The Pale Blue Eye

by Louis Bayard

  “No, sir. I’ve only been here but two months, though, so . . .”

  “Can you tell me what he looked like?”

  “Oh, it was terrible dark in the room. I had but the one candle, you see, and that was next to—next to Mr. Fry, and this officer had a candle, too, but his face was in shadow.”

  “So you didn’t see his face?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How did you know he was an officer, then?”

  “The bar, sir. On the shoulder. He was holding the candle in such a way I could see it.”

  “That was very thoughtful of him. And he never otherwise identified himself.”

  “No, sir. But then I wouldn’t expect it of an officer.”

  I could see it so clearly at that moment. Leroy Fry’s shrouded body. The quailing private. The officer: shoulder bathed in light, voice coming out of the long shadows.

  “How did this officer sound, Private?”

  “Well, he didn’t say so very much, sir.”

  “High voice? Low?”

  “High. Medium to high.”

  “What about his shape? His form? Was he tall?”

  “Not so tall as you, sir, I wouldn’t think. Maybe two or three inches shorter.”

  “And his frame. Was he slender? Heavy?”

  “Slender, would be my guess. But it was hard to say.”

  “Do you think you’d be able to recognize him again? In the light?”

  “I doubt it, sir.”

  “What about his voice?”

  He scratched his ear, as if trying to scratch the sound back in. “It’s possible,” he allowed. “It’s just possible, sir. I could give it a try. ”

  “Well, then, I’ll see if we can arrange it, Private.”

  It was when I stood to go that I noticed, on the wall behind Cochrane, two piles of garments. Underdrawers and blouses and pantaloons, rearing up on every side, reeking of sweat and mold and grass. . . .

  “Well, now, Private,” I said. “That’s quite a lot of clothing you’ve got.”

  He leaned his head to one side. “Oh! That’s Cadet Brady’s, sir. And that pile there is Cadet Whitman’s. They pay me to clean their laundry once a week.” I must have looked puzzled, for he quickly added, “A private can’t live, sir. Not on what Uncle Sam pays you.”

  Amid all the day’s unruliness, I never had a spare thought for Poe. Not until I got back to my hotel late that night, after taking a long walk around the reservation, and found the brown-paper parcel by the door.

  How the sight of it made me smile. My little bantam! Hard at work all this time. And though he didn’t know it—though I didn’t know it—moving toward the heart of things.

  Report of Edgar A. Poe to Augustus Landor

  November 16th

  Have you remarked, Mr. Landor, how early in the day—and with what singular swiftness—Dusk comes to these Highlands? It seems to me that the sun has only just inaugurated its reign when, as suddenly, it absconds, leaving the invading gloom to descend like Judgment. Night’s cruel tyranny comes hard on—and yet, here and there, a prisoner may find commutations of his sentence. As his eye traces upward, he may be delighted by the full orb of the retreating sun, confronting him from the turreted clefts of Storm King and Cro’ Nest, shedding a glorious effulgence as it goes. Now, as at no other time of the day, the broad aisle of the Hudson stands revealed in all its glory—this profound and mighty torrent, which, in its thundering passage, draws the Imagination down every ravine and shadow.

  And no venue affords a purer vantage on this blessed scene than the West Point cemetery. Have you found your way there, Mr. Landor? It is a small enclosure about half a mile distant from the Academy, situated on a lofty riverbank and almost entirely obscured by trees and shrubbery. If one had to be buried, Mr. Landor, one might do far worse. To the east lies a shaded walk with exquisite views of the Academy. To the north, a sloping alluvial expanse, bounded by rugged heights, behind which lie the fertile valleys of Dutchess and Putnam.

  This cemetery, then, is a space twice hallowed—by God and by Nature—and of a character so quiet and immured as to make even the most reverentially disposed think twice before trespassing. Certain it is, however, that my thoughts were all jointly taken up with one still living.

