The Accursed Page 45

  Was this the Devil speaking, in prophecy? Or was this the very God of Winslow Slade’s ancestors, speaking in disgust of him?

  Suddenly it seemed, the coarse-skinned girl was furious with Winslow. Or—someone was furious with Winslow.

  For he was struggling fiercely now, to save his life. As the girl clawed at him, like a maddened animal.

  In desperation Winslow freed himself from her, and managed to escape from the cabin; unless, in mirth, his assailants had allowed him to escape, and were laughing heartily at him, as he fled running—limping . . .

  Along a roadside, in the rural dark . . .

  Behind him, shouts. Female cries, fading.

  For Winslow had managed to escape, and made his way limping and lurching, in his stocking feet, into a wooded area, collapsing here, for how long he wasn’t certain, before summoning his strength, and continuing onward, with the vaguest awareness of a road somewhere ahead, which would turn out to be the Lambertville-Trenton Road, that intersected with the Old King’s Highway, and that with the Princeton Pike, that would bring him at last home tearful and repentant.

  “God help me! For I could not have helped myself.”

  YET, WHAT WAS the seminarian’s mortification, and shame, when he learned a few days later that the unclothed, badly beaten corpse of a young Negro female had been found in a wooded area in Cold Spring, in Hopewell Township, a quarter mile from a public house of local notoriety; knowing at once that this was Pearl and that the rust-red-haired man and his companion had very likely beaten her, and murdered her.

  Yet Winslow’s terror of exposure was such, he could not force himself to step forward to speak; he could not, would not, volunteer to help in the identification of the murderers.

  It was not that God failed to give Winslow Slade the clear knowledge of what he should do, but rather, God withheld from him the strength with which to do it.

  I cannot. I know that I must and yet—I cannot.

  For all of my life will be ruined, and the hopes of my family—dashed, despoiled.

  Then, what was the coward’s daily terror but that he would be drawn into the case, and made to testify at a public hearing; and forced to reveal, under penalty of perjury, all that had happened on that luckless night. Indeed, his life would be ruined; his career as a minister killed, in the bud; his engagement ended, and hope for marriage destroyed; nor could Winslow Slade raise his head in decent society again, or look his dear parents in the eye; for it was nearly as the wrathful voice had predicted Yet you shall be brought down to Hell.

  But, as God had allowed Winslow to escape the female and her companions, and to make his desperate way back to Princeton, by that time badly limping, with bloodied feet, so God intervened another time, and the murderer Selincourt was apprehended within a week, and made to confess; and a number of witnesses in Cold Spring came forth to testify against him, speaking of his inclination to rob, beat, and intimidate any who opposed him, and of his liaison with the young mill-girl whose body had been found.

  Nothing was said in the press of a gold heirloom pocket watch, from a Swiss manufacturer, that must have been found in Selincourt’s pockets. Or a pair of sturdy leather shoes from a Princeton cobbler, that could not have belonged to an individual like Selincourt, or any of his companions.

  In this way, the sordid matter ended, with a public hanging at Trenton of Henri Selincourt; and the episode forgotten.

  Forgotten that is by all except the young Winslow Slade, soon to become Reverend Slade, a highly revered “gentleman of the cloth”; honored by the task of providing the master’s oration at the seminary, at graduation, and licensed to preach by the Presbyterian Church in Lawrenceville. In this he was applauded, and congratulated, and admired, and warmly spoken-of by all, and held up as a model of Christian integrity through the tumultuous decades of the late nineteenth century: rising in his public career and in the estimation of his peers: ever rising: to the presidency of Princeton University at the very young age of forty-one, and to the governorship of the State of New Jersey, thirteen years later.

  “In my pride, and in my shame. And now—I stand before you utterly exposed, and beg your mercy.”

