Mysteries of Winterthurn

by Joyce Carol Oates

  (When this tale was told to Xavier, however, by the excitable young Ringgold, it was most skeptically received: for, as Xavier pointed out, Ringgold had not so much as glimpsed the lady’s face, nor had he the slightest shred of evidence that she was swiping at something invisible,—for, if it were invisible, how might it then be seen? Such “eyewitness” accounts could scarcely be taken seriously, Xavier scornfully said, as if, for the moment, he were Monsieur Dupin, or Sherlock Holmes himself, confronted with a particularly obtuse individual,—and, indeed, the reliability of amateur witnesses is notorious throughout the history of crime.)

  Equally unreliable, and colored with a surprising cruelty, were the divers tales told of poor Thérèse and Perdita, who had bravely returned to classes at the Parthian Academy, that they might not fall behind their classmates: for now, it seems, it was openly observed, by even those girls who had been amiable enough in the past, that the Kilgarvan sisters were most odd; had been odd from the start; sighed too frequently in the classroom, and wept too frequently in the cloakroom; aroused scorn by working so very diligently at her studies, in the case of Thérèse, and impatience, by an excess of brooding, in the case of Perdita; kept to themselves, or, conversely, failed to keep sufficiently to themselves,—for if Perdita approached a group of girls they coolly turned aside, and Thérèse’s deskmate of many months now shrank from her, and requested of the headmistress that she be moved elsewhere. For, it seems, the sisters offended not only by their presence but by an odor that emanated from them, of something most rank, chill, unclean, and sickly. (Like singed feathers, one girl claimed. Like wet fur, claimed another. Like milk just beginning to turn; or agèd soiled clothes; mildew; mold; rot; waste; dark brackish unspeakable blood.)

  Felicity Peregrine widened her periwinkle-blue eyes and lowered her voice to a whisper, as she swore she had seen Thérèse’s shadow detach itself from her and drift away, on one of the school’s graveled walks; Mary-Louise Von Goeler evoked frightened giggles by swearing that she had, entirely by accident, touched Perdita’s wrist, to discover that the girl’s skin was clammy and cold, as that of,—why, she would not wish to say. And how fierce was the expression Perdita turned upon her: darkly bright eyes ablaze like a cat’s, with ill-suppressed fury!

  And all the Parthian girls agreed that the Kilgarvan sisters knew more than they acknowledged regarding the death of the Whimbrel baby,—more, certainly, than the fools in the sheriff’s office suspected.

  (When these reckless accusations were repeated in Xavier’s presence, he had all he could do to keep from bursting out in rage; and felt the insult against sweet Perdita as keenly as if a razor-sharp blade had been drawn against his unprotected skin.)

  The headmistress of the school, Clarice Von Goeler (a maiden aunt of the cruel talebearer Mary-Louise), had long made it her mission to befriend Thérèse and Perdita, both because she pitied the girls, being motherless; and because she yet cherished her girlhood friendship with Georgina, who was, in her steadfastly loyal view, “one of the very few outstanding individuals of her acquaintance,—of either sex.” Though the relationship between Clarice and Georgina had long since atrophied, for no reason Clarice could discover, she continued to write little notes to Georgina from time to time, inviting her to accompany her sisters to tea at the headmistress’s residence, or to dinner, or on a Sunday excursion along the river to one of the majestic old inns: most of which invitations, despite their gracious tone, and unforced offer of sympathy and affection, went unanswered. (For in this, and in a host of related issues, the Judge’s daughter quite betrayed her heritage, in her shocking rudeness.) Miss Von Goeler was a tall, flaxen-haired woman of young middle age, healthily colored, forthright, yet, upon occasion, given to periods of introspection: reserved, one might say, out of stubbornness rather than timidity: with very little patience for gossip, scandal, and the like. So it was, when thoughtless persons asked of her what the “Blue Nun” was truly like, or how matters truly stood at Glen Mawr (as if, indeed, Clarice had set foot in the house for some ten or twelve years), she was likely to flare up in a temper, and reply that “it was no one’s concern, and a vulgar sort of diversion, to make such queries.” A tale making the rounds, which was repeated to Xavier’s mother by a lady friend, had it that the headmistress had called both Kilgarvan girls to her office to speak in private with them, and to ask if she might be of assistance: with the startling consequence that Thérèse burst into speechless sobs, and little Perdita grew very white in the face, saying, in a voice of quivering pride, “Thank you for your pity, Miss Von Goeler, but we do not require it, and we do not wish it,”—or words to that effect (for the story, as one might suspect, underwent numerous alterations and embellishments as it spread through town).

