unhappy one of the party. He thought it so tame an ending
for our flight, he was half unwilling to return again. That
afternoon and night he was exceedingly gloomy and held
aloof.
For the last time we lighted the torches and kindled
the fire; for the last time we, each in turn, told our stories.
Poe alone had not spoken. We had left him to himself.
* See the Poem
34
THE m a n w h o c a l l e d HIM SELF POE
Thomas Goode Tucker had just finished a tale of a sweet
and tender nature. The old story of two lovers—a grievous
misunderstanding, a cruel separation, a happy reconciliation.
It was a restful bit of human nature, a trifle commonplace,
but so restfully, charmingly told as to gain a forgiveness for
its evident touch of everyday life. During the little pause
that follows the telling of any good story, Poe, still full of
gloom, strode in from out of the shadows and stood in our
midst with folded arms, and told his story.
To-night the recollection of those burning words, slow and
distinctly uttered, rise before me in all of their original fresh-
ness and in all of their original horror. On the day after, I
alone of that little party expressed a willingness to return
some day to that spot in the Ragged Mountains where we
had listened to that strange story, so wonderfully and
strangely told.
His first words, delivered in a slow, monotonous tone,
were those mysterious lines found in the poem—
“ Over the lilies there that wave
And weep above a nameless g ra v e ”
He paused, then pointed to a little clump of early spring
lilies. They were just coming into bloom. They were growing
into beauty beneath the shadows of a large hemlock, on the
inner edge of the firelight glow, plainly in the sight of all.
Somehow, instantaneously, came the thought to each one of
us, how like a grave-mound those clustered filies had shaped
themselves as they grew.
“No; you are wrong,״ he said, seeming to divine our very
thought; the shape of yonder bed of fair lilies is but a fore-
shadowing of a grave yet to be there—a grave that shall
be forever nameless. No one now lies beneath the purity
of those blossoms. Their fragrance and their liveliness are
not stolen from any human mold slowly decaying beneath
the dark, rich soil. Out in the blackness of the night, beyond
THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE
3 5
the flare of your torch and in the light of your fire, a company
of ill-boding spirits have gathered. In their center three
Demons of the Darkness. They are dancing. It is the Death-
Dance. They stop. And now they are, each in turn, whisper-
ing to me. But you can neither hear nor see them. As they
whisper to me I will repeat the words to you.”
Bending forward in the attitude of an eager listener, and
as if straining to catch the words of some one whispering, Poe
slowly uttered the strange sentences of his wild story. The
deception—if deception it was—was indeed most perfect.
Each one of our number was ready to believe that Poe was
actually hearing and repeating words spoken to him by some
invisible person. The action was so wonderfully natural
that it created the most absorbing effect. For a brief while
I could scarcely believe my own identity. It was, in truth,
some time before I could rid myself of the impression that
Poe was in actual and direct communication with evil spirits.
Tucker afterwards told me that several members of the
party—otherwise sensible fellows—were never able entirely
to rid themselves of this impression. H 1 4 9 3 9 1 2
It is useless to even attem pt a reproduction of that story.
The bare outline—at best feeble—is all that I dare trust myself
to give. Those three Demons are supposed to be the nar-
rators using Poe as a mouthpiece. Consequently the story is
divided into three parts.
I
Two young men start out in life together. They have been
unto one another more like brothers than like friends. Their
hearts are drawn together by the tenderest ties that can bind
two unselfish souls. Manhood finds them living a peaceful,
harmonious life. Thus far without the shadows. But a curse
yet unfulfilled hangs over them—some iniquity of the fathers
that must be visited on the children of the third and fourth
generation.
3 6
THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE
Discord, and then the horrors of civil war invade the
peaceful land. The execution of the curse is near. There is
a great issue at stake, and those young men differ about the
merits of the cause. It is their first difference. They go on
the battle-field and on opposite sides. In an evil hour, in the
bitterness of a hand-to-hand conflict, they meet, each un-
known to the other. Their weapons cross, a deadly thrust,
and one lies dying. Then the cruel agony of a too-late recog-
nition. While the dying man breathes away his life, young,
and so like a flower, on the bosom of his comrade, full of
wretchedness, a voice:—'“Your soul has expiated the curse
of your race; peace abide with you.” He is dead. But other
voices, harsh and penetrating, ring out upon the ear of the
grief-stricken survivor, ״Your curse has barely begun its bale-
ful course; you are to go about the world a homeless, friend-
less wanderer; and when the end does come, you are to lie
in a grave forever nameless.”
