"Then his heart it grew ashen and soberAs the leaves that were crispéd and sere,—As the leaves that were withering and sere!"
"Then his heart it grew ashen and soberAs the leaves that were crispéd and sere,—As the leaves that were withering and sere!"
The Star of Love was fading in the eastern sky and through the ghostly dawn he turned and fled aghast to the cottage among the cherry trees.
Mother Clemm who had lain waiting and watching for him all night arose from her uneasy couch when she heard the latch of the gate lifted, and opened the door. He came in and walked past her like a wraith. His eyes were wild, his face was bloodless and haggard, his hair damp and disordered. The Mother's eyes were filled with dumb pain. He suffered her to take his hand in hers and to gaze into his eyes with pity and even raised the hand that held his own to his lips, as though to reassure her; but he spake no word—made no attempt at explanation—and she asked no questions.
For a moment he remained beside her, then straight to his desk he walked and began arranging writing materials before him, while she disappeared into the kitchen and started a blaze under a pot of coffee that stood upon the little stove.
He wrote rapidly—furiously—without pausing for thought or for the fastidious choice of words that was apt to make him halt frequently in the act of composition, and the words that he wrote were the wild words—wild, but beautiful and moving as an echo from Israfel's own lute—of the poem, "Ulalume:"
"The skies they were ashen and sober;The leaves they were crispéd and sere,—The leaves they were withering and sere,—It was night in the lonesome OctoberOf my most immemorial year."
"The skies they were ashen and sober;The leaves they were crispéd and sere,—The leaves they were withering and sere,—It was night in the lonesome OctoberOf my most immemorial year."
After that eventful night a change came over him that sat upon the Rock of Desolation. The Solitude and the Silence still enfolded him, but the Star of Love had arisen in his firmament, ushering in a new day and new hope to his soul. And he no longer trembled as he sat upon the rock, but with new energy he worked and with exceeding patience he waited. And as he worked interest in life returned to him, and ambition returned.
One day he copied "Ulalume" upon a long, narrow slip of paper and rolled it into one of the tight little rolls that all the editors knew and Mother Clemm made a pilgrimage to the city especially on account of it. First she tried it atThe Union Magazine, which promptly rejected it. It was too "queer" the editor said. ButThe American Reviewagreed to take it and to print it without signature—for this poem must be published anonymously, if at all, the poet insisted. It soon afterward appeared and Mr. Willis copied it into the next number ofThe Home Journalwith complimentary editorial comment.
The result was a new sensation—the reader everywhere declared himself to be brought under a magic spell by the words of this remarkable poem—though he frankly owned that he did not in the least understand them; which was as Edgar Poe intended.
Even the old dream of founding a magazine returned and possessed him as it had so often possessed him before. It was in the interest of the magazine, which he still proposed to nameThe Stylus, that he determined to give his new work, "Eureka!" as a lecture, in various places. He did give it once—in New York—coming out of his seclusion for the first time, upon a frosty February night. The rhapsody, delivered in his low but musical and dramatic tones, thrilled his audience, but it was a small audience, and when soon afterward, the work was published by thePutnamsit was a small number of copies that was sold.
And again Edgar Poe was desperately poor. Yet he had seen the Star of Love—"Astarte's bediamonded crescent"—usher in a new morning; and he waited and worked in hope.
Autumn with its enchanted October night, and winter filled with work and spent in deep seclusion at Fordham, and spring with its revival of plans forThe Stylus, and the appearance of "Eureka!" as a book, and its author's return to the world as a lecturer, slipped by.
About midsummer The Dreamer lay a night in the old town of Providence. It was a warm night and the window of his room was open—letting in a flood of light from the full moon. He leaned from the window which looked upon a plot of flowers whose many odors rising, enveloped him in incense sweet as the incense from the censers of the angels when the spirit of his Virginia was near. But it was not of Virginia that the fragrance told him tonight. Something about the blended odors, combined with the sensuous warmth of the night and the light of the moon, transported him suddenly, magically, back through the years to his boyhood and to the little room in the Allan cottage on Clay Street, hanging, like this room, over a space of flowers—the night following the day when he had first seen Rob Stanard's mother.
Back, back into the long dead past he wandered! The broken and jaded Edgar Poe was dreaming again the dream of the fresh, enthusiastic boy, Edgar Poe.
How every incident of that day and night stood out in his memory! He could feel again the wonder that he felt when he saw the beautiful "Helen" standing against the arbor-vitæ in the garden; could see her graceful approach to meet and greet him—the lonely orphan boy—could hear her gracious words in praise of his mother while she held his hand in both her own. As he lived it all over again, with the silver moonlight enfolding him and the breath of the flowers filling his nostrils, a clock somewhere in the house struck the night's noon hour. He started—even so it had been that other night in the long past. He half believed that if he should go forth into this night as he had gone into that he should see once more the lady of his dream, with the lamp in her hand, framed in the ivy-wreathed window, and seeing, worship as he had worshipped then.
Scarce knowing what he did, he arose and hurrying down the stair was in the street. The streets were strange to him but there was a pleasant sense of adventure in wandering through them—he knew not whither—and the sweet airs of the flowers were everywhere.
Suddenly he stopped. While all the town slept there was one beside himself, who kept vigil. Clad all in white, she half reclined upon a violet bank in an old garden where the moon fell on the upturned faces of a thousand roses and on her own, "upturned,—alas, in sorrow!"
