The Accursed (18 page)
As an undergraduate, with no family income to support him, Upton had lived in unspeakably impoverished conditions. Yet he did not regret his experience, for it was at that time he had converted to Socialism, and felt a powerful kinship with all workingmen, the victims of the capitalist juggernaut. By contrast, these Princeton students, many of them sporting the cocked hats of their clubs, were deprived, in a sense, of this kind of knowledge, and had no comprehension that the bourgeois way of life was in fast decline; that they and their families were doomed to early extinction; that the Apocalypse close at hand would usher in a new era. Ah, the New Jerusalem to come!—when all men and women of all races and colors should know themselves
kin,
and never again
enemies.
It was not yet known how the Revolution would develop. But Upton supposed that the arguments of the philosophical anarchists were most convincing: society would fragmentize into independent, self-governing communities of mutually congenial individuals, requiring no police, no army, no guardians of morality, and no government. The old Deity being dead and dethroned, Humankind would come at last into power. And the Proletarian, transformed, would teach its former class enemies the virtues of self-restraint, charity, communal sharing, and contempt for greed.
In the bustling tavern, Upton ordered cheese, dark bread, and a glass of milk from the bemused waitress and sat lost in such thoughts, that had the effect of consoling him. Then, as the young male voices on all sides were so loud, gay, and fired with the myriad enthusiasms of youth, he couldn’t help eavesdropping; hearing excited news of a recent crewing victory over Brown; crude and jocose commentary on President Wilson and his “family of females”; and rumors that a “coal-black nigger” had been detained, as the possible murderer of the young Spags girl; except that a prior detainee, an immigrant from eastern Europe, had signed a confession to Trenton police, this newer detainee was believed to be the actual murderer, and not the other. (Discussing the Spags murder, of which Upton had heard only rumors, the young Princeton undergraduates were indignant and incensed; several of them infuriated that a “coal-black nigger” should defile a white girl, and yet voices were raised in his defense . . .)
At this news Upton frowned, and lowered his milk glass to the table. The abduction and murder of a young girl in the Trenton-Princeton area had greatly frightened Meta, and had originally inspired her to take the Smith & Wesson revolver out of its hiding place in a closet, and see that it was properly loaded. But now it seemed that the murderer might not be apprehended after all: very likely, considering the integrity of the local police, an innocent man, or men, had been detained and questioned and made to “confess.” Mixed with the smells of beer, ground beef, and corned-beef hash, which boys at a nearby table were consuming, and the pervasive odor of smoke, the atmosphere of the tavern grew increasingly oppressive; Upton felt a wave of revulsion for the meat-eaters, who had not the slightest awareness of what they were eating: neither its true nature, that of suffering terrified animals, and the debased nature caused by the meat-packing industry. He passed a trembling hand over his eyes and for a moment seemed to smell again the raw, rancid, sickening and yet strangely sensual odor of the stockyard-slaughterhouses in which he’d lived for two months. The odor of blood, guts, animal excrement, raw flesh, and animal terror . . . The very air alive and shuddering with the stench of living creatures turned into mere flesh; screams of animal panic, and horror; the eyes of sentient creatures bulging in terror of death, tongues protruding . . .
The hog squeal of the universe
Upton Sinclair had called it, in his novel; shrieks mounting to the very Heavens, that paid not the slightest heed to their sufferings. And if humankind were aware of this suffering, there was an easy way to assuage guilt—
They are only animals
.
As it had been argued by Southern Christians, that black slaves did not feel pain, like the white race.
Feeling ill, Upton pushed aside his part-eaten meal and staggered from the tavern. He wondered if he’d hidden the revolver carefully enough in the hay barn, that Meta could not find it; then, unaware of any contradiction in his thoughts, whether it had been wise to hide the little box of bullets beneath the crude floor of his cabin, where dampness might corrode them.
BY THIS TIME
most of Princeton was buzzing with the scandalous news of the abduction of Winslow Slade’s granddaughter Annabel, just seconds after her wedding; unless the young bride had fled of her own volition, in a kind of illicit elopement, following her wedding vows to Lieutenant Dabney Bayard. But Upton Sinclair was unaware of such scandal as he made his way, somewhat dazed, to Stockton Street, and so to Hodge Road; pulling his two-wheeled contraption behind him, filled with the day’s purchases. He recalled how he and dear Meta had played duets together, early in their courtship: he on the violin, Meta on the piano. Their best pieces were compositions by the young Mozart, that lifted their hearts. He recalled how eagerly Meta had read the lengthy manuscript of his verse narrative on the subject of the Haymarket Massacre of 1886; how Meta had declared the work a masterpiece, and how he’d kissed her—impulsively, daringly. Meta believed that Upton Sinclair would be one of the most brilliant writers and thinkers of his generation of Americans. How innocently happy they’d been, then!
