The Accursed

by Joyce Carol Oates

  O Josiah help me. Do not abandon me as you have done. Come to me and warm me!

  And this time, no crew members being near, Josiah climbed over the rail and unhesitatingly dived into the pitching sea.

  POSTSCRIPT

  The carelessly annotated log for the Balmoral entered in Captain Oates’s flowing hand, contains the (undated) notation that Josiah Slade’s lifeless body, solid-frozen and encased in ice, was hauled from the McMurde Sound, and carried into the hold of the ship.

  “Requiescat in pace,” the vexed captain scribbled into the log, “—and there’s an end to it!”

  THE WHEATSHEAF ENIGMA I

  On the morning that Copplestone Slade at last “made his move” his frightened wife Lenora had dared to lock her door against him, having had a premonition that her husband’s unreasonable fury at her could not much longer be suppressed. As it was Lenora’s habit, following the deaths of her children, to sequester herself away in her private rooms, after her morning bath, to write letters, and read in her Bible, and enjoy her modest breakfast, so Copplestone knew where to find her; she had been hearing his uplifted voice downstairs, as if he were reprimanding the household staff, which lately he did often, and trying to gauge if he were on his way outside, or whether he was on his way to her.

  For months, Lenora had queried herself mercilessly, as to how she had failed her husband; she had sought advice and solace from Henrietta Slade, and from the elder Slades at Crosswicks; she had not wanted to seek out her own family, the Biddles of Philadelphia, for fear of revealing too much that was intimate, and risking a scandal. At the time of her marriage to Copplestone Slade, all of her relatives had thought the match a very good one, for Copplestone was a genial, good-hearted, prank-loving young man, far from the shrewd businessman who was his elder brother Augustus, and farther still from their father Winslow Slade; he had evinced a good deal of pride in the fact that his young wife resembled a “Renoir woman” and was a descendant of the Pennsylvania patriot Lord Stirling, who’d met a martyred death while commanding the Northern Department of the Continental army; and destined to inherit a small, tidy fortune from her parents, as she was their sole surviving heir.

  For many years, their marriage was unremarkable; as a West End couple, they entertained frequently, and dined out frequently. As an historian I am inclined to somewhat overzealously research even my minor subjects, and so I have looked into Copplestone’s background; but there is really not much to report, for the man acquitted himself in a more or less adequate way as a son of Winslow Slade, and a partner in the Slade family businesses, that were managed by professionals, and had always prospered. It is true, Copplestone had a penchant for the theater, as a younger man; he had even participated in amateur theatrics, in the Princeton Players, taking on such ambitious roles as Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bertram in All’s Well That Ends Well, and Frederic in The Pirates of Penzance; less profitably, Copplestone had a penchant for gambling on racing horses, at which he lost a fair amount of money over the years; but very likely Lenora never knew anything about it, for the couple lived quite separate lives, within the granite walls of Wheatsheaf.

  Since the abduction of Annabel Slade in June 1905, relations between Copplestone and Lenora had deteriorated; the more exacerbated by the children’s deaths, for which Copplestone blamed Lenora. And there was Copplestone’s yet more irrational jealousy of Lenora, for he seemed to have convinced himself, with no evidence, that his wife was “involved” with one or another Princeton man including the dashing Count von Gneist—though so far as I have been able to determine, Lenora and the Count could have met only once or twice, at large gatherings.

  Yet, Copplestone had so degenerated in his denunciations of his wife, he was overheard to mutter in her hearing such words as Slut! Whore! Doxy! Bitch! and Sloven! not caring whether others overheard, including even the abashed household staff.

  “Yet, I know myself innocent in the eyes of God,” Lenora bravely reasoned. “Shall I feel ashamed, in his eyes?”

  ON THIS MORNING in late May, Lenora was sitting at her writing desk, beginning a letter as an officer of the New Jersey chapter of the Colonial Dames of America, when Copplestone struck loudly on her door with his fist, and demanded that she open it.

  So terrified was Lenora, and so oppressed by her husband, she hesitated only a moment before rising to open the door; it was with housewifely concern that she removed the breakfast tray from a nearby table, with a platter of blueberry muffins, butter, and jam, and tea things, that had scarcely been touched, to set it out of harm’s way. Then, with a silent prayer, Lenora went to unlock the door, and her infuriated husband pushed it open, and stepped inside.