Faint with the beauty and the poetry of the scene he leaned upon the gate of the
"enchanted gardenWhere no wind dared to stir unless on tiptoe."
"enchanted gardenWhere no wind dared to stir unless on tiptoe."
He dared not speak or give any sign of his presence, but he gazed and gazed until to his entranced eyes it seemed that
"The pearly lustre of the moon went out:The mossy banks and the meandering paths—The happy flowers and the repining trees—Were seen no more."
"The pearly lustre of the moon went out:The mossy banks and the meandering paths—The happy flowers and the repining trees—Were seen no more."
All was lost to his vision—
"Save only the divine light in those eyes—Save but the soul in those uplifted eyes."
"Save only the divine light in those eyes—Save but the soul in those uplifted eyes."
He continued to gaze until the moon disappeared behind a bank of cloud and he watched the white-robed figure glide away like "a ghost amid the entombing trees." Yet still (it seemed to him) the eyes remained. They lighted his lonely footsteps home that night and he told himself that they would light him henceforth, through the years.
Nearly a year had passed since that October night when the Star of Love ushering in a new morning had prophesied to him of new hope—nearly a year through which he had waited patiently, but not in vain. The time had evidently come for the prophecy to be fulfilled and Fate had led him to this town and the spot in this town where she that was to be (he was convinced) the hope, the guide, the savior, of his "lonesome latter years" awaited him.
Who was she?—
So spirit-like, so ethereal, she seemed, as robed in white and veiled in silvery moon-beams she sat among the slumbering roses, and as she was gathered into the shadows of the entombing trees, that she might almost have been the "Lady Ligeia." Yet he knew that she was not. The "Lady Ligeia" had been but the creation of his own brain. Very fair she had been to his dreaming vision, very sweet her companionship had been to his imagination—sufficient for all the needs of his being in his youthful days when sorrow was but a beautiful sentiment, when "terror was not fright, but a tremulous delight" but how was such an one as she to bind up the broken heart of a man? It was thehumanelement in the eyes of her that sat among the roses that enchained him. Ethereal—spirit-like—as she was, the eyes upturned in sorrow were the eyes of no spirit, but of a woman; from them looked a human soul with the capacity and the experience to offer sympathy meet for human needs—the needs even, of a broken-hearted man.
How dark the woe!—how sublime the hope!—how intense the pride!—how daring the ambition!—how deep, how fathomless the capacity for love!—that looked (as from a window) from those eyes upturned in sorrow, in the moonlight while all the town slept!
Who was she?—this lady of sorrows. And by what sweet name was she known to the citizens of this old town?—Surely Fate that had brought her to the bank of violets beneath the moon—Fate that had led him to her garden gate, would in Fate's own time reveal!
As Helen Whitman flitted as noiselessly as the ghost she seemed to be up the dark stairway to her chamber, and without closing the casement that admitted the moonlight and the garden's odors, lay down upon her canopied bed, she trembled. What was it that she had been aware of in the garden?—that presence—that consciousness of communion between her spirit and his upon whom all her thoughts had dwelt of late? Herself a poet, from her earliest knowledge of the work of Edgar Poe she had seemed to feel a kinship between her mind and his such as she had known in regard to no other. She had followed his career step by step, and out of the many sorrows of her own life had been born deep sympathy for him. Since his last, greatest blow, she had more than ever mourned with him in spirit, for she too was widowed—she too had sat upon the Rock of Desolation and knew the Silence and the Solitude.
She and The Dreamer had at least one mental trait in common—a tendency toward spiritualism—a more than half belief in the communion of the spirits of the dead with those of the living and of those of the living with each other.
What had led her into the moonlit garden when all the world slept?
She knew not. She only knew that she had felt an impelling influence—a call to her spirit—to come out among the slumbering roses. She had not questioned nor sought to define it. She had heard it, and she had obeyed. And then the presence!—
She had never seen Edgar Poe, yet she felt that he had been there in the spirit, if not in the flesh—she had felt his eyes upon her eyes and she had half expected him to step from the shadows around her and to say,
"I, upon whom your thoughts have dwelt—I, who am the comrade and the complement of your inner life—I, whose spirit called to you ere you came into the garden—I am here."
It was almost immediately upon The Dreamer's return to Fordham, and when he was still under the spell of the night at Providence, that the identity of the lady of the garden was revealed to him, in a manner seemingly accidental, but which he felt to be but another manifestation of the divinity that shapes our ends. Some casual words concerning the appearance and character of Mrs. Whitman, spoken by a casual visitor, lifted the curtain.
So the lady of the garden was Helen Whitman! whose poetry had impressed him favorably and whose acquaintance he had desired. Helen Whitman—Helen! As he repeated the name his heart stood still,—even in her name he heard the voice of Fate.Helen—the name of the good angel of his boyhood! Were his dreams of "Morella" and of "Ligeia" to come true? Was he to know in reality the miracle he had imagined and written of in these two phantasies?—the reincarnation of personal identity? Was he in this second Helen, in this second garden, to find again the worshipped Helen of his boyhood?
He turned to the lines he had written so long ago, in Richmond, when he had gone forth into the midsummer moonlight, even as he had gone forth in Providence, and had worshipped under a window, even as he had worshipped at a garden gate. He read the first two stanzas through.
