The Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869)/Chapter 66
CHAPTER IX.
ABYSSUS ABYSSUM VOCAT.
ANOTHER face had disappeared,—Tom-Jim-Jack's. He had suddenly ceased to frequent the Tadcaster Inn.
Persons so situated as to be able to observe phases of fashionable life in London, might have seen about this time that the "Weekly Gazette" announced the departure of Lord David Dirry-Moir, by order of her Majesty, to take command of his frigate in the white squadron then cruising off the coast of Holland.
Ursus was much troubled by Tom-Jim-Jack's absence. He had not seen the sailor since the day on which he had driven off in the same carriage with the lady of the gold piece. It was, indeed, an enigma who this Tom-Jim-Jack who carried off duchesses under his arm could be. What an interesting investigation! What questions to propound! What things to be said! Therefore Ursus said not a word.
Ursus, who had had experience, knew the smart caused by rash curiosity. Curiosity ought always to be proportioned to the rank of the curious. By listening, we risk our ear; by watching, we risk our eye. Prudent people neither hear nor see. Tom-Jim-Jack had got into a princely carriage. The tavern-keeper had seen him. It appeared so extraordinary that the sailor should sit by the lady that it made Ursus circumspect. The caprices of those in high life should be sacred to the lower orders. The reptiles called the poor had best keep quiet in their holes when they see anything out of the way. Quiescence is a power. Shut your eyes, if you have not the luck to be blind; stop up your ears, if you have not the good fortune to be deaf; hold your tongue, if you have not the good fortune to be mute. The great do what they like, the humble what they can. Let the mysterious pass unnoticed. Do not annoy the gods and goddesses. Do not interrogate appearances. Have a profound respect for idols. Do not gossip about the lessenings or increasings which take place in the upper regions, or about motives of which we are ignorant. Such things are mostly optical delusions to us inferior creatures. Metamorphoses are the business of the gods; the transformations and disorders of great persons who float above us are difficult to comprehend, and perilous to study. Too much attention irritates the Olympians engaged in their gyrations of amusement or fancy, and a thunderbolt may teach you that the bull you are too curiously examining is Jupiter. Do not lift the folds of the stone-coloured mantles of those terrible powers. Indifference is the truest wisdom. Do not stir, and you will be safe. Feign death, and they will not kill you. Therein lies the wisdom of the insect. Ursus practised it.
The tavern-keeper, who was puzzled as well, questioned Ursus one day. "Do you notice that Tom-Jim-Jack never comes here now?"
"Indeed!" said Ursus. "I had not remarked it."
Master Nicless made an observation in an undertone, no doubt touching on the intimacy between the ducal carriage and Tom-Jim-Jack,—a remark which, as it might have been irreverent and dangerous, Ursus took good care not to hear.
Still, Ursus was too much of an artist not to regret Tom-Jim-Jack. He felt some disappointment. He told his feelings to Homo, of whose discretion alone he felt certain. He whispered into the ear of the wolf: "Since Tom-Jim-Jack has ceased to come, I feel a blank as a man, and a chill as a poet." This outpouring of his heart to a friend relieved Ursus. His lips were sealed before Gwynplaine, who, however, made no allusion to Tom-Jim-Jack. The fact was that Tom-Jim-Jack's presence or absence mattered little to Gwynplaine, absorbed as he was in Dea.
Forgetfulness fell more and more on Gwynplaine. As for Dea, she had not even suspected the existence of a vague trouble. At the same time, no more cabals or complaints against the Laughing Man were spoken of. Hate seemed to have let go its hold. All was tranquil in and around the Green Box. No more opposition from strollers, merry-andrews, nor priests; no more grumbling outside. Their success was unclouded. Destiny allows of such sudden serenity. The brilliant happiness of Gwynplaine and Dea was for the present absolutely cloudless. Little by little it had risen to a degree which admitted of no increase. There is one word which expresses the situation,—apogee. Happiness, like the sea, has its high tide. The worst thing for the perfectly happy is that it recedes.
There are two ways of being inaccessible,—being too high and being too low. At least as much, perhaps, as the first, is the second to be desired. More surely than the eagle escapes the arrow, the animalcule escapes being crushed. This security of insignificance, if it had ever existed on earth, was enjoyed by Gwynplaine and Dea, and never before had it been so complete. They lived on, daily more and more ecstatically wrapt in each other. The heart saturates itself with love as with a divine salt that preserves it, and from this arises the incorruptible constancy of those who have loved each other from the dawn of their lives, and the affection which keeps its freshness in old age. There is such a thing as the embalmment of the heart. It is of Daphnis and Chloe that Philemon and Baucis are made. The old age, of which we speak, evening resembling morning, was evidently reserved for Gwynplaine and Dea. In the mean time they were young.
Ursus watched this love affair as a doctor watches a case. He had what was termed in those days a hippocratic expression of countenance. He fixed his sagacious eyes on Dea, so fragile and pale, and growled out, "It is lucky that she is happy." At other times he said, "It is fortunate for her health's sake." He shook his head, and at times read attentively the chapters treating of heart-disease in Avicenna, translated by Vopiscus Fortunatus, Louvain, 1650, an old worm-eaten book of his.
