CHAPTER II.
THE DREGS.
Gwynplaine left the house, and began to explore Tarrinzeau Field inevery direction. He went to every place where, the day before, the tentsand caravans had stood. He knocked at the stalls, though he knew wellthat they were uninhabited. He struck everything that looked like adoor or a window. Not a voice arose from the darkness. Something likedeath had been there.
The ant-hill had been razed. Some measures of police had apparently beencarried out. There had been what, in our days, would be called a_razzia_. Tarrinzeau Field was worse than a desert; it had been scoured,and every corner of it scratched up, as it were, by pitiless claws. Thepocket of the unfortunate fair-green had been turned inside out, andcompletely emptied.
Gwynplaine, after having searched every yard of ground, left the green,struck into the crooked streets abutting on the site called East Point,and directed his steps towards the Thames. He had threaded his waythrough a network of lanes, bounded only by walls and hedges, when hefelt the fresh breeze from the water, heard the dull lapping of theriver, and suddenly saw a parapet in front of him. It was the parapet ofthe Effroc stone.
This parapet bounded a block of the quay, which was very short and verynarrow. Under it the high wall, the Effroc stone, buried itselfperpendicularly in the dark water below.
Gwynplaine stopped at the parapet, and, leaning his elbows on it, laidhis head in his hands and set to thinking, with the water beneath him.
Did he look at the water? No. At what then? At the shadow; not theshadow without, but within him. In the melancholy night-bound landscape,which he scarcely marked, in the outer depths, which his eyes did notpierce, were the blurred sketches of masts and spars. Below the Effrocstone there was nothing on the river; but the quay sloped insensiblydownwards till, some distance off, it met a pier, at which severalvessels were lying, some of which had just arrived, others which were onthe point of departure. These vessels communicated with the shore bylittle jetties, constructed for the purpose, some of stone, some ofwood, or by movable gangways. All of them, whether moored to the jettiesor at anchor, were wrapped in silence. There was neither voice normovement on board, it being a good habit of sailors to sleep when theycan, and awake only when wanted. If any of them were to sail during thenight at high tide, the crews were not yet awake. The hulls, like largeblack bubbles, and the rigging, like threads mingled with ladders, werebarely visible. All was livid and confused. Here and there a red cressetpierced the haze.
Gwynplaine saw nothing of all this. What he was musing on was destiny.
He was in a dream--a vision--giddy in presence of an inexorable reality.
He fancied that he heard behind him something like an earthquake. It wasthe laughter of the Lords.
From that laughter he had just emerged. He had come out of it, havingreceived a blow, and from whom?
From his own brother!
Flying from the laughter, carrying with him the blow, seeking refuge, awounded bird, in his nest, rushing from hate and seeking love, what hadhe found?
Darkness.
No one.
Everything gone.
He compared that darkness to the dream he had indulged in.
What a crumbling away!
Gwynplaine had just reached that sinister bound--the void. The Green Boxgone was his universe vanished.
His soul had been closed up.
He reflected.
What could have happened? Where were they? They had evidently beencarried away. Destiny had given him, Gwynplaine, a blow, which wasgreatness; its reaction had struck them another, which was annihilation.It was clear that he would never see them again. Precautions had beentaken against that. They had scoured the fair-green, beginning byNicless and Govicum, so that he should gain no clue through them.Inexorable dispersion! That fearful social system, at the same time thatit had pulverized him in the House of Lords, had crushed them in theirlittle cabin. They were lost; Dea was lost--lost to him for ever. Powersof heaven! where was she? And he had not been there to defend her!
To have to make guesses as to the absent whom we love is to put oneselfto the torture. He inflicted this torture on himself. At every thoughtthat he fathomed, at every supposition which he made, he felt within hima moan of agony.
Through a succession of bitter reflections he remembered a man who wasevidently fatal to him, and who had called himself Barkilphedro. Thatman had inscribed on his brain a dark sentence which reappeared now; hehad written it in such terrible ink that every letter had turned tofire; and Gwynplaine saw flaming at the bottom of his thought theenigmatical words, the meaning of which was at length solved: "Destinynever opens one door without closing another."
All was over. The final shadows had gathered about him. In every man'sfate there may be an end of the world for himself alone. It is calleddespair. The soul is full of falling stars.
This, then, was what he had come to.
