"was not fright,But a tremulous delight."
"was not fright,But a tremulous delight."
His learning to write bore still another fruit.
When Mrs. Allan had first adopted him and set apart a room in her home for him, she had placed in a little cabinet therein the packet of letters his dying mother had given him. She had not opened the packet, for she felt that the letters were for the actress's child's eye alone. He, when he looked at it, did so with a feeling of mixed reverence and fascination which was deepened by his inability to decipher the secrets bound together by the bit of blue ribbon tied around it. How the sight of the packet recalled to him that sad, that solemn hour in which it had been given into his hands! When getting him ready for boarding-school, Mrs. Allan had packed the letters with his other belongings, for she was a woman of sentiment, and she felt the child should not be parted from this gift of his dying mother. But at length, when a knowledge of writing made it possible for him to read the letters, he was possessed with a feeling of shrinking from doing so, as one might shrink from opening a message from the grave.
What grim, what terrible secrets, might not the little bundle of letters reveal!
It was not until his fifth and last year at Stoke-Newington that Edgar decided one day to look into the packet. He was confined to his bed by slight indisposition and so had the dormitory to himself and could risk opening the letters without fear of interruption. He untied the blue ribbon and the thin, yellowed papers, with fragments of their broken seals still sticking to them, fell apart. He picked up the one bearing the earliest date and began to read. It was from his father to his mother immediately after their betrothal. His interest was at once intensely aroused and in the order in which the letters came, he read, and read, and read, with the absorption with which he might have read his first novel. They were a revelation to him—a revelation of a world he had not known existed, though it seemed, it lay roundabout him—these love-letters of his parents, literally throbbing with the exalted passion of two young, ardent, poetic spirits. The boy had not dreamed that anything so beautiful could be as this undying love of which they wrote and the language in which they made their sweet vows to each other. His own heart throbbed in answer to what he read. His imagination was violently wrought upon and exquisite feelings such as he had never known before awakened in his breast.
Under the spell of the letters the child-poet fell in love—not with any creature of flesh and blood, for his entire acquaintance and association was with boys—but with the ideal of his inner vision. From that time, his poetic outbursts came to be filled with—more than aught else—the surpassing beauty, the worshipful goodness, the divine love of woman. He was a naturally reverent boy, but for these more than mortal beings, as they appeared to his fancy, was reserved the supreme worship of his romantic soul. Indeed, the adoration of his ideal woman—perfect in body, in mind and in soul, became, and was to be always, a religion to him.
To imagine himself rescuing from a dark prison tower, hid in a deep wood, or from a watery grave in a black and rock-bound lake, at midnight, some lovely maiden whose every thought and heart-beat would thenceforth be for him alone—this became the entrancing inward vision of Edgar the Dreamer—the poet—the lover, at whom Edgar Goodfellow with whisper as insistent as the voice of Conscience, scoffed and sneered, seeking to make him ashamed; but all in vain.
Of course it was to follow, as the night the day, that the boy would find someone in whom to dress his ideal. Upon a Sunday soon after his falling in love, he saw the very maiden of his dreams in the flesh. It was in the Gothic church. From the remote pew in the gallery where he sat with his school-mates, he looked down upon a wonderful vision of white and gold in one of the principal pews of the main aisle. Clad all in white and with a shower of golden tresses falling over her shoulders, she was like a glorious lily or a holy angel. Her eyes, uplifted in the rapture of worship, he divined, rather than saw, were of the hue of heaven itself. He loved her at once, with all his soul's might. Her name? Her home? These were mysteries—sacred mysteries—whose unfathomableness but added to her charm.
After that, service in the Gothic church was a much more important event to The Dreamer than before—an event looked forward to with trembling from Sunday to Sunday. After that too, upon his periodical week-day walks with the school, he would look up at the quaint old homesteads they passed, with their hedged gardens, ivied walls and sweet-scented shrubberies, and try to guess which was the house-wonderful in which she dwelt. Then suddenly, one sweet May afternoon, he discovered it.
It was, as was fitting, the most antique, the most distinguished mansion of them all. He saw her through the bars of the stately entrance gate as she sat beside her mother, on a garden-seat, tying into nosegays the flowers that filled her lap. Stupified by the shock of the discovery, he stood rooted to the ground, letting his school-mates go on ahead of him. She was much nearer him than she had been in the dusky church, and upon closer view, she seemed even more lovely, more flower-like, more angelic than ever before. He stared upon her face with a gaze so compelling that she looked up and smiled at him; then, with sudden impulse, gathered her flowers in her apron, and running forward, handed him through the gate, a fragrant, creamy bud that she happened at the moment to have in her hand.
As in a dream, he stretched his fingers for it. He tried to frame an expression of thanks, but his lips were dry and though they moved, no sound came. She had returned at once to her seat beside her mother, and the voice of the usher (who had just missed him) sharply calling to him to "Come on!" was in his ears. He hurried forward, trembling in all his limbs. Twice he stumbled and nearly fell. The bud, he had quickly hidden within his jacket—it was too holy a thing for the profane eyes of his school-fellows to look upon.
When strength and reason came back to him he was like a new being. Happiness gave wings to his feet and he walked on air. A divine song seemed to be singing in his ears. Mechanically, he went through the regular routine of school, with no difference that others could see. To himself, heart and soul—detached and divorced from his body—seemed soaring in a new and beautiful world in which lessons and teachers had no place, no part. Whenever it was possible for him to do so unobserved, he would snatch the rose from his bosom and kiss and caress it. He only lived to see Sunday come round.
But on the next Sunday and the next she was absent from her accustomed place. Such a thing had not happened before since he had first seen her. He was filled with the first real anxiety he had ever known. Here was a mystery in which there was no charm!
The Wednesday after the second Sunday upon which he had missed her was a day dropped out of heaven. The mild, early summer air that floated through the open windows into the gloomy, oak-ceiled schoolroom, was ambrosial with the breathings of flowers. Young Edgar could not fix his thoughts upon the page before him. The out-of-door world was calling to him. He found himself listening to the birds in the trees outside and gazing through the narrow, pointed windows at the waving branches.
Suddenly his heart stopped. The deep, sweet, hollow, ghostlike voice of the bell in the steeple, tolling for a funeral, was borne to his ears. In a moment his fevered imagination associated the tolling with the absence of his divinity from her pew, and in spite of passionately assuring himself that it could not be, and recalling how lovely and full of health she had been when he saw her through the gate, he was possessed by deep melancholy.
The days and hours until Sunday seemed an age to him—an age of foreboding and dread—but they at last passed by. In a fever of anxiety, he walked with the rest of the boys to church, and mounted the steps to the school gallery.
