The Pale Blue Eye

by Louis Bayard

  In the wake of such an abrupt leave-taking, it was but a matter of time before the guests murmured their regrets and began the necessary rituals of departure. These rituals, however, were summarily abrogated by Artemus, who gave me a parting press of the hand before loudly calling upon Ballinger and Upton to escort him back to barracks. I was sorely puzzled by his precipitous action, for it left me with no polite means of making my departure, save by my own devices (Dr. Marquis having absented himself to comfort his afflicted spouse). As I waited in the foyer for the maid to fetch my cloak and shako, I chanced to catch Ballinger’s parting glance in my direction—a stare of such naked malignity that I stood fairly dumb before it. Thankfully, I was able to retain sufficient of my faculties to intuit that this look only partly included me. I turned my eyes then back to the parlor, where I found Miss Marquis, framed by her pianoforte, abstractedly performing a simple motif in the uppermost register.

  Ballinger had by now followed Artemus out the door, but that expression of his remained powerfully present, and before long, the meaning of it came flashing upon my mind: this fellow was jealous—yes, jealous! overcome by purple rage!—at the prospect of my being left alone with Miss Marquis. From this I could conclude only that he regarded me as, mirabile dictu, a contender for her attentions!

  Oh, it is a sweet and a fitting irony, Mr. Landor, that in treating me as his arch-rival, Ballinger should have given me the courage to regard myself for the first time in that light. Otherwise I should never have had the temerity in that moment to address Miss Marquis. No, I would sooner have faced down an onrushing horde of Seminole or hurled myself into Niagara’s thunderous Abyss. But confident now of the threat I posed, if only in Ballinger’s jaundiced eyes, I found myself able—somehow—to speak.

  “Miss Marquis, I fear it would be the grossest imposition on your graciousness to request an audience with you tomorrow afternoon. And yet there is nothing, nothing in the world that would afford me greater pleasure.”

  The moment the words had left my lips, I was seized by a paroxysm of self-reproach. That a mere Plebe (though no Boy, Mr. Landor) could presume to stake even the smallest claim upon a Woman of such ineffable grace—how could this be viewed as any but the barest effrontery? And yet I felt you, Mr. Landor—you foremost of all—urging me onward. For if we seek to plumb the depths of the enigmatic Artemus, what better plumb line than his beloved sister, by virtue of whose esteem he sinks or sails? Nevertheless, it was with an all too perfect sense of my fault that I awaited the justifiable reproach that was hers alone to make.

  Her countenance, however, betrayed an altogether differing vein of feeling. With that wry smile of hers—I had already become tolerably familiar with that—and a gleam in her eye, she begged to know if she was to meet me at Flirtation Walk or Gee’s Point or any of those other secluded venues beloved of amorous cadets.

  “None of these places,” I stammered.

  “Where, then, Mr. Poe?”

  “I had in mind the cemetery.”

  Her astonishment was considerable, but she recovered herself in good time and bestowed upon me an expression of such severity that I nearly blanched before it.

  “Tomorrow,” she said, “I am engaged. I am free to meet you at four-thirty on Tuesday afternoon. You will have fifteen minutes of my attention. Beyond that, I promise nothing.”

  As this was fifteen minutes more than I had dared hope for, I had no need of promise beyond that. It was enough to know that before another forty-eight hours had passed, I should once again be in her presence.

  In perusing the above lines, Mr. Landor, I see that I may have given the impression of being quite overborne by Miss Marquis’ manifold charms. Nothing could be further from the truth. If I am sensible to her virtues, I am still more sensible to the imperative of drawing these investigations to a successful close. My lone purpose in furthering my acquaintance with her, therefore, is to glean from her such insights into her brother’s character and propensities as might advance the ultimate end of Justice.

  Oh! I nearly forgot to include perhaps the most intriguing detail pertaining to Miss Lea Marquis. Her eyes, Mr. Landor! They are of an exquisite and a decidedly pale blue.

  Narrative of Gus Landor

  17

  November 15th and 16th

  When we first went into business together, Captain Hitchcock and I had mapped out a wide range of eventualities. We’d talked about what we’d do if the guilty parties were cadets or soldiers. We’d even discussed what to do if Leroy Fry’s assailant should turn out to be a faculty member. But this possibility had somehow slipped between the crevices: a faculty member’s son.

  “Artemus Marquis?”

  We were sitting in the commandant’s own quarters. Strictly a bachelor affair, fairly shabby by Army standards, with dried-out quills and a clock of cracked marble and the scent of amiable decay hanging in every brocaded curtain.

  “Artemus,” Hitchcock repeated. “Dear God, I’ve known him for years.”

  “And would you vouch for his character?” I asked.