A vapour had passed. He had been mingled with it. It had lain heavily onhis eyes; it had disordered his brain. He had been outwardly blinded,intoxicated within. This had lasted the time of a passing vapour. Theneverything melted away, the vapour and his life. Awaking from the dream,he found himself alone.
All vanished, all gone, all lost--night--nothingness. Such was hishorizon.
He was alone.
Alone has a synonym, which is Dead. Despair is an accountant. It setsitself to find its total; it adds up everything, even to the farthings.It reproaches Heaven with its thunderbolts and its pinpricks. It seeksto find what it has to expect from fate. It argues, weighs, andcalculates, outwardly cool, while the burning lava is still flowing onwithin.
Gwynplaine examined himself, and examined his fate.
The backward glance of thought; terrible recapitulation!
When at the top of a mountain, we look down the precipice; when at thebottom, we look up at heaven. And we say, "I was there."
Gwynplaine was at the very bottom of misfortune. How sudden, too, hadbeen his fall!
Such is the hideous swiftness of misfortune, although it is so heavythat we might fancy it slow. But no! It would likewise appear that snow,from its coldness, ought to be the paralysis of winter, and, from itswhiteness, the immobility of the winding-sheet. Yet this is contradictedby the avalanche.
The avalanche is snow become a furnace. It remains frozen, but itdevours. The avalanche had enveloped Gwynplaine. He had been torn like arag, uprooted like a tree, precipitated like a stone. He recalled allthe circumstances of his fall. He put himself questions, and returnedanswers. Grief is an examination. There is no judge so searching asconscience conducting its own trial.
What amount of remorse was there in his despair? This he wished to findout, and dissected his conscience. Excruciating vivisection!
His absence had caused a catastrophe. Had this absence depended on him?In all that had happened, had he been a free agent? No! He had felthimself captive. What was that which had arrested and detained him--aprison? No. A chain? No. What then? Sticky slime! He had sunk into theslough of greatness.
To whom has it not happened to be free in appearance, yet to feel thathis wings are hampered?
There had been something like a snare spread for him. What is at firsttemptation ends by captivity.
Nevertheless--and his conscience pressed him on this point--had hemerely submitted to what had been offered him? No; he had accepted it.
Violence and surprise had been used with him in a certain measure, itwas true; but he, in a certain measure, had given in. To have allowedhimself to be carried off was not his fault; but to have allowed himselfto be inebriated was his weakness. There had been a moment--a decisivemoment--when the question was proposed. This Barkilphedro had placed adilemma before Gwynplaine, and had given him clear power to decide hisfate by a word. Gwynplaine might have said, "No." He had said, "Yes."
From that "Yes," uttered in a moment of dizziness, everything hadsprung. Gwynplaine realized this now in the bitter aftertaste of thatconsent.
&n
bsp; Nevertheless--for he debated with himself--was it then so great a wrongto take possession of his right, of his patrimony, of his heritage, ofhis house; and, as a patrician, of the rank of his ancestors; as anorphan, of the name of his father? What had he accepted? A restitution.Made by whom? By Providence.
Then his mind revolted. Senseless acceptance! What a bargain had hestruck! what a foolish exchange! He had trafficked with Providence at aloss. How now! For an income of L80,000 a year; for seven or eighttitles; for ten or twelve palaces; for houses in town, and castles inthe country; for a hundred lackeys; for packs of hounds, and carriages,and armorial bearings; to be a judge and legislator; for a coronet andpurple robes, like a king; to be a baron and a marquis; to be a peer ofEngland, he had given the hut of Ursus and the smile of Dea. Forshipwreck and destruction in the surging immensity of greatness, he hadbartered happiness. For the ocean he had given the pearl. O madman! Ofool! O dupe!
