Mysteries of Winterthurn Read online

  AS COLIN HAD, it seems, thoughtlessly wandered off, Xavier made the decision to dig the mass grave by himself: which laborious and unromantic task had at least the salutary effect of waking him yet more fully, and driving from him all dream-phantasms, pleasurable or otherwise—! In other circumstances he might have contented himself with doing his task as quickly, and as offhandedly, as possible,—for, of the Kilgarvan boys, he ranked with Wolf, as frequently unreliable in household matters: but, as Upchurch had so sternly charged him to dig the grave four feet deep, and to cover the lambs well, Xavier toiled to fulfill these requirements, oft pausing to catch his breath, or wipe at his damp brow, or, indeed, turn hurriedly aside that he might overcome a sudden spasm of nausea.

  When, at last, he finished his laborious chore, his back ached most cruelly, and blisters had already formed on his hands: but the pitiful creatures were at least hidden from sight, beneath a mound of fresh dirt: and Xavier did not think that Upchurch could criticize him, or complain of him, or rank him with the mere gawkers and busybodies who had tramped about earlier. “So it is, Xavier Kilgarvan must acquire a reputation for being altogether dedicated, and, indeed, professional,” Xavier declared inwardly, propping the shovel up against the fence with care.

  His mood was somewhat dampened, however, when, having found his brother napping just beyond the pond, in a cozy sort of bed or burrow he had fashioned in the tall grasses, Colin turned upon him a most uncharacteristic expression: both groggy and startled, and distinctly peevish: his broad, high-colored, handsome face reddening, it seemed, with irritation or obscure embarrassment. While asleep he had evidently been bitten by flies or mosquitoes, as upward of a dozen red, puffy, ugly miniature wounds now appeared on his face and throat; he had scratched at these with such unconscious violence that several were bleeding; and his fingernails were edged with his own blood. Seeing his belovèd brother thus, and being greeted with a surliness he had not expected (for, in the mornings, it was always Colin who woke easily, with a fresh, sunny smile, and an immediate appetite for breakfast, and Xavier who lashed out with childish ire), Xavier felt a pinprick of alarm: might something have happened to Colin in his sleep?—and why, indeed, had he chosen to sleep at so unpropitious a time?—for the boy was husky and broad-shouldered and possessed, it seemed, of twice Xavier’s energy, and generally scornful of those who required daytime naps.

  It took Colin but a few seconds to overcome his grogginess, and to rise to his feet, assuring Xavier, with a negligent wave of his hand, that he was quite all right,—though stupefied with boredom, and resentful as well, of having been “dragged along” on one of Xavier’s foolhardy adventures.

  Xavier halted in his path, for he had, it seems, anticipated some brotherly gratitude, if not actual surprise and admiration, for his labor in burying the lambs unassisted: but, as this was not forthcoming, and Colin continued in his ungracious temper,—averring, with a curl of his lip, that he was heartily sick of “detection,” and halfway thought he should report the morning’s excursion to their father—Xavier too lapsed into a sullen silence; in which mood the boys bicycled home.

  Alas, Colin exacted a subtle sort of revenge, in pedaling with such consistent swiftness, and no ostensible effort, that he soon left his panting brother behind; for the younger boy had not the strength in his leg muscles, or the lung capacity, to keep pace with him. That this was performed, as it were, unintentionally,—that Colin seemed merely not to notice Xavier’s absence beside him—made the insult all the more cutting. Too proud to call after his brother, Xavier doggedly pedaled in his wake, watching Colin’s broad, bent shoulders, and the muscles that rippled across them, and the unflagging motions of his legs, until, by degrees, as the country road dipped, and rose, and twisted, and dipped yet again, the older boy passed out of sight.

  “If I-Am You-”

  It was on a sun-drenched afternoon in early May, some thirteen years before, when the air of Parthian Square shimmered greenly in the wake of a brief shower, and all the world, it seems, was giddy with the scent of lilac, that Miss Clarice Von Goeler of the Parthian Academy for Girls (at this time but the headmistress’s assistant, and a popular instructress in Music, Elocution, and Deportment) had so curious an adventure while accompanying her friend Georgina Kilgarvan to Dr. Hatch’s office on Berwick Square that she brooded over it for months,—for years: and only after Miss Georgina’s shocking death, not two weeks before her forty-third birthday, did she speak of it to several of her female relatives: the studied consensus being, they could make no more sense of the incident than of “Iphigenia’s” clotted poesy of old . . . !

