A Tale of Two Cities - Vol. V
Charles Dickens
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A Tale of Two Cities - Vol. V
by Charles Dickens
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Jerry's turn to approach the gate: which he did, holding his breath. Crouching down again in a corner there, and looking in, he made out the three fishermen creeping through some rank grass! and all the gravestones in the churchyard--it
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was a large churchyard that they were in--looking on like ghosts in white, while the church tower itself looked on like the ghost of a monstrous giant. They did not creep far, before they stopped and stood upright. And then they began
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to fish.
They fished with a spade, at first. Presently the honoured parent appeared to be adjusting some instrument like a great corkscrew. Whatever tools they worked with, they worked hard, until the awful striking of
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the church clock so terrified Young Jerry, that he made off, with his hair as stiff as his father's.
But, his long-cherished desire to know more about these matters, not only stopped him in his running away, but lured him back again. They were
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still fishing perseveringly, when he peeped in at the gate for the second time; but, now they seemed to have got a bite. There was a screwing and complaining sound down below, and their bent figures were strained, as if by a weight. By slow
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degrees the weight broke away the earth upon it, and came to the surface. Young Jerry very well knew what it would be; but, when he saw it, and saw his honoured parent about to wrench it open, he was so frightened, being new to the sight, that he made
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off again, and never stopped until he had run a mile or more.
He would not have stopped then, for anything less necessary than breath, it being a spectral sort of race that he ran, and one highly desirable to get to the end of. He had a strong
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idea that the coffin he had seen was running after him; and, pictured as hopping on behind him, bolt upright, upon its narrow end, always on the point of overtaking him and hopping on at his side--perhaps taking his arm--it was a pursuer to shun.
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It was an inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend too, for, while it was making the whole night behind him dreadful, he darted out into the roadway to avoid dark alleys, fearful of its coming hopping out of them like a dropsical boy's Kite without tail and
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wings. It hid in doorways too, rubbing its horrible shoulders against doors, and drawing them up to its ears, as if it were laughing. It got into shadows on the road, and lay cunningly on its back to trip him up. All this time it was incessantly hopping
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on behind and gaining on him, so that when the boy got to his own door he had reason for being half dead. And even then it would not leave him, but followed him upstairs with a bump on every stair, scrambled into bed with him, and bumped down, dead and
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heavy, on his breast when he fell asleep.
From his oppressed slumber, Young Jerry in his closet was awakened after daybreak and before sunrise, by the presence of his father in the family room. Something had gone wrong with him; at least, so Young
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Jerry inferred, from the circumstance of his holding Mrs. Cruncher by the ears, and knocking the back of her head against the head-board of the bed.
"I told you I would," said Mr. Cruncher, "and I did."
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"Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!" his wife implored.
"You oppose yourself to the profit of the business," said Jerry, "and me and my partners suffer. You was to honour and obey; why the devil don't you?"
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"I try to be a good wife, Jerry," the poor woman protested, with tears.
"Is it being a good wife to oppose your husband's business? Is it honouring your husband to dishonour his business? Is it
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obeying your husband to disobey him on the wital subject of his business?"
"You hadn't taken to the dreadful business then, Jerry."
"It's enough for you," retorted Mr.
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Cruncher, "to be the wife of a honest tradesman, and not to occupy your female mind with calculations when he took to his trade or when he didn't. A honouring and obeying wife would let his trade alone altogether. Call yourself a religious woman?
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If you're a religious woman, give me a irreligious one! You have no more nat'ral sense of duty than the bed of this here Thames river has of a pile, and similarly it must be knocked into you."
The altercation was conducted in a low tone of voice, and
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terminated in the honest tradesman's kicking off his clay-soiled boots, and lying down at his length on the floor. After taking a timid peep at him lying on his back, with his rusty hands under his head for a pillow, his son lay down too, and fell
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asleep again.
There was no fish for breakfast, and not much of anything else. Mr. Cruncher was out of spirits, and out of temper, and kept an iron pot-lid by him as a projectile for the correction of Mrs. Cruncher, in case he should observe any
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symptoms of her saying Grace. He was brushed and washed at the usual hour, and set off with his son to pursue his ostensible calling.
Young Jerry, walking with the stool under his arm at his father's side along sunny and crowded Fleet-street, was
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a very different Young Jerry from him of the previous night, running home through darkness and solitude from his grim pursuer. His cunning was fresh with the day, and his qualms were gone with the night--in which particulars it is not improbable that
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he had compeers in Fleet-street and the City of London, that fine morning.
"Father," said Young Jerry, as they walked along: taking care to keep at arm's length and to have the stool well between them: "what's a Resurrection-Man
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?"
Mr. Cruncher came to a stop on the pavement before he answered, "How should I know?"
"I thought you knowed everything, father," said the artless boy.
"Hem! Well," returned Mr. Cruncher,
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going on again, and lifting off his hat to give his spikes free play, "he's a tradesman."
"What's his goods, father?" asked the brisk Young Jerry.
"His goods," said Mr. Cruncher, after turning it over in
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his mind, "is a branch of Scientific goods."
"Persons' bodies, ain't it, father?" asked the lively boy.
"I believe it is something of that sort," said Mr. Cruncher.
"Oh, father, I
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should so like to be a Resurrection-Man when I'm quite growed up!"
Mr. Cruncher was soothed, but shook his head in a dubious and moral way.
"It depends upon how you dewelop your talents. Be careful to dewelop your talents, and never
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to say no more than you can help to nobody, and there's no telling at the present time what you may not come to be fit for." As Young Jerry, thus encouraged, went on a few yards in advance, to plant the stool in the shadow of the Bar, Mr.
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Cruncher added to himself: "Jerry, you honest tradesman, there's hopes wot that boy will yet be a blessing to you, and a recompense to you for his mother!"
XV. Knitting
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There had been earlier drinking than usual in the wine-shop of Monsieur Defarge. As early as six o'clock in the morning, sallow faces peeping through its barred windows had descried other faces within, bending over measures of wine.