Yet nevertheless--and here the objection reappeared on firmer ground--inthis fever of high fortune which had seized him all had not beenunwholesome. Perhaps there would have been selfishness in renunciation;perhaps he had done his duty in the acceptance. Suddenly transformedinto a lord, what ought he to have done? The complication of eventsproduces perplexity of mind. This had happened to him. Duty gavecontrary orders. Duty on all sides at once, duty multiple andcontradictory--this was the bewilderment which he had suffered. It wasthis that had paralyzed him, especially when he had not refused to takethe journey from Corleone Lodge to the House of Lords. What we callrising in life is leaving the safe for the dangerous path. Which is,thenceforth, the straight line? Towards whom is our first duty? Is ittowards those nearest to ourselves, or is it towards mankind generally?Do we not cease to belong to our own circumscribed circle, and becomepart of the great family of all? As we ascend we feel an increasedpressure on our virtue. The higher we rise, the greater is the strain.The increase of right is an increase of duty. We come to manycross-ways, phantom roads perchance, and we imagine that we see thefinger of conscience pointing each one of them out to us. Which shall wetake? Change our direction, remain where we are, advance, go back? Whatare we to do? That there should be cross-roads in conscience is strangeenough; but responsibility may be a labyrinth. And when a man containsan idea, when he is the incarnation of a fact--when he is a symbolicalman, at the same time that he is a man of flesh and blood--is not theresponsibility still more oppressive? Thence the care-laden docility andthe dumb anxiety of Gwynplaine; thence his obedience when summoned totake his seat. A pensive man is often a passive man. He had heard whathe fancied was the command of duty itself. Was not that entrance into aplace where oppression could be discussed and resisted the realizationof one of his deepest aspirations? When he had been called upon tospeak--he the fearful human scantling, he the living specimen of thedespotic whims under which, for six thousand years, mankind has groanedin agony--had he the right to refuse? Had he the right to withdraw hishead from under the tongue of fire descending from on high to rest uponhim?
In the obscure and giddy debate of conscience, what had he said tohimself? This: "The people are a silence. I will be the mighty advocateof that silence; I will speak for the dumb; I will speak of the littleto the great--of the weak to the powerful. This is the purpose of myfate. God wills what He wills, and does it. It was a wonder thatHardquanonne's flask, in which was the metamorphosis of Gwynplaine intoLord Clancharlie, should have floated for fifteen years on the ocean, onthe billows, in the surf, through the storms, and that all the raging ofthe sea did it no harm. But I can see the reason. There are destinieswith secret springs. I have the key of mine, and know its enigma. I ampredestined; I have a mission. I will be the poor man's lord; I willspeak for the speechless with despair; I will translate inarticulateremonstrance; I will translate the mutterings, the groans, the murmurs,the voices of the crowd, their ill-spoken complaints, theirunintelligible words, and those animal-like cries which ignorance andsuffering put into men's mouths. The clamour of men is as inarticulateas the howling of the wind. They cry out, but they are understood; sothat cries become equivalent to silence, and silence with them meansthrowing down their arms. This forced disarmament calls for help. I willbe their help; I will be the Denunciation; I will be the Word of thepeople. Thanks to me, they shall be understood. I will be the bleedingmouth from which the gag has been torn. I will tell everything. Thiswill be great indeed."
Yes; it is fine to speak for the dumb, but to speak to the deaf is sad.And that was his second part in the drama.
Alas! he had failed irremediably. The elevation in which he hadbelieved, the high fortune, had melted away like a mirage. And what afall! To be drowned in a surge of laughter!
He had believed himself strong--he who, during so many years, hadfloated with observant mind on the wide sea of suffering; he who hadbrought back out of the great shadow so touching a cry. He had beenflung against that huge rock the frivolity of the fortunate. He believedhimself an avenger; he was but a clown. He thought that he wielded thethunderbolt; he did but tickle. In place of emotion, he met withmockery. He sobbed; they burst into gaiety, and under that gaiety he hadsunk fatally submerged.