  As he had so long led a life of willful seclusion, and could scarcely be said to thrust himself upon the attentions even of the enlightened public, Simon Esdras Kilgarvan escaped general notice, and was the subject of few tales. So it was, the Kilgarvans of Wycombe Street were astonished one evening at the dinner table when, in his usual blithe and unthinking manner, Wolf told them that his circle of friends,—by which he meant the Rock Barrens racetrack circle, which included young Valentine Westergaard and Calvin Shaw—had quite solved the mystery of Glen Mawr: it was Simon Esdras who had murdered the baby, for he would have had a key to the bed-chamber, and only Simon Esdras, of all the household, was unquestionably mad. So bluntly, yet so casually uttered, these words did not evoke the response Wolf had anticipated, even from his brothers; Mrs. Kilgarvan pressed her hand to her bosom, in mute consternation; and Mr. Kilgarvan, after a moment’s shocked silence, told his son that he was no gentleman, but a lowlife ruffian, to speak in so coarse a way at the dinner table,—and of his own uncle. “You will excuse yourself at once, and leave us,” Mr. Kilgarvan said. “But, sir,” Wolf protested, attempting a smile, “surely you must understand that our theory is not altogether serious.” “The more scurrilous, then, the lot of you,” Mr. Kilgarvan said, with trembling lips, “and you will take your leave at once.”

  It was not long after that evening, however, when reports spread of Simon Esdras,—or a white-haired gentleman who closely resembled him—in any number of unlikely places, including the rougher areas of South Winterthurn, and the unlicensed establishments of Rivière-du-Loup. Whether he drank to dazed excess, or tried his inexpert hand at gambling and cards, or consorted with women of a certain unspecified category,—none of the talebearers was prepared to say. It was the case, however, that Simon Esdras now attended church more faithfully, including even Wednesday evening services (to which he escorted Thérèse and Perdita,—Miss Georgina being temporarily invalided); and he caused a stir by showing up, unannounced, at a meeting of the Thursday Afternoon Society, having mistaken the day’s program of verse recitation by Miss Iris Kathleen Hume for a symposium of some sort on a Scottish philosopher, of whom no one in the Society had ever heard. On the more somber side, he had taken to dropping in at the Corinthian Club, which he had not visited for forty years, and wandering about both downstairs and upstairs, as if in search (so observers believed) of his dead brother: with a most mournful, distracted, childlike expression on his pink-flushed face, and a wistful smile for all who came forward to shake his hand. Only a night or two prior to the Kilgarvan boys’ adventure at the Upchurch farm, Valentine Westergaard chanced to encounter the philosopher on the granite steps between the Club’s stately gryphon figures, and, seeing that Simon Esdras smiled toward him in a somewhat stupefied manner, put himself at his aid, and offered to escort him home. According to young Westergaard, the old gentleman breathed a sweet liquorish breath, yet behaved, in a sense, in no more tipsy a way than usual: plucking at his sleeve, and inquiring of him whether Heraclitus was correct in asserting that one cannot plunge into the same river twice; or whether, to reason more adroitly, Simon Esdras Kilgarvan was correct in asserting that one can either not plunge into the river (sic) once, which is to say, at all, as the “river” is but a figure
of speech, or not not plunge (sic) into the “river,” as the river is ubiquitous, and carries all mortals along, to we know not where. When Valentine did no more than chuckle uneasily, not grasping that an actual proposition had been put to him, Simon Esdras repeated it, in a high petulant voice that betrayed an uncommon anxiety. “So it is, young man, you must choose,” the philosopher said, “—Heraclitus, or Kilgarvan: which is it?” Canny though young Westergaard was, and a very devil at cards and horses, he had no mind for the knottier issues of philosophy, and answered in a vague cheery tone that he “would put his money on Plato,”—the only philosopher of whom he had heard, and by whom his grandfather the Colonel swore: which answer was, as it turned out, most brilliant, as it not only impressed Mr. Kilgarvan but silenced him for the remainder of the drive home. Then, at the Manor, he shook Valentine’s hand and offered him formal thanks, for having “pricked him in his sophist slumber”: for Plato, though mad, doubtless contained a yet more ubiquitous Truth, that “river” and “he-who-plunges” are similarly unreal, or, conversely, “real” to the same degree. “In any case,” Simon Esdras said, with a sudden sunny smile, “I shall think hard upon it: and it may be, after all, that Erasmus yet lives,—and none of us must die.”