  “So! What are you writing? I demand to see.”

  Mutely Lenora stood aside as Copplestone bent over the writing table, to see the innocuous-seeming letter on the issue of the Dolly Lambert house in Washington’s Crossing, Pennsylvania; yet seeing this, the jealous man snorted in derision, as if this were the most transparent of ploys, and he was not to be deceived.

  Trying to disguise her alarm, Lenora suggested to Copplestone that he sit down, and breathe deeply; for he was breathing loudly, and he was flush-faced, and “should take care not to strain his over-taxed heart.”

  Copplestone relented, to a degree; for Lenora’s wifely solicitude was always touching to him, even in such circumstances. Yet angrily he waved a sheaf of handwritten letters in her face, claiming that he had evidence here for civil divorce, on grounds of infidelity: “These shameless letters from Yr. adoring Tommy.”

  Lenora had no idea what Copplestone meant, but knew not to inflame him further. She suggested that he be seated, and be “calm”; perhaps join her in a cup of Earl Grey tea, which was his favorite, and a blueberry muffin from a batch baked by Lenora herself just that morning, in the hope of tempting him . . .

  “ ‘Yr. adoring Tommy’ it is—and again, on these five or six letters—Yr. adoring Tommy. As if the horse-face parson hadn’t enough womenfolk of his own to pet and pamper him on the university campus, he dares to plot clandestine meetings with my wife!” Copplestone waved the letters another time at Lenora, who saw that they were somewhat yellowed, and covered in a dense, dark hand that looked familiar to her but which she could not immediately identify.

  “My dear husband, I can’t understand any of this except to say that I am innocent. I have never received a letter from—are you referring to Woodrow Wilson?—ah, never! I scarcely know him, or his wife Elaine—is that her name? Ellen? I swear that I—”

  Copplestone grunted in disgust, and slapped Lenora on the side of the head, causing her to cry out in surprise and pain. In addition, her graying hair was loosed from its pins, and fell unevenly about her face, the sight of which so repelled Copplestone, he feinted a second blow, and the poor woman dissolved in shamefaced tears.

  “Copplestone, I swear to you—I am innocent. The letters might be from my great-uncle Timothy Jefferson Biddle, which he used to sign Yr. adoring Uncle Timmy—I think that must be it. Poor ‘Uncle Timmy’ has been dead for fifteen years, Copplestone! In the last, lonely years of his life he’d taken to writing long rambling letters to several of his nieces. I’m sure you’d met him, Copplestone. If you let me look at the letters, I’m sure I can explain.”

  “Yes. I’m sure you can explain. I’m sure you had a ready explanation.”

  Copplestone raised his hand as if to strike her again, and the poor woman shrank guiltily away.

  “Lies! ’Tis all ‘weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable’—this domestic life of ours, hewn out of chaos. Only the fifth act of the tragedy redeems.”

  Panting quickly, Copplestone was yet distracted enough by the aroma of Lenora’s blueberry muffins to stab his finger into one of the muffins, and taste the crumbs, even as he continued to persecute Lenora, ranting that “Thomas Woodrow Wilson” could not have been the first, or the last, to have been involved with Lenora—“It isn’t beyond imagining that my own damned brothe
r ’Gustus has set his cloven hoof in my bed, for the sport and spite of it!” In his rage, Copplestone’s vocabulary had sharpened; his pronunciation of certain common words had acquired a British flair.

  “Your own brother, Augustus? You can’t be serious . . .”

  “Can’t I! Can’t I ‘be serious’! You will be quiet, whore, or I will murder you! It’s as the playwright knew, ‘Lie with her? Lie on her? We say lie on her, when they belie her. Lie with her, that’s fulsome!’ All who marry take out license to become cuckolds, in time.” Copplestone made the cuckold’s sign of horns on his forehead, as his greeny eyes shone. “Yet—should I take my revenge now, or leave her to Heaven? Let me see that damned letter you’re scribbling—in code, I suppose. It’s said that Adelaide Burr kept a journal in code, that the authorities are trying to ‘crack’ without success. Pah! A regiment of faithless women.”

