Arthur Griffiths - "The Passenger from Calais"

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Mary Louisa S. Molesworth - "Us"

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Mr. Seaver defied censorship and conventional literary standards to bring works by rabble-rousing authors like Samuel Beckett, Henry Miller and William Burroughs to American readers.

Mary Newton Stanard - The Dreamer

M >> Mary Newton Stanard >> The Dreamer




His heart ached for the pretty, tender little mother. How soft the arms
that had clung about his neck, the lips that had pressed his hot brow!
How piteous her dear tears! They had almost robbed him of his
resolution, but he had succeeded in steeling himself against this
weakness. He had folded her close in his arms and kissed her, and vowed
that, come what might, he could never forget her or cease to love her,
and that he should always think of her as his mother and himself as her
child. Then he had put her gently from him for, for all his vows, she
was inseparably bound up in the old life from which he was breaking
away--his life as John Allan's adopted son--she could have no real place
in his future.

Yet the tie that bound him to her was the strongest in his life and
could not be severed without keen pain. In the world into which he was
going to fight the battle of life (he told himself) memory of her would
be one of his inspirations.

But where was that battle to be fought, and with what weapons? He had
been brought up as a rich man's son, and with the expectation of being a
rich man's heir. He had been trained to no money-making work, physical
or mental; and now he was to fare forth into the great world where there
was not a familiar face, even, to earn his bread! What could he do that
would bring him the price of a loaf?--

Did the question appal him? Not in the least. He had youth, he had
health, he had hope, he had his beloved talent and the secret training
he had given himself toward its cultivation. His "heart-strings were a
lute"--he felt it, and with an optimism rare for him he also felt that
he had but to strike upon that lute and the world must needs stop and
listen.

What he did not have was experience and knowledge of the world. Little
did he dream how small a part of the busy hive would turn aside to hear
his music or how little poetry had to do with the earning of daily
bread.

His trunk was standing open, half packed, though his destination was
still undecided; and among the first things that had gone into it was a
box containing a number of small rolls of neat manuscript. As he thought
of them his heart warmed and his eyes grew soft.

"The world's mine oyster, and with my good pen I'll open it," he
joyously paraphrased. But toward what part of the world should he turn
his face--to what market take his precious wares? That was the
all-important question! How much his fortune might depend upon his
decision!

As he stood at the window, he stared into the brilliancy and the shadows
of the icy, unresponsive night--seeking a sign. But the cold splendor of
the cloudless sky and glittering moon and the inscrutible shadows in the
garden below where the leafless trees and bushes cast monster shapes
upon the frozen ground, alike mocked him.

Presently there was the first hint of softness in the night. It came
like a sigh of tender pity across the stillness and he bent his head to
listen. It was the voice of the faintest of breezes blowing up from the
south and passing his window. He threw wide his arms to empty space as
if to embrace some invisible form.

"Ligeia, Ligeia, my beautiful one," he breathed, invoking his
dream-lady, "Be my counsellor and guide! Let thy sweet voice whisper
whither I must go!"

But the voice was silent and all the night was still again.

He turned from the window and threw himself into his arm-chair, letting
his eyes rove about the room as though he would seek a sign from its
walls. Suddenly he sat erect, his dilated pupils fixed upon a point
above the chimney-piece--upon a small picture. It was a little
water-color sketch done by the hand of his versatile mother, and found
among her belongings after her death. Like her miniature and her
letters, the picture had followed him through his life and had always
adorned the walls of his room. Often and over he had studied it until he
knew by heart every stroke of the brush that entered into its
composition. Yet he stared at it now as if he had never seen it before.
Finally he took it down from its place on the chimney and held it in his
hands, gazing upon it in deep abstraction.

Underneath the picture was written its title: "Boston Harbor--Morning,"
and upon its back,

"For my little boy, Edgar, who must love Boston, the place of his birth,
and where his mother found her best and most sympathetic friends."

The picture gave him the sign! With rising excitement he decided that
it must be accepted. To Boston, of course, he would go. Boston, the
place of his birth and where his angel mother had found her "best, most
sympathetic friends."

He would get away as early the next morning as possible, he told
himself. He would waste no time in goodbyes, for, he remembered with
some bitterness, there were few to say goodbye to. The boys were all off
at college again, now that the holidays were over, and as for Myra, she
had quickly consoled herself and was already a wife! He had addressed
some reproachful verses to her as a bride; then dismissed her from his
thoughts.

