by Whit Burnett
Edgar now, like him in kind, an aesthete, an intellectual, a
freak. High courage filled him, and he was able to smile pityingly at the hate, the contempt, the mockery on the faces of the others.
"You have read Poe?'' Edgar asked eagerly. "I don't mean
only The Gold Bug or Murders in the Rue Morgue-I mean
his poetry and stories like 'Ligeia'?"
"Oh, yes, and I'm especially fond of the verse and the stories
of the supernatural."
"You know, Miss Willis, that there is a growing vogue for
Poe these days?"
"Yes, I know. The Gothic revival, and perhaps even this new
Existentialism business." She smiled. "I have just finished reading Poe and the Romantic Tradition. It's a marvelous book, Mr. Baker."
"Well! I thank you for that, Miss Willis." He turned to the
IDC • Nineteen Tales of Terror
others. "Miss Willis is referring to my study of Poe, and I think
it's only fair to warn you that the critics don't quite share her
enthusiasm."
Tiiis overture they rebuffed with unblinking sullenness. Not
one of them smiled. Chastened, but for the moment beyond
their power to wound him, he smiled good-naturedly and gave
them the names of the textbook and the collateral reading for
the course. As they finished scratching the last name into their
notebooks, the bell rang. They swept their books together and
dashed toward the door with undisguised relief. Edgar halted
the stampede.
"One moment pleaSe, if you don't mind. I should like to
make an assignment. Will you please read Poe's poems
'Ulalume,' 'Annabel Lee,' and 'Israfel,' and write a brief interpretation of each, for next time."
"How many words do you want?" asked a beefy fellow
wearing a leather flying jacket and officers' pink pants.
"I leave that to your discretion,'' Edgar said.
"O.K., but what's the minimum?" another asked, winking at
the flyer.
Edgar stiffened. They were baiting him now.
"What is your name, please?" he asked coldly.
"Dodderidge," the baiter answered. He sounded less gay
now. "Richard Dodderidge, Mr. Baker."
"Very well, Mr. Dodderidge, since you insist on a personal
· prescription from the teacher, suppose we make it a thousand
words." He turned to the class. 'The rest of you write as much
as you feel impelled to."
A titter went up from the class. At the back of the room
Helen Willis smiled. Dodderidge stood dumb struck, his neck
and ears crimson.
"A thousand words, Mr. Dodderidge," Edgar repeated
sweetly. "That will be all."
They went then, eager, he supposed, to sort and compare
their impressions of the new English teacher in some place
free of his presence, some place where students were at liberty
to drink cokes and smoke and swear at teachers. Miss Willis
lingered in the doorway, as the others went on out of sight.
Edgar, busy gathering his books, was aware of her leisured passage through the room, and it was her pause that nerved him to speak.
"I want to thank you, Miss Willis," he said softly, his eyes
lowered. Although he had come off well in the brush with
Dodderidge, he felt that he had been too severe, giving the boy
a task that was virtually impossible for him. He felt weak and
drained; a shock reaction had set in. The stimulation Helen
Willis had given him trickled away with the departing students
I Am Edgar • lOS
and left him without emotional prop. The migraine was sawing,
rending, and he was acutely conscious of his viscera. He looked
like a very ill man, an advanced tuberculosis sufferer, with the
large black eyes burning febrilely, the chalky face high-lighted
at the cheekbones with flaming disks.
She stared at him. "Why-it's an honor to be in your class,
Mr. Baker. But--do you feel quite well'l Is there something I
can do?"
Not daring to look up, he shook his head.
"I'll see you next class meeting, then," she murmured.
"Wednesday."
He managed to nod.
Eleanor was watching for him from the kitchen window of
the small furnished bungalow they had rented. She ran to
open the door when she saw him tum off the road on to the
walk of their house. Anxiously she examined his face.
"Well, darling, how did it go?" she asked brightly after they
had kissed.
"Oh, God."
''That bad, sweetheart?" she said compassionately. She led
him to the sofa, sat down with him, stroked his head. "Was it
the migraine again?" she asked softly.
He lifted his head and nodded, his eyes brimming. "I can't
make it, Eleanor, I don't see how I can make it," he said miserably. "Maybe if I could try an eastern university again, but not here. Not here where they all have the same empty face,
'Engel's rural idiots.' They fear me because they don't know
what to make of me, and because they're afraid they hate me."·
"No. Edgar, how could they! It's all in your mind," she said.
Then she felt him go tense as he pushed her away, and she
saw his eyes fill with cold hate.
"Oh please, Edgar, I didn't mean it like that," she said, her
voice shrill with despair. "I'm sorry, dear, we know you're perfectly well now so how could I have meant that?" Her words spilled out in a frantic cascade as she tried to mollify him. Then
it became too much for her.
