The Accursed Page 44

  The healthy tan Woodrow Wilson had acquired during his Bermuda sojourn, which everyone in Princeton had remarked upon, had faded with unusual swiftness; for this spring of 1906 in New Jersey was wet, chill, often overcast and cheerless, and spring flowers and blossoming trees were beaten down by relentless rain. Yet, Dr. Wilson retained still an air of strength and determination. The “Defeat at Charleston” he wished to think was behind him now; but he deeply grieved the loss of his old friend and supporter Pearce van Dyck whose brain, Dr. Wilson believed, had simply “snapped” under the tension of the university struggle: these many months of conflict, subterfuge, and tireless politicking among Woodrow Wilson’s enemies among the faculty and administration. Yet, Pearce’s death had had one positive result: for by it Dr. Wilson’s Campbell fighting mettle was aroused another time, and, within a week of his friend’s funeral, the president of Princeton University addressed his quasi-mutinous board of trustees so forcibly, and so convincingly, that, with some reluctance, the gentlemen were led to do the unthinkable—to reject the $1 million Procter bequest, that came with an insistence that the dean of the Graduate School, and not the president of the university, have control of the fund. News had spread through Princeton that Woodrow Wilson had racked up an unexpected victory over Andrew West, who was taken utterly by surprise, and had been going about town boasting recklessly that he would be the university’s next president. What a pity it was, Woodrow told his wife, when news of the board’s decision came to him, that Pearce van Dyck could not share in this glory, which was the first step in the recovery of Dr. Wilson’s authority.

  Dr. Wilson was given to thinking, in his brooding, ever-obsessive manner, that, were it known, Pearce van Dyck was a casualty of the “war” against Woodrow Wilson, very nearly a “martyr.” Of that, Dr. Wilson would not wish to speak, at least not immediately.

  “It is so sad, Woodrow, isn’t it! The poor child.”

  “Yes. It is always sad. But—‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’ This is the peace that passeth understanding.”

  Dr. Wilson’s lips moved nimbly. For a vague moment, he could not recall what funeral—whose funeral—this was.

  At a little distance from his parents, as if estranged from them, stood Todd Slade, outfitted in black broadcloth mourning, with a fitted jacket, short trousers pegged at the knee, and black socks tightly secured by garters. The brother of the deceased little girl had been dressed, with much stoic effort, by the children’s nanny; Todd’s mother had not laid a hand on him, nor could she bring herself to look at him this morning, for fearing to see, in the boy’s eyes, an accusation of her.

  In the past several months, Todd Slade had somewhat matured: he was not so spindly-limbed, nor so antic. His face had become more angular, and sharp-boned; his sloping chin, more pointed and stubborn; his bright black eyes, beneath quizzical brows, darted about with the restlessness of minnows. He was five feet four inches tall—a good height for a skinny twelve-year-old. Todd had not wept for his sister’s death, it was being whispered of him. (In some quarters, including servants’ quarters, it was being whispered that the “strange” boy knew more about his sister’s death than he had admitted.) As the child’s coffin was secured inside the mausoleum, and a light chill rain fell on the heads of all, as on the weatherworn granite tomb, Todd stood very still with shut eyes and a twitching mouth. I shall be good. I shall be the swan that is now needed, and not the duckling.

  IT WAS TO his grandson Todd that Winslow Slade suddenly turned, as the gravesite ceremony was nearing its end, and the heavy iron doors of the family mausoleum were being closed, and secured; to Todd, that the elderly white-haired man appealed, taking his arm and saying that he must “protect” him—“My grandsons Todd and Josiah, who are all that remain of that generation.” Blinking in confusion, a hopeful smile on his lips, Winslow said to Josiah, “For my old sin lies upon you and I must explain myself, and make amends however I can, that God will spare my remaining grandchildren.”

  Winslow’s sons came quickly forward as well, as if to silence their father, whose words were astonishing to them; but Winslow resisted the men, slipping his arms through the arms of his grandsons, and holding them close to him, as all stared.

  “Allow me to speak now, at Oriana’s grave,” Winslow said, pleadingly, “as I had shrunk from speaking at Annabel’s grave. This I beg of you all, if you love me; or, failing that, if you pity me.”

