Mrs. Poe (29 page)

Well into the evening, Mr. Poe, his face stern, appeared at the parlor door. I closed my eyes in a prayer of thanks. He was safe.

“Come here, come here,” crooned Miss Lynch. She ran over and buried herself against him, leaving her cheek pressed to his chest a few seconds too long. Her large almond eyes glittered with tears of
relief when she led him into the group. Until that moment, I had not realized that she was in love with him.

“The fire is only to the west now,” he announced. “All of the manuscripts at my office are safe.” He scanned the crowd. “Those of you who have sent me poems can still expect rejection.”

Miss Lynch rested her head against his arm as the crowd laughed with the heartiness of those who’d just escaped peril.

Mrs. Ellet, the newcomer to our circle, wrinkled her nose flirtatiously. “You jest, Mr. Poe.”

Dark-haired and heavy-featured, with an especially pendulous lower lip, she seemed to be one of those women whose doting parents had given her the idea that she was beautiful when she was a child, and she had never learned otherwise.

He ignored her, looking for me. Our eyes met. I glanced away, my heart floating, only to find Reverend Griswold’s gaze upon me.

He gave me a punishing look, then turned to Mr. Poe. “How
is
your charming wife? A day like today cannot have been good for someone in her condition.”

“Thank you for asking,” said Mr. Poe.

Reverend Griswold waited, blinking, for the answer. His mouth snapped shut when he saw none was coming. “Well! Our gathering is always enhanced when Mrs. Poe comes. You must bring her next time, lest we forget that you are a married man.”

“There’s no chance of that,” said Miss Lynch. She smiled bravely. “Dear Mr. Poe, may I ask a special favor? Might we lean on you tonight and ask for a reading of ‘The Raven’? We so need a diversion, and your riveting poem—and particularly the way you read it—is the perfect prescription.”

“Of course he reads well.” Reverend Griswold took a sip of tea. “His mother was an actress—in
her
hands, with any luck, a ‘noble’ profession. Had she not died so young, surely,
surely
she would have become better known—at least in charming little Richmond.”

The mask of civility fell from Mr. Poe’s face, revealing a stare of pure, murderous hatred. I feared he would act with the violence Mr. Bartlett had once predicted, goaded by the pressure of worrying about his wife. For after seeing her today, I knew in my heart beyond any doubt: Mrs. Poe was dying.

Oblivious, Mrs. Ellet placed herself next to Mr. Poe. “I’ve never heard you read, sir. I understand it’s quite an experience. Our mutual friend, Thomas Holley Chivers, has told me so, many times. I only wish I could do readings well. It is so
unfair
that writers are expected to do so, when by nature we are solitary creatures, spinning our delicious webs in a quiet room.”

“Where is Mr. Ellet?” Reverend Griswold demanded shrilly. He seemed to have surprised himself at the strength of the effect he’d had upon Mr. Poe.

“Columbia, South Carolina.” She scowled at him as if he were one of the pesky no-see-ums from that region. “He is a professor of chemistry at the university.” She resumed her beaming upon Mr. Poe. “You and I are fellow Southerners, you see.”

“I am thinking of wedding a woman from Charleston!” Reverend Griswold cried self-importantly.

Mr. Poe glared at Mrs. Ellet, then looked for me. Miss Lynch cried out, “Everyone, please help me move the furniture to make it cozy for our show!”

Soon the chairs were rearranged. I took one in the back. Mr. Poe caught my glance, then beckoned for me to come forward.

“There’s no room,” I mouthed.

He spread his palm toward the floor beneath him, indicating that I should sit there.

“Please,” he said aloud.

Heads turned to look at me. I saw Miss Ellet’s inquisitive gaze.

“Go on, Frances,” said Miss Lynch. “Every poet needs a muse. Don’t we all wish we could be Mr. Poe’s!”

Conscious of gazes upon me, I came forward as the maid was dimming the lights. To balk at sitting near him would call further attention to me. I settled near his feet and turned up my face in attention, although inwardly I roiled. What would this crowd think if Edgar and I took up after his wife died? Would they accept us? Would anyone, anywhere, accept us? I shuddered. Who had I become, planning for our life together after her demise?

