December 12

December 12 gathers exhaustion, attempted suicide, and sudden alarm into a single chronological hinge. In scenes marked by that date, Augustus Landor struggles through a day in which ordinary routines barely hold his attention; he leaves Edgar Allan Poe a private message, catches Lea Marquis as she throws herself from an overlook, and later hurries to the Marquis household after reading words that make him fear for Poe’s life. The date’s significance lies in this tightening sequence: private encouragement gives way to physical rescue, then to an urgent attempt to reach the person who may be able to intervene.

A Day Begun in Disorientation

The December 12 narration opens with Landor awake when the morning drumbeat sounds, but too depleted to experience the world in an ordinary way. Dawn seems to smell like boot blacking, his coverlet to taste of mushrooms, and the air to have the substance of clay. He describes himself as caught between clarity and exhaustion; exhaustion prevails, and he falls asleep sitting up. When he wakes a little after noon, he dresses in a hurry and goes to the mess hall.

Even there, routine does not restore his attention. Landor stands watching the cadets eat, absorbed in several thoughts and so distracted that he fails to notice Cesar approaching. Cesar greets him warmly and offers him a place at the officers’ ordinary upstairs, describing it as a more suitable place for a gentleman. The exchange sets the day’s practical world—meals, rank, hospitality—against Landor’s inward disarray. He is present among other people but not fully attentive to them, a condition that makes the day’s later demands feel like interruptions that break through exhaustion rather than a return to settled routine.

A Message Left in the Garden

The next December 12 section turns Landor’s concern outward. Faced with what to tell Poe, he settles on the words “TAKE COURAGE.” He writes them on the back of a trade bill and places it beneath the secret rock that the two men use in Kosciusko's Garden, choosing a hiding place where he is certain Poe will find it. The message is physically slight—a few words on a scrap of paper—but its placement makes it personal: it belongs to a private channel between the investigator and his informant.

The note also marks a change in what Landor can offer. Rather than a solution or an explanation, he leaves encouragement. Its brevity contrasts with the day’s mounting circumstances, while the secret rock gives the message a recurring, concrete point of contact between the two men. The encouragement does not settle what threatens Poe; it is a modest act of care made at a moment when Landor has little more to give.

Lea Marquis at the Overlook

The day’s danger becomes immediate when Landor calls after Lea Marquis and follows her toward the overlook. His account emphasizes his hesitation: he believes he understands what her body is trying to do, yet at first he cannot make his limbs respond. Lea, meanwhile, continues moving even as her limbs stiffen and fail. She reaches the brink, totters there, and throws herself over the side.

Landor shouts “No!” and catches her arm just as the rest of her disappears. The rescue is not a clean reversal in which he remains safely on solid ground. Lea’s momentum carries them both over, and Landor continues holding on as the earth drops away beneath them. The scene turns the date’s crisis from inward depletion into bodily peril: his delayed response nearly leaves Lea beyond reach, and his attempt to save her places his own life in danger as well. The action is defined by the grip he maintains, not by control over the fall.

The Farewell and the Rush to the Marquis House

A later sequence makes the day’s urgency widen from Lea’s crisis to Poe’s. News arrives so suddenly that Landor is unnerved. He considers whether Poe and Lea are acting to elope, but the speed of events and Lea’s recent brush with death make that explanation seem insufficient. He wonders whether a greater urgency is driving events instead. Then he sees the words “Farewell, Landor,” which strike him as a warning rather than an ordinary leave-taking.

Landor becomes certain that Poe is in danger and believes he must find the one man who can answer his questions—or might be made to answer them under pressure. By half an hour before midnight he has reached the Marquis house. He pounds on the door; Eugenie appears in her nightgown, but the sight of his face stops her from chiding him, and she silently directs him to the library. There he finds Dr. Marquis asleep in a velvet armchair, a monograph open on his lap and a glass of brandy still held in his extended hand. Landor’s rush ends not with an immediate answer but at the threshold of an inquiry: after a day of exhaustion, encouragement, and rescue, the farewell note propels him toward a confrontation with someone he hopes can help save Poe.