"The Poe Shadow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pearl Matthew)

20

"BARON! IS THERE a real baron staying in this hotel?"

A thickly bearded man in nightclothes and slippers stood at the door, holding up his candle.

"This is not the room of Baron Dupin?"

"We have not seen him!" replied the man with disappointment, looking over his shoulder as though perhaps there was a baron in his bed-quilt he had neglected to notice. "But we've only arrived this afternoon from Philadelphia."

I mumbled my apologies and returned hurriedly through the hall and to the street. The Baron had changed hotels again and, in my distraction,

I had missed it. My thoughts ran quick and conflicting as I emerged from the hotel. Immediately I felt eyes upon the back of my neck and slowed my walk. It was not merely the intensity of my mood. There was the handsome black whom I had seen before, hands deep in his coat pockets, standing under the streetlamp. Or was it? He remained within the scope of the light only momentarily; then I could find him no more.

Turning to the other side, I thought I saw one of the two men in the old-fashioned dress I had seen following the Baron. My heart thumped violently at the vague feeling of being surrounded. I marched away as quickly as possible, jumping nearly headlong into a hackney coach, which I directed back to Glen Eliza.

After a night of sleeplessness, images of Duponte and the Baron

Dupin alternating and mixing in my mind with the sweeter sounds of

Hattie's sonorous laugh, a messenger arrived in the morning with a note from the athenaeum clerk. It concerned the man who had handed him those Poe-related articles-that first hint of the existence of the real

Dupin. The clerk had indeed remembered or, rather, had seen the very man himself, and when doing so had requested his calling card to send to me.

The man who had passed along the articles was Mr. John Benson, a name meaningless to me. The enameled calling card was from Richmond but had a Baltimore address written in a man's hand. Had someone wanted me to find the real Dupin? Had someone possessed a motive in seeing him brought to Baltimore to resolve Poe's death? Had I been chosen for this?

To say sooth, though, my hopes for elucidation were dim. It seemed to me likely that the ancient clerk, however well-meaning, may have simply mistaken this fellow as the man he had met so briefly two years ago.

I thought of the figures who'd seemed to creep from the shadows around me the night before. Prior to venturing outside on this day, I had secured a revolver that my father had kept in a box to bring on his business visits to the less cultivated countries that traded with Baltimore. I placed the weapon in the pocket of my coat and started for the address printed on Benson's card.

Walking through Baltimore Street, I saw, from a distance, Hattie standing in front of the sign for a fashionable store. I signaled her halfheartedly, not knowing if she would simply walk away without addressing me.

With great abruptness, she ran ahead and embraced me warmly. Though I thrilled at her affection, and the comfort of being close to her again, I imagined with true torment and anxiety that she would brush against the revolver in my coat and develop again the doubts about my behavior that had plagued her. She pulled back as quickly as she had reached for me, as though afraid of spying eyes.

"Dear Hattie," I said, "you do not abhor the very sight of me?"

"Oh, Quentin. I know that you have found new worlds for yourself, new experiences outside the ones we could have together."

"You do not understand who that was. She is a thief, a burglar! Please, I must make you understand. Let us talk together somewhere quiet."

I took her arm to lead her. She gently pulled away.

"It is far too late. I had only come to Glen Eliza that night to explain. I have told you things are quite different."

This could not be! "Hattie, I needed to follow what seemed right. But soon all will be returned to normal."

"Auntie wishes that I never say your name again, and has instructed all of our friends that they are never to mention our engagement with a single living breath."

"But surely Auntie Blum can be readily convinced…What she wrote in her note to me about you finding someone else…it is not true?"

Hattie gave a small nod. "I am to be married to another man, Quentin."

"It is not because of what you saw at Glen Eliza."

She shook her head no, her face motionless and ambivalent.

"Who?"

Here was my answer.

Peter stepped from inside the store where Hattie stood, counting out some coins given to him by the shop-girl. Seeing me, he turned away guiltily.

"Peter?" I cried. "No."

