Ursus turned away, and muttered, "I thought that sort of work was out of
date." He took down an old book, and read in Latin that, by slitting the
mouth and performing other operations in childhood, the face would
become a mask whose owner would be always laughing.
At that moment the infant awoke, and Ursus gave it what was left of the
milk.
The baby girl was blind. Ursus had already decided that he and Homo
would adopt the two children.
_II.--Gwynplaine and Dea_
Gwynplaine was a mountebank. As soon as he exhibited himself all who saw
him laughed. His laugh created the laughter of others, though he did not
laugh himself. It was his face only that laughed, and laughed always
with an everlasting laugh.
Fifteen years had passed since the night when the boy came to the
caravan at Weymouth, and Gwynplaine was now twenty-five. Ursus had kept
the two children with him; the blind girl he called Dea. The boy said he
had always been called Gwynplaine. Of course the two were in love.
Gwynplaine adored Dea, and Dea idolised Gwynplaine.
"You are beautiful," she would say to him. The crowd only saw his face;
for Dea, Gwynplaine was the person who had saved her from the tomb, and
who was always kind and good-tempered. "The blind see the invisible,"
said Ursus.
The old caravan had given way to a great van--called the Green
Box--drawn by a pair of stout horses. Gwynplaine had become famous. In
every fair-ground the crowd ran after him.
In 1705 the Green Box arrived in London and was established at
Southwark, in the yard of the Tadcaster Inn. A placard was hung up with
the following inscription, composed by Ursus:
"Here can be seen Gwynplaine, deserted, when he was ten years old, on
January 29, 1690, on the coast of Portland, by the rascally
Comprachicos. The boy now grown up is known as 'The Man who Laughs.'"
All Southwark came to see Gwynplaine, and soon people heard of him on
the other side of London Bridge, and crowds came from the City to the
Tadcaster Inn. It was not long before the fashionable world itself was
drawn to the Laughing Man.
One morning a constable and an officer of the High Court summoned
Gwynplaine to Southwark Gaol. Ursus watched him disappear behind the
heavy door with a heavy heart.
Gwynplaine was taken down flights of stairs and dark passages till he
reached the torture-chamber. A man's body lay on the ground on its back.
Its four limbs, drawn to four columns by chains, were in the position of
a St. Andrew's Cross. A plate of iron, with five or six large stones,
was placed on the victim's chest. On a seat close by sat an old man--the
sheriff of the county of Surrey.
"Come closer," said the sheriff to Gwynplaine. Then he addressed the
wretched man on the floor, who for four days, in spite of torture, had
kept silence.
"Speak, unhappy man. Have pity on yourself. Do what is required of you.
Open your eyes, and see if you know this man."
The prisoner saw Gwynplaine. Raising his head he looked at him, and then
cried out, "That's him! Yes--that's him!"
"Registrar, take down that statement," said the sheriff.
The cry of the prisoner overwhelmed Gwynplaine. He was terrified by a
confession that was unintelligible to him, and began in his distress to
stammer and protest his innocence. "Have pity on me, my lord. You have
before you only a poor mountebank--"
"I have before me," said the sheriff, "Lord Fermain Clancharlie, Baron
Clancharlie and Hunkerville, and a peer of England!"
Then the sheriff, rising, offered his seat with a bow to Gwynplaine,
saying, "My lord, will you please to be seated?"
_III.--The House of Lords_
Before he left the prison the sheriff explained to Gwynplaine how it was
he was Lord Clancharlie.
The bottle containing the documents which had been thrown into the sea
in January 1690 had at last come to shore, and had been duly received at
the Admiralty by a high official named Barkilphedro.
This document declared that the child abandoned by those on the sinking
vessel was the only child of Lord Fermain Clancharlie, deceased. At the
age of two it had been sold, disfigured, and put out of the way by order
of King James II. Its parents were dead, and a man named Hardquanonne,
now in prison at Chatham, had performed the mutilation, and would
recognise the child, who was called Gwynplaine. Being about to die, the
signatories to the document confessed their guilt in abducting the
child, and could not, in the face of death, refrain from acknowledgment
of their crime.
