Nevermore, p.3
Nevermore, page 3
As I sat erect upon my bed, contemplating the lifelike phantasma that swam so thrillingly before my sleepless eyes, a subtle yet marked transformation began to overtake the features of my angelic Virginia. Gradually, and yet with a grim ineluctability, the vibrant hue of her faultless skin was replaced with a wan and lurid tincture. Her lips, so ripe with the first bloomings of youth, became withered and drawn—her plump cheeks grew waxy and sunken—and a lustreless pall overspread her large, liquid eyes—those cerulean orbs that, only moments before, had shone with the pure light of heaven. My own eyes widened to their fullest extent. I gaped—with what unspeakable horror I can scarcely convey—at the dread metamorphosis taking place before me as the glorious vision of my beloved Virginia—my cousin, soul-sister, and intended bride—was inexorably transfigured into the hideous spectre of a pale and ghastly corpse!
A quivering moan filled my ears, as dire as the lamentation of a lost, tormented soul. I stared about wildly, seeking the source of this fearful sound, before realizing that it had issued from my own tremulous lips. In that interval, the cadaverous vision flickered like a guttering candle-flame—then vanished as though snuffed by the damp night-draft that whispered through the apertures of my window frame.
My racing heart grew calmer by degrees as I pondered on the grim apparition that had visited me. What did it portend? Only a single interpretation presented itself. I would not—could not—reveal my coming encounter to my loved ones. The knowledge that I was to expose myself to the threat of physical danger would smite their dear hearts like a death-blow. I must face my trial alone.
Rising hurriedly from my bed, I groped my way into my study and seated myself at my writing table. Within my chest I felt the sudden swelling of that profound, poetical sentiment that can only be likened to the feeling of the paramour whose beloved has recently perished in the excruciating throes of consumption (for what occurence can inspire such solemn yet lyrical emotions as the tragic death of a beautiful young woman?). Illuminating my oil lamp, I took quill in hand and gave vent to my overbrimming passions in a song whose fervent tones accurately reflected the adoration I harbored for my darling Virginia. The verses, to which I afterwards prefixed the title “To My Darling Sissy?” ran thus:
When, at the blessed hour of your birth,
The seraphs came with wings full-pluméd
To place your soul upon the earth,
As did those Kings their gifts perfuméd
Deliver to that humble manger—
So has your love made me a stranger
To terror and to loneliness.
And for that gift I thee do bless.
Now is my heart with love so laden
That it would sacrifice its life
If you, who, though still child-maiden,
Refused to join with me as wife—
Though I must wait with patient mien
Until your years have reached thirteen,
Which age (pace the superstitious)
Shall bring my heart the joy it wishes.
Your hyacinth hair and liquid eyes
Possess my heart and haunt my dreams.
Your face becalms me when I rise
From nightmares that evoke my screams.
And thus our lives are intertwined
Like heart-veins dark-incarnadined.
You shall be bride—I shall be groom—
Until Death seals us in the tomb.
By the time this composition was completed, the tempest had abated. Night had given way to dawn, and the first watery rays of daylight were leaking through the translucent panes of my window. Returning to my bedchamber, I made my way to the washstand and, after performing my ritual ablutions, dressed in my customary garb—black frockcoat, black waistcoat, black trousers, black cravat.
Regarding my face in my shaving-glass, I took note of the doleful alterations which that dreary night of disquietude had wrought upon my features. Suffusing my complexion was a dull yet distinctly unwholesome pallor. Dark lines extended downward from my nostrils, past the corners of my mouth, to the border of my chin. Beneath each of my eyes depended a large, fleshy pouch whose livid tint appeared all the more striking in contrast to the singularly anaemic coloration of my skin. My eyes themselves possessed an anomalous tincture, the pale orbs mottled by a fine, crimson webwork of ruptured capillaries.
