L'homme qui rit. English

  CHAPTER II.

  THE EFFECT OF SNOW.

  He journeyed some time along this course. Unfortunately the footprintswere becoming less and less distinct. Dense and fearful was the fallingof the snow. It was the time when the hooker was so distressed by thesnow-storm at sea.

  The child, in distress like the vessel, but after another fashion, had,in the inextricable intersection of shadows which rose up before him, noresource but the footsteps in the snow, and he held to it as the threadof a labyrinth.

  Suddenly, whether the snow had filled them up or for some other reason,the footsteps ceased. All became even, level, smooth, without a stain,without a detail. There was now nothing but a white cloth drawn over theearth and a black one over the sky. It seemed as if the foot-passengerhad flown away. The child, in despair, bent down and searched; but invain.

  As he arose he had a sensation of hearing some indistinct sound, but hecould not be sure of it. It resembled a voice, a breath, a shadow. Itwas more human than animal; more sepulchral than living. It was a sound,but the sound of a dream.

  He looked, but saw nothing.

  Solitude, wide, naked and livid, was before him. He listened. That whichhe had thought he heard had faded away. Perhaps it had been but fancy.He still listened. All was silent.

  There was illusion in the mist.

  He went on his way again. He walked forward at random, with nothinghenceforth to guide him.

  As he moved away the noise began again. This time he could doubt it nolonger. It was a groan, almost a sob.

  He turned. He searched the darkness of space with his eyes. He sawnothing. The sound arose once more. If limbo could cry out, it would cryin such a tone.

  Nothing so penetrating, so piercing, so feeble as the voice--for it wasa voice. It arose from a soul. There was palpitation in the murmur.Nevertheless, it seemed uttered almost unconsciously. It was an appealof suffering, not knowing that it suffered or that it appealed.

  The cry--perhaps a first breath, perhaps a last sigh--was equallydistant from the rattle which closes life and the wail with which itcommences. It breathed, it was stifled, it wept, a gloomy supplicationfrom the depths of night. The child fixed his attention everywhere, far,near, on high, below. There was no one. There was nothing. He listened.The voice arose again. He perceived it distinctly. The sound somewhatresembled the bleating of a lamb.

  Then he was frightened, and thought of flight.

  The groan again. This was the fourth time. It was strangely miserableand plaintive. One felt that after that last effort, more mechanicalthan voluntary, the cry would probably be extinguished. It was anexpiring exclamation, instinctively appealing to the amount of aid heldin suspense in space. It was some muttering of agony, addressed to apossible Providence.

  The child approached in the direction from whence the sound came.

  Still he saw nothing.

  He advanced again, watchfully.

  The complaint continued. Inarticulate and confused as it was, it hadbecome clear--almost vibrating. The child was near the voice; but wherewas it?

  He was close to a complaint. The trembling of a cry passed by his sideinto space. A human moan floated away into the darkness. This was whathe had met. Such at least was his impression, dim as the dense mist inwhich he was lost.

  Whilst he hesitated between an instinct which urged him to fly and aninstinct which commanded him to remain, he perceived in the snow at hisfeet, a few steps before him, a sort of undulation of the dimensions ofa human body--a little eminence, low, long, and narrow, like the mouldover a grave--a sepulchre in a white churchyard.

  At the same time the voice cried out. It was from beneath the undulationthat it proceeded. The child bent down, crouching before the undulation,and with both his hands began to clear it away.

  Beneath the snow which he removed a form grew under his hands; andsuddenly in the hollow he had made there appeared a pale face.

  The cry had not proceeded from that face. Its eyes were shut, and themouth open but full of snow.

  It remained motionless; it stirred not under the hands of the child. Thechild, whose fingers were numbed with frost, shuddered when he touchedits coldness. It was that of a woman. Her dishevelled hair was mingledwith the snow. The woman was dead.

  Again the child set himself to sweep away the snow. The neck of the deadwoman appeared; then her shoulders, clothed in rags. Suddenly he feltsomething move feebly under his touch. It was something small that wasburied, and which stirred. The child swiftly cleared away the snow,discovering a wretched little body--thin, wan with cold, still alive,lying naked on the dead woman's naked breast.

  It was a little girl.

  It had been swaddled up, but in rags so scanty that in its struggles ithad freed itself from its tatters. Under it its attenuated limbs, andabove it its breath, had somewhat melted the snow. A nurse would havesaid that it was five or six months old, but perhaps it might be a year,for growth, in poverty, suffers heart-breaking reductions whichsometimes even produce rachitis. When its face was exposed to the air itgave a cry, the continuation of its sobs of distress. For the mother notto have heard that sob, proved her irrevocably dead.

  The child took the infant in his arms. The stiffened body of the motherwas a fearful sight; a spectral light proceeded from her face. Themouth, apart and without breath, seemed to form in the indistinctlanguage of shadows her answer to the questions put to the dead by theinvisible. The ghastly reflection of the icy plains was on thatcountenance. There was the youthful forehead under the brown hair, thealmost indignant knitting of the eyebrows, the pinched nostrils, theclosed eyelids, the lashes glued together by the rime, and from thecorners of the eyes to the corners of the mouth a deep channel of tears.The snow lighted up the corpse. Winter and the tomb are not adverse. Thecorpse is the icicle of man. The nakedness of her breasts was pathetic.They had fulfilled their purpose. On them was a sublime blight of thelife infused into one being by another from whom life has fled, andmaternal majesty was there instead of virginal purity. At the point ofone of the nipples was a white pearl. It was a drop of milk frozen.

  Let us explain at once. On the plains over which the deserted boy waspassing in his turn a beggar woman, nursing her infant and searching fora refuge, had lost her way a few hours before. Benumbed with cold shehad sunk under the tempest, and could not rise again. The falling snowhad covered her. So long as she was able she had clasped her little girlto her bosom, and thus died.

  The infant had tried to suck the marble breast. Blind trust, inspired bynature, for it seems that it is possible for a woman to suckle her childeven after her last sigh.

  But the lips of the infant had been unable to find the breast, where thedrop of milk, stolen by death, had frozen, whilst under the snow thechild, more accustomed to the cradle than the tomb, had wailed.

  The deserted child had heard the cry of the dying child.

  He disinterred it.

  He took it in his arms.

  When she felt herself in his arms she ceased crying. The faces of thetwo children touched each other, and the purple lips of the infantsought the cheek of the boy, as it had been a breast. The little girlhad nearly reached the moment when the congealed blood stops the actionof the heart. Her mother had touched her with the chill of her owndeath--a corpse communicates death; its numbness is infectious. Herfeet, hands, arms, knees, seemed paralyzed by cold. The boy felt theterrible chill. He had on him a garment dry and warm--his pilot jacket.He placed the infant on the breast of the corpse, took off his jacket,wrapped the infant in it, took it up again in his arms, and now, almostnaked, under the blast of the north wind which covered him with eddiesof snow-flakes, carrying the infant, he pursued his journey.

  The little one having succeeded in finding the boy's cheek, againapplied her lips to it, and, soothed by the warmth, she slept. Firstkiss of those two souls in the darkness.

  The mother lay there, her back to the snow, her face to the night; butperhaps at the moment when the little boy stripped himse
lf to clothe thelittle girl, the mother saw him from the depths of infinity.