  This was, I knew, the most impertinent query I’d yet made. Artemus was, by virtue of being a cadet, vouched for. He’d been appointed by a United States representative, hadn’t he? He’d passed his entrance exams and had borne up under nearly four years of Sylvanus Thayer’s pounding and, barring any disaster, was due to take up his brevet commission the following summer. Such feats were, by their very design, guarantors of character.

  But curiously, it was not Artemus’ character that Hitchcock rushed to defend, but rather his father’s. Dr. Marquis, I was given to know, had caught a musket ball in the Battle of Lacolle Mills, had been personally commended by Colonel Pike for his extreme diligence in tending to the wounded, had never, through all his many years at the Academy, known a breath of scandal. . . .

  “Captain,” I said, feeling the wave of pique that came over me whenever he talked on top of me. “I don’t believe I even mentioned the good doctor. Did I mention the good doctor?”

  Well, he just wanted me to know that Artemus Marquis came from a fine family, a distinguished family, and his collusion in such inconceivable acts was—was inconceivable. Yes, Reader, he was starting to repeat himself . . . until something rose up in his head and left him, for a short time, mute.

  “There was an incident,” he said at last.

  I stayed perfectly still in my chair.

  “Yes, Captain?”

  “I remember, yes, it was some time ago, well before Artemus was a cadet. It had to do with Miss Fowler’s cat.”

  More rummaging now.

  “This cat,” he said, “vanished under circumstances I can’t recall, but I do recall it met a bizarre end.”

  “Dissection?” I guessed.

  “Vivisection. Yes, I’d completely forgotten that. And it was—” His eyes went light with wonder. “It was Dr. Marquis who assured Miss Fowler that the cat had been dead prior to—to being quartered. I remember how deeply affected he was by the incident.”

  “Did Artemus ever confess to the deed?” I asked.

  “No, of course not.”

  “But you had reason to suspect him?”

  “I knew he was intelligent, that’s all. Not malicious, not by any stretch, but prankish.”

  “And a doctor’s son.”

  “Yes. A doctor’s son.”

  Newly agitated, Captain Hitchcock drew himself out of the candlelight. I could see him rolling something—a marble? a ball of clay?—in his palm.

  “Mr. Landor,” he said, “before we go any further toward impugning anyone, I wish you would tell me whether you’ve discovered anything to tie Artemus to Leroy Fry.”

  “Precious little, as it stands. Artemus was a year ahead of Fry, we know that. There’s no sign of their having fraternized in any way. Never sat at mess together, never shared a section. Never, as far as I can tell, marched together or sat together in chapel. I’ve interviewed several dozen cadets by now, and I’ve yet to hear any of them me
ntion Artemus’ name in connection with Fry.”

  “What about this Ballinger fellow?”

  “That’s a little more promising,” I conceded. “There’s some evidence that Ballinger and Fry were friendly at one time. They were seen together a couple of summers ago, pulling tents down on a bunch of new plebes. Both were also, for a brief while, members of the . . . oh, damn, what’s the . . . the Amo—Amo-soapic—”

  “Amosophic Society.”

  “The very one. Fry, being a quieter soul, didn’t take to debating as naturally as Ballinger, and he soon quit the place. No one can recall having seen them together after that.”

  “And is that all?”

  I almost let it rest there, but something in his voice—a note of retreat, maybe—egged me on.

  “There is one other link,” I said, “though it’s nothing but innuendo. Ballinger and Fry both appear to have had a hankering for Artemus’ sister. Indeed, from what I hear, Ballinger considers himself the prime candidate for her affections.”

  “Miss Marquis?” echoed Hitchcock, arching a brow. “I think that unlikely.”

  “How so?”

  “You may ask any of the faculty wives. Miss Marquis is well known for discouraging the overtures of even the most importunate cadets.”

  All but one, I thought, grinning to myself. Who would have guessed my little bantam would be rushing in where other cocks feared to go?

  “Aha!” I exclaimed. “She’s a prideful thing, I suppose.”

  “The exact opposite,” he answered. “So exceedingly modest as to make one doubt whether she has ever seen herself in a mirror.” The slightest reddening came over the captain’s cheek. So he was open to the calls of the flesh, after all.

  “Then what explains her withdrawing from the world?” I asked. “Is she so awfully shy?”

  “Shy! You must engage her on the subject of Montesquieu sometime and see for yourself how shy she is. No, Miss Marquis has ever been a puzzle and even, among certain circles, a consuming pastime. Now that she has attained the ancient age of twenty-three, she is no longer much spoken of. Except, I am sorry to say, by nickname.”

  Politeness, I guess, would normally have kept him from venturing further, but seeing my curiosity, he moved to slake it.

  “They call her the Sorrowing Spinster,” he said.

  “And why ‘sorrowing,’ Captain?”

  “I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you.”

  I smiled and folded my arms across my chest and said, “Knowing how carefully you choose your words, Captain, I’ll have to presume you don’t use the word couldn’t when you actually mean, maybe, wouldn’t.”

  “I choose my words with care, yes, Mr. Landor.”

