Mary Newton Stanard - The Dreamer

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* * * * *

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 of _The Stylus_ will 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 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.

Alas, the vow!--that solemn, sacred vow! How could he have so utterly
forgotten it? How plainly he could see her lying upon the snowy
pillow--her face not much less white--her trustful eyes on his eyes as
he knelt by her side and swore that he would never bind himself in
marriage to another--invoking from Heaven a terrible curse upon his soul
if he should ever prove traitorous to his oath.

Alas, where had been his will that he had so soon forgotten his vow? How
he despised himself for his weakness--he that had boasted in the words
of old Joseph Glanvil, until he had almost made them his own words:

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