The Man Who Laughs (Estes and Lauriat 1869)/Chapter 40
CHAPTER VII.
BARKILPHEDRO GNAWS HIS WAY.
THERE is one essential thing,—that is to be ungrateful. Barkilphedro did not fail in this particular. Having received so many benefits from Josiana, he had naturally but one thought,—to revenge himself upon her. When we add that Josiana was beautiful, great, young, rich, powerful, and illustrious, while Barkilphedro was ugly, little, old, poor, dependent, obscure,—he must necessarily revenge himself for all this as well. When a man is made of darkness, how can he forgive so many beams of light?
Barkilphedro was an Irishman who had denied Ireland,—a bad type. Barkilphedro had but one thing in his favour,—that he had a very big belly. A big belly passes for a sign of kind-heartedness; but this belly was only an addition to Barkilphedro's hypocrisy, for the man was full of malice.
What was Barkilphedro's age? Any age whatever; that is to say, the age necessary for the project of the moment. He was old in his wrinkles and grey hairs, young in the activity of his mind; he was at once active and ponderous,—a sort of hippopotamus-monkey. A royalist, certainly; a republican,—who knows? A Catholic, perhaps; a Protestant, without doubt. For Stuart, probably; for Brunswick, evidently. To be For is a power only on condition of being at the same time Against. Barkilphedro practised this wisdom.
The appointment of drawer of the bottles of the ocean was not as absurd as Barkilphedro had appeared to make out. The complaints (which would in these times be termed denunciations) of Garcia Fernandez, in his "Followers of the Sea," against the stealing of jetsam, called right of wreck, and against the pillaging of wreck by the inhabitants of the sea-coast, had created a sensation in England, and had secured for the shipwrecked this reform,—that their goods, chattels, and property, instead of being stolen by the country-people, were confiscated by the Lord High Admiral. All the debris of the sea cast upon the English shore (merchandise, broken hulls of ships, bales, chests, etc.) belonged to the Lord High Admiral; but—and here was revealed the importance of the place solicited by Barkilphedro—the floating receptacles containing messages and information received particular attention at the Admiralty. Shipwrecks excite England's deep solicitude. Navigation being her chief occupation, shipwrecks are one of her greatest causes of anxiety. England is kept in a state of perpetual anxiety by the sea. The little glass bottle cast into the waves from the doomed ship contains intelligence precious from every point of view,—intelligence concerning the ship; intelligence concerning the crew; intelligence concerning the place, the time, the manner of shipwreck; intelligence concerning the winds which broke up the vessel; intelligence concerning the currents which bore the floating flask ashore. The office filled by Barkilphedro has been abolished more than a century, but it had its utility. The last holder was William Hussey, of Doddington in Lincolnshire. The man who held it was a sort of guardian of the sea. All the closed and sealed vessels, bottles, flasks, jars, cast upon the English coast by the tide, were brought to him. He alone had the right to open them; he was the first to learn the secrets they contained; he put them in order, and ticketed them with his signature. The expression "loger un papier au greffe," still used in the Channel Islands, is thence derived. However, one precaution was certainly taken. Not one of these bottles could be unsealed except in the presence of two examiners of the Admiralty office who were sworn to secrecy, and who signed, conjointly with the holder of the jetsam office, the official report of the opening. But these officials being pledged to secrecy, Barkilphedro was invested with considerable discretionary power. It depended upon him, to a certain extent, to suppress a fact or bring it to light.
These frail floating messages were far from being as rare and insignificant as Barkilphedro had asserted. Some reached land with very little delay; others, after many years. It depended on the winds and the currents. The fashion of casting bottles into the sea is rather out of date now, like that of thank offerings; but in those religious times, those who were about to die were glad thus to despatch their last thoughts to God and men, and at times these messages from the sea were plentiful at the Admiralty. A parchment preserved in the hall at Audlyene (ancient spelling), with notes by the Earl of Suffolk, Grand Treasurer of England under James I., bears witness that in the one year 1615 fifty-two flasks, bladders, and tarred vessels, containing mention of sinking ships, were brought and registered in the records of the Lord High Admiral.
