CHAPTER I.
WHEREIN WE SEE THE FACE OF HIM OF WHOM WE HAVE HITHERTO SEEN ONLY THEACTS.
Nature had been prodigal of her kindness to Gwynplaine. She had bestowedon him a mouth opening to his ears, ears folding over to his eyes, ashapeless nose to support the spectacles of the grimace maker, and aface that no one could look upon without laughing.
We have just said that nature had loaded Gwynplaine with her gifts. Butwas it nature? Had she not been assisted?
Two slits for eyes, a hiatus for a mouth, a snub protuberance with twoholes for nostrils, a flattened face, all having for the result anappearance of laughter; it is certain that nature never produces suchperfection single-handed.
But is laughter a synonym of joy?
If, in the presence of this mountebank--for he was one--the firstimpression of gaiety wore off, and the man were observed with attention,traces of art were to be recognized. Such a face could never have beencreated by chance; it must have resulted from intention. Such perfectcompleteness is not in nature. Man can do nothing to create beauty, buteverything to produce ugliness. A Hottentot profile cannot be changedinto a Roman outline, but out of a Grecian nose you may make aCalmuck's. It only requires to obliterate the root of the nose and toflatten the nostrils. The dog Latin of the Middle Ages had a reason forits creation of the verb _denasare_. Had Gwynplaine when a child beenso worthy of attention that his face had been subjected totransmutation? Why not? Needed there a greater motive than thespeculation of his future exhibition? According to all appearance,industrious manipulators of children had worked upon his face. It seemedevident that a mysterious and probably occult science, which was tosurgery what alchemy was to chemistry, had chiselled his flesh,evidently at a very tender age, and manufactured his countenance withpremeditation. That science, clever with the knife, skilled in obtusionsand ligatures, had enlarged the mouth, cut away the lips, laid bare thegums, distended the ears, cut the cartilages, displaced the eyelids andthe cheeks, enlarged the zygomatic muscle, pressed the scars andcicatrices to a level, turned back the skin over the lesions whilst theface was thus stretched, from all which resulted that powerful andprofound piece of sculpture, the mask, Gwynplaine.
Man is not born thus.
However it may have been, the manipulation of Gwynplaine had succeededadmirably. Gwynplaine was a gift of Providence to dispel the sadness ofman.
Of what providence? Is there a providence of demons as well as of God?We put the question without answering it.
Gwynplaine was a mountebank. He showed himself on the platform. No sucheffect had ever before been produced. Hypochondriacs were cured by thesight of him alone. He was avoided by folks in mourning, because theywere compelled to laugh when they saw him, without regard to theirdecent gravity. One day the executioner came, and Gwynplaine made himlaugh. Every one who saw Gwynplaine held his sides; he spoke, and theyrolled on the ground. He was removed from sadness as is pole from pole.Spleen at the one; Gwynplaine at the other.
Thus he rose rapidly in the fair ground and at the cross roads to thevery satisfactory renown of a horrible man.
It was Gwynplaine's laugh which created the laughter of others, yet hedid not laugh himself. His face laughed; his thoughts did not. Theextraordinary face which chance or a special and weird industry hadfashioned for him, laughed alone. Gwynplaine had nothing to do with it.The outside did not depend on the interior. The laugh which he had notplaced, himself, on his brow, on his eyelids, on his mouth, he couldnot remove. It had been stamped for ever on his face. It was automatic,and the more irresistible because it seemed petrified. No one couldescape from this rictus. Two convulsions of the face are infectious;laughing and yawning. By virtue of the mysterious operation to whichGwynplaine had probably been subjected in his infancy, every part of hisface contributed to that rictus; his whole physiognomy led to thatresult, as a wheel centres in the nave. All his emotions, whatever theymight have been, augmented his strange face of joy, or to speak morecorrectly, aggravated it. Any astonishment which might seize him, anysuffering which he might feel, any anger which might take possession ofhim, any pity which might move him, would only increase this hilarity ofhis muscles. If he wept, he laughed; and whatever Gwynplaine was,whatever he wished to be, whatever he thought, the moment that he raisedhis head, the crowd, if crowd there was, had before them oneimpersonation: an overwhelming burst of laughter.