Notwithstanding these signs of bodily fatigue and excessive—even morbid—cerebration, there could be seen in the cast of my features—in the set of my Ups and the expression emanating from my eyes—a marked constancy of purpose. Such a look could not fail to impress my opponent with the realization that he was facing no commonplace foe, but rather a being possessed of the same unyielding spirit displayed, in ancient times, when David defeated the Philistine champion Goliath, or when Leonidas, warrior-king of the Spartans, made his celebrated stand at Thermopylae.
Emerging from my bedchamber, I could hear, issuing from our little kitchen, the comforting sounds of my tireless Muddy, who arose at every daybreak to attend, with religious regularity, to her matinal chores. A welcoming warmth radiated from the cooking stove upon whose surface stood a pan of simmering water. Approaching Muddy from behind, I clutched her fondly by the shoulders, at which gesture she gave a little jump and emitted a sharp gasp.
“Oh, Eddie,” she said, turning to face me, one hand clutching at the bosom of her housedress. “You gave me quite a start.”
“Where is Virginia?” I inquired after planting a filial kiss upon my aunt’s ruddy cheek.
“Still abed.”
“She sleeps like the dead,” I remarked with a heartfelt sigh. “It is the repose of the innocent.”
Muddy’s broad brow wrinkled as she inspected my countenance. “My gracious, Eddie, but you do look peaked. Another bad night?”
I acknowledged the accuracy of her observation with a melancholy nod. “Slumber—that blessed but fickle benefactress—withheld her sweet nepenthe from my soul.”
She regarded me for a long moment before inquiring, “Do I take that to mean ‘yes’?”
“That is, indeed, the signification I intended.”
She patted my cheek. “Poor, troubled boy,” she commiserated. “I cannot help but believe that you would sleep more soundly if you spent less time locked up in that stuffy room, brooding on death and premature burial and whatnot. Perhaps you should try writing something … cheerier. Why, look at that delightful poem by Mr. Longfellow, ‘The Village Smithy.’ Surely you could compose something equally charming if you would only put your mind to it.”
The earnest, if misguided, simplicity of my dear, well-meaning Muddy elicited from my lips a soft, indulgent laugh—whose tone, however, was not untinged with a rueful awareness that the man of creative genius must ever be misunderstood, even by those most sympathetic to his strivings.
“Oh Muddy!” I exclaimed. “Can I not make you see? The true artist must endeavor to give shape to the teeming phantasmagoria of the soul—to those swirling shapes and shrouded forms that spring, like a hideous throng of netherworld-demons, from the dark inner reaches of his own harrowed heart and anguished brain!”
Muddy’s eyes blinked several times as she stared at me wordlessly. “Perhaps a nice cup of tea might help,” she said at last.
As I sat at our table, imbibing the fragrant brew which Muddy had dispensed, my vitals felt suffused with an invigorating heat, as though the fire which burned in the belly of the cookstove now blazed within the depths of my own bowels.
Draining my cup, I sprang from the seat and clutched Muddy to my breast. “I must depart on a matter of the utmost urgency,” I cried “Your potion has inflamed me to the core.”
“Oh my,” she replied, placing the fingertips of one hand to her lips. “Perhaps you should have allowed it to cool.”
Her dear miscomprehension brought a burst of hilarity from my throat. Striding across the kitchen, I paused at the doorway and faced her. “I cannot state for a certainty at which hour I will return,” I exclaimed. “But rest assured that, when next you behold me, I will have acquitted myself in a manner befitting a Poe!”
“Don’t forget your hat, dear,” replied the ever-devoted woman. “We may be in for some more weather.”
And indeed, though the rains had abated, the sky remained shrouded in gray. Grim, leaden clouds seemed to press down upon the very rooftops of the city. In contrast to the previous evening, however, the unrelieved gloom of the atmosphere found no inner counterpart in my own spiritual condition. Perhaps it was due to the warming aftereffects of Muddy’s salubrious beverage, or perhaps it was a consequence of her own inspiriting love. I could not say. It was nevertheless the case that I felt infused with a fiery determination—prepared to teach the vaunting Crockett a lesson in etiquette that would not, at any time soon, fade from his consciousness.
