The Pale Blue Eye: A Novel (34 page)

No uncertainty this time about who was standing in the doorway. Mrs. Marquis' face was thrown into a sharp relief by the taper she held in her hands, and this light played up all the bird-bones of her face and turned her eyes into great abysses.

"Ah, my dear!" said Dr. Marquis. "Recovered so soon?"

"Yes, it appears I was in grievous error. I had feared I was in for one of those horrid migraines, but it seems a moment's rest was all I required, and I find myself quite cured. Now, Daniel, I see you are on the verge of boring Mr. Landor with one of your journal articles. You must return it to where you found it, and Mr. Landor, you must put away that dreadful old military coat, I am quite sure it won't fit you, and would you both kindly escort me back downstairs before the others begin to wonder where we've gone? Oh, and Daniel, please douse the fire in the parlor, Mr. Landor is perspiring from all the heat!"

We were a few paces outside the parlor door when we heard the pianoforte, kindled into life, and the sound of stomping feet and a single high suppressed giggle. Humor! How had that broken loose? But the evidence was there for all to see. Lea was playing a quadrille on the pianoforte, and under its influence, Poe and Artemus were marching across the parlor floor and swaying as they went. And laughing--laughing like angels.

"Oh, Lea, let me play!" screamed Mrs. Marquis.

Lea needed no more injunction than that. Quit her place at the piano and hied herself straight to the back of the column, wrapped her hands round Artemus' waist, and set to swaying. Mrs. Marquis, proudly perched on the piano bench, pounded out a dance tune recently imported from Vienna, playing it double-time with an almost frightening virtuosity.

And there I sat smiling, coatless and damp, asking myself, Which of the people in this room just tried to kill me?

Faster came the notes, louder came the feet, and the laughter was now general--even Dr. Marquis allowed himself to chuckle and wipe his eye-- and all the sour undertones of half an hour ago had, in this moment, been banished, and I could almost have believed I'd dreamed the whole business in the closet.
And then Mrs. Marquis, as quickly as she had taken up her task, abandoned it. Slammed her hands down on the keyboard and sent a knife of discord through the room, stopping everyone in place.

"You must forgive me," she said, rising and smoothing her skirt. "What sort of hostess am I? I am quite sure that Mr. Landor wants no more of me on the piano and would much rather listen to Lea." How she drew that name out! Stretched it as far as it could go. "Leee-aaa? Would you do us all the favor of a song?"

A song was the last thing on earth Lea wished to undertake, but no matter how she begged off, Mrs. Marquis would have none of it. She wrapped both hands round her daughter's wrist and gave a series of ungentle tugs.

"We must beg, is that it? Very well, everyone, down on your knees. We must all implore, it seems."

"Mother."

"Perhaps if we did a salaam or two..."

"There is no need," said Lea, staring at her shoes. "I should be only too glad."

At which Mrs. Marquis broke into a silvery peal of laughter. "Well, isn't that fine! Now, I must warn you all, I have always found my daughter's taste in music rather dowdy and mournful. I have thus taken the liberty of suggesting a selection from the Lady's Book."

"I'm not sure Mr. Poe would--"

"Oh, I'm sure he would. Wouldn't you, Mr. Poe?"

"Whatever Miss Marquis would see fit to grace us with," said Poe, half trembling, "would be a benediction to the--"

"Just as I thought!" cried the mother, lashing him away with her hand. "You will not put us off another moment, Lea." With a low undertone, audible to everyone within twenty feet, she added, "You know Mr. Landor won't care for it."

Lea looked at me then. Ah, yes, with the most undivided attention she had given me all evening. Then she set the music on the stand. Lowered herself onto her bench. One last glance, she gave her mother--impossible to read--not pleading, not resistance; curiosity, maybe. She was wondering what would happen.

Then she cleared her throat and began to play. And sing.

A Soldier's the lad for my notion,

A Soldier's the lad for my notion.

We girls must allow that his row de dow dow

Sets the hearts of his hearers in motion... Strange that Mrs. Marquis should have found it in the Lady's Book. It was the sort of song you might have heard many years ago at the Olympic Theatre, on a bill with burnt-cork comedians and French ballerinas. It would have been performed by a girl named Magdalena or Delilah, and she would have worn blue-beaded ostrich feathers or, more daringly, a sailor's suit, and her cheeks would have been as red as her lips, and her knees redder still, and her kohl-smeared eyes would have been screwed into an uglifying wink.

Delilah would at least have taken to her task with some zeal. But then I'd guess even galley slaves would've shown more enthusiasm than did Lea Marquis that December evening, sitting bolt upright on her bench, her arms rigid as muskets. Once, just once, her hands lifted off the keyboard, as though she would stop. But then she (or someone) thought better of it, and down came the hands, and up climbed the voice.

With his row, With his dow, With his row de dow...

She was, as Poe had reported, a natural contralto, singing in a too-high key, and her voice, as it neared the top of the clef, began to cloud over, until it was just a burst of steam through clenched lips, scarcely to be heard but weirdly resilient all the same. Nothing would quite still it.

Dow de dow,

Dow de dow, dow...

I suppose, in that moment, I thought of Pawpaw's birds, calling through their iron bars. What would I not have given--what would all of us not have given, I think--for the key to this particular cage. But the song rolled onward (easier to call the tide back than stop it), and as it went on, the bottom fell out of Lea's voice, and her hands took on a strange new energy, began to flog the keys, and with each flog, some note went spinning off its rhythm--landed in another measure entirely--and the piano itself, stunned by the pounding, seemed ready to rise up in protest, and still Lea sang on:

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 Eugenie (darling Eugenie!) 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?