by Louis Bayard
I didn’t mind that she avoided my eye, nor did I care that every sentence seemed to die on us. It felt oddly domestic, as if we had been ignoring each other for many years in perfect comfort, and I was more jangled than I expected when we were at last interrupted—not by Poe or Mrs. Marquis but by Artemus himself, striding into the parlor with squeaking soles.
“Woman,” he called to his sister. “Fetch me my pipe.”
“Fetch it yourself,” she answered.
This was the extent of their greeting. Lea bounded from her chair and set upon him, shaking and squeezing and pummeling. It took the arrival of the servant girl with her dinner bell to bring them back to the world at large. Only then did Artemus give me a nod and a handshake. Only then did Lea permit me to take her by the arm and escort her into the dining room.
Why Mrs. Marquis should have needed help with the seating plan, well, that was anyone’s guess. We were a small party that night. The hostess herself sat at one end of the table, and Dr. Marquis at the other (squaring his shoulders like a draft animal). Lea was seated next to me, Poe next to Artemus. Dinner, I recall, was roasted canvasback with cabbage, peas, and stewed apples. There must have been bread, too, for I have a distinct memory of Dr. Marquis cleaning his plate with it, and I remember, too, the way Mrs. Marquis, prior to eating, removed her gloves inch by inch, as though she were sliding out of her own skin.
Throughout the meal, Poe refused to look at me, doubtless fearing that even a half second’s eye contact would give us away. He was nowhere near so cagey, of course, with Lea. She, for her part, never met his gaze, though it yet found an answer in her: a bow of the head, a play of the lips. Oh, no, I wasn’t too old to have forgot those.
Fortunately for them, the lovers had other people’s agitations to hide behind that night. Dr. Marquis was carrying on a colloquy with his cabbage, and Artemus was humming a measure of . . . Beethoven, I think it was, the same measure again and again. Amid all these crosscurrents, something useful at least emerged: a family history. By dint of quiet questions and leading remarks, I learned that the Marquis family had resided at the Academy for eleven years. I learned that Artemus and Lea had adopted these hills as their own and had, between them, discovered so many secret recesses they could probably, if they wished, gain employ as British spies. Indeed, by virtue of being thrown into each other’s company so often, they had forged a bond that Dr. Marquis could mention only in terms of great awe.
“And do you know, Mr. Landor? When it came time to decide what Artemus was to do, there was no question. ‘Artemus!’ I said. ‘Artemus, my boy, you’ll have to become a cadet, by God. Your sister won’t allow for anything else!’ ”
“I believe Artemus has always been free to do as he likes,” said Lea.
“And he always does,” answered her mother, stroking the sleeve of her son’s gray coat. “Don’t you find my son exceptionally handsome, Mr. Landor?”
“I would—I would judge both of your children to have been blessed in that regard,” I replied.
My tact was lost on her. “Dr. Marquis looked just the same way when he was young. I’m not embarrassing you, am I, Daniel?”
“Only a bit, my dear.”
“What a figure he cut, Mr. Landor! Bear in mind, of course, my family consorted with a great many officers in those days. I remember my mother always told me, ‘You may dance with a leaf, and flirt with a bar, but reserve your best smile for the eagle and star.’ Well, that was my intention. I would settle for nothing less than a major. But then who should come along but this dashing young surgeon? Oh, I needn’t tell you, he had charms. He might have had his pick of all the surplus females in White Plains, so I really can’t fathom why he chose me. Why was that, dear?”
“Oh,” said the doctor, swelling into a laugh. Such a laugh! The jaw opened and shut as if it were being yanked by a ventriloquist.
“Well,” Mrs. Marquis went on, “as I explained to my parents, ‘Dr. Marquis may not be a major, but his potential is simply limitless.’ Why, he had already been one of the personal physicians to General Scott, did you know that? And of course, the University of Pennsylvania was longing to hire him as lecturer. But then the Chief of Engineers came knocking with this Academy appointment, and there you are. Duty beckoned, didn’t it?” She trailed her knife in absent lines across her plate. “Of course, it was only supposed to be a temporary post. A year or two at the utmost, and then back to New York. But we never did get back, did we, Daniel?”
Dr. Marquis confessed that they had not. At which Mrs. Marquis grinned like a tiger. “ We still might,” she said. “It’s conceivable. The moon might rise in place of the sun tomorrow. Dogs might write symphonies. Anything might happen, mightn’t it, dear?”
I will say this about her smile: it never collapsed, but it never fixed itself, either. Infinite in its nuance. I could see Poe’s eyes widening as he watched her—trying to track her, in the way you might track a funnel cloud.
“You mustn’t think I mind, Mr. Landor. It’s terribly remote here, that’s true, one might as well live in Peru, but one does, on rare occasion, meet fascinating people. Think only of yourself, Mr. Landor.”
“I know we think of you,” chimed Artemus. “All the time.”
