The Accursed Read online

  _____ . (It seems that, at Wheatsheaf, my dear aunt Pru was encountered by the Slades’ son Todd who told her, in a lowered voice so that his mother could not hear, that all of her “white-witch-foolery” could have no lasting effect against the “Curse.”)

  _____ . For Horace, to win back his love: a blend of edelweiss, Atropa belladonna, & a tiny pinch of dog-bane to be dissolved, Aunt Pru suggests, in his tea. & for Adelaide who is all nerves, a powder of “live-forever” & cloudberry—(this last once used by the Lenni-Lenape Indians of this area of New Jersey to assist them in difficult childbirths).

  When I asked my aunt if it was too late for me to have a baby she seemed stunned as if I had whispered an obscenity to her out of Dr. Rush’s compendium of horrors; but then recovered to say, with a mysterious smile—“What is to be, is to be.”

  _____ . I shall scribble a note to Reverend Slade, though he is but “Winslow Slade” among us now; yet, he is the man who confirmed me in my faith, & I shall not forget him in his prime. I will beg from him spiritual solace of the kind that once satisfied our elders & our ancestors; I will write to the Count as well, a note to give to the boy to post, for this European nobleman in our midst is yet a houseguest at Drumthwacket, I believe, though traveling in the West. (If, indeed, the Count is traveling, as Mandy claimed.) Ah, what measures will I not take! For I am not feeble; I am still a relatively young woman, in the fourth decade of my life. I might easily ring my maid & be dressed & have my hair properly fashioned & clothe myself in the latest Worth styles & a carriage summoned for me & I know not what-all else: for a train journey to the Philadelphia McLeans would not be unthinkable; or a train journey in the company of my headstrong young cousin Wilhelmina, to New York City; or a journey by White Star steamer to London, Paris, Gibraltar, Istanbul . . . It is spring, my pulses leap! Shall I not astonish the prim prune-faces of Princeton by sailing in a sleek line-o’packet ship to the South Polar region, which the great Robert Falcon Scott has lately explored; shall I not resume my artist vocation, & bring along my large sketch-book, & commit a series of drawings of the emperor penguin colony of Antarctica, to amaze & delight the world?*

  (Though I suppose it might be more reasonable to plan a journey to the East Indies where my great-uncle Reginald Kirkpatrick McLean is Major-General of the Bengal Artillery, stationed at New Delhi—so very far from the evils of the Curse, I should feel quite safe. For white people are treated with much honor in India, as I understand it; especially those of us of English ancestry. & how astonished & jealous Horace would be, to receive photographs of his dear Puss, carried on an elephant’s back!)

  (Here is a curiosity, by the by: Aunt Pru whispered to me that Lenora Slade queried her the other day about a very curious matter. Though Mrs. Slade began by asking in a playful manner which “love potions” might be most effective in winning back Copplestone’s love & devotion, she then proceeded, during the course of the conversation, to inquire of white baneberry, common nightshade, bittersweet nightshade & bluebeard lily: which of them might “grind up the finest” & be “undetectable” in a heated drink or if mixed with dough & sweetened with sugar. (For, Aunt Pru tells me, these are all poisons; & however Lenora Slade came to know of them, she could not imagine!) So, Aunt Pru “gently dissuaded” Mrs. Slade, & Mrs. Slade said, with a hurt little laugh, that her interest was “wholly scientific” & “best forgotten.”)

  Woke this morning feeling that I badly missed my dear headstrong cousin Wilhelmina whom (it is said) her parents have “all but disowned” for her insistence upon taking up residence in New York City, in some “squalid Bohemian” quarter near Washington Square Park; most shockingly, an unchaperoned residence. Still, I sent a note over to Pembroke, addressed to her, which I hope the elder Burrs will forward & not discard out of meanness.

  _____ . (Still there is talk in Princeton of the recent “Snake Frenzy” in Rocky Hill, & of my cousin’s unexplained role in it. In some quarters, poor Wilhelmina Burr is pitied, that she was the victim of both an invasion of snakes from the Millstone River at spring flood-time & the disapproval of her headmistress, who promptly “fired” her for not reacting responsibly to the schoolgirls’ hysteria; in other quarters, it is believed that Willy herself summoned forth the snakes, in some ill-advised & bravado effort of impressing giddy school-girls with her emancipated bluestocking powers. & so I hope to speak with Willy, to find out which is true, or whether there is a third explanation.)

