CHAPTER VII.
WHY SHOULD A GOLD PIECE LOWER ITSELF BY MIXING WITH A HEAP OF PENNIES?
An event happened.
The Tadcaster Inn became more and more a furnace of joy and laughter.Never was there more resonant gaiety. The landlord and his boy werebecome insufficient to draw the ale, stout, and porter. In the eveningin the lower room, with its windows all aglow, there was not a vacanttable. They sang, they shouted; the great old hearth, vaulted like anoven, with its iron bars piled with coals, shone out brightly. It waslike a house of fire and noise.
In the yard--that is to say, in the theatre--the crowd was greaterstill.
Crowds as great as the suburb of Southwark could supply so thronged theperformances of "Chaos Vanquished" that directly the curtain wasraised--that is to say, the platform of the Green Box was lowered--everyplace was filled. The windows were alive with spectators, the balconywas crammed. Not a single paving-stone in the paved yard was to be seen.It seemed paved with faces.
Only the compartment for the nobility remained empty.
There was thus a space in the centre of the balcony, a black hole,called in metaphorical slang, an oven. No one there. Crowds everywhereexcept in that one spot.
One evening it was occupied.
It was on a Saturday, a day on which the English make all haste to amusethemselves before the _ennui_ of Sunday. The hall was full.
We say _hall_. Shakespeare for a long time had to use the yard of an innfor a theatre, and he called it _hall_.
Just as the curtain rose on the prologue of "Chaos Vanquished," withUrsus, Homo, and Gwynplaine on the stage, Ursus, from habit, cast alook at the audience, and felt a sensation.
The compartment for the nobility was occupied. A lady was sitting alonein the middle of the box, on the Utrecht velvet arm-chair. She wasalone, and she filled the box. Certain beings seem to give out light.This lady, like Dea, had a light in herself, but a light of a differentcharacter.
Dea was pale, this lady was pink. Dea was the twilight, this lady,Aurora. Dea was beautiful, this lady was superb. Dea was innocence,candour, fairness, alabaster--this woman was of the purple, and one feltthat she did not fear the blush. Her irradiation overflowed the box, shesat in the midst of it, immovable, in the spreading majesty of an idol.
Amidst the sordid crowd she shone out grandly, as with the radiance of acarbuncle. She inundated it with so much light that she drowned it inshadow, and all the mean faces in it underwent eclipse. Her splendourblotted out all else.
Every eye was turned towards her.
Tom-Jim-Jack was in the crowd. He was lost like the rest in the nimbusof this dazzling creature.
The lady at first absorbed the whole attention of the public, who hadcrowded to the performance, thus somewhat diminishing the openingeffects of "Chaos Vanquished."
Whatever might be the air of dreamland about her, for those who werenear she was a woman; perchance too much a woman.
She was tall and amply formed, and showed as much as possible of hermagnificent person. She wore heavy earrings of pearls, with which weremixed those whimsical jewels called "keys of England." Her upper dresswas of Indian muslin, embroidered all over with gold--a great luxury,because those muslin dresses then cost six hundred crowns. A largediamond brooch closed her chemise, the which she wore so as to displayher shoulders and bosom, in the immodest fashion of the time; thechemisette was made of that lawn of which Anne of Austria had sheets sofine that they could be passed through a ring. She wore what seemed likea cuirass of rubies--some uncut, but polished, and precious stones weresewn all over the body of her dress. Then, her eyebrows were blackenedwith Indian ink; and her arms, elbows, shoulders, chin, and nostrils,with the top of her eyelids, the lobes of her ears, the palms of herhands, the tips of her fingers, were tinted with a glowing andprovoking touch of colour. Above all, she wore an expression ofimplacable determination to be beautiful. This reached the point offerocity. She was like a panther, with the power of turning cat at will,and caressing. One of her eyes was blue, the other black.
Gwynplaine, as well as Ursus, contemplated her.
The Green Box somewhat resembled a phantasmagoria in itsrepresentations. "Chaos Vanquished" was rather a dream than a piece; itgenerally produced on the audience the effect of a vision. Now, thiseffect was reflected on the actors. The house took the performers bysurprise, and they were thunderstruck in their turn. It was a rebound offascination.
The woman watched them, and they watched her.
At the distance at which they were placed, and in that luminous mistwhich is the half-light of a theatre, details were lost and it was likea hallucination. Of course it was a woman, but was it not a chimera aswell? The penetration of her light into their obscurity stupefied them.It was like the appearance of an unknown planet. It came from a world ofthe happy. Her irradiation amplified her figure. The lady was coveredwith nocturnal glitterings, like a milky way. Her precious stones werestars. The diamond brooch was perhaps a pleiad. The splendid beauty ofher bosom seemed supernatural. They felt, as they looked upon thestar-like creature, the momentary but thrilling approach of the regionsof felicity. It was out of the heights of a Paradise that she leanttowards their mean-looking Green Box, and revealed to the gaze of itswretched audience her expression of inexorable serenity. As shesatisfied her unbounded curiosity, she fed at the same time thecuriosity of the public.
It was the Zenith permitting the Abyss to look at it.
Ursus, Gwynplaine, Vinos, Fibi, the crowd, every one had succumbed toher dazzling beauty, except Dea, ignorant in her darkness.
An apparition was indeed before them; but none of the ideas usuallyevoked by the word were realized in the lady's appearance.