“Oh!” cried his mother. “That is only because Mr. Landor is a personage of rare intelligence, a quality in such ridiculously short supply here. I do, of course, exempt the faculty, but the wives, Mr. Landor! Not a modicum of wit, not a particle of taste. You will never in your life meet less ladylike ladies.”
“Their manners are bad,” Artemus allowed. “West Point is probably the only place they could still be taken up. I can’t think of a drawing room in New York that would have them.”
Lea frowned into her dish. “I’m sure you’re both being dreadful. We have received a great many kindnesses at their hands, and I have spent many happy hours in their company.”
“Knitting, you mean,” answered her brother. “Endless knitting.” Leaping to his feet, he began darning the air with his fingers and affecting a drawl that was, if I may say so, a pretty fair approximation of one of those faculty wives, Mrs. Jay. “Do you know, my dear, I believe this October is just a shade cooler than last October. Yes, yes, I know it, for, you see, Koo-Koo—have you met my dear, sweet little parrot from the Azores?—why, he’s been shivering, poor dear, from the moment he wakes up. I never should have taken him to the violin recital the other night, he can’t abide the wind, you know. . . .”
“Stop!” screamed Mrs. Marquis, squealing through her fingers.
“Why, I’m quite certain it gave him chilblains.”
“Naughty boy!”
Thus rewarded, Artemus flung himself back down in his chair with a grin. I let a space of silence fall before I cleared my throat and said, as softly as I could:
“I expect that Mrs. Jay has other topics on her mind these days.”
“And what would those be?” asked Mrs. Marquis, still chuckling.
“Why, Mr. Fry, of course. And your friend Mr. Ballinger.”
No words then, only sounds. The tender crack of Poe’s knuckles, the flick of Artemus’ finger against the side of his plate. The slurping of Dr. Marquis’ bread as it chased an errant pea round the circuit of his plate.
And then a low snigger from Mrs. Marquis, as she tossed back her head and said, “I hope she will not overstep her bounds by launching her own inquiries, Mr. Landor. Such feminine interference could in no way be welcome to you.”
“Oh, I’m grateful for any help I can get,” I said. “Especially if I don’t have to pay for it.”
A ghost of a smile stole over Poe’s face. Incriminating, I thought, by its very smallness. But when I shot a look at Artemus, I found him too busy with his own amusement to notice.
“Mr. Landor,” he said, “I hope when you’ve finished with your official business, you’ll assist me with a little puzzle of my own.”
“Puzzle?”
“Yes, the strangest affair! While I was i
n recital Monday, it appears someone tried to break my door down.”
“Terrible people are abroad,” intoned Dr. Marquis.
“Really, Father? I was inclining toward the theory that the fellow was simply rude.” Artemus smiled at me once again. “While having, of course, no idea who he was.”
“All the same, darling, you must be careful,” said Mrs. Marquis. “You really must.”
“Oh, Mother, he was probably just some tiresome old fellow with nothing better to do and no life of his own to speak of. A rustic sort of cottager who likes to—to tipple on the side and hang about in sordid taverns. Don’t you think, Mr. Landor?”
I saw Mrs. Marquis flinch; I saw Poe rearrange himself in his chair. The air seemed to crackle round the table. Artemus must have felt it, too, for his eyes opened into pools.
“Oh, you have a cottage, too, don’t you, Mr. Landor? Well, then, I’m sure you know the type I’m speaking of.”
“Artemus,” said Lea in a warning voice.
“You may even have some very near relations who fit the pattern.”
“Stop it!” his mother yelled.
And everything did stop. We were all looking at her now, staring helplessly at the grooves around her mouth and the taut cords of her throat and her skinny little fists, which had come together in a trembling knot.
“I hate it!” she screamed. “I positively hate it when you take on this way!”
Eyeing her with a bland curiosity, Artemus said, “I don’t think I follow your drift, Mother.”
“Oh, no, you don’t, of course you don’t. Follow my drift? I might drift clear to the other side of the Hudson, and no one would . . .” For the first time, the corners of her mouth turned downward. “No one would follow, would they, Daniel?”
They looked at each other now, husband and wife, with such a depth of feeling that the eight feet separating them shrank to nothing. Then, slowly, with a darkling gleam in her eye, Mrs. Marquis raised her plate above her head . . . and let it drop. A canvasback bone flopped free, the stewed apples flew straight up, and the plate blew into a dozen pieces scattered across the red linen tablecloth.
“Ha! You see! A china plate should never crack unless it is kept too close to the fire. I shall have to speak with Eugénie.” Her pitch rising, she slapped at the china fragments, as though she were thrashing them. “I am perfectly furious with her, you know. How she can . . . when she’s not even French! If only you could find a decent servant here, but you can’t, God help you. Never mind persuading one to wear livery or treat you as—as an employer, oh, no! Well, the time has come to speak. The time has come to say, we will not be treated this way!”
Her chair tipped back, and she was, shockingly, on her feet, clutching her hair, and before any of the gentlemen could rise, she had staggered from the room, the napkin still pinned to her dress. I heard a swish of taffeta . . . a moan . . . a rattle of boots on the stairs. And with that everything went quiet, as one by one, we turned back to our plates.
“You’ll have to excuse my wife,” said Dr. Marquis, to no one in particular.
And that was the only thing said on the matter. With no further apology, no explanation, the rest of the Marquis clan tucked right back into their food and kept eating. They were no longer to be shocked. Too many other dinners had come to ruin on this same shoal.
Poe and I, by contrast, had lost what was left of our appetites. We set down our forks and waited as first Lea finished, then Artemus, and finally Dr. Marquis, who rose and, after having a leisurely go at his teeth with a pocket knife, inclined his head in my direction and said, “Mr. Landor, I wonder if you’d care to join me in my study.”
Narrative of Gus Landor
25
Dr. Marquis closed the dining room door behind him and bent toward me, his eyes teeming, his breath steamy with onions and whiskey.
“My wife’s nerves,” he said. “This time of year. A bit overworked, as you can see. The winter and the cold. Very confining. Sure you understand.”
He nodded as if to assure himself he’d done his duty, then motioned me into his study—an exceedingly narrow room, with a smell like burnt caramel and a single burning taper, doubled by the reflection of a looking-glass in a tarnished gold frame. From atop the central bookcase frowned the lordly head of Galen. In a niche between two other bookcases hung an antique oil portrait, no more than two feet high, of a clergyman, robed in black. Just below it was a pillow—coarse and gray and musty—upon which a cameo portrait lay, flat on its back, as though it had been sung to sleep. “Tell me, Doctor, who is this charming creature?” “Why,” he sputtered, “that’s my beloved bride, of course.” More than twenty years had passed since the portrait was first committed to ivory, but very little of Mrs. Marquis’ frame or face had slackened. If anything, the advancing years had merely concentrated her, so that the round buoyant liquid eyes of this portrait bore as much relation to their present-day counterparts as dough to bread.
“She quite undervalues her own beauty, doesn’t she?” said the doctor. “None of the amour propre which is, you know, the province of the female. Ah, but I haven’t yet shown you my monographs!” Thrusting his hands into the shelf just below, he came away with a stack of thin, yellowing paper that stung the air like pepper. “Yes, yes,” he chuckled, “just the thing! An inaugural essay on blisters. I was invited to read this at the College of Physicians and Surgeons. Inaugural essay on fistula in ano, very well received at the University of—oh, but now this, well, I think it’s fair to say this made my reputation, such as it is. A short account of the most approved method of treating the putrid bilious yellow fever, vulgarly called the black vomit.”
“A most impressive range of interests, Doctor.”
“Oh, that’s just the way the old cranium works. Hither and yon, that’s my modus. But the paper I really must show you, Mr. Landor . . . my observations on Dr. Rush’s work on diseases of the mind. Published in the New England Journal of Medicine and Surgery.”
“I’d be fascinated to see it.”
“Would you really?” He grimaced at me, half believing. I must have been the first human being ever to respond to this overture. “Well, that’s . . . oh, but it’s not . . . do you know, I believe I was perusing it in bed last night. Shall I fetch it?
“By all means.”
“You’re certain?”
“Of course! Why, I’ll even escort you, if you don’t mind the company.”
His jaw swung open, his hand came forward. “It would be a—a distinct privilege. It would be a delight.”
Yes, a little kindness went far with Dr. Marquis. I remember how brightly his boots rang going up the stairs—the sound echoed through the whole house, that’s how small these government quarters can be. Everything that happens in one room becomes the property of all rooms.
Which meant that from his dining room roost, Artemus could track every step of our progress, would know the exact moment we reached the second-story landing. But would he know this? That his father would forget to bring a candle? And that the first light to present itself to us should be a night-lantern fixed high on the wall of a small, shuttered bedroom? A strange barren curdled space, where the only things visible were a wall clock (stopped at twelve minutes past three) and the outlines of a plain brass bed, stripped of everything but its mattress.
“Your son’s room?” I asked, turning on Dr. Marquis with a smile.
He allowed that it was.
“How nice for him,” I said. “A little retreat from the hurly-burly of cadet life.”
“As a matter of fact,” said the doctor, scratching his cheek, “Artemus stays here only on holidays. More credit to him. He told me once, he said, ‘Father, if I’m going to be a cadet, then by God, I’m going to live like one. No running home to Mother and Father every night, that’s not how a soldier makes his way. I shall be treated the same as all my comrades.’ ” Dr. Marquis tapped his chest and smiled. “How many men can lay claim to having such a son, eh?”
“Few indeed.”
Once again he leaned into me; once again the air grew bitter with onions. “I needn’t tell you, Mr. Landor, how my heart . . . swells to see him grown to such a man. Not cut from my cloth, no. Born to lead, anyone can see that. Yes, but we were looking for the monograph, weren’t we? This way, please.”
At the end of the hallway was Dr. Marquis’ bedroom. He stopped— made as if to knock—then retracted his hand.
“It has just occurred to me,” he whispered, “that my good bride is resting. Perhaps I’ll just tiptoe inside, if you don’t mind waiting here?”