In the midst of their woe at the prospect a miracle happened--a miracle and a discovery.

It fell upon a serene summer's afternoon when the two children--they were both that at heart--wandered along a sweet, shady lane leading from the outskirts of town into the country. It was to be their last walk together for who knew, who could tell how long? The poet's great grey eyes wore their deepest melancholy and the little maid's soft brown ones too, were full of trouble, for had not their love turned to pain? They spoke little, for the love and the pain were alike too deep for words, but the heart of each was filled with broodings and musings upon the love it bore the other and upon the agony of parting.

How could he leave her? the poet asked himself. His cherished comrade whose beauty, whose purity and innocence, the stored sweets of whose nature were for him alone? Into his life of loneliness, of lovelessness, of despair--a life from which everyone who had really cared for him had been s.n.a.t.c.hed by untimely death and shut away from him forever in an early grave--a life where there had been not only sorrow, but bitterness--where there had been pain and want and homelessness and desolate wanderings and longings for the unattainable--where there had been misunderstanding and distrust and temptation and defeat--into such a life this wee bit of maidenhood--this true heartsease--had crept and blossomed, filling heart and life with beauty and hope and love--with blessed healing.

How could he leave her? To others she seemed wrapped in timid reserve.

He only had the key to the fair realm of her unfolding mind. How could he bear to leave her for even a little while? How barren his life would be without her! How shorn of all beauty and grace!

And what would her life be without him, to whom had been offered up all her beauty and the stored sweets of her nature? Who would guard her from other eyes, that as her beauty and charm came to their full bloom might look covetously upon her?

For the first time (and the bare suggestion seemed profanation) it occured to him that a day might come when, as this slip of maidenhood walked forth in her surpa.s.sing beauty and her precious innocence and purity the eyes of a man might make note of her loveliness, her altogether desirableness--might rest upon her with hopes of possession--and he not there to kill him upon the spot. What if in his absence another's hand should be stretched to pluck his heartsease blossom--that left unguarded, unprotected by him, another should s.n.a.t.c.h it, in its beauty, its purity and innocence, to his bosom?

The thought was h.e.l.l!

Faint and trembling, he gazed down upon her as they strolled along, compelling her soft eyes to meet his anguished ones. His face was white and strained with his misery. She was pale and trembling, too, and there was dew on the sweeping lashes, and as she lifted them and looked into his face she trembled more. He looked upon her, tenderly marvelling to see in her at once the loveliest of children and of women--a woman with her first grief!

There was heart-break in his voice, for himself and for her, as he murmured (brokenly) words of love and of comfort in her ear, and in her voice as she, brokenly, answered him.

The sun was setting--a pageant in which they both were wont to take exquisite delight--but they could not look at the glowing heavens for the heaven of love and of beautiful sorrow that each found in the eyes of the other.

Suddenly, they knew!

The knowledge burst upon them like an illumining flood. How or whence it came they could not tell, nor did they question--but they knew that the love they bore each other was no brother and sister love, but that what time they had been calling each other "Buddie," and "Sissy," there had been growing--growing in their hearts the red, red rose of romance--the love betwixt man and maid of which poets tell--knew that in that sweet, that sad, that wondrous eventide the rose had burst into glorious flower.

They trembled in the presence of this sweetest miracle. The beauty and solemnity of it well nigh deprived them of the power of speech. A divine silence fell upon them and they slowly, softly took their way homeward through the gathering dusk, hand in hand--but with few words--to tell the Mother.

To the widow their disclosure came as a shock. At first she thought the silly pair must be joking--then that they were mad. Finally she realized their earnestness and their happiness and saw that the situation was serious and must be dealt with with the utmost tact. Still, she could hardly believe what she saw and heard. Was it possible that the demure girl talking to her so seriously of love and marriage was her little Virginia--her baby? And that these two should have thought of such a thing! Cousins!--Brother and sister, almost!--And with such disparity in ages--thirteen and six-and-twenty!

She had lived long enough, however, to know that love is governed by no rules or regulations and besides, she had kept through all the changes and chances of her checkered life, a belief in true love as fresh as a girl's. This was too sacred a thing to be carelessly handled--only, it was not what she would have chosen.... Yet--was it not?