  “Well, then,” I said, cheerful as a shower, “we may come back to the business at hand. Which, unless you object, leads us in the direction of Artemus’ quarters.”

  Oh, how grim he looked in that moment! For he was already heading down the same path.

  “Shall we inspect them first thing tomorrow morning?” I suggested. “Ten o’clock, why don’t we say? Oh, and Captain, if we could keep this between the two of us. . . .”

  It was cold as blazes, that I remember. The clouds were low and sharded like icicles, and the stone edifices of North and South Barracks, standing at right angles to each other, made a whetting stone for the hard flat single-minded wind that drove in from the west. We felt it, didn’t we, standing in that L-shaped assembly yard, preparing our little raid? Shivered like fish on a line.

  “Captain,” I said. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to look first at Cadet Poe’s quarters.”

  He never asked me why. He’d gotten tired, maybe, of digging in his heels. Or else he had his own suspicions about this young man of mine, who so freely clothed himself in myth. Or else he just wanted to get in out of the cold.

  My, but it was small enough, this room where Cadet Fourth Classman Poe and his two roommates passed their days and nights! Room is no word for it—bandbox. Thirteen by ten, and halved by a partition. Numbingly cold, smoky, close, with a smell like whale guts. There were a pair of candle sconces, a woodbox, a table, a straight-backed chair, a lamp, a mirror. No bedsteads, not in Thayer’s monastery: you sleep on a narrow pallet on the floor, which you roll up each morning with your blanket. Oh, it was a bare gray mean space—not to be owned by anyone. There was nothing in Number 22, South Barracks, to announce that somebody here had once swum the James River or written poems or been to Stoke Newington or was in any way different from the other two-hundred-odd boys that the Academy was squeezing into men.

  Well, the soul will out, I suppose, even against large odds. So it was that after a cursory look at the room, I came to Poe’s trunk and, unlatching it, found—there on the underside of the lid—an engraving of Byron. As fugitive and damning as a love letter.

  From another pocket, I drew out a tiny bundle layered in black crepe. The crepe fell away in an instant to reveal the cameo portrait of a young woman in an Empire gown and ribboned bonnet. An almost aching girlishness to her sweetly huge eyes, her frail shoulders. She looked nearly the same as she had looked at the Park Street Theatre, all those years ago, singing “Nobody Coming to Marry Me.”

  The very sight of her left a clot in my throat. A familiar sort of tightening—it was, I realized, the same feeling I got whenever I thought too long about my daughter. I remembered then what Poe had said, sitting there in my parlor:

  We’re both alone in the world.

  Breathing out, I closed the trunk and clicked the hasp.

  “He keeps a neat room,” said Hitchcock, grudgingly.

  That he did. Should he care to, I thought, Cadet Fourth Classman Poe could go on keeping a neat room for another three years and a half—three years and a half of bedrolls and tight-buttoned collars and shiny boots. And for his reward, he would get—what? A posting on the Western frontier, where, in between hunting Indians, he could recite his poems to military men and their neurasthenic wives and wasting daughters? Oh, what a figure he would cut in those small bright parlor-graves.

  “Captain,” I said, “I no longer have the heart for this.”

  The rooms in North Barracks were at least larger—twenty-five by nineteen—a sop for the upperclassmen. The only sop, so far as I could see. Artemus’ quarters, though warmer than Poe’s, were even drearier: the pallets patched, the coverlets hard used, the air sneezy, and the walls pouched and streaked with soot. Because it faced west, the room had to make do with whatever light broke over the mountains, and even at midmorning, the gloom was so deep we were reduced to using matches to peer into some of the tighter corners. It was in this way that I found Artemus’ compacted telescope, tucked between a water bucket and a chamber pot. No other signs of old revels: no cards, chickens, pipes, not even the stray aroma of tobacco (though the windowsill bore scattered grains of snuff).

  “The woodbox,” said Hitchcock. “That’s always the first place I look.”

  “Then by all means, Captain.”

  Surprise! He could find only wood at first. Oh, and an old lottery ticket from Cuming’s Truly Lucky Offices and a scrap of book-muslin handkerchief and a half-empty packet of Brazil sugar—one by one, he dragged them to the surface, and I was just about to pocket the sugar when I heard a sound behind us.

  A clicking, like a latch being slid into place. And then an even fainter sound coming from behind that.

  “Captain,” I said, “I’m beginning to think we were expected.”

  The sun by now was just starting to carom off the blue rocky slopes to the west, and for the first time that morning, waves of hard yellow light were flooding into that dank chamber, and it was the light, really, that made me understand what was happening, more than anything else.

  “What’s wrong?” called Captain Hitchcock.

  He had drawn a small brown-paper bundle from the woodbox, and he was holding it out to me like an offering, but I was already throwing myself against the door frame.

  “It won’t open
,” I said.

  “Step aside,” he shouted.