The Dreamer Part 23

"This is a drawing of her made by myself," he said. "It was done from memory, but is a good likeness. I needed no sitting to make her likeness."

When he had shown Mr. Graham the picture, he hung it back in its place and a gentle hush fell upon the little group. Speech seemed out of place after the moving recital and the four sat gazing into the embers, each sunk in his or her own dreams.

The poet was the first to speak.

"Some music Sissy," he said turning to Virginia. "I want Mr. Graham to hear you."

She arose at once and seating herself at the harp, struck some soft, bell-like chords while she waited for "Buddie" to decide what she should sing.

"Let it be something sweet and low," he said, "and simple. Something of Tom Moore's, for instance. You know my theory, anything but the simplest music to be appreciated--to reach the soul--must be heard alone."

The harp accompaniment rippled forth, and in a moment more melted into the rich, sweet pa.s.sionate tones of her voice as she told in musical numbers a heart-breaking story of love and parting.

Ballad after ballad followed while the little audience sat entranced.

Finally when the singer returned to her seat by the side of her husband, the conversation turned upon music. Mr. Graham commented upon his host's theory that all music but the simplest should, for its best effect, be listened to in solitude.

"Yes," said The Dreamer, "It is (like the happiness felt in the contemplation of natural scenery) much enhanced by seclusion. The man who would behold aright the glory of G.o.d as expressed in dark valleys, gray rocks, waters that silently smile and forests that sigh in uneasy slumbers, and the proud, watchful mountains that look down upon all--the man that would not only look upon these with his natural eye but feed his soul upon them as a sacrament, must do so in solitude. And so too, I hold, should one listen to the deep harmonies of music of the highest cla.s.s."

At length the hour came when Mr. Graham felt that he must tear himself away--bring this strange visit to an end. Before going he felt moved by an impulse to express something of the effect it had had upon him.

"Mr. Poe," he said, "I wish to thank you for one of the most delightful evenings of my life and for having taken me into the heart of your home.

I can find no words in which to express my appreciation. Tonight, at your fireside, it seems to me that I have had for the first time in my life a clear understanding of the word happiness."

Edgar Poe smiled, dreamily.

"Why should we not be happy here?" he answered. "Concerning happiness, my dear Mr. Graham, I have a little creed of my own. If I could only persuade others to adopt it there would be more happy people--far more contented ones--in the world."

"And the articles of your creed?" queried Mr. Graham.

"Are only four. First, free exercise in the open air, and plenty of it.

This brings health--which is a kind of happiness in itself--that attainable by any other means is scarcely worth the name. Second, love of woman. I need not tell you that my life fulfils that condition." (As he spoke, his eyes, with an expression of ineffable tenderness, wandered for a moment--and it seemed involuntarily--in the direction of his wife). "The third condition is contempt for ambition. Would that I could tell you that I have attained to that! When I do, there will be little in this world to be desired by me. The fourth and last is an object of unceasing pursuit. This is the most important of all, for I believe that the extent of one's happiness is in proportion to the spirituality of this object. In this I am especially fortunate, for no more elevating pursuit exists, I think, than that of systematically endeavoring to bring to its highest perfection the art of literature."

"I notice you do not mention money in your creed," remarked his guest.

"No, neither do I mention air. Both the one and the other are essential to life, and to the keeping together of body and soul. It goes without saying that the necessities of life are necessary to happiness. But money--meaning wealth--while it makes indulgence in pleasures possible, has nothing to do with happiness. Indeed the very pleasure it ensures often obscure highest happiness--the happiness of exaltation of the soul, of exercise of the intellect. What has money to do with happiness?

It is a happiness to wonder--it is a happiness to dream. Your over-fed, jewel-decked, pleasure-drunk rich man or woman is too deeply embedded in flesh and sense to do either. No"--he mused, his eyes on the glowing coals in the grate, "No--I have no desire for wealth--for more than enough money to keep my wife and mother comfortable. They, like myself, have learned the lesson of being poor and happy. But I _must_ keep them above want--I _will_ keep them above want!" As he repeated the words the meditative mood dropped from him. He straightened himself in his chair with sudden energy, his voice trembled and sunk almost to a whisper, in place of the dreamy look his eyes flamed with pa.s.sion.

"Mr. Graham," he exclaimed, "to see those you love better than your own soul in want, and, in spite of working like mad, to be powerless to raise them out of it, is h.e.l.l!"

A second time the exquisite child-wife slipped quickly, noiselessly, to his side and with the same easy grace leaned over and touched his brow with her lips, but this time instead of moving away, remained hanging over the back of his chair, her fair hand gently toying with the ringlets on his brow. He was calm in an instant.

"I mean, of course, such a condition would be intolerable provided it should ever exist," he added.

As the visitor stepped from the cottage door into the chill of the bright November night, and made his way down the little path of flagstones--irregularly shaped and clumsily laid down, so that mossy turf which was still green, appeared between them--he felt that he was stepping back into a flat, stale and unprofitable world from one of the enchanted regions, "out of s.p.a.ce, out of time," of Poe's own creation.

He had indeed, had a revelation of harmonious home-life such as he had not guessed existed in a work-a-day world--of the music, the poetry of living. He had had a glimpse into the Valley of the Many-Colored Gra.s.s.

CHAPTER XXV.

The next morning found Mr. Graham still under the spell of the evening with the Poes. He caught himself impatiently watching the clock, for the man under whose charm he had come was to call at a certain hour, to confer with him in regard to the magazine. He could hear him coming (stepping briskly and whistling a "Moore's Melody") before the rap upon the door announced him. He came in with the bright, alert air of a man ready for action for which he has appet.i.te. His rarely heard laugh rang out, fresh and spontaneous, several times during the interview. His manners were at all times those of a prince, but Mr. Graham had never seen him so genial, so gay. The mantle of dreamer and poet had suddenly dropped from him, but the new mood had a charm all its own.

When business had been dispatched and they sat on to finish their cigars, Mr. Graham reiterated his expressions of pleasure in his visit of the evening before.

"You gave me food for thought, Mr. Poe," said he. "I've been pondering on that creed of yours for finding and keeping the secret of true happiness. It is about the most wholesome and sane doctrine I've met with for some time. I've determined to adopt it, and to, at least endeavor, to practice it."

His companion smiled.

"Good!" said he. "I only hope you'll have better success in living up to it than I have."

Mr. Graham's eyebrows went up. "I thought that was just what you did,"

was his answer.

"So it is, at times; but when the blues or the imp of the perverse get hold of me all my philosophy goes to the devil, and I realize what an arch humbug I am."

"The imp of the perverse?" questioned Mr. Graham.

"That is my name for the principle that lies hidden in weak human nature--the principle of antagonism to happiness, which, with unholy impishness, tempts man to his own destruction. Don't you think it an apt name?"

"I don't believe I follow you."

"Then let me explain. Did you never, when standing upon some high point, become conscious of an influence irresistibly urging you to cast yourself down? As you listened--fascinated and horrified--to the voice, did you not feel an almost overwhelming curiosity to see what the sensations accompanying such a fall would be--to know the extremest terror of it? Your tempter was the _Imp of the Perverse_.

"Did you never feel a sense of glee to find that something you had said or done had shocked someone whose good opinion you should have desired?

Did you never feel a desire to depart from a course you knew to be to your interest and follow one that would bring certain harm--possible disaster--upon you? Did you never feel like breaking loose from all the restraints which you knew to be for your good--throwing off every shackle of propriety, and right, and decency?--Mr. Graham, did you never feel like throwing yourself to the devil for no reason at all other than the desire to be perverse? Could any desire be more impish?--I will ill.u.s.trate by my own case, I am in one respect not like other men. An exceptionally high-strung nervous temperament makes alcoholic stimulants poison to me. It works like madness in my brain and in my blood. The gla.s.s of wine that you can take with pleasure and perhaps with benefit drives me wild--makes me commit all manner of reckless deeds that in my sane moments fill me with sorrow!--and sometimes produces physical illness followed by depression of spirits, horrible in the extreme. More--an inherited desire for stimulation and the exhilaration produced by wine, makes it well nigh impossible for me, once I have yielded my will so far as to take the single gla.s.s, to resist the second, which is more than apt to be followed by a third, and so on. I am fully aware therefore, of the danger that lies for me in a thing harmless to many men, and that my only safety and happiness and the happiness of those far dearer to me than myself, lies in the strictest, most rigid abstinence. Knowing all this, one would suppose that I would fly from this temptation as it were the plague. I do generally. At present, several years have pa.s.sed since I yielded an inch. But there have been times--and there may be times again--when the Imp of the Perverse will command me to drink and, fully aware of the risk, I _will_ drink, and will go down into h.e.l.l for a longer or shorter period afterward."