  In brief, the event came about in this way: Clarice was in the midst of conducting her third-form girls in a spirited recitation of an ode to spring by John Greenleaf Whittier when, of a sudden, the door was flung open, and two distraught girls burst into the room to say that their teacher, Miss Kilgarvan, had been overcome by an attack of breathlessness,—that she had gone red in the face, and staggered from her desk,—that she had fallen to the classroom floor in a faint,—and gave every impression of ceasing to breathe. Whereupon, without a second’s hesitation, Clarice hurried down the corridor to her friend’s classroom, to discover, with infinite relief, that Georgina had partway revived, and was being assisted to her feet by several girls. Indeed, the dazed woman was feebly protesting that she was quite all right now,—she was quite restored to herself,—and they had no need of milling about, and coming so close: for she could not recall having given anyone permission to leap from her desk . . .

  How luridly colored was Georgina’s handsome face, blotched with hectic red, yet waxen-pale beneath!—how stupefied with fear, her rapidly blinking eyes!—though she made a show of attempting to stand erect, and refusing further assistance, declaring, in a voice so weakened it scarcely sounded like her own, that she did not wish to be touched, as she was now fully recovered,—and must complete the day’s lesson.

  Clarice, however, could not be so easily dissuaded. It was self-evident, in her opinion, that Georgina was distinctly unwell,—for was she not, even now, short of breath, and swaying on her feet?—no matter her protests, the class must be dismissed, and she must allow Clarice to take her at once, by hackney cab, to Dr. Hatch,—the physician’s office being but a few blocks distant, near the city hospital. Georgina essayed to stand her ground, reiterating, with enfeebled breath, that she had quite recovered, that it had been a trifling attack of light-headedness, and that, under no circumstances, was the headmistress,—or, indeed, anyone—to be informed—for she must, she must, remain with her class, she must complete the day’s lesson, else—

  “Georgina, you are not yourself,—you are ill,” Clarice interrupted, in a voice both alarmed and chiding, “and if you possess a whit of the common sense we expect of our students, you will acknowledge that fact.”

  At this, Georgina drew breath to contend, but was, it seemed, overtaken by a fresh wave of dizziness; and, to the startled concern of all, did a most uncharacteristic thing, in bursting into girlish tears.

  (THAT MISS KILGARVAN, the most exacting disciplinarian at the Parthian Academy, the instructress most feared, most admired, and, alas, most frequently imitated behind her back, should succumb to a fainting spell in her classroom, let alone copious tears,—why, was this not wondrous?—was this not delicious?—in truth, was it not remarkable? For so sternly fixèd was Georgina Kilgarvan’s character, in the minds of Parthian students, that those who had not witnessed the outburst could not believe it: and were queerly resistant to being convinced. “Why, I might more readily believe, as the Spanish peasants do, that a statue of the Virgin Mary has shed tears,” one of the bolder young ladies asserted, “than I might believe, or wish to believe, that Miss Kilgarvan has shed tears.”)

  AS WINTERTHURN CITY girls of a near-identical age and social background, Miss Clarice Von Goeler and Miss Georgina Kilgarvan had been drawn together, at the Canandaigua Seminary: though Georgina’s homesickness was decidedly less pronounced
than Clarice’s, and her penchant for solitude, and the studying of inhospitable texts (works of Aeschylus and Sophocles read in the original), and the scribbling of idiosyncratic rhymes had a dampening effect upon their friendship. Clarice had no less a “personality” at the school than Georgina, and was not the sort to pursue an acquaintanceship where but a modicum of encouragement was offered: so it came about, it must be said to Clarice’s secret sorrow, that though she was in truth Georgina’s “closest” friend at Canandaigua, she was not, in truth, a “close” friend—!