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Monsieur Defarge sold a very thin wine at the best of times, but it would seem to have been an unusually thin wine that he sold at this time. A sour wine, moreover, or a souring, for its influence on the mood of those who drank it was to make them
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gloomy. No vivacious Bacchanalian flame leaped out of the pressed grape of Monsieur Defarge: but, a smouldering fire that burnt in the dark, lay hidden in the dregs of it.
This had been the third morning in succession, on which there had been
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early drinking at the wine-shop of Monsieur Defarge. It had begun on Monday, and here was Wednesday come. There had been more of early brooding than drinking; for, many men had listened and whispered and slunk about there from the time of
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the opening of the door, who could not have laid a piece of money on the counter to save their souls. These were to the full as interested in the place, however, as if they could have commanded whole barrels of wine; and they glided from seat to seat,
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and from corner to corner, swallowing talk in lieu of drink, with greedy looks.
Notwithstanding an unusual flow of company, the master of the wine-shop was not visible. He was not missed; for, nobody who crossed the threshold looked for him, nobody
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asked for him, nobody wondered to see only Madame Defarge in her seat, presiding over the distribution of wine, with a bowl of battered small coins before her, as much defaced and beaten out of their original impress as the small coinage of humanity
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from whose ragged pockets they had come.
A suspended interest and a prevalent absence of mind, were perhaps observed by the spies who looked in at the wine-shop, as they looked in at every place, high and low, from the king's
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palace to the criminal's gaol. Games at cards languished, players at dominoes musingly built towers with them, drinkers drew figures on the tables with spilt drops of wine, Madame Defarge herself picked out the pattern on her sleeve with her
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toothpick, and saw and heard something inaudible and invisible a long way off.
Thus, Saint Antoine in this vinous feature of his, until midday. It was high noontide, when two dusty men passed through his streets and under his swinging lamps: of whom,
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one was Monsieur Defarge: the other a mender of roads in a blue cap. All adust and athirst, the two entered the wine-shop. Their arrival had lighted a kind of fire in the breast of Saint Antoine, fast spreading as they came along, which
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stirred and flickered in flames of faces at most doors and windows. Yet, no one had followed them, and no man spoke when they entered the wine-shop, though the eyes of every man there were turned upon them.
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"Good day, gentlemen!" said Monsieur Defarge.
It may have been a signal for loosening the general tongue. It elicited an answering chorus of "Good day!"
"It is bad weather, gentlemen," said Defarge, shaking
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his head.
Upon which, every man looked at his neighbour, and then all cast down their eyes and sat silent. Except one man, who got up and went out.
"My wife," said Defarge aloud, addressing Madame Defarge: "I have
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travelled certain leagues with this good mender of roads, called Jacques. I met him--by accident--a day and half's journey out of Paris. He is a good child, this mender of roads, called Jacques. Give him to drink, my wife!"
A second man got
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up and went out. Madame Defarge set wine before the mender of roads called Jacques, who doffed his blue cap to the company, and drank. In the breast of his blouse he carried some coarse dark bread; he ate of this between whiles, and sat munching
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and drinking near Madame Defarge's counter. A third man got up and went out.
Defarge refreshed himself with a draught of wine--but, he took less than was given to the stranger, as being himself a man to whom it was no rarity--and
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stood waiting until the countryman had made his breakfast. He looked at no one present, and no one now looked at him; not even Madame Defarge, who had taken up her knitting, and was at work.
"Have you finished your repast,
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friend?" he asked, in due season.
"Yes, thank you."
"Come, then! You shall see the apartment that I told you you could occupy. It will suit you to a marvel."
Out of the wine-shop into the street, out of the street into a
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courtyard, out of the courtyard up a steep staircase, out of the staircase into a garret--formerly the garret where a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes.
No white-haired man was there now;
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but, the three men were there who had gone out of the wine-shop singly. And between them and the white-haired man afar off, was the one small link, that they had once looked in at him through the chinks in the wall.
Defarge closed the door carefully,
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and spoke in a subdued voice:
"Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques Three! This is the witness encountered by appointment, by me, Jacques Four. He will tell you all. Speak, Jacques Five!"
The mender of
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roads, blue cap in hand, wiped his swarthy forehead with it, and said, "Where shall I commence, monsieur?"
"Commence," was Monsieur Defarge's not unreasonable reply, "at the commencement."
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"I saw him then, messieurs," began the mender of roads, "a year ago this running summer, underneath the carriage of the Marquis, hanging by the chain. Behold the manner of it. I leaving my work on the road, the sun going to
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bed, the carriage of the Marquis slowly ascending the hill, he hanging by the chain--like this."
Again the mender of roads went through the whole performance; in which he ought to have been perfect by that time, seeing that it had been the infallible
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resource and indispensable entertainment of his village during a whole year.
Jacques One struck in, and asked if he had ever seen the man before?
"Never," answered the mender of roads, recovering his
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perpendicular.
Jacques Three demanded how he afterwards recognised him then?
"By his tall figure," said the mender of roads, softly, and with his finger at his nose. "When Monsieur the Marquis demands that evening,
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'Say, what is he like?' I make response, 'Tall as a spectre.'"
"You should have said, short as a dwarf," returned Jacques Two.
"But what did I know? The deed was not then accomplished, neither did he
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confide in me. Observe! Under those circumstances even, I do not offer my testimony. Monsieur the Marquis indicates me with his finger, standing near our little fountain, and says, 'To me! Bring that rascal!' My faith, messieurs, I offer
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nothing."
"He is right there, Jacques," murmured Defarge, to him who had interrupted. "Go on!"
"Good!" said the mender of roads, with an air of mystery. "The tall man is lost, and he is
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sought--how many months? Nine, ten, eleven?"
"No matter, the number," said Defarge. "He is well hidden, but at last he is unluckily found. Go on!"
"I am again at work upon the
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hill-side, and the sun is again about to go to bed. I am collecting my tools to descend to my cottage down in the village below, where it is already dark, when I raise my eyes, and see coming over the hill six soldiers. In the midst of them is a tall
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man with his arms bound--tied to his sides--like this!"