He arose and placed the picture carefully in the trunk with the rest of
his treasures and then went to bed to fall into the easy slumber of one
whose mind is well made up.

* * * * *

A few days later Edgar Poe had looked with delight and ineffable emotion
upon the real Boston Harbor, with its rocky little islets and its varied
shipping and its busy wharves, and--for him--its suggestions of one in
Heaven.




CHAPTER XIII.


Upon his arrival in Boston, our errant knight, before setting out upon
his quest for the Fame and Fortune to whose service he was sworn, spent
some hours in wandering about the old town, with mind open to the
quickening influences of historic association and eye to the irregular,
picturesque beauty about him.

It was one of those rare days that come sometimes in the month of
February when, though according to the callendar it should be cold,
there is a warmth in the sunshine that seems borrowed from Spring. Tired
out by his tramp, young Edgar at length sat down upon a bench in the
Common, under an elm, great of girth and wide-spreading. The sunshine
fell pleasantly upon him, through the bare branches. Roundabout were
other splendid, but now bare elms and he sat gazing upward into their
sturdy brown branches and dreamily picturing to himself the beauty of
these goodly trees clothed in the green vesture of summer. Suddenly, by
a whimsical sequence of suggestion, the pleasure he felt in the sunshine
of February as it reached him under the tree in Boston Common, vividly
called to mind the refreshing coolness of the shade of the elms, in full
leaf, as he, a little lad of six, had walked the streets of old
Stoke-Newington for the first time.

There was little relation between that first and this present parting
with the Allans, yet in his mind they became inseparably connected. He
recalled his happiness in his first essays at composition, made at the
Manor School, and told himself that, though he did not know it at the
time, that was the first step toward his life work. He was now, here in
Boston, the city of his birth, about to take the second; for the hour
had arrived when his work would be given to the world!

Across his knees he held the box containing his precious manuscripts. He
arose from the bench and turning toward the lower end of the Common,
walked, with brisk, hopeful step down town, in the direction of a
well-known publishing house whose location he had already ascertained.

Edgar Poe had known sorrow, real and imaginary; he was now to have his
first meeting with Disappointment, bitter and grim.

Of all the persons who had ever seen his work, every one had been warm
in its praise--everyone saving John Allan only. Some had been positively
glowing. True, they had not been publishers, yet among them there had
been gentlemen and ladies of taste and culture. But here was a different
matter. Here was a personage with whom he had not reckoned, but who was
the door, as it were, through which his work must pass into the world.
He was unmistakably a personage. His bearing, though modest, spoke of
power. His dress, though unobtrusive, was in the perfect taste which
only the prosperous can achieve and maintain. His features were cast in
the mold of the well-bred. He was past middle age and his naturally fine
countenance was beautiful with the ennobling lines which time leaves
upon the face of the seeker after truth. He was courteous--most
Bostonians and many publishers are. He was sympathetic. He was
undoubtedly intellectual, but the eyes that regarded through big,
gold-rimmed spectacles, the romantic beauty, the prominent brow and the
distinguished air of the sweet-voiced youth before him, wore a not only
thoughtful, but something more--a distinctly shrewd and practical
expression. In them was no awe of the bare mention of "original poetry."

He took the little rolls of manuscript into his strong, and at the same
time smooth and well-shapen hands, and drew them out to their full
length with the manner of one who handled as good every day. He cast his
eyes rapidly down the sheets--_too_ rapidly, it seemed to the poet--with
a not unkind, yet critical air, while the sensitive youth before him
turned red and white, hot and cold, by turns, and learned something of
the horrors of the Inquisition.

It was really but a very short space, but to the boy who seemed
suspended between a life and a death sentence, it was an age.

Finally, he experienced something like a drowning sensation while he
heard a voice that barely penetrated the flood of deep waters that was
rolling over his head, saying words that were intended to be kind about
the work showing promise, in spite of an absence of marketable value.

"Marketable value?" Heavens! Was he back in John Allan's counting house?
What could the man mean? It was as literature, not as merchandize that
he wanted his poetry to be judged!