  She it was who had consumed my sleeping and waking. She it was whose imminent arrival had prostrated every energy of mind.

  Four o’clock had come, Mr. Landor. She had not. Five, ten minutes elapsed—still she had not come. A less faithful attendant might have despaired, but my devotion to you and to our joint cause determined me to wait all evening if needed. It was, by the evidence of my watch, precisely thirty-two minutes past four when my vigil was at last rewarded with the sound of swishing silk and a glimpse of a pale yellow bonnet.

  Not so long ago, Mr. Landor, I should have been the first to deny that ever a thought arose within the human brain beyond the utterance of the human tongue. And yet Miss Marquis! The majesty, the ease of her demeanor; the incomprehensible lightness and elasticity of her footfall; the luster of her eye, more profound than the well of Democritus—all these aspects of her lie outside the compass of language. The pen falls powerless from my shivering hand. I could inform you that she arrived slightly out of breath from her climb; that she wore an Indian shawl; that her ringlets were tied in an Apollo knot; that she had absently wound the drawstring of her reticule round her index finger. What would these signify, Mr. Landor? How could they convey the unthought-like thoughts that stirred from the abysses of my heart?

  There I stood, Mr. Landor, groping for words ample to the occasion, and finding only these paltry syllables:

  “I had feared the cold might keep you away.”

  Her reply was every bit as succinct.

  “It did not,” she said. “As you may see.”

  That her manner toward me was greatly altered from our last encounter, I could discern at once. Indeed, there could have been no mistaking the desiccated coolness of her tone, the aggrieved attitude of her alabaster jaw, the calculated refusal of her eye—lovely eye!—to connect with mine. Every movement, every intonation gave sign that she was chafing beneath the obligation I had imposed upon her.

  Well, Mr. Landor, I confess that I am little schooled in the ways of Woman. I could therefore see no way of bridging the mysterious impasse that now divided us, nor could I fathom her reasons for honoring an engagement which was so patently distasteful to her. She, on her side, contented herself merely with twirling her reticule and making repeated circuits of the Cadet Monument.

  The sight of this column served to turn my thoughts upon those unfortunate Cadets who had (like Leroy Fry) been taken away in the dawning of their usefulness. I gazed upon the clusters of dark green cedars, which stood like sentries over this camp of Death; upon the snow-white gravestones, composing so many tents for those who, in the height of their manly beauty, had been called from Life’s daily drills. In momentary thrall to these conceits, I even made so bold as to confide them to my restless companion, in the hope that they might endow some common fund of discourse—only to see them dismissed with a cut of her head.

  “Oh,” she said, “there’s nothing so very poetical about Death, is there? I cannot think of anything more prosaic.”

  I answered that quite to the contrary, I considered Death—and in particular, the death of a beautiful woman—to be Poetry’s grandest, most exalted theme. For the first time since her arrival, she gave me the full gift of her attention—and then exploded into a paroxysm of laughter more discomfiting by far than the coldness which had preceded it, and much akin to that hilarity which had seized her in Artemus’ presence. She suffered it to travel through her frame before, wiping the merriment from her eyes, she murmured, “How well it sits on you.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Morbidity. It suits you even better than your uniform. See, now, your cheeks are all aglow, and there is a positive glitter to your eye!” Shaking her head in wonder, she added, “The o
nly one to match you is Artemus.”

  I replied that I had never, in my avowedly brief acquaintance with that gentleman, known him to dwell in the realms of Melancholy.

  “He does consent,” she said, pensively, “to visit our world for long intervals. You know, Mr. Poe, I believe it’s possible to dance on broken glass for some length of time. But not forever, I think.”

  I retorted that if one knew only the sensation of broken glass—that is, if one had been raised from earliest infancy to tread upon it—one would count it no worse than the gentlest sward of turf. This observation, I was flattered to see, occupied her thoughts for no small interval, at the close of which she replied, in a lower tone, “Yes. I can see you two hold much in common.”