It was early; few of the worshippers had arrived, but in a little while there was a stir near the door. A group of figures shrouded in the black habiliments of woe were moving up the aisle—were enteringherpew, from which alas,shewas again absent!
Then he knew—knew that she would enter that sacred placenevermore!
After the service there were inquiries as to the cause of a commotion in the gallery occupied by the Manor House School, and it was said in reply that the weather being excessively hot for the season, one of the boys had fainted.
The June following young Edgar's eleventh birthday found him in Richmond once more. The village-like little capital was all greenery and roses and sunshine and bird-song and light-hearted laughter, and he felt, with a glow, that it was good to be back.
In the five years of his absence he had grown quite tall for his age, with a certain dignity and self-possession of bearing acquired from becoming accustomed to depend upon himself. All that was left of the nut-brown curls that used to flow over his shoulders were the clustering ringlets that covered his head and framed his large brow. His absence had also wrought in him other and more subtle changes which did not appear to the friends who remarked upon what a great boy he had grown—a maturity from having lived in another world—from having had his thoughts expanded by new scenes and quickened by the suggestions of historic association and surroundings.
But with his return, England and Stoke-Newington sank into the shadowy past—their spell weakened, for the time being, by the thought-absorbing, heart-filling scenes of which he had now become a part. The years at the Manor House School were as a dream—thiswas the real thing—thiswas Home.Home—ah, the charm of that word and all it implied! His heart swelled, his eyes grew misty as he said it over and over to himself. The clatter of drays "down town" was like music in his ears, the dusty streets of the residential section were fair to his eyes for old time's sake. How he loved the very pavement under his feet, rough and uneven as it was; how dearly he loved the trees that he had climbed (and would climb again) which stretched their friendly boughs over his head!
In a state of happy excitement he rushed about town, visiting his old haunts to see if they were still there, and "the same."
"Comrade," his brown spaniel—his favorite of all his pets—had grown old and sober and had quite forgotten him, but his love was soon reawakened. The boys he had played with, too, had almost forgotten him, but his return called him to mind again and put them all in a flutter. A boy who had lived five years on the other side of the ocean and had been to an English boarding school, was not seen in Richmond every day. Mrs. Allan gave him a party to which all of the children in their circle were invited. In anticipation of this, he had purchased in London, out of the abundance of pocket-money with which his doting foster-mother always saw to it he was provided, a number of little gifts to be distributed among the boys at home. These, with the distinction his travels gave him, made him the man of the hour among Richmond children. And how much he had to tell! At Stoke-Newington it was always the boys at home that were the heroes of the stories he spun by the yard for the entertainment of his school-fellows—the literal among whom had come to believe that there was no feat a Virginia boy could not perform. Now that he was in Richmond, the Stoke-Newington boys themselves loomed up as the wonder-workers, and his playmates listened with admiration and with such expression as, "Caesar's ghost!"—"Jiminy!"—"Cracky!" and the like, as he narrated his tales of "Freckles," "Goggles," "the Beau," and the rest.
One of his first visits after reaching home was to his old black "Mammy," in the tiny cottage, with its prolific garden-spot, on the outskirts of the town, in which Mr. Allan had installed her and her husband, "Uncle Billy," before leaving Virginia.
"Mammy" was expecting him. With one half of her attention upon the white cotton socks she was knitting for her spouse and the other half on the gate of her small garden through which her "chile" would come, she sat in her doorway awaiting him. She was splendidly arrayed in her new purple calico and a big white apron, just from under the iron. Her gayest bandanna "hankercher" covered her tightly "wropped" locks from view and the snowiest of "neckerchers" was crossed over her ample bosom. Her kind, black countenance was soft with thoughts of love.
"Uncle Billy," too, was spruced for the occasion. Indeed, he was quite magnificent in a "biled shut," with ruffles, and an old dresscoat of "Marster's." His top-boots were elaborately blacked, and a somewhat battered stove-pipe hat crowned his bushy grey wool. Each of the old folks comfortably smoked a corn-cob pipe.
"Mammy" saw her boy coming first. She could hardly believe it was he—he was so tall—but she was up and away, down the path, in a flash. Half-way to the gate that opened on the little back street, she met him and enveloped him at once in her loving arms.
"Bless de Lord, O my soul!" she repeated over and over again in a sort of chant, as she held him against her bosom and rocked back and forth on her broad feet, tears of joy rolling down her face.
"De probable am returned," announced Uncle Billy, solemnly.
"G'long, Billy," she said, contemptuously. "He ain' noprobable. He jes' Mammy's own li'l' chile, if heisgrowed so tall!"
"I'se only 'peatin' what de Good Book say," replied Uncle Billy, with dignity.
Edgar was crying too, and laughing at the same time.
"Howdy, Uncle Billy," said he, stretching a hand to the old man as soon as he could extricate himself from Mammy's embrace. "My, my, you do look scrumptious! How's the rheumatiz?"
"Now jes' heah dat! Rememberin' uv de ole man's rheumatiz arter all dis time!" exclaimed the delighted Uncle Billy. "'Twus mighty po'ly, thankee, li'l Marster, but de sight o' you done make it better a'ready. I 'clar 'fo' Gracious, if de sight of you wouldn' be good for so' eyes! Socifyin' wid dem wile furren nations ain' hu't you a bit—'deed it ain't!"
"How did you expect them to hurt me, Uncle Billy?" asked Edgar, laughing.
"I was 'feard dey mought make aInjun, or sum'in' out'n you."
"G'long, Billy," put in his wife, with increased contempt, "Marse Eddie ain' been socifyin' wid no Injuns—he been socifyin' wid kings an' queens' settin' on dey thrones, wid crowns on dey haids an' spectres in dey han's! Come 'long in de house, Honey, an' set awhile wid Mammy."
As they crossed the threshold of the humble abode, Edgar looked around upon its familiar, homely snugness with satisfaction—at the huge, four-post bed, covered with a cheerful "log cabin" quilt made of scraps of calico of every known hue and pattern; at the white-washed walls adorned with pictures cut from old books and magazines; at the "shelf," as Mammy called the mantel-piece, with its lambrequin of scallopped strips of newspaper, and its china vases filled with hundred-leaf roses and pinks; at the spotless bare floor and homemade split-bottomed chairs; at the small, but bright, windows, with their rows of geraniums and verbenas, brilliantly blooming in boxes, tin-cans and broken-nosed tea-pots.
Almost all that Mammy could say was,
"Lordy, Lordy, Honey, how you has growed!" Or, "Jes' to think of Mammy's baby sech a big boy!"
Presently a shadow crossed her face. "Honey," she said, "You gittin' to be sech a man now, you won't have no mo' use fur po' ole Mammy. Dar won't be a thing fur her to do fur sech a big man-chile."