"What's going to become of us?" she cried, and broke down
into a spasm of uncontrolled sobbing. The hate went out of
Edgar's eyes, and he reached out his hand to touch her hair.
Then the aura that had been building in him all day flared
through his nerves in an unbearable golden burst and he lost
consciousness.
"I'm sorry, darling," was the first thing he said. He was in
bed, undressed, and she was sitting by, ·watching him. She
smiled at him. The last rays of the winter sun slanted through
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Nineteen Tales of Terror
•
the window almost horizontally, bathing the room in a cold,
yellow light. He felt dissociated and will-less, and when he
spoke the words sounded like someone's else. By some trick of
vision or light, Eleanor looked flat and one-dimensional,
framed against the east window. With the dying yellow light on
her face she looked like a Dali portrait of Gala, one that had
always frightened him.
"Why don't you tum on the light, darling?" he heard himself
say. "It's getting dark."
She patted his hand and got up and switched on the lamp.
The room leaped into focus and the queerness slipped away.
"Can you eat, dear? I can have dinner ready in a minute,"
Eleanor said.
The languor was dissipating, and as reality returned, Edgar
became acutely aware that he hadn't eaten since breakfast. "As
a matter of fact, I think I'm ravenous," he said.
At dinner they cast about desperately for small talk, avoiding
what was paramount. But the dissemblance became unbearable, and Edgar put down his fork and took Eleanor's hand.
"Eleanor, what did I say before?"
"When?"
"You know
, when I came out of it."
"Why, I don't remember, dear." This too casually.
"Well I do. I said I was sorry. I'm not certain if I fully real-
ized then what I meant."
"Edgar, you don't have to talk about it; dear."
"But I do. When I said I was sorry I meant more than just
for tonight, for my idiotic resentment of your perfectly harmless and well-meant remark."
"But I never should have phrased it the way I did, Edgar. It
was thoughtless, especially since you-weren't feeling well."
"No, Eleanor, I wasn't feeling welL And that's what I'm
sorry about. You're saddled with a sick man, a neurotic on the
verge of worse-"
"Edgar! You mustn't," she pleaded.
"I've been a drag on you too long," he went on, "and after
today the prospect looks dimmer than ever. This was supposed
to be the new beginning, the start of a new life. Teach in a quiet
little cow college, live in a tranquil midwestern town, away from
the city, out of the disturbing currents of the New York literary
life. But just one day of it, and look at mel Look what happened
the very first day of the new regime."
"All right then, Edgar, you tell me the answer," she said,
crying quietly.
"First off, I couldn't get a teaching job again back east if I
tried. And if I did, I'd be raving in a week. The same goes for
I Alii Edgar • IOl
getting on a magazine. Maybe I need another three years in the
sanatorium." He laughed bitterly, calmly.
"No, Edgar, don't," she protested, still weeping.
"Why fool ourselves any more, Eleanor?" He put his hand
under her chin and gently lifted her head until their eyes met.
"At best, this is going to be a temporary leave from the sanatoriums. That's the best I can hope for from here on-in for a long cure and out for a short furlough. Now is the time, while
you're still yomg and have time to build a different life. I'll give
you a divorce,. darling . . . . "
He looked at her for a long timeless moment while the universe diminished, irised in from a world to a country to a college town to a house to a room to them to their eyes, their eyes were the only reality, the distillate of life. She leaned over and
kissed him.
"No. No. I'm not leaving you, Edgar," she said. ''We're
going to give this place a fair trial. There must be something
you can build on here. Some of your students will respond, darling; there's a great literary tradition out here-Cather, Anderson, Lewis-"
"Of course there is," Edgar said. "It wasn�t those kids today,
it was me. I came into the classroom with high intention. I was
going to be friendly and cordial and sympathetic, get rapport
right away. But what I said came out all wrong. Some perversity in me made me see them as clods, apathetic, insensible clods, instead of the decent, average, college class they really
are. I was afraid of the situation-my first class since I came
out-and I was trying to fail, trying to precipitate my own
downfall."
"Did you make them very angry, darling?"
"I'm afraid I did. Except one. A marvelous girl."
Edgar told her about Helen Willis. They talked hopefully,
well into the night, about his plans for winning over the class,
about a possible new study of Poe, about the promising people
at the faculty tea. It was happy talk, and they became quite excited, and before they went to bed Eleanor made cocoa and they drank it listening to a mystery program that was an old
favorite of theirs. But when he was alone in the dark everything
went bad again, and Edgar lay awake through the night, staring
wide-eyed at the familiar creatures of his Upset mind.