And now they were trapped together—not as lovers any longer (for that relationship had proved deadly following the unanticipated pregnancy, that must not be repeated) but as brother and sister, emotionally estranged. Lately, mere glances and tender words on Upton’s part were repelled by Meta, who feared unwanted consequences. Can it be, Upton wondered, that he was no longer
loved
?
Suddenly it seemed urgent to him to return home. As he hurried along the roughly paved sidewalk of Hodge Road in the direction of Rosedale Road and the open countryside he was seized by the conviction that he must get back to the farm, to his wife and infant son—“Before it’s too late.”
A
nnabel! Annabel!
Midway in the wedding ceremony. A low hissing sound issuing from all the corners of the austere old Colonial church.
The sound was inaudible to most of the guests but distinctly heard by Annabel Slade standing tremulously beside her husband-to-be Lieutenant Dabney Bayard at the altar of the First Presbyterian Church of Princeton.
Annabel? Come.
Though hardly more than a whisper yet the summons exuded the authority of a shouted commandment. As Reverend Nathaniel FitzRandolph enunciated the sacred wedding vows
Annabel Slade do you take this man
the hissing sound grew louder and more persistent and the distracted bride was observed to be glancing sidelong, away from Lieutenant Bayard who knelt beside her, and toward the very rear of the church. Her expression, it would later be claimed by witnesses, was one of apprehension, and guilt.
Annabel! I tell you, come.
A sepulchral tone, grave, lofty and yet intimate. As if the humid air of late spring were taking elemental form.
Annabel: come with me.
Now the bride found it impossible to maintain her composure but with each hissed ejaculation of her name glanced over her shoulder—now to the right, now to the left—her skin ashen, and her lips visibly trembling.
So much has been written on the subject, and so high did local feeling run for decades following, the historian must proceed cautiously in presenting an “objective” picture of the scene. For, in what appears to have been a denial of their senses, a majority of the spectators—(those who might describe themselves as close friends of the Slade family, for instance)—would afterward insist that the young Annabel had been “abducted” from the altar, in the very wake of her marriage to Lieutenant Bayard; for no one could have believed that the bride would have been capable of an action so mad, and so criminal, as
walking away of her own volition.
The reader must imagine for himself the interior of the First Presbyterian Church of Princeton on that Saturday morning in early June 1905. A church interior of white, bedecked with sumptuous white flowers—lilies, roses, carnations; the walls otherwise unadorned, with a beautiful Protestant simplicity; narrow windows in stone walls, whose wavy glass emits a wavy sort of sunshine. Presiding at the altar is Reverend Nathaniel FitzRandolph, Winslow Slade’s able successor; middle-aged, gentlemanly, with an earnest bald head and a frowning sort of smile, conscious of the solemnity of the occasion; above, at the rear of the church, rich resonant organ-notes intoning Bach. The bride in dazzling white has been delivered to the altar, and to the bridegroom, by her beaming father, Augustus Slade, seated now in the front pew of the crowded church; Lieutenant Bayard has come to stand, and then to kneel, beside his bride, in his U.S. Army dress uniform; women’s eyes are fixed upon the bride, and her bridal gown of creamy-white satin, with its stylish “monobosom,” high collar, yoke of ribbon inserts, feather stitching, and nine-inch-deep waist shirrings; the long skirt deceptively plain, with but a few horizontal tucks ending in a lacy train; the sleeves double-puffed at the upper arm, then slim to the wrist, in ribbon and feather stitching about which Mrs. Grover Cleveland would lament in her diary
she could not ever again wear so slim a fashion
.
To the surprise of all who knew her, Mrs. Horace Burr, that is, Adelaide Burr, has risen from her invalid’s bed to attend the ceremony, supported on one side by her devoted husband Horace and on the other by an older McLean brother; Adelaide who began to weep even as Annabel was led up the aisle by Augustus Slade, and all the more as Annabel and Lieutenant Bayard knelt at the altar, heads bowed, like beautiful children to be disciplined, and Reverend FitzRandolph began the solemn intonations of the Presbyterian wedding ritual. That evening, Adelaide would record in her journal, in a cascade of hieroglyphics, that the mere trim of satin lilies-of-the-valley on the bride’s gown so moved her, she yearned to be a girl again, a silly little unsuspecting goose, another time joined in holy matrimony with dear Horace, if she could be outfitted thus! Adelaide, as well as other female observers, take particular note of the bride’s floating veil which had been handed down through the Slade family, dating back to England in the late 1600s, before the early, adventurous crossings to the New World.
The reader should probably know, however, that the fashionable “narrow silhouette” of the bride, which renders the young woman’s waist exquisitely small at about eighteen inches, is the result of artful corseting; the monobosom of 1905 is cleverly built up so that, of necessity, and to continue the harmonious line, the entire body of the female is forward-tilting. Like the waist, the hips are remarkably slim—a controversial innovation, as fuller hips in the female are preferred by the more conservative of fashion-makers, as by, in general, the male sex.