He let his gaze drift aimlessly. "Hello, Quentin."

"You are…engaged to marry Peter!" I moved forward and whispered to Hattie so that he could not hear. "Dear Miss Hattie, Hattie, just tell me one thing-are you happy? Just tell me."

She paused, then nodded brightly, putting out her hand to me.

"Quentin, let us all talk together," Peter said.

But I did not wait. I rushed forward, passing Peter without so much as touching my hat. I wished that both of them would disappear.

"Quentin! Please!" Peter called out. He followed me for a few feet, but he gave up when he saw I would not stop-or perhaps when he saw the anger that flashed in my eyes.

I almost forgot the gun hidden in my coat, considering the mortal weight of this new discovery. On my way to Mr. Benson's address, I passed through some of the finer, most well-appointed streets of Baltimore.

After explaining that I was a stranger with some brief business to discuss with the gentleman of the house, and apologizing for possessing no letter of introduction, I was ushered inside by a colored servant to a sofa in the parlor. The rooms were sparser than was the fashion of the day, with rather exotic paper of an Oriental flavor on the walls, the background for several small silhouettes; the only large portrait loomed behind the sofa, and at first it did not strike me as anything worth noticing.

I do not know, scientifically speaking, if one's senses can detect the eyes of a painting looking upon them, but as I waited for the master of the house, a curious sensation arose in me that made me crane my head. The position of the lamps threw a vivid light around the picture. I rose to my feet as the painted eyes met mine. The face was full, wearied but still alive with vivacity, as though from some idealistic past. The eyes, though…No, how foolish of me. It was an excitable spell at work from the strains of the last days. The shadowy face was older, the hair whiter, the chin thick, whereas his was gaunt and almost pointed. Yet the eyes! It was as though they had been transplanted from the dark orbs of the Phantom, the man whose image still invaded my mind at regular intervals, telling me not to meddle and having started, almost single-handedly, the quest that had taken me this far. I quickly shook away this unhealthy notion of recognition, yet remained in a bothered state. As I waited longer, I remembered how little faith I had in the use of the present visit, and felt the formal setting of the receiving room to be suffocating. I decided to leave my calling card and return to Glen Eliza.

But upon hearing someone coming, I halted.

Slow steps led down the stairway, and from around its bend Mr. Benson appeared.

I gasped. "The Phantom!"

There he stood. The singular man who so many months earlier had warned me away from the case of Poe. A younger version of the eyes on the wall behind me. The man who had seemed to dissolve himself into smoke and mist as I pursued his shadows through the street. Without thinking about it, without considering what I might do next, my hand plunged into the pocket of my coat and my fingers found the handle of my revolver.

"What's that?" he asked, turning one ear toward me doubtfully. "Fenton, do you say? Benson, sir. John Benson…"

I imagined myself pointing the gun at his mouth. That, after all, was the mouth that provoked me to investigate Poe, that had led to all this, to all these decisions, to the neglect of my friends, to Hattie and Peter's irreversible betrayal of me!

"No, not Fenton." I do not know what perverse urge led me to correct a man into knowing he was my long-sought foe. I clenched my teeth around the word: "Phantom."

He studied me carefully, lifting a finger to his lips in thoughtful contemplation of my reply. "Ah." Then, raising his eyes in the operation of remembering some lines, he recited:

"Mr. Clark, isn't it? This is a surprise."

"Why did you give me that article? Did you want me to find him? What sort of madman-Was this some sort of plan all along?" I demanded.

"Mr. Clark, I confess confusion," answered John Benson. "If I may ask a question in return, what brings you here?"

"You warned me not to meddle in the business of Poe's death. You cannot deny it, sir!"

Benson leaned back with a sad grin. "May I suppose from your manner that you did not listen to me?"

"I demand you explain!"

"Happily. But first…" He extended his hand. Hesitating for a moment at the gesture, I removed my hand from its pocket, yielding the ready grip on the revolver, and watched his hand as though he might throttle me. "Pleased to properly make your acquaintance, Mr. Clark. I'll certainly explain how you came to my personal attention. But tell me something I had been wondering at the very time we first met: what is your interest in Edgar Poe?"