II
A storm. Night falls about, drawn on before its time. Out
of the darkness of a distant valley a man full of years toils
up the mountain side. But a human shadow. He trembles
with fatigue and fright. The storm sweeps along the moun-
tain. He seeks protection from its raging, unpent fury be-
neath the branches of a wide-spreading hemlock. It is where
you are seated to-night. Years hence will mark his coming
to this lonely dell in the heart of the Ragged Mountains.
The shadows will steal away his power of action, and the
shadows will close in and around about him, and from this
spot he will not again depart.
III
This human shadow, shut in by a troop of Demon-sent
shadows, labors day by day at some mysterious task. Never
man worked at so strange a labor. It is the slow making of a
THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE
3 7
grave—and his own. Day after day the work goes on. Then
there comes a pause. His labors are ended. And there, at the
foot of a beautiful bed of lilies, an open grave. And now he
sleeps in that grave, made by the painful toil of his weak and
shriveled hands.
And Edgar Allan Poe, in conclusion, “The fitfulness of
his fife goes out into a perpetual darkness. The Angel of
Death forever calms the trouble heart. And in those days
when my three now powerful Demons shall have lost their
high and most evil estate, an
d when other and better
spirits shall have gathered here to hold high carnival in their
stead, then the song of the midnight elfin shall be—
‘Over the lilies there that wave
And weep above a nameless grave! ”
His story was ended. Those last words were said in a
whisper. Then there was a long and painful silence. Not a
word, not a movement, only the crackling sound of pine
fagots almost burned out. We made effort to shake off the
gloom settling down upon us. It was useless. Then we were
startled to our feet by the sound of a retreating footfall. It
came from the tangled mountain growth that enclosed our
open space around the camp-fire.
Poe, with a wild expression on his face, lighted by the
glare of the torch and fire, stood erect in our midst. With
a mocking laugh that chilled every heart, he made this cry:
—“Be still, my brave comrades; it is only the retreating foot-
fall of my last Demon. He is gone! Come, scatter the dying
embers. Bid farewell to our safe retreat. Now let us go, and
in peace, down the mountain side, and again return to the
University.״
It is indeed a mystery how, on that night, we reached our
deserted rooms; for it was the darkest night that I have ever
known. And our souls too were filled with the darkness—a
troop of grim terrors. Present in every mind the picture of
3 8
THE M AN WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE
that nameless grave. It was a picture with a ghoulish back-
ground of human Shadows and Death-Dancing Demons.
Now this which I have told is the bare outline—an in-
complete synopsis—of that strange tale. It would take the
touch of a master hand to render full justice to a story told
by that master spirit, Edgar Allan Poe.
The days which followed thereafter almost drifted us into
the belief that we had somewhere and somehow dreamed
away the period of our hiding in the Ragged Mountains—a
delicious slumber ruffled by the shadowy presence of a whis-
pering phantom and a nameless grave—yet to be—far up in
the wooded heart of that spur of the Blue Ridge.
The following December ended my term and my stay at
the Virginia University. Poe left at the same time. Our lines
of life stretched out in directions widely different, and they
never crossed again. Our old friendship was never renewed.
But our parting that December night was exceeding sad,
full of tenderness and—pardon the weakness, for we
were hardly more than boys—tears, hot, impulsive tears of
deep regret. “I will never see you again,״ he said. His words
were indeed prophetic. And perhaps it was better so, yet—
But no; I will leave untold that which would only gratify
an idle curiosity and open to public gaze an unsuspected
heart-wound.
There is a sequel to that story of the nameless grave, as
it was told to us by the boy Poe on that spring-time night
in The Valley of Unrest.
About five years ago, after a long period of wandering in
many strange and out-of-the-way places, I found myself in
an old Italian town. There was a charm about the place. It
was ancient, crude and interesting. To gratify an idle fancy—
a mere whim—I had taken for the winter an old Ducal Pal-
ace, long ago given over to the chance tenant and—ruin.
There came a holiday; then a night of the Carnival. I
stood on the carved stone balcony of my own Ducal Palace
and watched the motley throng passing down the crowded
THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE
3 9
street. They pelted me where I stood, and laughed to see a
face so full of sober thought in so gay a time.
Something—perhaps the odor of some flower, or, as it was
to-night, the sound of some voice, rich, suggestive—something
brought the desire to come back again to this, my native
land. It had been for me the scene of much unhappiness,
but a new generation of haste-lovers had risen, and I thought
to go again to the home of my fathers. Vacant all the rest of
that winter was my Ducal Palace. And the people said that
I was driven out by the ill-resting spirit of some Duke foully
murdered in the long ago. So I left that uneasy shade in the
full possession of that Ducal Palace, rich in tarnished gild-
ings and faded colorings.