With the aid of his indispensable cap, he represented a man with his elbows bound fast at his hips, with cords that were knotted behind him.
"I stand aside, messieurs, by my
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heap of stones, to see the soldiers and their prisoner pass (for it is a solitary road, that, where any spectacle is well worth looking at), and at first, as they approach, I see no more than that they are six soldiers with a tall man bound, and that
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they are almost black to my sight--except on the side of the sun going to bed, where they have a red edge, messieurs. Also, I see that their long shadows are on the hollow ridge on the opposite side of the road, and are on the hill above it, and are
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like the shadows of giants. Also, I see that they are covered with dust, and that the dust moves with them as they come, tramp, tramp! But when they advance quite near to me, I recognise the tall man, and he recognises me. Ah, but he would be
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well content to precipitate himself over the hill-side once again, as on the evening when he and I first encountered, close to the same spot!"
He described it as if he were there, and it was evident that he saw it vividly; perhaps he had not seen
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much in his life.
"I do not show the soldiers that I recognise the tall man; he does not show the soldiers that he recognises me; we do it, and we know it, with our eyes. 'Come on!' says the chief of that company, pointing to the
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village, 'bring him fast to his tomb!' and they bring him faster. I follow. His arms are swelled because of being bound so tight, his wooden shoes are large and clumsy, and he is lame. Because he is lame, and consequently slow, they drive him with
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their guns--like this!"
He imitated the action of a man's being impelled forward by the butt-ends of muskets.
"As they descend the hill like madmen running a race, he falls. They laugh and pick him up again. His face is bleeding
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and covered with dust, but he cannot touch it; thereupon they laugh again. They bring him into the village; all the village runs to look; they take him past the mill, and up to the prison; all the village sees the prison gate open in the darkness of
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the night, and swallow him--like this!"
He opened his mouth as wide as he could, and shut it with a sounding snap of his teeth. Observant of his unwillingness to mar the effect by opening it again, Defarge said, "Go on, Jacques."
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"All the village," pursued the mender of roads, on tiptoe and in a low voice, "withdraws; all the village whispers by the fountain; all the village sleeps; all the village dreams of that unhappy one, within the locks and bars of the prison on the
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crag, and never to come out of it, except to perish. In the morning, with my tools upon my shoulder, eating my morsel of black bread as I go, I make a circuit by the prison, on my way to my work. There I see him, high up, behind the bars of a lofty iron
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cage, bloody and dusty as last night, looking through. He has no hand free, to wave to me; I dare not call to him; he regards me like a dead man."
Defarge and the three glanced darkly at one another. The looks of all of them were dark,
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repressed, and revengeful, as they listened to the countryman's story; the manner of all of them, while it was secret, was authoritative too. They had the air of a rough tribunal; Jacques One and Two sitting on the old pallet-bed, each
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with his chin resting on his hand, and his eyes intent on the road-mender; Jacques Three, equally intent, on one knee behind them, with his agitated hand always gliding over the network of fine nerves about his mouth and nose; Defarge standing
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between them and the narrator, whom he had stationed in the light of the window, by turns looking from him to them, and from them to him.
"Go on, Jacques," said Defarge.
"He remains up there in his iron cage
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some days. The village looks at him by stealth, for it is afraid. But it always looks up, from a distance, at the prison on the crag; and in the evening, when the work of the day is achieved and it assembles to gossip at the fountain, all faces are
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turned towards the prison. Formerly, they were turned towards the posting-house; now, they are turned towards the prison. They whisper at the fountain, that although condemned to death he will not be executed; they say that petitions
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have been presented in Paris, showing that he was enraged and made mad by the death of his child; they say that a petition has been presented to the King himself. What do I know? It is possible. Perhaps yes, perhaps no."
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"Listen then, Jacques," Number One of that name sternly interposed.
"Know that a petition was presented to the King and Queen. All here, yourself excepted, saw the King take it, in his carriage in the street, sitting beside the Queen. It is
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Defarge whom you see here, who, at the hazard of his life, darted out before the horses, with the petition in his hand."
"And once again listen, Jacques!" said the kneeling Number Three: his fingers ever wandering over and over those
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fine nerves, with a strikingly greedy air, as if he hungered for something--that was neither food nor drink; "the guard, horse and foot, surrounded the petitioner, and struck him blows. You hear?"
"I hear,
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messieurs."
"Go on then," said Defarge.
"Again; on the other hand, they whisper at the fountain," resumed the countryman, "that he is brought down into our country to be executed on the
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spot, and that he will very certainly be executed. They even whisper that because he has slain Monseigneur, and because Monseigneur was the father of his tenants--serfs--what you will--he will be executed as a parricide. One old
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man says at the fountain, that his right hand, armed with the knife, will be burnt off before his face; that, into wounds which will be made in his arms, his breast, and his legs, there will be poured boiling oil, melted lead, hot resin, wax, and
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sulphur; finally, that he will be torn limb from limb by four strong horses. That old man says, all this was actually done to a prisoner who made an attempt on the life of the late King, Louis Fifteen. But how do I know if he lies? I am not a
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scholar."
"Listen once again then, Jacques!" said the man with the restless hand and the craving air. "The name of that prisoner was Damiens, and it was all done in open day, in the open streets of this city of Paris; and nothing
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was more noticed in the vast concourse that saw it done, than the crowd of ladies of quality and fashion, who were full of eager attention to the last--to the last, Jacques, prolonged until nightfall, when he had lost two legs and an arm, and
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still breathed! And it was done--why, how old are you?"
"Thirty-five," said the mender of roads, who looked sixty.
"It was done when you were more than ten years old; you might have seen it."
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"Enough!" said Defarge, with grim impatience. "Long live the Devil! Go on."
"Well! Some whisper this, some whisper that; they speak of nothing else; even the fountain appears to fall to that tune. At length, on Sunday night when all the
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village is asleep, come soldiers, winding down from the prison, and their guns ring on the stones of the little street. Workmen dig, workmen hammer, soldiers laugh and sing; in the morning, by the fountain, there is raised a gallows forty feet high,
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poisoning the water."
