CHAPTER II.
FROM GAY TO GRAVE.
How simple is a miracle! It was breakfast hour in the Green Box, and Deahad merely come to see why Gwynplaine had not joined their littlebreakfast table.
"It is you!" exclaimed Gwynplaine; and he had said everything. There wasno other horizon, no vision for him now but the heavens where Dea was.His mind was appeased--appeased in such a manner as he alone canunderstand who has seen the smile spread swiftly over the sea when thehurricane had passed away. Over nothing does the calm come so quickly asover the whirlpool. This results from its power of absorption. And so itis with the human heart. Not always, however.
Dea had but to show herself, and all the light that was in Gwynplaineleft him and went to her, and behind the dazzled Gwynplaine there wasbut a flight of phantoms. What a peacemaker is adoration! A few minutesafterwards they were sitting opposite each other, Ursus between them,Homo at their feet. The teapot, hung over a little lamp, was on thetable. Fibi and Vinos were outside, waiting.
They breakfasted as they supped, in the centre compartment. From theposition in which the narrow table was placed, Dea's back was turnedtowards the aperture in the partition which was opposite the entrancedoor of the Green Box. Their knees were touching. Gwynplaine was pouringout tea for Dea. Dea blew gracefully on her cup. Suddenly she sneezed.Just at that moment a thin smoke rose above the flame of the lamp, andsomething like a piece of paper fell into ashes. It was the smoke whichhad caused Dea to sneeze.
"What was that?" she asked.
"Nothing," replied Gwynplaine.
And he smiled. He had just burnt the duchess's letter.
The conscience of the man who loves is the guardian angel of the womanwhom he loves.
Unburdened of the letter, his relief was wondrous, and Gwynplaine felthis integrity as the eagle feels its wings.
It seemed to him as if his temptation had evaporated with the smoke, andas if the duchess had crumbled into ashes with the paper.
Taking up their cups at random, and drinking one after the other fromthe same one, they talked. A babble of lovers, a chattering of sparrows!Child's talk, worthy of Mother Goose or of Homer! With two lovinghearts, go no further for poetry; with two kisses for dialogue, go nofurther for music.
"Do you know something?"
"No."
"Gwynplaine, I dreamt that we were animals, and had wings."
"Wings; that means birds," murmured Gwynplaine.
"Fools! it means angels," growled Ursus.
And their talk went on.
"If you did not exist, Gwynplaine?"
"What then?"
"It could only be because there was no God."
"The tea is too hot; you will burn yourself, Dea."
"Blow on my cup."
"How beautiful you are this morning!"
"Do you know that I have a great many things to say to you?"
"Say them."
"I love you."
"I adore you."
And Ursus said aside, "By heaven, they are polite!"
Exquisite to lovers are their moments of silence! In them they gather,as it were, masses of love, which afterwards explode into sweetfragments.
"Do you know! In the evening, when we are playing our parts, at themoment when my hand touches your forehead--oh, what a noble head isyours, Gwynplaine!--at the moment when I feel your hair under myfingers, I shiver; a heavenly joy comes over me, and I say to myself, Inall this world of darkness which encompasses me, in this universe ofsolitude, in this great obscurity of ruin in which I am, in this quakingfear of myself and of everything, I have one prop; and he is there. Itis he--it is you."
"Oh! you love me," said Gwynplaine. "I, too, have but you on earth. Youare all in all to me. Dea, what would you have me do? What do youdesire? What do you want?"
Dea answered,--
"I do not know. I am happy."
"Oh," replied Gwynplaine, "we are happy."
Ursus raised his voice severely,--
"Oh, you are happy, are you? That's a crime. I have warned you already.You are happy! Then take care you aren't seen. Take up as little room asyou can. Happiness ought to stuff itself into a hole. Make yourselvesstill less than you are, if that can be. God measures the greatness ofhappiness by the littleness of the happy. The happy should concealthemselves like malefactors. Oh, only shine out like the wretchedglowworms that you are, and you'll be trodden on; and quite right too!What do you mean by all that love-making nonsense? I'm no duenna, whosebusiness it is to watch lovers billing and cooing. I'm tired of it all,I tell you; and you may both go to the devil."
And feeling that his harsh tones were melting into tenderness, hedrowned his emotion in a loud grumble.
"Father," said Dea, "how roughly you scold!"
"It's because I don't like to see people too happy."
Here Homo re-echoed Ursus. His growl was heard from beneath the lovers'feet.
Ursus stooped down, and placed his hand on Homo's head.
"That's right; you're in bad humour, too. You growl. The bristles areall on end on your wolf's pate. You don't like all this love-making.That's because you are wise. Hold your tongue, all the same. You havehad your say and given your opinion; be it so. Now be silent."
The wolf growled again. Ursus looked under the table at him.
"Be still, Homo! Come, don't dwell on it, you philosopher!"
But the wolf sat up, and looked towards the door, showing his teeth.
"What's wrong with you now?" said Ursus. And he caught hold of Homo bythe skin of the neck.
Heedless of the wolf's growls, and wholly wrapped up in her own thoughtsand in the sound of Gwynplaine's voice, which left its after-tastewithin her, Dea was silent, and absorbed by that kind of esctasypeculiar to the blind, which seems at times to give them a song tolisten to in their souls, and to make up to them for the light whichthey lack by some strain of ideal music. Blindness is a cavern, to whichreaches the deep harmony of the Eternal.
While Ursus, addressing Homo, was looking down, Gwynplaine had raisedhis eyes. He was about to drink a cup of tea, but did not drink it. Heplaced it on the table with the slow movement of a spring drawn back;his fingers remained open, his eyes fixed. He scarcely breathed.