"To protect his name from the vermin and false friends," I replied, looking him over suspiciously for a reaction.

"Then we did indeed have some common interest, Mr. Clark. When we spoke that day near Saratoga Street, I was visiting Baltimore. I live in Virginia, you see. In Richmond I am an officer of the Sons of Temperance. Edgar Poe was visiting Richmond that summer, as you may know, and had met some of our members at the Swan Inn, where he was lodging, including a Mr. Tyler, who invited the writer to tea."

I thought of the clipping from the Raleigh newspaper describing Poe joining the temperance men. We mention the fact, conceiving that it will be gratifying to the friends of temperance to know that a gentleman of Mr. Poe's fine talents and rare attainments has been enlisted in the cause. That was only a month and three days before he'd turn up in distress at Ryan's.

"Mr. Poe took our pledge never to sip the juice again. He stepped up to the desk and attached his signature with unusual firmness. He was the newest son, and one we took pride in among our ‘children.' There were those who were skeptical. I was not among them. I heard that after the vigilance committee secretly followed him for a few days in Richmond, they found him honest to his word. Not long after Mr. Poe's departure from Richmond late the next month, we were shocked to hear of his death at a hospital here, and more shocked to read that it was the result of a spree he commenced on reaching this city. We of the temperance order tried to reach the facts from Richmond, and the consensus had been he was not drinking. But we were too far from the facts to try to change the public opinion.

"Being as I was only a few years younger than Poe, and had met him on occasion and had greatly admired his writing, our council suggested that I travel here to inquire after the circumstances of what happened to him. You see, I was born in Baltimore, and lived here until I was twenty-one, so it was thought I would have the better chance of discovering what had happened than any other of our members. I was determined to make a careful investigation, and bring back the truth about Poe's death to Richmond."

"What did you find, Mr. Benson?"

"First, I spoke to the doctor at the hospital where I heard Poe had died."

"John Moran?"

"Yes-Moran." Benson looked me over, perhaps a bit impressed by my knowledge. "Dr. Moran admitted that he could not say that Poe had been drinking, but that Poe was in such an agitated and insensible state Moran could not prove that he was not."

It was the same comment I had heard Moran say, which made me trust Benson's account more. "When did you make this visit, Mr. Benson?"

"A week after Poe's death, perhaps."

It began to settle upon me that this man, the devious Phantom of months past, had entered the mystery even before I had.

"The newspapers," he sighed. "The way they cut up Poe. Those fictions they were printing! The temperance unions here and in New York were keen on using him up. You have seen the articles, perhaps. As though to defeat a dead man to teach a lesson was a triumph. Well, Mr. Clark, believing that Poe was innocent, and knowing his genius, I felt rather-"

"Enraged," I completed his thought.

He nodded. "I am by habit a man of calm and reserve, but yes: I was enraged. I left word in many quarters that I wished to discover the details of Poe's final days as corroboration that he had held his pledge to the Sons of Temperance. It happened, while doing some researches, that I overheard you one afternoon, in the athenaeum, request the reading room clerk to reserve for you all articles about Poe's death. I presumed you were among those taking pleasure in reading these venomous reports of Poe's supposed demoralization and sin. I asked the clerk your name, and I learned from others that you were a local lawyer, gifted with a bright mind but known to be under the thumb of people more assertive than yourself. And that you had represented some local periodicals before. I suspected, at that point, that you were engaged by the Baltimore temperance press, who wished to portray Poe as a drunkard as a moral lesson against drinking. I imagined that perhaps you had been paid by them to counter my own mission and to disrupt the aim of the Richmond Sons of Temperance. And so, when I observed you on a different day coming toward the athenaeum, I proffered to you a caution not to meddle in it."

"You thought I was part of the ruin of Poe's name?" I asked, astounded.

