Crockett’s proposal to escort me home to Amity Street would, under ordinary circumstances, have been greeted with a polite but firm refusal; for—in spite of the lateness of the hour and the dreary expanse of deserted thoroughfares that lay between Montague’s dwelling and my own—I would normally have required no such assistance. My nerves, however, had been so completely unstrung by the dismaying events of the day that I not only acceded to his offer but positively welcomed it.
Even with Crockett’s companionship, the long march homeward promised to be a wearisome undertaking, given my state of extreme emotional and physical depletion. The reader may thus imagine my intense and delighted surprise when—upon emerging with Crockett from Montague’s dwelling—I spied a handsome chaise hitched to die wooden post directly in front of the house.
Undoing the reins, the frontiersman climbed into this conveyance and motioned me to assume the seat beside him. “Mr. Potter, the hotel manager, loaned me the use of this-here buggy for as long as I am lodging here in Baltimore,” my companion informed me as I settled into my place. “Said he reckoned a man of my station ought to be riding around in style.” Then, with a flick of the reins and a cluck of the tongue, Crockett urged the steed forward.
As we proceeded along the moonlit streets towards our destination, the rhythmic motions of the carriage, combined with the hollow clopping of die animal’s hooves upon the paving-stones, seemed to lull me into a sort of Mesmeric trance. My eyelids felt weighted with lead—my head drooped—my shoulders slumped—my mouth hung partway open. Sunk into this stuporous state—incapable not merely of speech but, indeed, of coherent thought—I sat dully beside my companion, so utterly oblivious of our progress that I bolted erect with a startled gasp when the chaise suddenly drew to a halt and the frontiersman announced: “Here we are, ol’ hoss. You’d best git yourself straight to bed. I’ll be shot with a packsaddle if you ain’t plumb tuckered out.”
With a muttered word of gratitude, I dismounted from the vehicle and made my way towards my front door.
“I will see you and them two purty gals of yours tomorrow evening,” Crockett said by way of farewell, as he skillfully maneuvered the carriage around and headed back in die direction from whence we had travelled.
The extremity of my mental fatigue was such that I could make no sense of Crockett’s parting words. For what unexplained reason he intended to visit my household on the morrow I neither knew nor cared. My only thought at that moment was of the sweet, unutterably beguiling object that lay just within the walls of my abode. I mean, of course, my bed.
Slipping inside my dwelling, I closed the door carefully behind me and paused briefly in the entranceway. The interior of the house was as silent and dark as the tomb. Evidently, Muddy had remained ignorant of my surreptitious departure from the house after supper. Had my absence been discovered, I would undoubtedly have found her seated at the kitchen table, anxiously awaiting my return.
Making my way down the lightless but utterly familiar hallway towards my bedchamber, I cautiously opened die door and stole inside. The curtains of my window had not been drawn, and moonlight—pale and ghostly—streamed through the unobstructed panes. So profound was my fatigue that the mere prospect of exchanging my garments for a nightshirt plunged my soul into despair; Staggering towards the bed, I collapsed face downward upon the mattress and fell instantly asleep.
To those who—for whatever reason of bodily or emotional suffering—have endured its prolonged deprivation, there is nothing on earth (or in heaven) more devoutly to be desired than sleep. Nowhere is this truth made more wrenchingly evident than in the justly renowned soliloquy of the tormented protagonist of Shakespeare’s magnificent (if, perhaps, somewhat imperfectly motivated) tragedy Macbeth:
Methought I heard a voice cry “Sleep no more! Macbeth does murder sleep”—the innocent sleep, Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care, The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath, Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course, Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
And yet, while few passages in literature possess more of the truly sublime, these lines do not take sufficient account of a no less important, though absolutely contrary, phenomenon—the degree to which sleep itself may, on occasion, be the source, not of healing, solace, and refreshment, but of the very opposite effects: to wit, nervous agitation, spiritual unease, and even more debilitating exhaustion.
Such, unhappily, was the case with the vexed and tormented slumber I experienced that night Awakening with a sob from a harrowing dream—in which a chimerical creature with vulture wings, a woman’s head, and the body and legs of an arachnid pursued me through a labyrinth of subterranean chambers—I lay prone upon the mattress and stared wildly about my chamber, From the intensity of the daylight suffusing the room, I deduced that the morning was already well advanced, and—consulting my clock—saw to my astonishment that the time was approaching the noon hour!
Dragging myself from my bed, I stood for a moment with throbbing head and reeling brain, like a man attempting to readjust to solid land following a protracted voyage at sea. Eventually my dizziness subsided, and—crossing unsteadily to the washstand which stood at the opposite end of my chamber—I splashed a handful of cold water onto my face before regarding myself in my shaving-mirror.
The debilitating effects of that long and surpassingly dreary night were all-too-plainly inscribed upon my countenance. The mere sight of my reflection in the glass—of my pale and haggard complexion—of the purplish sacs depending from beneath my eyes—of the intricate webwork of crimson capillaries defacing the orbs themselves—brought an involuntary gasp of dismay from my lips. Turning from the glass with a shudder of revulsion, I traversed my chamber, flung open the door, and stepped into the hallway.
No sooner had I done so than my finely attuned auditory sense was struck, not by any particular sound, but—on the contrary—by the entire absence of acoustical stimuli. An intense, almost preternatural, hush seemed to suffuse the atmosphere, suggesting that mine was the only living presence in the dwelling. This impression was quickly confirmed when—upon calling out to both Muddy and Sissy—I received no reply.
