The late January night was bitterly cold, and clear as crystal. There
was a metallic glitter about the round moon, shining down from a
cloudless, blue sky--too bright to show a star--upon the black and bare
trees and shrubbery in the terraced garden of the Allan homestead.
Edgar Poe looked from his casement upon the splendor of the beautiful,
but frigid and unsympathetic night. Bitterness was in his heart
contending with a fierce joy. At last it had come--the breach with Mr.
Allan--and he was going away! He knew not where, but he was going, going
into the wide world to seek fame and fortune.
He had much to regret. He loved Richmond--loved it for the joy and pain
he had felt in it; for the dreams he had dreamed in it. He loved it
exceedingly for the two dear graves, one in the churchyard on the hill
and one in the new cemetery, that held his beloved dead.
Yes, he was sorry to leave this _home_-city, if not of his birth, at
least of his childhood and early youth, and his soul was still shaken by
the scene with his foster-parents through which he had just passed. But
in spite of all, his heart--rejoicing in the nearness of the freedom for
which he had so fiercely longed, sang, and stilled his sorrow.
But a few weeks had passed since his return from the University. A few
weeks? They seemed to him years, and each one had left a feeling of
increased age upon his spirit.
The home-coming had not been altogether unhappy--humiliating as it was.
In spite of the black looks of his foster-father, the little mother
(bless her!) had welcomed him with out-stretched arms and eyes beaming
with undimmed love. Never had she been more tenderly sweet and dear. She
had given the most beautiful Christmas party, with all his best friends
invited, and everything just as she knew he would like it. Her husband
had frowningly consented to this, but her tears and entreaties were all
of no avail to win his consent for the boy's return to college. Vainly
had she plead his talents which she believed should be cultivated, and
the injustice (since they had voluntarily assumed the responsibility of
rearing him) of cutting short his education at such an early age. John
Allan was adamant.
And so, after the holidays, he had taken his place in the counting-house
of "Ellis and Allan."
Distasteful as the new work was to the young poet, he was determined to
stick to it, and would probably have done so, but the strict
surveillance he soon realized he was under (as if he could not be
trusted!) and the manner of Mr. Allan who rarely spoke to him except
when it was absolutely necessary, and seemed to regard him as a hopeless
criminal, would have been unbearable to a far less proud and sensitive
nature than Edgar Poe's. Both at the office and at home, Mr. Allan's
narrow, steel-colored eyes seemed to keep constant watch, under their
beetling brows, for faults or blunders; and it seemed to the driven boy
that no matter what he did or said, he should have done or said just the
reverse. He felt constantly that a storm was brewing which must sooner
or later, certainly break, and that night it had burst forth with all
the fury of the tempest which has been a long time gathering.
He hardly knew what had brought it on, or how it had begun. Its violence
was so great as to almost stun him until at length, without being more
than half conscious of the significance of his own words he had asked if
it would not be better for him to go away and earn his own living; and
then came his foster-father's startlingly ready consent, with the
warning that if he did go he must look for no further aid from him.
His heart ached for the pretty, tender little mother. How soft the arms
that had clung about his neck, the lips that had pressed his hot brow!
How piteous her dear tears! They had almost robbed him of his
resolution, but he had succeeded in steeling himself against this
weakness. He had folded her close in his arms and kissed her, and vowed
that, come what might, he could never forget her or cease to love her,
and that he should always think of her as his mother and himself as her
child. Then he had put her gently from him for, for all his vows, she
was inseparably bound up in the old life from which he was breaking
away--his life as John Allan's adopted son--she could have no real place
in his future.
Yet the tie that bound him to her was the strongest in his life and
could not be severed without keen pain. In the world into which he was
going to fight the battle of life (he told himself) memory of her would
be one of his inspirations.
But where was that battle to be fought, and with what weapons? He had
been brought up as a rich man's son, and with the expectation of being a
rich man's heir. He had been trained to no money-making work, physical
or mental; and now he was to fare forth into the great world where there
was not a familiar face, even, to earn his bread! What could he do that
would bring him the price of a loaf?--
Did the question appal him? Not in the least. He had youth, he had
health, he had hope, he had his beloved talent and the secret training
he had given himself toward its cultivation. His "heart-strings were a
lute"--he felt it, and with an optimism rare for him he also felt that
he had but to strike upon that lute and the world must needs stop and
listen.
What he did not have was experience and knowledge of the world. Little
did he dream how small a part of the busy hive would turn aside to hear
his music or how little poetry had to do with the earning of daily
bread.
His trunk was standing open, half packed, though his destination was
still undecided; and among the first things that had gone into it was a
box containing a number of small rolls of neat manuscript. As he thought
of them his heart warmed and his eyes grew soft.
"The world's mine oyster, and with my good pen I'll open it," he
joyously paraphrased. But toward what part of the world should he turn
his face--to what market take his precious wares? That was the
all-important question! How much his fortune might depend upon his
decision!
As he stood at the window, he stared into the brilliancy and the shadows
of the icy, unresponsive night--seeking a sign. But the cold splendor of
the cloudless sky and glittering moon and the inscrutible shadows in the
garden below where the leafless trees and bushes cast monster shapes
upon the frozen ground, alike mocked him.
Presently there was the first hint of softness in the night. It came
like a sigh of tender pity across the stillness and he bent his head to
listen. It was the voice of the faintest of breezes blowing up from the
south and passing his window. He threw wide his arms to empty space as
if to embrace some invisible form.
"Ligeia, Ligeia, my beautiful one," he breathed, invoking his
dream-lady, "Be my counsellor and guide! Let thy sweet voice whisper
whither I must go!"
But the voice was silent and all the night was still again.
He turned from the window and threw himself into his arm-chair, letting
his eyes rove about the room as though he would seek a sign from its
walls. Suddenly he sat erect, his dilated pupils fixed upon a point
above the chimney-piece--upon a small picture. It was a little
water-color sketch done by the hand of his versatile mother, and found
among her belongings after her death. Like her miniature and her
letters, the picture had followed him through his life and had always
adorned the walls of his room. Often and over he had studied it until he
knew by heart every stroke of the brush that entered into its
composition. Yet he stared at it now as if he had never seen it before.
Finally he took it down from its place on the chimney and held it in his
hands, gazing upon it in deep abstraction.
Underneath the picture was written its title: "Boston Harbor--Morning,"
and upon its back,
"For my little boy, Edgar, who must love Boston, the place of his birth,
and where his mother found her best and most sympathetic friends."
The picture gave him the sign! With rising excitement he decided that
it must be accepted. To Boston, of course, he would go. Boston, the
place of his birth and where his angel mother had found her "best, most
sympathetic friends."
He would get away as early the next morning as possible, he told
himself. He would waste no time in goodbyes, for, he remembered with
some bitterness, there were few to say goodbye to. The boys were all off
at college again, now that the holidays were over, and as for Myra, she
had quickly consoled herself and was already a wife! He had addressed
some reproachful verses to her as a bride; then dismissed her from his
thoughts.
He arose and placed the picture carefully in the trunk with the rest of
his treasures and then went to bed to fall into the easy slumber of one
whose mind is well made up.
* * * * *
A few days later Edgar Poe had looked with delight and ineffable emotion
upon the real Boston Harbor, with its rocky little islets and its varied
shipping and its busy wharves, and--for him--its suggestions of one in
Heaven.