"It seemed at the time I was the only one who was not, Mr. Clark! Do you know what that feels like? I tried to visit the offices of the editors of some of the city's newspapers. They would not hear of correcting the misleading information they were printing. I compiled a selection of positive extracts and articles on Poe from years past-praising him, praising his writings-and handed these to the editors to try to persuade them that the late Mr. Poe deserved more honor. Some of these articles I left in the care of the athenaeum clerk for you, as well, with the same purpose. I believe this is one of the articles you referred to earlier."

"Do you mean you selected the articles at random?" I asked.

"I suppose," he said, unclear at the source of my utter disbelief.

"They were not intended to cause or provoke any particular action?"

"I hoped the praise included about Poe from less bloodthirsty times would cause more consideration of the value of Poe and his literary productions. Soon after that, I returned to Richmond. Having presently come back to stay here with my Baltimore relatives for a while, I had the occasion to come upon the clerk from the athenaeum, and the clerk excitedly requested my calling card so he could pass it along to you, Mr. Clark."

"When you spoke to me on the street, you said I must not meddle

‘with your lowly lies.'"

"Did I?" He blinked thoughtfully, then developed a trace of a smile.

"It comes from Poe's poem of a woman half in death and half in life, Lenore, ‘that now so lowly lies.'"

"I suppose it does" was Benson's maddening answer.

"Didn't you mean something by this? Some sort of message or cipher? Do not say, Mr. Benson, that this too was only randomly selected?"

"You are a man with a highly nervous character, I see, Mr. Clark." He did not seem inclined to answer my questions beyond this observation, yet he continued. "When you have taken to reading Poe, it is difficult, nay, impossible, to stop his words from affecting you. Indeed, the man or woman who reads Poe too much, I'd suggest, will believe themselves eventually to be in one of his astounding and perplexing creations. When I came to Baltimore, my mind and every thought was engraved with Poe; I could read only words that had passed through his pen. Every sentence I said might be at risk to be his voice, no longer belonging to my own speech or intelligence. I reveled in his dreams and in what I believed was his soul. It is enough to crush a man who is liable to the trap of discovery. The only answer is to cease reading him at all-as at length I have done. I have banished him from memory, though perhaps not entirely successfully."

"But what of your investigation into Poe's death? You were among the first, perhaps the very first, to make any sort of examination-you were in the best position to learn the truth!"

Benson shook his head.

"You must have learned more!" I cried.

He hesitated, then began as though I had asked something different. "I am an accountant, Mr. Clark. I had forgotten this for a moment. I had begun to damage my business interests by remaining here, away from my proper work in Richmond. Imagine, a man who has kept perfect account books since age twenty, losing all sense of his finances. Indeed, the decline was to such a degree that I must now depend on working for part of each year in my uncle's business here in Baltimore, as I am doing at present." It was this uncle of the Benson family who was pictured in the portrait above us showing the strong resemblance to Benson. "Your city is fine in many respects-though far more coachmen drink spirits while they are meant to be in control of their horses."

Seeing my lack of interest in the point, the temperance side of the man became more adamant. "It is an appalling danger to society, Mr. Clark!"

"There is still much more to be done, Benson," I reasoned with him. "In relation to Poe, I mean. You can help us-"

"Us? Are there others involved?"

Duponte? The Baron? I was not confident of an answer. "You can help. We can do this work together, Mr. Benson; we can find the truth you sought following Poe's death."

"I can do nothing more here. And you, a lawyer, Mr. Clark, do you not have quite enough to keep you occupied?"

"I have taken a leave from my situation," I said softly.

"I see," he replied knowingly and with a tone of some satisfaction. "Mr. Clark, the most dangerous temptation in life is to forget to tend to your own business-you must learn to respect yourself enough to preserve your own interests. If pursuing the causes of others-even in charity-prevents your own happiness, you will be left with nothing.

