Dragonwyck (32 page)

'Read them the poem, Eddie,' repeated the motherly voice. Through long experience, Mrs. Clemm had discovered this recipe for bringing him to if he had not already entered that terrifying borderland where no human appeal would reach him for days. She vaguely understood that his unintelligible poems—for she never could make out what they were about—represented an outlet for the misery which tortured him, an outlet like the far more dangerous liquor.

She sighed with relief as the clutching hand fell from her arm to the sheets of foolscap on the table. He jerked them toward him.

'The skies they were ashen and sober;

The leaves they were crisped and sere...'

His voice at first harsh and incoherent slowly gained timber. Soon each syllable was accentuated with delicacy, each word rounded to the fullest melody. From his actor parents he had inherited the talent of communicating emotion to an audience.

Mrs. Ellet ceased fanning and leaned forward. They were all hushed—even Nicholas—as the voice throbbed and deepened in the weird evocative cadences.

It was 'Ulalume' that he read to them. The elegy that foreshadowed Virginia's death and the recurring defeat of his own soul.

The first stanzas meant nothing to Miranda, except for their inescapable music.

'And now, as the night was senescent
And star-dials pointed to morn—
As the star-dials hinted of morn—
At the end of our path a liquescent
And nebulous luster was born...'

But it was in the next stanza that the meaning caught her. It was as though the voice with its interpretation swung wide the iron gate and precipitated her into the mists beyond—'the region of sighs.' Sadness engulfed her like a shroud, sadness and an eerie foreboding. For a few seconds she was held by fear like that she had felt in the Red Room, and each word seemed directed at her.

'But Psyche, uplifting her finger,
Said—"Sadly this star I mistrust—
Her pallor I strangely mistrust:—
Oh, hasten! Oh, let us not linger!
Oh, fly! let us fly!—for we must."
In terror she spoke, letting sink her
Wings till they trailed in the dust—
In agony sobbed, letting sink her
Plumes till they trailed in the dust—
Till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust.'

Miranda, without conscious will, turned her frightened eyes to her husband. For the space of a heart beat diat phrase echoed in her own soul, 'Sadly this star I mistrust.'

She made a slight motion, and Nicholas, seeing it, smiled at her and shook his head in warning not to disturb the recitation. Reality came flooding back. She relaxed. Here was nothing but a small roomful of people and a drunken, though eloquent, poet.

In her reaction, she listened impatiently to the rest of the poem, thinking it unnecessarily gloomy. She had had enough of this morbid, poverty-tainted little cottage. She was sorry for them all, terribly sorry; but she longed for the spacious elegance of her bedroom. Her head had begun to ache and the heat grew steadily worse.

'Well I know, now, this dank tarn of Auber,

This ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.'

The poem was finished.

'Magnificent!' said Nicholas heartily, and to Miranda's relief he stood up.

'Too utterly divine—' observed Mrs. Ellet, also rising. She touched Poe's hand gingerly with her fingertips, murmured that it had been a great pleasure, gave a loud disapproving sniff directed at the brandy fumes which permeated the room, and scurried out to say good-bye to Virginia.

'It's not right yet—there are many changes to make,' said Poe dully. All vitality had drained out of him, his speech was sluggish again. He made a couple of futile pencil marks on the manuscript, then his head sank forward onto his outstretched arms. His breathing grew stertorous.

'Poor Eddie,' said Mrs. Clemm. 'He'll sleep it off now. Tell me, sir.' She looked up at Nicholas pleadingly. 'Did you really like the poem?'

'I think it one of his very best.'

The anxious face brightened. 'Would you help a little to get it published? I know you don't have anything to do with such things, but if you could just say a word here or there? Mrs. Gove heard it and she said she'd try.'

'I shall be most happy to,' answered Nicholas, and they left Mrs. Clemm to the tending of her two sick children.

That evening when Miranda and Nicholas sat down to late supper in their cool dining-room, she summoned the courage to ask him the question which had been in the back of her mind on all the long drive home.

'Was the visit what you expected, Nicholas? Are you glad we went?'