  Availing myself of this incremental thaw in her demeanor, I endeavored then to draw her attention to the divers points of interest that presented themselves to the inquiring eye: the views of the landing and the siege battery; Mr. Cozzens’ hotel; the remains of old Fort Clinton, whittled down by the tempests and wintry blasts of half a century. These spectacles excited in her nothing so much as a shrug. (In retrospect, Mr. Landor, I should have expected that one reared in these climes, as Miss Marquis has been, would regard them in the fashion of the faeries who abide all their lives in palaces of diadems and so consider those treasures no more worthy of notice than gorse bushes.) I no longer had any shadow of hope that Joy might be extracted from our misbegotten encounter, and so resolved to bear my sufferings with fortitude. Small talk, Mr. Landor. How much valor is needed to perpetrate it under such unpropitious circumstances! I inquired after Miss Marquis’ health. I commended her taste in dress. I expressed the belief that blue looked well on her. I asked her if she had been privileged to attend any dinner parties of late. I asked her—yes!—if she believed the frigid climate to have settled in for good. Upon making this last comment, which I considered the height of banality and the very pinnacle of inoffensiveness, I was astonished to see her wheel upon me in a perfect fury of clenched teeth and stabbing eye.

  “Oh, let us not . . . Do you—Mr. Poe, do you suppose I consented to come here in order to talk of the weather? I have done with that, I can assure you. For many years—too many years, Mr. Poe—I was one of the ‘four o’clocks’ waiting down by Flirtation Walk. You have seen them, I’m sure. Doubtless you have escorted one or two. There is considerable talk of weather, as I recall, talk of boat rides and dances and dinner parties, and before very long—time being of the essence—someone is protesting undying love. It never matters who, of course, for it all comes to naught. The cadets leave—they always do leave, don’t they, Mr. Poe?—and there are always more to take their place.”

  I had thought that speech of such a vehement character would soon spend itself down or would, at the least, effect some diminution in its author’s rage. Quite the opposite, Mr. Landor: the longer she continued, the higher leapt the tongues of her ire’s flame.

  “Ah, but you still have all your buttons, Mr. Poe! Does that mean you have never once torn off the one closest to your heart and proffered it for a lock of your mistress’ hair? In my time, Mr. Poe, I have given away so many of my tresses, it’s a wonder I’m not bald. I have heard so many troths plighted that had they all come to pass, I should now have as many husbands as Solomon had wives. Proceed, then, by all means. Declare your undying love, so that we may both return home and be none the worse.”

  At last, her fury did abate, by slow degrees. Passing her hand across her brow, she turned away and, in accents of the heaviest dullness, muttered, “I’m sorry, I’m being a horror, and I’ve no idea why.”

  I assured her that I required no apology, that my sole concern was for her welfare. Whether she derived solace from this, I cannot say, but she sought no more comfort in my direction. The minutes passed like days. Oh, yes, Mr. Landor, it was a situation peculiarly uncomfortable, and I could scarcely summon the resolution to end it—until, that is, I became distinctly aware of a change in Miss Marquis’ manner. She was, for the first time since her arrival, shivering.

  “You are cold, Miss Marquis.”

  She shook her head; she denied it; nevertheless, she shivered. I inquired if she wished to borrow my cloak. No answer did she make. I repeated my offer. No answer. Her shivering had by now increased tenfold, and there was, stamped on her exquisite visage, an expression of unutterable fright and awe.

  “Miss Marquis!” I cried.

  Amid the fevered calls of her own disordered fancy, my plaintive treble might have emanated from the remotest cavern, so little did she mark me, so rapt was she in the contemplation of her private, her all too palpable terror. Fright being, in its way, as communicable a disorder as leprosy, I soon felt my own heart pound, my own limbs stiffen, and at length I became persuaded—merely on the evidence of Miss Marquis’ terror-struck countenance—that another was there, a personage of such vile depravity that before him, our very souls lay in mortal peril.

