Mysteries of Winterthurn

by Joyce Carol Oates

  He was proud rather than vain, despite his angelic good looks, the main source of his irritation being the fact that his family had “come down” so visibly in the world: for he knew how the Kilgarvans of Wycombe Street were oft designated, with chilling dispatch, as the “poor” Kilgarvans,—to distinguish them from their wealthy relatives who lived at Glen Mawr. And, ah!—how deep the insult cut into the sensitive youth!

  LIKENESSES OF XAVIER KILGARVAN as a boy betray such classic masculine beauty, it is not to be wondered at that Miss Georgina should suspect her young cousin and her young half-sister of “romantic” mischief: for, with his Grecian profile, and his dreamy opal-gray eyes, and his olive-pale complexion so readily suffused with warmth, and, framing all, his abundant, lustrous, ebony-black curls,—how should Xavier fail to suggest a type of precocity that is both innocent and childlike, yet gravely unsettling,—and, withal, especially disturbing to those who have had some experience with romance of the more delirious sort, and its attendant tragedies? (For it was well known through Winterthurn that poor Georgina had suffered a broken heart in her youth.)

  So it came about that Georgina imagined that her handsome young cousin Xavier,—whom, in truth, she scarcely knew!—was boldly staring at her, with the intention of “penetrating” her brain; and that he cast improper eyes upon Perdita,—even as the party of some thirty mourners stood assembled on one of the loftiest ridges of the cemetery, before the noble granite mausoleum of the Kilgarvans.

  Indeed, in his restlessness, Xavier had allowed his gaze to settle upon the twelve-year-old Perdita: and it began to perplex him, that this mere child, whom he had hardly noticed in the past, now radiated so somber, yet so potent, a girlish beauty, he found himself quite strangely absorbed. “Girls” as such interested him not at all; “romance” was but a word,—and an unappealing word at that. And he quite naturally felt some animosity toward all the Kilgarvans of Glen Mawr,—whom it pleased him to consider his and his father’s enemies.

  It was while Xavier stood staring in his cousin’s direction that the air so radically altered, and the sun seemed to burst forth from a dozen blinding angles, reflected from tombstones on all sides; and the unearthly keening sound materialized, to the distress of the mourners. Alas, what was it?—from whence did it issue? Rising as if from the grasses underfoot, or falling with exquisite lightness from the boughs of the agèd beech trees,—an expression of sorrow lightly tinted, it seemed, with anger,—now joined by another, and that by yet another: a chorus of grief never before heard in Winterthurn.

  Then, of a sudden, before it could be distinctly heard, the sound dropped away.

  Xavier Kilgarvan’s senses were roused at once, but he knew not how to behave: and bethought himself that perhaps he had imagined it, and must not cause any disruption while Reverend De Forrest continued with his prayer.

  Scarcely five yards away stood Miss Georgina herself, who betrayed not the slightest awareness of having heard anything out of the usual: a commanding presence, even on this morning of grief, in a black silk-and-wool mourning costume only spartanly adorned with ribands, and a very plain black hat, and a fur-lined woolen traveling cape (from out her mother’s trousseau of forty-odd years previous, it was whispered, and, alas, somewhat moth-eaten): her head only slightly bowed, as if pride in the midst of her unparalleled sorrow, and in her station, kept her thus erect,—and, indeed, scornful of weakness. Does all of Winterthurn watch? the stiff-backed spinster seemed to muse. Very well, then: I shall deprive them of any spectacle.

  All covertly, though, I suppose, somewhat rudely, Xavier observed his elder cousin: noted the splashes of damp on her traveling cape; noted her mismatched gloves—though each was black, their subtly warring textures proclaimed them unmated; noted the way in which her black muslin veil was sucked arrhythmically against her nose and mouth, and then released, and again sucked back, by the action of her hoarse breathing, leaving a patch of damp . . . Studying the “Blue Nun” thusly, Xavier felt a small pang of pity for her, rather than sympathy, for she had been entirely devoted to her father; and, though she had always turned a chill eye upon his entire family, rebuffing even Mrs. Kilgarvan’s overtures of friendship, he could quite see that her life was “tragic” in the loose sense of the word. “Cousins we are said to be, by blood,” Xavier thought, “yet strangers we are in fact: though more irrevocably divided than most strangers, in that we can never become friends.”

