The Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869)/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VI.
STRUGGLE BETWEEN DEATH AND NIGHT.
THE child stood before this thing with staring eyes, dumb and wondering. To a man it would have been a gibbet; to the child it was an apparition. Where a man would have seen a corpse, the child saw a spectre. Besides, he did not understand.
The attractions of mysterious horrors are manifold. There was one on the summit of that hill. The child took one step, then another; he ascended, wishing all the while to descend; and he approached, wishing all the while to retreat. When he got close under the gibbet, he looked up and examined the spectre. It was tarred, and here and there it shone. The child could distinguish the face. That too was coated with pitch; and this mask, which appeared viscous and sticky, varied its aspect even in the night shadows. The child saw the mouth, which was a hole ; the nose, which was a hole; the eyes, which were holes.
The body was wrapped, and apparently corded up, in coarse canvas, soaked in naphtha. The canvas was mouldy and torn. A knee protruded through it; a rent disclosed the ribs. The face was the colour of earth; slugs, wandering over it, had traced across it vague ribbons of silver. The skull, cracked and fractured, gaped like a huge rotten apple. The teeth were still human, for they retained a laugh; the remains of a cry seemed to linger in the open mouth. There were a few hairs of beard on the cheek. The inclined head had an air of attention. Some repairs had recently been made; the face had been tarred afresh, as well as the ribs and the knee which protruded from the canvas. The feet hung out below. Just underneath, in the grass, were two shoes, which snow and rain had rendered shapeless. These shoes had fallen from the dead man's feet. The barefooted child looked at the shoes.
The wind, which had become more and more restless, was now and then interrupted by those pauses which foretell the approach of a storm. For the last few minutes it had altogether ceased to blow. The corpse no longer stirred; the chain was as motionless as a plumb line. Like all new-comers into life, and taking into account the peculiar influences of his fate, the child no doubt felt within him that awakening of ideas characteristic of early years, which endeavours to open the brain and which resembles the pecking of the young bird in the egg. But all that there was in his little consciousness just then was resolved into stupor. Excess of sensation has the effect of too much oil, and ends by putting out thought. A man would have put himself questions; the child put himself none; he only looked. The tar gave the face a wet appearance; drops of pitch, congealed in what had once, been the eyes, produced the effect of tears. However, thanks to the pitch, the ravages of death, if not annulled, had been greatly retarded. That which hung before the child was a thing of which great care was taken. The man was evidently precious; and though they had not cared to keep him alive, they had cared to preserve him dead. The gibbet was old and worm-eaten, although strong, and had been in use many years.
It was the custom in England to tar smugglers. They were hanged on the seaboard, coated over with pitch an left swinging. Examples must be made in public, and tarred examples last longest. The tar was a fine thing; by renewing it they were spared the necessity of making too many fresh examples. In those days they placed gibbets from point to point along the coast, as nowadays they do beacons. The hanged man did duty as a lantern. After his fashion, he guided his comrades, the smugglers, who from far out at sea perceived the gibbets. There is one, first warning; another, second warning. It did not however stop smuggling; but public order is made up of such things. The fashion lasted in England up to the beginning of the present century. In 1822 three men could still be seen hanging in front of Dover Castle. But, for that matter, the preserving process was employed not with smugglers alone. England treated robbers, incendiaries, and murderers in the same way. Jack Painter, who set fire to the government storehouses at Portsmouth, was hanged and tarred in 1776. L'Abbé Coyer, who calls him Jean le Peintre, saw him in 1777; Jack Painter was still hanging above the ruin he had made, and was re-tarred from time to time. His corpse lasted (I had almost said lived) nearly fourteen years. It was still doing good service in 1788; in 1790, however, they were obliged to replace it by another. The Egyptians used to value the mummy of the king; a plebeian mummy can also be of service, it seems.
The wind, having great power on the hill, had cleared it of all snow. Herbage was now reappearing on it, interspersed here and there with a few thistles; the hill was covered with that close, short grass which grows by the sea, and makes the tops of cliffs resemble green cloth. Under the gibbet, on the very spot over which hung the feet of the executed criminal, was a long thick tuft, uncommon on such poor soil. Corpses, crumbling there for centuries past, accounted for the beauty of the grass. Earth feeds on man.
A dreary fascination held the child spell-bound. He only dropped his head a moment when a nettle, which felt like an insect, stung his leg; then he looked up again,—looked up at the face which was looking down on him. It appeared to regard him the more steadfastly because it had no eyes. It was a comprehensive glance, having an indescribable fixedness, in which there was both light and darkness, and which emanated from the skull and teeth as well as from the empty arches of the brow. The whole head of a dead man seems to have vision, and this is awful; no eyeball, yet we feel that we are being looked at.