"The populace wishes to see Poe how they wish to see him, martyr or sinner; nothing you do prevents that," he went on. "Perhaps we do not care what happened to Poe. We have imagined Poe dead for our own purposes. In some sense, Poe is still very much living. He will be constantly changed. Even if you were somehow to find the truth, they would only deny it in favor of a newer speculation. We cannot sacrifice ourselves on an altar of Poe's mistakes."

"Surely you have not come to believe those temperance men who fought you? That Poe caused all this by some petty vice?"

"Not at all," said Benson with weak defiance. "But had he been more cautious, had he used his passions to address the claims of the world rather than only those of his high order of intellect, all this might not have had to happen-and the millstone around his neck would never have become ours."

I felt a type of relief after my interview with Benson-relief that someone else had attempted to find the truth behind Poe's death. Benson's undertaking had proven Peter Stuart and Auntie Blum wrong. I had not embarked on the quest of a madman. Here was another; an accountant.

Relief flooded me from another direction, too, regarding the Baron and Duponte. I had stopped just short of betraying my allegiance to Duponte in favor of a criminal, a false showman. For what, a series of narrow coincidences between the Baron and Poe's tales? I had lost Hattie forever and would never find a person in the world who knew me as she did. The law practice that my father's good name helped build was sinking into extinction. My friendship with Peter was no more. At least I'd not made a horrible mistake with Duponte, too. I felt, returning home from Benson's, as if I had just awoken from a deep sleep.

How much trust, how much confidence, how much time I had placed in Duponte and his own confluences with Poe's tales! If he were but more confrontational against the Baron Dupin's activities; if he but provided more reason to think he progressed as well as the Baron Dupin; if only he did not stand idly by while the Baron Dupin spouted his own claims; if he were to take these measures upon himself, I would naturally be able to eject these dangerous revolutions in my thoughts!

I watched Duponte as he sat in my living room. I looked directly at him and questioned him as to his ongoing submission to the Baron Dupin's aggressiveness. I asked him why he stood by as the Baron Dupin all but claimed victory in our contest. I had begun to recount this conversation prematurely at an earlier chapter. You remember. You'll recall I suggested boxing the Baron's ears, to which Duponte noted that it might not assist our cause.

"Just so," said I. "It would remind him, I should think, that he is not alone playing this game. He believes, in the infinite deception of his brain, that he has already won, Monsieur Duponte!"

"He has subscribed to a mistaken belief, then. The situation is quite reversed. The Baron, I'm afraid for him, has already lost. He has come to the end, as have I."

That is when my other fears suspended themselves. "What do you mean?"

"Poe drank," said Duponte. "But he was not a drinking man. In fact, he was quite the opposite. On average, we can be confident he took less stimulus than any common man on the street."

"Yes?"

"He was not intemperate, but he was intolerant, constitutionally, to spirits, to an extreme degree never witnessed by most ordinary persons."

I sat upright. "How do you know this, Monsieur Duponte?"

"If only people would see, rather than just look. You will no doubt remember one of the few obituaries written by an acquaintance, rather than by a reporter. Therein was a report that, with a single glass of wine, Monsieur Poe's ‘whole nature was reversed.' Many would understand this to mean that Poe was habitually intoxicated, a reckless and constant drunkard. In fact, it is just opposite. The detractors have proved too much in this arena, and therefore prove nothing. It is likely-nay, almost certain-that Poe possessed a rare sensitivity to drink that would almost at an instant change and paralyze him. In a state of mental disarray, and in the company of low fellows, no doubt Poe sometimes followed this with further drinking, especially when in the midst of your aggressive southern conviviality, which requires that one not refuse such offers. But this last fact is irrelevant to us. It was the first drink, almost the first sip, that would send him into an attack of insensibility. Not madness from excessive drinking, but temporary madness from not being able to drink as does the next fellow."

"So, on the day he was discovered at Ryan's, monsieur, you believe he had taken some drink?"

"Perhaps one glass of indulgence. Not as the temperance writers would have it, who look upon human actions for their morality. I shall show you how they operate-indeed how they were operating at the very time that interests us."

Duponte rummaged through one of his incomprehensibly organized piles of newspapers and brought out an issue of the Sun from October 2, 1849, the day before Poe was found.