It was like a head of Medusa, but Medusa hilarious. All feeling orthought in the mind of the spectator was suddenly put to flight by theunexpected apparition, and laughter was inevitable. Antique art formerlyplaced on the outsides of the Greek theatre a joyous brazen face, calledcomedy. It laughed and occasioned laughter, but remained pensive. Allparody which borders on folly, all irony which borders on wisdom, werecondensed and amalgamated in that face. The burden of care, ofdisillusion, anxiety, and grief were expressed in its impassivecountenance, and resulted in a lugubrious sum of mirth. One corner ofthe mouth was raised, in mockery of the human race; the other side, inblasphemy of the gods. Men confronted that model of the ideal sarcasmand exemplification of the irony which each one possesses within him;and the crowd, continually renewed round its fixed laugh, died away withdelight before its sepulchral immobility of mirth.
One might almost have said that Gwynplaine was that dark, dead mask ofancient comedy adjusted to the body of a living man. That infernal headof implacable hilarity he supported on his neck. What a weight for theshoulders of a man--an everlasting laugh!
An everlasting laugh!
Let us understand each other; we will explain. The Manichaeans believedthe absolute occasionally gives way, and that God Himself sometimesabdicates for a time. So also of the will. We do not admit that it canever be utterly powerless. The whole of existence resembles a lettermodified in the postscript. For Gwynplaine the postscript was this: bythe force of his will, and by concentrating all his attention, and oncondition that no emotion should come to distract and turn away thefixedness of his effort, he could manage to suspend the everlastingrictus of his face, and to throw over it a kind of tragic veil, and thenthe spectator laughed no longer; he shuddered.
This exertion Gwynplaine scarcely ever made. It was a terrible effort,and an insupportable tension. Moreover, it happened that on theslightest distraction, or the slightest emotion, the laugh, driven backfor a moment, returned like a tide with an impulse which wasirresistible in proportion to the force of the adverse emotion.
With this exception, Gwynplaine's laugh was everlasting.
On seeing Gwynplaine, all laughed. When they had laughed they turnedaway their heads. Women especially shrank from him with horror. The manwas frightful. The joyous convulsion of laughter was as a tribute paid;they submitted to it gladly, but almost mechanically. Besides, when oncethe novelty of the laugh had passed over, Gwynplaine was intolerable fora woman to see, and impossible to contemplate. But he was tall, wellmade, and agile, and no way deformed, excepting in his face.
This led to the presumption that Gwynplaine was rather a creation of artthan a work of nature. Gwynplaine, beautiful in figure, had probablybeen beautiful in face. At his birth he had no doubt resembled otherinfants. They had left the body intact, and retouched only the face.
Gwynplaine had been made to order--at least, that was probable. They hadleft him his teeth; teeth are necessary to a laugh. The death's headretains them. The operation performed on him must have been frightful.That he had no remembrance of it was no proof that it had not takenplace. Surgical sculpture of the kind could never have succeeded excepton a very young child, and consequently on one having littleconsciousness of what happened to him, and who might easily take a woundfor a sickness. Besides, we must remember that they had in those timesmeans of putting patients to sleep, and of suppressing all suffering;only then it was called magic, while now it is called anaesthesia.
Besides this face, those who had brought him up had given him theresources of a gymnast and an athlete. His articulations usefullydisplaced and fashioned to bending t
he wrong way, had received theeducation of a clown, and could, like the hinges of a door, movebackwards and forwards. In appropriating him to the profession ofmountebank nothing had been neglected. His hair had been dyed with ochreonce for all; a secret which has been rediscovered at the present day.Pretty women use it, and that which was formerly considered ugly is nowconsidered an embellishment. Gwynplaine had yellow hair. His hair havingprobably been dyed with some corrosive preparation, had left it woollyand rough to the touch. Its yellow bristles, rather a mane than a headof hair, covered and concealed a lofty brow, evidently made to containthought. The operation, whatever it had been, which had deprived hisfeatures of harmony, and put all their flesh into disorder, had had noeffect on the bony structure of his head. The facial angle was powerfuland surprisingly grand. Behind his laugh there was a soul, dreaming, asall our souls dream.
However, his laugh was to Gwynplaine quite a talent. He could do nothingwith it, so he turned it to account. By means of it he gained hisliving.
Gwynplaine, as you have doubtless already guessed, was the childabandoned one winter evening on the coast of Portland, and received intoa poor caravan at Weymouth.