And what had they laughed at? At his laugh. So that trace of a hatefulact, of which he must keep the mark for ever--mutilation carved ineverlasting gaiety; the stigmata of laughter, image of the shamcontentment of nations under their oppressors; that mask of joy producedby torture; that abyss of grimace which he carried on his features; thescar which signified _Jussu regis_, the attestation of a crime committedby the king towards him, and the symbol of crime committed by royaltytowards the people;--that it was which had triumphed over him; that itwas which had overwhelmed him; so that the accusation against theexecutioner turned into sentence upon the victim. What a prodigiousdenial of justice! Royalty, having had satisfaction of his father, hadhad satisfaction of him! The evil that had been done had served aspretext and as motive for the evil which remained to be done. Againstwhom were the lords angered? Against the torturer? No; against thetortured. Here is the throne; there, the people. Here, James II.; there,Gwynplaine. That confrontation, indeed, brought to light an outrage anda crime. What was the outrage? Complaint. What was the crime? Suffering.Let misery hide itself in silence, otherwise it becomes treason. Andthose men who had dragged Gwynplaine on the hurdle of sarcasm, were theywicked? No; but they, too, had their fatality--they were happy. Theywere executioners, ignorant of the fact. They were good-humoured; theysaw no use in Gwynplaine. He opened himself to them. He tore out hisheart to show them, and they cried, "Go on with your play!" But,sharpest sting! he had laughed himself. The frightful chain which tieddown his soul hindered his thoughts from rising to his face. Hisdisfigurement reached even his senses; and, while his conscience wasindignant, his face gave it the lie, and jested. Then all was over. Hewas the laughing man, the caryatid of the weeping world. He was an agonypetrified in hilarity, carrying the weight of a universe of calamity,and walled up for ever with the gaiety, the ridicule, and the amusementof others; of all the oppressed, of whom he was the incarnation, hepartook the hateful fate, to be a desolation not believed in; theyjeered at his distress; to them he was but an extraordinary buffoonlifted out of some frightful condensation of misery, escaped from hisprison, changed to a deity, risen from the dregs of the people to thefoot of the throne, mingling with the stars, and who, having once amusedthe damned, now amused the elect. All that was in him of generosity, ofenthusiasm, of eloquence, of heart, of soul, of fury, of anger, of love,of inexpressible grief, ended in--a burst of laughter! And he proved, ashe had told the lords, that this was not the exception; but that it wasthe normal, ordinary, universal, unlimited, sovereign fact, soamalgamated with the routine of life that they took no account of it.The hungry pauper laughs, the beggar laughs, the felon laughs, theprostitute laughs, the orphan laughs to gain his bread; the slavelaughs, the soldier laughs, the people laugh. Society is so constitutedthat every perdition, every indigence, every catastrophe, every fever,every ulcer, ever
y agony, is resolved on the surface of the abyss intoone frightful grin of joy. Now he was that universal grin, and that grinwas himself. The law of heaven, the unknown power which governs, hadwilled that a spectre visible and palpable, a spectre of flesh and bone,should be the synopsis of the monstrous parody which we call the world;and he was that spectre, immutable fate!
He had cried, "Pity for those who suffer." In vain! He had striven toawake pity; he had awakened horror. Such is the law of apparitions.
But while he was a spectre, he was also a man; here was the heartrendingcomplication. A spectre without, a man within. A man more than anyother, perhaps, since his double fate was the synopsis of all humanity.And he felt that humanity was at once present in him and absent fromhim. There was in his existence something insurmountable. What was he? Adisinherited heir? No; for he was a lord. Was he a lord? No; for he wasa rebel. He was the light-bearer; a terrible spoil-sport. He was notSatan, certainly; but he was Lucifer. His entrance, with his torch inhis hand, was sinister.
Sinister for whom? for the sinister. Terrible to whom? to the terrible.Therefore they rejected him. Enter their order? be accepted by them?Never. The obstacle which he carried in his face was frightful; but theobstacle which he carried in his ideas was still more insurmountable.His speech was to them more deformed than his face. He had no possiblethought in common with the world of the great and powerful, in which hehad by a freak of fate been born, and from which another freak of fatehad driven him out. There was between men and his face a mask, andbetween society and his mind a wall. In mixing, from infancy, awandering mountebank, with that vast and tough substance which is calledthe crowd, in saturating himself with the attraction of the multitude,and impregnating himself with the great soul of mankind, he had lost, inthe common sense of the whole of mankind, the particular sense of thereigning classes. On their heights he was impossible. He had reachedthem wet with water from the well of Truth; the odour of the abyss wason him. He was repugnant to those princes perfumed with lies. To thosewho live on fiction, truth is disgusting; and he who thirsts forflattery vomits the real, when he has happened to drink it by mistake.That which Gwynplaine brought was not fit for their table. For what wasit? Reason, wisdom, justice; and they rejected them with disgust.
There were bishops there. He brought God into their presence. Who wasthis intruder?
The two poles repel each other. They can never amalgamate, fortransition is wanting. Hence the result--a cry of anger--when they werebrought together in terrible juxtaposition: all misery concentrated in aman, face to face with all pride concentrated in a caste.
To accuse is useless. To state is sufficient. Gwynplaine, meditating onthe limits of his destiny, proved the total uselessness of his effort.He proved the deafness of high places. The privileged have no hearing onthe side next the disinherited. Is it their fault? Alas! no. It is theirlaw. Forgive them! To be moved would be to abdicate. Of lords andprinces expect nothing. He who is satisfied is inexorable. For thosethat have their fill the hungry do not exist. The happy ignore andisolate themselves. On the threshold of their paradise, as on thethreshold of hell, must be written, "Leave all hope behind."