  Copplestone snatched up the letter on behalf of the Colonial Dames, but could make no sense of it, and hadn’t the patience to read it carefully. Lenora dared to speak to him, saying that she feared he was “unwell”; since Oriana’s death, he had not been sleeping through the night, and his appetite had diminished so that he only picked at his favorite foods—roast suckling pig, blood pudding, sweetbreads, and the baked goods Lenora made with her own hand, solely to please him.

  “Dear husband, I wish you would sit down for just a minute, and compose yourself; then if you like, you can resume your interrogation of me.” Lenora spoke so pleadingly, fixing her husband with tearful yet loving eyes, it was very difficult for Copplestone to resist. “Here is a cup of Earl Grey. And here, some brown sugar, and cream. Shall I? You are very fatigued, you know; you have taken the deaths of our children very hard, which is a mark of your love for them . . . Copplestone, darling, these blueberry muffins are favorites of yours, prepared from the recipe of Prudence Burr which I’ve often followed. You know you are very hungry, dear. It isn’t good for a man of your age and responsibilities to fast; I am sure that it is very bad. Shall I butter the muffin for you . . .”

  Despite his resolve, Copplestone was swayed by his wife’s soothing words; for perhaps he did love her, or some dim memory of Miss Lenora Biddle, forged in the long-ago of a Philadelphia Christmas cotillion ball at which Copplestone Slade and Miss Biddle were perceived to shine. Roughly he wiped at his eyes and mustache and, overcome by a rush of ravenous if reluctant hunger, he took the blueberry muffin from Lenora and devoured it in two or three bites—“Well. Yes. It is good—God damn!” Copplestone laughed, and took up the platter of muffins, which Lenora had pushed in his direction; greedily he devoured these, with swabs of butter, eating rapidly and with an obvious sensual pleasure. Lenora poured him another cup of tea, and sweetened it as before with brown sugar and cream; and this too the panting man accepted, with a shaky hand. He drank heartily, finishing the cup within a minute; rudely he belched, and wiped his mouth on the edge of an embroidered doily, on Lenora’s table. After a pause he said, with a sly, cruel smile: “Yet it will not save you, whore. It will not save you.”

  FOR COPPLESTONE SLADE had prepared a document during the night, dictated to him, as he thought it, by a Higher Power; which document, embossed with the monogram of Wheatsheaf Manor and the coat of arms of the Slades, he intended for his adulterous wife to sign. Then, he would bribe a notary public employed by the family firm, to swear that he had witnessed the signature.

  While Lenora listened, very stiffly, and still, Copplestone read to her in a swift, stern voice: “ ‘I, Lenora Biddle Slade, the wife of Copplestone Slade and the mistress of Wheatsheaf Manor, being of sound mind and body, do hereby confess to the loathsome sin of Adultery, with these persons—____, _____, and _____.’ ” He would fill in the blanks, Copplestone said, when he’d determined the full extent of her crimes. “ ‘By affixing my signature to this document, free and uncoerced, with my husband as my primary witness, I hereby relinquish all my claims as mistress of his household and surrender all my expectations as his lawful wedded wife; and sign over to him the power of attorney of my hand, and the rights and privileges thereby entailed; and, as God is my witness, I consign to him and to him alone the discretion of taking my life, or no: this act to be performed at a time and a place appropriate to it, the decision resting with Copplestone Slade.’ So, a Higher Power has instructed me, Lenora; it is out of my hands. You are to sign on the line here, do you see? Yes?”

  Copplestone then tried to close his wife’s trembling fingers about her fountain pen, and to dip it into ink, but their struggle was such that an anguine blot appeared on the document, which quite dismayed Copplestone, as he had prepared the writ with great care on a stiff sheet of parchment, and had neither the time nor the spirit to transcribe it a second time. “Sign your name, whore, and have done with it!”

  Understanding that her cause was hopeless, and that this man was not her husband but a maddened creature bent on her destruction, Lenora sprang past him suddenly to seize a silk bell pull that hung on the wall, in order to summon a servant; she had to hope, in desperation, that the household staff downstairs would not shrink from the responsibility of coming to her rescue, or at least summoning help from neighbors; but, unfortunately, Copplestone was too quick for her, clumsily wrenching her back by the hips and throwing her down onto a velvet chaise longue. The spark of resistance in the woman—the mere touch of her flesh—seemed to inflame him; he felt a perverse rush of animal desire, yet a stronger rush of revulsion. His fingers closed about her throat as he muttered: “Oh no you don’t, whore—you shall not. For a Higher Power has instructed me, we are but pawns in His hand. Stop struggling, slut—don’t madden me the more!”