A man was standing in the doorway, behind Dea. He was clad in black,with a hood. He wore a wig down to his eyebrows, and held in his handan iron staff with a crown at each end. His staff was short and massive.He was like Medusa thrusting her head between two branches in Paradise.
Ursus, who had heard some one enter and raised his head without loosinghis hold of Homo, recognized the terrible personage. He shook from headto foot, and whispered to Gwynplaine,--
"It's the wapentake."
Gwynplaine recollected. An exclamation of surprise was about to escapehim, but he restrained it. The iron staff, with the crown at each end,was called the iron weapon. It was from this iron weapon, upon which thecity officers of justice took the oath when they entered on theirduties, that the old wapentakes of the English police derived theirqualification.
Behind the man in the wig, the frightened landlord could just beperceived in the shadow.
Without saying a word, a personification of the Muta Themis of the oldcharters, the man stretched his right arm over the radiant Dea, andtouched Gwynplaine on the shoulder with the iron staff, at the same timepointing with his left thumb to the door of the Green Box behind him.These gestures, all the more imperious for their silence, meant, "Followme."
_Pro signo exeundi, sursum trahe_, says the old Norman record.
He who was touched by the iron weapon had no right but the right ofobedience. To that mute order there was no reply. The harsh penalties ofthe English law threatened the refractory. Gwynplaine felt a shock underthe rigid touch of the law; then he sat as though petrified.
If, instead of having been merely grazed on the shoulder, he had beenstruck a violent blow on the head with the iron staff, he could not havebeen more stunned. He knew that the police-officer summ
oned him tofollow; but why? _That_ he could not understand.
On his part Ursus, too, was thrown into the most painful agitation, buthe saw through matters pretty distinctly. His thoughts ran on thejugglers and preachers, his competitors, on informations laid againstthe Green Box, on that delinquent the wolf, on his own affair with thethree Bishopsgate commissioners, and who knows?--perhaps--but thatwould be too fearful--Gwynplaine's unbecoming and factious speechestouching the royal authority.
He trembled violently.
Dea was smiling.
Neither Gwynplaine nor Ursus pronounced a word. They had both the samethought--not to frighten Dea. It may have struck the wolf as well, forhe ceased growling. True, Ursus did not loose him.
Homo, however, was a prudent wolf when occasion required. Who is therewho has not remarked a kind of intelligent anxiety in animals? It may bethat to the extent to which a wolf can understand mankind he felt thathe was an outlaw.
Gwynplaine rose.
Resistance was impracticable, as Gwynplaine knew. He remembered Ursus'swords, and there was no question possible. He remained standing in frontof the wapentake. The latter raised the iron staff from Gwynplaine'sshoulder, and drawing it back, held it out straight in an attitude ofcommand--a constable's attitude which was well understood in those daysby the whole people, and which expressed the following order: "Let thisman, and no other, follow me. The rest remain where they are. Silence!"
No curious followers were allowed. In all times the police have had ataste for arrests of the kind. This description of seizure was termedsequestration of the person.
The wapentake turned round in one motion, like a piece of mechanismrevolving on its own pivot, and with grave and magisterial stepproceeded towards the door of the Green Box.
Gwynplaine looked at Ursus. The latter went through a pantomime composedas follows: he shrugged his shoulders, placed both elbows close to hiships, with his hands out, and knitted his brows into chevrons--all whichsignifies, "We must submit to the unknown."
Gwynplaine looked at Dea. She was in her dream. She was still smiling.He put the ends of his fingers to his lips, and sent her an unutterablekiss.
Ursus, relieved of some portion of his terror now that the wapentake'sback was turned, seized the moment to whisper in Gwynplaine's ear,--
"On your life, do not speak until you are questioned."
Gwynplaine, with the same care to make no noise as he would have takenin a sickroom, took his hat and cloak from the hook on the partition,wrapped himself up to the eyes in the cloak, and pushed his hat over hisforehead. Not having been to bed, he had his working clothes still on,and his leather esclavin round his neck. Once more he looked at Dea.Having reached the door, the wapentake raised his staff and began todescend the steps; then Gwynplaine set out as if the man was dragginghim by an invisible chain. Ursus watched Gwynplaine leave the Green Box.At that moment the wolf gave a low growl; but Ursus silenced him, andwhispered, "He is coming back."
In the yard, Master Nicless was stemming, with servile and imperiousgestures, the cries of terror raised by Vinos and Fibi, as in greatdistress they watched Gwynplaine led away, and the mourning-colouredgarb and the iron staff of the wapentake.
The two girls were like petrifactions: they were in the attitude ofstalactites. Govicum, stunned, was looking open-mouthed out of a window.
The wapentake preceded Gwynplaine by a few steps, never turning round orlooking at him, in that icy ease which is given by the knowledge thatone is the law.
In death-like silence they both crossed the yard, went through the darktaproom, and reached the street. A few passers-by had collected aboutthe inn door, and the justice of the quorum was there at the head of asquad of police. The idlers, stupefied, and without breathing a word,opened out and stood aside, with English discipline, at the sight of theconstable's staff. The wapentake moved off in the direction of thenarrow street then called the Little Strand, running by the Thames; andGwynplaine, with the justice of the quorum's men in ranks on each side,like a double hedge, pale, without a motion except that of his steps,wrapped in his cloak as in a shroud, was leaving the inn farther andfarther behind him as he followed the silent man, like a statuefollowing a spectre.