The Dreamer Part 25

"My wife and her mother have thought that you Penn folk might like to sit down to a Virginia supper," said the host, as he led Mrs. Graham to the table, and stood for a moment while Virginia designated the seats to be taken. Then still standing, said,

"Every man a priest to his own household, is our Virginia rule, but as we have with us tonight one who before he took up Letters wore the cloth, I'm going to abdicate in his favor. Dr. Griswold will you ask a blessing?"

All heads were bowed while the time-honored little ceremonial was performed, then seats were taken and the repast begun.

Virginia presided over the "tea-things," while Mrs. Clemm occupied the seat nearest the door opening on the kitchen, that she might slip as un.o.btrusively as possible out and back again when necessary; but most of the serving was done by the guests themselves, each of whom helped the dish nearest his or her plate, and pa.s.sed the plates from hand to hand.

All of the supper, save the dessert and fresh supplies of hot waffles was on the table. There were oysters and turkey salad and Virginia ham.

And there were hot rolls and "batter-bread" (made of Virginia meal with plenty of b.u.t.ter, eggs and milk, and a spoonful of boiled rice stirred in) and there was a "Sally Lunn"--light, brown, and also hot, and plenty of waffles. In the little s.p.a.ces between the more important dishes there were pickles and preserves--stuffed mangoes and preserved quinces and currant jelly. And in the centre of the table was the beautiful birthday cake frosted by Virginia's dainty fingers and brilliant with its thirty-three lighted candles.

There was just enough room left for the three slender cut-gla.s.s decanters that were relics of Mother Clemm's better days.

"The decanter before you, Mr. Graham, contains the Madeira; the Canary is before you, Captain Reid, and I have here a beverage with which I am very much in love at present--_apple wine_--" Edgar Poe said, tapping the stopper of a decanter of cider near his plate.

All understood. He had served the cider that he might join with them in their pledges of friendship and good will without breaking through the rule of abstemiousness in which he was finding so much benefit.

The toasts were clever as well as complimentary, and the table-talk light and sparkling. Finally both Mrs. Clemm and Virginia arose to clear the table for the dessert.

"You see, my friends, we keep no maid or butler," said the host, "but I'm sure you will all agree with me in feeling that we would not exchange our two Hebes for any, and they take serving you as a privilege."

The cake was cut and served with calves-foot jelly--quivering and ruby red--and velvety _blanc mange_.

After supper Virginia's harp was brought out of its corner and she sang to them. With adorable sweetness and simplicity she gave each one's favorite song as it was asked for--filling all the cottage with her pure sweet tones accompanied by the bell-like, rippling notes of the harp.

The company sat entranced--all eyes upon the lovely girl from whose throat poured the streams of melody.

She seemed but a child; for all she had been married six years she had but just pa.s.sed out of her "teens" and might easily have been taken for a girl of fifteen. Her hair, it is true, was "tucked up," but the innocence in the upturned, velvet eyes, the soft, childish outlines of the face, the dimpled hands and arms against the harp's glided strings, the simple little frock of white dimity, all combined to give her a "babyfied" look which was most appealing, and which her t.i.tle of "Mrs.

Poe" seemed rather to accentuate than otherwise.

Rufus Griswold's furtive eye rested balefully upon her. And this exquisite being too, belonged to that man--as if the G.o.ds had not already given him enough!

From a far corner of the room her husband gazed upon her, and bathed his senses in contemplation of her beauty while his soul soared with her song. Mother Clemm noiselessly pa.s.sing near him to snuff a candle on the table upon which his elbow, propping his head, rested, paused for a moment and laid a caressing hand upon his hair. He impulsively drew her down to a seat beside him.

"Oh, Muddie, Muddie, look at her--look at her!" he whispered. "There is no one anywhere so beautiful as my little wife! And no voice like hers outside of Heaven!... Ah--"

What was the matter? Was his Virginia ill? Even as he spoke her voice broke upon the middle of a note--then stopped. One hand clutched the harp, the other flew to her throat from which came only an inarticulate sound like a struggle for utterance. Terror was in the innocent eyes and the deathly white, baby face.

For a tense moment the little company of birthday guests sat rooted to their places with horror, then rushed in a ma.s.s toward the singer, but her husband was there first--his face like marble. His arms were around her but with a repet.i.tion of that inarticulate, gurgling sound she fell limp against his breast in a swoon. From the sweet lips where so lately only melody had been a tiny stream of blood oozed and trickled down and stained her pretty white dress.

