The Pale Blue Eye

by Louis Bayard

  “Ugh,” she said at last. “It’s all so bare now, isn’t it? How much nicer in March, when one can at least be sure there’s life on the way.”

  I replied that to the contrary, it was my belief that the Highlands, to be apprehended in the full extent of their glory, must be seen immediately after the fall of the leaf, for neither Summer’s verdancy nor Winter’s rime can then conceal the minutest objects from the eye. Vegetation, I told her, does not improve, but rather obstructs, God’s originating design.

  How I seem to amuse her, Mr. Landor—the more so when I have the least design to amuse.

  “I see,” she said. “A Romantic.” And then, smiling broadly, she added, “You do enjoy talking of God, Mr. Poe.”

  I remarked that in matters of human and natural provenance, I could imagine no more appropriate entity to invoke, and inquired if she knew of a more suitable authority.

  “Oh,” she said. “It’s all so . . .” Her voice trailed away, and her hand made a gentle fanning motion, as if to send the topic sailing on the next easterly wind. In our too-brief acquaintance, I had never known her to be so vague on any point, so averse to taking up the dangling thread of discussion. Not wishing, however, to arouse her suspicions with a more concerted inquiry, I permitted the matter to drop and contented myself instead with the aforementioned view—and with such occasional sidelong glimpses of my companion as I might, in good conscience, purloin.

  How precious did her lineaments seem to me in that moment! The lovely soft green of her bonnet, the voluminous, billowing pool of her skirts and petticoats beneath her. The delicious contour of her sleeve and her puffed white undersleeve, out of which peeped fingers of delectable whiteness and vigor. Her scent, Mr. Landor! The very aroma which had lain pent within that slip of stationery—earthy, sweet, lightly pungent. The longer we sat, the more it imposed itself upon my consciousness— until, driven near to distraction, I asked her if she would be so good as to identify it for me. Was it eau de rose? I wondered. Blanc de neige? Huile ambrée?

  “Nothing so fashionable as those,” said she. “It is only some orrisroot.”

  This intelligence had the effect of summarily silencing me. For several minutes altogether, I found myself incapable of even the most rudimentary speech. At length, growing anxious for my welfare, Miss Marquis begged to know what was the matter.

  “I must ask your pardon,” said I. “Orrisroot was my mother’s favorite fragrance. I used to smell it on her clothes, long after she had died.”

  I had intended it only as a passing remark; it was certainly never my purpose to speak of my mother in any greater detail. I had not reckoned, however, on the countervailing force of Miss Marquis’ curiosity. She at once “brought me out” on the subject and succeeded in extracting from me as thoroughgoing an account as my constrained circumstances might afford. I told her of my mother’s national renown, of the many proofs of her extraordinary artistry, of her joyous and abject devotion to husband and children . . . and of her tragic and untimely end in the fiery abyss of the E Theatre, scene of so many of her thespian triumphs.

  My voice trembled as it passed over certain events, and I doubt I would have had the strength to carry the narrative to its full conclusion had I not enjoyed, in Miss Marquis, an audience of such surpassing empathy. I told her all, Mr. Landor, or at least as much as could be compressed into ten minutes’ duration. I told her of Mr. Allan, who, being most affected by my orphaned state, had taken it upon himself to make me his heir and raise me as the Gentleman my mother should have wished me to be. I spoke of his wife, the late Mrs. Allan, who had, until her own recent demise, been a second mother to me. I spoke of my years in England, my peregrinations across Europe, my service in the artillery—and more, I spoke of my thoughts, my dreams, my fancies. Miss Marquis listened to everything, good and ill, with a near-sacerdotal equanimity. In her person I found embodied the principle enumerated by Terence: Homo sum, humani nil a me alienum puto. Indeed, her spirit of indulgence so emboldened me that after a very short time, I felt free to confess that my mother has maintained a kind of supranatural presence in my sleepings and awakenings. No living memory did she bequeath me, I avowed, and yet she persists with mysterious doggedness as spirit-memory.

  Upon hearing this, Miss Marquis looked at me with great intentness. “You mean to say she speaks to you? What does she say?”

  For the first time that morning, I grew reticent. How I longed to tell her, Mr. Landor, of that mysterious poetical fragment—I could not. Nor did she seem in any way to demand further elaboration. After posing the question, she abandoned it as quickly and concluded by murmuring, “They never leave us, do they? The ones who come before us. I wish I knew why.”

  Haltingly, then, I spoke of the Theories I had propounded on this very question. “There are times,” I declared, “when I believe the dead haunt us because we love them too little. We forget them, you see; we don’t mean to, but we do. All our sorrow and pity subside for a time, and in that interval, however long it lasts, I believe they feel most cruelly deserted. And so they clamor for us. They wish to be recalled to our hearts. So as not to be murdered twice over.

  “Other times,” I continued, “I believe we love them too much. And as a consequence they are never free to depart, because we carry them, our most deeply beloved, within ourselves. Never dead, never silent, never appeased.”