On my return, familiar places claimed my attention. Many
of those whom I had known and loved were dead, and many
changes marked the town of my birth. I turned from them
all. I was disappointed. Only one place had not changed.
Only one of those old places satisfied me. It was the Uni-
versity of Virginia. There everything seemed the same. True,
a new set of Professors filled the chairs of those whom I
had known, and men with unfamiliar faces frequented
Rotunda, Porch, Arcade, and Lawn. Yet the place itself—its
walls and its groves consecrated to knowlege—was just as
I had left it.
One thought absorbed my attention. It was a foolish no-
tion that would not down, and was yet ill-defined. Perhaps,
by a mere accident, some one might have been buried in
The Valley of Unrest and in a nameless grave. So it was,
filled with this almost belief, that I determined to go and
see for myself.
But to find that lonely dell far up in the wooded heart of
the Ragged Mountains was not an easy task.
While a student I had often rambled over the University
Range of Mountains. I had often gathered flowers and ferns
from the scattered ruins of the old observatory.* I had often
* Now a new and beautiful Observatory stands on the old site.
4 0
THE M A N WHO CALLED HIM SELF POE
stood on the summit of Lewis Mountain and looked down
upon the Pantheon-modeled Dome of the old Rotunda. I
had often watched the afternoon sunlight slowly creeping
beneath the Arcades of Range and Lawn. And I had often
looked down upon the town of Charlottesville, with glitter-
ing spire and gleaming roof, softened into a suggestion of
something picturesque by distance and sunshine. But I had
never but that once—those three days of hiding—explored
the Ragged Mountains. From the time that I first saw them
looking then as they always did, the embodiment of dense
and somber loneliness, they had for me a charm. This charm
was enhanced by our self-imposed banishment and the tale
told by Edgar Allan Poe on that spring-time night beneath
the shadows of those low-sweeping pines and in the glare of
torch and camp-fire.
That memory, after all of those years, had brought me
again within the reach of The Valley of Unrest.
It was the spring-time. And it was early one bright morn-
ing when I started up the mountain-side to find again that
beautiful dell. But in vain I wandered up and down the
length and breadth of the Ragged Mountains. The old path
was overgrown and forgotten. I was wearied with much and
fruitless search
ing. I stretched out beneath a huge pine,
on a bed of dry moss, and closed my eyes, but not in
slumber. A bunch of new-blown lilies growing on a nameless
grave was my one and troubled thought. It was about the
hour of noon. Suddenly I grew conscious that some one was
near, looking down into my face, studying its features. It was
that peculiar and unmistakable feeling of a nearness to a
human being. Out of mere perverseness I remained still and
as if asleep. My ear, on the alert for the slightest sound,
caught the better part of these sentences: “Yes, yes, I am
sure he is one of their number. True, he is greatly changed;
but in spite of his long white hair and his heavily bearded
face, I know him.״
Breaking away from the capricious control of that per
THE M AN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE
41
verse spirit, I arose and stood before a man as old, if not
older than myself. He was a tall, angular, raw-boned moun-
taineer. His manner was calm, collected. His eye was bright
and full of the fires of life, not yet burned out by the hoary
encroachments of many years.
“Stranger,” said he, in a voice somewhat low, and full of
earnestness, “I have seen you before. But you have never seen
me. You were about these parts now nigh on to fifty years
ago. You were with a crowd of students from the Univer-
sity who came hither to hide from the county sheriff. Now
come, stranger, and behold the fulfillment of a strange pre-
diction that you and I and all the rest of us heard on the
third and last night of your stay in the Ragged Mountains.”
I
had no answer. I was full of ill-concealed wonder. In
silence I followed the man who had just spoken. We pene-
trated deep into the dense gloom of the forest. We neared
an open spot. It was a lonely dell, and I was sure that once
again, after all the years, I stood within the shadows of that
Valley of Unrest.
Instantly came to mind those words placed in the mouth
of Bedloe, in Edgar Allan Poes “Tale of the Ragged Moun-
tains”: “The scenery which presented itself on all sides had
about it an indescribable and to me a delicious aspect of
dreary desolation. The solitude seemed absolutely virgin. I
could not help believing that the green sods and the gray
The Man Who Called Himself Poe Page 6