  Close beside Miss Georgina stood Simon Esdras, in whom Xavier had a more than ordinary interest: for he had closely perused his father’s agèd copy of A Treatise on the Probable “Existence” of the World, which was said to have been published on the philosopher’s nineteenth birthday: and found it a most tantalizing and knotty document, quite incomprehensible as to its meaning! Xavier had inquired of his father what the argument of the Treatise was—in brief: Did the world exist, or no; or was there merely the probability of its existing? But Lucas Kilgarvan had said he didn’t know; and was of the opinion that the Treatise was proclaimed an act of youthful genius, and its author touted as another Spinoza, or Aristotle, by philosophers on both sides of the Atlantic, precisely because one could discern no “argument” in the book at all. The first Treatise was followed by a second, after a space of more than a decade, and though this monograph—A Treatise on the “Probable” Existence of the World—was said to thoroughly refute the claims of the first, Xavier could make very little sense of it; and tossed it irritably aside after a few hours’ examination. (Which, indeed, was the general response, for the second Treatise, according to Xavier’s father, “fell upon deaf ears,” and received no reviews or notices, save one indignant dismissal in the English journal Mind.) At the age of forty-seven Simon Esdras published a third Treatise, by way of a private press located at Nautauga Falls, but this, A Treatise on the Probable Existence of the “World,” Lucas Kilgarvan did not own; and Xavier had not yet taken the time to locate it, in the public library, or to borrow it from the headmaster at the Academy: for he had begun to mistrust his ability to reason philosophically. The third Treatise was said to have met with slightly more enthusiasm than the second, though not proclaimed a work of genius: which disappointing response so outraged Simon Esdras, he declared he would henceforth boycott the world of philosophy, and never publish again. Yet a slim pamphlet of thirty-odd pages did appear, on his sixty-second birthday, with the formidable title A Prolegomenon Concerning a Treatise on the “Probable Existence” of the World,—this privately printed document exciting interest in only one fellow thinker, of whom no one in Winterthurn had ever heard: Charles Sanders Peirce, at this time residing in lonely exile in a small Pennsylvania town three hundred miles away. (It was believed that Peirce’s lengthy letter to Simon Esdras proved gratifying, and somewhat restored his faith in the ability of the philosophical world to recognize his gifts: yet, such was Simon Esdras’s indifference to social occasions, and his scorn for the “folly of seeking out persons in the flesh,” that he and Peirce were never to meet; nor did their correspondence continue.)

  Nonetheless, Xavier harbored some interest in his uncle: and might well have tried to befriend him had not the older gentleman behaved ambiguously in the matter of the contested will (announcing himself as indifferent to its outcome, yet profiting, nevertheless, from the judgment against Xavier’s father); and had not the Manor been declared “off limits” to him and his brothers, by all adult parties involved in the dispute. “For he is, at the very least,” Xavier reasoned, “an unusual relative; and might very well have something to teach me.” But if Simon Esdras had any awareness of his four nephews, let alone any special interest in the youngest, he had certainly never given any sign: and when the curious wailing sound began, and, for an accidental moment, Xavier and Simon Esdras locked eyes, there appeared to be no recognition in the older man’s silvery-gray gaze,—nor did his affable countenance betray any agitation beyond a fluttering of pale eyelashes. An enigmatic personage, indeed!—for Xavier thought him, in his lifelong
willful seclusion in pursuit of Truth, more remarkable even than his renowned brother Erasmus; and decidedly more “colorful” than Xavier’s own father.

  The queer luminous-gray tone of Simon Esdras’s eyes, enhanced by the lenses of his pince-nez, reminded Xavier of cats’ or owls’ eyes,—reflecting rather than absorbing light. Yet, in his somewhat shiny black suit that fitted him so indifferently, a narrow swath of stubble unshaven on his chin, he had so unstudied and human an air, it was impossible not to feel a measure of affection for him: and Xavier fancied he saw a distant smile playing about his thin lips . . .