  “Revenants,” she said, eyeing me closely.

  “Yes, I suppose so. But how can they be said to return when they have never gone away?”

  Her hand passed in front of her mouth—for what purpose, I could not ascertain until I heard the eructation of merriment spilling through her lips.

  “Why is it, Mr. Poe, that I would sooner spend an hour with you in the”—again she laughed—“in the gloomiest contemplations than spend another minute speaking of dresses and baubles and the things that make most people happy?”

  A solitary gleam now struck the base of the mountain on which we gazed. Miss Marquis, however, turned her attention away, and, with the assistance of a blunt stick, began idly to sketch abstract figures on the granite ledge.

  “The other day,” she said at length. “In the cemetery . . .”

  “We need not speak of that, Miss Marquis.”

  “But you see, I want to speak of it. I want to tell you . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “How grateful I was. To open my eyes, I mean, and find you there.” She chanced a glance in my direction, then withdrew it at once. “I looked deep into your face, Mr. Poe, and I found there something I never would have expected. Not in a thousand years.”

  “What did you find, Miss Marquis?” “Love,” she said.

  Ah, Mr. Landor! You will scarcely credit that until this moment, I had never once entertained the notion of being in love with Miss Marquis. That I admired her—greatly, yes—I would never have disputed. That she intrigued—nay, fascinated—me was beyond argument. But never, Mr. Landor, did I dare venture any more exalted construction of my sentiments.

  And yet as soon as this—this sacred word had passed her lips, I could no longer deny the truth that lay locked within it, the truth that she, with her exquisite clemency, had now sprung from its straitened cell.

  I loved, Mr. Landor. In despite of all my protestations, I loved.

  And with that, a change came over all things. Sturgeon, rising in a great commotion of smacks and slaps, burst through the surface of the Hudson, and out of the bosom of that haunted river issued, little by little, a melody more divine than that of Aeolus’ harp. I sat, motionless, as upon the golden threshold of the wide-open gate of dreams, gazing far away to where the prospect terminated—only to realize that it terminated in her.

  “I see I’ve embarrassed you,” she said. “You needn’t feel that way. You must have seen—” Her voice caught, but she went on. “You must have seen the love that was in my heart, too.”

  How suddenly it comes, this benison of Love! And how it eludes us even in the moment of its
birth! Although we may scale the very heavens to grasp it, we cannot close it round. No, no, it must always escape us. We must fail—fall—

  In short, I fainted dead away. And might, without a single qualm, have missed the morning recital. And might have missed many more, might even have suffered Atropos herself (cruel daughter of Themis!) to shear the thread of life, so happy—so exorbitantly, inhumanly happy—was I in that moment.

  It was her face I beheld upon returning to my senses—her heavenly orbs, exuding rays of holy light.

  “Mr. Poe,” she said. “I suggest that during our next meeting, we both remain conscious for the entire duration.”

  I heartily concurred with her suggestion and vowed that I would never again so much as close my eyes if she lay framed therein. I then implored her at once to seal our covenant by referring to me ever after by my Christian name.

  “Edgar, is it? Oh, very well, Edgar, if you like. And I suppose you must then call me Lea.”

  Lea. Lea! What a ravishing residue does that name deposit within my ear’s inner chamber! What a world of happiness is foretold within those two brief and euphonious syllables! Lea. Lea.

  Narrative of Gus Landor

  20

  November 21st

  This was the oddest part of all: Poe had nothing to add to what he’d written. As soon as I was finished reading, I waited for him to pick up where he’d left off. To quote another Latin poet or walk me through some etymology, expound on the unsurvivability of love. . . .

  But all he did was bid me good night. And after promising to report further when he could, he slipped away as easily as a wraith.

  I didn’t see him again until the next evening—and might never have seen him again at all but for chance. Poe himself would call it something grander, but for now, I’ll stand by my word. It was chance that made me halt in the midst of toiling over Leroy Fry’s diary and gave me a sudden hankering for air. Sent me spilling out the door into the charcoal dusk, swinging my lantern in slow arcs to keep from losing my footing.

  It was a dry piney night. The river was noisier than usual, and the moon could have cut you just to look at it, and the ground seemed to crackle with each step, so that I walked with great care, as if I were on the brink of offending. I paused by the ruins of the old Artillery Barracks and stood within sniffing distance of the Plain, casting my eyes along the long incline of night-purpled grass.

  And then stopped.

  Something was moving. Something by Execution Hollow.

  I lifted my lamp higher, and as I drew closer, the figure’s strangeness, the jangle of its borders, resolved into something clearer. I was looking at a man—a man on all fours.

  Which from a distance, seemed a dire, an unhealthy pose for anyone to be in—the prelude to a full collapse. But as I drew still closer, I could see there was a meaning behind this position. For just beneath that first figure lay a second.