  I turned on my heel and scanned the near and far horizons for this figure—this malignity—which so oppressed my lovely companion. In the full fury of my monomania, I inspected every stone, peered behind every cedar, made three more circuits of the monument. No one was there, Mr. Landor!

  Mollified, though by no means pacified, by this intelligence, I turned back to my companion, only to discover that the spot upon which she had last been standing now stood vacant. Miss Marquis had vanished.

  The urgency which now seized me was so utter and entire that I ceased any longer to regard myself as a being separate and enclosed from the one who had disappeared. Never once did it occur to me that I should be late for evening parade. Fain would I have given up all parades, all duties, for one more glimpse of her angelic aspect. I ran—from tree to tree, from stone to stone—I sprinted along the shaded walk—canvassed every log and stump—searched turf and moss, meadow and stream for her. I shouted her name to the tree toads and the cock robins; I shouted it to the westerly wind and the sinking sun and the very mountains. No answer came back. In the depths of my agony, I even—you may imagine at what cost—dragged myself to the precipice of the cemetery bluff and called down the craggy slope, expecting every second to find her broken, lifeless body laid out on the rocks below.

  I had quite despaired of finding her, Mr. Landor, until, at length, I passed a rhododendron bush—not fifty yards from where I had last seen her—and beheld, through the tracery of the nearly denuded branches, a single foot, encased in a lady’s boot. Squinting through the overgrowth, I came to see that this foot was connected with a leg, this leg with a torso, this torso with a head—composing in sum the pallid and inert form of Miss Lea Marquis, prostrated on the bitter, hard, rocky ground.

  Kneeling before her, I remained for some time both breathless and motionless. Her blue eyes were turned up in the most alarming fashion, so that her irises fairly disappeared behind the canopies of her eyelids. A line of saliva had materialized round those tender and voluptuous lips, and her whole person was suffused with a trembling so pronounced and generalized in its character as to make me dread for her life!

  She spoke no word, and I—not for worlds could I have uttered a syllable—until at last—at last!—the fit of ague began to recede. And still I waited, until my vigilance was rewarded with the swell of her breast, the scarcely visible flutter of her eyelashes, the soft dilation of her nostrils. She was not dead. She would not die.

  Her face, however, was of the ghastliest pallor. The knot of her hair had come unraveled, and the ringlets of her jetty hair now tumbled over her brow in promiscuous confusion. Her eyes, Mr. Landor. Her pale blue eyes stared into mine, with a wildness and a wantonness—a too, too glorious effusion. These alterations to her appearance, being organic in nature, were not, in themselves, worrisome. There was no gainsaying, though, the disturbances to her person which bore an external, a human—nay, I will go further, an inhuman—imprint. Her dress, Mr. Landor, had been torn above the shoulder. Brutish nails had gouged her wrists; the blood still ran
from her wounds. A brutish fist had left a bruise on her right temple—sacrilege against the spiritual placidity of her noble brow.

  “Miss Marquis!” I cried.

  Had I a thousand years, Mr. Landor, and words innumerable, I could not portray the smiling raiment in which her lovely, battered face was then clothed.

  “I’m so sorry to have troubled you,” said she. “Do you think you might walk me home? Mother does tend to worry when I’m gone too long.”

  Narrative of Gus Landor

  19

  November 17th

  I can’t blame Poe for not recognizing the symptoms. He’d never had a clergyman in the family, you see, and clergymen are the physicians of choice for this particular disorder. Even my father, who was more about freezing the soul than healing it, even he would be called upon more often than he liked. One family I specially remember. They lived in the farmhouse in the next glen. Each time their boy had a spell of falling sickness, they’d come galloping into our hollow, carrying that arched, thrashing body, demanding a miracle. Hadn’t Jesus done it for that boy in Mark 9:17–30? Couldn’t the Reverend Landor do the same?