"Don't you believe that, for a minute, Mammy," was the quick reply. "I was just wondering if you had forgotten how to make those good ash-cakes."
"Now, jes' listen to de chile, makin' game o' his ole Mammy!" she exclaimed. "Livin' so high wid all dem hifalutin' kings an' queens an' sech, an' den comin' back here an' makin' ten' he wouldn' 'spise Mammy's ash-cakes!"
"I'm in dead earnest, Mammy. Indeed, indeed and double deed, I am. Kings and queens don't have anything on their tables half as good as one of your ash-cakes, with a glass of cool butter-milk."
"Dat so, Honey?" she queried, with wonder. "Den you sho'ly shall have some, right away. Mammy churn dis ve'y mornin', and dars a pitcher of buttermilk coolin' in de spring dis minute. You des' make you'se'f at home an' I'll step in de kitchen an' cook you a ash-cake in a jiffy. Billy, you pick me some nice, big cabbage leaves to bake it in whilst I'm mixin' de dough, an' den go an' git de butter-milk an' a pat o' dat butter I made dis mornin' out'n de spring."
Edgar and Uncle Billy followed her into the kitchen where she deftly mixed the corn-meal dough, shaped it in her hands into a thick round cake, which she wrapped in fresh cabbage leaves and put down in the hot ashes on the hearth to bake. Meantime the following conversation between Edgar and the old "Uncle:"
"Uncle Billy do you ever see ghosts now-adays?"
"To be sho', li'l' Marster, to be sho'. Sees 'em mos' any time. Saw one las' Sunday night."
"What was it like, Uncle Billy?"
"Like, Honey?—Like ole Mose, dat's what t'wus like. Does you 'member Mose whar useter drive de hotel hack?"
"Yes, he's dead isn't he?"
"Yes, suh, daid as a do' nail. Dat's de cur'us part on it. He's daid an' was buried las' Sunday ebenin'—buried deep. I know, 'ca'se I wus dar m'se'f. But dat night when I had gone to bed an' wus gittin' off to meh fus' nap, I was woke up on a sudden by de noise uv a gre't stompin' an' trompin' an snortin' in de road. I jump up an' look out de winder, an' I 'clar' 'fo' Gracious if dar warn't Mose, natchel as life, horses an' hack an' all, tearin' by at a break-neck speed. I'se seed many a ghos' an' a ha'nt in meh time, uvhumans, but dat wus de fus' time I uver heard tell uv a horse or a hack risin' f'um de daid. 'Twus skeery, sho'!"
Before Edgar had time for comment upon this remarkable apparition, Mammy set before him the "snack" she had prepared of smoking ash-cake and fresh butter, on her best china plate—the one with the gilt band—and placed at his right hand a goblet and a stone pitcher of cool butter-milk. A luncheon, indeed, fit to be set before royalty, though it is not likely that any of them ever had such an one offered them—poor things!
Edgar did full justice to the feast and was warm in his praises of it. Then, before taking his leave, he placed in Mammy's hands a parcel containing gifts from the other side of the water for her and Uncle Billy. There is nothing so dear to the heart of an old-time negro as a present, and as the aged couple opened the package and drew out its treasures, their black faces fairly shone with delight. Mammy could not forbear giving her "chile" a hug of gratitude and freshly springing love, while Uncle Billy heartily declared,
"De Lord will sho'ly bless you, li'l' Marster, fur de Good Book do p'intedly say dat He do love one chufful giver."
To young Edgar's home-keeping playmates, he seemed to be the luckiest boy in the world, and indeed, his brief existence had been up to this time, as fortunate as it appeared to them. Even the beautiful sorrow of his mother's death had filled his life with poetry and brought him sympathy and affection in abundant measure.
But bitterness was soon enough to enter his soul. His thoughts from the moment of his return to Richmond, had frequently turned to the white church and churchyard on the hill—and to the grave beside the wall. Thither he was determined to go as soon as he possibly could, but it was too sacred a pilgrimage to be mentioned to anyone—it must be as secret as he could make it; and so he must await an opportunity to slip off when he would be least apt to be missed. He chose a sultry afternoon when Mr. and Mrs. Allan were taking a long drive into the country. He waited until sunset—thinking there would be less probability of meeting anyone in the churchyard after that hour than earlier—and set out, taking with him a cluster of white roses from the summer-house in the garden.
It was nearly dusk when he reached the church and climbed the steps that led to the walled graveyard, elevated above the street-level. Never had the spot looked so fair to him. The white spire, piercing the blue sky, seemed almost to touch the slender new moon, with the evening star glimmering by her side. The air was sweet with the breath of roses and honeysuckle, and the graves were deeply, intensely green. Long he lay upon the one by the wall, near the head of which he had placed his white roses—looking up at the silver spire and the silver star and the moon's silver bow—so long that he forgot the passage of time, and when he reached home and went in out of the night to the bright dining-room, blinking his great grey eyes to accustom them to the lamp-light, supper was over.
The keen eyes of John Allan looked sternly upon him from under their fierce brows. The boy saw at once that his foster-father was very angry.
"Where have you been?" he demanded, harshly.
"Nowhere," replied the boy.
"What have you been doing all this time?"
"Nothing," was the answer.
"Nowhere? Nothing? Don't nowhere and nothing me, Sir. Those are the replies—the lying replies—of a boy who has been in mischief. If you had not been where you shouldn't have been, and doing as you shouldn't have done, you would not be ashamed to tell. Now, Sir, tell me at once, where you have been and what you have been doing?"
The boy grew pale, but made no reply, and in the eyes fixed on Mr. Allan's face was a provokingly stubborn look. The man's wrath waxed warmer. His voice rose. In a tone of utter exasperation he cried, "Tell me at once, I say, or you shall have the severest flogging you ever had in your life!"
The boy grew paler still, and his eyes more stubborn. A scowl settled upon his brow and a look of dogged determination about his mouth, but still he spoke not a word.
Mrs. Allan looked from one to the other of these two beings—husband and son—who made her heart's world. The evening was warm and she wore a simple white dress with low neck and short sleeves. Anxiety clouded her lovely face, yet never had she looked more girlishly sweet—more appealing; but the silent plea in her beautiful, troubled eyes was lost on John Allan, much as he loved her.
"Tell him, Eddie dear," she implored. "Don't be afraid. Speak up like a man!"
Still silence.
She walked over to the table where the boy sat before the untouched supper that had been saved for him, and dropped upon one knee beside him. She placed her arm around him and drew him against her gentle bosom—he suffering her, though not returning the caress.
"Tellme, Eddie, darling—tell Mother," she coaxed.
The grey eyes softened, the brow lifted. "There's nothing to tell, Mother," he gently replied.
