The Accursed. Joyce Carol Oates

juices from their cut stems dripped, and darkened her rainy-day skirt in tiny splotches; she had no choice but to thank Mr. Mayte, for he was very kind; and as gallant, she was sure, as any Princeton gentleman.

      More gallant than her fiancé, certainly! For Dabney could be curt and ill-tempered, when he and Annabel were alone, with no elders to observe him; Dabney could confound Annabel with paradoxes she wasn’t sure were serious, or mocking: “Do you think? Your face is so like a doll’s—a painted ceramic doll.”

      Annabel saw with relief that Axson Mayte had set aside the wickedly sharp hand-sickle, letting it fall carelessly on the path.

      The gardener would discover it there, or—possibly—Annabel’s mother, Henrietta, who “gardened” in pleasant weather, in beds kept weeded and lushly fertilized by the grounds staff.

      In a confused sort of happiness Annabel was smiling. Or—perhaps it was sheer nerves, unease. So many spring flowers, some were falling from her hands. Impulsively she selected a long-stemmed narcissus to offer Axson Mayte, for his buttonhole.

      “Compliments of Crosswicks Manse!”

      Mayte seemed genuinely surprised by this gesture; warmly and effusively he thanked her. “From the depths of my soul, chère mademoiselle, I thank you—you are too kind—you cannot know, in fact, how kind you are—a rare quality in ‘ladies’ of your station, in my experience.”

      Though Mayte’s words were flattering, or were meant to be, the man next behaved in an odd, crude manner: he shortened the narcissus stem by clamping his strong teeth upon it near the flower and biting down hard, that it might fit with ease in his buttonhole—where in fact it looked very striking.

      “Will you, mademoiselle—?”

      Looming over Annabel, from his height of at least six feet, Axson Mayte extended his arm for Annabel to take, hesitantly, that he might escort her back up to the Manse where now, on the rear terrace, Winslow Slade himself was waving and calling urgently to them.

THE SPECTRAL DAUGHTER

      Now, we arrive at the first public manifestation of the Curse, on Sunday morning 20 April 1905—except that no previous history credits this episode, nor did any of the principals know, or could have guessed, what the vision of the Spectral Daughter portended.

      That is, what the vision portended for those like the Slades, and Lieutenant Dabney Bayard, who might have supposed themselves mere bystanders, astonished and pitying witnesses to a mental collapse of ex-President Grover Cleveland.

      This chapter, intended to be brief, is pivotal in my chronicle, and difficult to execute, I think—for, prior to this, my dramatized scenes were between but two persons; now, I am attempting a larger dramatis personae, and must try to hint to the reader, without being over-explicit, some of the subtleties of emotion that existed among the young people Josiah, Annabel, and Annabel’s fiancé, Dabney Bayard.

      (Yet, some readers will complain: the chronicle is too subtle. Even as others will complain, it is not subtle enough.)

      ON THIS MORNING, following Sunday church services in Princeton, a party of approximately two dozen persons traveled to the “old Craven estate” on Rosedale Road, which had recently been purchased by the Slades, as its grounds of several acres abutted the three-hundred-acre property of Crosswicks Manse, that stretched back from Elm Road; the revelation being, that the elder Slades were making the Craven estate a wedding gift to the young couple, for them to take occupancy there following their honeymoon in Italy.

      Of course, I have seen photographs of the “old Craven estate” which was razed years later, to make way for a larger and grander country estate at the height of the economic boom of the 1920s; at this time, among the Slades and their party, the house was considered a “honeymoon cottage” though it contained as many as twenty rooms, with twelve high, narrow front windows bracketed by black shutters; its steep roof was made of gleaming Holland tile. So large a house, with an impressive exterior of Boonton limestone—(incidentally, from the Slades’ quarry at Boonton)—would not seem, to most readers, unfamiliar with the vagaries of the rich, appropriately designated a cottage.

      Later, the house was to acquire an ironic, or perhaps a purely ignorant misnomer—“the old Bayard estate”—though neither Lieutenant Bayard nor his bride Annabel was ever to live in it, nor even spend a single night beneath its roof; at the time of this narrative, in 1905, the house was still named for its original owner, the Revolutionary hero Major Dunglass Craven, who, as George Washington’s most intimate aide, uncovered the scheme of the spy André, and brought about his execution.

      It was a gay and splendidly dressed party, driving out in several surreys trimmed in pink dogwood from Princeton for brunch at the house, which was to be presented by Crosswicks kitchen staff on-site, as china, cutlery, tables and chairs and linens, and a vast quantity of food and drink, had to be brought from Crosswicks, to the (vacated) house. So far as I have been able to determine, from various diaries and letters, the party consisted of Grover and Frances Cleveland, Pearce and Johanna van Dyck, Edgerstoune and Amanda FitzRandolph, Ezra and Cecelia Bayard (Dabney’s uncle and aunt), Dr. Aaron Burr III and his wife Jennifer, and her daughter Wilhelmina (who was to be Annabel’s maid of honor at the wedding), the Reverend Nathaniel FitzRandolph (since Winslow Slade’s retirement, the full-time pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Princeton) and Mrs. FitzRandolph and the Reverend Thaddeus Shackleton, head of the Princeton Theological Seminary, as well as a number of the Slades—Winslow and his son and daughter-in-law Augustus and Henrietta, and Copplestone and Lenora Slade, Annabel’s uncle and aunt, and their young son Todd, as well as Annabel and Dabney, and Annabel’s brother Josiah.

      “Grandfather! You are so kind! You make us happy as children—we scarcely know what to say . . .”

      So Annabel exclaimed, seeing the house with its somewhat austere and even forbidding limestone exterior, and the great weight of the Holland tiles, that looked like an avalanche about to flow; yet the greening grasses and overarching elms and oaks, just beginning to come into leaf, gave the scene a picturesque air, like a fairy-tale dwelling; Lieutenant Bayard stammered his gratitude as well, having lost some of his usual composure at the sight of the property, soon to be deeded to him.

      It would be disclosed afterward that negotiations to acquire the house had been discussed with Dabney’s father and his uncle and aunt, before the Slades had moved forward with the purchase. But Dabney himself had not guessed—the plot was kept secret from him, as from Annabel.

      (Though very likely, as a shrewd young military officer who had graduated with honors in his class at West Point, Dabney had surmised that the wealthy Slades would give their dear Annabel and her bridegroom a gift commensurate with their love, and their wealth.)

      Still, confronted with the “Craven estate” on this sun-lit morning in April, in the midst of a gathering of jovial well-wishers, Dabney seemed quite surprised, and somewhat tongue-tied. A fierce blush rose into his face and in his eyes too sprang some sort of moisture which surreptitiously he brushed away with his fingertips.

      The atmosphere of this outing was light, admiring, and festive, for the spring day was perfection, and the stone house with its handblown leaded-glass windows, and its Tiffany-stained glass framing the front door, struck all as ideal for the “honeymoon couple.” Hearing the words honeymoon couple caused Annabel to blush, and Dabney to smile awkwardly; though Annabel couldn’t fail to have noticed a certain reserve in her brother Josiah, and a matching discomfort in Dabney when, a few minutes later, by chance the three young people found themselves together in a downstairs room, while the rest of the party ascended to the second floor, to admire the several bedrooms and the splendid vistas framed by each window. (Most of the rooms were empty of course, but Annabel’s mother, Henrietta, had been out to the house numerous times with a retinue of servants on a confidential errand of “decorating” the house in a temporary sort of way. The real effort of decorating, and of furnishing, would fall to the young married couple.)

      “How exquisite!—how very lovely! I quite envy the young