The Accursed Read online

  The young women then noticed that Todd was not alone in this strange space: but there stood before him, engaging him in earnest conversation, a young girl unknown to either Annabel or Willy, of slender proportions, indeed wraith-like, with long and unruly dark hair, and a round, dusky-skinned, sharp-boned face; and dark eyes that seemed to blaze with passion. The girl was very coarsely dressed in what appeared to be work-clothes, that had been badly soiled, torn, or even burnt. The fingers of her right hand appeared to be misshapen, or mangled. Most remarkably, small flames lightly pulsed about the girl: now lifting from her untidy hair, now from her tensed shoulders, now from her outstretched hand!—for the girl was reaching out to Todd, as if to grasp his hand.

  More remarkably still, around the girl’s neck was a coarse rope, fashioned into a noose; the length of the rope about twelve feet, and its end blackened as from a fire.

  And ah!—how the girl’s topaz eyes blazed, with vehemence!

  Was the hellish vision a trick of the sunlight? Did Annabel’s and Wilhelmina’s widened eyes deceive them? The flames pulsed about the girl, and rippled, and subsided; and flared up again, lewdly vibrating, tinged with blue like a gas-jet, at their core; so subtle, in hellish beauty, they might have been optical illusions, or mirages, caused by some fluke of the fading light.

  “Todd! Come here . . .”

  In a faltering voice Annabel called to him, but Todd gave no sign of hearing.

  For it seemed that Todd had fallen under the spell of the demon girl, and could not rouse himself to flee from her, as if not comprehending what the pulsing blue flames might mean, or the coarse rope around her neck; or the danger to him, as she came very close to touching him, caressing him, with her burning fingers, and he did not shrink away.

  “Todd! It’s Annabel—Annabel and Wilhelmina—come to take you home. Todd!”

  Yet, was the burning girl not most mesmerizing?—though dusky-skinned, with a flat, slightly thick nose, and thick lips, and unruly and unwashed-looking hair tumbling down her back; and those uncanny luminous eyes; and the noose around her neck, that must have been uncomfortable, for it seemed tight enough to constrict breathing . . . It might have been that Todd believed the girl to be his own age, yet a closer look suggested that she was considerably older, at least the age of Annabel or Wilhelmina, a young woman and not a girl.

  And there was the German shepherd Thor so strangely stretched on the lichen-bed a few yards from the feet of the burning girl, muzzle extended, ears pricked into little triangles, eyes adoringly fixed upon the girl—why was Thor not barking but only just panting, audibly, as if he had run a great distance to throw himself down, as if in worship?

  When Annabel and Willy, clutching hands, ran forward, with little shrieks of concern, the burning girl turned to them, with an expression of rage, dismay, and anguish; now, a paroxysm of flames whipped over her figure, to obliterate her entirely; and, in the blink of an eye, as if she had never been, the burning girl vanished.

  “Todd! Thank God, you are unharmed!”—so Annabel cried, rushing to Todd, to embrace him; and quite shocked, when Todd wrenched himself from her, and fixed upon her a look of angry contempt.

  “Here is Cousin Annabel,” Todd began to chant, in the singsong that so maddened his father, “who has come too soon; here is Miss Willy, who has come unbidden; here is Todd, who had at last found a friend in the forest, but who has lost his friend—poor silly Todd, left all alone.”

  Most alarmingly, the German shepherd, who had known Annabel since he was a puppy, and had known Wilhelmina Burr nearly that long, had leapt to his feet and was growling deep in his throat, ears laid back and hackles raised, and formidable teeth exposed as if—(could this be possible?)—he failed to recognize the distraught young fair-haired woman and her dark-haired friend.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE: THE HISTORIAN’S CONFESSION

  Though it is the rare historian who will speak candidly of such matters, all of us who are engaged in the rendering of the past—by way of the amassing, selection, and distillation of a multitude of pertinent facts—are commonly beset by two dilemmas: the phenomenon of simultaneity of event, and the phenomenon of the authenticity of evidence.

  In assembling my materials for The Accursed: A History of the Tragic Events of 1905–1906, Princeton, New Jersey, which has been an effort of decades, if not my entire life, I have been forced to eliminate a great deal, that the reader will not be distracted by an excess of information; yet it would be disingenuous of me to pretend that, as my narrative moves forward in the mimesis of a “fable,” with its focus upon certain key individuals, the others are arrested in a kind of frieze, and refrain from thinking, feeling, speaking, and acting—indeed, in participating in History. While I write about Annabel Slade, Wilhelmina Burr, and Todd, in Crosswicks Forest, it is certainly the case that Woodrow Wilson, Winslow Slade, Adelaide Burr, Josiah Slade, the Clevelands, Lieutenant Bayard, and all the rest continue their lives uninterrupted, with no awareness that the “focus” has shifted elsewhere; as they have not the slightest awareness that they are participants in a chronicle of a time long past as an historian labors to illuminate the pathos of their situation. But, as I am confined to a linear chronology, and to the exigencies of print, how otherwise can I proceed? And even should I wish to include in this chronicle everything that transpired in Princeton, at this time, how could such a Herculean undertaking be accomplished?