The reader should imagine the Slade family in the front pews of the church—the dignified old gentleman Winslow— his sons Augustus and Copplestone and their wives; Annabel’s brother Josiah, prominent among the groom’s party, not fashionably but handsomely dressed for the occasion in a dark suit, with a dark necktie; for, fortunately, Josiah had returned from hunting in the Poconos with his friends, just the previous night. And there is Annabel’s cousin Todd forced to wear a “little gentleman’s suit”—(chocolate-brown linen, hand-stitched white satin vest, white gloves, gleaming black patent-leather shoes)—seated beside Josiah, itchy and restless and with a threat of his eyes rolling back in his head like those of a captive wild pony.
Here too is Miss Wilhelmina Burr in the front pew, the much-envied maid of honor; clearly nervous in her snug-fitting flounced pink gown, and not smiling calmly as she would wish; and the six beautiful bridesmaids in their matching dresses, like upright breathing pink-satin flowers; there is little Oriana, Todd’s sister, the flower girl—an angelic little blond child with very bright eyes and a shy smile. Of the groom’s men only Josiah Slade figures in this narrative, so I think I will not elaborate upon these others—handsome young men, friends and comrades of Lieutenant Bayard, whose names are lost to posterity even as they find themselves eyewitnesses at close range of the extraordinary events of that day, when the Curse first manifests itself to the public in the most dramatic of ways.
Annabel: now.
According to Adelaide Burr, seated in the second row, directly behind the Slades, it was Todd Slade who first exhibited an awareness of the low hissing sound in the church, judging from the boy’s restlessness, and agitation; another was Woodrow Wilson, possibly, with his acute hearing and the extreme sensitivity of all his senses, who glanced about frowning, and squinting; then, with disapproval. One by one, numerous persons heard the hissing, or imagined that they heard; though what it was they were “hearing,” no one could have said; nor could they have sworn that the sound was audible, and not rather an uncanny vibration of the air, as if a high-pitched whistle were being blown, undetectable to the human ear.
Yet Dabney Bayard, kneeling at the altar, seemed to hear nothing, and to be aware of nothing except the minister’s gravely intoning voice—
Dabney Bayard do you take Annabel to be your lawful wedded wife
—and his own solemn reply
I do
. The muscles of Lieutenant Bayard’s jaws clenched as if in a sudden spasm of nerves and he turned to his beautiful bride only to see, with some shock, that the demure Annabel was scarcely aware of him, or of Reverend FitzRandolph; her blue-violet widened eyes sought someone or something in the church, not visible, though perhaps at the very rear of the austere old Colonial building.
Annabel: come.
Yet, the ritual proceeded: Reverend FitzRandolph made his final pronouncement, in the name of the Lord:
I now pronounce you man and wife
. And yet, even now, when the bride and groom should be embracing, and kissing, the low hissing grew louder, like rising waves, and Annabel shuddered, and drew away from Lieutenant Bayard in a fainting gesture, as if she failed to recognize him.
By this time the whispering had increased in volume. Each individual who heard it was perplexed, and some frightened; stricken with a numb sort of panic; not knowing if he or she heard truly, or had lapsed into a temporary sort of faintness, or madness, in this humid public place that had seemed now to have turned hostile.
For such is the Devil’s power to tease us, and terrify us, as to whether we are in his spell, or merely caught up in childish fantasies.
AS THIS INFAMOUS EPISODE
in Princeton history moves to its inevitable conclusion, I will acknowledge that I am relying almost exclusively upon my predecessor Q. T. Hollinger, as well as a miscellany of letters, journals, and diaries written by local observers. For otherwise, the episode is totally beyond my comprehension. Yet it is clear that the bold summons—
Annabel! Come to me
—is from Annabel’s seducer Axson Mayte, who stands at the rear of the church, in the opened doorway, not taking a step inside.
Not daring to take a step inside, commentators will note. For the sanctified church is a holy place, into which the Devil, or any of his demons, cannot enter.
Yet, though Axson Mayte cannot enter the church, he has the power to draw Annabel Slade, now Mrs. Annabel Bayard, from her husband’s side, as forcibly as if he has stridden into the church and along the crimson carpet to seize the trembling young woman by the nape of her neck, and lead her away with him.
Annabel: it is time. You will come with me at once.
And so, the bride turns from her bridegroom, blindly; drops her floral bouquet onto the carpet; glancing to neither side, but with her gaze fixed to the commanding figure in the doorway, hurries up the aisle, with the wounded grace of an injured bird, her lips parted in breathless subjection, and in the most subtle, and most sensual, of female smiles.
“Annabel, my love! Have you been not naughty?”—so Axson Mayte declares in a low, mocking voice; and, while the wedding guests turn to stare in gawking horror, the toad-like creature grips the bride roughly in his arms and presses upon her lips a kiss of the most carnal heat, and manly authority.
