The Dreamer | Page 7

wander there.
Thus the habit that nurtured God-given genius, branded as sin, and
forbidden, might have been broken up, altogether or in part, had not the
special providence that looks after the development of this rare exotic

transplanted it to a more fertile soil--a more congenial clime.
CHAPTER III.
Upon a mellow September afternoon three years after the newspapers
had announced the death, in Richmond, Virginia, of Elizabeth Arnold,
the popular English actress, generally known in the United States as
Mrs. Poe, the ancient town of Stoke-Newington, in the suburbs of
London, dozing in the shadows of its immemorial elms, was aroused to
a mild degree of activity by the appearance upon its green-arched
streets of three strangers--evidently Americans. It was not so much
their nationality as a certain distinguished air that drew attention upon
the dignified and proper gentleman in broadcloth and immaculate linen,
the pretty, gracious-seeming and fashionably dressed lady and
especially the little boy of six or seven summers with the large, wistful
eyes and pale complexion, and chestnut ringlets framing a prominent,
white brow and tumbling over a broad, snowy tucker. He wore pongee
knickerbockers and red silk stockings and on his curls jauntily rested a
peaked velvet cap from which a heavy gold tassel fell over upon his
shoulder.
The denizens of old Stoke-Newington gazed upon this prosperous trio
with frank curiosity; the reader has already recognized John Allan and
his wife, Frances, and little Edgar Poe--their adopted child.
The sun was still hot, and the refreshing chill in the dusky street, under
its arch of interlacing boughs, was grateful to the tired little traveller.
As he moved along, clinging to Mrs. Allan's hand, his big eyes gazing
as far as they might up the long, cool aisle the trees made, the hazy
green distance invited his mystery-loving fancy. The odors of a
thousand flowering shrubberies were on the air and he felt that it was
good to be in this dreaming old town--as old, it seemed to him, as the
world; and there was born in him at that moment, though he could not
have defined it, a sense of the picturesquesness, the charm, the
fragrance, of old things--old streets, old houses, old trees, old turf and
shrubberies, even--with their haunting suggestions of bygone days and
scenes.

They passed the ancient Gothic church, standing solemn and serene
among its mossy tombs. In the misty blue atmosphere above the elms
the fretted steeple seemed to the boy to lie imbedded and asleep, but
even as he gazed upon it the churchbell, sounding the hour, broke the
stillness with a deep, hollow roar which thrilled him with mingled awe
and delight.
Ah, here indeed, was a place made for dreaming!
In the midst of the town lay the Manor House School where the
scholarly Dr. Bransby, who preached in the Gothic church on Sundays,
upon week-days instructed boys in various branches of polite
learning--and also frequently flogged them. This school was the
destination of the three strangers from America, for here the
foundations of young Edgar's education were to be laid during the
several years residence of his foster-parents in London, in which city
the boy himself would pass his holidays and sometimes be permitted to
spend week-ends.
The ample grounds of the school were enclosed from the rest of the
town by a high and thick brick wall, dingy with years, which seemed to
frown like a prison wall upon the grassy and pleasantly shaded freedom
without. At one corner of this ponderous wall was set a more
ponderous gate, riveted and studded with iron bolts, and surmounted
with jagged iron spikes. As the boy passed through it he trembled with
delicious awe which was deepened by the ominous creak of the mighty
hinges. He fancied himself entering upon a domain of mystery and
adventure where all manner of grim and unearthly monsters might
cross his pathway to be wrestled with and destroyed. The path to the
house lay through a small parterre planted with box and other shrubs,
and beyond stretched the playgrounds.
As for the house itself, that appeared to the eyes of the boy as a
veritable palace of enchantment. It was a large, grey, rambling structure
of the Elizabethan age. Within, it was like a labyrinth. Edgar wondered
if there were any end to its windings and incomprehensible divisions
and sub-divisions--to its narrow, dusky passages and its steps down and
up--up and down; to its odd and unexpected nooks and corners. Scarce

two rooms seemed to him to be upon the same level and between
continually going down or up three or four steps in a journey through
the mansion upon which Dr. Bransby guided him and his foster-parents,
the dazed little boy found it almost impossible to determine upon which
of the two