“Parfaitement,” the little Frenchman agreed. “The remembrance of these so strange deaths has bored into your inner consciousness like a maggot in a cheese. You are—how do you say in American? Sans bouc—goatless?”
”Exactly,” the other smiled wanly. “If it were something I could sink my hands in—something tangible that I could shoot or stick a bayonet into—I’d stand up to it and say, ‘You be damned!’ but it’s not. The men of my family—except old Joshua, perhaps—seem to have been pretty decent fellows. They fought their country’s battles; they paid their debts; they were good to their wives, but—there it is. The birth of a child is the death warrant of every Phipps descended from Joshua of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and I don’t mind admitting that it’s got my goat. I’ve been more than ordinarily successful in my work—I’m an architect, you know—I’ve several good commissions right now, but I just can’t seem to get my mind on ’em. I’ve as much to live for as most men—work, achievement, possibly a woman’s love and children; but there’s this constant threat eating into me like a canker-worm, walking at my elbow, lying down to sleep with me and rising with me in the morning. I can’t shake it any more than I can my skin. It hangs on like Sinbad’s Old Man of the Sea. I’ve consulted half a dozen of these so-called occultists, even went to a clairvoyant and a couple of mediums.”
He gave a short, hard laugh. “Did they help? Like hell! They all say, ‘Fear nothing; evil from without cannot prevail against the good within!’ or some such fiddle-faddle. I’m not after fairy-tale comfort, Dr. de Grandin; I want some assurance of safety, if it’s to be had.
“Once I tried a psychoanalyst. He wasn’t much better than the other quacks. Used a lot of learnèd-sounding double-talk about relative subconsciousness, fear complexes and inhibitions, then assured me it was all in my mind—but you can damned well bet he couldn’t explain why all my male ancestors died as soon as they became fathers, and he didn’t attempt it. Now”—the young man looked almost challengingly into de Grandin’s thoughtful eyes—“they tell me you’ve an open mind. You don’t slop over about the spirits of the departed, but you don’t pooh-pooh any intimation of the supernatural. The mediums and occultists I’ve been to were a lot of ignorant charlatans. The psychoanalyst didn’t seem to grasp the idea that there’s something more than the merely natural behind all this—he waved aside everything that couldn’t be recorded on one of his instruments or hadn’t been catalogued by Freud. I believe that you can help if anybody can. If you can’t do something for me, God have mercy. His mercy didn’t seem to help my ancestors much.”
“I appreciate your confidence and frankness, Monsieur,” de Grandin answered. “Also, I concur in the pious wish that you may have the assistance of Deity. It may be true, as you say, that heaven’s mercy did little or nothing for your ancestors, but then in olden days Providence was not assisted by Jules de Grandin. Today the case is different.
“Suppose, now, we commence at the commencement, if you please. You have, perhaps, some intimation concerning the untimely taking-off of your forebears? You have heard some plausible reason why your so distinguished ancestor Monsieur Josué found death’s grinning countenance where he thought to look upon the features of his first-born?”
“Yes!” young Phipps answered tersely, a slight flush mounting to his face. “You’ll probably call it a lot o’ nonsense, but I’m convinced it’s—it’s a family curse!”
“U’m?” de Grandin thoughtfully selected a long black cigar from the humidor, bit its end and struck a match. “You interest me, Monsieur. Who cursed your family, and why, if you please?”
“Here,” Phipps drew a small brown-leather volume from his pocket and thrust it into the Frenchman’s hand, “you’ll find the history of it there. Obediah, Joshua’s younger brother, wrote it in his diary way back in 1755. Start reading there; I’ve checked the pertinent entries in red,” he indicated a dog-eared page of ancient, porous paper closely barred with fine writing in faded logwood ink. “Obediah’s comments may seem melodramatic in the cold light of the twentieth century; but when we remember how Joshua fell strangled with blood at the entrance of his wife’s chamber, and how his son and his son’s sons died without seeing their children, it doesn’t seem so overdrawn, after all. Something else: Every man jack of ’em died in such a way that his mouth was smeared with blood. Oh, the old curse has been carried out to the letter, whether by coincidence or not!”
“U’m?” de Grandin repeated noncommittally, taking the slender book in his hand and examining its binding curiously.