  In a soft but unwavering voice Winslow Slade brought his story to an end, as all strained to hear. He was not now leaning on Josiah’s arm, but stood apart from him, addressing the gathering of mourners of whom not one failed to be deeply moved, and many blinked tears from their eyes. He said, “My dear family, and my dear friends—I have carried the scar of this old sin in my heart through the years, to this very hour. So often have I prayed to God for forgiveness, I think it possible that God, in His mercy, has forgiven me for now; yet I have not forgiven myself; and have come to realize, through the past year, that the Curse leashed upon our community springs from the Curse of the young woman Pearl—and from my cowardice, revealed at last to the judgment and censure of all the world.”

  Soon then, the Slades urged Winslow to leave the gravesite, and to be driven, in one of the family motorcars, back to Crosswicks; while his listeners remained behind, as if slow to leave the cemetery, in the wake of the extraordinary revelation.

  At first, all were silent; then, all began talking.

  Amanda FitzRandolph, resplendently attired in her widow’s clothing, raised her voice in the way of an operatic singer, to drown out lesser voices: “Winslow Slade is a saint, indeed—as we’ve long known. Who else would stand before us, so humbled? So Christian? To ‘forgive’ such a man is ridiculous. Only—what a pity that Winslow Slade’s judgment should be so affected by the loss of his granddaughters, to allow him to imagine that he, of all people, might be held to account for the so-called ‘curse’ . . .”

  As Mrs. FitzRandolph spoke, it seemed that a warmer, more spring-like air suffused the cemetery; overhead, the occluded sky began to break, and thin rays of sunlight appeared, like hesitant fingers; the mourners felt a sort of shifting of the very earth, or believed that they did; as if at last the Curse might now be lifting.

  “Pray God it’s so,” Dr. Wilson murmured to his wife, as they walked from the Princeton cemetery, virtually alone of all the mourners having come on foot, in the direction of Nassau Street, and the university campus, “for surely, all of us have been punished enough.”

  21 MAY 1906

  It can’t be. My own uncle—a murderer of his wife. And a shameless liar.”

  Virtually sleepless since the terrible news had been relayed to her, by telephone, that her uncle Horace Burr had brutally murdered her cousin Adelaide Burr—(in fact, the women were third-cousins, and not very closely related by blood)—Wilhelmina found herself at the center of a sordid melodrama, as improbable as any devised by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Louisa May Alcott, and Wilkie Collins: her deranged uncle Horace was claiming that he had murdered his wife at the instigation of the bluestocking temptress Wilhelmina Burr.

  No amount of denials, protestations, or defenses seemed to make any difference, in what is called the “court” of public opinion; though Princeton police detectives, investigating the case, were inclined to be sympathetic with the distraught Miss Burr, whose testimony seemed to them far more likely than the rambling testimony of Horace Burr.

  Wilhelmina had in fact overheard one of the police officers say to another, believing himself out of her hearing: “As if she would have anything to do with him.”

  The shock of it was, Wilhelmina had always liked her uncle Horace, and thought him the most patient, kindly, and tolerant of husbands, in that category of “invalid-husbands” of Princeton, of whom there were a number, at any given time.

  And how shocking, Horace had stolen Adelaide’s ivory swan-brooch, to give to Wilhelmina; and Wilhelmina had kept the exquisitely wrought piece of jewelry hidden away in a drawer, unable to part with it, as she was unable to wear it in public.

  Following Adelaide’s death, Wilhelmina took out the swan-brooch and decided that she would wear it after all: “For Adelaide would want me to, I think. Adelaide would not w
ant it to be shut away in a drawer.”