The next day, Tuesday, was an easy one, with only two
classes in Freshman Rhetoric. Edgar went through the day in
a gauzy haze, detached and remote, lightheaded from the
sleepless night. After his classes were over, instead of going
home he spent the afternoon in the college library, which b:e
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Nineteen Tales ot Terror
•
found crammed with agricultural treatises, Department of the
Interior reclamation reports, studies of the bot fly, and out-ofdate works on the physical sciences. There was not one book by Fitzgerald, Kafka, Dos Passos, or Celine, a few of the names
he chose at random to look for in the catalogue. Hervey Allen's
lsrafel, which he particularly wanted to read to help pass the
afternoon, was also lacking. He settled for the Woodberry biography of Poe, which he had not looked at since his own student days. When he got home, he managed a cheerful mien for Eleanor. She was quite happy.
After dinner he retired to the bedroom to prepare some
notes for his next day's lecture on Poe. In the living room
Eleanor, who was reading Joyce straight through, occupied
herself with Stephen Hero. After a few preliminary attempts,
Edgar gave up trying to outline a lecture and stretched out on
the bed. He could ad lib as good an introduction to Poe as anything he might prepare, he decided. Jie thought of the class, of Arnold the pig-faced boy, of the boy in the flight jacket, of
Dodderidge of the thousand words. He made a mental bet that
Dodderidge would cut class the next day.
And then he thought of Helen Willis. He found himself looking forward to the paper she would tum in on Poe's verse. Of course it would be far better than any of the others, but would
it show freshness, originality? Better not to expect too much;
the girl looked young, very young, despite her poise and seeming maturity. But he himself had written well and had a mature critical sense when he was a junior in college, so why couldn't
the girl? Virginia Clemm was only thirteen when Poe married
her, for that matter. If a girl of thirteen was old enough to be
the wife of an Edgar Allan Poe, and this Willis girl, this Helen
Willis, who was at least sixteen, and he was a leading Poe
scholar-it might well be that she was what he needed. Instead
of Eleanor.
Then his mind reeled, the earth cracked, and he saw himself
astride the gap. There was an Eleanor on either side of him,
pulling at his arms, the gap ever widening. Then he split in two.
The two Eleanors drifted toward each other, coalesced into one
Eleanor dressed in bridal white. But now there were two Edgars. One was standing with Eleanor, and the other was on the opposite bank of the chasm. They called to him, but he smiled
sadly and shook his head. He pointed down into the chasm and
their eyes followed his finger. Then Eleanor pushed him into
the chasm and the earth closed in on him. Then the other Edgar, the one he had been trying to become for so long and. now was, led Eleanor to a great castle that was surrounded by a
moat and had a long jagged crack in one wall. He led her across
I A .. Edgar • 109
the drawbridge and down and down a winding staircase into a
vaulted dungeon. He pulled on a bronze handle set in the wall
and a silver casket lined in black velvet slid out. Eleanor got in
the casket and he pushed it back into_ the wall. Then he left the
castle and when it crumbled noiselessly into the moat it was a
blue and white morning and he was in an endless flowered
meadow. Helen was walking toward him.
Edgar was at his desk before the bell rang. As the stu
dents
entered the room he examined their faces carefully, and he was
satisfied that none of them knew. Then Helen Willis came in
and smiled into his eyes when she said good morning and he saw
that she knew. He was happy that that was the way it was. He
called the roll, and they were all there but Dodderidge.
It went very well. He gave a sparkling lecture on Poe's
"Poetic Principle" and then a brief sketch on the true things in
Poe's life. Not everything, of course, because that would have
to remain secret until the time came. Then he called on Helen
Willis to read her assignment. She began with 'lsrafel,' and
Edgar was delighted that she chose it first. She blushed when he
called her name, but when she read her voice was musical and
unfaltering:
" 'lsrafel', who was the most melodious of angels in the
Koran, is probably Poe's most important poem in that it clearly
gives his notion of the perfect poet. It states the theory by
which every other poem of Poe's should be tried. Poetry must
be music, but music rendered as pure and as exalted as possible.
When Israfel sings, the music of the spheres is stilled so that he
may be heard. Also, perfect poetry_ is not to be realized on this
earth, for only in heaven are the perfect emotions experienced . . . . "
The class sat wide-eyed, their mouths open. Edgar was enchanted by her perfect understanding. And then 'Ulalume':
" . . . Written on the death of his young wife. Poe created the
names in this poem for their weird onomatopoeia. Although
Virginia died in January, Poe substitutes the more musicalsounding October. The poem is an exercise in schizophreniathe gloomy Psyche confronts the hopeful intellect with his destiny of doom, bringing him to the tomb of Ulalume. His hope of peace is destroyed . . . . "
And 'Annabel Lee': "Again he mourns the death of his wife.
The supernal yearning is clearly expressed here, when he writes
that they love 'with a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
coveted her and me.' The jealous angels took her from this
earth, and Poe thenceforth lies (in fantasy) 'in her sepulchre
there by the sea.' When mortals infringe on the delights re-
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