Alas, this buoyant mood was not destined to persist. For as I strode along the puddled street, a shrill, unearthly yowl sent shivers of terror coursing through every fibre of my being. I froze in mid-stride, paralyzed with fright. At that instant, a feline of the tomcat variety flung itself from the gap between the two houses on my right. Its coat was of the blackest midnight hue—and as it darted specter-like across my intended path, my heart quailed—and quavered—and sickened—from a sudden violent spasm of superstitious dread!
CHAPTER 4
The establishment at which Crockett was lodging was operated by Mrs. Elmira Macready, an elderly widow known to me solely by name—although her deceased husband had been a personage of such lofty repute in our city that, without ever having set eyes upon him, I knew something of his remarkable history. One of Baltimore’s most prosperous merchants, Junius Macready was renowned not merely for the magnitude of his fortune but for the singularly enlightened uses to which he had applied it. Entirely free of the philistinism so characteristic of his class, he had been a lifelong devotee of the arts, whose passionate dedication to the elevation of public taste was reflected in his repeated deeds of munificent yet unobtrusive patronage.
In his later years, however, this worthy gentleman had suffered business reversals of such awful severity that they had cost him the bulk of his fortune. The blow proved equally calamitous to his health, and he had died within months of his financial ruin, leaving his elderly widow in sadly degraded circumstances. Compelled to divest herself of virtually all of her worldly possessions—not excluding the stately manse in which she and her husband had passed the long, happy years of their marriage—she had moved into the modest house on Howard Street that was her sole remaining inheritance and managed to subsist by providing rooms to boarders.
Among the many cultural enterprises to which Junius Macready had devoted himself during the height of his prosperity was the ownership and management of the now-defunct Majestick Theatre on Albermarle Street, This splendid auditorium (since converted into a tobacco warehouse) still stands as a sacred shrine within the precincts of my heart, having been the site of a triumphant performance by the beautiful, ill-fated woman to whose existence I owed the gift of my own. I refer, of course, to my sweet, long-departed mother, the actress Eliza Poe, who shuffled off her mortal coil at the all-too-tender age of twenty-four, less than three years following my birth. To this very day, one of my most treasured possessions is a yellowed clipping from the Baltimore Daily Gazette, lauding her brilliant characterization of Lydia Languish in Sheridan’s The Rivals.
Having passed Mrs. Macready’s boarding house during my numerous perambulations about the city, I knew it to be located in a tranquil neighborhood, remote from the bustle of the city’s main commercial district This fact, combined with the earliness of the hour— which had not yet reached eight—caused me to believe that Howard Street would be largely, if not entirely, deserted when I arrived. It was to my great surprise, therefore, that, as I rounded the corner, I immediately perceived a considerable crowd gathered directly in front of the hostelry—as though the public had been notified of my pending encounter with Crockett, and an audience had assembled to witness the proceedings!
How like Crockett it was, I reflected, to convert a private affair into a vulgar spectacle—much as he had transformed himself from an obscure backwoodsman into the self-proclaimed “King of the Wild Frontier.” For Crockett’s genius—if we may employ the term so loosely—resided less in his capacities as a statesman (a rôle for which he had displayed only meagre aptitude) than in his natural gifts as a showman. His appetite for celebrity—to say nothing of his willingness to cater to the crude tastes of the masses—appeared limitless. I need scarcely add that—for all of his pretensions to authorial dignity—such an appetite was in direct contradistinction to the character of the true man of literature, whose glory derives in no small measure from his readiness, not merely to struggle in solitude with the demands of his art, but to endure—often throughout the course of a lengthy career—the utter indifference, if not outright scorn, of a dull and incomprehending public.
The sight of the crowd gathered before the boarding house so offended my sense of propriety that I felt a sudden impulse to forgo the entire affair and return to my chambers at once, Crockett’s insolent challenge unanswered. By then, however, I was near enough to my destination to perceive an anomalous look upon the faces of many of the individuals, who displayed none of the excited eagerness one might expect in the circumstances, but rather a distinct appearance of uneasiness, even distress. Stepping closer, I managed to distinguish a few anxiously muttered words emanating from their midst: “Murder … Butchery … Poor woman!”