  Clothed in identical black capes of a heavy cotton-woolen fabric that possessed an unflattering sheen, wearing kindred black hats that might well, by the look of them, have been handed down by Georgina, the sisters Thérèse and Perdita maintained their wooden posture, at Simon Esdras’s left elbow; and stood with heads meekly bowed, and cheeks agleam with tears, even as the eerie keening sound arose—though Xavier believed he could discern a nervous tic in the elder’s eye; and sweet little Perdita, startled into glancing upward, revealed, through the gossamer veil that chastely covered her eyes, a gaze of extraordinary intensity. (And was not the reddened tip of her nose uniquely charming, Xavier thought; and the tremulous air of her pale parted lips; and her tiny foot, tightly encased in a black kidskin shoe, which peeped out, as it were, beneath the hem of her heavy dress?) But in the next instant, as the sourceless noise dropped away, the sisters the more resolutely bowed their heads, and clasped their dark-gloved hands against their bosoms. Did they hear? Xavier wondered. Or did they not? Yet he forbade himself to stare; for he knew that, at the very least, rude behavior on his part, at his uncle’s gravesite, would only distress his mother.

  Xavier listened closely but heard no further sound, save Miss Georgina’s hoarse rapid breathing; and the random and forlorn calls of birds. The irreverent notion struck him that the dead man had awakened of a sudden, to discover himself imprisoned in his satin-lined coffin,—as, indeed, he had imprisoned so many criminals in the course of his career: and those faint wailing cries of sorrow and anger,—might they not be his, sounding distantly from out the coffin? A most disagreeable fancy!

  But Xavier deemed himself too much a rationalist to believe in such things. “That the dead are thoroughly dead, to this life at least, no matter how they are transmogrified in Heaven (or in Hell),” Xavier thought, “I take to be self-evident, and shall never question. Such superstitions are for the untutored, and certain members of the female sex.” Yet he could not resist the judgment that, if any gentleman in Winterthurn deserved so hideous a fate as to awake imprisoned in his own coffin, it was Chief Justice Erasmus Kilgarvan.

  WHEN NEWS OF ERASMUS KILGARVAN’S DEATH spread through Winterthurn, it was greeted with some measure of incredulity, for so vigorous had the elderly jurist been, so very much in the public eye, that one might have thought him indestructible: with his ruddy flushed skin, piercing silver-gray eyes, sturdy, compact, and rather bullish body, and, withal, his air of ceaseless energy: the very power residing in his soul. That he was felled by a stroke while addressing the courtroom seemed in a way apt, for, as the outspoken Miss Imogene Westergaard observed, upon hearing the news of her neighbor’s demise, it was the only way in which old Erasmus might be cut down,—by a lightning-bolt, so to speak, issued with no warning.

  Though Erasmus Kilgarvan was a familiar and much-admired presence about town, dining out four or five evenings a week, in private homes, or in one or another of his clubs,—amongst them, the Winterthurn Yacht Club and the prestigious Corinthian Club—he was one of the more temperamental of the several well-to-do “bachelor-widowers” in Winterthurn society: and could not always be trusted to suffer fools gladly in his hosts’ drawing rooms. Gregarious and even somewhat sybaritic as he was; loving rich foods, alcoholic spirits, good-natured ripostes, and anecdotes of a colorful or even slightly risqué nature; a “jolly fellow”; a “man among men”; a gallant amongst the ladies; an indefatigable charmer when he wished to be so—nevertheless he held the Law in such high regard, he might fly into a rage if certain ideals, judgments, or sentences were questioned; and had acquired, over a period of forty years, a reputation as a jurist of stern and unparalleled purity. (Which is to say that, unlike the majority of his associates, and even his “cronies” in town, Erasmus Kilgarvan could not be bribed: nay, not even swayed by sentiments of a personal or pragmatic nature.)