  Yet ties between them, of a sort, did exist: for each sensed herself the unmarriageable, if not the unlovable, type: and so busied herself with activities of a rich diversity, and a generally unflagging air of intellectual vivacity, that no observer, of either sex, might have known whether it was indifference, or timidity, or private fear, that most potently governed her soul. Physically, too, they were alike, in being taller by several inches than the average girl, and less naturally given to gracious motion; the one possessed of fine dark hair and eyes, and the long, aquiline, slightly hooked Kilgarvan nose; the other blond, with frank hazel eyes, and a snubbed nose, and a somewhat stolid jaw. Both loved poetry, and aspired to composing it: but though Georginia, as editor of Canandaigua Bluets, consented to publish several of Clarice’s poems, she refrained from uttering a word of praise,—which tacit disapproval, or dislike, wounded Clarice’s feelings.

  Ties there were, however, of whatever intangible kind, for, after graduation, when Georgina went bravely away to study at Barnard, and Clarice remained closer to home, at the Nautauga Falls College for Women, an unexpected correspondence ensued: this being one of those odd relationships that bloom, as it were, through the mails, with surprising vigor, and even a modicum of affection. How flattered,—indeed, how warmed—how delighted Clarice was! Whether Georgina truly cared for Clarice’s lush impressions of her college, and of her professors, or whether she derived greater pleasure from her own writing,—lengthy, acerbic, “dashed off” letters chock-a-block with vivid descriptions of such features of New York life as elevated trains, A. T. Stewart’s gigantic dry goods store, Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue on Sunday mornings, the “demonically inspired” sermons of Henry Ward Beecher, which, it seems, Georgina had ventured to Brooklyn several times to hear,—it would be difficult to say: but when Judge Kilgarvan fell ill, and summoned his daughter home, the epistolary friendship was abruptly terminated; and, to Clarice’s bewilderment and hurt, no “real” friendship took its place. They visited each other, and had tea in town, and attended meetings together of the Thespian Society, and the Junior Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Corinthian Club, and the Thursday Afternoon Society; yet Clarice had the distinct feeling that Georgina sometimes looked upon her with actual fear,—that she should suddenly presume upon their girlish “postal” intimacy, and deeply embarrass them both.

  After both young women joined the faculty of the Parthian Academy, however, and became, in a manner of speaking, “professionals,” their relations were somewhat easier. Clarice might freely complain of the headmistress’s crotchets, or of the board of trustees (a gathering of elderly females to whom the tumult of the 1850s had marked “the beginning of the end”); Georgina might complain of the frivolity of their young charges, and their inability to master the rudiments of English grammar, albeit they knew the latest slang. If Clarice complained, from time to time, of her family (for Mrs. Von Goeler had greeted Clarice’s thirtieth birthday not as an anticipation of the disgrace of spinsterdom, but as an acknowledgment of it), Georgina demurred from offering complaints of her own,—though Erasmus Kilgarvan had taken a simple-minded sort of young lady for his second wife, not three years before, and rumor had it, through Winterthurn, that stepmother and stepdaughter were not the very best of friends. Nor did Clarice and Georgina make reference to those awkward little “poems” that appeared from time to time, in the Gazette and elsewhere, under a conspicuous nom de plume.

  Yet, through the years, it was Clarice’s hidden sentiment, not only that Georgina was in truth her closest and dearest and most sisterly friend, but that, in some ill-comprehended way, she possessed the like value in Georgina’s heart . . . !

  “But I suppose we shall never speak of such things,” Clarice sighingly observed, “for they are so very vaporous, where is the vocabulary to engird them? And I should be, no doubt, as tongue-tied as Georgina!”

  THE FAINTING SPELL in the classroom occurred approximately eighteen months before the arrival in Winterthurn of young Malcolm Guillemot, and initiated a period of such capricious ill-health that Georgina thought it best to take temporary leave from her teaching responsibilities: the chronology of which was to be twisted about, in later accounts, so that it would seem, more romantically, that Mr. Guillemot,—or his abrupt withdrawal from the scene—had precipitated Georgina’s illness. (In truth, as many persons knew, Georgina Kilgarvan had always suffered intermittent and inexplicable “lapses of health”: being robust one day, and weakly pale the next; possessed of a normal appetite upon one occasion, and sickened by food upon the next. Though never before given to actual tears, she was susceptible to dark, raging moods, and sometimes forgot herself in the classroom, raising her voice against her abashed, frightened students, out of proportion to their sins. She scorned certain excesses of the “weaker sex,”—thought the perennial invalids about town were self-pitying babies, undeserving of sympathy,—yet was often invalided herself, for three or four weeks at a time. A tale was told of her, that when Miss Verity Peregrine pressed upon her a packet of iron tablets, that she might build up her strength and make her coloring more attractive, Georgina archly replied, “Attractive to whom?”—and refused the offer. There were periods when she seemed to affect a deliberate carelessness in her toilet, and in her apparel, wearing dresses that hung on her like sacks, as if to disguise her inordinate thinness; and to refute the very notion of feminine responsibility.)