Little by little the child himself was becoming petrified. He no longer moved. A deadly torpor was stealing over him. He did not even perceive that he was losing consciousness, though he was becoming benumbed and lifeless. Winter was silently delivering him over to night. There is something of the traitor in winter. The child was all but a statue. The coldness of stone was penetrating his bones; darkness, that insidious reptile, was creeping over him. The drowsiness resulting from snow steals over one like a dim tide. The child was being slowly invaded by a stagnation resembling that of the corpse. He was on the point of falling under the gibbet. He no longer knew whether he was standing upright or not.
The end always impending, no transition between to be and not to be, the return to the crucible, the slip possible every minute,—such is life! Another instant, and the child and the dead would be victims of the same obliteration.
The spectre seemed to understand this, and not to wish it. Suddenly it moved: one would have said it was warning the child. The wind was beginning to blow again. Nothing stranger than this dead man in motion could be conceived of. The corpse at the end of the chain, swayed by the invisible gust, assumed an oblique position; rose on the left, then fell back; reascended on the right, and then fell and rose with slow and mournful precision. A weird game of see-saw; it seemed as though one saw in the darkness the pendulum of the clock of Eternity.
This continued some time. The child felt himself waking up at the sight; for even through his increasing numbness he experienced a keen sensation of fear. The chain with every oscillation made a creaking sound, with hideous regularity. It seemed to take breath, and then to resume. This creaking was like the cry of a grasshopper. An approaching squall is heralded by sudden gusts of wind; all at once the breeze increased into a gale. The corpse quickened its dismal oscillations; it no longer swung, it tossed. The chain, which had been creaking, now shrieked; it seemed as if its shriek was heard. If it was a call, it was obeyed. From the depths of the horizon came a rushing sound: it was the sound of wings.
An incident now occurred, one of the weird incidents peculiar to graveyards and solitudes. It was the arrival of a flock of ravens. Black flying specks pricked the clouds, pierced the mist, increased in size, came nearer, all hastening towards the hill and uttering shrill cries. It was like the approach of a Legion. The winged vermin of darkness alighted on the gibbet; the child drew back in terror. The birds crowded on the gibbet; not one was on the corpse. They were talking among themselves; the croaking was frightful. The howl, the whistle, and the roar are signs of life; the croak is a pleased announcement of putrefaction; in it you can fancy you hear the grave speak. The child was even more overcome with terror than with cold.
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The Child at the Gallows.
Etched by H. Lefort.—From Drawing
by François Flameng.
Then the ravens were silent. Finally one of them flew down upon the skeleton. This was the signal: they all precipitated themselves upon it. There was a cloud of wings, then their ranks closed up, and the skeleton disappeared under a swarm of black objects struggling in the darkness. Just then the corpse moved. Was it the corpse, or was it the wind? It made a frightful bound. The hurricane, which was increasing, came to its aid. The skeleton fell into convulsions. The squall, already blowing fiercely, seized hold of it, and dashed it about in all directions. It became horrible; it began to struggle,—an awful puppet, with a gallows' chain for a string. It seemed as if some one had seized the string, and was playing with the mummy; it leaped about as if it would fain dislocate itself. The birds frightened, flew off; it was as if an explosion had scattered the unclean creatures. Then they returned and a fresh struggle began.
The dead man seemed endowed with hideous vitality. The winds lifted him as though they meant to carry him away. He seemed to be struggling and to be making efforts to escape, but his iron collar held him fast. The birds adapted themselves to all his movements, retreating, then striking again,—scared but desperate. The corpse, moved by every gust of the wind, had shocks, starts, fits of rage: it went, it came, it rose, it fell, driving back the scattered swarm. The fierce, assailing flock would not let go their hold, and grew stubborn; the spectre, as if maddened by their attacks, redoubled its blind chastisement of space. At times the corpse was covered by talons and wings; then it was free. There were disappearances of the horde; then sudden furious returns. The birds seemed frenzied. Thrusting of claws, thrusting of beaks, croakings, rendings of shreds which were no longer flesh, creakings of the gibbet, shudderings of the skeleton, rattlings of the chain, the voices of the storm and tumult,—what conflict more fearful? A hobgoblin warring with devils, a combat with a spectre!
At times, the storm redoubling its violence, the hanged man revolved as if upon a pivot, turning everyway at once, as if trying to run after the birds. The wind was on his side, the chain against him. It was as if dark-skinned deities were mixing themselves up in the fray. The hurricane took part in the battle. As the dead man turned himself about, the flock of birds wound round him spirally. It was a whirl in a whirlwind. A great roar was heard from below,—it was the sea.
As the child was gazing at this nightmare, he suddenly trembled in every limb; a shiver traversed his frame; he staggered, tottered, nearly fell; recovered himself, pressed both hands to his forehead, as if he felt his forehead a support. Then, with hair streaming in the wind, he descended the hill with long strides, his eyes closed, himself almost a phantom, leaving that horror of the night behind him.