Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, page 391
“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 foam Of 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 heart But 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 hear The 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 dispel He 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!”
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.”
CHAPTER XXXIII.
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 of lang 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 of The Southern Literary Messenger where the editor, Mr. John R. Thompson — himself a poet — gave him a warm welcome always, and gladly accepted and published in The Messenger anything 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 to The Stylus poured 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, immortal ego was 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 to The 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:
“A voice from out the future cries, ‘On! on!’ But o’er the Past (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies Mute, motionless, aghast!”
And again, the words of his “Bridal Ballad” — more prophetic still:
“Would to God I could awaken! For I dream I know not how; And my soul is sorely shaken Lest an evil step be taken, — Lest the dead who is forsaken May not be happy now.”
And that merciless other self, his accusing Conscience, arose, and with whisper louder and more terrible than ever before, upbraided him — reminding him of the vow he had made his wife upon her bed of death.