Mr. Allan rose from his chair. "I'll give you five minutes in which to find something to tell," he exclaimed, shaking a trembling finger at the culprit; then stalked out of the room.
In his absence his wife fell upon the neck of the pale, frowning child, covering his face and his curly head with kisses, and beseeching him with honeyed endearments, to be a good boy and obey his father. But the little figure seemed to have turned to stone in her arms. In less than the five minutes Mr. Allan was back in the room, trimming a long switch cut from one of the trees in the garden as he came.
"Are you ready to tell me the truth?" he demanded.
No answer.
Still trimming the switch, he approached the boy. Frances Allan trembled. Rising from the child's side, she clasped her husband's arm in both her hands.
"Don't, John! Don't, please, John dear. I can't stand it," she breathed. He put her aside, firmly.
"Don't be silly, Frances. You are interfering with my duty. Can't you see that I must teach the boy to make you a better return for your kindness than lying to hide his mischief?"
"But suppose that he is telling the truth, John, and that he has been doing nothing worse than wandering about the streets? You know the way he has always had of roaming about by himself, at times."
"And do you think roaming about the streets at this time of night proper employment for a boy of eleven? Would you have him grow up into a vagabond? A boy dependent upon the bounty of strangers can ill afford to cultivate such idle habits!"
The boy's already large and dark pupils dilated and darkened until his eyes looked like black, storm-swept pools. His already white face grew livid. He drew back as if he had been struck and fixed upon his foster-father a gaze in which every spark of affection was, for the moment, dead. He had been humiliated by the threat of a flogging, but the prospect of the hardest stroke his body might receive was as nothing to him now. His sensitive soul had been smitten a blow the smart of which he would carry with him to his last day. "Dependent upon the bounty of strangers,"—of strangers!
Up to this time he had been the darling little son of an over-fond mother, and though his foster-father had been at times, stern and unsympathetic with him, no hint had ever before dropped from him to indicate that the child was not as much his own as the sons of other fathers were their own—that he was not as much entitled to the good things of life which were heaped upon him without the asking as an own son would have been. His comforts—his pleasures had been so easily, so plentifully bestowed that the little dreamer had never before awaked to a realization of a difference between his relation with his parents and the relation of other children with theirs. Brought face to face with this hard, cold fact for the first time, and so suddenly, he was for the moment stunned by it. He felt that a flood of deep waters in which he was floundering helplessly was overwhelming him.
A deep silence had followed the last words of Mr. Allan, who continued to trim the switch, while his wife, sinking into a chair, bowed her face in her arms, folded upon the table, and began to cry softly. The gentle sounds of her weeping seemed but further to infuriate her husband.
"Come with me," he commanded, placing his hand on the shoulder of the child, who unresistingly suffered himself to be pushed along toward his foster-father's room. Frances Allan broke into wild sobbing and placed her fingers against her ears that she might not hear the screams of her pet. But there were no screams. Silently, and with an air of dignity it was marvellous so small a figure could command, the beautiful boy received the blows. When one's soul has been hurt, what matters mere physical pain? When both the strength and the passion of Mr. Allan had been somewhat spent, he ceased laying on blows and asked in a calmed voice,
"Are you ready to tell me the truth now?"
In one moment of time the child lived over again the beautiful hour at his mother's grave. He saw again the silver spire and the silver half-moon and the silver star—smelled the blended odors of honeysuckle and rose, made sweeter, by the gathering dews, and felt the coolness and freshness of the long green grass that covered the grave. Who knew but that deep down under the sweet grass she had been conscious he was there—had felt his heart beat and heard his loving whispers as of old, and loved him still, and understood, though she would see him nevermore? Share the secret of that holy hour with anyone—of all people, with this wrathful, blind, unsympathizing man who had just confessed himself a stranger to him? Never!
A faint smile, full of peace, settled upon his poet's face, but he answered never a word.
There was a stir at the door. John Allan looked toward it. His wife stood there drying her eyes. He turned to the boy again.
"Go with your mother and get your supper," he commanded.
"I don't want it," was the reply.
"Well, go to bed then, and tomorrow afternoon you are to spend in your own room, where I hope meditation upon your idle ways may bring you to something like repentance."
The boy paused half-way to the door. "Tomorrow is the day I'm going swimming with the boys. You promised that I might go."
"Well, I take back the promise, that's all."
"Don't you think you've punished him enough for this time, John?" timidly asked his wife.
"No boy is ever punished enough until he is conquered," was the reply. "And Edgar is far from that!"
Mrs. Allan, with her arm about the little culprit's shoulder went with him to his room. How she wished that he would let her cuddle him in her lap and sing to him and tell him stories and then hear him his prayers at her knee and tuck him in bed as in the old days before he went to boarding-school! Her heart ached for him, though she had no notion of the bitterness, the rebellion, that were rankling in his. As she kissed him goodnight she whispered,
"You shall have your swim, in the river, tomorrow, Eddie darling; I'll see that you do."
"Don't you askhimto let me do anything," he protested, passionately. "I'm going without asking him. He disowned me for a son, I'll disown him for a father!"
He loved her but he was glad when the door closed behind her so that he could think it all out for himself in the dark—the dear dark that he had always loved so well and that was now as balm to his bruised spirit. The worst of it was that he could not disown John Allan as a father. He had to confess to himself with renewed bitterness that he was indeed, and by no fault of his own—a helpless dependent upon the charity of this man who had, in taunting him with the fact, wounded him so grievously. His impulse was to run away—but where could he go? Though his small purse held at that moment a generous amount of spending money for a boy "going on twelve," it would be a mere nothing toward taking him anywhere. It would not afford him shelter and food for a day, and he knew it—it would not take him to the only place where he knew he had kindred—Baltimore. And what if he could get as far as Baltimore, would he care to go there? To assert his independence of the charity of John Allan only to throw himself upon the charity of relatives who had never noticed him—whom he hated because they had never forgiven his father for marrying the angel mother around whose memory his fondest dreams clung?
No, he could not disown Mr. Allan—not yet; but the good things of life received from his hands had henceforth lost their flavor and would be like Dead Sea fruit upon his lips. Hitherto, though he knew, of course, that he was not the Allans' own child, he had never once been made to feel that he was any the less entitled to their bounty. They had adopted him of their own free will to fill the empty arms of a woman with a mother's heart who had never been a mother, and that woman had lavished upon him almost more than a mother's love—certainly more than a prudent mother's indulgence. He had been the most spoiled and petted child of his circle, and the bounty had been heaped upon him in a manner that made him feel—child though he was—the joy that the giving brought the giver, and therefore no burden of obligation upon himself in receiving. If Mr. Allan had been strict to a point of harshness with him, at times, Mr. Allan was a born disciplinarian—it seemed natural for him to be stern and unsympathetic and those who knew him best took his stiffness and hardness with many grains of allowance, remembering his upright life and his open-handed charities. He had administered punishment upon the little lad when he was naughty in the years before he went away to school, and the little lad had taken his medicine philosophically like other naughty boys—had cried lustily, then dried his eyes and forgotten all about it in the pleasure which the goodies and petting he always had from his pretty, tender-hearted foster-mother at such times gave him. Butthiswas different. He was a big lad now—very big and old, he felt, far too big to be flogged; quite big enough to visit his mother's grave, if he chose, without having to talk about it. And he had not only been flogged because he would not reveal his sacred, sweet secret, but had had his dependence upon charity thrown up at him!
Henceforth, he felt, his life would be a lonely one, for he now knew that he was different from other boys, all of whom (in his acquaintance) had fathers to whose bounty they had a right—the right of sonship. Yes, he was a very big boy (he told himself) and he had not cried when he was flogged, but under the cover of the kindly dark, hot tears of indignation, hurt pride and pity for his own loneliness—his singularity—made all his pillow wet.
Comfort came to him from an unexpected source. The door of his room had been closed, but not latched. It was now pushed open by "Comrade," his old spaniel, who made straight for his side, first pushing his nose against his face and then leaping upon the bed and nestling down close to him, with a sigh of satisfaction. The desolate boy welcomed this dumb, affectionate companionship. The feel of the warm, soft body, and the thought of the velvety brown eyes which he could not see in the dark, but knew were fixed upon him with their intense, loving gaze, were soothing to his overwrought nerves. Here was something whose love could be counted upon—something as dependent upon him as he was upon Mr. Allan; yet what a joy he found in the very dependence of this devoted, soft-eyed creature! Never would he taunt Comrade with his dependence upon charity.
"No;" he said, his hands deep in the silky coat, "I would not insult a dog as he has insulted me! Never mind, Comrade, old fellow, we'll have our swim in the river tomorrow, and he may flog me again if he likes."
But he was not flogged the next day. An important business engagement occupied Mr. Allan the whole afternoon, and when he came in late, tired and pre-occupied, he found Edgar fresh and glowing from his exercise in the river, the curls still damp upon his forehead, quietly eating his supper with his mother.Sheknew, but tender creature that she was, she was prepared to do anything short of fibbing to shield her pet from another out-burst. But John Allan, still absorbed in business cares, hardly looked toward the boy, and asked not a question.
The home of the Allans was never quite the same to Edgar Poe after that night. A wall had been raised between him and his foster-father that would never be scaled. He was still indulged in a generous amount of pocket money which he invariably proceeded to get rid of as fast as he could—lavishing it upon the enjoyment of his friends as freely as it had been lavished upon him. He had plenty of pets and toys, went to dancing school, in which his natural love of dancing made him delight, and was given stiff but merry little parties, at which old Cy, the black fiddler played and called the figures, and the little host and his friends conformed to the strict, ceremonious etiquette observed by the children as well as the grown people of the day.
For these indulgences Frances Allan was chiefly responsible. The one weak spot in the armor of austerity in which John Allan clothed himself was his love for his wife, and it was often against what he felt to be his better judgment that he acquiesced in her system of child-spoiling. He felt a solemn responsibility toward the boy, and he did his duty by him, as he saw it, faithfully. It was not in the least his fault that he didnotsee that under the broad white brow and sunny ringlets was a brain in which, like the sky in a dew-drop, a whole world was reflected, with ever changing pageantry, and that the abstracted expression in the boy's eyes that he thought could only mean that he was "hatching mischief," really indicated that the creative faculty in budding genius was awake and at work.
For a child Edgar's age to be making trials at writing poetry Mr. Allan regarded as sheer idleness, to be promptly suppressed. Indeed, when he discovered that the boy had been guilty of such foolishness, he emphatically ordered him not to repeat it. To counteract the effects of his wife's spoiling of her adopted son, he felt it his duty to place all manner of restrictions upon his liberty, which the freedom-loving boy, with the connivance of his mother and the negro servants who adored him, disregarded whenever it was possible. Though bathing in the river was (except upon rare occasions) prohibited, Edgar became before summer was over, the most expert swimmer and diver of his years in town, and many an afternoon when Mr. Allan supposed that he was in his room, to which he had been ordered for the purpose of disciplining his will and character, or for punishment, he was far beyond the city's limits roaming the woods, the fields, or the river-banks—joyously, and without a prick of conscience (for all his disobedience) feeding his growing soul upon the beauties of tree, and sky, and cliff, and water-fall.
And so, in spite of the melancholy moods in which he was occasionally plunged by the bitterness which had found lodgment in his breast, the summer was upon the whole a happy one to the boy. He was so young and the world was so beautiful! He could not remember always to be unhappy. Edgar Goodfellow, as well as Edgar the Dreamer, revelled in the world of Out-of-Door. To the one all manner of muscular sport and exercise was as the breath of his nostrils; to the other, whose favorite stories were ancient myths and fairy-tales, all natural phenomena possessed vivid personality. He loved to trace pictures in the clouds. In the rustling of corn or the stirring of leaves in the trees, or in the sound of running waters he heard voices which spoke to him of delightsome things, bringing to his full, grey eyes, as he hearkened, a soft, romantic look, and touching his lips and his cheeks with a radiant spirituality.
The cottage, on Clay Street, to which the Allans had removed soon after their return from England, was in a quiet part of the town. The window of Edgar's own, quaint little room in the dormer roof, with its shelving walls, gave him a fair view of the sky, and brought him sweet airs wafted across the garden of old-fashioned flowers below. Here, such hours as he spent from choice or by command were not lonely, for, sitting by the little window, many a story or poem was thought out; or buried in some favorite book his thoughts would be borne away as if on wings to a world where imagination was king.
In the fall he was entered at Mr. Clarke's school. The school-room, with its white-washed walls and the sun pouring in, unrestricted, through the commonplace, big, bare windows, was very different from the great, gloomy Gothic room at old Stoke-Newington—so full of mystery and suggestion—but Edgar found it a pleasant place in which to be upon that cool fresh morning in late September, when he made its acquaintance. He felt full of mental activity and ready to go to work with a will upon his Latin, his French and his mathematics. Since his return from England, in June, he had become acquainted with most of the boys who were to be his school-fellows, and he took at once to the school-master, Professor Clarke, of Trinity College, Dublin—a middle-aged bachelor of Irish birth, an accomplished gentleman and a very human creature, with a big heart, a high ideal of what boys might be and abundant tolerance of what they generally were. If he had a quick temper, he had also a quick wit, and a quick appreciation of talent and sympathy with timorous aspirations.
It had been Master Clarke's suggestion that his new pupil, who was known as Edgar Allan, should put his own name upon the school register. Edgar, looking questioningly up into Mr. Allan's face, was glad to read approval there, and with a thrill of pride he wrote upon the book, in the small, clear hand that had become characteristic of him:
"Edgar Allan Poe."
He was proud of his name and proud of his father, of whom he remembered nothing, but in whose veins, he knew, had run patriot blood, and who had had the independence to risk all for love of the beautiful mother of worshipped memory. It was with straightened shoulders and a high head that he took the seat assigned him at the clumsy desk, in the bare, ugly room of the school in which he was to be known for the first time asEdgar Poe. He felt that in coming into his own name he had come into a proud heritage.
Mr. Clarke's Irish heart warmed toward him. He divined in the big-browed, big-eyed boy a unique and gifted personality and proceeded with the uttermost tact to do his best toward the cultivation of his talents. The result was that Edgar not only acquitted himself brilliantly in his studies, but progressed well in his verse-making, which though, since Mr. Allan's prohibition, it had been kept secret in his home, was freely acknowledged to teacher and school-fellows.
By his class-mates he was deemed a wonder. He was so easily first among them in everything—in the simple athletics with which they were familiar, as well as in studies—and his talent for rhyming and drawing seemed to set him upon a sort of pedestal.
In the first blush of triumph these little successes gave him, young Edgar's head was in a fair way to be turned. He saw himself (in fancy) the leader, the popular favorite of the whole school. Indeed, he flattered himself he had leaped at a single bound to this position at the moment, almost, of his entrance. But he soon began to see that he was mistaken. While he was conscious of the unconcealed admiration of most, and the ill-concealed envy of a few of the boys, of his mental and physical abilities, he began, as time went on, to suspect—then to be sure—that for some reason that baffled all his ingenuity to fathom, he was not accorded the position in the school that was the natural reward for superiority of endowment and performance. This place was filled instead by Nat Howard, a boy who, he told himself, he was without the slightest vanity bound to see was distinctly second to him in every way.
He noticed that whatever Nat proposed was invariably done, so that he was forced either to follow where he should have led, or be left out of everything. Often when he joined the boys listening with interest to Nat's heavy jokes and talk, a silence would fall upon the company, which in a short while would break up—the boys going off in twos and threes, leaving him to his own society or that of a small minority composed of two or three boys for the most part younger than himself, who in spite of the popular taste for Nat, preferred him and were captivated by his clever accomplishments.
That there was some reason why he was thus shut out from personal intimacy by school-mates who acknowledged and admired his powers he felt sure, and he was determined to ferrit it out. In the meantime his heart, always peculiarly responsive to affection, answered with warmth to the devotion of the small coterie who were independent enough to swear fealty to him. He helped them with their lessons, initiated them into the mysteries of boxing and other manly exercises, went swimming and gunning with them, and occasionally delighted them by showing them his poems and the little sketches with which he sometimes illustrated his manuscript, in the making.
It must be confessed that there was little in these compositions to set the world afire. They would only be counted remarkable as the work of a school-boy in his early teens, and were practice work—nothing more. They served their purpose, then sank into the oblivion which was their meet destiny. But to Jack Preston, Dick Ambler, Rob Stanard and Rob Sully, and one or two others, they were master-pieces.
These boys, as well as Edgar, were giving serious attention to their linen, the care of their hands, and the precise parting of their hair, just then; and a close observer might often have detected them in the act of furtively feeling their upper lips with anxious forefinger in the vain hope of discovering the appearance—if ever so slight—of a downy growth thereupon. For they, as well as he, were making sheep's eyes at those wonderful visions in golden locks and jetty locks, with brown eyes and blue eyes, with fluttering ribbons and snowy pinafores, known as "Miss Jane Mackenzie's girls," who were the inspiration of most of their poet-chum's invocations of the muse. The little hymns in praise of the charms of these girls were generally adorned with pen or pencil sketches of the fair charmers themselves.
Poor Miss Jane had a sad time of it. As the accomplished principal of a choice Young Ladies Boarding and Day School, she enjoyed an enviable position in the politest society in town. Parents of young ladies under her care congratulated themselves alike upon her strict rule and her learning, her refinement of manners and conversation and her distinguished appearance. She was tall and stately and in her decorous garb of black silk that could have "stood alone," and an elegant cap of "real" lace with lavender ribbons softening the precise waves of her iron-grey hair, she made a most impressive figure—one that would have inspired with profound respect any male creature living saving that incorrigible non-respecter of persons and personages, especially of lady principals—the Boy. For the "forming" of young ladies, Miss Jane had a positive forte, but the genus boy was an unknown quantity to her, and worse—he was a positive terror. For one of them to invade the sacred precincts of her school, or its grounds, seemed to her maiden soul rank sacrilege; to scale her garden wall after dark for the purpose of attaching a letter to a string let down from a window to receive it, was nothing short of criminal. For one of her girls to receive offerings of candy and original poetry—love poetry—from one of these terrible creatures; such an offence was unspeakably shocking.
Yet discovery of such offences happened often enough to give her repeated shocks, and to confirm her in her belief in the total depravity, the hopeless wickedness of all boys—especially of John Allan's adopted son.
In spite of her vigilance, Edgar Poe found the means to outwit her, and to transmit his effusions, without difficulty, to her fair charges, who with tresses primly parted and braided and meek eyes bent in evident absorption upon their books, were the very pictures of docile obedience, and bore in their outward looks no hint of the guilty consciences that should, by rights, have been destroying their peace.
Miss Jane was the sister of Mr. Mackenzie who had adopted little Rosalie Poe. Rosalie was, at Miss Jane's invitation, a pupil in the school, but (ungrateful girl that she was) she became, at the suggestion of her handsome and charming brother Edgar, whom she adored, the willing messenger of Dan Cupid, and furthered much secret and sentimental correspondence between the innocent-seeming girls and the young scamps who admired them.
In these fascinating flights into the realms of flirtation, as in other things, Edgar's friends acknowledged his superiority—his romantic personal beauty and his gift for rhyming giving him a decided advantage over them all; but they acknowledged it without jealousy, for there was much of hero worship in their attitude toward him, and they were not only perfectly contented for him to be first in every way but it would have disappointed them for him not to be. The captivating charm of his presence, in his gay moods, made it unalloyed happiness for them to be with him. They were always ready to follow him as far as he led in daring adventure—ready to fetch and carry for him and glowing with pride at the least notice from him.