  HERE FOLLOWS, in summary form, assembled out of the Ebony-Lacquered Box, Winslow Slade’s remarkable account—his “confession,” it might be said; an impassioned if not entirely coherent recollection of an event of 1855, involving a young woman known only as “Pearl.” This impromptu revelation was unparalleled in Princeton, and most astonishing to all who were witnesses, who would speak of it, and write of it, in an alarming variety of ways. As Winslow Slade spoke with numerous halts and stammers, and frequently lapsed into silence, it is impossible for me to render his words accurately here; nor will I note when one or the other of his agitated and embarrassed sons pressed him to quit, and to come away home, for it seemed as if the elderly man was on the brink of a nervous collapse.

  The “unfortunate episode in my life”—as Winslow Slade called it—began one afternoon in March, in 1855; a day unlike this day in May when overcast winter skies yielded suddenly to a suggestion of spring; a temporary respite, yet much prized. Winslow Slade was twenty-four years old at this time and had only just entered into an engagement (later to be broken) with the heiress daughter of Jarrell LaBove, a Republican senator from New Jersey; he lived with his parents at Crosswicks, and took classes at the Princeton Theological Seminary where he was studying Hebrew, Greek, the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, Germanic theology, and such practical subjects as “sermon preparation and delivery” and “pastoral counseling.” Like most of the seminarians Winslow Slade had entered the Presbyterian seminary immediately after graduation from college, not entirely decided whether he would become a “man of the cloth” or a private, Biblical scholar; or whether he would seek his destiny in a more secular sphere of public life. (One of Winslow’s classmates and friends was Henry van Dyck, who would become a renowned minister and orator and, in time, Professor of English Literature at Princeton—for the record, the father of Pearce van Dyck.) Three years earlier, at commencement day exercises at the university, the young graduate Winslow Slade had delivered the belles lettres oration, speaking so avidly of Milton, Goethe, and Shakespeare, and of the need of graduates to devote themselves to both the God of their fathers and the nation’s destiny, he was several times interrupted by applause, and felt elation, that words could arouse such a response in an audience. (The New York Herald of June 25, 1852, noted that young Mr. Slade’s oration was “an eloquent, glowing, and greatly inspiring effort, presented with intelligent sensitivity, the high point perhaps of the morning’s exercises.”)

  So, it had seemed that an enviable career lay ahead. Winslow Slade had but to pluck the fruit from the tree, that was his for the taking.

  Yet, within a year of seminary studies, and the tension of courting an attractive but badly spoiled young woman of nineteen, Winslow was feeling exhausted; his brain felt literally overtaxed, from the study of languages and from the custom of preaching sermons in empty churches; in a short period of time the young man succumbed to maladies as variously diagnosed as typhoid, brain fever, and neuritis, which necessitated a period of calm and recuperation at Crosswicks, and temporary withdrawal from the seminary. It was within two weeks of Winslow’s recovery from a virulent fever of unknown origin that, by the malevolence of chance, the young man had the unfortunate “adventure” that would haunt him through his life . . .

  At this time, Winslow was newly engaged; and had endured a round of engagement parties in Princeton, New York, and Philadelphia; in a valiant attempt to make up for lost time at the seminary he was working twelve to fourteen hours a day, as it was a matter of pride that he graduate with his classmates, and not even a few month
s after. In addition, Winslow sometimes prowled the grounds of Crosswicks late at night, debating to himself the old knotty issues of Calvinism and free will, that gripped him, he said, like a strangler’s hands.

  His ancestor Jonathan Edwards had had not a moment’s doubt that human life was strictly determined, by God; Reverend Edwards had but scorn for the “childishness” of the very notion of free will. Yet the conundrum was, if we don’t know the future, and have no idea what God’s plan for us is, are we not in a position to imagine “free will”?—and are we not responsible, in any case, for our actions?

  Most of humankind was damned to Hell, Jonathan Edwards and his contemporary Puritans believed. But Winslow Slade could not accept it, that God would send most of His creation to Hell.

  Being a modest young man, easily embarrassed and not wishing to seem pious, pretentious, or naïve, Winslow had said nothing of these thoughts to any elder, and certainly not to his pretty fiancée, Evangeline.