The mender of roads looked _through_ rather than _at_ the low ceiling, and pointed as if he saw the gallows somewhere in the sky.
"All work is stopped, all assemble there, nobody leads the
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cows out, the cows are there with the rest. At midday, the roll of drums. Soldiers have marched into the prison in the night, and he is in the midst of many soldiers. He is bound as before, and in his mouth there is a gag--tied so, with a tight string,
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making him look almost as if he laughed." He suggested it, by creasing his face with his two thumbs, from the corners of his mouth to his ears. "On the top of the gallows is fixed the knife, blade upwards, with its point in the air. He is hanged there
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forty feet high--and is left hanging, poisoning the water."
They looked at one another, as he used his blue cap to wipe his face, on which the perspiration had started afresh while he recalled the spectacle.
"It is frightful,
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messieurs. How can the women and the children draw water! Who can gossip of an evening, under that shadow! Under it, have I said? When I left the village, Monday evening as the sun was going to bed, and looked back from the hill, the shadow struck
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across the church, across the mill, across the prison--seemed to strike across the earth, messieurs, to where the sky rests upon it!"
The hungry man gnawed one of his fingers as he looked at the other three, and his finger
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quivered with the craving that was on him.
"That's all, messieurs. I left at sunset (as I had been warned to do), and I walked on, that night and half next day, until I met (as I was warned I should) this comrade. With him,
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I came on, now riding and now walking, through the rest of yesterday and through last night. And here you see me!"
After a gloomy silence, the first Jacques said, "Good! You have acted and recounted faithfully. Will you
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wait for us a little, outside the door?"
"Very willingly," said the mender of roads. Whom Defarge escorted to the top of the stairs, and, leaving seated there, returned.
The three had risen, and their heads were together when he
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came back to the garret.
"How say you, Jacques?" demanded Number One. "To be registered?"
"To be registered, as doomed to destruction," returned Defarge.
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"Magnificent!" croaked the man with the craving.
"The chateau, and all the race?" inquired the first.
"The chateau and all the race," returned Defarge. "Extermination."
The hungry man
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repeated, in a rapturous croak, "Magnificent!" and began gnawing another finger.
"Are you sure," asked Jacques Two, of Defarge, "that no embarrassment can arise from our manner of keeping the register?
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Without doubt it is safe, for no one beyond ourselves can decipher it; but shall we always be able to decipher it--or, I ought to say, will she?"
"Jacques," returned Defarge, drawing himself up, "if madame my wife undertook
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to keep the register in her memory alone, she would not lose a word of it--not a syllable of it. Knitted, in her own stitches and her own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as the sun. Confide in Madame Defarge. It would be easier for the
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weakest poltroon that lives, to erase himself from existence, than to erase one letter of his name or crimes from the knitted register of Madame Defarge."
There was a murmur of confidence and approval, and then the man who
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hungered, asked: "Is this rustic to be sent back soon? I hope so. He is very simple; is he not a little dangerous?"
"He knows nothing," said Defarge; "at least nothing more than would easily elevate himself to a gallows of the
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same height. I charge myself with him; let him remain with me; I will take care of him, and set him on his road. He wishes to see the fine world--the King, the Queen, and Court; let him see them on Sunday."
"What?" exclaimed the hungry man,
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staring. "Is it a good sign, that he wishes to see Royalty and Nobility?"
"Jacques," said Defarge; "judiciously show a cat milk, if you wish her to thirst for it. Judiciously show a dog his natural prey, if you wish him to bring it down one day."
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Nothing more was said, and the mender of roads, being found already dozing on the topmost stair, was advised to lay himself down on the pallet-bed and take some rest. He needed no persuasion, and was soon asleep.
Worse quarters than Defarge's
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wine-shop, could easily have been found in Paris for a provincial slave of that degree. Saving for a mysterious dread of madame by which he was constantly haunted, his life was very new and agreeable. But, madame sat all day at her counter, so
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expressly unconscious of him, and so particularly determined not to perceive that his being there had any connection with anything below the surface, that he shook in his wooden shoes whenever his eye lighted on her. For, he contended
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with himself that it was impossible to foresee what that lady might pretend next; and he felt assured that if she should take it into her brightly ornamented head to pretend that she had seen him do a murder and afterwards flay the victim, she would
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infallibly go through with it until the play was played out.
Therefore, when Sunday came, the mender of roads was not enchanted (though he said he was) to find that madame was to accompany monsieur and himself to Versailles. It was
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additionally disconcerting to have madame knitting all the way there, in a public conveyance; it was additionally disconcerting yet, to have madame in the crowd in the afternoon, still with her knitting in her hands as the crowd waited to see the
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carriage of the King and Queen.
"You work hard, madame," said a man near her.
"Yes," answered Madame Defarge; "I have a good deal to do."
"What do you make,
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madame?"
"Many things."
"For instance--"
"For instance," returned Madame Defarge, composedly, "shrouds."
The man moved a little further away, as
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soon as he could, and the mender of roads fanned himself with his blue cap: feeling it mightily close and oppressive. If he needed a King and Queen to restore him, he was fortunate in having his remedy at hand; for, soon the large-faced King and the
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fair-faced Queen came in their golden coach, attended by the shining Bull's Eye of their Court, a glittering multitude of laughing ladies and fine lords; and in jewels and silks and powder and splendour and elegantly spurning figures and
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handsomely disdainful faces of both sexes, the mender of roads bathed himself, so much to his temporary intoxication, that he cried Long live the King, Long live the Queen, Long live everybody and everything! as if
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he had never heard of ubiquitous Jacques in his time. Then, there were gardens, courtyards, terraces, fountains, green banks, more King and Queen, more Bull's Eye, more lords and ladies, more Long live they all! until he absolutely wept
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with sentiment. During the whole of this scene, which lasted some three hours, he had plenty of shouting and weeping and sentimental company, and throughout Defarge held him by the collar, as if to restrain him from flying at the
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objects of his brief devotion and tearing them to pieces.
