The Dreamer Part 36

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 pa.s.sed into the church, then followed, and as the bell stopped tolling and the organ began to play the familiar, moving chant, he pa.s.sed 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sageways 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 Gra.s.s, 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 G.o.d 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:

"'Man doth not yield himself to the angels nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his will.'"

Hours on hours he wandered the streets of the city whose every paving stone seemed to speak to him of his Virginia--the city where he had walked with her--where he had first spoken of love to her and heard her sweet confession--where, in the holy church, the beautiful words of the old, old rite had made them one.

All day he wandered, and all night--driven, cruelly driven--by the upbraiding whisper in his ear, while before him still he saw her white face with the soft eyes looking out--it seemed to him in reproach.

Finally the longing which had come upon him in Providence--the longing for the peace of the grave and reunion, in death, with Virginia, was strong upon him again--pressed him hard--mastered him.

It was sometime in the early morning that he swallowed the draught--the draught that would free his spirit, that would enable him to lay down the burden of his body and to fly from the steps that dogged _his_ steps--from the voice that whispered upbraidings. He would lay his body down by the side of her body in the "legended tomb" while his spirit would fly to join her spirit in that far Aidenn where they would be happy together forever.

As he fell asleep he murmured (again quoting himself):

"And neither the angels in heaven above, Nor the demons down under the sea, Can ever dissever my soul from the soul Of the beautiful Annabel Lee."

When he opened his wondering eyes upon the white walls of the hospital he was feeble and weak in his limbs as an infant, but his brain was unclouded. Gentle hands ministered to him and a woman's voice read him spirit-soothing words from the Gospel of St. John. But the draught had done its work. He lingered some days and then, on Sunday morning, the seventh day of October of the year 1849, his spirit took its flight. His last words were a prayer:

"Lord, have mercy on my poor soul!"

Many were the friends who rose up to comfort the stricken mother and who hastened to bring rosemary to the poet's grave. But there was one whom he had believed to be his friend--a big man whose big brain he had admired--in whose furtive eye was an unholy glee, about whose thick lips played a smile which slightly revealed his fang-like teeth. To him was entrusted the part of literary executor--it had been The Dreamer's own request. In his power it would lie to give to the world his own account of this man who had said he was no poet and had distanced him in the race for a woman's favor.

The day was at hand when Rufus Griswold would have his full revenge upon the fair fame of Edgar the Dreamer.

"Out--out are the lights--out all!

And, over each quivering form, The curtain, a funeral pall, Comes down with the rush of a storm; And the angels, all pallid and wan, Uprising, unveiling, affirm That the play is the tragedy, 'Man,'

And its hero the Conqueror Worm."