  UPON RETURNING from a business trip to Vanderpoel and the western reaches of the Valley, Bradford Kilgarvan reported the alarming news that the family’s very name, once so distinguished, had become, of late, shrouded in mystery and confused scandal: that Erasmus’s entirely natural death was being whispered of as “unnatural” and “unexplained”: that not one, but several infants, had died at the Manor: that the “Blue Nun” was most irresponsibly linked with a woman, not even an ancestress, of the late 1790s,—harking back beyond Phillips Goode’s time—who had, it seems, poisoned several husbands in Winterthurn. Alas, many an old shameful tale, attached as much to the Kilgarvans’ neighbors as to them, was being resuscitated, and passed off as new—!

  Protest as Bradford assuredly did, with as much gentlemanly tact, forbearance, and good humor as he could summon forth, that these stories were greatly exaggerated, and that, in any case, the Kilgarvans of Glen Mawr Manor were very different persons from the Kilgarvans of Wycombe Street,—yet he failed, in his own estimation, to greatly alter those notions. Still more worrisome was the puzzling development that those store owners or managers (among them the overseer of the Children’s Floor of the great Brant Brothers Cast Iron Palace, in downtown Vanderpoel) who had, in the past, unhesitatingly ordered Mr. Kilgarvan’s toys in considerable quantities, because of the very name Kilgarvan, now professed less enthusiasm; and agreed to order, it almost seemed with reluctance, certain specialties of the Winterthurn workshop (the wooden Noah’s Ark, the fretwork humblybeg, the ever-popular “crying” doll, above all the splendid rocking horse) that were belovèd of the children of the well-to-do, and not available elsewhere, from other toymakers or suppliers. Bradford was deeply insulted when one shopkeeper, while placing his order, expressed the hope that the toys should not prove “dangerous”: for he had heard—why, he knew not precisely what he had heard!

  Informed of such perfidious matters, Lucas Kilgarvan at first flared up in manly anger: then, within an hour, lapsed into that listless melancholia to which he was, it seems, prone. Never did he utter aloud a word of complaint or self-pity, not to his belovèd wife, not even to his most trusted son Bradford: yet it was evident that he suffered: and that, after so many years of unflagging industry and deserved praise for the masterly craftsmanship of his custom-made toys, he still could not rest in the assumption of financial stability. So it was, year upon year, the effect, it seemed, of the virulent animosity his elder brother had conceived for him, for clouded reasons . . .

  Young Xavier, sensing these things, did not violate his father’s pride by speaking of them: but vowed with the more heated fervor that he should one day restore his father’s fortune to him, and his reputation; that he should exorcise for all times even the rumor of his father’s (and his own) “tainted blood,”—baseless though it was, and trivial. But, ah!—was the very name of Kilgarvan now accursed?—might he be forced to leave Winterthurn to realize his destiny?