"Bravo!" said Defarge, clapping him on the back when it was over, like a patron; "you are a good boy!"
The mender of roads was now coming to himself, and was
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mistrustful of having made a mistake in his late demonstrations; but no.
"You are the fellow we want," said Defarge, in his ear; "you make these fools believe that it will last for ever. Then, they are the more insolent, and it is the nearer
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ended."
"Hey!" cried the mender of roads, reflectively; "that's true."
"These fools know nothing. While they despise your breath, and would stop it for ever and ever, in you or in a
#pgx127
hundred like you rather than in one of their own horses or dogs, they only know what your breath tells them. Let it deceive them, then, a little longer; it cannot deceive them too much."
Madame Defarge looked superciliously at the client, and
#pgx128
nodded in confirmation.
"As to you," said she, "you would shout and shed tears for anything, if it made a show and a noise. Say! Would you not?"
"Truly, madame, I think so. For the moment."
#pgx129
"If you were shown a great heap of dolls, and were set upon them to pluck them to pieces and despoil them for your own advantage, you would pick out the richest and gayest. Say! Would you not?"
"Truly yes, madame."
#pgx130
"Yes. And if you were shown a flock of birds, unable to fly, and were set upon them to strip them of their feathers for your own advantage, you would set upon the birds of the finest feathers; would you not?"
"It is true,
#pgx131
madame."
"You have seen both dolls and birds to-day," said Madame Defarge, with a wave of her hand towards the place where they had last been apparent;
"now, go home!"
#pgx132
XVI. Still Knitting
Madame Defarge and monsieur her husband returned amicably to the bosom of Saint Antoine, while a speck in a blue cap toiled through the darkness, and through the dust, and down the weary
#pgx133
miles of avenue by the wayside, slowly tending towards that point of the compass where the chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his grave, listened to the whispering trees. Such ample leisure had the stone faces, now, for listening to the trees and
#pgx134
to the fountain, that the few village scarecrows who, in their quest for herbs to eat and fragments of dead stick to burn, strayed within sight of the great stone courtyard and terrace staircase, had it borne in upon their starved fancy that the
#pgx135
expression of the faces was altered. A rumour just lived in the village--had a faint and bare existence there, as its people had--that when the knife struck home, the faces changed, from faces of pride to faces of anger and pain; also, that when that
#pgx136
dangling figure was hauled up forty feet above the fountain, they changed again, and bore a cruel look of being avenged, which they would henceforth bear for ever. In the stone face over the great window of the bed-chamber where the murder was
#pgx137
done, two fine dints were pointed out in the sculptured nose, which everybody recognised, and which nobody had seen of old; and on the scarce occasions when two or three ragged peasants emerged from the crowd to take a hurried
#pgx138
peep at Monsieur the Marquis petrified, a skinny finger would not have pointed to it for a minute, before they all started away among the moss and leaves, like the more fortunate hares who could find a living there.
Chateau and hut, stone face and
#pgx139
dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well--thousands of acres of land--a whole province of France--all France itself--lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint
#pgx140
hair-breadth line. So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in the
#pgx141
feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it.
The Defarges, husband and wife, came lumbering under the starlight, in their public vehicle, to that gate of Paris
#pgx142
whereunto their journey naturally tended. There was the usual stoppage at the barrier guardhouse, and the usual lanterns came glancing forth for the usual examination and inquiry. Monsieur Defarge alighted; knowing one or two of the soldiery
#pgx143
there, and one of the police. The latter he was intimate with, and affectionately embraced.
When Saint Antoine had again enfolded the Defarges in his dusky wings, and they, having finally alighted near the Saint's boundaries, were picking their
#pgx144
way on foot through the black mud and offal of his streets, Madame Defarge spoke to her husband:
"Say then, my friend; what did Jacques of the police tell thee?"
"Very little to-night, but all he knows.
#pgx145
There is another spy commissioned for our quarter. There may be many more, for all that he can say, but he knows of one."
"Eh well!" said Madame Defarge, raising her eyebrows with a cool business air. "It is necessary to register him. How
#pgx146
do they call that man?"
"He is English."
"So much the better. His name?"
"Barsad," said Defarge, making it French by pronunciation. But, he had been so
#pgx147
careful to get it accurately, that he then spelt it with perfect correctness.
"Barsad," repeated madame. "Good. Christian name?"
"John."
"John Barsad,"
#pgx148
repeated madame, after murmuring it once to herself.
"Good. His appearance; is it known?"
"Age, about forty years; height, about five feet nine; black hair; complexion dark; generally, rather handsome
#pgx149
visage; eyes dark, face thin, long, and sallow; nose aquiline, but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left cheek; expression, therefore, sinister."
"Eh my faith. It is a portrait!" said madame, laughing.
#pgx150
"He shall be registered to-morrow."
They turned into the wine-shop, which was closed (for it was midnight), and where Madame Defarge immediately took her post at her desk, counted the small moneys that had been taken during her
#pgx151
absence, examined the stock, went through the entries in the book, made other entries of her own, checked the serving man in every possible way, and finally dismissed him to bed. Then she turned out the contents of the bowl of money for the
#pgx152
second time, and began knotting them up in her handkerchief, in a chain of separate knots, for safe keeping through the night. All this while, Defarge, with his pipe in his mouth, walked up and down, complacently admiring, but
#pgx153
never interfering; in which condition, indeed, as to the business and his domestic affairs, he walked up and down through life.
The night was hot, and the shop, close shut and surrounded by so foul a neighbourhood, was ill-smelling.
#pgx154
Monsieur Defarge's olfactory sense was by no means delicate, but the stock of wine smelt much stronger than it ever tasted, and so did the stock of rum and brandy and aniseed. He whiffed the compound of scents away, as he put down his smoked-out
#pgx155
pipe.
"You are fatigued," said madame, raising her glance as she knotted the money. "There are only the usual odours."
"I am a little tired," her husband acknowledged.