Gwynplaine had met with the reception of a spectre entering the dwellingof the gods.
Here all that was within him rose in rebellion. No, he was no spectre;he was a man. He told them, he shouted to them, that he was Man.
He was not a phantom. He was palpitating flesh. He had a brain, and hethought; he had a heart, and he loved; he had a soul, and he hoped.Indeed, to have hoped overmuch was his whole crime.
Alas! he had exaggerated hope into believing in that thing at once sobrilliant and so dark which is called Society. He who was without hadre-entered it. It had at once, and at first sight, made him its threeoffers, and given him its three gifts--marriage, family, and caste.Marriage? He had seen prostitution on the threshold. Family? His brotherhad struck him, and was awaiting him the next day, sword in hand. Caste?It had burst into laughter in his face, at him the patrician, at him thewretch. It had rejected, almost before it had admitted him. So that hisfirst three steps into the dense shadow of society had opened threegulfs beneath him.
And it was by a treacherous transfiguration that his disaster had begun;and catastrophe had approached him with the aspect of apotheosis!
Ascend had signified Descend!
His fate was the reverse of Job's. It was through prosperity thatadversity had reached him.
O tragical enigma of life! Behold what pitfalls! A child, he hadwrestled against the night, and had been stronger than it; a man, he hadwrestled against destiny, and had overcome it. Out of disfigurement hehad created success; and out of misery, happiness. Of his exile he hadmade an asylum. A vagabond, he had wrestled against space; and, like thebirds of the air, he had found his crumb of bread. Wild and solitary, hehad wrestled against the crowd, and had made it his friend. An athlete,he had wrestled against that lion, the people; and he had tamed it.Indigent, he had wrestled against distress, he had faced the dullnecessity of living, and from amalgamating with misery every joy of hisheart, he had at length made riches out of poverty. He had believedhimself the conqueror of life. Of a sudden he was attacked by freshforces, reaching him from unknown depths; this time, with menaces nolonger, but with smiles and caresses. Love, serpent-like and sensual,had appeared to him, who was filled with angelic love. The flesh hadtempted him, who had lived on the ideal. He had heard words ofvoluptuousness like cries of rage; he had felt the clasp of a woman'sarms, like the convolutions of a snake; to the illumination of truth hadsucceeded the fascination of falsehood; for it is not the flesh that isreal, but the soul. The flesh is ashes, the soul is flame. For thelittle circle allied to him by the relationship of poverty and toil,which was his true and natural family, had been substituted the socialfamily--his family in blood, but of tainted blood; and even before hehad entered it, he found himself face to face with an intendedfractricide. Alas! he had allowed himself to be thrown back into thatsociety of which Brantome, whom he had not read, wrote: "_The son has aright to challenge his father!_" A fatal fortune had cried to him, "Thouart not of the crowd; thou art of the chosen!" and had opened theceiling above his head, like a trap in the sky, and had shot him up,through this opening, causing him to appear, wild, and unexpected, inthe midst of princes and masters. Then suddenly he saw around him,instead of the people who applauded him, the lords who cursed him.Mournful metamorphosis! Ignominious ennobling! Rude spoliation of allthat had been his happiness! Pillage of his life by derision!Gwynplaine, Clancharlie, the lord, the mountebank, torn out of his oldlot, out of his new lot, by the beaks of those eagles!
What availed it that he had commenced life by immediate victory overobstacle? Of what good had been his early triumphs? Alas! the fall mustcome, ere destiny be complete.
So, half against his will, half of it--because after he had done withthe wapentake he had to do with Barkilphedro, and he had given a certainamount of consent to his abductions--he had left the real for thechimerical; the true for the false; Dea for Josiana; love for pride;liberty for power; labour proud and poor for opulence full of unknownresponsibilities; the shade in which is God for the lurid flames inwhich the devils dwell; Paradise for Olympus!
He had tasted the golden fruit. He was now spitting out the ashes towhich it turned.
Lamentable result! Defeat, failure, fall into ruin, insolent expulsionof all his hopes, frustrated by ridicule. Immeasurable disillusion! Andwhat was there for him in the future? If he looked forward to themorrow, what did he see? A drawn sword, the point of which was againsthis breast, and the hilt in the hand of his brother. He could seenothing but the hideous flash of that sword. Josiana and the House ofLords made up the background in a monstrous chiaroscuro full of tragicshadows.
