The Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869)/Chapter 31
CHAPTER IV.
ANOTHER KIND OF DESERT.
IT was Weymouth which the boy had just entered. Weymouth then was not the respectable and fine Weymouth of to-day.
Ancient Weymouth could not boast, like the present one, of an irreproachable rectangular quay, with an inn and a statue in honour of George III.,—and this owing to the fact that George III. had not then been born. For the same reason, they had not yet fashioned on the side of the green hill to the east, by cutting away the turf and leaving the chalky soil exposed to the view, the "White Horse," an acre long, bearing the king upon his back,—still another work of art in honour of George III. These honours, however, were deserved. George III., having lost in his old age the mind he had never possessed in his youth, was not responsible for the calamities of his reign. He was little better than an idiot. So why not erect statues to him?
Weymouth, a hundred and eighty years ago, was about as symmetrical as a game of spillikins in confusion. In legends it is said that Astaroth travelled about the world, carrying on her back a wallet which contained everything, even good women in their houses. A goodly number of sheds thrown pell-mell from her bag would give an idea of quaint old Weymouth,—the good women in the sheds included. The Music Hall remains as a specimen of the buildings of that day. The whole town was composed of shapeless, overhanging buildings,—some with pillars, leaning one against the other for support against the sea-wind, and leaving between them narrow and winding lanes and passages, often flooded by the equinoctial tides. A heap of grandmother houses crowded round a grandfather church, such was Weymouth; a sort of old Norman village washed ashore on the coast of England. The traveller who entered the tavern, now replaced by the hotel, instead of paying his twenty-five francs for a fried sole and a bottle of wine, had to suffer the humiliation of eating a pennyworth of soup made of fish,—which soup, by-the-bye, was very good. Wretched fare!
The deserted child, carrying the foundling, passed through the first street, then the second, then the third. He raised his eyes, seeking in the upper stories and in the roofs a lighted window-pane; but all were closed and dark. At intervals he knocked at the doors. No one answered. Nothing so hardens the heart as for its owner to be snug and warm in bed. The noise and the shaking had at last awakened the infant. The boy knew this because he felt her suck his cheek. She did not cry, believing him her mother. He was about to turn and wander through the Scrambridge lanes, where there were then more cultivated plots than dwellings, more thorn-hedges than houses; but fortunately he struck into a passage which exists to this day near the Trinity schools. This passage led him to the water's edge, where there was a roughly built quay with a parapet, and on the right he made out a bridge. It was the bridge over the Wey, connecting Weymouth with Melcombe Regis, and under the arches of which the Backwater communicates with the harbour.
Weymouth, a hamlet, was then a suburb of Melcombe Regis, a city and port; now Melcombe Regis is a parish of Weymouth. The village has absorbed the city. It was the bridge which did the work. Bridges are strange instruments of suction, which absorb a population, and often swell one river-bank at the expense of its opposite neighbour.
The boy went to the bridge, which at that period was a covered wooden structure. He crossed it. Thanks to its roofing, there was no snow on the planks; his bare feet had a moment's comfort as they crossed them. Having passed over the bridge, he was in Melcombe Regis. There were fewer wooden houses than stone ones there. He was no longer in the village, he was in the city. The bridge opened on a rather fine street called St. Thomas's Street; he entered it. Here and there were high carved gables and shop-fronts. He set to knocking at the doors again: he had no strength left to call or shout.
At Melcombe Regis, as at Weymouth, no one was stirring. The doors were all carefully locked and barred; the windows were covered with shutters. Every precaution had been taken to avoid being aroused by disagreeable surprises. The little wanderer was suffering the indefinable depression caused by a sleeping town. Sleep has gloomy associates beyond this life: the decomposed thoughts of the sleepers float above them in a mist and combine with the possible, which perhaps has also the power of thought, as it floats in space. Hence comes bewilderment. Dreams, which may be compared to clouds, interpose their folds and their transparencies over that star, the mind. Above those closed eyelids, where vision has taken the place of sight, a sepulchral disintegration of outlines and appearances dilates itself into impalpability. Mysterious and diffused existences amalgamate themselves with life in sleep, that counterpart of death. Even he who sleeps not, feels a medium full of sinister life press upon him. The surrounding chimera, in which he suspects a reality, impedes him. The waking man, wending his way amidst the sleep-phantoms of others, has, or imagines that he has, a vague fear of contact with the invisible, and feels at every moment the obscure pressure of a hostile encounter which immediately dissolves. A sleeping town has something of the effect of a forest.
This is what is called being afraid without cause. Very naturally, a child is even more susceptible to this feeling than a man. The uneasiness of nocturnal fear, increased by the spectral houses, increased the weight of the burden under which the boy was struggling. He entered Conycar Lane, and perceived at the end of that passage the Backwater, which he mistook for the ocean; he no longer knew in what direction the sea lay. He retraced his steps, struck to the left by Maiden Street, and returned as far as St. Alban's Row. There he knocked violently at any house that he happened to pass. His blows, on which he was expending his last energies, were faint and irregular,—now ceasing for a time, now renewed as if in irritation. One voice answered,—that of Time. Three o'clock tolled slowly behind him from the old belfry of St. Nicholas. Then silence reigned again.
That no inhabitant should have opened his lattice may appear surprising. But we must remember that in January, 1790, they were just over a severe outbreak of the plague in London, and that the fear of receiving sick vagabonds caused a diminution of hospitality everywhere. People would not even open their windows for fear of inhaling the poison.
The boy felt the coldness of men more deeply than the coldness of the night. The coldness of men is intentional. He felt a sinking of heart which he had not experienced on the plain. Now he had entered into the midst of life, and yet remained alone. This was the height of misery. He had understood the pitiless desert, but the unrelenting town was too much to bear. The hour, the strokes of which he had just counted, had been another blow. It seemed to be a declaration of indifference, and as if Eternity were saying, "What does it matter to me?" He stopped, and it is probable that in that miserable minute he asked himself whether it would not be better to lie down there and die; but the little girl leaned her head against his shoulder, and fell asleep again. This blind confidence drove him on once more. He whom all supports were failing felt that he was himself a basis of support. Irresistible summons of duty! Neither such ideas nor such a situation belonged to his age. It is probable that he did not well understand them; it was merely a matter of instinct. He set out in the direction of Johnstone Row. But now he no longer walked; he dragged himself along. He left St. Mary's Street to the left, made zig-zags through lanes, and at the end of a winding passage found himself in a rather wide, open space. It was a piece of unimproved land,—probably the spot where Chesterfield Place now stands. The houses ended there. He perceived the sea on his right, and scarcely anything more of the town on his left.
What would become of him? Here was the country again! To the east great inclined planes of snow indicated the wide slopes of Radipole. Should he continue his journey; should he advance and re-enter the solitude; or should he turn back and re-enter the town. How was he to choose between the mute plain and the deaf city? The poor little despairing wanderer cast a piteous glance around him.
Suddenly he heard an ominous sound.