  The one on top, I recognized straight off. I had seen enough of him in cadet mess to know the flaxen hair, the farm-boy mass of him: Randolph Ballinger, if you please. Astride his opponent, using his heavy legs to pin the fellow’s arms to the ground and plying the full weight of his mighty forearm against the other’s windpipe.

  And who was on the receiving end of that onslaught? It wasn’t until I’d circled round and got the necessary vantage—seen the outsized head and the brittle whippet frame and, yes, the cloak with its torn shoulder—that I could be certain.

  And now I was running. For I knew in my bones how unequal this contest was: Ballinger was a good half foot taller than Poe, forty pounds heavier, and more than that, he had in his actions a clean line of intent that suffered no reversal. He would not turn back.

  “Leave off, Mr. Ballinger!”

  I heard my own voice, rock-steady, shrinking the distance between us.

  His head jerked up. His eyes—white pools in the lantern light—met mine. And without letting up one bit from Poe’s throat, he said, calm as a pond:

  “Private business, sir.”

  It was Leroy Fry who came echoing back in that moment. Calling out merrily to his companion on the landing: Necessary business. . . .

  And there was a necessity to this business, to judge by Ballinger’s flat, unruffled brow, his air of studious attention. He had seen his course, and he would follow it out. And he would do it without another word of explanation. Indeed, the only sound I could make out now was the gargling in Poe’s throat, a wet, mangled frequency—worse than any scream.

  “Leave off, Mr. Ballinger!” I cried again.

  And still he pressed down with that heavy, heavy arm, squeezing the last drops of air from Poe’s lungs. Waiting for the cartilage of Poe’s trachea to give way.

  I swung my boot and caught Ballinger square on the temple. He grunted, shook the pain from his head . . . and kept pressing.

  The second kick caught him on the chin and sent him sprawling onto his back.

  “If you leave now,” I said, “you can keep your commission. Stay, and I can guarantee you’ll be court-martialed by week’s end.”

  He sat up. Gave his jaw a rub. Looked straight ahead, as if I weren’t there.

  “Or maybe,” I said, “you’re not familiar with Colonel Thayer’s opinions on attempted homicide.”

  It came down to this: he was no longer in his element. Like many bullies, he was able to enforce his will within a finite enclosure, but no further. As first assistant to the carver at Table Eight, he could stare down anyone who demanded roast beef before his turn. Outside the orbit of Table Eight, outside of 18 North Barracks, he had no system to gird him up.

  Which is to say, he left. With as much dignity as he could muster, but knowing still that he’d been stopped, and that knowledge trailed behind him in fumes.

  Reaching down, I pulled Poe to his feet. He was breathing more easily now, but his skin was a mottled copper color in the lamplight.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  He winced as he tried a test swallow. “I am quite well,” he gasped out. “It will take more than a . . . craven . . . underhanded assault to . . . cow a Poe. I hail from a—a long line of—”

  “Frankish chieftains, I know. Maybe you can tell me what happened.”

  He took a single tottering step forward.

  “I can hardly say, Mr. Landor. I’d stolen out of my chambers with the intent of visiting you . . . having taken all the . . . all the usual precautions. Careful as ever to . . . I can’t explain it . . . he was able to surprise me.”

  “Did he say anything?”

  “The same thing. Again and again. Under his breath.”

  “And what was that?”

  “ ‘Little beasts—ought to know their place’.”

  “And that was all?”

  “That was all.”

  “And how do you interpret that, Mr. Poe?”

  He shrugged, and even this tiny motion sent a new line of pain up the column of his throat.

  “Arrant jealousy,” he said at last. “He is . . . manifestly distraught . . . that Lea prefers me to him. He seeks to frighten me away from her.” From somewhere inside him came a high, squirrelly laugh. “He can scarcely . . . gauge . . . the depths of my resolve on this matter. I am not to be frightened.”

  “So you think he wished only to scare you, Mr. Poe?”

  “What else?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” I said, gazing once more at Execution Hollow. “From where I was standing, he looked awfully set on killing you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. He hasn’t the nerve. He hasn’t the imagination.”

  Oh, Reader, I had half a mind to tell him about the killers I’d met in my day. Some of the least imaginative men you’d ever want to meet. Which was what made them so dangerous.

  “All the same, Mr. Poe, I wish you’d . . .” I shoved my hands into my pockets, gave the turf a light kick. “You see, the point is, I’ve come to depend on you in a fashion, and I’d hate to think you might lose your life over a young w
oman, however pretty she may be.”

  “I shan’t be the one to lose his life, Mr. Landor. You may be certain of that.”

  “Who, then?”

  “Ballinger,” he said simply. “Before I let him come between me and my heart’s desire, I will kill him. Yes, and it will be the purest pleasure and the most—the most moral act of my career.”

  I took him by the elbow and walked him gently up the slope toward the hotel. A minute passed before I dared speak again.

  “Oh yes,” I said, as lightly as I could, “the morality part is easily squared. But as for taking pleasure in it, Mr. Poe, I can’t imagine you doing that.”