He seemed well on the way himself toward developing strong feelings toward the little dancer, Trippetta—another reason, I suppose, for him not to be too anxious to leave.
So we put more work into our act. We had rehearsed before simply to maintain the appearance of our announced roles. We had feared recognition, however, should we actually go onstage, since Von Kempelen knew us and there was always the possibility that Griswold or even Templeton had had some extra-physical means of summoning our likenesses for others to see. It did not seem worth taking chances. But the more we thought of it the more it seemed that masks or garish face-paint might not be out of order in a comic act.
Fortunately nothing like an organized schedule of performances existed. The prince or his steward called now and then, at any hour of the day or night, for one type of amusement or another. Also, many of the performers—musicians or jugglers usually—went freelancing among the crowd of guests, gathering scattered coins against the time when they should be free to leave the abbey and have a chance to spend them.
Peters was somewhat readier than I to take the stage, eager I suppose to do anything that would bring him into more frequent association with Trippetta. And so he actually accompanied a number of clowns and acrobats seeking to increase their number one evening, one of their members having suffered a broken leg during a particularly daring feat. I thought little of it, even on the following day when the troupe was sent for again. It was not until the prince began requesting solo performances of him that I grew concerned. As it turned out, I needn't have.
The motley costume concealed the inhumanly thick musculature of his arms and shoulders, and he displayed a talent I would never have expected for clowning. It was only a matter of days before he had become the prince's favorite jester.
Soon we were into March, and it became increasingly apparent—at least to me, in my garish garb, as I put Emerson through his paces—that Trippetta regarded Peters only as another of the freaks who appeared among the entertainers: amusing, but not to be taken seriously.
I'd even done a foolish and avuncular thing one day. Catching her aside following a performance, I did not exactly ask Trippetta her intentions toward Peters in so many words; but I had wanted to find where he stood in her regard, for having him smitten and mooning about as he was might well interfere with his ability to act and react quickly and with a clear head should the necessity arise.
She gave me her pert smile and curtsied.
"Yes, Sir Giant?" she responded to my salutation. "How may I serve?"
"Just a point of information, lovely miss," I said. "You must be aware of my friend Peters' attentions—"
"The jester? 'Twould be difficult not to, Sir Giant, for he is always there, whenever I turn—grinning like one demented, scraping, bowing, proffering a flower."
"He is very fond of you, Miss Trippetta. While your affairs are none of my affair, so to speak, friendship bids me exceed common civility and inquire as to your feelings on his regard. That is to say—"
"Do I feel that the fool is making a fool of himself?" she finished. "Fairly put, and the answer is yes, Sir Giant. I do not wish to hurt a countryman of his stature, but Prince Prospero himself has smiled upon me twice now and complimented my beauty. I have considerably higher hopes than an alliance with one who represents everything which caused me to flee the American Wilderness. I am, Sir Giant, a lady; and I feel my position in life may soon be elevated to reflect my tastes and talents."
"Thank you, Miss Trippetta," I acknowledged. "It is a refreshing thing to encounter in the midst of courtly circumlocution."
"You are welcome, Sir Giant," she said, granting me another curtsy. "And you might tell your friend that, having seen many, I deem him an extraordinary fool."
"I shall convey the compliment." I turned on my heel then and departed.
Later, when I summarized our conversation for Peters, removing my premeditation to make it seem more spontaneous, he only grinned his broadest demon's grin and applauded it as an example of her wit.
I realized then—perhaps had known all along—that talking was of no use, that he would break his heart over her one way or the other no matter what I said or how I said it.
I wished for Ligeia's counsel, or Valdemar's. But that would have to wait.
It was more than the place by which she walked to sing. Tonight she came to be alone, as more and more she did these troubled days. Barefoot, on the broad, brown expanse, she paced; and the sea boomed beside her and ebbed, the sky grown coppery mountains where cloud had been, echoes of that wave-clap out, out, out, returning sound for sea. Her contralto played against its lowering note as she turned and trod the emptied path of the whales, out through limp, damp weed, glass-slick stones of many colors, shells, skeletons, shipwrecks. It was among the bones of the sea, in a coral grove, that she found him—orange, red, green, and yellow still clinging to the dampness, like the distillation of all the rainbows arching centuries above. He looked away and dried his eyes when he felt that she was near.
Turning again, he regarded her.
"Lady," he said, "I am sorry."
"And I," she replied, "for I meant this as a place of joy."
"You are—"
"Annie, of course," she answered.
"But you're all grown!"
"So I am. Come here."
He did, and she held him.
"You'll be my mother, then?" he asked.
"Of course," she told him. "Anyone, Eddie. Anyone you need."
Abruptly, he wept again.
"I'd a dream," he said, "that I was grown, too. It hurt so... ."
"I know."
"I think that I will not go back. I believe that I shall dwell here forever."
"If you wish. It is always your home, wherever you may be."
After an hour or a year he drew away from her and turned.
"Do you hear it?" he asked.
The echo of the retreating sea still hung in the air about them, and she only nodded in reply.
"It calls to me."
"I know."
"I should go to it."
"No. You need not."
"Then I wish to. The rest is pain."
She caught up his hand.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I never meant the world should use you as it has. I had a dream. For us. It has been broken. You were caught, in a place of pain. I love you, Eddie. You are too pure a spirit for what the world has offered you."
"It has given me vision, Annie."
She looked away.
"Was it worth the price?" she asked.
He bowed and kissed her hand.
"Of course," he replied.
They listened to the echo of the melancholy, long, withdrawing roar. Then, "I must go now," he said.
"Bide a while."
"Then sing to me."
She sang, and singing made; the sea became the self that was her song. The tiger-shadows fell like bars about them.
"Thank you," he said, at length. "I love you, too, Annie. Always did, always will. I have to follow it now, though."
"No. You don't."
"Yes. I do. I know you can hold me, for this is your kingdom." His gaze fell upon their hands. "Please don't."
She studied the gray-eyed child's face, the light of forty years upon it, as if looking up from a coffin.
Then she opened her hand.
"Bon voyage, Eddie."
"Au revoir," he said; and, turning, he headed into the east, where the sea had gone and its voice thudded, warbled, then rose in pitch.
She turned the other way and walked back to the shore. The copper mountains turned to coal. The sky filled up and the lights came on. She sat on a cliff beneath their blaze and listened as the blood-warm tide came in.
IX
"Of all melancholy topics, what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?" Death was the obvious reply. "And when," I said, "is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?"... the answer, here also, is obvious—"When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world—and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover."