The Pale Blue Eye

by Louis Bayard

  With his row, With his dow . . .

  For the first time all evening, Poe was looking away from her, as though she might be found somewhere down the hall, and I could see Artemus dragging his fingers down his cheek, and there was Mrs. Marquis, the author of it all, in a trance of pleasure or was it fear, her eyes glinting in different directions, her throat rippling with swallows. Please, I thought, please. . . .

  Oh, a Soldier’s the lad for my notion! Oh, a Soldier’s the lad for my notion!

  She sang three choruses, and the whole production lasted some four minutes, at the close of which we all sprang to our feet, clapping as though our lives depended on it. Mrs. Marquis clapped louder than anyone. Her feet beat a tarantella on the floor, and her voice rang out with such a vengeance that Dr. Marquis had to drive a finger into his ear.

  “Oh, my dear, yes! ” she shouted. “Wasn’t it? I only wish, my dear—and this is all I will say, and you will never hear me broach the subject again, I promise—but I do wish you wouldn’t grow so faint of heart when you approach those F’s and G’s. You must think”—she jabbed the air with a long saber thrust—“you must think out, not up. It is not a climb, it is a journey into—into resonance, I have told you this, Lea.”

  “Please, Alice,” said Dr. Marquis.

  “I’m sorry, have I said something to offend?” Receiving no reply from her husband, she turned a querying eye on each of us in turn before settling on her daughter. “Lea, dear, you must tell me, have I done anything to bruise you?”

  “No,” said Lea coolly. “I have told you before. You would have to do a great deal more to bruise me.”

  “Well, then, why is everyone so morose? Why have a party at all if we can’t be gay?” She took a step back. Her eyes began to well. “And the snow-light is so charming, and here we are, and why aren’t we happy?”

  “We are, Mother,” said Artemus.

  Though there was nothing particularly gay in his tone just then, only the clang of obligation, shouldered for the thousandth time. But it was enough, wasn’t it, to fire a new spirit in Mrs. Marquis, who became from that moment a relentless organizer. She put us through several rounds of checkers and charades, and she demanded that we wear blindfolds while eating the cake, so that we might guess all the flavors that Eugénie (darling Eugénie!) had smuggled into it. And it was only when we had finished our chocolate truffles and crept back into the parlor, and Dr. Marquis, no mean musician himself, was playing “Old Colony Times” in blue accents, and Artemus and Lea stood with their arms wrapped round each other, rocking back and forth, and Poe sat on the ottoman, gazing up at them as if they were condors . . . only then did Mrs. Marquis turn her attentions back to me.

  “Mr. Landor, you are quite full? You’re certain? Well, that’s a blessing. I wonder if you wouldn’t mind sitting next to me. Oh, I’m so glad you were able to come. I only wish that Lea had been in better form. I assure you if you were to come back another time, you would not be disappointed.”

  “I am . . . I have no right to . . .”

  “Well, of course, that’s just the sort of man you are. It is a perfect wonder to me, Mr. Landor, that you have not been subject to more intrigues since coming to the Point.”

  “Intrigues?”

  “Oho! Don’t think I am blind to the ways of women. Their maneuvers have slain more men than all the world’s cavalries combined. Surely at least one of these dreadful Army wives has introduced you to at least one of her dreadful daughters?”

  “I don’t—I don’t believe they—”

  “Now, if they had girls like Lea, there’d be no stopping them. Lea, as you know, has always been considered quite the ‘catch.’ If she weren’t so very particular, she might have had, oh, lots of—but you know, she has a great many ideas, and I’ve always thought she would be so much better off with a man of, shall we say, more mature sensibilities? Someone who might guide her, through gentle persuasion, toward her proper sphere in life.”

  “I would have thought your daughter herself might be the best judge of—”

  “Oh, yes!” she interrupted, her voice a high locusty shrill. “Yes, I thought the same thing when I was her age. And look at me now! No, Mr. Landor, in these matters, one’s mother really does know best. And that is why whenever I have the opportunity, I tell Lea, ‘An older man’s the one for you. A widower, that’s who you ought to set your cap for.’”

  And as she said it, she reached over and tapped me twice on the cuff link.

  The merest gesture, that was all it took, and suddenly it was me in the cage, and the bars had slammed down, and I couldn’t even sing my way to freedom.

  And here was the final joke. Mrs. Marquis had, as usual, spoken loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear. And now they were all peering through the bars at me. There was Artemus, with that peculiarly blank look of his, and there was Lea, dry-eyed, dry-mouthed. And there was Cadet Fourth Classman Poe, his cheeks reddened as if by a slap, his lips pruny with outrage.

  “Daniel!” screeched Mrs. Marquis. “Fetch me champagne! I wish to be twenty again!”

  And for some reason, that was the moment I chose to look down at my hands, only to see the coppery, granular residue I had wiped from the officer’s coat in Artemus’ closet—preserved, as in amber, on the skin of my finger.