During this lecture upon one of his favorite hobbies, the low voice of The Dreamer was vibrant with earnestness. He spoke out of bitter experience and as he who bore the reputation of a reserved man, laid his soul bare, his vivid eyes held the eyes of his companion by the very intensity--the deep sincerity of their gaze.

Mr. Graham's last conversation with his new editor had dazed him; this one dazed him still more. What manner of man was this? (he asked himself) with whom he had formed a league? He could not say--beyond the fact that he was undoubtedly original--and interesting. Admirable qualities for an editor--both!

The readers of the new monthly thoroughly agreed with him. The history of Edgar Poe's career as editor of _The Southern Literary Messenger_ promptly began to repeat itself with _Graham's Magazine_. The announcement that he had been engaged as editor immediately drew the attention of the reading world toward _Graham's_, and it soon became apparent that in the new position he was going to out-do himself. The rapidity with which his brilliant and caustic critiques and essays, and weird stories, followed upon the heels of one another was enough to take one's breath away. He alternately raised the hair of his readers with master-pieces of unearthly imaginings and diverted them with playful studies in autography and exhibitions of skill in reading secret writing.

About the time of his beginning his duties at _Graham's_ he must needs have had a visit from some fairy G.o.dmother, the touch of whose enchanted wand left him with a new gift. This was a wonderfully developed power of a.n.a.lysis which he found pleasure in exercising in every possible way. To quote his own words, "As the strong man exults in his physical ability, delighting in such exercises as bring his muscles into action, so glories the a.n.a.lyst in that moral activity which disentangles. He derives pleasure from even the most trivial occupations bringing his talent into play."

He tried the newly discovered talent upon everything. In his papers on "Autography" he practised it in the reading of character from hand-writing, and in his deciphering of secret writing he carried it so far and awakened the interest and curiosity of the public to such extent that it bade fair to be the ruin of him; for it seemed his correspondents would have him drop literature and devote himself and the columns of _Graham's Magazine_ for the rest of his life, to the solving of these puzzles. Finally, having proved that it was impossible for any of them to compose a cypher he could not read in less time than its author had spent in inventing it, he took advantage of his only safeguard, and positively declined to have anything more to do with them.

But he found a much more interesting way of exercising his power of a.n.a.lysis. In the April number of _Graham's_ he tried it upon a story--"The Murders in the Rue Morgue"--which set all the world buzzing, and drew the interested attention of France upon him. In the next number, while the "Murders" were still the talk of the hour, he made an excursion into the world of _pseudo_-science the result of which was his thrilling "Descent into the Maelstrom;" but later in the same month he returned to his experiments in a.n.a.lysis--publishing in _The Sat.u.r.day Evening Post_ an _advance_ review of Charles d.i.c.kens' story "Barnaby Rudge," which was just beginning to come out in serial form. In the review he predicted, correctly, the whole development and conclusion of the story. It brought him a letter from d.i.c.kens, expressing astonishment, owning that the plot was correct, and enquiring if Edgar Poe had "dealings with the devil."

Soon followed the "Colloquy of Monos and Una," in which in the exquisite prose poetry of which The Dreamer was a consummate master, his imagination sought to pierce the veil between this world and the next--to lay bare the secrets of the soul's pa.s.sage into the "Valley of the Shadow."

Whatever else Edgar Poe wrote, he continued to pour out through the editorial columns of _Graham's Magazine_ a steady stream of criticism of current books. While entertaining or amusing the public as far as power to do so in him lay, he did not for a moment permit anything to come between him and the duties of his post as Defender of Purity of Style in American Letters. He was unsparing in the use of his pruning hook upon the work of his contemporaries and the height of art to which by his fearless, candid and, at times, cruel criticism, he sought to bring others, he exacted of himself. In spite of the amount of work he produced, each sentence that dropped from his pen in this time of his maturity--his ripeness--was the perfection of clear and polished English.

But the evidences of this conscientiousness in his own work did not make the little authors one whit less sore under his lash. Privately they writhed and they squirmed--publicly they denounced. All save one--an ex-preacher, Dr. Rufus Griswold--himself a critic of ability, who would like to have been, like The Dreamer, a poet as well as a critic.