A Princess of Mars Rethroned
by Edna Rice Burroughs
Copyright 2010 Edna Rice Burroughs
FOREWORD
To the Reader of this Work:
In submitting Captain Carter's strange manuscript to you in book form, I believe that a few words relative to this remarkable personality will be of interest.
My first recollection of Captain Carter is of the few months she spent at my mother's home in Virginia, just prior to the opening of the civil war. I was then a child of but five years, yet I well remember the tall, dark, smooth-faced, athletic woman whom I called Aunt Jack.
She seemed always to be laughing; and she entered into the sports of the children with the same hearty good fellowship she displayed toward those pastimes in which the women and men of her own age indulged; or she would sit for an hour at a time entertaining my old grandfather with stories of her strange, wild life in all parts of the world. We all loved her, and our slaves fairly worshipped the ground she trod.
She was a splendid specimen of womanhood, standing a good two inches over six feet, broad of shoulder and narrow of hip, with the carriage of the trained fighting woman. Her features were regular and clear cut, her hair black and closely cropped, while her eyes were of a steel gray, reflecting a strong and loyal character, filled with fire and initiative. Her manners were perfect, and her courtliness was that of a typical southern gentlewoman of the highest type.
Her horsewomanship, especially after hounds, was a marvel and delight even in that country of magnificent horsewomen. I have often heard my mother caution her against her wild recklessness, but she would only laugh, and say that the tumble that killed her would be from the back of a horse yet unfoaled.
When the war broke out she left us, nor did I see her again for some fifteen or sixteen years. When she returned it was without warning, and I was much surprised to note that she had not aged apparently a moment, nor had she changed in any other outward way. She was, when others were with her, the same genial, happy fellow we had known of old, but when she thought herself alone I have seen her sit for hours gazing off into space, her face set in a look of wistful longing and hopeless misery; and at night she would sit thus looking up into the heavens, at what I did not know until I read her manuscript years afterward.
She told us that she had been prospecting and mining in Arizona part of the time since the war; and that she had been very successful was evidenced by the unlimited amount of money with which she was supplied. As to the details of her life during these years she was very reticent, in fact she would not talk of them at all.
She remained with us for about a year and then went to New York, where she purchased a little place on the Hudson, where I visited her once a year on the occasions of my trips to the New York market--my mother and I owning and operating a string of general stores throughout Virginia at that time. Captain Carter had a small but beautiful cottage, situated on a bluff overlooking the river, and during one of my last visits, in the winter of 1885, I observed she was much occupied in writing, I presume now, upon this manuscript.
She told me at this time that if anything should happen to her she wished me to take charge of her estate, and she gave me a key to a compartment in the safe which stood in her study, telling me I would find her will there and some personal instructions which she had me pledge myself to carry out with absolute fidelity.
After I had retired for the night I have seen her from my window standing in the moonlight on the brink of the bluff overlooking the Hudson with her arms stretched out to the heavens as though in appeal. I thought at the time that she was praying, although I never understood that she was in the strict sense of the term a religious woman.
Several months after I had returned home from my last visit, the first of March, 1886, I think, I received a telegram from her asking me to come to her at once. I had always been her favorite among the younger generation of Carters and so I hastened to comply with her demand.
I arrived at the little station, about a mile from her grounds, on the morning of March 4, 1886, and when I asked the livery woman to drive me out to Captain Carter's she replied that if I was a friend of the Captain's she had some very bad news for me; the Captain had been found dead shortly after daylight that very morning by the watchman attached to an adjoining property.
For some reason this news did not surprise me, but I hurried out to her place as quickly as possible, so that I could take charge of the body and of her affairs.
I found the watchman who had discovered her, together with the local police chief and several townspeople, assembled in her little study. The watchman related the few details connected with the finding of the body, which she said had been still warm when she came upon it. It lay, she said, stretched full length in the snow with the arms outstretched above the head toward the edge of the bluff, and when she showed me the spot it flashed upon me that it was the identical one where I had seen her on those other nights, with her arms raised in supplication to the skies.
There were no marks of violence on the body, and with the aid of a local physician the coroner's jury quickly reached a decision of death from heart failure. Left alone in the study, I opened the safe and withdrew the contents of the drawer in which she had told me I would find my instructions. They were in part peculiar indeed, but I have followed them to each last detail as faithfully as I was able.
She directed that I remove her body to Virginia without embalming, and that she be laid in an open coffin within a tomb which she previously had had constructed and which, as I later learned, was well ventilated. The instructions impressed upon me that I must personally see that this was carried out just as she directed, even in secrecy if necessary.
Her property was left in such a way that I was to receive the entire income for twenty-five years, when the principal was to become mine. Her further instructions related to this manuscript which I was to retain sealed and unread, just as I found it, for eleven years; nor was I to divulge its contents until twenty-one years after her death.
A strange feature about the tomb, where her body still lies, is that the massive door is equipped with a single, huge gold-plated spring lock which can be opened only from the inside.
Yours very sincerely,
Edna Rice Burroughs.