Dea, when fatigued, suffered much from perspirations and drowsiness, and took a daily siesta, as we have already said. One day, while she was lying asleep on the bearskin, and Gwynplaine was out, Ursus bent down softly and applied his ear to Dea's heart. He seemed to listen for a few minutes, and then stood up, murmuring, "She must not have any shock. It would be sure to go to the weak spot."
The crowd continued to flock to the performances of "Chaos Vanquished." The success of the Laughing Man seemed inexhaustible. Every one rushed to see him,—not from Southwark only, but even from other parts of London. The general public began to mingle with the usual audience, which no longer consisted exclusively of sailors and drivers. In the opinion of Master Nicless, who was familiar with crowds, there were many gentlemen and baronets disguised as common people in this one. Disguise is one of the chief amusements of the great, and was greatly in fashion at that period. This admixture of an aristocratic element with the mob was a good sign, and showed that the popularity of the show was extending to London. The fame of Gwynplaine must have penetrated into the great world. Such was the fact. Nothing was talked of but the Laughing Man. He was the subject of comment even at the Mohawk Club, frequented by noblemen.
The inmates of the Green Box had no idea of all this. They were content to be happy. It was bliss to Dea to touch, as she did every evening, the crisp, tawny locks of Gwynplaine. In love there is nothing like habit. The whole of life is concentrated in it. The reappearance of the stars is the custom of the universe. Creation is nothing but a mistress, and the sun a lover. Light is a dazzling caryatide supporting the world. Every day, for one sublime moment, the earth shrouded by night rests on the rising sun. Dea, blind, felt a similar return of warmth and hope within her when she placed her hand on Gwynplaine's head. To adore each other in seclusion, to love in the plenitude of silence,—who would not be reconciled to such an eternity?
One evening Gwynplaine, feeling within him that overflow of felicity, which like the intoxication of perfumes causes a sort of delicious faintness, was strolling, as he usually did after the performance, in the meadow a few hundred yards from the Green Box. Sometimes in those high tides of feeling in our souls we feel that we would fain pour out the sensations of the overflowing heart. The night was dark but clear. The stars were shining. The whole fair-ground was deserted. Sleep and forgetfulness reigned in the vans which were scattered over the Tarrinzeau Field. One light alone was unextinguished. It was a lamp at the Tadcaster Inn, the door of which was left ajar to admit Gwynplaine on his return.
Midnight had just struck in the five parishes of Southwark, with the different intervals and tones of their various bells. Gwynplaine was dreaming of Dea. Of whom else should he dream? But that evening, feeling singularly troubled, and full of a charm which was at the same time a pang, he was thinking of Dea as a man thinks of a woman. He reproached himself for this. It seemed to be a lack of respect to her. Sweet and imperious impatience! He was crossing the invisible barrier, on one side of which stands the virgin, on the other, the wife. He questioned himself anxiously. A blush, as it were, overspread his mind. The Gwynplaine of long ago had been transformed by degrees and unconsciously. The modest youth was becoming strangely agitated. We have an ear of light, into which the spirit speaks; and an ear of darkness, into which the instinct speaks. Into the latter strange voices were now whispering. However pure-minded the youth may be who dreams of love, a certain grossness of the flesh eventually comes between him and his dream. Intentions lose their transparency. The secret desires implanted by nature will make themselves heard. Gwynplaine felt an indescribable yearning of the flesh, and Dea was scarcely flesh. In this fever, which he knew to be unhealthy, he transfigured Dea into a more material aspect, and tried to exaggerate her seraphic form into feminine loveliness. It is thou, woman, that we require.
Love will not permit too much of paradise. It requires the fevered skin, the troubled life, the unbound hair, the electrical and irreparable kiss, the clasp of desire. The sidereal is embarrassing, the ethereal is cumbersome. Too much of the heavenly in love is like too much fuel on a fire,—the flame suffers from it. Gwynpiaine fell into an exquisite reverie,—Dea to be clasped in his arms! Dea clasped in them! He heard nature in his heart crying out for her. Like a Pygmalion modelling a Galatea out of the azure, in the depth of his soul he retouched the chaste outlines of Dea's form,—outlines with too much of heaven, too little of Eden about them; for Eden is Eve, and Eve was a female, a carnal mother, a terrestrial nurse, the sacred womb of future generations, the breast of unfailing milk, the rocker of the cradle of the new-born world; and wings are incompatible with the bosom of woman. Virginity is but the hope of maternity.
Still, in Gwynplaine's dreams heretofore, Dea had been enthroned above flesh. Now, however, he made wild efforts in thought to draw her downwards by that thread, sex, which binds every girl to earth. Not one of these birds is free. Dea was not exempt from this law, surely; and Gwynplaine, though he scarcely acknowledged it, felt a vague desire that she should submit to it. This desire possessed him in spite of himself, and with an ever-recurring persistency. He pictured Dea as woman. He came to the point of regarding her under a hitherto unheard-of form,—as a creature no longer of ecstasy alone, but of voluptuousness as well. He was ashamed of this visionary desecration. It was like an attempt at profanation. He resisted its assault. He turned from it, but it returned again and again. He felt as if he were committing a criminal assault. To him, Dea was encompassed as by a cloud.