A new thought came to her--a revelation--inspiration--what you will, and sunk her in deep revery.

Why was this not what she would have chosen? Why not a union between her children--her all? Her own days were fast running out. She could not live and make a home for them always--then, what would become of them?

She would die happy, when her time came, if she could see them in their own home, bound by the most sacred, the most indissoluble of ties--bound together until death should part them!

She fell asleep with a heart full of thankfulness to G.o.d for his mercies.

A quite different view of the matter was taken by other members of the Poe connection in Baltimore--particularly the men, who positively refused to regard the love affair as anything more than sentimental nonsense--"moonshine"--they called it, which would be as fleeting as it was foolish. Their cousin, Judge Neilson Poe, who had made a pet of Virginia, was especially active in his opposition and brought every argument he could think of to bear upon the young lovers and upon Mrs.

Clemm in his endeavor to induce them to break the engagement; but he only succeeded in sending Virginia flying with frightened face to "Buddie's" arms, vowing (as, much to Cousin Neilson's disgust, she hung upon his neck) that she would never give him up, while "Buddie," holding her close, a.s.sured her, in the story-book language that they both loved, that "all the king's horses and all the king's men" would not be strong enough to take her from him.

CHAPTER XXI.

Midsummer found Edgar Poe in Richmond and regularly at work upon his new duties in the office of _The Southern Literary Messenger_. He felt that if he had not actually reached the end of the rainbow, it was at least in sight and it rested upon the place of all others most gratifying to him--the dear city of his boyhood whose esteem he so ardently desired.

Most soothing to his pride, he found it, after his several ignominious retreats, to return in triumph, a successful author, called to a place of acknowledged distinction, for all its meagre income.

The playmates of his youth--now substantial citizens of the little capital--called promptly upon him at his boarding-house. They were glad to have him back and they showed it; glad of his success and glad and proud to find their early faith in his powers justified, their early astuteness proven.

All Richmond, indeed, received him with open arms and if there were some few persons who could not forget his wild-oats at the University and his seeming ingrat.i.tude to Mr. Allan, who they declared had been the kindest and most indulgent of fathers to him, and who did not invite him to their homes or accept invitations to parties given in his honor, they were the losers--he had friends and to spare.

Yet he was not happy. The ivy had been torn from the oak and there was no sweet heartsease blossom to make glad his road--to made daily--hourly--offerings to him and him alone of the beauty, physical and spiritual, that his soul worshipped--of beauty and of unquestioning love and sympathy and approbation. In other words, The Dreamer was sick, miserably sick, with the disease of longing; longing for the modest home and the invigorating presence of the Mother; longing that was exquisite pain for the sight, the sound, the touch, the daily companionship of the child who without losing one whit of the purity, the innocence, the charm of childhood, had so suddenly, so sweetly become a woman--a woman embodying all of his dreams--a woman who lived with no other thought than to love and be loved by him.

Life, no matter what else it might give, life without the soft glance of her eye, the sweet sound of her voice, the pure touch of her hand within his hand, her lips upon his lips, was become an empty, aching void.

After two years of the sheltered fireside in Baltimore whose seclusion had made the dream of the Valley of the Many-Colored Gra.s.s possible, the boarding-house with its hideous clatter, its gossip and its commonplaceness was the merest make-shift of a home. It was stifling.

How was a dreamer to breathe in a boarding-house? He was even homesick for the purr and the comfortable airs of the old white cat!

Whenever he could he turned his back upon the boarding-house and tried to forget it, but the clatter and the gossip seemed to follow him, their din lingering in his ears as he paced the streets in a fever of disgust and longing. For the first time since Edgar Poe had opened his eyes upon the tasteful homelikeness of the widow Clemm's chamber and the tender, dark eyes of Virginia searching his face with soft wonder, the old restlessness and dissatisfaction with life and the whole scheme of things were upon him--the blue devils which he believed had been exorcised forever had him in their clutches. Whither should he fly from their harra.s.sments? By what road should he escape?

At the answer--the only answer vouchsafed him--he stood aghast.