  Even a natural death, a fully “legal” death, has repercussions far beyond what might be anticipated; how much more, a murder, within one’s family. And there were numerous legal complications following from the murder of Adelaide McLean Burr, whose estate would have gone to her husband, ordinarily; except, in this case, her husband was both her murderer and a homicidal lunatic imprisoned at Otterholme. So, there was much for local lawyers to deal with, to their delight; and Wilhelmina felt obliged to return to Princeton, to Pembroke House, to offer emotional support to her female relatives in particular, who were in need of her company and counsel. Her parents did not for an instant believe the ugly rumors, that Wilhelmina had “instigated” her uncle, for they were in a position to know how avidly their daughter wanted to live in New York, and be an artiste. It was a measure of their sympathy for her, in the wake of the disaster, that they spoke of her admiringly, if not with much knowledge of what she was doing, or what her art “meant”—for it seemed to them dark, and smudged, and too ordinary in its subjects, to be of a class with the great masters, or with the American landscape painter Frederic Church, whose oil painting of the Hudson River Valley Storm at Twilight was the centerpiece of their dining room.

  So it happened, “Willy” has returned to Princeton, to a maze of familial responsibilities; but can’t bring herself to venture out into society, even to the funeral of Oriana Slade, whose death has torn at her heart. “Even though I would see Josiah there, I cannot.”

  Instead, she writes letters of condolence to all of the Slades, not just Lenora and Copplestone. And to Josiah she adds What terrible things have happened to your family, and to all of us who love you.

  Quickly then, before she can change her mind, and rescind the word love, she seals and stamps the envelope.

  MANY MILES AWAY in Boston, Dean Andrew West, having concluded a disappointing interview in the Beacon Hill mansion of the wealthy octogenarian Isaac Wyman (Princeton 1843), prepared slowly to take his leave, as his gaze moved about the elderly man’s library—seizing and discarding one item after another: Latin volumes (surely never once opened); an ivory elephant paperweight (from India, perhaps, but Andrew West knows nothing of that barbaric place); flatteringly executed portraits of Wyman ancestors; the head of a great-eared klipspringer, stuffed and mounted and staring in mournful resignation from a brass plaque above the fireplace (but Dean West is not a hunter); and, what’s this?—a conversation piece, or a family heirloom—an antiquated musket and powder horn prominently placed upon the wall.

  Cleverly, in the casual way of a practiced administrator and fund-raiser, Dean West remarked upon these items, in admiring tones, knowing that his elderly host would respond with enthusiasm. Though Princeton’s popular dean had been lately rebuffed by the board of trustees, and would seem to be floundering in his struggle with Woodrow Wilson, yet Dean West never registered any sign of discouragement, or distraction, but only a frank and boyish enthusiasm. (He would leave to Woodrow Wilson, he said, such displays of temper; for in the end, Wilson’s “childish egotism” would defeat him.) So it was no surprise when Isaac Wyman told him, in detail, of his great-grandfather Captain Horatio Wyman, one of General Washington’s most trusted aides; a hero who had fallen “in great glory” at the Battle of Princeton.

  Andrew West’s eyes alight, and his wide mouth widens in a delighted smile.

  “The Battle of Princeton, you say? Why, Mr. Wyman, I walk in Battle Park, as it’s called, every day of my life, in all weather. And it would be close by Battle Park, with a view running to Mercer Street, that the Graduate College would be built, according to my plan; while Mr. Wilson prefers to build merely on campus, amid a plethora of other buildings, in which the Graduate College would be swallowed up.”

  At which the wealthy alum, who’d seemed eager to be rid of the dean but a few minutes previously, urges him to sit down again, and offers him a glass of his very best Scots whiskey.

  “You must tell me more about these plans, Dean West. ‘With a view’ of Battle Park, I think you said?”*

