Part 33 (1/2)

Nearly a year had pa.s.sed since that October night when the Star of Love ushering in a new morning had prophesied to him of new hope--nearly a year through which he had waited patiently, but not in vain. The time had evidently come for the prophecy to be fulfilled and Fate had led him to this town and the spot in this town where she that was to be (he was convinced) the hope, the guide, the savior, of his ”lonesome latter years” awaited him.

Who was she?--

So spirit-like, so ethereal, she seemed, as robed in white and veiled in silvery moon-beams she sat among the slumbering roses, and as she was gathered into the shadows of the entombing trees, that she might almost have been the ”Lady Ligeia.” Yet he knew that she was not. The ”Lady Ligeia” had been but the creation of his own brain. Very fair she had been to his dreaming vision, very sweet her companions.h.i.+p had been to his imagination--sufficient for all the needs of his being in his youthful days when sorrow was but a beautiful sentiment, when ”terror was not fright, but a tremulous delight” but how was such an one as she to bind up the broken heart of a man? It was the _human_ element in the eyes of her that sat among the roses that enchained him.

Ethereal--spirit-like--as she was, the eyes upturned in sorrow were the eyes of no spirit, but of a woman; from them looked a human soul with the capacity and the experience to offer sympathy meet for human needs--the needs even, of a broken-hearted man.

How dark the woe!--how sublime the hope!--how intense the pride!--how daring the ambition!--how deep, how fathomless the capacity for love!--that looked (as from a window) from those eyes upturned in sorrow, in the moonlight while all the town slept!

Who was she?--this lady of sorrows. And by what sweet name was she known to the citizens of this old town?--Surely Fate that had brought her to the bank of violets beneath the moon--Fate that had led him to her garden gate, would in Fate's own time reveal!

As Helen Whitman flitted as noiselessly as the ghost she seemed to be up the dark stairway to her chamber, and without closing the cas.e.m.e.nt that admitted the moonlight and the garden's odors, lay down upon her canopied bed, she trembled. What was it that she had been aware of in the garden?--that presence--that consciousness of communion between her spirit and his upon whom all her thoughts had dwelt of late? Herself a poet, from her earliest knowledge of the work of Edgar Poe she had seemed to feel a kins.h.i.+p between her mind and his such as she had known in regard to no other. She had followed his career step by step, and out of the many sorrows of her own life had been born deep sympathy for him.

Since his last, greatest blow, she had more than ever mourned with him in spirit, for she too was widowed--she too had sat upon the Rock of Desolation and knew the Silence and the Solitude.

She and The Dreamer had at least one mental trait in common--a tendency toward spiritualism--a more than half belief in the communion of the spirits of the dead with those of the living and of those of the living with each other.

What had led her into the moonlit garden when all the world slept?

She knew not. She only knew that she had felt an impelling influence--a call to her spirit--to come out among the slumbering roses. She had not questioned nor sought to define it. She had heard it, and she had obeyed. And then the presence!--

She had never seen Edgar Poe, yet she felt that he had been there in the spirit, if not in the flesh--she had felt his eyes upon her eyes and she had half expected him to step from the shadows around her and to say,

”I, upon whom your thoughts have dwelt--I, who am the comrade and the complement of your inner life--I, whose spirit called to you ere you came into the garden--I am here.”

It was almost immediately upon The Dreamer's return to Fordham, and when he was still under the spell of the night at Providence, that the ident.i.ty of the lady of the garden was revealed to him, in a manner seemingly accidental, but which he felt to be but another manifestation of the divinity that shapes our ends. Some casual words concerning the appearance and character of Mrs. Whitman, spoken by a casual visitor, lifted the curtain.

So the lady of the garden was Helen Whitman! whose poetry had impressed him favorably and whose acquaintance he had desired. Helen Whitman--_Helen_! As he repeated the name his heart stood still,--even in her name he heard the voice of Fate. _Helen_--the name of the good angel of his boyhood! Were his dreams of ”Morella” and of ”Ligeia” to come true? Was he to know in reality the miracle he had imagined and written of in these two phantasies?--the reincarnation of personal ident.i.ty? Was he in this second Helen, in this second garden, to find again the wors.h.i.+pped Helen of his boyhood?

He turned to the lines he had written so long ago, in Richmond, when he had gone forth into the midsummer moonlight, even as he had gone forth in Providence, and had wors.h.i.+pped under a window, even as he had wors.h.i.+pped at a garden gate. He read the first two stanzas through.

As he read he gave himself up to an overwhelming sense of fatality.

Could anything be more fitting--more descriptive? The end of the days of miracles was not yet--this _was_ his ”Helen of a thousand dreams!”

His impulse was to seek an introduction at once, but this seemed too tamely conventional. Besides--he was in the hands of Fate--he dared not stir. Fate, having so clearly manifested itself, would find a way.

His correspondence was always heavy. Letters, clippings from papers and so forth, came to him by every post from friends and from enemies, with and without signatures. Yet from all the ma.s.s, he knew at once that the ”Valentine,” unsigned as it was, was from her.

By way of acknowledgment, he turned down a page of a copy of ”The Raven and Other Poems” at the lines, ”To Helen,” and mailed it to her. He waited in anxious suspense for a reply, but the lady was coy. Days pa.s.sed and still no answer. The desire for communication with her became irresistible and taking pen and paper he wrote at the top of the page, even as long ago he had written, the words, ”To Helen,” and underneath wrote a new poem especially for this new Helen in which he described the vision of her in the garden (but placing it in the far past) and his feelings as he gazed upon her:

”I saw thee once--once only--years ago; I must not say _how_ many--but not many.

Clad all in white, upon a violet bank I saw thee half reclining; while the moon Fell on the upturned faces of the roses, And on thine own, upturned,--alas in sorrow!

Was it not Fate, that, on this July midnight-- Was it not Fate (whose name is also Sorrow) That bade me pause before that garden-gate To breathe the incense of those slumbering roses?

No footstep stirred: the hated world all slept, Save only thee and me. (Oh, Heaven!--oh, G.o.d!

How my heart beats in coupling those two words!) Save only thee and me!” ...