It was a cap octavo volume, bound in beautifully tanned leather carved with scrolls, oeils-de-boeuf and similar ornaments dear to eighteenth century bookbinders. Across the back was stamped in gold:
OBEDIAH PHIPPS
HYS JOURNALL
“Friend Trowbridge,” de Grandin rushed quickly through the book’s yellowed leaves, then passed it to me, “have the kindness to read us what old Monsieur Obediah set down in the long ago. Me, I understand the barbarities of your language passably, but I think we shall get the fuller effect by hearing you read aloud. I should make sad hash of the old one’s entries. Read on, my friend, like Monsieur Balaam’s ass, I am all ears.”
Adjusting my pince-nez I moved nearer the desk lamp, glanced hastily at the indicated page, then, bending closer, for the once-black ink had faded to pale sepia with the passage of two hundred years, I read:
3d. Sep. 1775—This day came the trained band from fighting with the French; Joshua my brother looking mighty fine and soldier-like in his scarlet coat and the long sword which swung from his baldric. With them are come a parcel of prisoners of war, holden at the King his Majesty’s pleasure. Mostly children and young folk they be, and though they are idolaters and not of our Christian faith, I find it in my heart to pity their hard lot, for from this day they must be bearers of burdens, hewers of wood and drawers of water, bound to menial service to our people that the Commonwealth’s substance be not eaten up in keeping them in idleness.
What is it I say? Obediah, it is well you are for Harvard College and the law, for the sternness of the soldier’s trade or the fiery Gospel of the Lord of Hosts are things too hard for thee, meseemeth. And yet, while none shall hear me murmur openly against the fate of these poor wretches, I pity them with all my soul.
One among them rouses my compassion most. A lissome chit of girl, she, with nut-brown hair and eyes as grey as the sea, and such a yearning in her pale, frightened child-face as might wring compassion from a stone. I hear tell she will be put on the block on Wednesday next, though it is understood that Brother Joshua shall have her for his household drudge in part requital of his valiant work against the Frenchmen and the Indians. If this be so, God pity the poor wench, for Joshua is a hard man and passionate, never sparing of himself or others, and prodigal with fist and whip to urge his servants unto greater diligence.
“Eh bien, Monsieur,” remarked de Grandin as I sought the next marked sage in the diary, “it seems this Monsieur Joshua of yours was the very devil of a fellow.”
“Huh, you haven’t got to first base yet,” Phipps answered with a grimness of expression that belied the lightness of his words.
I found the second red-checked passage and began:
29th Sep. 1755—Have pity, gentle Saviour, for I, the meanest of thy creatures and a sinful man, harbor thoughts of blood and death against mine own kin. On Lord’s Day I visited my brother, and as I made to enter at the kitchen did behold Marguerite DuPont, the Popish serving wench, bearing water from the well. A brace of heavy buckets, oaken-staved and bound with brass, she staggered under, and their weight was like to bear her down, had not I hastened to her succor.
A look of passing wonder she gave me as I took the bucket-yoke from off her shoulders and placed it on mine own, and, “Merci beaucoup, M’sieu”, she whispered, with the words dropping me a curtsey as though she were a free woman and mine equal in station.
Her hands are red and rough with toil,
but small and finely made, and in die greyness of her eyes dwells that to make a man’s heart beat the faster. Perchance she is a witch, like most of the idolaters, as Parson did expound at meeting that same morning. Howbeit, she is very fair to look on, nor do I take shame to myself for that I took her burden on me.
“C’est le sabbat, n’est-ce-pas, M’sieu’?” she asks me as I set the buckets down beside the doorstep, and when I nodded she looked at me so sadly I was like to weep for very pity.
Then from the bodice of her gown she drew a tiny cross-shaped thing, a bit of sinful vanity shaped like the cross whereon our Lord suffered for the vileness of mankind, and would have raised the symbol to her lips.
“What means this heathenry, ye Papist slut?” bellows Brother Joshua, bursting from the house-door like a watchdog from his kennel at scent of a marauder. “What means this demonry in a Christian man’s house?” with which he struck the fond thing from her hand and caught her such a cuff upon the ear that down she fell beside it.
The lass picked up the cross and would have hid it in her dress again, but Joshua was quicker, and ground it under heel, well-nigh crushing her frail hand therewith.
