The Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869)/Chapter 60
CHAPTER III.
WHERE THE PASSER-BY REAPPEARS.
THE Green Box, as we have just seen, had arrived in London, and was now established in Southwark. Ursus had been tempted by the bowling-green, which had one great recommendation,—it was always fair-day there, even in winter.
The dome of St. Paul's was a delight to Ursus. London, take it all in all, has some good in it. It was a brave thing to dedicate a cathedral to Saint Paul. The real cathedral saint is Saint Peter. Saint Paul is suspected of imagination, and in matters ecclesiastical imagination means heresy. Saint Paul is a saint only by virtue of extenuating circumstances. He entered heaven only through the artists' door. A cathedral is a sign. St. Peter is the sign of Rome, the city of dogma; St. Paul that of London, the city of schism.
Ursus, whose philosophy had arms so long that it embraced everything, was a man who appreciated these shades of difference; and his attraction towards London arose, perhaps, from a certain admiration for Saint Paul.
The yard of the Tadcaster Inn had taken Ursus' fancy. It might have been made for the Green Box. It was a theatre ready-made. It was square, enclosed by the inn on three sides and on the fourth by a wall. Against this wall was placed the Green Box, which they had been able to draw into the yard, owing to the height of the gate. A large wooden piazza roofed over, and supported on posts, on which the rooms of the first story opened, ran round the three sides of the interior façade of the house, making two right angles. The windows of the ground-floor made boxes, the pavement of the court, the pit; and the balcony the gallery. The Green Box, placed against the wall, had quite an audience hall in front of it. It was very like the Globe, where they played "Othello," "King Lear," and "The Tempest." In a corner behind the Green Box there was a stable. Ursus had made his arrangements with the tavern-keeper. Master Nicless, who, owing to his respect for the law, would not admit the wolf without charging him extra.
The placard, "Gwynplaine, the Laughing Man," taken from its nail in the Green Box, was hung up close to the sign of the inn. The sitting-room of the tavern had, as we have seen, an inside door, which opened into the court. By the door was constructed off-hand, by means of an empty barrel, an office for the door-keeper, who was sometimes Fibi, and sometimes Vinos. It was managed much as at present,—pay and pass in. Under the placard announcing the Laughing Man was a piece of wood, painted white, on which was written with charcoal in large letters the title of Ursus' grand piece, "Chaos Vanquished." In the centre of the balcony, precisely opposite the Green Box, and in a compartment having for an entrance a window reaching to the ground, there had been partitioned off a space "for the nobility." It was large enough to hold two rows of spectators, ten in each row. "We are in London," said Ursus. "We must be prepared for the gentry." He had furnished this box with the best chairs in the inn, and had placed in the centre a large arm-chair covered with plush, in case some alderman's wife should come.
They began their performances. The crowd immediately flocked to them, but the compartment for the nobility remained empty. With that exception their success became so great that no showman had ever seen anything to equal it. All Southwark ran in crowds to admire the Laughing Man.
The merry-andrews and mountebanks of Tarrinzeau Field were aghast at Gwynplaine. The effect he created was similar to that of a sparrow-hawk flapping his wings in a cage of goldfinches, and feeding in their seed-trough. Gwynplaine gobbled up their patrons. Besides the small fry, such as the swallowers of swords, and the grimace makers, real performances took place on the green. There was a circus resounding from morning till night with the blare of all sorts of instruments,—psalteries, drums, rebecks, micamons, timbrels, reeds, dulcimers, gongs, chevrettes, bagpipes, German horns, English eschaqueils, pipes, flutes, and flageolets. In a large round tent were some tumblers, who could not equal our present climbers of the Pyrenees,—Dulma, Bordenave, and Meylonga,—who descend from the peak of Pierrefitte to the plateau of Limaçon, an almost perpendicular height. There was a travelling menagerie, with a performing tiger, who, when struck by the keeper, snapped at the whip and tried to swallow the lash. But even this comedian with jaws and claws was eclipsed in success. Curiosity, applause, receipts, crowds,—the Laughing Man monopolized everything. It all came about in the twinkling of an eye. Nothing was thought of but the Green Box.
"'Chaos Vanquished' is 'Chaos Victor,'" said Ursus, appropriating half Gwynplaine's success, and thus taking the wind out of his sails, as they say at sea. The success was prodigious. Still, it remained local. Fame does not cross the sea easily. It took a hundred and thirty years for the name of Shakspeare to penetrate from England into France. The sea is a wall; and if Voltaire—a thing which he very much regretted having done when it was too late—had not built a bridge over to Shakspeare, Shakspeare might still be in England, on the other side of the wall, the captive of an insular glory.