He put down his coffee cup and frowned into space. 'The man is worthless,' he said contemptuously, 'but I envy him his dreams.'

'His dreams—' she repeated, not understanding.

Nicholas nodded, but he shut his mouth firmly and did not explain.

The man Poe had disappointed him. Nicholas had hoped for a kindred spirit, one as unhampered by petty morality or the conventional attitude toward evil as Nicholas knew himself to be. Instead he had found despicable weakness, a sick man clutching at his mother and crying out for anodyne, a man terrified by the thought of death.

There had, however, been one rewarding moment during the conversation with Poe, who had unknowingly suggested an unusual avenue of escape into the mystical realms of power and increased consciousness. An avenue not to be compared with the muddy downhill path which liquor represented. Some day, thought Nicholas, perhaps I shall experiment.

'Could you send the poor things some money—? Anonymously, of course,' said Miranda, seeing that Nicholas was through with the subject.

He shrugged and picked up his coffee cup. 'The sooner the wife dies the better for everyone, I should think, but I'll have Bronck send them something if you wish.'

She was as anxious as he to forget the Poe household and she soon did forget it. But as it was with Nicholas, one legacy from the visit remained with her. Hers was the memory of the unexpected pleasure she had felt in that dismal little kitchen at talking about Jeff. And the doctor had disturbed her. Though she did not think of Jeff very often, she nevertheless took to reading the war news. And whenever the casualty lists were published she scanned them anxiously, reaching the bottom name with deep relief.

BY THE MIDDLE OF JUNE THE HEAT HAD SETTLED into a succession of broiling days and muggy nights. Even in the Stuyvesant Street garden there was no relief, for the city pressed around it too close. Street smells—manure, garbage, and dust—completely overpowered the garden's mignonette and roses. All noises were magnified, the harsh shouts of the street vendors, the rattle of wagons on the cobblestones. And through that stifling air the bellowing of doomed cattle penned in the great market at Forty-Second Street added to the sleep-shattering confusion.

Everyone who could left the city, and the Van Ryns with them. On a Thursday morning Nicholas and Miranda boarded the Reindeer and started up the Hudson. They were to disembark at Catskill Landing, and proceed twelve miles by stage to the Pine Orchard Mountain House.

Miranda had hoped that as long as Dragonwyck was not yet ready Nicholas might take her traveling. During the past fortnight they had gone to parties given by the Schermerhorns and the Astors where Miranda had met many people with more ambitious summer plans than dieirs. Some were going to the ocean at Rockaway Beach, some to the White Mountains; two couples were even going as far afield as Niagara Falls and Lake Erie.

'How I should love to see the real ocean! I never have, you know—or Niagara Falls, Nicholas,' she had said wistfully, but he would not consider any change of plan. He had had his fill of traveling during the year of their separation, and besides, he wished to be in the vicinity of Dragonwyck so that he could be present on the July Rent Day and oversee the opening of the house.

'We might go up to Saratoga for a few days if we tire of the Mountain House,' he said, and that was the end of the matter.

I suppose I was greedy and ungrateful to want more, she thought, leaning against the Reindeer's mahogany rail and watching the Palisades slide by. How strangely different this was from her first trip up the river! The boat looked much the same as the one on which she had sailed then; but the Swallow, the graceful Swallow with its name bird so bravely painted in blue on the wheel box, was now nothing but a mass of rotting timber at the bottom of the Hudson. The Swallow had raced the Express once too often, and the year before had split herself in two on the rocks of a tiny island called Noah's Brig. A dozen people had been drowned.

I wonder, thought Miranda, if I had a premonition drat day, when the racing frightened me so. By turning her head she could see a corner of the deck almost identical with the recess on the Swallow where Nicholas had placed her on that other June day two years ago—a shabby figure in brown merino, clutching the farm basket and wearing that hideous cheap bonnet. How dazzled she had been by the boat's carvings and archways, chandeliers, red plush carpets and statuary! The Reindeer was even more elaborate, but now Miranda was accustomed to magnificence.

