The Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869)/Chapter 67
BOOK IV.
THE CELL OF TORTURE.
CHAPTER I.
THE TEMPTATION OF SAINT GWYNPLAINE.
ONE jet of flame is scarcely visible in the darkness; another sets fire to a volcano. Some sparks are gigantic.
Gwynplaine read the letter, then he read it over again. Yes, the words were there, "I love you." Grim terrors chased each other through his mind. The first was, that he believed himself to be mad. He was mad; that was certain. He had just seen what had no existence. The twilight spectres were making game of him, poor wretch! The youth in scarlet was a will-o'-the-wisp. Sometimes at night, nothings condensed into flame come and laugh at us. Having had his laugh out, the visionary being had disappeared, and left Gwynplaine behind him, mad. Such are the freaks of darkness.
The second terror was, to find out that he was really in his right senses. A vision? Certainly not. How could that be? Had he not a letter in his hand? Did he not see an envelope, a seal, paper, and writing? Did he not know from whom it came? It was all plain enough. Some one took a pen and ink, and wrote. Some one lighted a taper, and sealed it with wax. Was not his name written on the letter, "To Gwynplaine"? The paper was scented. All was clear. Gwynplaine knew the little man. The dwarf was a page. The gleaming scarlet was a livery. The page had given him a rendezvous for the same hour on the morrow, at the corner of London Bridge. Was London Bridge an illusion? No, no; everything was plain. There was no delirium. It was all reality. Gwynplaine was perfectly clear in his mind. It was not a phantasmagoria suddenly dissolving above his head, and fading into nothingness; it was something that had really happened to him.
No, Gwynplaine was not mad, nor was he dreaming. He read the letter again. Well, yes. But then? That then was terror-striking. There was a woman who desired him! If so, let no one ever again pronounce the word incredible! A woman desire him! A woman who had seen his face; a woman who was not blind! And who was this woman? An ugly one? No; a beauty. A gypsy? No; a duchess!
What was it all about, and what could it all mean? What peril in such a triumph! And how was he to help plunging headlong into it? What! that woman? That siren, that goddess, that superb lady in the box, that light in the darkness! It was she. Yes; it was she!
His blood seemed to take fire throughout his veins. It was the beautiful unknown,—she who had so troubled his thoughts previously; and his first tumultuous feelings about this woman returned. Forgetfulness is nothing but a palimpsest: an incident happens unexpectedly and all that was effaced revives in the blanks of wondering memory.
Gwynplaine thought that he had dismissed this image from his remembrance, but he found that it was still there; she had put her mark in his brain, and without his suspecting it the lines had been graven deep by reverie. A certain amount of evil had been done, and this train of thought, thenceforth, perhaps, irreparable, he now resumed eagerly. What! she desired him? What! the princess descend from her throne, the idol from its shrine, the statue from its pedestal, the phantom from its cloud? What! From the depths of the impossible had this chimera come! This deity of the sky! This radiant being! This nereid all glistening with jewels! This proud and unattainable beauty from the height of her radiant throne, was bending down to Gwynplaine! She had checked her chariot of the dawn, drawn by turtle-doves and dragons, before Gwynplaine, and said to him, "Come!" What! this terrible glory of being the object of such abasement from the empyrean, for Gwynplaine! This woman, if he could give that name to a form so starlike and majestic, this woman proposed herself, gave herself, delivered herself up to him! Wonder of wonders! A goddess prostituting herself for him! Superb arms opening in a cloud to clasp him to the bosom of a goddess, and that without degradation! Such majestic creatures cannot be sullied. The gods bathe themselves pure in light; and this goddess who came to him knew what she was doing. She was not ignorant of the incarnate hideousness of Gwynplaine. She had seen the mask that formed his face; and yet that mask had not caused her to draw back. Gwynplaine was loved notwithstanding it! Here was a thing that far surpassed all the marvels of dreams. Gwynplaine was loved in consequence of his mask. Far from repulsing the goddess, his hideousness attracted her. He was not only loved, he was desired. He was more than accepted, he was chosen. He, chosen!