As he read he gave himself up to an overwhelming sense of fatality. Could anything be more fitting—more descriptive? The end of the days of miracles was not yet—thiswashis "Helen of a thousand dreams!"
His impulse was to seek an introduction at once, but this seemed too tamely conventional. Besides—he was in the hands of Fate—he dared not stir. Fate, having so clearly manifested itself, would find a way.
His correspondence was always heavy. Letters, clippings from papers and so forth, came to him by every post from friends and from enemies, with and without signatures. Yet from all the mass, he knew at once that the "Valentine," unsigned as it was, was from her.
By way of acknowledgment, he turned down a page of a copy of "The Raven and Other Poems" at the lines, "To Helen," and mailed it to her. He waited in anxious suspense for a reply, but the lady was coy. Days passed and still no answer. The desire for communication with her became irresistible and taking pen and paper he wrote at the top of the page, even as long ago he had written, the words, "To Helen," and underneath wrote a new poem especially for this new Helen in which he described the vision of her in the garden (but placing it in the far past) and his feelings as he gazed upon her:
"I saw thee once—once only—years ago;I must not sayhowmany—but not many.Clad all in white, upon a violet bankI saw thee half reclining; while the moonFell on the upturned faces of the roses,And on thine own, upturned,—alas in sorrow!Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight—Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow)That bade me pause before that garden-gateTo breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?No footstep stirred: the hated world all slept,Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven!—oh, God!How my heart beats in coupling those two words!)Save only thee and me!" ...
"I saw thee once—once only—years ago;I must not sayhowmany—but not many.
Clad all in white, upon a violet bankI saw thee half reclining; while the moonFell on the upturned faces of the roses,And on thine own, upturned,—alas in sorrow!Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight—Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow)That bade me pause before that garden-gateTo breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?No footstep stirred: the hated world all slept,Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven!—oh, God!How my heart beats in coupling those two words!)Save only thee and me!" ...
The paper trembled in the hands—tiny and spirit-like—of Helen Whitman. Her soul answered emphatically,
"ItisFate!"
So he had been there in the flesh—near her—in the shadows of that mystic night! The presence was no creation of an overwrought imagination. It was Fate.
Tremulously she penned her answer to his appeal, but was it Fate again, which caused the letter to miscarry? It reached him finally, in Richmond—Richmond, of all places!—whither he had gone to deliver to audiences of his old friends, his lecture upon "The Poetic Principle," in the interest of the establishment of his magazine,The Stylus. What could have been more fitting than that the gracious words of "Helen of a thousand dreams" should come to him in Richmond?
Not many days later and he was under her own roof in Providence.
He waited in the dimness of her curtained drawing-room, ear strained for the first sound of her footstep. Noiselessly as a sunbeam or a shadow she entered the room, her gauzy white draperies floating about her slight figure as she came, while his great eyes drank in with reverent joy each detail of her ethereal loveliness—her face, the same he had seen in the garden, pale as a pearl and as softly radiant, and framed in clustering dark ringlets which escaped in profusion from the confinement of a lacy widow's cap—the tremulous mouth—the eyes, mysterious and unearthly, from which the soul looked out.
For one moment she paused in the doorway, her hand pressed upon her wildly beating heart—then, with hesitating step advanced to meet him. Her words of greeting were few, and so low and faltering as to be quite unintelligible, but the tones of her voice fell on his ear like strangely familiar music.
The man spoke no word. As her eyes rested for one brief moment upon his, then fell before the intensity of his gaze, he was conscious of spiritual influences beyond the reach of reason. In a tremulous ecstacy he bent and pressed his lips upon the hand that lay within his own and it was with difficulty that he restrained himself from falling upon his knees before her in actual worship.
Three evenings of "all heavenly delight" he spent in her companionship—sometimes in the seclusion and dusk of her quiet drawing-room, sometimes walking among the roses in her garden, or among the mossy tombs in the town cemetery—their sympathetic natures finding expression in such conversation as poets delight in. Under the intoxicating spell of her presence all other dreams passed, for the time, into nothingness and he passionately cried,
"Helen, I love now—now—for the first and only time!"
Yet he was poor, and the weaknesses which had caused him to fall in the past might cause him to fall in the future. How could he plead for a return of his love?
His very self-abasement made his plea more strong. Still, she did not yield too suddenly. True, she too, was under the spell, but she resisted it. As he found his voice, and his eloquence filled the room a restlessness possessed her. Now she sat quite still by his side, now rose and wandered about the apartment—now stood with her hand resting upon the back of his chair while his nearness thrilled her.
There were objections, she told him—she was older than he.
"Has the soul age, Helen?" he answered her. "Can immortality regard time? Can that which began never and shall never end consider a few wretched years of its incarnate life? Do you not perceive that it is my diviner nature—my spiritual being, that burns and pants to commingle with your own?"
She urged her frail health as an objection.
For that he would love—worship her—the more, he said. He plead for her pity upon his loneliness—his sorrows—and swore that he would comfort and soothe her in hers, through life, and when death should come, joyfully go down with her into the night of the grave.
Finally he appealed to her ambition.
"Was I right, Helen, in my first impression of you?—in the impression that you are ambitious? If so, and if you will have faith in me, I can and will satisfy your wildest desires. Would it not be glorious to establish in America, the sole unquestionable aristocracy—that of the intellect—to secure its supremacy—to lead and control it?"