  _____ . Off-white satin, with a “drop-away” skirt & but a few very subtle stitched pleats at the back waistline & a double row of those exquisite silken lilies-of-the-valley that Annabel Slade wore on her wedding day. & a “bib” in front, with a deep oval of fine Portuguese lace, trimmed with beaded braiding. A monobosom, for that style is both chaste & fashionable & suited to my diminutive figure.

  The wedding train, I think, will be my own, old train—it is carefully wrapped in a closet in this very room, I believe. Untouched, like my bridal gown, for fifteen years.

  _____ . A lighted fire in my little marble fireplace that is so rarely utilized; & here is Horace close beside my divan reading aloud from The Smart Set & McClure’s, to entertain his Puss. In the demon-dancing firelight his skin is unnaturally pitted & mottled; & it seems clear, a stranger often gazes through his eyes. But I must give no sign that I know. & then, as I have been yawning, Horace slyly puts aside his reading matter & dares to remove one of the slender books of verse on my bedside table, beneath Mrs. Fern’s; to my astonishment he leafs through Poems of Emily Dickinson, with a frowning leer, & wets his lips with a quick-darting tongue, & dares to reach, fumblingly at first & then with more authority, as if such verse were not utterly alien to him but familiar—

  A narrow Fellow in the Grass

  Occasionally rides—

  You may have met Him—did you not

  His notice sudden is—

  The Grass divides as with a Comb—

  A spotted shaft is seen—

  And then it closes at your feet

  And opens further on. . . .

  Several of Nature’s People

  I know, and they know me—

  I feel for them a transport

  Of Rhapsody—

  But never met this Fellow

  Attended, or alone

  Without a tighter breathing

  And Zero at the Bone—

  —his strangely tremulous voice ending so abruptly, you can see that he expects the poem to be longer. The heightened tension in the bedchamber is such, these enigmatic lines of Dickinson have the effect of tightening a wire; a wire that is already quite tight, and now made tighter; the narrow fellow in the grass seemed to rise before me, & flick his demon-tongue, & suddenly, I know not why, I was laughing, & then I was crying, & quickly Horace set aside the book of poems, & tried to take my hands, to calm me. & after some minutes, I allowed myself to appear calm; though my heart beat wildly, yet I hid my distress; or I did not want to upset Horace further, I feared the man’s temper & the strangeness in his own unfathomed soul. Then, as it was nearing my bedtime of 9 p.m., Horace turned his attentions to the tray of desserts Minnie had prepared for us, & two glasses of warmed milk; Horace spooned into my mouth morsels of a blueberry tart, which was most delicious, yet unnaturally sweet, I thought. At once my temples pounded & my eyes watered as with the onset of a migraine & I did not hesitate to confront Horace boldly—“Are these blueberries truly, and not bluebeard-lily? For that is a poison, you know.” At this remark my guileless husband stared & blinked & plucked nervously at his mustache; then leaned forward as if fearing I might by some convulsive means fall from the divan & injure myself. At this, I may have struck out blindly with my fists & elbows & cried—“You are trying to poison me! You & she! Do you think that I don’t know about this she—for I can smell the civet-cat odor on all your clothing . . .” Horace protested, he had no idea what I was talking about; & staggered to his feet, & backed away from me, & what happened next, I do not know—for it seems, I mus
t have fainted; & there was Horace passing my vial of smelling salts beneath my nose, to revive me.

  “Dearest Puss! You must know—I love only you.”

  _____ . At last my cousin Wilhelmina has condescended to answer my very sweet letter to her, not in reproach but in the most lightsome teasing way asking when she would drop by to see her poor abandoned cousin, & her reply is hurried & brusque & took no time obviously for it is attached to a crudely printed poster advertising YOUNG ARTISTS SPRING EXHIBIT NEW YORK SCHOOL OF ART APRIL–MAY—a boastful gesture since it is implied that Wilhelmina Burr as “W. BURR” has several drawings in the exhibit, on Tenth Street at Fifth Avenue, NYC. As if I would make the disagreeable journey to Manhattan, to see so crude & amateur an exhibit! Nor would Horace wish to accompany me to such a place, I am certain.

  _____ . Now I am most cautious of all that passes between my lips. Now I am shrewd enough to invite Griselda to drink, to eat, to sample what she has brought me on a tray, though the supposition is that Minnie prepared it. & suddenly I am very tired of them all, like a minstrel-show Greek chorus chattering & nattering away in worry of their mistress Adelaide. If the Count will only come, & take me away! I am sure it is time, by now.