  Thrown into a frenzy, like a wild creature fighting for its life, Lenora too cast off all restraint; so raking Copplestone’s hands and face with her nails as to force him from her, at least temporarily, that she might scream for help. In a fury the madman seized a pillow and pressed it over her face; and pressed, and pressed, until her cries were muffled; and the wild thrashing of her body gradually ceased. Such was Copplestone’s effort, his eyes fairly bulged from his head, and a great artery throbbed between his eyes. Half-sobbing he fell upon the woman, and pummeled her with his fists as a child might have done, whispering: “Whore! Strumpet! Have you learned, too late? Do you repent—too late?”

  When Lenora made no reply, and did not move, Copplestone threw the pillow to the floor, took hold of Lenora’s chin and roughly shook her head from side to side. How like the deceitful whore, to mock him! But her eyes seemed to have rolled back up into her head, hideously; her mouth had gone slack; horribly, it seemed all life had drained from her.

  Copplestone grunted, and lifted himself from his wife’s body with effort; he stared, and wiped bloody spittle from his lips; adjusted his disheveled clothing. “Why then ’tis done—consummated. ‘When I love thee not, chaos is come again . . .’ ”

  THE WHEATSHEAF ENIGMA II

  Yet when several of the more courageous servants ventured into Lenora Slade’s morning-room, through the opened door, in great trepidation at what they might discover, it was an unexpected scene: for their mistress Lenora Slade lay unconscious on the velvet chaise longue, breathing faintly; and their master Copplestone Slade lay on the rosebud carpet, his dressing gown torn open and his face, still flushed and radiant with heat, contorted in a hellish expression—of rage, agony, and immense surprise.

  Which is to say: Lenora Slade lived; and Copplestone Slade departed this life.

  BY THE TIME help had been summoned, and Dr. Boudinot arrived, followed quickly by Augustus Slade, Lenora had begun to waken; though the poor woman had no idea of what had happened or even, it seemed, that she had been viciously attacked. Her muslin gown was badly ripped and stained; her face, throat, and bosom were bruised. Though it must have cost her great effort to speak, she appealed to Dr. Boudinot to attend to her husband, and not herself.

  “Mrs. Slade, I’m afraid it’s too late. Copplestone is—is not—breathing . . .” />
  Already the heated, corpulent corpse was cooling; the reddened face gradually losing its angry hue, and the glassy eyes shining a fainter green. On the froth-spittled mouth were remnants of muffin crumbs, as on the silk dressing gown. For it seemed to Dr. Boudinot that the deceased man must have eaten a hearty breakfast, prior to his collapse; the physician did not want to think, despite evidence, that Copplestone Slade had violently attacked his wife, before succumbing to a stroke.

  “Death would have been instantaneous, in this sort of massive stroke,” Dr. Boudinot said, in the tone of one speaking to individuals who know less than he knows of the human body and its perils, “for the symptoms are familiar to me, unfortunately! I’d long warned Mr. Slade that he was overweight, and had high blood pressure; I’d warned him that he was not too young, at his age, to suffer a stroke. (For, you know, Woodrow Wilson had a stroke at the age of thirty-nine—a fairly minor stroke, but it has been kept secret in order not to injure his career.) A tragedy, Mrs. Slade, and Augustus, but if it’s the smallest consolation, you should know that in such cases the victim feels not a moment of pain, despite his facial expression. Copplestone may appear angry, but he is entirely at peace.”

  It was a matter of some embarrassment, that Lenora Slade seemed to have suffered some sort of attack upon her person, showing, among other injuries, the reddened imprints of fingers around her throat; but neither of the gentlemen wished to inquire, and Lenora herself was eager to be led away to her bedroom, by one of the colored girls, to bathe, and dress and groom herself, in preparation for the ordeal of dealing with her husband’s death, as she had had to deal with the deaths of both her children. For it had happened, that which God had not prevented from happening—Yet another innocent member of her family had been taken from her.