Where this woman dwelt, in a region of matchless splendour, and in a state of perfect freedom, there were princes in plenty, and she could have taken a prince; nobles, and she could have taken a noble; there were handsome, charming, and magnificent men, and she could have taken an Adonis: but whom had she chosen? Gnafron! She could have the mighty, six-winged seraphim, but she chose the larva crawling in the slime. On one side were royal highnesses and peers, grandeur, opulence, and glory; on the other, a mountebank,—but the mountebank won the day! What kind of scales could there be in the heart of this woman? By what measure did she weigh her love? She took off her ducal coronet and flung it at the feet of a clown! She took from her brow the Olympian aureole and placed it on the bristling head of a gnome! The world was turned topsy-turvy. The insects swarmed on high, the stars were scattered below, while the wonder-stricken Gwynplaine, overwhelmed by a flood of light and lying in the dust, was enshrined in glory. One all-powerful, indifferent to beauty and splendour, gave herself to a creature of night,—preferred Gwynplaine to Antinoüs. Impelled by curiosity, she entered the slums and even descended into them, and from this abdication of goddess-ship resulted this wonderful exaltation of the wretched. "You are hideous. I love you." These words touched Gwynplaine in the ugly spot of pride. Pride is the heel in which all heroes are vulnerable. Gwynplaine was flattered in his vanity as a monster. He was loved for his deformity. He, too, was the exception, as much, and perhaps more, than the Jupiters and the Apollos. He felt superhuman, and so much a monster as to be a god. Fearful bewilderment!
But who was this woman? What did he know about her? Everything and nothing. She was a duchess, that he knew; he knew, too, that she was beautiful and rich; that she had liveries, lackeys, pages, and footmen running with torches by the side of her coroneted carriage. He knew that she was in love with him,—at least, she said so. Of everything else he was ignorant. He knew her title, but not her name. He knew her wishes, but he knew nothing of her life. Was she married? Was she a widow or a maiden? Was she free? To what family did she belong? Were there snares, traps, dangers about her? Of the immorality existing on the heights of society; the caves on those summits, in which savage charmers dream amid the scattered skeletons of the loves which they have already preyed upon; of the extent of tragic cynicism to which the experiments of a woman may attain who believes herself to be beyond the reach of man,—of such things as these Gwynplaine had no idea. Nor had he even in his mind materials out of which to build up a conjecture, information concerning such things being very scanty in the social depths in which he lived. Still, he detected a shadow; he felt that a mist hung over all this brightness. Did he understand it? No. Could he guess at it? Still less. What was there behind that letter? One pair of folding-doors opening before him as another pair closed behind him, thus causing him a vague anxiety. On the one side an avowal; on the other an enigma,—avowal and enigma, which, like two mouths, one tempting, the other threatening, pronounce the same word, "Dare!"
Never had perfidious chance taken its measures better, nor timed more fitly the moment of temptation. Gwynplaine, moved by the influences of springtime, and by the sap rising in all things, was prompt to dream the dream of the flesh. The old Adam, who is not to be stamped out, and over whom none of us can triumph, was awaking in that backward youth, still a boy at twenty-four. It was just at the most stormy moment of the crisis that this offer was made him, and the naked bosom of the Sphinx appeared before his dazzled eyes. Youth is an inclined plane. Gwynplaine stooped, and something pushed him forward. What? The season and the night. Who? The woman. Were there no month of April, man would be a great deal more virtuous. The budding plants are a set of accomplices! Love is the thief, Spring the receiver.
Gwynplaine was deeply agitated. There is a kind of unpleasant smoke preceding sin, in which the conscience cannot breathe. The nausea of hell steals over virtue in temptation. The yawning abyss emits an exhalation which warns the strong and turns the weak giddy. Gwynplaine was suffering from this mysterious discomfort. Dilemmas, transient and at the same time stubborn, were floating before him. Sin, presenting itself obstinately again and again to his mind, was taking form. The morrow, midnight? London Bridge, the page? Should he go? "Yes," cried the flesh; "No," cried the soul.