  _____ . Psalm 71. In Thee, O Lord, do I put my trust: let me never be put to confusion. Deliver me in Thy righteousness, & cause me to escape: incline Thine ear unto me, & save me.

  (AUTHOR’S NOTE: Here is a letter hastily written by Adelaide Burr, not coded, and addressed, as the reader will see, to Winslow Slade: a letter that will be found in the pages of the secret journal after Mrs. Burr’s death, for it was never sent, nor even slipped into an envelope to be addressed and stamped. )

  5 MAY 1906

  MIDNIGHT

  Dear Dr. Slade—

  This Curse I wish to warn of, & this is the Curse I am beginning now to explain, this is a secret I must reveal, & which I plead with you as my spiritual advisor—(though we have not seen each other face to face, in any mood of intimacy for many years, dear Reverend Slade)—to comprehend, & to share with me; this Curse you must save us from, & pray God to save us from, for ONLY YOU DR. SLADE can save us, I must acknowledge that now. These many months I have pursued “strange gods”—to no resolution. For I know now less than I knew as a girl kneeling before you, to receive my first communion from your chaste fingers, as one day years later I knelt to make my wedding vows beside my dear bridegroom Horace Burr. This is a warning I wish to sound through the village of Princeton & through all of the Nation, that there is something happening to us that has been happening from the time of our births, & we have been unknowing. It is the Shadow that falls over us, that blinds us, we cannot see what the Shadow obscures. This is a story I must tell hurriedly for Horace may detect the faint candlelight beneath my bedroom door. Horace may deduce, his wife is exposing her soul to another man, as she had not ever exposed her soul to him.