There was nothing about her diaphanous, nothing undecided, nothingfloating, no mist. She was an apparition; rose-coloured and fresh, andfull of health. Yet, under the optical condition in which Ursus andGwynplaine were placed, she looked like a vision. There are fleshyphantoms, called vampires. Such a queen as she, though a spirit to thecrowd, consumes twelve hundred thousand a year, to keep her health.
Behind the lady, in the shadow, her page was to be perceived, _el mozo_,a little child-like man, fair and pretty, with a serious face. A veryyoung and very grave servant was the fashion at that period. This pagewas dressed from top to toe in scarlet velvet, and had on his skull-cap,which was embroidered with gold, a bunch of curled feathers. This wasthe sign of a high class of service, and indicated attendance on a verygreat lady.
The lackey is part of the lord, and it was impossible not to remark, inthe shadow of his mistress, the train-bearing page. Memory often takesnotes unconsciously; and, without Gwynplaine's suspecting it, the roundcheeks, the serious mien, the embroidered and plumed cap of the lady'spage left some trace on his mind. The page, however, did nothing to callattention to himself. To do so is to be wanting in respect. He heldhimself aloof and passive at the back of the box, retiring as far as theclosed door permitted.
Notwithstanding the presence of her train-bearer, the lady was not theless alone in the compartment, since a valet counts for nothing.
However powerful a diversion had been produced by this person, whoproduced the effect of a personage, the _denouement_ of "ChaosVanquished" was more powerful still. The impression which it made was,as usual, irresistible. Perhaps, even, there occurred in the hall, onaccount of the radiant spectator (for sometimes the spectator is part ofthe spectacle), an increase of electricity. The contagion ofGwynplaine's laugh was more triumphant than ever. The whole audiencefell into an indescribable epilepsy of hilarity, through which could bedistinguished the sonorous and magisterial ha! ha! of Tom-Jim-Jack.
Only the unknown lady looked at the performance with the immobility of astatue, and with her eyes, like those of a phantom, she laughed not. Aspectre, but sun-born.
The performance over, the platform drawn up, and the family reassembledin the Green Box, Ursus opened and emptied on the supper-table the bagof receipts. From a heap of pennies there slid
suddenly forth a Spanishgold onza. "Hers!" cried Ursus.
The onza amidst the pence covered with verdigris was a type of the ladyamidst the crowd.
"She has paid an onza for her seat," cried Ursus with enthusiasm.
Just then, the hotel-keeper entered the Green Box, and, passing his armout of the window at the back of it, opened the loophole in the wall ofwhich we have already spoken, which gave a view over the field, andwhich was level with the window; then he made a silent sign to Ursus tolook out. A carriage, swarming with plumed footmen carrying torches andmagnificently appointed, was driving off at a fast trot.
Ursus took the piece of gold between his forefinger and thumbrespectfully, and, showing it to Master Nicless, said,--
"She is a goddess."
Then his eyes falling on the carriage which was about to turn the cornerof the field, and on the imperial of which the footmen's torches lightedup a golden coronet, with eight strawberry leaves, he exclaimed,--
"She is more. She is a duchess."
The carriage disappeared: The rumbling of its wheels died away in thedistance.
Ursus remained some moments in an ecstasy, holding the gold piecebetween his finger and thumb, as in a monstrance, elevating it as thepriest elevates the host.
Then he placed it on the table, and, as he contemplated it, began totalk of "Madam."
The innkeeper replied,--
"She was a duchess." Yes. They knew her title. But her name? Of thatthey were ignorant. Master Nicless had been close to the carriage, andseen the coat of arms and the footmen covered with lace. The coachmanhad a wig on which might have belonged to a Lord Chancellor. Thecarriage was of that rare design called, in Spain, _cochetumbon_, asplendid build, with a top like a tomb, which makes a magnificentsupport for a coronet. The page was a man in miniature, so small that hecould sit on the step of the carriage outside the door. The duty ofthose pretty creatures was to bear the trains of their mistresses. Theyalso bore their messages. And did you remark the plumed cap of thepage? How grand it was! You pay a fine if you wear those plumes withoutthe right of doing so. Master Nicless had seen the lady, too, quiteclose. A kind of queen. Such wealth gives beauty. The skin is whiter,the eye more proud, the gait more noble, and grace more insolent.Nothing can equal the elegant impertinence of hands which never work.Master Nicless told the story of all the magnificence, of the white skinwith the blue veins, the neck, the shoulders, the arms, the touch ofpaint everywhere, the pearl earrings, the head-dress powdered with gold;the profusion of stones, the rubies, the diamonds.
"Less brilliant than her eyes," murmured Ursus.
Gwynplaine said nothing.
Dea listened.
"And do you know," said the tavern-keeper, "the most wonderful thing ofall?"
"What?" said Ursus.
"I saw her get into her carriage."
"What then?"
"She did not get in alone."
"Nonsense!"
"Some one got in with her."
"Who?"
"Guess."
"The king," said Ursus.
"In the first place," said Master Nicless, "there is no king at present.We are not living under a king. Guess who got into the carriage with theduchess."
"Jupiter," said Ursus.
The hotel-keeper replied,--
"Tom-Jim-Jack!"
Gwynplaine, who had not said a word, broke silence.
"Tom-Jim-Jack!" he cried.
There was a pause of astonishment, during which the low voice of Dea washeard to say,--
"Cannot this woman be prevented coming."