My curiosity piqued, I approached the individual most proximate to me—a stout, bewhiskered gentleman standing at the edge of the crowd—and inquired as to the cause of the gathering.
“Why, haven’t you heard?” he replied. “A most horrible crime has been perpetrated on these premises.”
“Crime!” I exclaimed. “Of what nature?”
“Foul murder,” he replied. “The poor widow Macready herself—slaughtered like a lamb in her own bedchamber!”
I gasped in horror at this revelation. “And who was the culprit?”
“That is a mystery as yet unresolved. Even at this moment, officers of the police are gathered within, investigating the monstrous deed.”
“Yes,” interjected the handsome matron beside him, clutching a knitted shawl to her capacious bosom. “They are being assisted by none other than Colonel Davy Crockett, who—as good fortune would have it—has been lodging in this very establishment during his current visit to our city.”
“Why with Davy’s help, the police are certain to apprehend the killer in no time .” The source of this observation was a young gentleman whose fastidious, if not foppish, attire—so strikingly inapt at that unseasonable hour—endowed him with the unmistakable aura of the dandy.
“If such an emotion were possible,” the bewhiskered gentleman proclaimed, “I would almost feel a measure of pity for the murderer. For if Davy gets his hands upon him, there will be the need for neither judge nor executioner.”
“You speak truly, friend,” observed the “dandy” “Why, do you recall the ferocious manner in which Davy subdued Ephraim Packer’s notorious gang of Mississippi river pirates, as reported in last month’s number of Crockett’s Almanac?”
“Recall it!” retorted the other. “Only yesterday, I was regaling my wife with the colorful particulars of that astonishing episode. She was transported with admiration as I recounted how Davy, though partly disabled by a pistol-shot inflicted by Packer’s cowardly lieutenant, Wicket Finney, defeated the latter in a savage bout of mortal combat.”
“To say nothing of Davy’s daring when, armed only with his hunting knife ‘Big Butcher,’ he dispatched no less than six of the murderous cutthroats.”
As the two men continued to rehearse the details of Crockett’s putative adventure—whose manifest improbability seemed in no wise to tax the credulity of the wonderstruck pair—my attention detached itself from their conversation and turned to the shocking intelligence of which I had just been apprised. That a cold-blooded murder had occurred on these very premises appeared nothing short of uncanny—the terrible fulfillment of the dark premonition that had gripped me when the black cat crossed my path. Surely something more than mere coincidence was involved in this awful circumstance! A dark fatality seemed to be at work, drawing me with the obscure yet inexorable pull of necessity into a situation whose outcome I could neither evade nor foresee.
Abandoning myself to the dim, if undeniable, forces of destiny, I proceeded to make my way towards the entranceway of the house. “I beg your pardon,” I proclaimed as I advanced through the assemblage. “I am here on a matter of urgent business with Colonel Crockett.”
My invocation of the idolatrized frontiersman had the desired effect. The crowd parted before me with awed murmurs of respect. A moment later, I ascended the wooden portico and passed across the threshold so recently traversed by that ghastly visitor whose unanticipated calling is, of all earthly misfortunes, the object of the deepest mortal dread. I refer, of course, to that grim intruder—sudden, violent Death!
The interior of the house was likewise full of people, many of whom—judging by their negligent state of dress—were lodgers who had been roused from their apartments by the untimely disturbance. Indeed, more than a few of them were standing about in their nightclothes, their faces taut with anxiety and dismay, I pressed my way through the crowd toward the far end of the main corridor, where, before an open doorway, a sombre group had gathered in a knot, straining to peer within.
“Allow me to pass, if you please. I must see Colonel Crockett.” By this expedient I soon reached the portal in question and entered that chamber of gloom.
A trio of police officers occupied the center of the apartment, engaged in an urgent consultation. Beside them stood Crockett, looking much the same as he had the previous afternoon, albeit a good deal more dishevelled—as though his ceremonial dinner had degenerated into a night of bibulous revelry. As I stepped inside the apartment, he glanced in my direction, his dark eyes dilating with surprise.