  Now it is past midnight in Princeton & Old North has tolled & this is the Curse to be explained, the presence in those among us enshadowed & obscured & unnamed & in their corporeal being wicked, steeped in evil, not knowing that I gazed full upon them, though perhaps the Brute does know, it is like them to sense such things. I have lighted my candle with steady fingers & I have arisen from my sickbed on shaky but determined legs & I have wrapt my vale-of-Kashmir shawl close about my frame. This is the Curse, this is the Horror of the Curse, you must pray God to save us from. I glided from the room & slipped noiseless into the hallway & in the direction of Horace’s (darkened) bedchamber all a-quiver that someone might discover me, Oh! it is the invalid-mistress of Maidstone, we have not seen in so long; Oh! it is the hysterical woman she will injure herself with such exertions, return her to her bed, put her to bed, to bed, put out her light in her bed, forever & ever TO BED. Paid no heed but gliding soundless along the hall, he shall be affrighted by Lilith, he shall be seduced by a succubus, he shall impregnate the demon-wraith, all unknowing. For a baby will be born of the Curse, to defy the Curse. Tall shadows cast by my candle leaping & swaying in a hellish dance, & this one, the one I am telling you of, the master of Maidstone House these many years, he is not in his bedchamber—as I knew; as I suspected, & in my heart I knew; for all that is happening & shall happen to me from which you must save me, Reverend Slade, upon receipt of this desperate letter, if you can. This one lay not in his bed as I knew, for I knew, for it could be no secret from me, the church bells having sounded their final strokes of midnight, & the Birds of Night softly calling, cooing; & I saw the toss’d bedclothes & the rumpled pillowcases & a single glove lying on the carpet, partway beneath the bed, so that only the fingers were visible, a most alarming sight yet my presence of mind prevailed for this is the story I must tell of the awareness in my soul of such evil, unspeakable evil for which there is no name, though they will deride me & call me hysterical, bundle her off to bed, to Otterholm, to bed, to bed forever & ever. Paying no heed but bravely pressing forward perusing the crumpled letters lying scattered atop Horace’s bureau & on the carpet, MY DEAREST —MY BELLE DAME SANS MERCI—MY PRECIOUS LOVE—MY CRUEL & BEAUTEOUS TEMPTRESS—MY JOY & AGONY—MY SWEET MY ADORED MY RAPTUROUS “WILLY”—& you can imagine the bitter laugh that passed my lips, you can imagine the dagger turned in my heart, though certainly I knew, if it was not my cousin Wilhelmina who has turned slut & harlot it is another’s cousin, as your own dear granddaughter Annabel “turned”—& the Fiend is her bridegroom, in Hell. Shall I confess I would rather have discovered the sooty-greasy smell of Griselda or of Hannah in my husband’s bed—(shall I confess, I am not altogether certain that the father of Hannah’s baby was not the master of Maidstone House, for it is whispered that poor Hannah suffered greatly in giving birth, in a cabin on Province Line Road where relatives had taken her in). Shall I confess, nothing would surprise me, Reverend Slade! Recalling how several years ago in a fitful midday nap I chanced to hear shuffling & murmuring & what seemed to me muffled laughter in the corridor outside my bedchamber & I thought, The wenches imagine their mistress too weak-minded to discover them, & I threw off the covers & quickly tiptoed to the door & opened it wide & was thunderstruck to discover MY OWN HUSBAND CROUCHED BY THE KEYHOLE ON HIS KNEES; & what I had taken for laughter was weeping & unmanly sobbing, & this is the Curse I must warn of, this is the habit of the male in his blood & marrow that the Bible has warned us, & pray God this night to save me, as the Psalm has promised, & you will recall, Reverend Slade, that you did promise, for this husband I am speaking of, this lawful wedded Christian husband who had vowed kneeling before you at the altar to love & honor his wife Adelaide in sickness & in health, was to be discovered in a harlot’s embrace in the carriage house, by moonlight; a curdled-milk-moonlight; a most sickly moonlight; & in my night-robe & shawl & in thin silk slippers in the chill air of early May in the hour past midnight I had not time for prayer, I had not time to steel myself for the hellish sight I would see, peeping past the stalls in which the horses are kept, I saw my tremulous candle-flame reflecting in the horses’ great staring eyes, they did not startle me, they did not frighten me, nor did the lustful creatures discovered in their intimate embrace startle, only just disgust; hideous unspeakable adultery, my husband showering kisses upon my own beloved cousin Wilhelmina Burr, she might be a daughter to the man, she might be a blood-relative to the man, this schoolgirl friend of your granddaughter Annabel who has been led to Hell, I think this is what I must say, I think this is why I am appealing to you, my cousin Willy has been damned by her friendship with your granddaughter who is damned; I saw all, & could not turn away; I saw all, & know that I must proclaim it; hideous swooning embrace of naked bodies, rabid kisses, shameless male murmuring O MY LOVE MY SWEET CRUEL WILLY-LOVE WHAT SHOULD I NOT DO FOR YOU, FOR THIS—the man’s impatient caresses, & the young woman’s faint protest; eyes by ghastly moonlight shuttered, for shame; Oh & the sucking lips!–it is too awful, I am sick to recall. This is the Curse of the Horror that is happening to us, Reverend Slade. It is the Curse of the Horr
or of Hell erupting in our sequestered world. What sin we have perpetrated, we do not know—we are innocent, as we are ignorant. As my girl-cousin failed to stop my husband’s mauling hands, & could not dissuade his gnawing mouth & protruding tongue, like some terrible species of deep-sea fish or sea-worm; this is the Curse of the Horror, Reverend Slade, in his lust he would wish to strangle poor Puss in her bed, to rid himself of poor sickly Puss though she loves him & has always been faithful to him. Oh! she is a hysterical female, let us dose her with medicines, let us wrap her in her bed as in her shroud, let us stifle her screams with the highest quality goose-feather pillow, let us tip this candle from its holder into her bed, let us cut her into pieces with her electric fan, Oh! she cannot be believed, she is telling lies, she is damned, & she is doomed: the Mistress of Maidstone.

  But it is not Horace who approaches, opening the door of my bedchamber—to my surprise & delight it is a gentleman known to me though I have never glimpsed him before, as I am known to him; a tall individual, with “leonine” hair; a craggy brow, & heavy eyebrows; an aquiline nose; & the most mesmerizing topaz eyes . . . For here is my friend Count English von Gneist at last. & so ’tis. I have not been snubbed after all, as Mandy would have wished. & the Princeton ladies need not laugh up their sleeves at Mrs. Adelaide Burr. “Please come inside, dear Count, I have been awaiting you. Please excuse me if I am nervous, or anxious—it is not the feeling I harbor for you in my heart, you must understand.” & the Count approaches my bed, & stoops above me, to bow; taking my chill fingers in his & implanting on the back of my hand a kiss of such lightness, it feels like very light itself; yet will sting, & burn, like a hot copper penny pressed into the flesh. “My dear Mrs. Burr, at last.”