She sprang up like a pantheress, her mild eyes all aflame, and defied him to his face.
“Thou harlot’s brat, I’ll learn ye to act so to your betters!” raged he, and struck her on the mouth with his clenched hand, so that the blood flowed down her chin and onto her kirtle.
“Nay, brother,” I opposed, “entreat her not thus spitefully. ‘Tis Lord’s Day, and she, of all the townsfolk, labours. ‘Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy … thou and thy manservant and thy maidservant …’ As for her vanity, bethink you that her faith, mistaken though it be, is dear to her as ours is to us.”
“Now, as the Lord liveth,” swore Brother Joshua, “meseemeth thou art half a Papist thyself, Obediah. Whence comes this sudden courage to champion the Popish bitch? The Sabbath Day, quotha? at knoweth she of sabbaths, save those wherein the witches and warlocks make merry? Rest and meditation on the Sabbath are for the Lord’s elect, not such as she. Now go thy ways, and quickly, lest I forget thou art my brother, and do thee injury.”
Lord Christ, forgive! In that wild moment I could have slain him where he stood, nor had a thought of guilt for doing it. In will, if not in act, I am another Cain!
2d. Nov. ’55, the next marked entry read.
At college, hard at work upon the middle voice of Greek, yet making sorry business of it.
Mea culpa,—I have sinned. Into my heart hath crept a lustful and unhallowed love for Marguerite DuPont, the kitchen-drudge.
What boots it is she be a bondmaid and a servant of the Antichrist? What matter though she be joined to her idols like Ephraim of old? Surely, though we approach God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour, or through His maid-mother Mary, the goal we seek is still the same, however different be our roads. And yet I may not tell her of my love; I dare not clip her in mine arms and whisper ’dearmeats to her. She is my brother’s thing and chattel, bound even as his blackamoors and Indians are bound, though by the letter of the law she is a war-captive and subject to release on ransom or exchange. Woe me, that I have loved a Hagar in the tents of Abraham!
“Name of a small blue man, Friend Trowbridge,” de Grandin tweaked the ends of his diminutive mustache, “I think I sniff the odour of romance here. Read on, I pray. I burn, I itch, I am consumed with curiosity.”
“9th June, ’56,” I read, turning to the next marked entry.
O Lord Christ, fill me plenteously with Thy love, for love of woman never shall be mine! This day sennite Marguerite gave birth to a man-child. She holds her peace right stubbornly, though many of the goodwives, and even Parson himself, have urged her to declare her partner in iniquity that he may stand his trial with her for adultery. Anon, when she is taken from her bed, she must make recompense for her sin, and if her paramour be not discovered, must bear the scarlet symbol of concupiscence alone upon her bosom to her life’s end.
Brother Joshua shows strange kindness for one so stern and upright. The child is cared for by his orders, and he has even visited the wretched mother in the outhouse where she lies. Forgive me, brother, I did wrong thee when I said thy heart was flint.
The child is dark, unlike its mother, and well favoured withal. ’Tis pity it must go through life as filius nullius, according to the lawmen’s phrase.
5th Dec. ’56, the next entry was headed.
My brother builds a house without the town. Foundations are already digged, and soon the chimneys will be raised. The idea likes me much, for when the building is completed he will take Marguerite and the child there, and she shall thus have respite from the townsfolk’s jeers.
11th Dec. ’56—My brother’s charity is interpreted. ‘Twas passing strange that he who would have rayed a flea for hide and tallow should have spent his substance on a bond-woman’s brat. Her bastard? Nay, his own! The child she bore was his, and he who calls himself a man of war and valiant battler for the Lord, has taken refuge from his shame behind a woman’s petticoat, and left her lonely to bear calumny, while she for very loyalty to her child’s sire forbore to name him to the elders, however much they pressed her to declare her paramour.
25th Dec. 1756—O Marguerite, my Marguerite, how fondly have I loved thee! I had e’en thought of asking thee for wife and giving my name to thy brat, but now it is too late—have pity, Heaven!—too late!
Marguerite is no more, and on my brother’s brow is graved indelibly the brand of Cain. From Cujo his blackamoor slave I have the tale, and though I may not denounce him, for I have but my own word, sith word of slave may not be taken in the court against the master, I here and now brand him a murderer. Joshua my brother, Thou art the man!