#pgx156
"You are a little depressed, too," said madame, whose quick eyes had never been so intent on the accounts, but they had had a ray or two for him. "Oh, the men, the men!"
"But my dear!" began Defarge.
#pgx157
"But my dear!" repeated madame, nodding firmly; "but my dear! You are faint of heart to-night, my dear!"
"Well, then," said Defarge, as if a thought were wrung out of his breast, "it _is_ a long time."
#pgx158
"It is a long time," repeated his wife; "and when is it not a long time? Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule."
"It does not take a long time to strike a man with Lightning," said Defarge.
#pgx159
"How long," demanded madame, composedly, "does it take to make and store the lightning? Tell me."
Defarge raised his head thoughtfully, as if there were something in that too.
"It does not take a long time," said madame, "for an
#pgx160
earthquake to swallow a town. Eh well! Tell me how long it takes to prepare the earthquake?"
"A long time, I suppose," said Defarge.
"But when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to pieces
#pgx161
everything before it. In the meantime, it is always preparing, though it is not seen or heard. That is your consolation. Keep it."
She tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it throttled a foe.
"I tell thee," said madame, extending
#pgx162
her right hand, for emphasis,
"that although it is a long time on the road, it is on the road and coming. I tell thee it never retreats, and never stops. I tell thee it is always advancing. Look around and consider the lives of all the world that we
#pgx163
know, consider the faces of all the world that we know, consider the rage and discontent to which the Jacquerie addresses itself with more and more of certainty every hour. Can such things last? Bah! I mock you."
"My brave wife,"
#pgx164
returned Defarge, standing before her with his head a little bent, and his hands clasped at his back, like a docile and attentive pupil before his catechist, "I do not question all this. But it has lasted a long time, and it is possible--you know well,
#pgx165
my wife, it is possible--that it may not come, during our lives."
"Eh well! How then?" demanded madame, tying another knot, as if there were another enemy strangled.
"Well!" said Defarge, with a half
#pgx166
complaining and half apologetic shrug.
"We shall not see the triumph."
"We shall have helped it," returned madame, with her extended hand in strong action. "Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we shall
#pgx167
see the triumph. But even if not, even if I knew certainly not, show me the neck of an aristocrat and tyrant, and still I would--"
Then madame, with her teeth set, tied a very terrible knot indeed.
"Hold!" cried Defarge,
#pgx168
reddening a little as if he felt charged with cowardice; "I too, my dear, will stop at nothing."
"Yes! But it is your weakness that you sometimes need to see your victim and your opportunity, to sustain you. Sustain yourself without
#pgx169
that. When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil; but wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained--not shown--yet always ready."
Madame enforced the conclusion of this piece of advice by striking her little counter with her
#pgx170
chain of money as if she knocked its brains out, and then gathering the heavy handkerchief under her arm in a serene manner, and observing that it was time to go to bed.
Next noontide saw the admirable woman in her usual place in the wine-shop,
#pgx171
knitting away assiduously. A rose lay beside her, and if she now and then glanced at the flower, it was with no infraction of her usual preoccupied air. There were a few customers, drinking or not drinking, standing or seated, sprinkled about.
#pgx172
The day was very hot, and heaps of flies, who were extending their inquisitive and adventurous perquisitions into all the glutinous little glasses near madame, fell dead at the bottom. Their decease made no impression on the
#pgx173
other flies out promenading, who looked at them in the coolest manner (as if they themselves were elephants, or something as far removed), until they met the same fate. Curious to consider how heedless flies are!--perhaps they thought as much
#pgx174
at Court that sunny summer day.
A figure entering at the door threw a shadow on Madame Defarge which she felt to be a new one. She laid down her knitting, and began to pin her rose in her head-dress, before she looked at the figure.
#pgx175
It was curious. The moment Madame Defarge took up the rose, the customers ceased talking, and began gradually to drop out of the wine-shop.
"Good day, madame," said the new-comer.
"Good day,
#pgx176
monsieur."
She said it aloud, but added to herself, as she resumed her knitting:
"Hah! Good day, age about forty, height about five feet nine, black hair, generally rather handsome visage, complexion dark, eyes dark, thin, long and sallow
#pgx177
face, aquiline nose but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left cheek which imparts a sinister expression! Good day, one and all!"
"Have the goodness to give me a little glass of old cognac, and a mouthful of
#pgx178
cool fresh water, madame."
Madame complied with a polite air.
"Marvellous cognac this, madame!"
It was the first time it had ever been so complimented, and Madame Defarge knew enough of its antecedents to
#pgx179
know better. She said, however, that the cognac was flattered, and took up her knitting. The visitor watched her fingers for a few moments, and took the opportunity of observing the place in general.
"You knit with
#pgx180
great skill, madame."
"I am accustomed to it."
"A pretty pattern too!"
"_You_ think so?" said madame, looking at him with a smile.
"Decidedly. May
#pgx181
one ask what it is for?"
"Pastime," said madame, still looking at him with a smile while her fingers moved nimbly.
"Not for use?"
"That depends. I may find a use for it
#pgx182
one day. If I do--Well," said madame, drawing a breath and nodding her head with a stern kind of coquetry, "I'll use it!"
It was remarkable; but, the taste of Saint Antoine seemed to be decidedly opposed to a rose on the head-dress of
#pgx183
Madame Defarge. Two men had entered separately, and had been about to order drink, when, catching sight of that novelty, they faltered, made a pretence of looking about as if for some friend who was not there, and went away. Nor, of those who had been
#pgx184
there when this visitor entered, was there one left. They had all dropped off. The spy had kept his eyes open, but had been able to detect no sign. They had lounged away in a poverty-stricken, purposeless, accidental manner, quite natural and
#pgx185
unimpeachable.
"_John_," thought madame, checking off her work as her fingers knitted, and her eyes looked at the stranger. "Stay long enough, and I shall knit
'BARSAD' before you go."
#pgx186
"You have a husband, madame?"
"I have."
"Children?"
"No children."
"Business seems bad?"
"Business is very
#pgx187
bad; the people are so poor."
"Ah, the unfortunate, miserable people! So oppressed, too--as you say."
