of vertigo overcomes her. A thought assails her Edgerstoune would not do such a thing to me. Beside the rarely used fireplace in the bedroom there is a wicked-looking poker, Mandy’s fingers yearn to wield, but she resists, she will resist, stooping to soothe the fretting infant, whispering, “Why it is nothing, Baby must sleep.”

      Close by, in a distinguished old Colonial house at 99 Campbelton Circle, Miss Wilhelmina Burr stares at herself in a full-length bedroom mirror, as a French seamstress kneels at her hem to make adjustments in the pale pink satin dress she will be wearing in Annabel’s wedding; her critical eye absorbing little of the appealing vision in the glass but fastening, with a cruel sort of intensity, upon defects—in face, figure, person. Wilhelmina is not in a “Willy” mood today—her “Willy”-self is dependent upon others, like Annabel, and Josiah; alone, she is but Wilhelmina, the daughter of parents who cannot seem to look at her except with disappointment, for she is not a beauty; and she is not the sort of charmingly submissive, sweetly acquiescent young woman whom lack of beauty might reasonably yield. Nor does Wilhelmina take note of her dress, its long graceful skirt edged in a double row of ruffles that rise to the front, to mesh with a set of delicate pleats, all of which is flattering to her somewhat angular figure. To the contrary, the subdued young woman, forced now to draw breath to accommodate the gown’s narrow waist, feels suddenly that she might burst—must burst: feels that she is in danger of weeping, or laughing, or crying in despair, or whispering words of profanity. (This, sometimes in her sleep, Wilhelmina finds herself doing, such foul words! such unexpected words!—that, in daylight, Wilhelmina scarcely knows.) For the imminent wedding of her closest friend throws into humiliating relief her own loneliness. Josiah does not love me, and will never love me.

      At most, Josiah is “fond” of Wilhelmina, whom he calls “Willy” with the casualness of a cousin, or a brother; he is admiring of her intelligence, and her skill at croquet;