And that brother seemed so brave and chivalrous! Alas! he had hardlyseen the Tom-Jim-Jack who had defended Gwynplaine, the Lord David whohad defended Lord Clancharlie; but he had had time to receive a blowfrom him and to love him.
&nbs
p; He was crushed.
He felt it impossible to proceed further. Everything had crumbled abouthim. Besides, what was the good of it? All weariness dwells in thedepths of despair.
The trial had been made. It could not be renewed.
Gwynplaine was like a gamester who has played all his trumps away, oneafter the other. He had allowed himself to be drawn to a fearfulgambling-table, without thinking what he was about; for, so subtle isthe poison of illusion, he had staked Dea against Josiana, and hadgained a monster; he had staked Ursus against a family, and had gainedan insult; he had played his mountebank platform against his seat in theLords; for the applause which was his he had gained insult. His lastcard had fallen on that fatal green cloth, the deserted bowling-green.Gwynplaine had lost. Nothing remained but to pay. Pay up, wretched man!
The thunder-stricken lie still. Gwynplaine remained motionless. Anybodyperceiving him from afar, in the shadow, stiff, and without movement,might have fancied that he saw an upright stone.
Hell, the serpent, and reverie are tortuous. Gwynplaine was descendingthe sepulchral spirals of the deepest thought.
He reflected on that world of which he had just caught a glimpse withthe icy contemplation of a last look. Marriage, but no love; family, butno brotherly affection; riches, but no conscience; beauty, but nomodesty; justice, but no equity; order, but no equilibrium; authority,but no right; power, but no intelligence; splendour, but no light.Inexorable balance-sheet! He went throughout the supreme vision in whichhis mind had been plunged. He examined successively destiny, situation,society, and himself. What was destiny? A snare. Situation? Despair.Society? Hatred. And himself? A defeated man. In the depths of his soulhe cried. Society is the stepmother, Nature is the mother. Society isthe world of the body, Nature is the world of the soul. The one tends tothe coffin, to the deal box in the grave, to the earth-worms, and endsthere. The other tends to expanded wings, to transformation into themorning light, to ascent into the firmament, and there revives into newlife.
By degrees a paroxysm came over him, like a sweeping surge. At the closeof events there is always a last flash, in which all stands revealedonce more.
He who judges meets the accused face to face. Gwynplaine reviewed allthat society and all that nature had done for him. How kind had naturebeen to him! How she, who is the soul, had succoured him! All had beentaken from him, even his features. The soul had given him all back--all,even his features; because there was on earth a heavenly blind girl madeexpressly for him, who saw not his ugliness, and who saw his beauty.
And it was from this that he had allowed himself to be separated--fromthat adorable girl, from his own adopted one, from her tenderness, fromher divine blind gaze, the only gaze on earth that saw him, that he hadstrayed! Dea was his sister, because he felt between them the grandfraternity of above--the mystery which contains the whole of heaven.Dea, when he was a little child, was his virgin; because every child hashis virgin, and at the commencement of life a marriage of souls isalways consummated in the plenitude of innocence. Dea was his wife, fortheirs was the same nest on the highest branch of the deep-rooted treeof Hymen. Dea was still more--she was his light, for without her all wasvoid, and nothingness; and for him her head was crowned with rays. Whatwould become of him without Dea? What could he do with all that washimself? Nothing in him could live without her. How, then, could he havelost sight of her for a moment? O unfortunate man! He allowed distanceto intervene between himself and his star and, by the unknown andterrible laws of gravitation in such things, distance is immediate loss.