  WHILE GAZING AT THE SLAUGHTERED LAMBS, and covering page after page of his sketchbook with deft, feathery strokes in charcoal, Xavier slipped, by degrees, into a pleasurable light trance: and, his restless brother being otherwise absorbed in wandering about the lower pasture, Xavier felt his spirit expand, and grow ever more airy and insubstantial, the while thoughts of a most exotic species seemed to lift from the trampled grasses underfoot, and fold him in their warm embrace . . .

  Of a sudden, Xavier was forcibly reminded of a dream he had had the previous night, bearing upon little Perdita, in which the lovely child had appeared,—in what attire, for what purpose, whether with hair loosed or no, the youth was shamed to recall—in his bed-chamber, by luminous moonlight: a vision of such fleeting sweetness, he had felt it imprinted upon his very being; and awoke with strangulated breath (alas, to naught but his too-familiar room, in which, close beside him, Colin slumbered with deep rasping breaths,—the blameless sleep of any healthsome lad).

  Now, not a yard distant from Upchurch’s lambs, this dream-image reappeared: and in the next instant vanished: nor could Xavier, though his heart strained, and desire leapt in his wrists, summon it back. Instead, other shapes appeared, of a graceful tantalizing nature: winged, it seemed: floating: gentle: transparent. A tiny hand, the palm heated, the fingers surprisingly strong, insinuated itself into his, to force the stick of charcoal away.

  Not clearly audible, yet unmistakably near, a voice murmured his name, and called him Cousin: being joined by another, and yet a third: high-pitched, melodic, sweet, yearning, familiar yet unutterably strange. Xavier! Dear Xavier! Dear Cousin! He felt a warm breath on his cheek and throat; felt his curls saucily tousled; his tense shoulders stroked; his sides, his torso, and, ah! the more saucily yet, his very nipples,—the while hairs stirred on the back of his neck, and his flesh lifted in goosebumps. Cousin, sweet cousin! O most comely of boys! O, are you ours? Enthralled, Xavier stood without moving, scarcely daring to breathe, as a pair of damp lips brushed boldly against his, in the first kiss of a forbidden kind the innocent youth had ever experienced. Soft-caressing voices sounded close about his head, fine as the humming of honeybees; and, with motions both timid and brazen, the tiny invisible hands stroked, and pinched, and plucked, and essayed to tickle, through his clothes. Dear Xavier! Dear Cousin! Can it be, you are ours? O sweetest of boys! The dream was so fraught with slow-pulsed pleasure, the voices so irresistible in their pleading, Xavier feared he might be on the brink of sin: and made an attempt to rouse himself, and to wake, as he oft-times did in the early morning, by jerking his head suddenly upon his pillow to shake off the languorous shackles of sleep.

  So it seemed, for a moment, he was awake: and naught before him,—the piteous small bodies of the lambs, the farmer’s coarse-handled shovel propped against a fence, the very slant and contours of the grassy slope—had been altered a whit. Yet, in the next pulsebeat, he heard again the heated, urgent voices, and felt again the numberless impatient fingers, and wondered if he should die of such suffocating sweetness!—for the incantatory Cousin, dear Cousin, O Xavier, O beautiful boy! rose to near-rapture, washing and lapping about him.

  From whatever source the necessary strength derived,—whether some hastily recalled passage of the Book of Common Prayer, or an imagined admonitory phrase of one of his detective-heroes, or, indeed, the healthful impulses of his own virgin soul—Xavier managed to rouse himself a second time, and to wrench his hand free of the steely little fingers. His lips of their own volition shaped a silent prayer,—O release me!—and in that instant the youth fully awakened: to discover himself crouched on trembling legs above the dead lambs, his body both uncomfortably heated yet chill, and his clothes dampened with perspiration.

  The voices, of that haunting mellifluousness, had abruptly fled as if they had never
been: and Xavier blinked dumbly, to see his precious sketchpad and charcoal stick had fallen at his feet.

  “How strange!—how disagreeably strange!” the lad bethought himself, stooping to retrieve his things. “And yet, why should I suffer any upset, for a mere dream?”