  It was a matter of debate amongst the ladies as to whether the Judge’s porcine features inclined toward the handsome, or toward the disagreeably smug; or whether the striking effect of his bald, blunt, bulletlike head was felicitous, or otherwise; nor was there widespread consensus as to whether he had “treated” his two wives well, or had behaved admirably in summoning his daughter Georgina back from New York City, where she had been attending college, that she might nurse him back to health,—and remain with him as his companion, forever afterward. (As to the matter of the suitor, Mr. Guillemot: a number of the ladies frankly believed that Erasmus had driven the feckless young man away—but this is idle conjecture, and not to be credited.) Debatable too was the Judge’s procedure, in scrupulously following the letter of the Law, and complying with his senile father’s wish to disinherit his half-brother Lucas completely: and the continued wisdom of his severity, in regard to his three daughters. (Georgina, it seems, soon ceased to give him any difficulty, and settled in, as it were, to a life of domestic seclusion, in her early thirties; at the time of Erasmus’s death, Thérèse and Perdita were driven each schoolday morning to the Parthian Academy for Girls, by the Negro servant Pride, and picked up again each afternoon, promptly at three o’clock: rarely allowed to visit their classmates’ homes, and only once or twice yearly given the privilege of staying late for tea, at the headmistress’s residence.) Such systematical severity, some observers thought, inclined to excess, for the girls were young and attractive, and might have enjoyed harmless schoolgirl friendships; but others, perhaps more reasonably, believed Erasmus eminently practical in wishing to shield his daughters, at their impressionable age, from certain unpleasant facts of life. Had not the world grown disagreeably motley and fast-paced, in the past several decades?—and had not poor Georgina herself been cruelly wounded, by her headstrong ventures into it?

  “It is only out of love that Erasmus acts with so adamant a paternal solicitude,” Reverend De Forrest frowningly said, “and I think we would all be grievously in error to offer criticism where we are only ignorant.”

  Though controversial in these divers ways, Erasmus Kilgarvan was assuredly not controversial in his fierce devotion to the Law, and in his unbending efforts to render justice where it was due. As his associates of many years argued, the Judge was, in truth, loath to condemn and punish; but, as he dwelt in a fallen, sinful world, where innocence might well be defined as the unfulfilled potential for evil, and guilt itself was but a matter of degree, he was obliged to take his responsibilities seriously: and is to be forgiven, I hope, for his steadfast belief that he was ordained by God, as well as by the State, in his judicial role. “Mercy is a luxury,” he frequently said, in defending a prison sentence of especial harshness, or, indeed, a death sentence, “while Justice is notoriously frugal. The one is very easy to scatter about, and will draw friends, as honey draws flies; the other wins precious few friends, and numberless enemies. But when God shows us our duty, we must follow it.” Nor would he consent to surrender his onerous burden, when advancing years brought with them certain vexing infirmities,—gout, dyspepsia, shortness of breath and temper, and a growing deafness in one, or both, ears.

  (As to whispered slanderous charges that Erasmus Kilgarvan naturally inclined toward the prosecution in any case, and was apt to express sardonic views over the strategies,—whether bumbling or expert—of those defense attorneys unfortunate enough to argue before him, these are, I think, quite groundless; and enjoy coinage only in a slacker, more lenient era, when life and property are so cheaply hel
d even by jurists, that negligible sentences are handed down daily, and criminals are soon freed, to commit further crimes against the innocent.)

  Heavy fines, incarcerations of many years, death by hanging: these sentences Erasmus Kilgarvan delivered with an air of solemn vigor that contrasted wondrously with his puckish private manner, revealed at the Corinthian Club, where he could unbutton, as it were, and relax, and speak frankly. Rarely did he jest at the expense of the poor wretches he had sent to the gallows; but he was not so intolerably pious a judge as to forbid his drinking companions to do so. Dr. Colney Hatch, in reminiscing over the grand old days of Erasmus Kilgarvan’s reign in Winterthurn, expressed the view commonly held, that it was an inexplicable oversight that the Judge was never named to the Supreme Court of the United States: a miscarriage of justice that must have deeply wounded the principal, though, being a gentleman to his fingertips, of course he never breathed a word about it. As Reverend De Forrest said of Judge Kilgarvan in his heartfelt funeral oration, he labored “not for earthly glory, but in the service of his God.” And this judgment, I think, remains uncontested.