"As _you_ say," madame retorted, correcting him, and deftly knitting an extra something
#pgx188
into his name that boded him no good.
"Pardon me; certainly it was I who said so, but you naturally think so. Of course."
"_I_ think?" returned madame, in a high voice. "I and my husband have enough to do to
#pgx189
keep this wine-shop open, without thinking. All we think, here, is how to live. That is the subject _we_ think of, and it gives us, from morning to night, enough to think about, without embarrassing our heads concerning others. _I_ think
#pgx190
for others? No, no."
The spy, who was there to pick up any crumbs he could find or make, did not allow his baffled state to express itself in his sinister face; but, stood with an air of gossiping gallantry, leaning his elbow on Madame Defarge's
#pgx191
little counter, and occasionally sipping his cognac.
"A bad business this, madame, of Gaspard's execution. Ah! the poor Gaspard!" With a sigh of great compassion.
"My faith!" returned madame, coolly
#pgx192
and lightly, "if people use knives for such purposes, they have to pay for it. He knew beforehand what the price of his luxury was; he has paid the price."
"I believe," said the spy, dropping his soft voice to a tone that invited
#pgx193
confidence, and expressing an injured revolutionary susceptibility in every muscle of his wicked face: "I believe there is much compassion and anger in this neighbourhood, touching the poor fellow? Between
#pgx194
ourselves."
"Is there?" asked madame, vacantly.
"Is there not?"
"--Here is my husband!" said Madame Defarge.
As the keeper of the wine-shop entered at the door, the
#pgx195
spy saluted him by touching his hat, and saying, with an engaging smile, "Good day, Jacques!" Defarge stopped short, and stared at him.
"Good day, Jacques!" the spy repeated; with not quite so much confidence, or
#pgx196
quite so easy a smile under the stare.
"You deceive yourself, monsieur," returned the keeper of the wine-shop.
"You mistake me for another. That is not my name. I am Ernest Defarge."
"It is all the same,"
#pgx197
said the spy, airily, but discomfited too: "good day!"
"Good day!" answered Defarge, drily.
"I was saying to madame, with whom I had the pleasure of chatting when you entered, that they tell me there
#pgx198
is--and no wonder!--much sympathy and anger in Saint Antoine, touching the unhappy fate of poor Gaspard."
"No one has told me so," said Defarge, shaking his head. "I know nothing of it."
Having said it, he
#pgx199
passed behind the little counter, and stood with his hand on the back of his wife's chair, looking over that barrier at the person to whom they were both opposed, and whom either of them would have shot with the greatest satisfaction.
The spy, well
#pgx200
used to his business, did not change his unconscious attitude, but drained his little glass of cognac, took a sip of fresh water, and asked for another glass of cognac. Madame Defarge poured it out for him, took to her knitting again, and hummed
#pgx201
a little song over it.
"You seem to know this quarter well; that is to say, better than I do?" observed Defarge.
"Not at all, but I hope to know it better. I am so profoundly interested in its miserable
#pgx202
inhabitants."
"Hah!" muttered Defarge.
"The pleasure of conversing with you, Monsieur Defarge, recalls to me," pursued the spy, "that I have the honour of cherishing some interesting
#pgx203
associations with your name."
"Indeed!" said Defarge, with much indifference.
"Yes, indeed. When Doctor Manette was released, you, his old domestic, had the charge of him, I know. He was delivered
#pgx204
to you. You see I am informed of the circumstances?"
"Such is the fact, certainly," said Defarge. He had had it conveyed to him, in an accidental touch of his wife's elbow as she knitted and warbled, that he would do best to
#pgx205
answer, but always with brevity.
"It was to you," said the spy, "that his daughter came; and it was from your care that his daughter took him, accompanied by a neat brown monsieur; how is he called?--in a little wig--Lorry--of
#pgx206
the bank of Tellson and Company--over to England."
"Such is the fact," repeated Defarge.
"Very interesting remembrances!" said the spy. "I have known Doctor Manette and his daughter, in England."
#pgx207
"Yes?" said Defarge.
"You don't hear much about them now?" said the spy.
"No," said Defarge.
"In effect," madame struck in, looking up from her work and her little song, "we
#pgx208
never hear about them. We received the news of their safe arrival, and perhaps another letter, or perhaps two; but, since then, they have gradually taken their road in life--we, ours--and we have held no correspondence."
#pgx209
"Perfectly so, madame," replied the spy. "She is going to be married."
"Going?" echoed madame. "She was pretty enough to have been married long ago. You English are cold, it seems to me."
#pgx210
"Oh! You know I am English."
"I perceive your tongue is," returned madame; "and what the tongue is, I suppose the man is."
He did not take the identification as a compliment; but he made the best of it, and turned it off
#pgx211
with a laugh. After sipping his cognac to the end, he added:
"Yes, Miss Manette is going to be married. But not to an Englishman; to one who, like herself, is French by birth. And speaking of Gaspard (ah, poor Gaspard! It was cruel,
#pgx212
cruel!), it is a curious thing that she is going to marry the nephew of Monsieur the Marquis, for whom Gaspard was exalted to that height of so many feet; in other words, the present Marquis. But he lives unknown in England, he is no Marquis there; he
#pgx213
is Mr. Charles Darnay. D'Aulnais is the name of his mother's family."
Madame Defarge knitted steadily, but the intelligence had a palpable effect upon her husband. Do what he would, behind the little counter, as to the striking of a light and the
#pgx214
lighting of his pipe, he was troubled, and his hand was not trustworthy. The spy would have been no spy if he had failed to see it, or to record it in his mind.
Having made, at least, this one hit, whatever it might prove to be worth, and no customers
#pgx215
coming in to help him to any other, Mr. Barsad paid for what he had drunk, and took his leave: taking occasion to say, in a genteel manner, before he departed, that he looked forward to the pleasure of seeing Monsieur and Madame Defarge again.
#pgx216
For some minutes after he had emerged into the outer presence of Saint Antoine, the husband and wife remained exactly as he had left them, lest he should come back.