The prisoner Hardquanonne had been found at Chatham, and he had
recognised Gwynplaine. Hardquanonne died of the tortures he had
suffered, but just before his death he said, "I swore to keep the
secret, and I have kept it as long as I could. We did it between us--the
king and I. Silence is no longer any good. This is the man."
What was the reason for the hatred of James II. to the child?
This. Lord Clancharlie had taken the side of Cromwell against Charles
I., and had gone into exile in Switzerland rather than acknowledge
Charles II. as king. On the death of this nobleman James II. had
declared his estates forfeit, and the title extinct, believing that the
heir was lost beyond possible recovery. On David Dirry-Moir, an
illegitimate son of Lord Clancharlie, were the peerage and estates
conferred, on condition that he married a certain Duchess Josiana, an
illegitimate daughter of James II.
How was it Gwynplaine was restored to his inheritance?
Anne was Queen of England when the bottle was taken to the Admiralty in
1705, and shared with the high official whose business it was to attend
to all flotsam and jetsam, a cordial dislike of Duchess Josiana. It
seemed to the Queen an excellent thing that Josiana should have to marry
this frightful man, and as for David Dirry-Moir he could be made an
admiral. Anne consulted the Lord Chancellor privately, and he strongly
advised, without blaming James II., that Gwynplaine must be restored to
the peerage.
Gwynplaine, without having time to return to the Green Box, was carried
off by Barkilphedro to one of his country houses, near Windsor, and
bidden the next day take his seat in the House of Lords. He had entered
the terrible prison in Southwark expecting the iron collar of a felon,
and he had placed on his head the coronet of a peer. Barkilphedro had
told him that a man could not be made a peer without his own consent;
that Gwynplaine, the mountebank, must make room for Lord Clancharlie, if
the peerage was accepted; and he had made his decision.
On awakening the next morning he thought of Dea. Then came a royal
summons to appear in the House of Lords, and Gwynplaine returned to
London in a carriage provided by the queen. The secret of his face was
still unknown when he entered the House of Lords, for the Lord
Chancellor had not been informed of the nature of the deformation. The
investiture took place on the threshold of the House, then very ill-lit,
and two very old and half-blind noblemen acted as sponsors at the Lord
Chancellor's request. The whole ceremony was enacted in a sort of
twilight, for the Lord Chancellor was anxious to avoid any sensation.
In less than half an hour the sitting was full. Gossip was already at
work about the new Lord Clancharlie. Several peers had seen the Laughing
Man, and they now heard that he was already in the Upper House; but no
one noticed him until he rose to speak.
His face was terrible, and the whole House looked with horror upon him.
"What does all this mean?" cried the Earl of Wharton, an old and much
respected peer. "Who has brought this man into the House? Who are you?
Where do you come from?"
Gwynplaine answered, "I come from the depths. I am misery. My lords, I
have a message for you."
The House shuddered, but listened, and Gwynplaine continued.
"My lords, among you I am called Lord Fermain Clancharlie, but my real
name is one of poverty--Gwynplaine. I have grown up in poverty; frozen
by winter, and made wretched by hunger. Yesterday I was in the rags of a
clown. Can you realise what misery means? Before it is too late try and
understand that our system of society is a false one."
But the House rocked with uncontrollable laughter at the face of
Gwynplaine. In vain he pleaded with those who sat around him not to
laugh at misery.
They refused to listen, and the sitting broke up in confusion, the Lord
Chancellor adjourning the House. Gwynplaine went out of the House alone.
_IV.--Night and the Sea_
Ursus waited for some time after seeing Gwynplaine disappear within
Southwark Gaol, then he returned sadly to Tadcaster Inn. That very night
the corpse of Hardquanonne was brought out from the gaol and buried in
the cemetery hard by, and Ursus, who had returned to the prison gate,
watched the procession, and saw the coffin carried to the grave.
"They have killed him! Gwynplaine, my son, is dead!" cried Ursus, and he
burst into tears.
