Part 35 (1/2)
”Why indeed?” echoed happy ”Muddie.” It was so delightful to have her son back at home, and in this hopeful, contented frame, she would have agreed with him in almost any statement he chose to make.
He gave her loving messages from ”Annie” and told her in the bright, humorous way which was characteristic of Edgar Goodfellow, of many pleasant little incidents of his journey. One of the nights to look back upon and to gloat over in memory was this night by the fireside at Fordham cottage with the Mother--a night of calm and content under the home-roof after tempestuous wandering.
A quiet, sweet Christmas they spent together--he reading, writing or talking over plans for new work, while she sat by with her sewing and Catalina dozed on the hearth. Part of every day (wrapped in the old cape) he walked in the pine wood or beside the ice-bound river, and for the first time since the feverish dream of new love had come to him he was able to visit the tomb of Virginia and to dwell with happiness, and with a clear conscience, upon her memory. During these days of serenity a ballad suggested by thoughts of her and his life with her in the lovely Valley of the Many-Colored Gra.s.s took form in his mind. It was no dirge-like song of the ”dank tarn of Auber,” but a song of a fair ”kingdom by the sea” and in contrast to the sombre ”Ulalume” he gave to the maiden in the new poem the pleasant sounding name of ”Annabel Lee.”
Out of these days too, came ”the Bells” and the exquisite sonnet to his ”more than Mother.”
One flash of the false light that had lured him reached The Dreamer at Fordham. He held a letter addressed to him in the familiar handwriting of Helen Whitman long in his hand without opening it. This flame was burned out, he told himself--why rake its cold ashes? Yet he felt that nothing that she could say would have power to disturb his new peace.
Still the Mother, though she kept her own counsel, trembled for herself and for him as she was aware (without looking up from her sewing) that he had broken the seal. Some minutes of tense stillness pa.s.sed--then,
”Shall I read you her letter?” he asked.
”As you will.”
”Then I will!--It is in verse and the place from which she dates it is,
”Our Island of Dreams,” which she explains in a sub-heading is
”By the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn”
--a line which she has borrowed from Keats. This is what she writes:
”Tell him I lingered alone on the sh.o.r.e, Where we parted, in sorrow, to meet nevermore; The night-wind blew cold on my desolate heart But colder those wild words of doom, 'Ye must part!'
”O'er the dark, heaving waters, I sent forth a cry; Save the wail of those waters there came no reply.
I longed, like a bird, o'er the billows to flee, From our lone island home and the moan of the sea:
”Away,--far away--from the wild ocean sh.o.r.e, Where the waves ever murmur, 'No more, nevermore,'
Where I wake, in the wild noon of midnight, to hear The lone song of the surges, so mournful and drear.
”Where the clouds that now veil from us heaven's fair light, Their soft, silver lining turn forth on the night; When time shall the vapors of falsehood dispel He shall know if I loved him; but never how well.”
Silence followed the reading of the poem-letter. Finally the mother asked,
”Will you go back?”
He placed the letter upon the top of a pile in the same handwriting, tied them together with a bit of ribbon and laid them in a small drawer of his desk. Then, rising, he leaned over the back of ”Muddie's” chair and lightly touching her seamed forehead with his lips replied,
”Quoth the raven, nevermore!”
Then took up a garland of evergreen which he had been making when the Mother came in with the mail, and set out in the direction of the churchyard with its ”legended tomb.”
CHAPTER x.x.xIII.
Back in Richmond!--The Richmond he loved best--Richmond full of suns.h.i.+ne and flowers and the sweet southern social life out of doors, in gardens and porches; Richmond in summertime!
In spite of the changes his observant eye marked as he rattled over the cobblestones toward the ”Swan Tavern,” on Broad and Ninth Streets, he almost felt that he was back in boyhood. It was just such a day, just this time of year, that--as a lad of eleven--he had seen Richmond first after his five years absence in England.
How good it was to be back upon the sacred soil! How sweet the air was, and how beautiful were the roses! When before, had he seen a magnolia tree in bloom?--with its dense shade, its dark green s.h.i.+ning foliage, and its snow-white blossoms. Was there anything in the world so sweet as its odor, combined with that of the roses and the other flowers that filled the gardens? It was worth coming all the way from New York just to see and to smell them.