Deeply puzzled by this strange, this unaccountable, development, I proceeded to the kitchen, where the mystery was immediately resolved. For there, at my place at the table—along with a platter holding several biscuits and a single slice of cured ham—lay a sheet of paper that contained the following message, inscribed in my darling Muddy’s neat, if somewhat childlike, hand:
Dearest Eddie,
We have gone to the market to buy the necessaries for tonight’s dinner with Colonel Crockett. We left at II. The door to your bedchamber was still closed and all was silent within. Oh, Eddie! It is so nice that you have finally managed to get a good night’s sleep! Here is your breakfast, dear. We will return later.
Your own
Muddy
I now recalled Crockett’s solemn vow to come and listen to Sissy’s enchanting repertoire of ballads. Of course! So that was the occasion to which he had been alluding when he took his departure last evening! The extraordinary events of the past twenty-four hours had driven all thoughts of his promised visit from my mind.
The mere prospect of having to play host to the frontiersman caused my heart to sink within my bosom. Few social requirements are more supremely wearying than the effort to maintain a convivial mien when one’s soul is weighted down by care. Still, I could see no way to avoid, much less to defer, tonight’s fête. So fervently had Sissy been anticipating the affair that I had no other alternative than to resign myself to its inevitable—and all-too-imminent—occurrence.
Fortifying myself with the simple but wholesome breakfast that Muddy had provided, I rose from the table and repaired to my study. I was painfully aware that an inordinate number of days had passed since I had last applied myself to my creative endeavors. I was already long overdue on the delivery of a promised tale of sensation for publication in a future number of the Southern Literary Messenger. And yet, to endeavor to engage in the act of literary composition seemed, at that moment, entirely futile. The all-too-vivid recollection of the horror I had witnessed on the previous eve—of the butchered old man buried beneath the floorboards of his own home—precluded the possibility of the sort of sustained imaginative effort necessary for artistic production.
It was imperative, moreover, that—until the present crisis was resolved—every modicum of my energy be devoted to its resolution. As long as the unknown perpetrator remained at large, no one in the city was safe from the maniac’s knife. There was, I confess, another and more immediately self-interested reason for my extreme sense of urgency. My latest encounter with the dark, uncanny female in the gloom of Montague’s dwelling had reinforced my conviction that—in some distinct, if still-inexplicable, way—the horrors that had descended upon our fair city were intimately connected with myself.
Closing the study door behind me, I crossed to my writing table. As I lowered myself into my seat, my gaze fell upon the yellowed newspaper review of my mother’s long-ago performance at the Front Street Theatre. No sooner did I notice this item—which lay precisely where I had left it the previous evening—than I was struck with a singular notion.
Up until that moment, I had scrutinized this article solely with an eye to identifying the various, eminent audience members whose names were mentioned within the text. The thought now occurred to me that a clue to the mystery might reside elsewhere—namely, in the particular play that was performed on that memorable evening in 1807. This, as the reader will recall, was Shakespeare’s supreme tragedy King Lear, in which my mother had won such excited acclaim in the rôle of Cordelia, the elderly monarch’s doomed, saintly daughter.
Retrieving my well-worn edition of Shakespeare’s complete dramatic works from the shelf on which it stood, I reseated myself at my desk and opened the heavy, leather-bound volume to the appropriate place. Within minutes, I was so entirely engrossed in this towering (if, perhaps, somewhat overly protracted) masterpiece that I grew entirely oblivious of my surroundings. By the time I arrived at the almost unbearable dénouement of the play, my eyes were moist—my bosom had begun to heave—and a thick mucosal lump, or globus hystericus, had risen into my throat The mental image of the anguished old man, cradling the corpse of his grievously wronged, yet ever-devoted, child proved more wrenching than my overtaxed emotions could tolerate (particularly since, within my mind’s eye, the lifeless figure draped in the howling king’s arms was that of my own deceased mother!). Laying the heavy book aside, I buried my face in my hands and wept.
Eventually my tears subsided. So intense—so utterly irresistible—was the spell cast by Shakespeare’s lofty genius that, reaching again for the book, I quickly became immersed in another of his plays—then another—and another. The single interruption occurred when Muddy appeared at my door to inform me that she and Sissy had returned from their expedition. We spent several minutes engaged in pleasant, if largely inconsequential, conversation before I returned to my reading. Thus the hours elapsed until—by the dimming of the daylight seeping in through my study window—I discerned that the afternoon was rapidly advancing and that Colonel Crockett’s arrival could not be far off.
It has frequently been observed that the entirety of human experience—all that can be known of nature, the world, and the “poor, bare, forked” beings who inhabit it—is contained within the compass of Shakespeare’s unsurpassed works. For this reason, the British poet Coleridge (whose opinions on literary matters, though rarely original, are asserted with a singular authority) deservedly describes the Bard as “our myriad-minded Shakespeare.” And indeed, should I ever find myself aboard an ocean-going vessel whose crew, after engaging in a violent mutiny, horribly butchers the officers and sets the surviving passengers adrift in a meagrely provisioned lifeboat; and should I then be washed ashore upon a tropical isle inhabited solely by savage cannibals, venomous serpents, and blood-thirsty predators—I think that I could still find contentment so long as I had, as my constant companion, my leather-bound volume of Shakespeare’s unexcelled oeuvre.
My examination of Lear and the other plays I perused that afternoon only confirmed this impression of the preternatural richness of the Bard’s inexhaustible imagination. Every aspect of existence seemed present in his work—every degree of baseness and nobility, of sacrifice and betrayal, of love and hatred, of soaring tragedy and coarse, uproarious comedy. Indeed, one thing only appeared to be missing from those pages.
Try as I might, I could not discover a single clue that would shed light on the meaning of the grim and inscrutable word “NEVERMORE.”