BARKILPHEDRO IN AMBUSCADE

To find the vulnerable spot in Josiana, and to strike her there, was the imperturbable determination of Barkilphedro. But how? That was the question.

With Barkilphedro the ground was Queen Anne. Barkilphedro approached the queen, and so close that sometimes he fancied he heard the monologues of her Majesty. How did the queen feel towards the Duchess Josiana? Did she wish her good or evil?

Here was the problem. Barkilphedro set himself to solve it. Divers chances served Barkilphedro.

Anne was, on her husband’s side, slightly related to the new Queen of Prussia. One day, in the presence of Barkilphedro, Anne asked the ambassador some question about this Drika.

“They say she is rich?”

“Very rich.”

“She has palaces?”

“More magnificent than those of her sister, the queen.”

“Whom will she marry?”

“A great lord, the Count Gormo.”

“Pretty?”

“Charming.”

“Is she young?”

“Very young.”

“As beautiful as the queen?”

The ambassador lowered his voice, and replied, -

“More beautiful.”

“That is insolent,” murmured Barkilphedro.

The queen was silent; then she exclaimed, -

“Those bastards!”

Another time, when the queen was leaving the chapel, Barkilphedro kept pretty close to her Majesty, behind the two grooms. Lord David Dirry-Moir made a sensation by his handsome appearance. As he passed there was an explosion of feminine exclamations.

“How elegant! How gallant! What a noble air! How handsome!”

“How disagreeable!” grumbled the queen.

Barkilphedro overheard this. He could hurt the duchess without displeasing the queen. The first problem was solved; but now the second presented itself.

What could he do to harm the duchess?

One day Lady Josiana asked Lord David, -

“What can drive my spleen away?”

Lord David stopped, looked at Josiana, shut his mouth, and inflated his cheeks, which signified attention, and said to the duchess, -

“For spleen there is but one remedy.”

“What is it?”

“Gwynplaine.”

The duchess asked, -

“And who is Gwynplaine?”

GWYNPLAINE AND DEA

Nature had bestowed on Gwynplaine a mouth opening to his ears, ears folding over to his eyes, a shapeless nose to support the spectacles, and a face that no one could look upon without laughing.

Gwynplaine was a mountebank. He showed himself on the platform. Hypochondriacs were cured by the sight of him alone. He was avoided by folks in mourning, because they were compelled to laugh when they saw him. One day the executioner came, and Gwynplaine made him laugh. He spoke, and the people rolled on the ground.

It was Gwynplaine’s laugh which created the laughter of others, yet he did not laugh himself. His face laughed; his thoughts did not. The extraordinary face which chance or a special and weird industry had fashioned for him, laughed alone. Gwynplaine had nothing to do with it. The outside did not depend on the interior. The laugh which he had not placed, himself, on his brow, on his eyelids, on his mouth, he could not remove.

On seeing Gwynplaine, all laughed. When they had laughed they turned away their heads. Women especially shrank from him with horror. The man was frightful. Gwynplaine was intolerable for a woman to see, and impossible to contemplate. But he was tall, well made, and agile, and no way deformed, excepting in his face.

This led to the presumption that Gwynplaine was rather a creation of art than a work of nature. Gwynplaine, beautiful in figure, had probably been beautiful in face. At his birth he had no doubt resembled other infants.

Behind his laugh there was a soul, dreaming, as all our souls dream. However, his laugh was to Gwynplaine quite a talent. He could do nothing with it. By means of it he gained his living.

Gwynplaine, as you have doubtless already guessed, was the child abandoned one winter evening on the coast of Portland, and received into a poor caravan at Weymouth.

That boy was at this time a man. Fifteen years had elapsed. It was in 1705. Gwynplaine was twenty-five years old.

Ursus had kept the two children with him. They were a group of wanderers. Ursus and Homo had aged. Ursus had become quite bald. The wolf was growing gray.

The little girl found on the dead woman was now a tall creature of sixteen, with brown hair, slight, fragile, admirably beautiful, her eyes full of light, yet blind. That fatal winter had killed the mother and blinded the child. Her eyes, large and clear, had a strange quality: to others they were brilliant. They were mysterious torches lighting only the outside. They gave light.

In her dead look there was a celestial earnestness. She was the night, she was a star. Ursus, with his mania for Latin names, had christened her Dea. He had taken his wolf into consultation. He had said to him,

“You represent man, I represent the beasts. We are of the lower world; this little one will represent the world. Human, animal, and Divine.”

The wolf made no objection. Therefore the girl was called Dea.

As to Gwynplaine, Ursus had not had the trouble of inventing a name for him. He had asked him,

“Boy, what is your name?” and the boy had answered,

“They call me Gwynplaine.”

“Be Gwynplaine, then,” said Ursus.