Still theyesthat so often seemed trembling upon her lips was not spoken. She received his almost daily letters and his frequent visits, listened to his rapturous love-making—trembling, blushing, letting him see that she was under the spell, that she loved him. Indeed she could not have helped his seeing it had she wished; but when he spoke of marriage she hesitated—tantalizing him to the point of madness, almost.
What was it that held her back?—She too, believed that it was the hand of Fate that had brought them together—that they were pre-ordained to cheer each other's latter years, to establish that intellectual aristocracy of which he dreamed. Yet she shrank from taking the step. When his great solemn eyes were upon her, his beautiful face pale and haggard with excess of feeling, turned toward her, his eloquent words of love in her ears, she sat as one entranced—bewitched; yet she would not give the word he longed for—the word of willingness to embark with him upon the sea of life.Fearchecked her. Such an uncharted sea it seemed to her—she dared not say him yea!
The truth was the poison was working—the Griswold poison. The wildest rumors came to her ears of the worse than follies of her lover. She knew that they were at least, overdrawn—possibly altogether false—yet they frightened her.
"Do you know Helen Whitman?" wrote one of The Dreamer's enemies to Dr. Griswold. "Of course you have heard it rumored that she is to marry Poe. Well, she has seemed to me a good girl and—you know what Poe is. Has Mrs. Whitman no friend in your knowledge that can faithfully explain Poe to her?"
But Rufus Griswold had already "explained Poe" to those whom he knew would take pains to pass the explanation on to "Helen"—had dropped the poison where he reckoned it would work with the greatest speed and effect. The explanation, with the usual indirectness of a Griswold, was sugared with a compliment.
"Poe has great intellectual power," he said with emphasis, "greatintellectual power, but," he added, with a sidelong glance of the furtive eye and a confidential drop in the voice, "but—he has no principle—no moral sense."
The poison reached the destination for which it was intended—the ears of Helen Whitman—in due course, and it terrified her as had none of the rumors she had heard before. Still her lover floundered in the dark—baffled—wondering—not able to make her out. Why did she tantalize him—torture him, thus?—keeping him dangling between Heaven and hell?—he asked himself, and he asked her, over and over again. He became more and more convinced that there was a reason,—what was it?
Finally she gave it to him in its baldness and its brutality, just as it had come to her—wrote it to him in a letter. It brought him a rude awakening from his dream of bliss. That such a charge should be brought against him at all was bitter enough, but that it could be repeated to him by "Helen" seemed unbelievable.
"You do not love me," he sadly wrote in reply, "or you would not have written these terrible words." Then he swore a great oath: "By the God who reigns in Heaven, I swear to you that my soul is incapable of dishonor—that with the exception of occasional follies and excesses which I bitterly lament, but to which I have been driven by intolerable sorrow, I can call to mind no act of my life which would bring a blush to my cheek—or to yours."
He followed the letter with a visit—again throwing himself at her feet and thrilling her with his eloquence and with the magic of his personality.
She gave him a half promise and said she would write to him in Lowell, where he had engaged to deliver a lecture.
In this town was a roof-tree which was a haven of rest to The Dreamer. Beneath it dwelt his friend and confidant, "Annie" Richmond—his soul's sweet "sister," as he loved to call her. And there he waited with a chastened joy, for he felt assured that the long wished foryeswas about to be said, yet dared not give himself over prematurely, to the ecstacy that would soon be his. In the pleasant, friendly family circle of the Richmonds, he sat during those chill November evenings, seeing pictures in the glowing fire, as he held sweet "Annie's" sympathetic hand in his, while the only sound that broke the silence was the ticking of the grandfather's clock in a shadowy corner.
Thus quietly, patiently, he waited.
But in Providence the Griswold poison was at work. All the friends and relatives of "Helen" were possessed of full vials of it—which they industriously poured into her ears. Against it the recollection of the night in the garden and her belief that Fate had ordained her union with the poet, had no avail. The letter that she sent her lover was more non-committal—colder—than any he had received from her before, yet there was still enough of indecision in it to keep him tantalized. In a state of mind well nigh distraction, he bade "Annie" and her cheerful fireside farewell and set his face toward Providence; but he went in a dream—the demon Despair, possessing him.
Unstrung, unmanned, almost bereft of reason, his old dissatisfaction with himself and the world overtook him—a longing to be out of it all, for forgetfulness, for peace, yea, even the peace of the grave,—why not?
A passionate longing—a homesickness—for the sure, the steadfast, the unvariable love of his beautiful Virginia consumed him. Oh, if he could but lie down and sleep and forget until one sweet day he should wake in the land where she awaited him, and where they would construct anew, and for eternity, the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass!
He listened.... For the first time since the Star of Love had ushered in a new day in his life, he heard the swinging of the censers of the angels—he inhaled the incense—he heard the voice of Virginia in the sighing wind. She seemed to call to him.
"I am coming, Heartsease!" he whispered as he quaffed the potion that he reckoned would bear him to her.
But it was not to be. When he awaked, weak and ill, but sane, he found himself with friends. Calmness and strength returned and with them, horror at the deed he had so nearly committed, and deep contrition.
With all haste he again presented himself at the door of "Helen," beseeching her to marry him at once and save him, as he believed she only could, from himself. And the consequences of her indecision making her more alarmed for him than she had formerly been for herself, she agreed to an engagement, though not to immediate marriage.