She looked down at her blue moire traveling suit, watching the bell-shaped hoop sway in the fresh breeze. This costume had cost a hundred dollars, and she had not even thought it expensive. That other girl who had sat in the corner there would have been horrified, despite her love of clothes, at the thought of paying such a sum. It was as much cash as the farm often brought in in a year.

How I've changed! she thought; but beneath the surface pride of that thought was disquiet. She had her heart's desires, everything that the Miranda of two years ago would have considered a paradise—wealth, position, and Nicholas. Why then should she suddenly remember a Spanish saying she had read long ago in 'The Gipsy's Revenge,' one of those idiotic books she used to borrow from Debby Wilson: 'May all your wishes come true, and may they all curse you!'

I don't know what's the matter with me, she thought impatiently, and turned from the rail as Nicholas approached. 'Come to dinner, my dear one,' he said gaily, drawing her arm through his. 'The captain is waiting for us in his cabin.' He was enjoying the trip. He had a deep feeling for the stately river which flowed by his manor, and though he shared little else with most of mankind, he shared that feeling of holiday freedom which a boat ride gives.

In the deserted passageway before the captain's cabin, he bent down and kissed her. It was the type of tender kiss that any newly wed husband might give his cherished bride. She entered the cabin, glowing and happy.

The happiness lasted through the bustle of landing and the tedious ride in the stage up the mountains to the hotel.

The Pine Orchard House on South Mountain was considered one of the noblest wonders in the East. All foreign visitors were taken to see it as a matter of course. Harriet Martineau had written of it that she would rather have missed the prairies, the Mississippi, or even Niagara than this. The Mountain House's fame rested not on its excellent cuisine, nor its elegant Greek-revival facade with the thirteen white Corinthian columns, nor yet on the Beach family's efficient management; it exalted the romantic nineteenth-century heart by its location on the edge of a twenty-five-hundred-foot precipice and in consequence its spectacular awe-inspiring view.

When Miranda walked through the hotel and stepped out on the piazza, she gasped, as everyone gasped. The Hudson Valley lay spread out beneath her, its fertile fields stained mauve in the sun's afterglow. Eight miles to the east the great river, diminished to a brooklet, curled like a silver shaving from Albany to Rhinebeck. Fifty miles away in Massachusetts the Berkshires thrust dark, irregular humps against the horizon. From time to time a trailing cloud mist floated by, obscuring the farms so far below, and accentuating the feeling of dizzy height.

'Flying must be like this—' sighed Miranda. Always intensely affected by her surroundings, it seemed to her that living in the presence of that view one could be eternally joyous, one would get nearer to God, who had lately receded to a nebulous vagueness where her hurried and self-conscious prayers did not reach. Nicholas' amused contempt for religion had had its effect. She no longer read her Bible at all, and she had skipped church on the last three Sundays. Not that Nicholas prevented her from going exactly, but there did seem to arise many difficulties; even though Saint Mark's was around the corner from the town house, he insisted that she be accompanied by one of the servants and take the carriage. Nor would he go with het himself. Moreover, she was gradually sleeping later and later in the mornings, for there were social events in the evenings, and even when there were not, Nicholas was seldom ready to retire before midnight.

Her lifetime training had not been disrupted without a feeling of guilt. But here in tins heavenly place, she thought, buoyed by that youthful conviction that a change of location inevitably produced inward change as well, here all would be simple and easy.

For some days she rejoiced in everything—their three-room suite, the coolness of the mountain air, the well-dressed, pleasant-looking people whom she saw in the dining-room at meals, or in the ballroom during evening concerts, or on the piazza, rocking and enjoying that wonderful view. She longed to meet some of these people, the young couple from Charleston, the noisy Benton family—mama, papa, and four assorted children who had traveled here from Boston and never tired of amusing the dining-room with humorous accounts of that journey—or even the trio of placid old ladies who pre-empted one corner of the piazza in which to knit and rock and sip lemonade while they gossiped.

But Nicholas, it seemed, had no intention of fraternizing with anyone. He snubbed one or two tentative overtures, and after that they were left to themselves. This remoteness produced no hostility, everyone knew they were on their honeymoon, but it did increase the other guests' interest in the romantic couple.