  And so, one March afternoon, Winslow was studying in the seminary library, in which a window had been pushed up several inches, to allow in fresh air; he had set for himself the task of completing a section of his Hebrew grammar, and sketching out an editorial for the Presbyterian, an agreeable but time-consuming task assigned to him by his advisor, Reverend Frick; and trying to collect his thoughts on the subject of infant damnation as elucidated by the Reverend Lancelot Price on the one hand and the Reverend Frederick Ettl on the other. For several hours the young man had been working diligently in the library, among a number of his classmates, whose diligence mirrored his own, when, suddenly, it seemed to him that a flame licked over his hands and the hefty volume he was gripping: a flame that was blue, and orange, and pale green and pale yellow, though transparent: and in that instant leapt up to his exposed eyes, and entered his brain.

  Winslow was not an excitable young man: he understood that the flame was some sort of optical illusion, some pathology of the optic nerve exacerbated by overwork and by his recent illness, and he did not allow himself to be (visibly) upset. (He did not wish to believe that the Devil had anything to do with it: he was not that sort of Presbyterian.) And so Winslow stifled a cry, and left the room without attracting any attention, he believed; though it would seem curious to his classmates that he’d left his books and papers behind, and an expensive fountain pen. Hurriedly he left the redbrick building, that was surrounded with sere winter grass, on the cusp of spring; quickly he walked across the wide lawn, avoiding a fellow seminarian, and one of his minister-professors; quickly he walked to Mercer Street, and southward, toward the open countryside; finding himself in a meadow, with a thawing, soft earth beneath, with no clear idea of where he was going, only that he must go somewhere—anywhere!—away from the Theological Seminary, and from Princeton.

  How Winslow Slade made his way south-west-ward to the village of Cold Spring, in Hopewell Township, and to a public house somewhat ominously called The Fox and the Hare, located at least twenty miles from Princeton, the young man would never quite understand; he must have hiked with more than his usual vigor and single-mindedness, soon abandoning Mercer Street for Stockton, and Stockton for Rosedale, and Rosedale for Province Line, until at last he abandoned roads altogether to traverse farmers’ fields and forests. During this suspended period of time Winslow’s thoughts were not of theology, nor even of his imminent assignments, or his fiancée, or his family at Crosswicks, who expected so much of him; rather, his thoughts were like the buzzing of maddened flies.

  The Fox and the Hare was utterly unknown to Winslow Slade, as to any of the Slades; it proved a coarse, rowdy, noisy yet companionable place. Despite his “city clothes”—and the sturdy leather shoes he was wearing—Winslow was not made to feel self-conscious; yet, unwisely, he quickly downed a tankard of ale, in emulation of the robust workingmen around him: persons of all ages who drank heartily and talked together loudly, laughing with great hilarity. (Who were they?—very likely mill-workers, who labored in the textile mills on the Delaware River a mile away, in the small town of Lambertville.) How strange it seemed to the seminarian, these individuals behaved as if they enjoyed their lives, and one another. And yet—what was there for them to enjoy? For were they not men of a low social rank, coarse-featured, and carelessly clothed and groomed, obliged to work with their hands and their backs; did not some of them, as Winslow happened to notice, bear scars and worse injuries, like missing fingers, and badly crooked backs? Their hilarity was so threaded with profanities and obscenities—(of a kind Winslow had never heard before, and could not have imagined)—it was clear to him that they were not beloved of God, and that Jesus had not entered their hearts; worse, they did not miss God, or Jesus. They don’t seem to understand that they are damned, Winslow thought, —someone should tell them! But this ministerial thought he quickly cast from him, as unwanted at this time.

  So it was, caught up in the general hilarity of the pub in Cold Spring, Winslow Slade downed a second tankard of ale, which went down more easily; and so, a third; and shortly became so giddy and confused in his perceptions, he failed to notice that a coarse-featured rust-red-haired man of some age beyond his, yet not much older than he, had crowded beside him at the bar, as if singling him out; and was soon urging Winslow, if not pleading with him, to come outside, where someone is asking for you.

  Or, it might have been that the coarse-featured man was saying someone is in need.