The glory of Gwynplaine had not crossed London Bridge. It was not great enough to re-echo through the city,—at least not yet. But Southwark ought to have sufficed to satisfy the ambition of a clown.
"The money bag grows perceptibly heavier," Ursus remarked one day.
They played "Ursus Rursus" and "Chaos Vanquished." Between the acts, Ursus exhibited his power as an engastrimythist, and executed marvels of ventriloquism. He imitated every sound heard in the audience, each snatch of song or exclamation, so perfectly as to amaze and startle the speaker or singer himself; and now and then he copied the hubbub of the public, and whistled as if there were a crowd of people within him. These were remarkable talents. Besides this, he harangued like Cicero, as we have just seen, sold his drugs, prescribed for maladies, and even healed the sick. Southwark was enthralled.
Ursus was satisfied, but by no means astonished with the applause of Southwark. "They are the ancient Trinobantes," he said. Then he added, "I must not confound them, for delicacy of taste, with the Atrobates, who people Berkshire, the Belgians, who inhabited Somersetshire, or the Parisians, who founded York."
At every performance the yard of the inn, transformed into a pit, was filled with a ragged and enthusiastic audience. It was composed of watermen, chairmen, coachmen, and bargemen and sailors, just ashore, spending their wages in feasting and debauchery. In it there were felons, ruffians, and blackguards,—these last soldiers condemned for some breach of discipline to wear their red coats, which were lined with black, inside out, hence the name of blackguard, which the French turn into blagueurs. All these flowed from the street into the theatre, and poured back from the theatre into the tap-room. The emptying of tankards did not decrease the company's success.
Amid what it is customary to call the scum, there was one taller than the rest, bigger, stronger, less poverty-stricken, broader in the shoulders; dressed like the common people, but not ragged; admiring and applauding everything to the skies, clearing his way with his fists, wearing a disordered periwig, swearing, shouting, joking, never dirty, and, if need be, ready to blacken an eye or pay for a bottle. This frequenter was the passer-by whose enthusiastic remark has already been recorded.
This connoisseur seemed to have taken an immense fancy to the Laughing Man. He did not attend every performance, but when he came he led the public; applause grew into acclamation; success soared not to the roof, for there was none, but to the clouds, for there were plenty of them,—which clouds (seeing that there was no roof) sometimes wept over the masterpiece of Ursus. His enthusiasm caused Ursus to notice this man, and Gwynplaine too observed him. They had a great friend in this unknown visitor. Ursus and Gwynplaine wanted to know him,—or at least to know who he was.
One evening Ursus, being in the side scene, which was the kitchen-door of the Green Box, and seeing Master Nicless standing by him, pointed this man out to the tavern-keeper and asked,—
"Do you know that man?"
"Of course I do."
"Who is he?"
"A sailor."
"What is his name?" said Gwynplaine, interrupting.
"Tom-Jim-Jack," replied the inn-keeper.
Then, as he re-descended the steps at the back of the Green Box, to enter the inn, Master Nicless let fall this profound reflection, so deep as to be unintelligible: "What a pity that he is not a lord! He would make a famous scoundrel."
Otherwise, although established in the tavern, the group in the Green Box had in no way altered their manner of living, and maintained their isolated habits. Except a few words exchanged now and then with the tavern-keeper, they held no communication with any of the persons who were living, either permanently or temporarily, in the inn; and continued to hold themselves rigorously aloof.
During their stay at Southwark, Gwynplaine had made it his habit, after the performance and the supper of both family and horses,—when Ursus and Dea had gone to bed in their respective apartments,—to enjoy the fresh air of the bowling-green a little, between eleven o'clock and midnight. A certain restlessness of spirit impels us to take walks at night, and to saunter about under the stars. There is a mysterious expectancy in youth. Hence it is that we are prone to wander out in the night, without an object. At that hour there was no one in the fair-ground, except, perhaps, some reeling drunkard, making wavering shadows in dark corners. The empty taverns were shut up, and the lower room in the Tadcaster Inn was dark, except where, in some corner, a solitary candle lighted a last reveller. A faint light gleamed through the window-shutters of the half-closed tavern as Gwynplaine, pensive, content, and dreaming, enveloped in a haze of divine joy, paced backwards and forwards in front of the half-open door. Of what was he thinking? Of Dea—of nothing—of everything. He never wandered far from the Green Box, being held, as by an invisible thread, to Dea. A few steps away from it was far enough for him. When he returned, he generally found all the inmates of the Green Box asleep, and so went straight to bed himself.