Where was she, the star? Dea! Dea! Dea! Dea! Alas! he had lost herlight. Take away the star, and what is the sky? A black mass. But why,then, had all this befallen him? Oh, what happiness had been his! Forhim God had remade Eden. Too close was the resemblance, alas! even toallowing the serpent to enter; but this time it was the man who had beentempted. He had been drawn without, and then, by a frightful snare, hadfallen into a chaos of murky laughter, which was hell. O grief! O grief!How frightful seemed all that had fascinated him! That Josiana, fearfulcreature!--half beast, half goddess! Gwynplaine was now on the reverseside of his elevation, and he saw the other aspect of that which haddazzled him. It was baleful. His peerage was deformed, his coronet washideous; his purple robe, a funeral garment; those palaces, infected;those trophies, those statues, those armorial bearings, sinister; theunwholesome and treacherous air poisoned those who breathed it, andturned them mad. How brilliant the rags of the mountebank, Gwynplaine,appeared to him now! Alas! where was the Green Box, poverty, joy, thesweet wandering life--wandering together, like the swallows? They neverleft each other then; he saw her every minute, morning, evening. Attable their knees, their elbows, touched; they drank from the same cup;the sun shone through the pane, but it was only the sun, and Dea wasLove. At night they slept not far from each other; and the dream of Deacame and hovered over Gwynplaine, and the dream of Gwynplaine spreaditself mysteriously above the head of Dea. When they awoke they could benever quite sure that they had not exchanged kisses in the azure mistsof dreams. Dea was all innocence; Ursus, all wisdom. They wandered fromtown to town; and they had for provision and for stimulant the frank,loving gaiety of the people. They were angel vagabonds, with enough ofhumanity to walk the earth and not enough of wings to fly away; and nowall had disappeared! Where was it gone? Was it possible that it was alleffaced? What wind from the tomb had swept over them? All was eclipsed!All was lost! Alas! power, irresistible and deaf to appeal, which weighsdown the poor, flings its shadow over all, and is capable of anything.What had been done to them? And he had not been there to protect them,to fling himself in front of them, to defend them, as a lord, with histitle, his peerage, and his sword; as a mountebank, with his fists andhis nails!
And here arose a bitter reflection, perhaps the most bitter of all.Well, no; he could not have defended them. It was he himself who haddestroyed them; it was to save him, Lord Clancharlie, from them; it wasto isolate his dignity from contact with them, that the infamousomnipotence of society had crushed them. The best way in which he couldprotect them would be to disappear, and then the cause of theirpersecution would cease. He out of the way, they would be allowed toremain in peace. Into what icy channel was his thought beginning to run!Oh! why had he allowed himself to be separated from Dea? Was not hisfirst duty towards her? To serve and to defend the people? But Dea wasthe people. Dea was an orphan. She was blind; she represented humanity.Oh! what had they done to them? Cruel smart of regret! His absence hadleft the field free for the catastrophe. He would have shared theirfate; either they would have been taken and carried away with him, or hewould have been swallowed up with them. And, now, what would become ofhim without them? Gwynplaine without Dea! Was it possible? Without Deawas to be without everything. It was all over now. The beloved group wasfor ever buried in irreparable disappearance. All was spent. Besides,condemned and damned as Gwynplaine was, what was the good of furtherstruggle? He had nothing more to expect either of men or of heaven. Dea!Dea! Where is Dea? Lost! What? lost? He who has lost his soul can regainit but through one outlet--death.
Gwynplaine, tragically distraught, placed his hand firmly on theparapet, as on a solution, and looked at the river.
It was his third night without sleep. Fever had come over him. Histhoughts, which he believed to be clear, were blurred. He felt animperative need of sleep. He remained for a few instants leaning overthe water. Its darkness offered him a bed of boundless tranquillity inthe infinity of shadow. Sinister temptation!
He took off his coat, which he folded and placed on the parapet; then heunbuttoned his waistcoat. As he was about to take it off, his handstruck against something in the pocket. It was the red book which hadbeen given him by the librarian of the House of Lords: he drew it fromthe pocket, examined it in the vague light of the night, and found apencil in it, with which he wrote on the first blank that he found thesetwo lines,--
"I depart. Let my brother David take my place, and may he be happy!"
Then he signed, "Fermain Clancharlie, peer of England."
He took off his waistcoat and placed it upon the coat; then his hat,which he placed upon the waistcoat. In the hat he laid the red book openat the page on which he had written. Seeing a stone lying on the ground,he picked it up and placed it in the hat. Having done all this, helooked up into the deep shadow above him. Then his head sank slowly, asif drawn by an invisible thread towards the abyss.
There was a hole in the masonry near the base of the parapet; he placedhis foot in it, so that his knee stood higher than the top, and scarcelyan effort was necessary to spring over it. He clasped his hands behindhis back and leaned over. "So be it," said he.
And he fixed his eyes on the deep waters. Just then he felt a tonguelicking his hands.
He shuddered, and turned round.
Homo was behind him.
CONCLUSION.
_THE NIGHT AND THE SEA._