  So, though I am tempted to examine certain scenes of unusual interest, which would surely throw some light upon the chronicle, I can’t, but must pass quickly by, with regret: for here is the partly clad Woodrow Wilson lying sick upon his bed, upstairs at Prospect; writhing in gastric agony, after 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. Ther
e 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; yet, he has not truly looked at her in years, she is sure. In their last conversation, Josiah had spoken eagerly of his new, numerous plans—(to study philosophy in Germany, to travel back west or rather north, to the Arctic; to join the Young American Socialists League, in New York City)—not one of which will involve Wilhelmina Burr.

  As Wilhelmina had been a very good schoolgirl and had memorized many passages from Shakespeare, she has absorbed enough of the great poet’s keen insight into human nature to know that while intense hatred might reverse itself, and erupt as “love,” mere fondness can never. And Willy can never be a sister to Josiah as Annabel is—there is no competing, in Josiah’s affections, with Annabel.

  Not hearing a query put to her by the seamstress Wilhelmina continues to stare at herself in the mirror, as if astonished by her own singular ugliness; perhaps it would be better, kinder, for her to fade away, like Ophelia; to remove herself from the Hamlet of her obsession, who has no obsession for her. Thinking, with a vindictiveness that is not characteristic of her good, generous nature, how she would like nothing so much as to possess, for even a brief period, that mysterious power over the male species that young women like Annabel Slade wield, in their very innocence and beauty; for what, in her unhappiness, does Wilhelmina care for her supposed intellectual and artistic talents, if no one loves her; if Josiah Slade does not love her. Her heart beats rapidly with the mean wish that Josiah might be wracked with bitter jealousy over her, for her appeal to a rival-gentleman. Then he would suffer as I have suffered. We would be well matched for life.

  Somewhere near this hour, in the vast lecture hall in McCosh, on the Princeton University campus, Professor Pearce van Dyck is interrupted in the midst of a lecture on Kantian ethics, to turn aside from the lectern and cough into a handkerchief; Professor van Dyck has been suffering from a mysterious allergy, or infection of a lung, for several weeks, intermittently; the malady does not appreciably worsen, yet it does not go away; as some fifty undergraduate men stare at him in a fascinated sort of pity, Professor van Dyck coughs, coughs, coughs; tears shimmer in his eyes, behind his wire-rimmed glasses, and threaten to spill onto his cheeks as in desperation he tries to clear his throat; tries to wrangle, out of the depths of his lungs, or his sinuses, whatever viscous substance it is, that threatens to choke him; until at last the young preceptor, who sits in the front row, rises to his feet, to approach him in trepidation—“Pr
ofessor van Dyck? May I help you?”

  As, on Nassau Street, at Witherspoon, Dean Andrew West encounters the dark-brow’d and richly dressed Mrs. Grover Cleveland, shopping in town with one of her daughters, and accompanied by a Negro maid; and engages in several minutes’ amiable conversation with the lady during the course of which a subtle sort of flirtation ensues; or, rather, the semblance of a flirtation; for neither Andrew West nor Frances Cleveland feel any genuine attraction for the other, except a “social” attraction; Andrew West learns that Mr. Cleveland’s health has been “fully restored”—Grover has so recuperated from his nervous prostration of several weeks before, he is now able to take his customary breakfast, which Mrs. Cleveland delights in reciting, for such is proof of her husband’s well-being: beefsteak, Virginia ham, pork chops, whiting, and fried smelt; even, occasionally, corned beef and cabbage, while he perused his usual fare of several newspapers—“For Grover is very O current, you know; it is his very life’s-blood.” All this while, Andrew West listens with an air of extreme interest, for it is the man’s dean-temperament, to make the most of any opportunity. So it is, Mrs. Cleveland says, turning the ivory handle of her sunshade, “that the rumors that have been circulating in Princeton, about Grover, are entirely unfounded; and I hope, Mr. West, you will do your part in combating them.”

  According to the diary kept by Henrietta Slade, Winslow’s daughter-in-law, Dr. Slade is, at this hour, sequestered away in his favorite corner of the jardin anglais at the Manse, immersed in one of his scholarly pursuits; whether work on Biblical translations, or labor at assembling his old sermons, or scribbling entries in his journal—(this journal to be, unhappily, destroyed in the spring of 1906)—she does not know; but Henrietta does note a “troubling change” in her father-in-law, who had always been of an even, placid disposition, as well-disposed to his family as to his public, rarely irritable or even fatigued or distracted; but lately, Winslow has been “not himself”—quite irritable, fatigued, distracted; and less inclined to spend time with his family, or with friends in the habit of dropping by to visit him in his library, than he had been. Perhaps he is anxious about the wedding, for so many people have been invited. Perhaps he is worrying about the weather, for an outdoor fete is planned here at the Manse. And Henrietta, mother of the bride-to-be, drifts onto pages of fretting about the wedding, of very little interest to History.