He returned to Fordham and to faithful Mother Clemm a wreck of his former self, but engaged to be married!
Yet he was not happy—a new horror possessed him. As in the night when the Star of Love first rose upon his vigil it had stopped over the door of "a legended tomb," so now again was his pathway closed. Turn which way he would, the tomb of Virginia seemed to frown upon him. He remembered his promise to her that upon no other daughter of earth would he look with the eyes of love. Vainly did he seek to justify himself to his own heart for breaking the promise. No one could ever supplant her, or fill the void in his life her death had made, he told himself—this new love was something different, and in no way disturbed her memory.
But the tomb still stood in his way.
"I am calm and tranquil," he wrote "Helen," "and but for a strange shadow of coming evil which haunts me I should be happy. That I am not supremely happy, even when I feel your dear love at my heart, terrifies me."
Later he wrote,
"You say that all depends on my own firmness. If this be so all is safe. Henceforward I am strong. But all does not depend, dear Helen, upon my firmness—all depends upon the sincerity of your love."
A month later the skies of Providence shone brightly upon him. He returned there, was received by Mrs. Whitman as her affianced lover, delivered his brilliant lecture upon "The Poetic Principle" to a great throng of enthusiastic hearers, and won a promise from his lady to marry him at once and return with him to Fordham. He scribbled a line to Mother Clemm notifying her to be ready to receive him and his bride and went so far as to engage the services of a clergyman, and to sign a marriage contract, in which Mrs. Whitman's property was made over to her mother.
But—just at this point a note was slipped into the hand of "Helen," informing her that her lover had been seen drinking wine in the hotel. When he called at her house soon afterward she received him surrounded by her family and though there were no signs of the wine, said "no" to him, emphatically—for the first time.
He plead, but she remained firm—receiving his passionate words of remonstrance with sorrowful silence, while her mother, impatient at his persistence, showed him the door. He prayed that she would at least speak one word to him in farewell.
"What can I say?" she questioned.
"Say that you love me, Helen."
"I love you!"
With these words in his ears he was gone. As he passed out of the gate and out of her life he saw, or fancied he saw, through the veiled window, a white figure beckoning to him, but his steps were sternly set toward the opposite direction—his whole being crying within him, "Nevermore—nevermore!" She had stretched out her spiritlike hands, but to draw them back again, in the fashion that fascinated and at the same time maddened him, once too often. The wave of romantic feeling which had borne him along since his vision of her in the garden suddenly subsided, leaving him disillusioned—cold. The reaction was so violent that instead of the magnetic attraction she had had for him he felt himself positively repelled by the thought of her unearthly beauty—her mysterious eyes.
He went straight to the depot and took the train just leaving, which would bear him back to the cottage among the cherry trees.
Mother Clemm, expecting him to bring home a bride, had spent the day putting an extra touch of brightness upon the simple but already spotless, home. A cheerful fire was in the grate; branches of holly, cedar and such other such bits of beauty as the woods afforded were everywhere about the house, and the Mother herself, in the snowiest of caps with the sheerest of floating strings and a gallant look of welcome upon her sorrowful face, stood at the window and watched for the coming of the son that Heaven had given her, and the woman who was to take the place of the daughter that Heaven had taken away from her. Her oak-like nature had quailed at the thought—but it had withstood many a blast, it could weather one more, and after all, if "Eddie" were happy—.
In the far distance a figure emerged out of the gathering dusk—a man. Could it be Eddie?—Alone?
Yes! It surely was he! The carriage of the head—the military cloak—the walk—were unmistakable.
But he was alone!—She grew weak in the knees.—The shock of joy more nearly unnerved her than had the pain. She had braced herself to bear the pain.
She recovered her composure and hastened to the door just in time to be folded into the arms of the figure in the cloak.
"Helen?"—she queried.
"Is dead—to me," he answered, with his arms still about her. "We will have nothing more to say of her except this: Muddie, I have been in a dream from which, thank God, I am now awake. In the darkness of my loneliness—of my misery, of which you alone have the slightest conception, I saw a light which I fancied would lead me to the love for which my soul is starving—to the sympathy which is sweeter even than love to the broken heart of a man. I followed it. I was deceived. It was no real light, but a mere will o' the wisp bred in the dank tarn of despair."
He released her to hang up the cloak in the little entrance hall, then taking her hand, which he raised to his lips, drew her into the sitting room.
"Ah, but it is good to be at home again!" he exclaimed.
His whole manner changed; a mighty weight seemed to roll from his shoulders as he stretched his legs before the fire. His old merry laugh—the laugh of Edgar Goodfellow—rang out as he told "Muddie" of the success of his lecture, in Providence,—of the great audience and the applause.
"Muddie," he cried, "my dream ofThe Styluswill come true yet! A few more such audiences and the money will be in sight! And let me add, I am done with literary women—henceforth literature herself shall be my sole mistress. I am more than ever convinced that the profession of letters is the only one fit for a man of brain. There is little money in it, of course, but I'd rather be a poor-devil author earning a bare living than a king. Beyond a living, what does a man of brain want with money anyhow?—Muddie, did it ever strike you that all that is really valuable to a man of talent—especially to a poet—is absolutely unpurchasable?—Love, fame, the dominion of intellect, the consciousness of power, the thrilling sense of beauty, the free air of Heaven, exercise of body and mind with the physical and moral health that these bring;—these, and such as these are really all a poet cares about. Then why should he mind what the world calls poverty?"