Nevertheless, we must remark that, strange as it may appear at first sight, Gwynplaine never once put himself the question, "Should he go?" quite distinctly. Reprehensible actions are like over-strong brandies,—you cannot swallow them at a single draught. You set down your glass; you will finish it presently; there is a strange taste even about that first drop. One thing is certain, he felt something behind him pushing him forward towards the unknown, and he trembled. He could catch a faint glimpse of a crumbling precipice, and he drew back, stricken with terror. He closed his eyes. He tried hard to convince himself that the adventure had never occurred, and to persuade himself into doubting his reason. This was evidently the best plan; the wisest thing he could do was to believe himself mad. Fatal fever! Every man, surprised by the unexpected, has at times felt the throb of such tragic pulsations. The observer ever listens with anxiety to the echoes resounding from the dull strokes of the battering-ram of destiny striking against a conscience.
One detail, however, is noteworthy: the effrontery of the adventure, which perhaps might have shocked a depraved man, never struck Gwynplaine. He saw only the grandeur of the woman. Alas! he felt flattered. His vanity assured him of victory only. To dream that he was the object of unchaste desire, rather than of love, would have required much greater wit than innocence possesses. He could not grasp the animal side of the goddess's nature.
A thousand conflicting ideas rushed into Gwynplaine's brain, now following each other singly, now crowding together. Then quiet reigned again, and he would lean his head on his hands, in a kind of mournful attention, like one who contemplates a landscape by night. Suddenly he realized that he was no longer thinking. His reverie had reached that point of utter bewilderment in which everything disappears from view. He remembered, too, that he had not entered the inn, and it was probably about two o'clock in the morning. He placed the letter which the page had brought him in his side-pocket, but perceiving that it was next his heart, he drew it out again, crumpled it up, and placed it in a pocket of his hose. He then directed his steps towards the inn, which he entered stealthily, and without awaking little Govicum, who had fallen asleep on the table, with his arms for a pillow, while waiting for him. He closed the door, lighted a candle at the lamp, fastened the bolt, turned the key in the lock, taking, mechanically, all the precautions usual to a man returning home late, ascended the staircase of the Green Box, slipped into the old hovel which he used as a bedroom, looked at Ursus, who was asleep, blew out his candle, but did not go to bed.
Thus an hour passed away. Weary, at length, and fancying that bed and sleep were synonymous, he laid his head upon the pillow without undressing, making darkness the concession of closing his eyes. But the storm of emotions which assailed him had not ceased for an instant. Sleeplessness is a torture which night inflicts upon man. Gwynplaine suffered greatly. For the first time in his life, he was not satisfied with himself. Secret loathing mingled with gratified vanity. What was he to do. Day broke at last; he heard Ursus get up, but did not raise his eyelids. No truce for him, however. The letter was ever in his mind. Every word of it came back to him. In certain violent mental conflicts, thought becomes a liquid. It is convulsed, it heaves, and something like the dull roaring of the waves rises from it. Flood and flow, sudden shocks and whirls, the hesitation of the wave before the rock; hail and rain; clouds with the light shining through their breaks; the petty flights of useless foam; the wild swell broken in an instant; great efforts lost; wreck appearing all around; darkness and universal dispersion,—these things which are true of the sea, are equally true of man. Gwynplaine was a prey to such a storm.
In the height of his agony, and while his eyes were still closed, he heard an exquisite voice asking, "Are you asleep, Gwynplaine?" He opened his eyes with a start and sat up. Dea was standing in the half-open door. An ineffable smile was in her eyes and on her lips. She stood there, charming in the unconscious serenity of her radiance. Then came, as it were, a sacred moment. Gwynplaine gazed on her, startled, dazzled, awakened. Awakened from what? From sleep? No, from sleeplessness. It was she, it was Dea; and suddenly he felt in the depths of his being a cessation of the storm and the sublime victory of good over evil. The miracle of the look from on high was accomplished; the blind girl, the sweet light-bearer, with no effort beyond her mere presence, dispelled the darkness within him; the curtain of cloud was dispersed from his soul as by an invisible hand, and a sky of azure, as though by celestial enchantment, again overspread Gwynplaine's conscience. In a moment he became, by the mere presence of that angel, the noble and good Gwynplaine, the innocent man.