The Accursed Read Online Free PDF Page A

moon, stared at his friend for a moment without comprehending his question. Family? Was Winslow Slade alluding to Woodrow’s distant “cousin”—Yaeger Washington Ruggles?
    Then, Woodrow realized that of course Winslow was referring to his wife, Ellen, and their daughters. Family.
    “No, Winslow. All is well there.” (Was this so? The answer came quickly, automatically; for it was so often asked.) “It’s another matter I’ve come to discuss with you. Except—I am very ashamed.”
    “ ‘Ashamed’? Why?”
    “But I must unburden my heart to you, Winslow. For I have no one else.”
    “Please, Woodrow! Take a seat. Beside the fire, for you do look chilled. And would you like something to drink?—to warm you?”
    No, no! Woodrow rarely drank.
    Out of personal disdain, or, if he gave thought to it, out of revulsion for the excess of drinking he’d had occasion to observe in certain households in the South.
    Woodrow shivered, sinking into a chair by the fireplace that faced his gracious host. Out of nervousness he removed his eyeglasses to polish them vigorously, a habit that annoyed others, though Winslow Slade took little notice.
    “It is so peaceful here . Thank you, Dr. Slade, for taking time to speak with me!”
    “Of course, Woodrow. You know that I am here, at any time, as your friend and ‘spiritual counselor’—if you wish.”
    In his heightened state of nerves Woodrow glanced about the library, which was familiar to him, yet never failed to rouse him to awe. Indeed, Winslow Slade’s library was one of the marvels of the wealthy West End of Princeton, for the part-retired Presbyterian minister was the owner of a (just slightly damaged and incomplete) copy of the legendary Gutenberg Bible of 1445, which was positioned on a stand close by Winslow’s carved mahogany desk; on another pedestal was an early, 1895 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. And there were first editions of works by Goethe, Kant, Hegel, Fichte, Schelling, Schleiermacher, Ritschl, James Hutchinson Stirling and Thomas Carlyle among others. In his youth Dr. Slade had been something of a classics scholar, and so there were volumes by Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and others in Greek, as well as Latin texts—Virgil, Caesar, Cicero, Seneca, Livy, Cato, and (surprisingly, considering the unmitigated pagan nature of their verse) Ovid, Catullus, and Petronius. And there were the English classics of course—the leather-bound works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Swift, Samuel Johnson through the Romantics—Wordsworth and Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats and, allegedly Dr. Slade’s favorite, the fated John Clare. The library was designed by the celebrated architect John McComb, Jr., famous for having designed Alexander Hamilton’s Grange: among its features were an ornate coffered ceiling, paneled walls of fifteenth-century tooled leather (reputedly taken from the home of Titian), and portraits of such distinguished Slade ancestors as General Elias Slade, the Reverend Azariah Slade, and the Reverend Jonathan Edwards (related by marriage to the original Slade family)—each rendered powerfully by John Singleton Copley. Portraits, daguerreotypes, and shadow drawings of Dr. Slade’s sons Augustus and Copplestone, and his grandchildren Josiah, Annabel, Todd, and little Oriana, also hung on the wall, just behind Dr. Slade’s desk; and should be mentioned here since all but the child Oriana will figure prominently in this chronicle.
    (Is this unobtrusively done? I am a historian, and not a literary stylist; so must “intercalate” such details very consciously, that the reader will take note of them; yet not so obtrusively, that the sensitive reader is offended by over-explicitness.)
    In this gracious room, commanding a position of prominence, was a fireplace of stately proportions in whose marble mantel was carved, in Gothic letters, HIC HABITAT FELICITAS—which caught Woodrow’s eye, as