Together with his black slaves and his Indians, as precious a crew of cut-throats as ever hanged in chains, my brother went to his new house to lay the hearth, and with him went the child and Marguerite. In the darkness of the night they heard her singing to the babe as she gave suck, a wanton song wherewith the Popists greet the Christmas-tide, “Venite adoremus.”
“What means this heathenry within a half-built Christian house?” asks Brother Joshua, and catches her a smart cuff on the ear so that the child fell down upon the floor, and as it set up a wailing he spurned it with his foot. Thereat my Marguerite rose up and snatched a dagger from her dress and wounded him full sore, for she was like a she-bear when it sees its cub threatened.
“By Abraham and Isaac, and by the Joshua whose name I bear, I’ll lay the hearthstone of my house according to the ancient rites!” my brother swears. “My house shall have to guard it that which none other in the colony can boast!”
And then they digged a great hole in the earth before the fireplace, and laid her bound therein, and rolled the hearth-slab forward to cement it over her.
So when she knew her end was come, and all hope fled, she cursed him in the English tongue she scarce could frame to form aright.
“Wo to thee, soiler of the innocent and hider of thy shame,” she told him. “The wrath of God be on thy head and countenance, and on thy sons and thy sons’ sons from generation unto generation. May thou and thy descendants drink blood in the day thy first-born is delivered. May thou and thy seed never look upon the faces of thy children or on thy wives in motherhood, and may this curse endure while hatred lasts!”
What more she would have said they know not, for even Joshua paled before her maledictions, and gave the signal for the stone to be put in its place.
De Grandin was leaning forward, his little round blue eyes fixed on me in a set, unwinking stare as I turned to the next entry. Young Phipps, too, sat rigidly, and it seemed to me the very air of my peaceful study was pregnant with the presence of those tragic actors in the old New England tragedy.
“3rd. Mar. ’58,” I read. “Joshua this day intermarried with Martha Partridge.”
The next item was the last in the book, and seemed much later than the other
s, for the ink retained some semblance of its original blackness.
25th Dec. 1758—The curse has fallen. This night Martha my brother’s wife, who hath been gravid, was delivered of a son whom they will call Elijah. Joshua sate before the fire in his great chair, gazing into the flames and on the hearth-stone which hides the evidence of the filthy act he wrought two little years agone, and thinking the Lord God only knows what thoughts. Did you see Marguerite’s pale face in the flames, brother; did the wind in the chimney recall her pleading voice as you waited the midwife’s summons to ascend the stairs?
Anon they came and said he had a son, and straightaway he rose up and went to look on him. But at the entrance of the chamber he fell down like Sisera of old when Jael smote him. And in that moment salt and bitterness were in his mouth, for from his lips gushed forth a bloody spate that dyed his beard and stained the oaken planking of the floor. He never saw the features of his lawful first-born son.
Have pity, Jesu!
It was dead-still in the study as I closed the little book. The soft hiss of a pine log in the fireplace sounded through the shadows, and the hooting of a motor horn outside came to us like a doleful period to the tale of futile love and stark tragedy.
“It sounds fantastic to me,” I commented as I returned the book to young Phipps. “I remember the Arcadians were expatriated by the New England colonists during King George’s War—Longfellow tells the story in Evangeline—but I never heard the poor devils were made virtual slaves by the New Englanders, or that they—”
“Many unpleasant things concerning our histories we forget easily, my friend,” de Grandin reminded with a slightly sarcastic smile. “Your Monsieur Whittier the realist takes up the tale where Monsieur Longfellow the romanticist leaves off. However,”—he raised his shoulders in a shrug—“why hold resentment? The crimes the ancestors committed against New France was nobly atoned for by their descendants. Did not your soldiers from New England pour out virile young blood like water in two vast transfusions—twice in one generation, by blue! when la belle France bled white with the sale boche’s bayonet wounds? At Cantigny and Château-Thierry and in the Argonne and on the beaches of Normandy they died all gloriously, while the descendants of those very Arcadians rested comfortably at home, enjoying the protection of Britain’s arm, making no move to help the land whence they had sprang—parbleu, I damn think they had sprung too far!”
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