"Why indeed?" echoed happy "Muddie." It was so delightful to have her son back at home, and in this hopeful, contented frame, she would have agreed with him in almost any statement he chose to make.
He gave her loving messages from "Annie" and told her in the bright, humorous way which was characteristic of Edgar Goodfellow, of many pleasant little incidents of his journey. One of the nights to look back upon and to gloat over in memory was this night by the fireside at Fordham cottage with the Mother—a night of calm and content under the home-roof after tempestuous wandering.
A quiet, sweet Christmas they spent together—he reading, writing or talking over plans for new work, while she sat by with her sewing and Catalina dozed on the hearth. Part of every day (wrapped in the old cape) he walked in the pine wood or beside the ice-bound river, and for the first time since the feverish dream of new love had come to him he was able to visit the tomb of Virginia and to dwell with happiness, and with a clear conscience, upon her memory. During these days of serenity a ballad suggested by thoughts of her and his life with her in the lovely Valley of the Many-Colored Grass took form in his mind. It was no dirge-like song of the "dank tarn of Auber," but a song of a fair "kingdom by the sea" and in contrast to the sombre "Ulalume" he gave to the maiden in the new poem the pleasant sounding name of "Annabel Lee." Out of these days too, came "the Bells" and the exquisite sonnet to his "more than Mother."
One flash of the false light that had lured him reached The Dreamer at Fordham. He held a letter addressed to him in the familiar handwriting of Helen Whitman long in his hand without opening it. This flame was burned out, he told himself—why rake its cold ashes? Yet he felt that nothing that she could say would have power to disturb his new peace. Still the Mother, though she kept her own counsel, trembled for herself and for him as she was aware (without looking up from her sewing) that he had broken the seal. Some minutes of tense stillness passed—then,
"Shall I read you her letter?" he asked.
"As you will."
"Then I will!—It is in verse and the place from which she dates it is,
"Our Island of Dreams," which she explains in a sub-heading is
"By the foamOf perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn"
"By the foamOf perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn"
—a line which she has borrowed from Keats. This is what she writes:
"Tell him I lingered alone on the shore,Where we parted, in sorrow, to meet nevermore;The night-wind blew cold on my desolate heartBut colder those wild words of doom, 'Ye must part!'"O'er the dark, heaving waters, I sent forth a cry;Save the wail of those waters there came no reply.I longed, like a bird, o'er the billows to flee,From our lone island home and the moan of the sea:"Away,—far away—from the wild ocean shore,Where the waves ever murmur, 'No more, nevermore,'Where I wake, in the wild noon of midnight, to hearThe lone song of the surges, so mournful and drear."Where the clouds that now veil from us heaven's fair light,Their soft, silver lining turn forth on the night;When time shall the vapors of falsehood dispelHe shall know if I loved him; but never how well."
"Tell him I lingered alone on the shore,Where we parted, in sorrow, to meet nevermore;The night-wind blew cold on my desolate heartBut colder those wild words of doom, 'Ye must part!'
"O'er the dark, heaving waters, I sent forth a cry;Save the wail of those waters there came no reply.I longed, like a bird, o'er the billows to flee,From our lone island home and the moan of the sea:
"Away,—far away—from the wild ocean shore,Where the waves ever murmur, 'No more, nevermore,'Where I wake, in the wild noon of midnight, to hearThe lone song of the surges, so mournful and drear.
"Where the clouds that now veil from us heaven's fair light,Their soft, silver lining turn forth on the night;When time shall the vapors of falsehood dispelHe shall know if I loved him; but never how well."
Silence followed the reading of the poem-letter. Finally the mother asked,
"Will you go back?"
He placed the letter upon the top of a pile in the same handwriting, tied them together with a bit of ribbon and laid them in a small drawer of his desk. Then, rising, he leaned over the back of "Muddie's" chair and lightly touching her seamed forehead with his lips replied,
"Quoth the raven, nevermore!"
"Quoth the raven, nevermore!"
Then took up a garland of evergreen which he had been making when the Mother came in with the mail, and set out in the direction of the churchyard with its "legended tomb."
Back in Richmond!—The Richmond he loved best—Richmond full of sunshine and flowers and the sweet southern social life out of doors, in gardens and porches; Richmond in summertime!
In spite of the changes his observant eye marked as he rattled over the cobblestones toward the "Swan Tavern," on Broad and Ninth Streets, he almost felt that he was back in boyhood. It was just such a day, just this time of year, that—as a lad of eleven—he had seen Richmond first after his five years absence in England.
How good it was to be back upon the sacred soil! How sweet the air was, and how beautiful were the roses! When before, had he seen a magnolia tree in bloom?—with its dense shade, its dark green shining foliage, and its snow-white blossoms. Was there anything in the world so sweet as its odor, combined with that of the roses and the other flowers that filled the gardens? It was worth coming all the way from New York just to see and to smell them.