  Blood. What else but blood?

  Narrative of Gus Landor

  27

  December 6th

  So here’s how it was, Reader. I had gone to the Marquis home hoping to solve one mystery, and I came away with three.

  Starting with this: who had tried to kill me in Artemus’ closet?

  Only Artemus himself and Dr. Marquis would have had the strength to wield a saber with such might, but they were both, so far as I knew, accounted for elsewhere: the doctor tending to his wife, the cadet downstairs in the parlor. It was next to impossible that someone from outside could have entered the house without anyone’s knowing. Who, then? Who had driven that blade against my tenderest points?

  And the next mystery was this: if the uniform in Artemus’ closet was the same one Private Cochrane had seen that night in Ward B-3—and I fully believed it was—then who had been wearing it?

  Artemus was, of course, the prime candidate. And so, the day after my dinner at the Marquises’, I had Captain Hitchcock call him into his office on the pretext of inquiring about the broken door in his barracks. A very pleasant chat they had, and the whole time, Private Cochrane was standing in the adjoining room, his ear to the door. When the interview was over, and Artemus had been dismissed, Private Cochrane screwed his mouth to one side and allowed as how that might have been the voice he heard, but then he might also have heard the voice somewhere else, and then again, it might have been someone else’s voice altogether.

  We were, in short, at sea. Artemus was still our first choice. But had I not seen with my own eyes how easily Dr. Marquis could ape his son in the dark? And here was a new wrinkle. From Poe’s last account, I now knew that Lea Marquis could play the part of a man with some success.

  It all added to the unease that had begun to steal over me: this feeling that the Marquis family had no center—no magnetic north, as it were. Peering into my mind’s compass, I might find the needle pointing to Artemus . . . but then I would recall how tamely he yielded to every last one of his mother’s moods, how resigned he sounded whenever he was around her.

  Very well, then, let the needle find Mrs. Marquis. But for all her skill in pressing herself on the general mood, she could only go so far, couldn’t she? Lea had, in her own way, stood up to her—even in the act of bowing to her wishes. How to account for that?

  Lea, then. Try Lea. But the needle wouldn’t stay there, either, not when every memory of her left me with the impression of someone being dragged off to the lions.

  Which led me to the third mystery: Why would Mrs. Marquis want to fob off her daughter on a spent clock like me?

  Lea Marquis was still perfectly marriageable. Too old to land
a cadet, it was true, but then she’d never really wanted one, by the sound of it. And weren’t there bachelor officers aplenty? Loitering in their cramped quarters? Had I not heard a trace of longing even in Captain Hitchcock’s voice when he spoke of her?

  Well, of all the mysteries, this alone seemed to admit of a solution. For if Lea’s illness was what I guessed, then her parents might well have come to view her as damaged goods, to be awarded to the first claimant who presented himself. And was this not, in its own way, happy news for Poe? For what stronger claimant could there be? No one better disposed than he to see Lea Marquis through sickness and health.

  My thoughts, then, had already gathered round him by the time he came to my hotel room. Came, I should say, like someone who knew he was being weighed. Most nights, you see, he wore only a shirt and vest under his cloak; tonight it was best dress—sword and cross belt, even—and instead of creeping in as he usually did, he took two long strides into the center of the room and whipped off his shako and bowed his head.

  “Landor, I wish to apologize to you.”

  Smiling a little, I cleared my throat and said, “Well, that’s awfully decent of you, Poe. May I ask . . . ?”

  “Yes?”

  “What are you apologizing for?”

  “I am guilty,” he said, “of imputing unworthy motives to you.”

  I sat on the bed. I gave my eyes a rub.

  “Oh,” I said. “Lea, yes.”

  “I cannot defend myself, Landor, except to say that there was something discomfiting about the manner in which Mrs. Marquis drew you into her confidences. I’m afraid I assumed—wrongly, it goes without saying—that you had welcomed and . . . perhaps even abetted her stratagems.”

  “How could I, when—”

  “No, please.” He put up his hand. “I will not impose upon you the indignity of defending yourself. And besides, there is no need. Anyone with a speck of mental faculty would recognize that the idea of your courting or—or marrying Lea is, frankly, too absurd even to be entertained.”

  Ah. Too absurd, was it? Well, as I had a peculiar male vanity of my own, I came close to resenting his remark. But hadn’t I just been ridiculing the idea myself ?

  “So I’m very sorry, old turtle,” said Poe. “I hope you’ll . . .”

  “Of course.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positively.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.” Laughing, he threw his hat on the bed and ran a hand across his brow. “Having made my clean breast, I hope we may now move on to matters of far greater moment.”

  “Indeed we may. Why don’t you begin by showing me Lea’s note?”

  His eyelids fluttered like moth wings. “Note,” he said dully.

  “The one she slipped into your pocket while you were putting on your cloak. You probably didn’t even notice it until you got back to barracks.”

  His cheek grew perceptibly pinker as he stroked it with his hand.

  “It’s not a . . . I’m not sure note is the best name for—”

  “Oh, let’s not worry about what to call it. Just show it to me. If you’re not too embarrassed.”

  For his cheeks were giving off an actual heat now . . .

  “Far from—far from embarrassing me,” he stammered, “this missive is a source of everlasting pride. To be the recipient of this—this . . .”

  Well, he really was embarrassed, for after pulling the scented paper from his breast pocket, he set it down on the bed and turned away as I read:

  Ever with thee shall my glad heart roam— Dreading to blanch or repine. Gather our hearts in a green pleasure-dome, All wreathed in a rich cypress vine— Richer still for that you are mine.

  “Very sweet,” I said. “And very clever, too, the way she—”

  But he had no need for testaments. He was already talking over me.

  “Landor, I scarcely know what to do with a gift such as this. It is too—it is . . .” He smiled, a bit sadly, as he ran his fingers around the rim of the paper. “Do you know, this is the first poem anyone has ever written for me.”

  “Well, then, you’re one poem ahead of me.”

  All those tiny white teeth came blazing forth at my expense. “Poor Landor! Never had a poem of your own, eh?” He cocked an eyebrow. “Nor written one, that we may be sure of.”

  I stood on the verge of correcting him. Because, you see, I had written poems. For my daughter, when she was very little. Silly rhyming things I’d leave on her pillow: Sandman here/Wishing you cheer. Here’s a kiss/There’s more of this. Not exactly shining examples of the form. In any case, she outgrew them.

  “That’s all right,” Poe was saying. “I shall write a poem for you someday, Landor. Something that will send your name down through the ages.”

  “I’d be awfully grateful,” I said. “But first, I suppose, you should finish the one you’ve started.”

  “You mean . . .”

  “That business about the girl with the pale blue eye.”

  “Yes,” he said, watching me closely.

  I watched him back. Then, groaning, I said:

  “Very well. Out with it.”

  “What?”

  “The latest verse. You must have it somewhere about you. Right behind Lea’s, probably.”

  He grinned, shook his head.

  “How well you read me, Landor! I doubt there is a secret in the entire universe that you could not, with your extraordinary perceptions, divine in the space of—”

  “Yes, yes. Bring it on.”

  I remember how carefully he spread it across the bed, as if he were unfurling Jesus’ shroud. Smoothed all the creases out of it, then stood back and regarded it like a nun, in a hush of faith. And then beckoned me to read.

  Down—down—down—came the hot thrashing flurry

  Of wings too obscure to descry. Ill at heart, I beseeched her to hurry . . . “Leonore!”—she forbore to reply. Endless Night caught her then in its slurry—

  Shrouding all but her pale blue eye. Darkest Night, black with hell-charneled fury,

  Leaving only that deathly blue eye.

  He was glossing it for me before I’d even finished reading.

  “We’ve already had occasion, Landor, to note how close the names are: Lea . . . Leonore. We’ve noted, in addition, the common feature of blue eyes. We’ve noted the suggestion of unspeakable distress—fully in keeping with Lea’s deportment in the cemetery. We glimpse now—” He stopped. His hand trembled as it pressed the paper. “We see a conclusion, Landor. An imminent demise. What greater urgency can there be? The poem is speaking to us, you must see that? It is all but announcing that an end is come.”

  “What must we do, then? Send the girl to a cloister?”

  “That’s the hell of it!” he cried, flinging his hands toward the ceiling. “I don’t know. I can only be the conduit for the poem, I cannot fathom its deeper meanings.”

  “Oh, ‘conduit’,” I growled. “Would you like to know something, Poe?

  You are the author of this poem. Not your mother, God rest her soul. Not some supernatural scribbler. You.”

  He folded his arms across his chest, sank into the rocker.

  “Use some of that analytical rigor of yours,” I said. “You have Lea on your brain day and night. You have reason, given your brief history with her, to fear for her safety. This fear, naturally enough, has found its way into your most favored form of expression: a poem. Why look any further than that?”

  “Then why can’t I summon it whenever I wish? Why should I not be able to pen a fourth stanza here and now?”

  I shrugged. “You fellows have muses, I believe. Muses are reckoned to be fickle.”

  “Oh, Landor,” he said, twitching his head away. “You should know me well enough to know I don’t believe in muses.”

  “Then what do you believe?”

  “That I am not the author of this poem.”

  It made for an impasse, Reader. There he sat, hard as shale, while I circuited the r
oom, doing nothing more, I thought, than feeling the play of light and shadow on my face, wondering why the light was no warmer than the shadow. In fact, I was coming to a decision.

  “All right,” I said at last. “If you insist on taking it all that seriously, then let’s look at the whole thing. Do you think you might recall the first two stanzas?”

  “Of course. They’re ingrained in my memory.”