  AT MIDDAY, having brought his mother to a luncheon at the home of Sparhawk relatives in Kingston, New Jersey—(less than a mile from the Rocky Hill Seminary for Girls, the site of the notorious “Snake Frenzy”)—ex-Lieutenant Dabney Bayard slips away from the company, to find himself walking swiftly along the tangled bank of the Millstone River, brooding, lost in thought, vastly relieved to be alone for the first time in hours. How tired Dabney is, of “genteel” conversation; of his mother, whose love for him is stifling as damp cotton batting, and her tedious relatives of whom not one is younger than she, and no one is near the age of her restless son. Especially, Dabney is relieved to escape an excruciating discussion of the Crosswicks Curse, as they call it; a subject about which Dabney Bayard never comments but maintains a dignified, wounded silence. For he has no idea how he feels, in his innermost heart: does he mourn Annabel Slade, who had been his lawful wedded wife for fewer than five minutes; or is he in fact glad that she has died, and that the Slades are in perpetual mourning; does he wish that he had been able to hunt down Axson Mayte, and murder the man with his bare hands, or is he relieved, too, that he’d never come close to his wife’s seducer, and so had not a chance of murdering him, and blighting his own, young life?

  “To Hell with them all. I mean all.”

  A short distance along the river path, and a climb over the hill bearing the Old King’s Highway, and now on the canal pathway that would border, for some of its length, Lake Carnegie;* where he sees, suddenly, a young man of about twenty, straddling a bicycle, in a dark purple sweater he recognizes as a “club” sweater—he thinks it might be Cottage. (Ivy and Cottage being the “elite” of the eating clubs at this time.) Dabney, a West Pointer, now bereft of his commission, feels a prick of resentment for the Princeton undergraduate who has pedaled out to Kingston; he guesses that the boy is the son of a wealthy father, and judging from his blandly “angelic” good looks, he has not suffered yet. Dreamily he stares at the lake, like a college-boy illustration in Collier’s Weekly; though he appears to be unaware of Dabney, there is something arrogant in his pose, as he gazes at the soft-rippling water in what seems to be willful indifference to Dabney Bayard who stands very still watching him at a distance of about thirty feet.

  Dabney sees that the boy wears no club hat, which is to the boy’s credit; his wheat-colored hair is thick and wavy, and would be interesting to touch. His clothes are casual, but stylish—of course. His trousers fit his slender body loosely; his manner is buoyant and forthright; he isn’t disturbing the tranquility of the canal pathway by whistling, or bustling about, with a pretense of taking delight in Nature—which attitude, in Dabney’s own sex, Dabney finds particularly repulsive.

  Dabney would turn away, but something holds him: the wavy-haired boy is now stretching his arms, and yawning; still oblivious of being observed, and believing himself alone. He lets fall his bicycle and strolls to the lakeside where he squats near the water, in his dreamy mood.

  Across the placid surface of the water, a flotilla of noisy Canada geese.

  “I will walk away of course. I will not approach him.”

  Yet now Dabney is (disagreeably) startled by the appearance, at his elbow, of a third person; doubly taken aback that this is the “Count”—the European theologian, so-called, introduced to Dabney recently at a soiree at Drumthwacket; the man’s name is too lengthy to remember, and has the ring of a fraudulent name; he is from Wallachia, or Romania, or Bavaria, or wherever. Though nothing more than a small frisson of recognition passed between the ex-lieutenant and the Count at the Pynes’ dinner party, now the tall, elegantly clothed gentleman is smiling at Dabney, and showing his gleaming wet teeth; and, whether in mockery or no, half-bowing to him, in the way of a European nobleman for whom such behavior, with even youthful Americans who have failed early at life, is noblesse oblige. He approaches Dabney in a sauntering manner; lightly touches Dabney’s shou
lder; with a glance at the boy squatting by the lakeside a few yards away he says: “You have sighted the lad first, Lieutenant. It is only fair he is yours.”

  “META? COME LISTEN.”

  He will read to her what he has written—having labored for twenty hours unrelieved except for brief, harried breaks—Upton Sinclair’s slashing rebuttal to the self-righteous and outright fraudulent defense of Armour & Co. published in the Saturday Evening Post under the name “J. Ogden Armour”—(as if the bloated capitalist swine could write a word for himself); Upton’s new essay is titled “The Condemned Meat Industry.” It is a summation of The Jungle and much more; the issue of Everybody’s Magazine in which it appears will sell out on newsstands in all major American cities.