The following morning the sheriff's officer, accompanied by
Barkliphedro, waited on Ursus, and told him he must leave Southwark, and
leave England. The last hope in the soul of Ursus died when Barkilphedro
said gravely that Gwynplaine was dead.
Ursus bent his head.
The sentence on Gwynplaine had been executed--death. His sentence was
pronounced--exile. Nothing remained for Ursus but to obey. He felt as if
in a dream.
Within two hours Ursus, Homo, and Dea were on board a Dutch vessel which
was shortly to leave a wharf at London Bridge. The sheriff ordered the
Tadcaster Inn to be shut up.
Gwynplaine found the vessel.
He had left the House of Lords in despair. He had made his effort, and
the result was derision. The future was terrible. Dea was his wife, he
had lost her, and he would be spurned by Josiana. He had lost Ursus, and
gained nothing but insult. Let David take the peerage; he, Gwynplaine,
would return to the Green Box. Why had he ever consented to be Lord
Clancharlie?
He wandered from Westminster to Southwark, only to find the Tadcaster
Inn shut up, and the yard empty. It seemed he had lost Ursus and Dea for
ever. He turned and gazed into the deep waters by London Bridge. The
river in its darkness offered a resting place where he might find peace.
He got ready to mount the masonry and spring over, when he felt a tongue
licking his hands. He turned, and Homo was behind him. Gwynplaine
uttered a cry. Homo wagged his tail. Then the wolf led the way down a
narrow platform to the wharf, and Gwynplaine followed him. On the vessel
alongside the wharf was the old wooden tenement, very worm-eaten and
rotten now, in which Ursus lived when the boy first came to him at
Weymouth. Gwynplaine listened. It was Ursus talking to Dea.
"Be calm, my child. All will come right. You do not understand what it
is to rupture a blood-vessel. You must rest. To-morrow we shall be at
Rotterdam."
"Father," Dea answered, "when two beings have always been together from
infancy, and that state is disturbed, death must come. I am not ill, but
I am going to die."
She raised herself on the mattress, crying in delirium, "He is no longer
here, no longer here. How dark it is!" Gwynplaine came to her side, and
Dea laid her hand on his head.
"Gwynplaine!" she cried.
And Gwynplaine received her in his arms.
"Yes, it is I, Gwynplaine. I am here. I hold you in my arms. Dea, we
live. All our troubles are over. Nothing can separate us now. We will
renew our old happy life. We are going to Holland. We will marry. There
is nothing to fear."
"I don't understand it in the least," said Ursus. "I, who saw him
carried to the grave. I am as great a fool as if I were in love myself.
But, Gwynplaine, be careful with her."
The vessel started. They passed Chatham and the mouth of the Medway, and
approached the sea.
Suddenly Dea got up.
"Something's the matter with me," she said. "What is wrong? You have
brought life to me, my Gwynplaine, life and joy. And yet I feel as if my
soul could not be contained in my body."
She flushed, then became very pale, and fell. They lifted her up, and
Dea laid her head on Gwynplaine's shoulder. Then, with a sigh of
inexpressible sadness, she said, "I know what this is. I am dying." Her
voice grew weaker and weaker.
"An hour ago I wanted to die. Now I want to live. How happy we have
been! You will remember the old Green Box, won't you, and poor blind
Dea? I love you all, my father Ursus, and my brother Homo, very dearly.
You are all so good. I do not understand what has happened these last
two days, but now I am dying. Everything is fading away. Gwynplaine, you
will think of me, won't you? Come to me as soon as you can. Do not leave
me alone long. Oh! I cannot breathe! My beloved!"
Gwynplaine pressed his mouth to her beautiful icy hands. For a moment it
seemed as if she had ceased to breathe. Then her voice rang out clearly.
"Light!" she cried. "I can see!"
With that Dea fell back stiff and motionless on the mattress.
"Dead!" said Ursus.
And the poor old philosopher, crushed by his despair, bowed his head,
and buried his face in the folds of the gown which covered Dea's feet.
He lay there unconscious.