In his dismay, he stammered something of the sort, only to be told that
when his poetry was made into a book it would become merchandize and it
mattered not how good, as poetry--it might be, the publisher could do
nothing with it unless as merchandize it would probably be valuable too.

Then--he had been politely bowed out, with his package still under his
arm!

During the few minutes he had spent in the publisher's office the sky
had become overcast and a biting east wind had blown up from the river;
but the change in the outside world was as nothing to that within him.
He had not known how large a part of himself was his dream of becoming a
poet. It now seemed to him that it was all of him--had from the
beginning of his life been all of him. Since those old days at
Stoke-Newington, he had been building--building--building--this castle
in the air; now, at one fell blow, the whole fabric was laid in ruin!

Weakness seized his limbs and deep dejection his spirits. His life might
as well come to an end for there was nothing left for him to live for.
How indeed, was he to live when the only work he knew how to do had "no
marketable value?" The money with which Mrs. Allan supplied him, before
he left home--"to give him a start"--would soon be exhausted. What if he
should not be able to make more?

Though he was in the city of his birth, he found himself an absolute
stranger. If any of those who had been sympathetic friends to his mother
were left, he had no idea who or where they were.

He went back to the lodgings he had engaged to a night of bitter,
sleepless tossing.

But with the new day, youth and hope asserted themselves. He decided
that he would not accept as final the verdict of any one publisher,
though that one stood at the head of the list. With others, however, it
was just the same; and another night of even greater wretchedness
followed.

Upon his third day in Boston (he felt that he had been there a year!)
he wandered aimlessly about, spirit broken, ambition gone. Finally, in
Washington Street, he discovered, upon a small door, a modest sign
bearing the legend:

"Calvin F.S. Thomas. Printer."

With freshly springing hope, he entered the little shop and was received
by a pale, soft-eyed, sunken-chested and somewhat threadbare youth of
about his own age, who in reply to his inquiry, announced himself as
"Mr. Thomas."

Between these two boys, as they stood looking frankly into each other's
eyes, that mysterious thing which we call sympathy, which like the wind
"bloweth where it listeth and no man knoweth whence it cometh or whither
it goeth," sprang instantly into being. The one found himself without
his usual diffidence declaring himself a poet in search of a publisher,
and the other was at once alert with interest.

Calvin Thomas had but just--timorously, for he was poor as well as
young--set up his little shop, hoping to build up a trade as a printer.
To be a publisher had not entered into his wildest imaginings--much less
a publisher for a poet! But he was, like his visitor, a dreamer, and
like him ambitious. Why should he not be a publisher as well as a
printer? The poet had not his manuscripts with him, but offered to
recite some extracts, which he did, with glowing voice and
gesture--explaining figures of speech and allusions as he went along.

Edgar Poe sat easily upon a high stool in the little shop. His dress was
handsome and, as always, exquisite in its neatness and taste. His whole
appearance and bearing were marked by an "air" which deeply impressed
the young printer who had promptly fallen under the spell of his
personal charm. He had laid his hat upon the desk, baring the glossy
brown ringlets that clustered about his large, pale brow. His clear-cut
features were mobile and eager; his dark grey eyes full of life. His
voice had a wonderful musical quality, becoming passionate when, as at
present, his feeling was deeply aroused.

His poetry, recited thus, gained much of distinction. Its crudities
would have been lost, to a great extent, even upon a critic. But Thomas
was no critic. He was simply a dreamy, half-educated youth with a mind
open to the beautiful and the romantic. The flights of the poet's fancy
did not seem to him obscure or too fantastic. They admitted him to a
magic world in which he sat spell-bound until silence brought him back
to his tiny bare shop which seemed suddenly to have been glorified.

"It is wonderful--_wonderful_!" he breathed.

He began to picture himself as not only sharing the wealth, but the fame
which the publication of these gems was bound to bring. But he had to
explain that he was poor, and that he could not bring out the poems
without financial aid. The money which had been given Edgar to set out
in the world with, was already dwindling, but he managed to subscribe a
sum which Thomas declared would be sufficient, with the little he
himself could add, for the printing of a modest edition, in a very
modest garb.




CHAPTER XIV.


In the Allan mansion, in Richmond, there was a stillness that was
oppressive. No young foot-falls sounded upon the stair; no boyish
laughter rang out in rooms or hall. There were handsome and formal
dinners occasionally, when some elderly, distinguished stranger was
entertained, but there were no more merry dancing parties, with old Cy
playing the fiddle and calling the figures.

Frances Allan, fair and graceful still, though looking somewhat out of
health and "broken," as her friends remarked to one another, trod softly
about the stately rooms with no song on her lip, no gladness in her
step. Her husband was grown suddenly prematurely old and his speech was
less frequent and harsher than before. He was more immersed in business
than ever and was prospering mightily, but the fact seemed to bring him
no satisfaction. Even the old servants had lost much of their mirth.
Their black faces were grown solemn and their tread heavy. They looked
with awe upon their mistress when, as frequently happened, they saw her
quietly enter "Marse Eddie's" room and close the door behind her.

In that room and there alone, the fair, gentle, woful creature gave free
reign to the grief of her stricken mother-heart. The room was kept just
as her boy had left it, for she constantly hoped against hope that he
would return. Hers was the aching, pent-up grief of a mother whose child
is dead, yet she is denied the solace of mourning.

Here was the bed which had pillowed his dear, sunny ringlets. Here were
his favorite chair--his desk--his books. In a little trunk against the
wall were his toys with some of the pretty clothes made with her own
fingers, in which it had been her pride to dress him when he was a wee
laddie. How she loved to finger and fondle them!

Fifteen years she had been his mother--now this was all she had!
Somewhere in the same world with her he was living, was walking about,
talking, eating, sleeping; yet he was dead to her! Oh, if she could only
know that he was happy, that he was well, that he lacked nothing in the
way of creature comfort; if she could know where he was, picture him at
work or in his leisure hours, it would not be so hard to bear.

But she knew nothing--nothing--save that he had gone to Boston.

One letter she had had from him there--such a dear one!--she knew it by
heart. In it he had called her "Mother" and assured her of his constant
love and thought of her. He had arrived safely, he said, and would soon
be busy making his living. Boston was a fine city and full of interest
to him. When his ship came in he was going to have her come on and pay
him a visit there. He would write again when he had anything worth
telling.

Days had passed--weeks--and no word had come. Had he failed to obtain
employment? Had he gone further--to New York, perhaps, or Philadelphia?
She did not know. Oh, if she could but _know_!

Was he ill? Fear clutched her heart and made her faint. The suspense was
terrible, and she had no one to go to for sympathy--no one. She dared
not mention her anxiety to her husband; it made him furious. He could
not stand the sound of Eddie's name, even--her darling, beautiful Eddie!
Her arms felt so empty they ached.

Winter was passing. The garden that Eddie loved so dearly was coming to
life. The crocuses for which he always watched with so much interest
were come and gone. The jonquils were in bloom and the first sweet
hyacinths, blue as turquoises, she had gathered and put in his room. It
cheered her to see them there. Somehow, they made the room look more
"ready" than usual--as if he might come home that day.

He did not come, but something else did. A letter with the Boston
post-mark she had so longed to see, and a small, flat package addressed
to her in his dear hand. She broke the seal of the letter first--she was
so hungry for the sight of the familiar, "Mother dear," and to know how
he fared.

It was a short letter, but, ah, the blessed relief of knowing he was
well and happy! And _prospering_--prospering famously--for he told her
he was sending her the first copy off the press of his book of poems! It
was a _very little_ book, he said, but it was a beginning. He felt
within him that he would have much bigger and better things to show her
erelong. For the present, he was hard at work making ready for a revised
and enlarged edition of his book, if one should be called for.

There was a jubilant note in the letter that delighted her and
communicated itself to her own spirits. She eagerly tore the wrappings
from the package, and pressed the contents against her lips and her
heart. It was but a slender volume, cheaply printed and bound, but it
was her boy's first published work and a wonderful thing in her eyes.
She already saw him rich and famous--saw him come home to her crowned
with honor and success--_vindicated_.

She turned the pages of the book. He had written upon the fly-leaf some
precious words of presentation to her. She kissed them rapturously and
passed on to the title-page:

"Tamerlane and Other Poems. By a Bostonian. Boston: Calvin F.S. Thomas,
Printer."

