Yet deeper into the forest the child ran, driving the dog before him.
Unless the dog was on the trail of some creature, and leading the boy forward in an ecstasy of blood-excitement.
“Todd! You promised . . .”
Vainly—laughingly—Annabel called after her headstrong cousin.
But Annabel was not truly complaining of Todd, her little cousin whom she loved dearly. His unfailing energy was a marvel to her, who was herself capable of walking for miles, in her good hiking shoes, in Crosswicks Forest and along the creek bank; nearly as far as the Craven house, and back again, on Rosedale Road. And Wilhelmina was an even more experienced hiker.
On this May afternoon the young women were very sensibly dressed for out-of-doors: Annabel in a blue-striped shirtwaist, with a high collar and a tight-clasped belt; Wilhelmina, or “Willy,” in stylish Turkish trousers and a belted blouse. Annabel had tucked a water iris into the silken coil of hair gathered at the nape of her neck: a flower of extreme delicacy that mimicked the violet-blue of her eyes. Her straw sailor hat gave her a pleasing and piquant childlike air and, once out of the sight of the Manse, she had, in imitation of her bolder companion, lifted her chiffon veil off her face, for she found it confining, and disagreeably warm. “Mother worries about my ‘fragile, English’ complexion,” Annabel said, “but I can’t think that the sun will make an aged crone of me in a single hour.”
“Not a single hour, but an accumulation of hours. That is the danger our elders perceive.”
But Willy spoke lightly, dismissively. Annabel’s schoolgirl friend had long cast off a daughterly reverence for her mother’s cautious admonitions, and had a way of speaking so impetuously, Annabel had to laugh.
“Well. We must take the risk, then. After all, the century is very young—it will go on for a long time.”
In Princeton circles, it was acknowledged that Annabel Slade and “Willy” Burr were close as sisters, though very different. While Annabel possessed the sylphid grace of a fairy-tale princess, unstudied and seemingly spontaneous, yet with a dreamy air, Willy presented a dramatic contrast: brash, brusque, heavy-jawed, with eyes that engaged too directly, and too often ironically. Willy’s considerable charm was at first obscured, to the superficial eye, by a certain stolidity in her figure, as in her character. She was a brunette, with a somewhat dark, and very healthy, complexion, while Annabel was ivory-pale, with very fair hair, and very blond eyelashes and brows; Willy was more forceful, as Annabel seemed to glide; yet both young women were likely to be gay-hearted in each other’s company, and to whisper together, and laugh a good deal. (“If only Dabney could make me laugh, as Willy does!”—Annabel said sighing.) Young men complained of Wilhelmina Burr that she was given to unpredictable—“unprovoked”—moods; she could not be relied upon, to turn up when she’d promised; if engaged in croquet, lawn tennis, or court tennis, she could not be relied upon to graciously lose to her male opponents, but seemed rather too intent upon winning; and, having won, was likely to express some satisfaction. Nor did Willy take care with her hair, or her clothes and grooming, as other young Princeton ladies did, conscientiously; Willy’s “Turkish trousers” would have been appropriate for a girl-cyclist, or even a girl hockey player; the plain straw hat on her head looked as if it had been hurriedly clamped in place, with no effort at charm. Willy had cast her gloves away, or had lost them; and carried over her shoulder, like a vagabond in an illustration, a canvas bag into which her sketch pad, pastel chalks, and other art supplies had been thrust. Her high-necked blouse was white cotton, with limp throat-ruffles, and cuffs just perceptively soiled.
Poor Wilhelmina, who struck the eye as distinctly disadvantaged, beside her beautiful friend!—for Mrs. Burr was always nagging at her, and complaining, and worrying that no one would ever wish to marry her, except for her family’s position and wealth. (Willy had “come out” in New York a year before Annabel but had, as yet, received only a scattering of unacceptable marriage offers, from either young men of no fortune, or young men of no family: which only amused the young woman, who commented that she looked forward greatly to declining an “irresistible” offer, like a governess in a romance novel, for the splash it would make in Princeton circles; but was being prevented by Fate.) So little did Willy care for feminine adornment, or for her own feelings, she did not take offense when Todd Slade, earlier in their walk, had presented his cousin with the exquisite water iris but gave to her a sprig of white baneberry, with the remark: “You shall have this, ‘Willy’—for it is said to be poison; and Todd senses, how you dislike him.” Indeed, so far from being offended by the boy’s curious, stiffly uttered words, Willy laughingly accepted the sprig from him, and tucked it into the chignon at the nape of her neck.
IT IS TIME to acknowledge that Mrs. Adelaide Burr, “poor Puss,” had not been entirely misinformed, regarding an UNSPEAKABLE crime in the Princeton vicinity; and this not the ugly episode in Camden, New Jersey, but the disappearance of a young girl of thirteen, sometime during the night of April 30, out of her parents’ home on the Princeton Pike, about midway between Princeton and Trenton; after a search, the body of Priscilla Mae Spags was found floating in the Delaware-Raritan Canal, not far from the family home; though details concerning the nature of the crime were unclear, either because law enforcement officers did not wish to release them, or knew very little. Nor was there any mention of the sordid crime in the weekly Princeton paper. Trenton authorities had acted with commendable swiftness in apprehending and interrogating, in Trenton, a male of “unfixed” address, an immigrant from eastern Europe who handily provided them with a signed confession—signed, that is, with crudely executed initials, for the wretch seemed not to know how to read or write English, or speak English very coherently, nor seemed even confident of his birth date!
So it was, or seemed, that the danger of further unspeakable outrages may have abated in the area; certainly, there should not have been any danger in the forested property belonging to the Slades, that stretched for several miles along Rosedale Road. (Crosswicks Forest, as it was locally known, and the adjoining countryside, were posted against all trespassers, of course; any hunter or poacher among the locals would have been very brash indeed, to set foot on the Slade property, and to risk the hot temper of the Slade gamekeeper, a close acquaintance of the county sheriff.)
The young women strolled briskly, yet with their arms linked, as was their custom; trying not to be nettled by the commotion of Annabel’s young cousin and Thor rushing ahead into the woods; calling out to him, not chidingly, for like a part-bridled young horse the boy balked at being scolded even by Annabel whom he adored, but sweetly—“Todd! Please try to stay in sight, will you? Don’t make us fret over you”—even as the boy shouted back to them, out of the forest underbrush, of the “devils” he and Thor were scaring up—“witches”—“trolls”—the famed “Jersey Devil” itself;* then, with diabolic slyness, doubling back and rushing at them from behind, with Thor noisily barking at his heels, meaning to frighten them; and indeed, to a degree frightening them. In a high-pitched singsong voice Todd demanded of the tensely smiling young women: “The Jersey Devil asks: What is round, and flat, and blank, and tells no lies?”
“ ‘Round, and flat, and blank, and tells no lies . . .’ ”
Unlike her brother Josiah who was skilled at riddles, as at charades, and other parlor games, Annabel was at a loss at such times; and sought to deflect the boy’s intensity by brushing his damp hair from his fevered forehead, and picking burrs from his clothing, and declaring that his riddle was “too difficult” for her—which caused the boy to react in frustration, to gnash his teeth, leap into the air and clap his hands loudly; Annabel was accustomed to such childish tantrums, and only tried to laugh, while Willy shrank away, that the antic boy might not stumble into her. (It was true, as Todd sensed, that Willy did not quite share in Annabel’s indulgent affection for him.) And now Todd confronted Wilhelmina: “What is round, and flat, and blank, and, for you especially, tells no lies?”
Willy tried to smile, as one tries to smile at the over-bright, unsettling children of relatives or friends; she offered the boy a fig bar which he accepted