He caught glimpses of one or two familiar figures as he drove along. How impatient he was to see his old friends—everybody—white and colored, old and young, masculine and feminine. He could hardly wait to get to the tavern, remove the dust of travel and sally forth upon the round of visits he intended to make. His spirits went up—and up, and finally it was Edgar Goodfellow in the flesh who stepped jauntily from the door of "Swan Tavern," arrayed for hot-weather calling. In spite of the summer temperature, he looked the personification of coolness and comfort. The taste of prosperity his lectures had brought him was evident in his modest but spruce apparel. He had discarded the habitual black cloth for a coat and trousers of white linen (exquisitely laundered by Mother Clemm's capable and loving hands) which he wore with a black velvet vest for which he had also to thank the Mother and her skilled needle. A broad-brimmed Panama hat shaded his pale features and the grey eyes, which glowed with happiness. As with proudly carried head and quick, easy gait, he bore westward up Broad Street, no single person passed him that did not turn to look with admiration upon the handsome, distinguished stranger, and to mentally ask "Who is he?"
It so happened that Jack Mackenzie was the first acquaintance he met.
"Edgar," he said, as their hands joined in affectionate grasp, "Do you remember once, years ago, I met you in the street and you said you were going to look for the end of the rainbow? Well, you look as if you had found it!"
"I have," was the reply. "An hour ago. It was here in Richmond all the time and I didn't know it, and like a poor fool, have been wandering the world over in a vain search for it. The trouble is, I was looking for the wrong thing. I was looking for fame and fortune, thought of which blinded my eyes to something far better—scenes and friendships oflang syne. Jack—" he continued, as—arm in arm—the two friends made their way up the street. "Jack, life is a great schoolmaster, but why does it take so long to drub any sense into these blockheads of ours?"
"Damned if I know," replied his companion, who was more truthful always than either poetic or philosophic, "but if you mean that you've decided to come back to Richmond to live, I'm mighty glad to hear it."
"That's what I mean. I came only for a visit and to lecture, but made up my mind on the way from the depot to come for good as soon as I can arrange to do so. I think it was a magnolia tree in bloom—the first I had seen in many a year—that decided me."
"Well, all of your old friends will be glad to have you back; there's one in particular that I might mention. Do you remember Elmira Royster? She's a comely widow now, with a comfortable fortune, and she's always had a lingering fondness for you. I advise you to hunt her up."
The Dreamer's face clouded.
"Women are angels, Jack," he said. "They are the salt that will save this world, if it is to be saved, and for poor sinners like me there would be simply no hope in either this world or the next but for them; but they will have no more part in my life, save as friends. A true friend of mine, however, I believe Myra is. I saw her during my brief visit here last fall.—Ah, Rob! my boy! Howdy!"
The two friends had turned into Sixth Street and as they drew near the corner of Sixth and Grace, almost ran into Rob Stanard—now a prominent lawyer and one of the leading gentlemen of the town.
"Eddie Poe, as I'm alive!" he exclaimed, with a hearty hand-clasp. "My, my, what a pleasure! I'm on my way home to dinner, boys. Come in, both of you and take pot-luck with us. My wife will be delighted to see you!"
The invitation was accepted as naturally as it was given, and the three mounted together the steps of the beautiful house and were received in the charmingly homelike drawing-room opening from the wide hall, by Rob's wife, a Kentucky belle who had stepped gracefully into her place as mistress of one of the notable homes in Virginia's capital. As she gave her jewelled hand to Edgar Poe her handsome black eyes sparkled with pleasure. She was not only sincerely glad to receive the friend of her husband's boyhood, but keen appreciation of intellectual gifts made her feel that to know him was a distinction. Some of the servants who had known "Marse Eddie" in the old days were still of the household—having come to Robert Stanard as part of his father's estate—and they were to their intense gratification, pleasantly greeted by the visitor.
That evening—and many subsequent evenings—The Dreamer spent at "Duncan Lodge" with the Mackenzies and their friends. A series of sunlit days followed—days of lingering in Rob Sully's studio or in the familiar office ofThe Southern Literary Messengerwhere the editor, Mr. John R. Thompson—himself a poet—gave him a warm welcome always, and gladly accepted and published inThe Messengeranything the famous former editor would let him have; days of wandering in the woods or by the tumbling river he had loved as a lad; days of searching out old haunts and making new ones.
And everywhere he found welcome. Delightful little parties were given in his honor, when in return for the courtesies paid him he charmed the company by reciting "The Raven" as he alone could recite it. His lectures upon "The Poetic Principle" and "The Philosophy of Composition," and his readings in the assembly rooms of the Exchange Hotel, drew the elite of the city, who sat spellbound while he, erect and still and pale as a statue, filled their ears with the music of his voice, and their souls with wonder at the brilliancy of his thought and words. Subscriptions toThe Styluspoured in. At last, this dream of his life seemed an assured fact.
One door—one only in all the town did not swing wide to receive him. The closed portal of the mansion of which he had been the proud young master, still said to him "Nevermore"—and he always had a creepy sensation when he passed it, which even the sight of the flower-garden he had loved, in fullest bloom, did not overcome.
The golden days ran into golden weeks and the weeks into months, and still Edgar Poe was making holiday in Richmond—the first holiday he had had since, as a youth of seventeen he had quarrelled with John Allan and gone forth to the battle of life. In the long, long battle since then there had been more of joy than they knew who looking on had seen the toil and the defeat and the despair, but from whose eyes the exaltation he had felt in the act of creation or in the contemplation of the works of nature, and the happiness he found in his frugal home, were hidden. But, as has been said, there had been no holiday, until now when he had come back to Richmond an older and a sadder and a more experienced Edgar Poe—an Edgar Poe upon whom the Silence and the Solitude had fallen and had left shaken—broken.