"No, no!" he cried within him, "Not that--not that!" Seeking to deafen his ears to a voice that at once charmed and terrified him, for it was the voice of a demon which possessed the allurements of an angel--a demon he reckoned he had long ago fast bound in chains from which it would never have the strength to arise. It was the voice that dwelt in the cup--the single cup--so innocent seeming, so really innocent for many, yet so ruinous for him; for, with all its promises of cheer and comfort it led--and he knew it--to disaster.

Bitterly he fought to drown the sounds of the voice, but the more he deafened his ears the more insistent, the clearer, the more alluring its tones became.

And it followed him everywhere. At every board where he was a guest the br.i.m.m.i.n.g cup stood beside his plate, at every turn of the street he was b.u.t.tonholed by some friend old or new, with the invitation to join him in the "cup of kindness." At every evening party he found himself surrounded by bevies of charming young Hebes, who, as innocent as angels of any intention of doing him a wrong, implored him to propose them a toast.

How could he refuse them? Especially when acquiescence meant escape from this horrible, horrible soul-sickness, this weight that was bearing his spirits down--crushing them.

Therein lay the tempter's power. Not in appet.i.te--he was no swine to swill for love of the draught. When he did yield he drained the cup scarce tasting its contents. But ah, the freedom from the sickness that tortured him, the weight that oppressed him! And ah, the exhilaration, physical and mental, the delightful exhilaration which put melancholy to flight, loosed his tongue and started the machinery of his brain--which robbed the past of regret and made the present and the future rosy!

It was in the promise of this exhilaration that the seductiveness of the dreaded tones lay.

Even his kindly old physician, diagnosing the pallor of his cheeks and melancholy in his eyes as "a touch of malaria," added a note of insistence to the voice, as he prescribed that panacea of the day, "a mint julep before breakfast."

Yet he still sternly and stoutly turned a deaf ear to the voice of the charmer, while dejection drew him deeper and deeper into its depths until one day he found he could not write. His pen seemed suddenly to have lost its power. He sat at his desk in the office of the _Messenger_ with paper before him, with pens and ink at hand, but his brain refused to produce an idea, and for such vague half-thoughts as came to him, he could find no words to give expression.

He was seized upon by terror.

Had his gift of the G.o.ds deserted him? Better death than life without his gift! Without it the very ground under his feet seemed uncertain and unsafe!

Then he fell. Driven to the wall, as it seemed to him, he took the only road he saw that led, or seemed to lead, to deliverance. He yielded his will to the voice of the tempter, he tasted the freedom, the exhilaration, the wild joy that his imagination had pictured--drank deep of it!

And then he paid the price he had known all along he would have to pay, though in the hour of his severest temptation the knowledge had not had power to make him strong. Neither, in that hour, had he been able to foresee how hard the price would be. That shadowy, yet very real other self, his avenging conscience, in whose approval he had so long happily rested, arose in its wrath and rebuked him as he had never been rebuked before. It scourged him. It held up before him his bright prospects, his lately acquired and enviable social position, a.s.suring him as it held them up, of their insecurity. It pointed with warning finger to the end of the rainbow and the road leading to it seemed to have suddenly grown ten times longer and rougher than before.

Finally it held up the images of his two good angels, "Muddie," with her heart of oak, and her tender, sorrow-stricken face, and Virginia, whose soft eyes were a heaven of trustful love--whose beauty, whose purity and innocence, the stored sweets of whose nature were for him alone, and to whom he was as faultless, as supreme as the sun in heaven.

It was too much. The dejection into which his "blue devils" had cast him was as nothing to the remorse that overwhelmed him now. On his knees before Heaven he confessed that his last estate was worse than his first, and cried aloud for forgiveness for the past and strength for the future.

In this mood he sat down to write to Mr. Kennedy (who had been absent upon a summer vacation when he left Baltimore) a letter of acknowledgment for his benefactions--for whatever The Dreamer was, it is very certain that he was _not_ ungrateful.

The date he placed at the top of his page was "September 11, 1835."

"I received a letter yesterday," he wrote, "which tells me you are back in town. I hasten therefore, to write you and express by letter what I have always found it impossible to express orally--my deep sense of grat.i.tude for your frequent and effectual a.s.sistance and kindness.

"Through your influence Mr. White has been induced to employ me in a.s.sisting him with the editorial duties of his Magazine--at a salary of $520 per annum."