It was in April, when even the spine has its dreams. He rambled on with an uncertain step in the solitude. To have no one by is an incentive to wander. Whither flew his thoughts? He would not have dared to own it to himself. To heaven? No, and yet you were looking down on him, ye stars!
Why talk of a man in love? Rather say a man possessed. To be possessed by the devil is the exception; to be possessed by a woman, the rule. Every man has to bear this alienation of himself. What a sorceress a pretty woman is! The true name of love is captivity. Man is made prisoner by the soul of a woman, and by her flesh as well,—sometimes even more by the flesh than by the soul. The soul is the true-love; the flesh, the mistress. We slander the devil. It was not he who tempted Eve. It was Eve who tempted him. The woman began it; Lucifer was passing by quietly. He perceived the woman, and became Satan. The flesh is the covering of the soul. It entices, strange to say, by its very modesty. Nothing could be more distracting. It is full of shame, the hussy!
It was passion rather than love which was then agitating Gwynplaine, and holding him in its power. What dark things lurk beneath the fairness of Venus! Something within him was calling aloud for Dea,—Dea the maiden, Dea the other half of a man, Dea flesh and flame! This cry was almost driving away the angel. Mysterious crisis through which all love must pass, and in which the Ideal is imperilled. Moment of heavenly corruption! Gwynplaine's love of Dea was becoming nuptial. Virgin love is but a transition. The moment was come. Gwynplaine coveted the woman. He coveted a woman! Precipice of which one sees but the first gentle slope. Luckily, there was no woman for Gwynplaine but Dea. The only one he desired. The only one who could desire him.
Gwynplaine felt that vague and mighty tremour which is the vital claim of infinity. Besides, there was the aggravation of the spring. He was breathing the nameless odours of the starry darkness. He walked on with a feeling of wild delight. The wandering perfumes of the rising sap, the soft irradiations which float in shadow, the distant opening of nocturnal flowers, the complicity of little hidden nests, the murmurs of waters and of leaves, soft sighs rising from all things, the freshness, the warmth, and the mysterious awakening of April and May, is the vast diffusion of sex murmuring in whispers their proposals of voluptuousness, till the soul reels beneath the temptation to which it is subjected. Any one seeing Gwynplaine walk, would have said, "Look at that drunken man." He almost staggered under the weight of his own emotions, of the springtime influence, and of the night.
The solitude in the bowling-green was so peaceful that at times Gwynplaine spoke aloud. The consciousness that there is no listener induces speech. He walked with slow steps, his head bent down, his hands behind him, the left hand in the right, the fingers open. Suddenly he felt something slipped between his fingers. He turned round quickly. In his hand was a paper, and in front of him a man. It was this man who, coming up behind him with the stealthy tread of a cat, had placed the paper in his fingers. The paper was a letter. This man, whom he saw quite clearly in the starlight, was small, chubby-cheeked, young, sedate, and dressed in a scarlet livery, exposed from top to toe through the opening of a long grey cloak, then called a capenoche,—a Spanish word contracted; in French it was cape-de-nuit. His head was covered by a crimson cap, like the skull-cap of a cardinal, on which servitude was indicated by a strip of lace. On this cap was a plume of tisserin feathers. He stood motionless before Gwynplaine, like a dark outline in a dream.
Gwynplaine recognized the duchess's page. Before he could utter an exclamation of surprise, he heard the thin voice of the page, at once child-like and feminine in its tone, saying to him:—
"At this hour to-morrow, be at the corner of London Bridge. I will be there to conduct you—"
"Whither?" demanded Gwynplaine.
"Where you are expected."
Gwynplaine glanced down at the letter, which he was holding mechanically in his hand. When he looked up, the page was no longer near him. He perceived a shadowy form rapidly disappearing in the distance. It was the little valet. He turned the corner of the street, and solitude reigned again. When Gwynplaine saw the page vanish, he again looked at the letter. There are moments in our lives when what happens seems but the figment of a dream. Surprise keeps us for a moment oblivious to the real facts.
Gwynplaine raised the letter, as if to read it, but soon perceived that he could not do so for two reasons,—first, because he had not broken the seal; and, secondly, because it was too dark. It was some minutes before he remembered that there was a lamp at the inn. He took a few steps sideways, as if he knew not whither he was going. A somnambulist to whom a phantom had just given a letter might walk as he did. At last he made up his mind. He ran, rather than walked, towards the inn, paused in the light which streamed through the half-open door, and again examined the closed letter by it. There was no design on the seal, and on the envelope was written, "To Gwynplaine." He broke the seal, tore open the envelope, unfolded the letter, put it directly in the light, and read as follows:
You are hideous; I am beautiful. You are a player; I am a duchess. I am of the highest; you, of the lowest; nevertheless I love you! Come!