Yet that personal identity upon the mystery of which he liked to ponder—the unquenchable, immortalegowas there; and it was, for all the outward and inward changes, the same Edgar Poe, with his two natures—Dreamer and Goodfellow—alternately dominating him, who had come back to find the real end of the rainbow in revisiting old scenes, renewing old friendships, awakening old memories—and had paused to make holiday.
Even in these golden days there were occasional falls, for the cup of kindness was everywhere and in his blood was the same old strain which made madness for him in the single glass—the single drop, almost; and in spite of all the great schoolmaster, Life, had taught him, there was in his will the same old element of weakness. Had it been otherwise he had not been Edgar Poe. At times, too, the blue devils raised their heads. Had it been otherwise he had not been Edgar Poe.
But on the whole the holiday was a bright dream of Paradise regained at a time when more than ever before his feet had seemed to march only to the cadence of the old, sad word, Nevermore.
Two sacred pilgrimages he made early in this holiday—to the two shrines of his romantic boyhood—to Shockoe Cemetery, where he not only visited "Helen's" tomb, but laid a wreath upon the grave of Frances Allan—his little foster mother, and to the churchyard on the hill. The white steeple still slept serenely in the blue atmosphere above the church and, as of yore, the bell called in deep, sweet tones to prayer. But how the churchyard had filled since he saw it last! Graves, graves everywhere. It was appalling! He stepped between the graves, old and new, stooping to read the inscriptions upon the slabs. So many that he remembered as merry boys and girls and hale men and women still in their prime—could they really be dead?—gone forever from the scenes which had known them and of which they seemed an integral part? Oh, mystery of mysteries, how was it possible?—Yet here were their names plainly written upon the marbles! The church builded by men's hands, the trees planted by men's hands, the monuments fashioned by men's hands remained, but the living, breathing men, where were they? Could it be that God's highest creation was a more perishable thing than the lifeless work of its own hand? His spirit cried out within him against such a thought. No, it could not be! Gone from earth, or holden from mortal vision they assuredly were—departed—but dead? No!
Finally he came to the grave beside the wall. No marble tomb told the passer-by that there lay the body of Elizabeth Poe. Yet, what matter?—Was her sleep the less peaceful? Was her tired spirit the less free?—If in its flight it should visit this spot where it had laid the burden of the body down, surely it would find, for all there was no carven stone to mark it, a most sweet spot. The greenest of grass, and clover with blossoms white and red, waved over it—the summer breeze rippling through them with pleasant sound,—and the tall trees hung a green canopy between it and the midday sun.
As he laid his offering of roses among the clover blooms and turned to go away the bell in the steeple began to toll. How the past came back!—He stood with uncovered and bowed head and counted the strokes. Suddenly, there was a sound of horses tramping in the street below the wall. Then through the gate and down the walk it came—the solemn procession.
He waited until the last of the mourners had passed into the church, then followed, and as the bell stopped tolling and the organ began to play the familiar, moving chant, he passed in and took a seat near the door. Whose funeral service he was attending he knew not—but he was back in childhood, and it was beautiful to him to hear once more, in this very church, the words of spoken music and the old familiar hymns he had heard that day when his infant heart had been filled with a beautiful sorrow that was not pain.
More than one pair of eyes turned to see the owner of the fine tenor voice that joined in the singing of the hymns, and resting for a moment upon the dark, uplifted eyes of Edgar Poe, caught a glimpse of something not of this earth.
As he left the church and churchyard, he noted many changes in its immediate neighborhood but the only one upon which his eye lingered was a smug brick house of commodious proportions and genteel aspect. A pleasant green yard afforded space for a few trees and flowers. A dignified and prosperous, but not in the least romantic house it was. A house with no rambling wings giving opportunities for winding passageways and odd nooks and corners; no unexpected closets where skeletons might be in hiding, or dusky stairways to creak in the dead of night, or upon which, even by day, one was almost certain he caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure flying before him as he groped his way up or down them. A house with no mysteries—just the house in which one might have expected to find Elmira Royster who, as the Widow Shelton, the prudent housewife and good manager of a prosperous estate, was simply the frank, clear-eyed girl he had known, grown older.
He would call upon Elmira sometime, but not now little son, so that she could only use the income, was duly signed and sealed. The wedding ring was bought.
With visions of a new start in life, of which there were many happy years in store for him (why not?—He was only forty!) The Dreamer set out on his way back to Fordham to settle up his affairs and bring Mother Clemm to Richmond to witness his marriage and to take up her abode with him and his bride, in the brick house on the hill. He had been upon a holiday, but he carried with him a goodly sum of money realized from his lectures, and a long list of subscribers toThe Stylus. Surely, Fortune had never shown him a more smiling face!
Baltimore!—
Why did his way lie through Baltimore? Baltimore, with its memories of Virginia—Baltimore where he had come up out of the grave to the heaven of her love, and where had been first constructed the most beautiful of all his dreams—the dream of the Valley of the Many-Colored Grass, in which he and she and the Mother had lived for each other only!
In Baltimore again he found his way stopped by the vision of "a legended tomb." It was paralyzing! He could go no further upon his journey, but lingered in Baltimore, wandering the streets like one bereft.
The words—the prophetic words—of his own poem "To One in Paradise," haunted him: