The True Story of Bluebeard

‘I MUST confess,’ said the Lady in Blue, ‘that I have always had a certain penchant for Bluebeard. I cut his picture out of my very best fairy-book and hung it over my bed as if he were my dearest saint, and I found his long blue beard quite charming. But the best of all was, of course, his secret chamber, and for this alone I would have gladly married him. He was my favorite hero, and not even Rochester could in my Jane-Eyre days deprive him of all my affections. What a pity there are no Bluebeards nowadays!’

‘Why, there are nothing but Bluebeards,’ answered the Gentleman in Gray. ‘Real Bluebeards, I mean, because the fairy story is a very incorrect rendering of the actual event. The real version has come to us through newly discovered Hittitic and Chaldaic documents, and I flatter myself on being one of the few persons who know the correct foundations of your beloved fairy tale.’

‘ Well, then tell it tome,’ commanded the Lady in Blue; ‘and oh! I do hope that the true story of Bluebeard is just as exciting and just as terrible as the one in my old fairy books.’

‘It is sadder,’ said the Gentleman in Gray, ‘and, consequently, truer. About its terribleness opinions may differ; to some it may seem only ludicrously absurd, others, perhaps, will perceive real tragedy in my version. Being myself no critic, but simply a chronicler, I shall give you the thing without any comment.

‘You have heard of King Cophetua — the one who married the beggar-maid? I am going to speak about his son, Cophetua II, who inherited from his mother certain little peculiarities and eccentricities, quite harmless in themselves, but in their final consequences rather distressing. He had wedded the daughter of a neighboring king, a most charming princess, and bringing her to his palace he gave her, according to the customs of the country, the keys to all the different rooms, and said then with a certain serious playfulness, “My beloved, this house is now yours, and I beg you to take entire possession of it. There is only one little room to which I keep the key myself, — a very tiny little room, indeed, — but no one, not even you, must enter this secret and forbidden chamber. As you love me, I know you will do what I ask of you.”

‘ The young Queen was deeply impressed. Cophetua was a most agreeable man and she had always rather liked him, but now she looked upon him with new eyes, and he seemed imbued with a strange and mysterious glamour that fanned her love to real passion. What secret the forbidden chamber might contain, she could, of course, not even guess, but her imagination created for her a thousand possibilities, one more interesting than the other, and Cophetua was changed out of a commonplace, everyday king into a being full of romance and mystery. Whenever there was a slight cloud on the brow of the King the young Queen said to herself with a little sigh, “Ah, the secret chamber!” Whenever his mind seemed to wander she thought him to be brooding about something in the forbidden room; and as she had decided that the mysterious thing was some deep sorrow or some bitter memory, she did everything a loving woman could think of to make him forget what he remembered so tenaciously. She was of quite unsurpassable tenderness, she had gestures full of allurement, and she found words that were one delicious caress. What wonder that poor Cophetua fell quite madly in love with his little wife and thought himself the happiest of all mortals?

‘ But as soon as the young Queen saw that her husband found all the delight in the world in her and her little person, her pity, her tenderness, her sympathy abated somewhat, while her curiosity awakened and she wanted to know what the secret chamber contained; she wanted to know what it was that her charm had conquered. Several times she begged Cophetua to tell her, but his answers were so unsatisfactory that one day she took the little key from its hiding-place and —’

He made an impressive pause.

‘And,’ the Lady in Blue repeated impatiently.

‘Ah, you want me to continue,’ sighed the Gentleman in Gray. ‘So be it, then. I said that the little Queen took the key from its hiding-place, walked quietly to the mysterious door, turned the key, opened the door, looked, and gave a shrill scream. The room was absolutely empty — she saw nothing in it, nothing at all.’

‘And that is the end?’ asked the Lady in Blue.

‘It is the end. I could still add that they lived unhappily ever after; that the Queen never forgave the King for giving her nothing to forgive; that she treated him henceforth as a quantité négligeable, and spoke with a certain asperity about matrimony and married life — but these are things which you can picture to yourself. I gave you the facts and I am done.’

‘Then permit me to say,’ exclaimed the Lady in Blue, ‘ that you have told me a very foolish story. If there was nothing to hide, why should there be a secret chamber? And if the Queen found no horrors, why should she not rejoice rather than turn into a shrew? And why did you say in the beginning that all men are Bluebeards nowadays ? ’

The Gentleman in Gray looked quite bewildered.

‘You ask too much at once,’ he protested. ‘Let me answer one question at a time. You asked why there should be a secret chamber if there was nothing to hide. My dear friend, look at us all — who of us has in truth hidden, secret depths in his nature, deep wells into which he himself hardly dares to look? Not one in a thousand. As our friend Monsieur Bergeret says, we are ”médiocrement bon et médiocrement mauvais.” And yet who of us is satisfied to be commonplace and uninteresting, and who does not at least hint that there is some chamber in the castle of his being to which he will never surrender the key? And what horror is sharper, what disenchantment more poignant, than when the one who rapturously believed in the secret room and all the wonders and terrors of it, at last finds out that there is nothing in it, nothing at all, and when all the charm she dreamed of, all the mystery she guessed at, all the terrors she feared, dissolve into the boring emptiness of absolute mediocrity? And was I not thus right to say that we are all Bluebeards — poor pretenders who know only too well their own shallowness, and yet want to drape themselves in the purple of romance and mystery?’

The Lady in Blue looked deeply dissatisfied.

‘You may be right,’ she said; ‘but I ask you if it is wise to tell me such things? I ask you if it is wise to show me that, after all, you are only a scoffer and that wherever I see the god you see nothing but satyrs?’

The Gentleman in Gray smiled apologetically, and his smile made him, suddenly, look very much younger.

‘You are right,’ he laughed; ‘perhaps it is not wise; but my scoffing, you see, my scoffing is just my secret chamber.’

And there was enough jest in his words to make the Lady in Blue smile, and enough seriousness to make her blush, while the little God of Love stood in a dim corner biding his time.