The Pale Blue Eye: A Novel (22 page)

The response of his sister was altogether more subdued, and as I already felt a deep solicitousness for her on Artemus' account, I made a point of seeking her out in private to ascertain if by chance my little offering had offended. She at once put me at my ease with a smile and an unequivocal shake of her head.

"No, Mr. Poe, it was lovely. I'm only a little sad thinking upon poor Helen."

"Poor Helen?" I echoed. "How poor?"

"Why, standing up in that window niche, day and night. How statuelike, didn't you say? How tiresome, you mean. Oh, dear, now it is I who have offended you. I do apologize. I was only thinking that a healthy girl like Helen should want to come out of her window niche now and again. Walk in the woods and chat with friends and go to a ball, even, if she feels up to it."

I answered that Helen--the Helen of my vision, that is--had no need of walking about, nor of dancing, for she had something far more precious: Immortality, as conferred upon her by Eros.

"Oh," she said, smiling gently, "I can't think of any woman who wishes to be immortal. A good joke might be all she desires. Or a single caress..." No sooner had she spoken than a small tincture of red began to irrigate her marble cheek. Biting her lip, she hurried down a less fraught avenue of conversation and came at length to--well, to myself, Mr. Landor. She had been moderately intrigued, it seems, by my allusions to "a perfumed sea" and a "weary, wayworn wanderer" and inquired whether she might infer from these phrases that I had myself traveled and seen much. Her powers of logic, I answered, were unassailable. I then limned for her in general terms my sojourns at sea and my peregrinations across the European continent, culminating in St. Petersburg, where I became embroiled in covert difficulties of so complex a nature that I had to be extricated at the eleventh hour through the exertions of the American consul. (Ballinger, happening to pass by at this juncture, asked me if the Empress Catherine herself had served as my advocate. His tone was sardonic, and I was left to conclude that his reformation in regard to me was, at best, piecemeal.) Miss Marquis heard my narrative with an air of perfect openness and unstinting encouragement, interrupting only to query me further surrounding this or that particular detail, and through it all, she evinced such a pure and abiding interest in my paltry affairs that--well, Mr. Landor, I had forgot what a beguiling thing it is to place one's deeds in the safekeeping of a young woman. It is, I rather think, one of the world's least reckoned wonders.

But I see I have not yet taken pains to describe this Miss Marquis. Was it Bacon, Lord Verulam, who said, "There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion"? Miss Marquis would bear out the truth of that sagacious remark. Her mouth, to take but one part, is irregularly formed--a short upper lip, a soft, voluptuous under--and yet it composes a triumph of sweetness. Her nose has perhaps too perceptible a tendency toward the aquiline, and yet its luxurious smoothness and harmoniously curved nostrils rival the graceful medallions of the Hebrews. Her cheeks are over-ruddy, yes, but her brow is lofty and pale, and her brown tresses are glossy, luxuriant, and naturally curling.

As I am enjoined by you to practice strict and scrupulous honesty in all matters, I should add that most observers would consider her a shade past her full bloom. In addition, there is about her person a lingering tristesse, which (if I do not presume too far) bespeaks the thwarting of Hope and the blighting of Promise. And yet how this sadness becomes her, Mr. Landor! I would not trade it for a thousand of those giddy effusions which are the province of so-called marriageable girls. Indeed, I find it scarcely to be fathomed that when so many insipid females are dragged straight from their fathers' mansions to the altar, a pearl such as this should rest unclaimed in the seabed of her girlhood home. It is true, then, what the Poet says: "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen / And waste its sweetness on the desert air."

I do not believe that my interview with Miss Marquis lasted more than ten or fifteen minutes, and yet what a gamut of themes we traversed together! I have not the time to enumerate them all (could I even recollect them), for the eloquence of her low, musical language possessed a charm that surpassed mere disputation. Being a woman, she is not so steeped in the moral, physical, and mathematical science as a man, and yet she is every bit as fluent in French as myself and has, to my astonishment, some modest proficiency in the classical tongues. Having used Artemus' telescope to her own profit, she was able also to discourse quite knowledgeably on a star of the sixth magnitude to be found near the large star in Lyra.

More than any of her intellectual acquisitions, however, what most confounded and beguiled me was her natural intelligence, which had the effect of cutting straight to the heart of any subject, no matter its abstruse-ness. I well remember with what lucidity she heard me out on the subject of Cosmology. At her prompting, I told her that the universe was, in my opinion, an eternal "revenant" returning to fullness from Material Nihility, swelling into existence and then subsiding into nothingness, this cycle being repeated ad infinitum. So, too, the Soul: a residue of diffused godhead, undergoing its own eternal cycle of cosmic annihilation and rebirth.

To any other woman, Mr. Landor, I might have conceived my speculations to be thoroughly repugnant. In Miss Marquis, however, I could find no trace of revulsion and much to testify to amusement. The very wryness of her expression seemed to imply that I had just executed the most complicated and dangerous gymnastic maneuver--and done it for no better reason than that I had been dared.

"You must take care now, Mr. Poe. All that diffusion will end by diffusing you. And then, of course, if you wish to flirt with... material nihility, is it?... why, then, you must also flirt with spiritual nihility."

"Oh, Private Poe never flirts!"

It is a measure of our mutual engrossment that we so utterly failed to remark Artemus' presence until he so brusquely announced it. Then again, I consider it more than possible that Artemus had every intention of startling--stole toward us on cat's feet for that very purpose--for having delivered himself of his jape, he pinioned Lea's arms behind her, as though to take her captive, and with the point of his chin gently jabbed her shoulder.

"Speak then, sister. What do you think of my little protege?"

Frowning, she prised herself from his grip. "I think," she said, "that Mr. Poe is beyond being anyone's protege." Artemus' face fairly collapsed with dismay--he had not expected to be chided--but with her exquisite aversion to causing harm, Miss Marquis at once absolved him of his crime with a peal of laughter.

"He is certainly not to be corrupted by the likes of you," she blurted. This remark had the effect of leaving both of them bound hand to foot in Laughter's chain. Their hilarity was, in truth, of such an expansive and consuming nature that I gave up any suspicions of being its butt and joined my own quieter laugh to theirs. Nevertheless, I was not so disarmed by Thalia's wiles that I failed to keep my wits about me, nor did I fail to discern that Lea ceased to laugh well in advance of her brother, and that through her eyes pierced a look--entirely missed by Artemus in his prostration to Comedy--of the deepest penetration. In that moment, I believe, she was peering into Artemus' very soul, to see what lay brushed across its canvas. What comfort or desolation she found there, none but a metaphysician could say. I can report only that her merriment did not return in the same abundance as before.

Fate provided me with no further occasion to speak with Miss Marquis. Artemus had challenged me to a game of chess (a pastime normally forbidden by the Academy), and Miss Marquis had been inveigled by Ballinger and Upton into a private concert, which was soon drowned out by those Cadets' strenuously unmusical vocal accompaniments. Dr. Marquis meanwhile took up his pipe and contemplated us benignly from the ramparts of his rocking chair, as Mrs. Marquis contented herself with rather desultory needlepoint--which exercise she shortly broke off in a passion, declaring herself afflicted with the most frightful Migraine and requesting leave to sequester herself in her bedchamber. When her husband made to stay her departure with the gentlest of remonstrances, she cried, "I don't see why you should care, Daniel--I don't see why anybody should care," and at once fled the room.

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...