  As Dr. Colney Hatch was the Kilgarvans’ family physician, he must have been familiar with Georgina’s vicissitudes of health; yet, when Clarice brought her into his office, patient and doctor behaved with a most puzzling formality,—Dr. Hatch being as distant, and as stubborn, as Georgina. For just as Georgina adamantly claimed that she was not unwell, and did not wish to be touched, so the frowning physician declared that he would not examine any patient of his, or, indeed, any person at all, who did not wish to be examined. Clarice impatiently interrupted to say that Georgina assuredly was unwell; and that any fool, simply by glancing at her, could discern it: but neither patient nor physician would budge, there being a distance of some five or six feet between them. “I cannot understand this,” Clarice cried, looking from one to the other, “and wonder if I am in the presence of madmen!”

  Dr. Hatch was a middle-aged gentleman of moderate height, inclining toward the stout, with a grave, dour expression, and heavy jowls, given a “sparkle” of sorts by the flash of a gold tooth, and the gold-rimmed bifocals that fitted his face so compactly. His reputation in Winterthurn City was impeccable; he had never married, and was a deacon at Grace Episcopal Church; he mingled with the very best families, and had memberships in the very best clubs; he inspired in his patients respect if not affection; his word was law in medical matters; one can scarcely imagine that he suffered insults lightly. Yet, when Clarice spoke as she did, the good doctor refrained from losing his temper: and, though coloring markedly, contented himself with repeating in a quiet voice that he would not “subject to any examination, any person who did not freely wish to be examined: excepting of course children, who had no jurisdiction over themselves.”

  Clarice appealed again to Georgina, without success; and yet again to Dr. Hatch, without success. For, though Georgina looked altogether sickly, her complexion mottled and her eyes ringed in shadow, though her breathing was audibly quickened, and she had need to support herself, however unobtrusively, by resting against a table,—Dr. Hatch kept his distance from her, his gaze now affixed to a point somewhere
in space, beyond his visitors’ heads, and went on to speak of the importance of unfailing morning regularity: which was, he believed, the cornerstone of all forms of regularity, and of good health. “Congestion in the head is most likely a consequence of congestion in the bowels,” Dr. Hatch said, “—both being symptoms of an overwrought nature, in the female sex in particular, when the strain of unaccustomed ratiocination takes its toll. Thinking, reading, writing, etc.,—these place an inordinate strain on the system, and bring about any number of disorders. Purges are a necessity; douches with vinegar or salt solution; enemas, of the cold-water variety; and the like. A week of enforced rest might be prescribed,—or two weeks, or three: but, as I say, I do not press my services upon any person who has not come willingly to my office, and who has not freely requested my opinion.” The physician fell silent, wiping his hands on a handkerchief, his manner no more forceful than previously, but no less firm. As he seemed about to bow and take his leave,—Clarice and Georgina being in his waiting room, and not in an interior office—it seemed to Clarice that she must protest yet again: but what might she say? Georgina had turned away, to adjust her hat, and to more firmly secure a strand of hair that had worked itself loose at the nape of her neck; her expression was both drained and gratified, apprehensive, yet relieved; how like a frightened child, Clarice observed, who has escaped some punishment or duty—!

  “Thank you, Dr. Hatch,” Georgina said, with a wild sort of good humor, as, her long fingers working blindly, she adjusted a hat-pin skillfully through the crown of her hat. “I shall take your advice to heart, as it were: and trust that, if a bill is forthcoming from your office, it will be mailed to me, at the Parthian Academy, and not to my father at home.”