The Accursed. Joyce Carol Oates

vocabulary such words as battle, war, enemy—even, perhaps, soul. For your nature is to take a little too seriously matters that are only local and transient, and you see conspiracy where there may be little more than a healthy difference of opinion.”

      Woodrow stared at his elder friend with a look of hurt and alarm.

      “ ‘Healthy difference of opinion’—? I don’t understand, Winslow. This is life or death—my life or death, as president of the university.”

      “When the issue is whether to build the new Graduate College at the heart of the campus or, as Dean West prefers, at the edge? That is a matter of your life or death?”

      “Yes! Yes, it is. And the eating clubs as well—my enemies are massing against me, to defeat my plan of colleges within the university, of a democratic nature. You know, I believe that the highest executive office must centralize power—whether the chief executive is the President of the United States, or of a distinguished university. And right here at home, I am met with mutiny.”

      “Woodrow, really! ‘Mutiny.’ ” Winslow Slade smiled.

      “Mutiny, yes,” Woodrow repeated grimly, “and I have no doubt that they are meeting in secret at this very minute, somewhere close by.”

      For Woodrow had learned, from a remark of Mrs. Wilson’s when she’d returned from a luncheon at the Princeton Women’s Club two days before, that Andrew Fleming West was to be a houseguest at a dinner party at the home of the Burrs, of FitzRandolph Place, to which the Wilsons had conspicuously not been invited.

      Winslow Slade murmured that none of this boded well for the university, if it was true; still less for Woodrow and his family.

      “Dr. Slade, it is true,” Woodrow said irritably, “the prediction around town that I will be ‘outflanked’ by Easter, cornered like a rat and made to resign the presidency! Please don’t deny it, sir, in the interests of kindness or charity, for I know very well that Princeton whispers of nothing else—even the washerwomen, and the Negro servants, and every sort of local riffraff, gloat over my distress.”

      At this, Winslow Slade leaned over to touch the younger man’s tensed arm. “Tommy—d’you mind if I call you ‘Tommy’?—I hope you remember the advice I gave you, when you accepted the trustees’ offer of the presidency: ‘A wise administrator never admits to having enemies, and a yet wiser administrator never has enemies.’ ”

      “A banal platitude, sir, if I may say so,” Woodrow said, with increasing vexation, “—that might have been put to the ‘enemies’ of Napoleon, as his armies swept over them and devastated them utterly. It is easy for you to think in such a way—you who have never known an enemy in your life, and have been blessed by God in all your efforts.”

      “I had political enemies enough, when I was governor of the state,” Winslow said. “I think you are forgetting the vicissitudes of real life, in your airy allegorical dramas.”

      Woodrow, pacing in front of the fireplace, spoke now rapidly, and heedlessly—saying that Ellen and his daughters were “sick with worry” over his health; his doctor, Melrick Hatch, had warned him that the palliative medications he’d been taking for years to steady his nerves might soon have a “reverse” effect. (One of Woodrow’s medications was the morphine-laced Mrs. Wycroff’s Soothing Syrup; another, McCormick’s Glyco-Heroin Throat Lozenges; yet another, Boehringer & Soehne’s Antiseptique, with its high quotient of opium. Woodrow was also somewhat addicted to such home remedies as syrupy calomel, bismuth, and Oil of Olmay; cascara sagrada and Tidwell’s Purge.) Again, Woodrow picked up the brass letter-opener, to turn it restlessly in his fingers—“The dean, it’s said, boasts that he intends to drive me into an ‘early grave’ and take my place as president. And a majority of the trustees align themselves with him.”

      “Woodrow, please! This isn’t worthy of you. I think that you and Dean West must meet face to face, and stop this absurd plotting. I would guess that Andrew goes about Princeton complaining of you, and declaring that you should drive him to an early grave, if you had your way.”

      Woodrow stiffened at this remark. For indeed, it had frequently come to him, even when he knelt in prayer at Sunday church services, feeling himself an empty vessel to be filled with the grace of God, that, if something would happen to his enemy Andrew Fleming West: how easy then, his life would become!

      “All opposition to my ideas would evaporate at once, like harmless smoke. All opposition.”

      “Woodrow, what do you mean? What have you said?”

      Had Woodrow spoken aloud? He was sure he had not.

      Winslow Slade said, quietly, yet with feeling, “Sometimes I think you scarcely know me, Tommy. Or, indeed—anyone. You so surround yourself with fantasies of your own creation! For instance, you claim that I seem not to have known an enemy in my career, and that God has ‘blessed’ my efforts; but you must know, this was hardly the case. There was a very vocal opposition at the university, when I pushed forward my ‘reform’ of the curriculum, and insisted upon higher admissions standards; very nearly, a revolt among the trustees. And then, when I was governor of this contentious, politician-ridden state, there were days when I felt like a battered war veteran, and only the solace of my religion, and my church, kept me from despair. Yet, I tried not to complain, even to my dear Oriana; I tried never to make careless public remarks, or denunciations. This is not in keeping with our dignity. Remember the doomed Socrates of The Crito—a public man in his seventies condemned to death by the state: it was Socrates’ position that one abides by the laws of his time and place, and that death is preferable to banishment from society. So I’ve long kept my own counsel, and not even those closest to me have known of my secret struggles. So it is, dear Tommy, in the waning years of my life, I can’t allow myself to be drawn into ‘politics’ yet again. I know that your office is a sacred trust in your eyes, very like that of the pulpit; you are your father’s son, in many ways; and you have been driving yourself these past months with a superhuman energy. But it must be remembered, Woodrow, the university is not the church; and your inauguration, however splendid, should not be interpreted as an ordination.” Winslow paused, to allow his words to sink in. It was a misunderstanding of the elder Slade, that he was without sarcasm or irony, as he was without guile; that, being by nature good-hearted and generous, he was one to suffer fools gladly. “So, my counsel to you is compromise, President Wilson—compromise.”

      Woodrow reacted like a child who has been slapped. Slowly, dazedly, he sank into his chair by the fireplace, facing his host. Waning firelight played on his tight, taut features; his stricken eyes were hidden behind the wink of his eyeglasses. In a hoarse voice he said: “Compromise!—what a thing to suggest! What—weakness, cowardice! Did our Savior compromise? Did He make a deal with his enemies? My father instructed me, either one is right, and compelled to act upon it; or one is in error, and should surrender the chalice to another man. Jesus declared, ‘I bring not peace but a sword.’ Does not our Lord declare everywhere in His holy writ, that one must be either for Him or against Him? I have reason to believe that all evil begins in compromise, Dr. Slade. Our great President Lincoln did not compromise with the slavers, as our Puritan ancestors did not compromise with the native Indians whom they discovered in the New World, pagan creatures who were not to be trusted—‘drasty Sauvages’ they were called. You might not know, Winslow, but our Wilson family motto—from the time of the Campbells of Argyll until now—God save us from compromise.”

      When Winslow didn’t reply, only just shook his head, with an inscrutable expression, Woodrow said, a little sharply: “Ours is a proud heritage! And it would go hard against my father, as against my own conscience, if I weakened in this struggle.”

      Winslow said, gently, “But after all, Tommy, you are not your father, however much you love and honor his memory. And you must bear in mind that he is no longer living; he has been dead this past year, and more.”

      At these words the younger man stared into a corner of the room as if he had been taken by surprise: was his father dead?

      And something else, someone else, another tormenting voice, had been beating