"Do you know the name John Watchman, Monsieur Clark?"

At first I responded that I knew no one by that name. A vague memory recurred, and I corrected myself. The day I had been chasing after the Phantom-Mr. Benson of the Richmond Sons of Temperance-I had looked for him under the street in one of the city's popular rum-holes. "Yes, I thought this Watchman was the Phantom because of a similar coat. Watchman was pointed out to me by another patron as one dangerously deep in the cups."

"Not surprising. Monsieur Watchman's hopes, his ambitions, for notoriety had been dashed not long before that. Here: a notice that would have interested you little two years ago, but may be of great value now."

Duponte pointed to an article in the October 2 newspaper. The temperance Sunday law had been a prominent issue in that state election, though, as Duponte had surmised, I'd had no particular feeling about it at the time. I had seen examples enough of the effects of drinking to sympathize with the ideas of the temperance cause. But it seemed hard to squeeze together one's energies into a single issue like temperance, to the exclusion of all other moral principles.

The Friends of the Sunday Law, an organization comprising the Baltimore temperance leaders of most consequence, had announced their own candidate for the House of Delegates to support their push for a Sunday law restricting the sale of alcohol: Mr. John Watchman. But Watchman was soon seen drinking at various taverns around town, and on October 2 the Friends withdrew their support of Watchman. Most interesting was the man who spoke in this column for the Friends of the Sunday Law committee: Dr. Joseph Snodgrass!

"This was only one day before Snodgrass would be called to Poe's side at Ryan's!" I said.

"Now you see the state of mind Snodgrass would possess. As a leader of this temperance faction, he had just been personally humiliated by his own candidate. Monsieur Watchman had been weak, no doubt. However, there is little doubt that the Friends of the Sunday Law suspected that Watchman had been purposely tempted by enemies of their political endeavor. Now, I should ask you also to look at the American and Commercial Advertiser from one week earlier to get a better view of Ryan's inn and tavern in the days before Snodgrass and Edgar Poe met there."

The first cutting Duponte pointed out to me spoke of

a large and enthusiastic meeting of the Whigs of the Fourth Ward of the city, held at Ryan's Hotel.

"Then Ryan's was not only a polling station," I said, "it was also a place for Whigs of that ward to gather. And the place," I sighed, "fated to be Poe's last passage outside a hospital bed." I thought of the group of Fourth Ward Whigs Duponte and I had observed at the den above the Vigilant engine house, near Ryan's. That was their private place; Ryan's, it appeared, their room for more public gatherings.

"Let us step backward even further," said Duponte, "looking at several days before…when this meeting by the Fourth Ward Whigs was advertised. Read aloud. And note most of all how it is signed below."

I did.

A Mass Meeting of the Whigs of the Fourth Ward will take place at Ryan's Hotel, Lombard Street, opposite the Vigilant Engine House, on Tuesday. Geo. W. Herring, Pres.

Another extract advertised a meeting for October 1, two days before the election, at 7 1/2 o'clock, again at Ryan's Hotel, across from the Engine House, with Full attendance earnestly requested; this one was also signed Geo. W. Herring, Pres.

"George Herring, president," I read again. I remembered Tindley, the burly doorkeeper, obsequiously answering his superior at the Whig club: Mr. George…Mr. George. "The man we saw, that president, it was his Christian name that was George, not his surname…George Herring. Surely he is a relation to Henry Herring, Poe's cousin by marriage! Henry Herring, who was the very man who came first to Poe's side after Snodgrass and refused to board him in his own home."

"Now you see that whatever Poe drank was a small part only of what transpired in his final days, but still is of importance to us to place all else in order. It helps now that we are able to comprehend the whole sequence of events."

"Monsieur Duponte," I said, putting down the newspaper, "do you mean that you do comprehend the whole now? That we are ready to share it with the world before the Baron Dupin speaks out?"

Duponte rose from his chair and walked to the window. "Soon," he said.