Court appointments are the drop of oil in the widow's cruse, they are ever on the increase. Thus it is that the porter has become chancellor, and the groom constable. The special officer charged with the appointment desired and obtained by Barkilphedro was usually a confidential man; Elizabeth had wished that it should be so. At court, to speak of confidence is to speak of intrigue; and to speak of intrigue is to speak of advancement. This functionary had come to be a personage of some consideration. He was a clerk, and ranked directly after the two grooms of the almonry. He had the right of entrance into the palace,—at least, what was called the humble entrance (humilis introïtus),—and even into the bedchamber; for it was the custom that he should inform the monarch, on occasions of importance, of the objects found, which were often very curious,—the wills of men in despair, farewells to fatherland, revelations of falsified logs, bills of lading, crimes committed at sea, legacies to the crown, etc.,—and should account from time to time to the king or queen concerning the opening of these ill-omened bottles. It was the Black Cabinet of the ocean. Elizabeth, who was always glad of an opportunity to speak Latin, used to ask Tonfield, of Coley in Berkshire, jetsam officer in her reign, when he brought her one of these papers cast up by the sea: "Quid mihi scribit Neptunus?"
The way had been eaten, the insect had succeeded. Barkilphedro had at last reached the queen. This was all he wanted. Was it in order that he might make his fortune? No. It was to destroy that of others. A much greater satisfaction. To destroy affords some persons unspeakable delight. To be imbued with a vague but implacable desire to destroy, and never to lose sight of that desire, is not a characteristic of every one; but Barkilphedro possessed this fixity of purpose in an eminent degree. He clung to his resolve with all the tenacity of a bull-dog. To feel himself inexorable afforded him no end of grim satisfaction. So long as he had a victim in his clutches, or a certainty of injuring him in his soul, he asked nothing more. He shivered content if he knew that his neighbour was suffering with the cold.
Catesby, the colleague of Guy Fawkes, in the Popish powder plot, said: "I would n't miss seeing Parliament blown upside down for a million sterling." Barkilphedro was that meanest and most terrible of things,—an envious man. There is always room for envy at court. Courts abound in impertinent people, in idlers, in rich loungers hungering for gossip; in those who seek for needles in haystacks; in triflers, in banterers bantered; in witty ninnies, who cannot do without converse with an envious man. What a refreshing thing the evil you hear about others is! Envy is good stuff to make a spy of. There is a profound analogy between that natural passion envy and that social function espionage. The spy hunts on some other person's account, like the dog; the envious man hunts on his own account like the cat. The envious man is generally a fierce man; but Barkilphedro was singularly cautious and reserved. He guarded his secret well, and racked himself with his hate. Enormous baseness implies enormous vanity. He was liked by those whom he amused, and hated by all others; but he felt that he was scorned by those who hated him, and despised even by those who liked him. He restrained himself; all his gall simmered noiselessly. He was a silent prey of the Furies. He had a talent for swallowing everything. Paroxysms of internal rage convulsed him, fierce fires smouldered unseen in his breast. He was a smoke-consuming man of passion. The surface was serene. He was kind, prompt, easy, amiable, obliging. Never mind to whom, never mind where, he bowed with every breath of wind; he bowed to the earth. What a source of fortune to have such a reed for a spine!
Such crafty and venomous beings are not so rare as is believed. We live surrounded by ill-natured, crawling things. Why are such malevolent creatures allowed to exist? A natural question! The dreamer continually puts it to himself, and the thinker never solves it. Hence the sad eye of the philosophers ever fixed upon that mountain of darkness which is destiny, and from the top of which the colossal spectre of evil casts handfuls of serpents over the earth.
Barkilphedro's body was obese, and his face lean,—a broad chest and a bony countenance. His nails were grooved and short, his fingers knotty, his thumbs flat, his hair coarse, his temples wide apart; and his broad, low forehead was that of a murderer. His small eyes were nearly hidden by his bushy eyebrows. His long, sharp, and flabby nose nearly met his mouth. Barkilphedro, properly attired as an emperor, would have certainly resembled Domitian. His muddy, sallow face might have been modelled in slimy paste; his immovable cheeks were like putty; he had all kinds of ugly wrinkles; the angle of his jaw was massive, his chin heavy, his ears coarse. In repose, and seen in profile, his upper lip was raised at an acute angle, showing two teeth. Those teeth seemed to glare at you; for the teeth can glare, just as the eye can bite. Patience, temperance, continence, reserve, self-control, amenity, deference, gentleness, politeness, sobriety, chastity, completed and finished Barkilphedro; but he degraded these virtues by possessing them.
In a short time Barkilphedro gained a firm foothold at court.