"Back!--All of you!" commanded the low, clear voice of Edgar Poe, as with the dear burden still in his arms he sank gently to the floor and propping her head in his lap, disposed her limbs in comfortable, and her dress in orderly manner. "Back--don't crowd! A doctor!"

One of the guests from nearby, who knew the neighborhood, had already slipped from the door and gone to fetch the nearest doctor. The others sat and listened for his step in breathless stillness.

Edgar Poe bent his marble face above the prostrate form of his wife, calling to her in endearing whispers while, with his handkerchief he wiped from her lips the oozing, crimson stream. His teeth chattered.

Once before he had seen such a stream. It was long ago--long ago, but he remembered it well. He was back--a little boy, a mere baby--in the small, dark room behind Mrs. Fipps' millinery shop, in Richmond, and a stream like this came from the lips of his mother who lay so still, so white, upon the bed. And his mother had been dying. He had seen her thus--he would see her nevermore!... Would the doctor never come?--

Many days the Angel of Death spread his wings over the cottage in the Valley of the Many-Colored Gra.s.s. Their shadow cast a great stillness upon the cottage. Outside was a white, silent world. Snow had fallen--snow on snow--until it lay deep, deep upon the garden-spot and deep in the streets outside. There was no wind and the ice-sheathed trees that were as sentinels round about the cottage stood still. They seemed to listen and to wait.

Inside, in the bed-chamber upstairs, under the shelving walls of the low Dutch roof, The Dreamer's heartsease blossom lay broken and wan upon the white bed. It was a very white little blossom and the dark eyes seemed darker, larger than ever before as they looked out from the pale face.

But they had never seemed so soft and a smile like an angel's played now and again about her lips.

Beside her, with his lips pressed upon the tiny white hand which he held in both his own was the bowed figure of a man--of a poet and a lover who like the ice-sheathed trees seemed to listen and to wait--of a man whose countenance from being pale was become ghastly, whose eyes from being luminous were wild with a "divine despair."

At the foot of the bed sat a silver-haired woman with saintlike face uplifted in resignation and aspiration. For once the busy hands were idle and were clasped in her lap. She too, listened and waited, as she had listened and waited for days. Oh Love! Oh Life! Are these the happy trio who lived for each other only in the Valley of the Many-Colored Gra.s.s?

The silence was only broken when the lips of the invalid moved to murmur some loving words or to babble of the flowers in the Valley. She was in no pain but she was very tired. She was not unhappy, for the two whom she loved and who loved her were with her and though she was tired she soon would rest--in Heaven. When she spoke of going the man's heart stood still with terror. He held the hand closer and pressed his lips more fiercely upon it.

He would not let her go, he vowed. There was no power in Heaven or h.e.l.l to whom he would yield her.

But she sweetly plead that he would not try to detain her--that he would learn to bear the idea of her leaving him which now gave her no unhappiness but for one thought--the thought that after a season he might, in the love of some other maiden, forget the sweet life he had lived with her in the Valley, and that because of his forgetting, it would not be given to him to join her at last, in the land where she would be waiting for him--the land of Rest.

At her words, he flung himself upon his knees beside her bed and offered up a vow to herself and to Heaven that he would never bind himself in marriage to any other daughter of earth, or in any way prove himself forgetful of her memory and her love, and to make the vow the stronger, he invoked a curse upon his head if he should ever prove false to his promise.

And as she listened her soft eyes grew brighter and she, in turn, made a vow to him that even after her departure she would watch over him in spirit and if it were permitted her, would return to him visibly in the watches of the night, but if that were beyond her power, would at least give him frequent indications of her presence--sighing upon him in the evening winds or filling the air which he breathed with perfume from the censers of the angels.

And she sighed as if a deadly burden had been lifted from her breast, and trembled and wept and vowed that her bed of death had been made easy by his vow.

But it was not to be the bed of death. Little by little the shadow lifted from over the cottage--the shadow of the wings of the Angel of Death--and sunshine fell where the shadow had been, and a soft zephyr made music, that was like the music of the voice of "Ligeia," in the trees which dropped their sheath of ice. And the snow disappeared from the streets and from the garden-spot which was all green underneath, and by the time the crocuses were up health and happiness reigned once more in the cottage.

