THE most astonishing thing about my friend Annabel Lee is that, young as she is, she seems except for some thing in the past to be absolutely in the present. She does not build up for herself things in the future. The future is a thing she looks upon with contempt. She has not a use for it—except perhaps to help form a bitter sentence of words.
The present she finds before her, and she lifts it up and places it upon a table before her and opens it as if it were a book—a book with but two pages. She seems to find symbols and figures and faint suggestions upon these two pages from which she derives a multitude of ideas and fancies and material to make bitter sentences of words.
It seems to interest her, and it interests me to rare degrees.
She dwells upon the present.
She talks of things in the present with inflections of voice that are in sharp contrast to the sentiments she utters. The while the expression of her face is inscrutable. Taken by and large, she is an inscrutable person. I wonder while I listen, does she herself believe these things?—or is she talking to amuse herself? But perforce I feel a vein of truth in each thing that she says. I look hard at her to discover signs of irony or insincerity—but I can but feel a vein of rancorous truth, or a vein of friendly truth, or a vein of ancient truth, or curious.
Then, as she is talking and in the same moment I am wondering, I consider: What matters it whether or not any of it is true, or whether or not she believes it, or whether or not I can understand it—since she is saying it. Is she not an exquisite person telling me these things in her exquisite voice?
She carries all before her in the world.
For she and I make up a small world.
If she be not brilliant in her talking, then that is because that set of sentences would be ruined by brilliancy.
If she be not profound in her discoursing, then that is because her fancy at the time dwells in the light fantastic and would be ruined by profoundness.
If she be not logical, that is because she is exquisite, which is quite beyond logic.
Nevertheless, when she says what is simple and plain and stupid the look of her face is more than all the look of one saying brilliant things.
And when she touches lightly upon one thin fancy and another the look of her lily face is above all things profound.
And when her mood and its expression are most reckless of logic the look of her face is the model of one giving out platitudes in all open candor and reasonableness.
I have been led by these looks of her face to see some varying visions of my friend Annabel Lee.
One is a vision of her as a capable, elderly maiden aunt, one who stands ready in sickness and in health to do for me, and cooks little meat pies for me, and tells me when I'm spending too much money, and what to do for a cold.
One is a vision of her as a playful child-companion who is with me in all my summer days, and shares all her quaint thoughts with me, and asks me countless questions and accepts my dictum as gospel.
One is a vision of her as a sister—one of that kind who has the best of all things in life whilst I must take the poor things; one of the kind that is to be married to a count from over the seas, and I must work and hurry to get her frocks ready for the wedding—and then go back to live in a small, dead village all the days of my life.
One is a vision of her as the quiet martyr-sister who comes at my call and retires at my bidding—and in this part my friend Annabel Lee walks with exceeding beauty.
One is a vision of her as a strong elderly friend who stands between me and all icy blasts, who lays out my daily life, who quiets my foolish excitement with her calmness and wisdom.
One is a vision of her as one who knows no law, who leads me in strange highways and byways, and whose mind for me is a labyrinth wherein I walk in piteous confusion.
One is a vision of her as an extremely wicked person whom I regard with fear, whom it behooves me to hate, but whom I love.
One is a vision of her as a woman of any age who is, above all, uncompromising and unsympathetic. If I am joyous, she is placid; if I am heavy of heart, she is placid; if I am full of anticipation, she is placid; if I am in despair, she is placid.
One is a vision of her as a shadow among shadows. She is not real, I say to myself. One day I shall awake and find her vanished—without pain and without "sadness of farewell," and as if she had not been.
One is a vision of her as one who is in the world and of the world, and like the rest of the world. And when I contemplate her thus my thought is, the best thing of all is to be in the world and of the world, and like the rest of the world,—to have the quality of humanness, to know the world so well as to be able to select the best of its treasures, and to make useful that in it which is useless.
But all these visions are vapory. There is not one of them that is my friend Annabel Lee. 'Tis the expressions of her lily face that give me these visions—not that which she says nor that which she does. In truth she is, in some way, like all the visions, but each is mingled so much with herself that the type is lost.
And my friend Annabel Lee, though she sits with the book of the two pages open before her and seems much interested in all that she finds in it, has yet the look of one who, if any one asked to borrow the book from her, would close it quickly and give it up readily with no regret. And after she had given away the book, it seems as if she would pick up a flower from somewhere near, and twirl the stem in her thumb and finger, and glance out the window.
Not that she has a contempt for the present as for the future, but that it seems she is not dependent on the book of the two pages for her thought of it.
But also there is method in her contempt for the future. For she deigns to consider that the future becomes the present, as one day follows after another. But she touches it not in good faith until it is indeed the present.
My friend Annabel Lee, times, sits playing upon a little, old lute.
"The future," said my friend Annabel Lee, "is like a lute with no strings. You cannot play upon such a lute and fill the long, long corridors in your brain with the thin, sweet, meaningless music. You can but sit stupidly staring into the cavity and thinking how joyous will be the music that shall come forth some day, as from time to time your lute is strung with strings—whereas you might better at that moment go out into your garden and fill the cavity with tomatoes and make haste with them to market. And while you sit dreaming over your stringless lute, in your impatience you press upon the stops and press too much and too often, so that when at last your lute is strung the stops will not work right, but will stick fast in one position. And when your other hand touches the strings there will be horrible discord—always horrible discord.
"I have never," said my friend Annabel Lee, "yet seen any one dreaming over an unstrung lute who did not finger the stops."
Having said this, my friend Annabel Lee gazed out over my head at the flat, green Atlantic sea, and her hand went upon and about her lute-strings, and there came out music. And the stops worked right, like stops that had not been tampered with in the lute's unstrung days.
And the music that came out was like yellow wine to the head, and went not only into the corridors but into the towers as well, and low down by the moat and within and without the outer wall, and into the dungeon where had not been music before.