Some boys would have taken advantage of this state of things, but not so Edgar Goodfellow. He, for his part, was always ready to contribute to their pleasure, and fairly sunned himself in the unstinting love and praise of these boys who admired, while but half divining his gifts. Their games had twice the zest when Eddie played with them—he threw himself into the sport with such heartfelt zeal that they were inspired to do their best. Many a ramble in the woods and fields around Richmond he took with them, telling them the most wonderful stories as he went along; but sometimes, quite suddenly, during these outings, Edgar Goodfellow would give place to Edgar the Dreamer and they would wonderingly realize that his thoughts were off to a world where none of them could follow—none of them unless it were Rob Sully, who was himself something of a dreamer, and could draw as well as Edgar.
The transformation would be respected. His companions would look at him with something akin to awe in their eyes and tell each other in low tones not to disturb Eddie, he was "making poetry," and confine their chatter to themselves, holding rather aloof from the young poet, who wandered on with the abstracted gaze of one walking in sleep—with them, but not of them.
There were other, less frequent, times when his mood was as much respected, when added to the awe there was somewhat of distress in their attitude toward him. At these times he was not only abstracted, but a deep gloom would seem to have settled upon his spirit. Without apparent reason, melancholy claimed him, and though he was still gentle and courteous, they had a nameless sort of fear of him—he was so unlike other boys and it seemed such a strange thing to be unhappy about nothing. It was positively uncanny.
At these times they did not even try to be with him. They knew that he could wrestle with what he called his "blue devils" more successfully alone. A restlessness generally accompanied the mood, and he would wander off by himself to the churchyard, the river, or the woods; or spend whole long, golden afternoons shut up in his room, poring over some quaint old tale, or writing furiously upon a composition of his own. When he looked at the boys, he did not seem to see them, but would gaze beyond them—the pupils of his full, soft, grey eyes darkening and dilating as if they were held by some weird vision invisible to all eyes save his own; and indeed the belief was general among his friends that he was endowed with the power of seeing visions. This impression had been made even upon his old "Mammy," when he was a mite of a lad. Many a time, when he turned that abstracted gaze upon her, she had said to him,
"What dat you lookin' at now, Honey? You is bawn to see evil sho'!"
And now a glimpse of Edgar Goodfellow—the normal Edgar, whom his chums saw oftenest and loved best, because they knew him best and understood him best.
It was a late Autumn Saturday—one of the Saturdays sent from Heaven for the delight of school-children—bracing, but not cold; and brilliant. Little Robert Sully looked pensively out of the window thinking what a fine day it would be for a country tramp, if only he were like other boys and could take them. But Rob was of frail build and constitution and could never stand much exertion. In his eyes was the expression of settled wistfulness that frequent disappointment will bring to the eyes of a delicate child; in the droop of his mouth there was a touch of bitterness, for he was thinking that not only did his weak body make it impossible for him to keep up with the boys, but that it was no doubt, a relief to the boys to leave him behind—that when he could be with them he was perhaps a drag on their pleasure. No doubt they would make a long day of it, this bright, bracing Saturday, for the persimmons and the fox-grapes were ripe and the chinquapin and chestnut burrs were opening. Tears of self-pity sprang to his eyes, but they were quickly dashed away as he heard his name called and saw his beloved Eddie, flushed and glowing with anticipated pleasure, at the gate.
"Come along, Rob," he was calling. "We are going to the Hermitage woods for chinquapins, and you must come too. Uncle Billy is going for a load of pine-tags, and we can ride in his wagon, so it won't tire you."
The other boys were waiting at the corner, all at the highest pitch of mirth, for they saw that their idol, Eddie, was in one of his happiest moods, which would mean a morning of unbounded fun to them. And the ride with old Uncle Billy who, with black and shiny face, beaming upon them in an excess of kindliness, hair like a full-blown cotton-boll, and quaint talk, was an unfailing source of delight to them!
The Saturday freedom was in their blood. Off and away they went in the jolly, rumbling wagon, past houses and gardens, and fields and into the enchanting, autumn-colored woods, where "Bob Whites" were calling to each other and nuts were dropping in the rustling leaves or waiting to be shaken from their open burrs.
As they jolted along, the steady stream of conversation between Edgar and Uncle Billy was as good as a play to the rest of the boys—Edgar, with grave, courteous manner, discoursing of "cunjurs" and "ha'nts" with as real an air of belief as that of the old man himself.
The allegiance of his little band of boon companions was all the sweeter to the young poet because he realized more and more fully as the years of his school-days passed that for some reason unknown to himself he was systematically, and plainly with intention, denied intimacy with Nat Howard and his followers—snubbed. As has been said, they did not hesitate to acknowledge his success in all sorts of mental and physical trials of skill, but in a formal, impersonal way. There was never the least familiarity in their intercourse with him. This, naturally, produced in him a reserve in his manner toward them that they unreasonably attributed to "airs." Their coldness wounded and chilled the sensitive boy as much as the love of his devoted adherents warmed him.
It was not until near the end of his third session in the school that the riddle was, quite suddenly, solved. Edgar Poe was now in his fifteenth year. One perfect May day, when the song of birds, the odors of flowers, the whisper of soft breezes and the languor of mellow sunshine outside of the open school windows were wooing all poetic souls to come out and live, and let musty, dry books go to the deuce, little Rob Sully found it impossible to fix his mind upon his Latin. As for Edgar's mind, it was plain from his expression that it was far afield; but then Edgar had the power of knowing his lessons intuitively, almost. Rob only "got" his by faithful plodding. When their respective classes were called, Edgar recited brilliantly, while Rob seemed like one befuddled and, making a dismal failure, was bidden to stay in and study at recess. A look of utter woe settled upon his thin, pallid face, which lifted as, impelled to look toward Edgar's desk, he caught his friend's eyes fixed upon him with their charming smile. He knew well what the eyes were saying:
"Don't worry, Rob, I'll stay in and help you."
And stay in the owner of the eyes did, patiently going over and over the lesson with the confused boy until the hard parts were made easy. Finally, when he saw that Rob had mastered it, Edgar walked out into the yard for the few minutes left of recess. The boys were all drawn up in a group a little way from the house and were being harangued by his rival, Nat Howard. His chums, Rob Stanard, Dick Ambler and Jack Preston, were standing together a few feet apart from the rest. Their faces were very red and the haranguing seemed to be addressed directly to them. Edgar stopped where he was, wondering what it was all about, but shy of joining a crowd over which Nat was presiding.
The speaker's voice rose to a higher key.
"I'll tell you, boys," he was saying, "if you persist in intimacy with this fellow, you needn't expect to be in with me and my crowd."
"We don't want you and your crowd," was the response. "He's worth all of you rolled into one."
Edgar's heart stood still. "Was Nat Howard talking abouthim?"
The voice went on: "I grant you the fellow's smart enough and game enough, but he's not in our class, and I, for one, won't associate with him intimately."
"His family's one of the oldest and most honorable in the country," said Robert Stanard. "I've heard my father say so."