He began to recite the poem, his voice low and cool, almost throbbing with barely contained emotion. Around the darkened room, faces grew slack as the rhythm of his words forcefully mollified
their minds. Numbed into submission, the listeners let the raven’s persistence fill them with dread. There was no escape, no release for the lover in the poem. He was destined to go on loving a woman who was dead to him, to be captive to her memory, to never find release from his everlasting sorrow.

Mr. Poe looked over the crowd, every breath heaving in unison. His final word, low and insistent, resounded from a fathomless inner well.

“Nevermore.”

The rhythm of our breathing filled the silence. And then, as if waking from a dream-filled slumber, first one person, and then another, clapped, until the prisms of the chandelier over our heads jingled with our applause.

When the lights were turned back up, Mrs. Ellet raced forward to cling to his side. I left the room and went outside to Miss Lynch’s rear garden, to catch my breath, alone.

I was pacing by a full stand of daisies, faintly luminescent in the white light of the moon, when Miss Fuller came outside.

“Are you all right?”

“It’s been a difficult day.”

“It’s not just the fire, is it?”

I saw that she knew everything. I shook my head.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“There is nothing to do.”

She watched me silently, then nodded. “Let me know when you need me.” She patted my hand. “There aren’t many of us who would go against him.”

I looked up. Did she think that I must leave him?

At that moment, the rear door opened. Mr. Poe trod down the steps.

Miss Fuller puffed herself to her fullest height as if to protect me. “Nice reading, Edgar.”

“Thank you.” He turned to me, his dark gaze disconcertingly fierce in the moonlight.

“Frances, would you like to go in with me?” said Miss Fuller.

“No,” said Mr. Poe, his gaze still upon me. “She wants to stay with me.”

I
did
want to stay with him. But it was wrong, wrong. How did I find the strength to break with him before it destroyed us both? “Go on, Margaret. Thank you.”

I faced him as she went inside.

“How is your wife? She’s gravely ill—more than I knew.”

His voice broke with anguish. “Why must you torment me with her?”

“Because my guilt torments me!”

He drew a breath as if to control himself. He touched my arm. “I am sorry that this is so difficult.”

I looked down at his hand, at his beautiful tapered fingers, so sensitive and strong. Sighing, I said, “Are we ignoring at our damnation the signs that we are not meant to be? You said there are no coincidences.” I swallowed against the pain building in my chest. “If we were meant for each other, why should it be this hard?”

He waited until I looked up at him. “You can leave me if you must.”

“Leave you? Edgar, I’ve never had you.”

His voice was rich with emotion. “Oh, my love. Frances. That is where you are wrong.”

His hand tightened around my arm as I searched his dark-lashed eyes. The pain in them tore my heart. I broke from him and, picking up my skirts, left him standing there, for his sake as well as mine.

The parlor was empty when I went in, with teacups and napkins abandoned haphazardly upon tables and chairs, as if their users had made a hasty departure. The gas chandeliers had been left burning, their orange flames flickering from mirrors on every wall. My distraught mind throbbed with the irrational thought that I was the last person left on earth.

I was marveling at how calmly I accepted my sentence of isolation when, through the front door, left ajar, came peals of laughter. I strode to it, and flinging it open to the lingering smell of smoke, found the other guests at the base of Miss Lynch’s stoop. There they encircled a young man, who was commanding a pig to count.

That spinner of delicious webs, Mrs. Ellet, worked her way over to me as the pig pawed the cobblestones, tail wiggling. “Mr. Brady saw them walking by and insisted we all out go and see,” she whispered. “
I
resisted.
After a reading by our brilliant Mr. Poe, I can hardly bear such common entertainment as Dan Rice and his sow.”

I considered the possibility of continuing toward home. Climbing into bed with my girls suddenly sounded painfully sweet. I could retrieve my hat later.

“It has been a day of extremes,” I said, then moved to go.

She held out her hand, large and white. “I’m Elizabeth Ellet.”

The others laughed at another porcine feat.

“Where is Mr. Poe?” Mrs. Ellet asked me as we shook hands.

How my bed called. “I don’t know.”

“I rather got the impression that you would.”

I froze as does a deer that has scented its hunter.

“I enjoyed your little exchange of poems.” Her swollen lower lip smoothed into a knowing smile. “Please don’t tell me that old tale about your exchange of poems in the
Journal
being a romantic hoax.”