She was still gloating over her treasure when the brass knocker on the
front door was sounded, and a minute later Myra Royster--now Mrs.
Shelton--was announced. Taking the book with her, she tripped
downstairs, singing as she went, and burst in upon Myra as she sat in
state in the drawing-room, in all her bridal finery.

Myra noticed as she kissed her, her glowing cheeks and shining eyes.

"How well you are looking today, Mrs. Allan," she exclaimed.

"It is happiness, dear. I've just had such a delightful letter from
Eddie, and this darling little book. It is his poems, Myra!"

Myra was all interest. "To think of knowing a real live author!" she
exclaimed. "I was sure Eddie would be famous some day, but had no idea
it would come so soon."

"Don't you wish you had waited for him?" teased Mrs. Allan, laughing
happily.

They chatted over the wonderful news until nearly dinner-time, and after
they had parted Mrs. Allan sat at the window watching for her husband to
come home that she might impart it to him at the earliest moment
possible. But when at last he appeared she put off the great moment
until after dinner, and then when he was comfortably smoking a fragrant
cigar she approached him timidly and placed the letter and the book in
his lap without a word.

"What's all this?" he questioned sharply.

She made no reply, but hovered about his chair, too excited to trust
herself to speak.

He picked up the letter and read it with a deepening frown, then opened
the book and ran his eyes hurriedly down one or two of its pages. At
length he spoke:

"So this is the way he's wasting his time and, I dare say, his money
too. Will the boy ever amount to anything, I wonder?"

The happiness in Frances Allan's face gave place to quick distress.

"Oh, John," she cried, "Don't you think it amounts to anything for a boy
of eighteen to have written and published a book of poetry?"

"Poetry? This stuff is bosh--utter bosh!"

For the first time in her life, there was defiance in her gentle face.
Her clinging air was discarded. She raised her head and with flashing
eyes and rising color, faced him.

"You think that, because you cannot understand or appreciate it," she
retorted, with spirit. "Neither do I understand it, but I can see that
it is wonderful poetry. If he can do this at eighteen I have no doubt he
will make himself and us famous before many years are past!"

Her husband's only reply was an astonished and piercing stare which she
met without flinching, then turned and swept from the room, leaving him
with a feeling of surprise to see that she was so tall.

Her self assertion was but momentary. As she ascended the stair and
entered Eddie's room, all the elasticity was gone from her step, all the
brightness from her cheeks and eyes and, still clasping her boy's letter
and book to her heart, she threw herself upon his bed and burst into a
passion of tears.

* * * * *

Meantime, the elms on Boston Common were clothed with tender April green
and under foot sweet, soft grass was springing. In this inspiring
cathedral walked Edgar Poe, his pale face and deep eyes, passionate with
the worship of beauty that filled his soul, lifted to the greening
arches above him, his sensitive ears entranced with the bird-music that
fluted through the cool aisles. His mind was teeming with new poems in
the making and with visions of what he should do if his book should
sell.

But it did not sell. The leading magazines acknowledged its receipt in
their review columns, but with the merest mention, which was exceedingly
disconcerting. It was discussed (but with disappointment) for a week by
his friends at home and at the University, to whom he sent copies. Then
was forgotten.

And now its author was, for the first time within his recollection,
beginning to feel the pinch of poverty. His money was almost gone and he
saw no immediate hope of getting more. He moved to the cheapest boarding
house he could find but he did not mind that so much as the prospect
that faced him of soon beginning to present a shabby appearance in
public. His shoes were already showing wear, and he found that to keep
his linen as immaculate as he had always been accustomed to have it cost
money and he actually had to economize in the quantity of clothing he
had laundered. This to his proud and fastidious nature was humiliating
in the extreme.

He and Calvin Thomas held frequent colloquies as to ways and means of
giving his book wider circulation. He visited the offices of the several
newspapers of the town in the hope of getting work in the line of
journalism--reporting, reviewing, story-writing, anything in the way of
the only business or profession for which he felt that he had any
aptitude or preparation; but without success.

At length the sign of "Calvin F.S. Thomas, Printer" had suddenly
disappeared from the little shop in Washington Street, and a dismal "To
Let," was in its place.

At about the same time Mrs. Blanks lost the handsome, quiet young
gentleman, who had evidently seen better days, from her unpretentious
lodging house, and the walks under the elms in Boston Common were no
longer trodden by The Dreamer from Virginia.

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