"Yes, but his father must have been a black sheep to run away with a common actress—"
The harangue was brought to an abrupt end. The enraged Edgar had sprung forward and, with a blow in the face, struck Nat Howard down. Nat's friends were lifting him up and wiping the blood from his face and dusting his clothing, while Edgar's own friends gathered around him as if to restrain him from repeating the attack. He shook them off, gazing with contempt upon his limp and half-stunned adversary.
"I'll not hit him again until he repeats his offence," he assured the boys, "but I want him and all other cowardly dogs to know what's waiting for them when they insult the memory of my father and mother. Yes! my mother was an actress! God gave her the gifts to make her one and she had the pluck to use them to earn bread for herself and for her children. Yes! she was an actress! She had the lovely face and form, the high intelligence and the poetic soul for the making of a perfect woman or for the interpreter of genius—for the personification of a Juliet, a Rosalind or a Cordelia. Yes! she was an actress! And I'm proud of it as surely as I'm proud she's an angel in Heaven! And I'm proud that my father—the son of a proud family—had the spirit, for her sweet sake, to fly in the face of convention, to count family, fortune and all well lost to become her husband, and to adopt her profession; to learn of her, in order that he might be always at her side to protect her and to live in the light of her presence. If I had choice of all the surnames and of all the lineage in the world, I would still choose the name of Poe, and to be the son of David and Elizabeth Poe, players!"
The boys were silent. The school bell was ringing and Edgar Poe, still pale and trembling with passion, turned on his heel and strode, with head up, in the direction of the door. Rob Stanard and Rob Sully walked one on each side of him, while Dick Ambler and Jack Preston and several others among his adherents, followed close. A little way behind the group came the other boys, their still half-dazed leader in their midst. Good Mr. Burke (who had succeeded Mr. Clarke as school-master) guessed as they came in and took their seats that there had been an altercation of some kind, and that his two brag scholars had been prominent in it; but he was wise in his generation and allowed the boys to settle their own differences without asking any questions unless he were appealed to, when his sympathy and interest were found to be theirs to count upon.
The afternoon session was unsatisfactory, but the master was in an indulgent mood and apparently did not notice what each boy felt—a confusion and abstraction. There was a palpable sense of relief when the closing hour came.
At dinner that day Edgar was silent and evidently under a cloud, and scarcely touched his food. Frances Allan looked toward him anxiously and her husband suspiciously. When his lack of appetite was remarked upon, he, truthfully enough, pleaded headache. Mrs. Allan was all sympathy at once.
"You study too hard, dear," she said. "You may have a holiday tomorrow if you like, and go and spend the day in the country with Rosalie and the Mackenzies."
"No, no," replied the boy. "I'll just stay quiet, in my room, this evening. I'll be all right by tomorrow."
"What have you been eating?" demanded John Allan, gruffly.
"Nothing, since breakfast, Sir," was the reply.
"Headaches are for nervous women. When a healthy boy complains of one, and declines dinner, it generally means that he has been robbing somebody's strawberry patch or up a cherry-tree, stuffing half-ripe fruit," he said in the acid, suspicious tone that the boy knew. It was beyond John Allan's powers to imagine any but physical causes for a boy's ailments.
Not until the door of his own little bed-room was closed behind him did Edgar Poe even try to collect his thoughts. Then he sat down at his window and looked out over the fragrant garden to the quiet sky, contemplation of which had so often soothed his spirit, and tried to readjust the inner world he lived in, in accordance with the discovery he had just made. A first such readjustment his world had experienced three years before, when Mr. Allan had taunted him with his dependence upon charity. Before that time the world, as he knew it, had held only love and beauty—sorrow, as he had seen it, being but a solemn and poetic form of beauty. The change in such a world made by the discovery that his being an adopted son set him apart in a class different from other boys—a class unlovely and loveless—had been great, had stolen much of the joy from living; but he was very young then, and the joy of mere living and breathing was strong in his blood, and he had gradually become accustomed—hardened, if you will—to the idea of his dependence upon charity.
But here was a change far more terrible, and coming at a time when he was old enough to feel it far more keenly. He was indeed, in a class by himself—he was held in contempt because of what his angel mother had been! His holy of holies had been profaned, the sacred fire that warmed his inner life had been spat upon. It seemed he had been from the beginning despised, though he had not dreamed it, for that which he held most dear—of which he was most proud. The little, aristocratic, puffed-up world he lived in would doubtless always despise him; but that was because of its narrowness and ignorance for which he, in turn, would despise it. With the whimsical, half-belief he had always had that the dead remain conscious through their long sleep, he wondered if his beautiful young mother, with the roses on her hair, down under the green earth, was not aware of the love and loyalty of her boy and if her spirit soaring the highest heavens, would not aid him in carrying out the resolution which in the bitterness of his soul, he then and there made—the resolution to bring this mean little, puffed up world to do honor to his name—to her name, of which he was prouder in this hour when others would trample it in the dust than he had ever been before.
Young boy though he was, he was conscious of his God-given endowments. He felt that the divine fire of poetic feeling in his breast was an immortal thing. Up to this time, his singing had been as the singing of a wood-bird—an impulse, a necessity to express the thoughts and feelings of his heart. He had never looked far enough ahead to consider whether he should or should not publish his work; but now ambition awoke—full-grown at its birth—and set him afire. From those parents whose memory had been insulted he had received (God willing it) the precious heritage of brilliant intellect. He would put the work of this intellect—his stories and his poems—into books. He would give them to the wide world. He would win recognition for the name of Poe.
He drew from within his coat the miniature of his mother—her dying gift. He gazed upon it long and tenderly, and with it still exposed to view brought from his desk the little packet of yellowed letters in their faded blue ribbon. He knew them by heart, but he read them—each one—over again, as carefully as if it had been the first time. They were not many and those not long; but ah, they were sweet!—those tender, quaint love-letters that had passed between his parents in their brief courtship and married life. His father's so manly so strong—like the letters of a soldier. His mother's so modest, so tender. They did not stir his pulses so wildly now as they did upon his first reading of them, when a little lad at old Stoke-Newington—but they were no less beautiful to him now than then. The sentences made him think of the dainty, sweet aroma of pressed roses.
He tied the packet up again and kissed letters and picture, as if to seal the promise he was making them, then restored them to their hiding-places. With the bitter knowledge that had come to him, he felt that years had passed over him—that he would never be young again—this boy of fourteen!
He raised his deep, pensive eyes once more to the quiet sky and his spirit cried to Heaven to grant him power to accomplish this task he had set himself: to lift the loved name of his parents from the dust where it lay, and to set it high in the temple of fame, wreathed with immortal myrtle.
His resolution gave to his poetic face and his slender figure an air of mastery, as though some new, high quality had been born within him.