“I’m very sorry, but I was just leaving.” I turned away.

“You know, I’ve got a mind to set my cap for him.”

I stopped. “He’s married.”

She laughed. “I’ve heard that doesn’t much matter.”

“You’ve heard wrong,” I said stiffly.

“I went to his office last week to offer my poems. No man happy in his marriage would look at me the way he did.” She sighed happily.

The green-eyed monster raised her scaly head. “I thought you said you were married.”

She heaved with a dry laugh. “I
know
that doesn’t much matter.” She tucked a dark lock behind her ear and peered toward the house. “Where’d you say Poe was?”

“I didn’t.”

Miss Lynch pattered over and linked her arms to ours. “Ladies, we are all going to sing now. Mr. Brady has talked Mr. Rice into coming inside and playing the piano. He has his own minstrel show and is supposed to be quite good.” Miss Lynch led us in as Mr. Rice tethered his pig to a hitching post.

But Mr. Rice’s merry minstrel tunes soon solidified into sober church hymns as the trauma of the day regained its emotional grip.
During a particularly grim rendition of “Amazing Grace,” I broke free when Mrs. Ellet was wiping her eyes.

Mr. Poe was sitting on a stone bench in the garden, surrounded by a firmament of daisies and swollen hydrangea heads. The ripening blooms seemed to nearly throb with awakening life, but all that could be smelled was the reek of charred wood, coming from the burning districts of the city.

He rose when he saw me and pocketed the scrap of paper and pen with which he’d been writing. He broke into a relieved smile. “I wasn’t sure if you’d come back.”

I pushed away my own gladness. “Your story about the asylum?” I asked.

His smile fell.

“You had gone there for a story this spring,” I said. “I haven’t heard what’s come of it.”

He looked away, then seemed to force himself to brighten. He reached for me. “I’m working on my address for the Boston crowd.”

I dodged his touch. “People will see.”

Exasperation hardened his face. “Damn it, I don’t care. I have acted the gentleman for far too long and what good has it done us? I’m tired of it. I’m tired of these charades. I need you, Frances. I love you. It’s dishonest for us to be apart.”

I laughed bitterly even as I pressed his words to my heart. “I doubt if people will give us credit for our honesty.”

“Don’t make light of this, Frances.”

He loved me. He said he loved me. “I want what’s right for my girls. I want what’s right for your wife.”

“What about us, Frances? Don’t we deserve happiness?”

“Not at the expense of others.” It took every scrap of will to keep my hands from his beautiful, anguished face.

He raked his hand through his hair, leaving it wild. “I’ll make it right. I’m trying to make it good for everybody. I need you to trust me that I can.” He grasped my wrist. His urgency melted into pleading. “Please.”

Voices carried from the front of the house. The conversazione was concluding.

He released me. “Let me walk you home,” he said quietly.

We left the gathering separately. He met me just down the street at Washington Square. We fell into step, neither touching nor speaking, as if to deny to any onlookers the feelings flying between us.

We stopped at the Bartletts’ gate. I fumbled with the latch.

He laid a finger across my gloved knuckles. I drew a breath, then rattled the latch.

He flipped it up and pushed at the gate, then stopped me when I moved to enter. “I’ve opened my heart to you as I have never done with another living person. Why do you reject me?”

I trembled as I turned to face him. “I don’t reject you, Edgar. I love you. I love you beyond reason and sanity and safety.” My voice broke. “I love you so much that it terrifies me.”

Pain spread across his face. “You say the words I have wanted to hear and yet—you wound me.”

Shaking with mounting desire, I started up the stairs. I did not stop him when I heard him follow. I would not stop him if he followed me through the house to the Bartletts’ garden, to a secluded spot I knew of behind the greenhouse, where a bower of lilies grew.

Then, upon entering the front door, I smelled it: that sharp, oily scent. An alarm jangled in my mind.

“What is it?” asked Mr. Poe.

A giggle came from the back parlor: Vinnie.

Anxiety rose from the pit of my stomach. With each step down the creaking floorboards of the hall, it inched upward like mercury in a thermometer, driving my clenched fists tighter, speeding up my heart. By the time I strode into the parlor, my temples were throbbing.

There, sitting at his easel, with our girls posing cheek to cheek before a host of gathered lamps, was Samuel.