But it was a happiness with a difference. A happiness which for all it was so sweet, was tinctured with the bitter of remorse.

During the illness of his beloved wife, Edgar Poe had lived over and over again through the horror of her death and burial with all of the details with which the circ.u.mstances of his life had so early made him familiar--and had tasted the desolation for him which must follow. While his soul had been overwhelmed with this supreme sorrow his mind had been unusually clear and alert. He had been alive to the slightest change in her condition. Antic.i.p.ating her every whim, he had nursed her with the tenderness the untiring devotion, of a mother with her babe. Through all his grief he was quiet, self-possessed, efficient.

But with the first glimmer of hope, his head reeled. His reason which had stood the shock of despair, or seemed to stand it, gave way before the return of happiness. A wild delirium possessed him. Joy drove him mad, and already drunk with joy--mad with it--he flung prudence, philosophy, resolutions to the wind and drank wine--and drank--and drank. When--where--how much--he did not know; but at last merciful illness overtook him and stopped him in his wild career.

With his convalescence his right mind returned to him; but he felt as he did when he awoke to consciousness in Mother Clemm's bed-chamber in Baltimore--that he had been down into the grave and back again.

Only--then there was no remorse--no fiercely accusing conscience to make him wish from his soul that he might have remained in the abyss.

In dressing-gown and slippers he sat--weak and tremulous--in an arm-chair drawn close to the open fire in the cottage sitting-room.

About him hovered his two angels, antic.i.p.ating his every need, pausing at his side now and again to bestow a delicate caress. Virginia was more beautiful since her illness. Her face and figure had lost their plumpness and with it their childish curves--but a something exalted and ethereal had taken their place. Her eyes were softer, more wistful than ever. Through her fair, transparent skin glowed the faintest, most exquisite bloom. Her harp was mute. Her singing voice was gone. But the deep, low tones of her speaking voice, full of restrained feeling, could only be compared by her husband to the melodious voice of the dream-woman, "Ligeia." They recalled to him the impression that the voice of the priest as he read the funeral rite over his dead mother had made upon his infant mind--the impression of _spoken_ music. His Virginia could no longer sing, but every word that fell from her lips was music.

As she and her tall, nun-like mother quietly stepped about the rooms ministering to his comfort, lifting the work of preparing the simple meals, mending the fire, and keeping the rooms bright into a sacred rite by the grace, the care, the dignity with which it was performed, no word, no look escaped either save of tenderness, patience, and boundless love. All the reproaches came from within his own breast--from that inner self that boldly tearing the veil from his deeds filled him with loathing of himself.

The years, his troubles, and his illness, had wrought a great change in him--outwardly. The dark ringlets that framed his face were still untouched with rime, and the dark grey eyes were as vivid, as ever-varying in expression as before, but the large brow wore a furrow and over it and the clear-cut features and the emaciated cheeks was a settled pallor. The face was still very beautiful, but in repose it was melancholy and about the mouth there was a touch of bitterness. The illumining smile still flashed out at times, and filled all his countenance with sweetness and light--but it was rarer than formerly.

He had many reasons for being happy--for being thankful. The genius with which he was conscious he was endowed in larger measure than others of his generation was being recognized. He had fame--growing fame--and money enough for his needs. He had what was as necessary to his soul as meat was to his body--the love of a woman who understood him in all his moods and who was beautiful enough in mind and in body and pure enough in spirit for him to worship as well as to love--to satisfy his soul as well as his senses. And this woman, at the very moment when he thought himself about to lose her forever, had been given back to him--given back clothed upon with a finer a more exquisite beauty than she had possessed before.

He had indeed found the end of the rainbow, but what did it amount to?

He was dissatisfied--not with what life was giving him, but with what he was doing with his life. At the moment when his cup was fairly overflowing with happiness and he should have been strongest, he had suffered himself to be led away by the Imp of the Perverse, and had spoiled all. Nothing he had ever been made to taste he told himself, was so unbearably bitter as this dissatisfaction--this disgust with self.

Yet when again the tiny crimson stream stained the sweet lips of his Virginia, and again the Angel of Death spread a dread wing for a season over the Valley of the Many-Colored Gra.s.s, all his knowledge of the bitterness--the loathing--of remorse was not sufficient to make him strong for the struggle with grief and despair.

Again the reason of Edgar Poe gave way before the strain, and again he fell.