Dea assisted Gwynplaine in his performances. Mankind was for Gwynplaine, as for Dea, an exterior fact. She was alone, he was alone. The isolation of Dea was funereal, she saw nothing; that of Gwynplaine sinister, he saw all things. Nothing was infinite to her but darkness. For Gwynplaine to live was to have the crowd for ever before him and outside him. They had reached the depth of possible calamity; they had sunk into it, both of them. And they were in a Paradise. They were in love. Gwynplaine adored Dea. Dea idolized Gwynplaine.

“How handsome you are!” she would say to him.

TRUE EYES

Only one woman on earth saw Gwynplaine. It was the blind girl. She had learned what Gwynplaine had done for her, from Ursus, to whom he had related his rough journey from Portland to Weymouth, and the many sufferings which he had endured. He had given her his rags, because she was cold; he had given her food and drink. Dea knew that as a child he had done this, and that now as a man, he was strength to her weakness, riches to her poverty, healing to her sickness, and sight to her blindness. Through the mist of the unknown, she distinguished clearly his devotion, his abnegation, his courage. Dea quivered with certainty and gratitude, her anxiety changed into ecstasy. Kindness is the sun; and Gwynplaine dazzled Dea.

To the crowd, Gwynplaine was a clown, a merry-andrew^[29], a mountebank, a creature grotesque, a little more and a little less than a beast. The crowd knew only the face.

For Dea, Gwynplaine was the saviour, who made life tolerable; the liberator, whose hand guided her through that labyrinth called blindness. Gwynplaine was her brother, friend, guide, support; the personification of heavenly power; the husband, winged and resplendent. Where the multitude saw the monster, Dea recognized the archangel. Blind Dea perceived his soul.

Ursus, a philosopher, understood that. He approved of the fascination of Dea. He said,

“The blind see the invisible. Conscience is vision”.

Then, looking at Gwynplaine, he murmured,

“Semi-monster, but demi-god”.

Gwynplaine, on the other hand, was madly in love with Dea.

There is the invisible eye, the spirit, and the visible eye, the pupil. He saw her with the visible eye. Dea was dazzled by the ideal; Gwynplaine, by the real. Gwynplaine was not ugly; he was frightful. Dea was sweet. He was horror; she was grace. Dea was his dream. She was almost an angel, and yet just a woman.

Gwynplaine and Dea were united, and these two suffering hearts adored each other. One nest and two birds – that was their story. They had begun to feel a universal law – to please, to seek, and to find each other.

THE BLUE SKY THROUGH THE BLACK CLOUD

Thus lived these unfortunate creatures together – Dea and Gwynplaine. These orphans were all in all to each other, the feeble and the deformed. An inexpressible thanksgiving arose out of their distress. They were grateful. To whom? To the obscure immensity. Be grateful in your own hearts. That suffices.

Gwynplaine and Dea were grateful. Deformity is expulsion. Blindness is a precipice. Gwynplaine was no longer deformed. He was beloved. The abjection of the disfigured man was exalted and dilated into intoxication, into delight, into belief; and a hand was stretched out towards the melancholy hesitation of the blind girl, to guide her in her darkness.

The rejected found a refuge in each other. They held together by what they lacked: in that in which one was poor, the other was rich. The misfortune of the one made the treasure of the other. Had Dea not been blind, would she have chosen Gwynplaine? Had Gwynplaine not been disfigured, would he have preferred Dea? What happiness for Dea that Gwynplaine was hideous! What good fortune for Gwynplaine that Dea was blind! Gwynplaine saved Dea. Dea saved Gwynplaine.

Gwynplaine had a thought – “What should I be without her?” Dea had a thought – “What should I be without him?” The exile of each made a country for both. They belonged to each other; they knew themselves. They were inexpressibly happy. In their hell they had created heaven. Such was your power, O Love! Dea heard Gwynplaine’s laugh; Gwynplaine saw Dea’s smile. Thus the mysterious problem of happiness was solved; and by whom? By two outcasts.

For Gwynplaine, Dea was splendour. For Dea, Gwynplaine was presence. Gwynplaine was the religion of Dea. Sometimes, lost in her sense of love towards him, she knelt, like a beautiful priestess.

These happy creatures dwelt in the ideal world. They were spouses in it at distances as opposite as the spheres. Their kisses were the kisses of souls.

They had always lived a common life. They knew themselves only in each other’s society. The infancy of Dea had coincided with the youth of Gwynplaine. They had grown up side by side. For a long time they had slept in the same bed, for the hut was not a large bedchamber. They lay on the chest, Ursus on the floor; that was the arrangement. One fine day, whilst Dea was still very little, Gwynplaine felt himself grown up. He said to Ursus,

“I will also sleep on the floor.”

And at night he stretched himself, with the old man, on the bear skin. Then Dea wept. She cried; but Gwynplaine, become restless because he had begun to love, decided to remain where he was. From that time he always slept by the side of Ursus on the planks. In the summer, when the nights were fine, he slept outside with Homo.

Such was the idyll blooming in a tragedy. Ursus said to them, -

“Old brutes, adore each other!”