  So it happened, again without Winslow’s exact comprehension, that he had left The Fox and the Hare, and was walking, or being “walked”—(for by this time the young seminarian, unaccustomed to drinking, was not very steady on his feet)—a short distance away; now, in another dwelling, not a pub but a crude house, or cabin; here, amid a strong smell of woodsmoke and kerosene, a young woman, more precisely a girl, of some age younger than Winslow, perhaps as much as eight or ten years younger than he, was presented to him; rather, pushed at him by the rust-red-haired man and another, whose face Winslow could not see clearly. The girl was named “Pearl”—or so Winslow was informed, by both men; in the lamplight she appeared to be of mixed race, Winslow thought; not “colored”—not “black”—or obviously “Negroid”—but of some mixture of these, with European ancestry; her nose was snubbed, and wide at the nostrils; her skin was a coarse, slightly pitted sere color, like something that has been left in the sun, and faded; her hair was hidden beneath a soiled head-scarf, of the kind the colored women at Crosswicks commonly wore. Nudged toward Pearl, as Pearl was nudged toward Winslow, the two were crowded together, in a small cramped space in the cabin; there were bare floorboards, a single bed with a soiled mattress and a coarse blanket, of the weight of a horse-blanket, dropped on it. The girl’s smell was strong: of a female body, and of rarely washed clothes; more pungently, of her grease-stiffened hair. And her breath smelled, like Winslow’s, of ale.

  As Pearl struggled to focus her eyes, and to spread her fleshy lips in a semblance of a smile, to please her captors—(for “captors” the men appeared to be)—Winslow tried to detach himself, to flee; but the girl placed her hand so firmly on his arm, and fixed her dark gaze so intently upon his gaze, he felt a sort of paralysis enter his soul.

  What followed from this, Winslow Slade would have very little memory.

  Except a moment’s revulsion, and recoiling—for he could not fail to see that several teeth were missing from Pearl’s mouth, in her lower jaw; and that the fingers of her right hand, with which she dared to “caress” him, were badly mangled.

  Except a sense, belated, and ineffectual, that something was being taken from him—(his wallet? his sturdy leather shoes?)—which he knew he must prevent, yet could not; for the wily girl was in his arms, or rather, the seminarian was in her arms, that grasped him tightly; in his ear, her hot breath that smelled of ale, and something darker. And so the rust-red-haired man and his companion laughed together, and left the seminarian and Pearl together, with a jocular slamming of the door.

  So, time passed in c
onfusion; Winslow Slade may in fact have lost consciousness, and lost all knowledge of his surroundings; there was an interruption, and there were loud (male) voices, and in the background a rushing of water, that indicated the Delaware River, which Winslow could not see, or had not the wit to try to see, at this time.

  Later it would be revealed, the rust-red-haired man was named Henri Selincourt. But “Pearl” had no last name.

  Ah, that Winslow Slade knew so little of his fellow man: that he had lived almost a quarter century, and knew Latin, and Greek, and Hebrew, and French, and German, and the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, and the latest and most fashionable theological notion, but he seemed to have no notion of the gravity of the situation, and the danger he was in. That he was engaged to be married, yet remained ignorant of the wiles of the opposite sex . . .

  In his confusion, and mounting fear, Winslow saw the pale flame lick across the contorted female face, faintly blue, yet orange and red as well, and transparent; in her eyes, a sickly yellow glow, as at her fingertips; and a faintness overcame him, that he had succumbed to the embrace of a demon, and his life would be blighted thereafter.

  Yet, his paralysis was such, he could not seem to break away, but suffered the female’s mouth to attach to his, and to suck, and suck; as if she might suck out his very soul; even as her sharp nails clawed at him, in a kind of provocative play, as one might tease a small child, or a dog, to animate it. How fleshy, the female’s body! Not delicate-boned, and small-waisted, like the young women with whom Winslow was acquainted, and her arm-muscles sinewy, inside the fatty flesh. And the shock of the female bosom, the large, cushiony breasts naked inside the female clothing . . . All this while, to rude laughter, Winslow was pleading that he must leave; he must return to his family, in Princeton; he must have his shoes back . . . Now it had been discovered that Winslow Slade was carrying a gold pocket watch, in an inside pocket; this watch, inscribed to W.S., was in fact an inherited watch, and priceless. Greedy hands snatched at it, and Winslow could not prevent them from taking it, as Pearl laughed, the gaps in her lower jaw painfully revealed. It may have been that Winslow tried to wrench himself from her, or pushed and shoved at the rust-red-haired man and his companion, who had returned to the cabin; for somehow, there was a struggle, and there were female screams, and a voice that was not the voice of the female, nor of the others, but a voice that seemed to issue from the very air of this hideous dank place—You are of the Slades, you boast to all the world that you are a Slade, yet Reverend we shall see if you are not brought down to Hell.