"Can it be true," said Defarge, in a low voice, looking
#pgx217
down at his wife as he stood smoking with his hand on the back of her chair: "what he has said of Ma'amselle Manette?"
"As he has said it," returned madame, lifting her eyebrows a little, "it is probably false. But it may be true."
#pgx218
"If it is--" Defarge began, and stopped.
"If it is?" repeated his wife.
"--And if it does come, while we live to see it triumph--I hope, for her sake, Destiny will keep her husband out of
#pgx219
France."
"Her husband's destiny," said Madame Defarge, with her usual composure,
"will take him where he is to go, and will lead him to the end that is to end him. That is all I know."
"But it is very
#pgx220
strange--now, at least, is it not very strange"--said Defarge, rather pleading with his wife to induce her to admit it,
"that, after all our sympathy for Monsieur her father, and herself, her husband's name should be
#pgx221
proscribed under your hand at this moment, by the side of that infernal dog's who has just left us?"
"Stranger things than that will happen when it does come," answered madame. "I have them both here, of a certainty; and
#pgx222
they are both here for their merits; that is enough."
She rolled up her knitting when she had said those words, and presently took the rose out of the handkerchief that was wound about her head. Either Saint Antoine had an instinctive sense
#pgx223
that the objectionable decoration was gone, or Saint Antoine was on the watch for its disappearance; howbeit, the Saint took courage to lounge in, very shortly afterwards, and the wine-shop recovered its habitual aspect.
#pgx224
In the evening, at which season of all others Saint Antoine turned himself inside out, and sat on door-steps and window-ledges, and came to the corners of vile streets and courts, for a breath of air, Madame Defarge with her work in her hand
#pgx225
was accustomed to pass from place to place and from group to group: a Missionary--there were many like her--such as the world will do well never to breed again. All the women knitted. They knitted worthless things; but, the
#pgx226
mechanical work was a mechanical substitute for eating and drinking; the hands moved for the jaws and the digestive apparatus: if the bony fingers had been still, the stomachs would have been more famine-pinched.
But, as the fingers
#pgx227
went, the eyes went, and the thoughts. And as Madame Defarge moved on from group to group, all three went quicker and fiercer among every little knot of women that she had spoken with, and left behind.
Her husband smoked at his door, looking after
#pgx228
her with admiration. "A great woman," said he, "a strong woman, a grand woman, a frightfully grand woman!"
Darkness closed around, and then came the ringing of church bells and the distant beating of the military drums in the Palace
#pgx229
Courtyard, as the women sat knitting, knitting. Darkness encompassed them. Another darkness was closing in as surely, when the church bells, then ringing pleasantly in many an airy steeple over France, should be melted into thundering
#pgx230
cannon; when the military drums should be beating to drown a wretched voice, that night all potent as the voice of Power and Plenty, Freedom and Life. So much was closing in about the women who sat knitting, knitting, that they their very selves were
#pgx231
closing in around a structure yet unbuilt, where they were to sit knitting, knitting, counting dropping heads.
XVII. One Night
Never did the sun go down with a
#pgx232
brighter glory on the quiet corner in Soho, than one memorable evening when the Doctor and his daughter sat under the plane-tree together. Never did the moon rise with a milder radiance over great London, than on that night when it found them still
#pgx233
seated under the tree, and shone upon their faces through its leaves.
Lucie was to be married to-morrow. She had reserved this last evening for her father, and they sat alone under the plane-tree.
"You are happy, my
#pgx234
dear father?"
"Quite, my child."
They had said little, though they had been there a long time. When it was yet light enough to work and read, she had neither engaged herself in her usual work, nor had she read to him. She had employed
#pgx235
herself in both ways, at his side under the tree, many and many a time; but, this time was not quite like any other, and nothing could make it so.
"And I am very happy to-night, dear father. I am deeply happy in the love that Heaven has so
#pgx236
blessed--my love for Charles, and Charles's love for me. But, if my life were not to be still consecrated to you, or if my marriage were so arranged as that it would part us, even by the length of a few of these streets, I should be more unhappy and
#pgx237
self-reproachful now than I can tell you. Even as it is--"
Even as it was, she could not command her voice.
In the sad moonlight, she clasped him by the neck, and laid her face upon his breast. In the moonlight which is always sad, as the
#pgx238
light of the sun itself is--as the light called human life is--at its coming and its going.
"Dearest dear! Can you tell me, this last time, that you feel quite, quite sure, no new affections of mine, and no new duties of mine, will ever interpose
#pgx239
between us? _I_ know it well, but do you know it? In your own heart, do you feel quite certain?"
Her father answered, with a cheerful firmness of conviction he could scarcely have assumed, "Quite sure, my darling! More than that," he
#pgx240
added, as he tenderly kissed her: "my future is far brighter, Lucie, seen through your marriage, than it could have been--nay, than it ever was--without it."
"If I could hope _that_, my
#pgx241
father!--"
"Believe it, love! Indeed it is so. Consider how natural and how plain it is, my dear, that it should be so. You, devoted and young, cannot fully appreciate the anxiety I have felt that your life
#pgx242
should not be wasted--"
She moved her hand towards his lips, but he took it in his, and repeated the word.
"--wasted, my child--should not be wasted, struck aside from the natural order of things--for my sake. Your
#pgx243
unselfishness cannot entirely comprehend how much my mind has gone on this; but, only ask yourself, how could my happiness be perfect, while yours was incomplete?"
"If I had never seen Charles, my
#pgx244
father, I should have been quite happy with you."
He smiled at her unconscious admission that she would have been unhappy without Charles, having seen him; and replied:
"My child, you did see him, and it is
#pgx245
Charles. If it had not been Charles, it would have been another. Or, if it had been no other, I should have been the cause, and then the dark part of my life would have cast its shadow beyond myself, and would have fallen on you."
It was the first
#pgx246
time, except at the trial, of her ever hearing him refer to the period of his suffering. It gave her a strange and new sensation while his words were in her ears; and she remembered it long afterwards.
"See!" said the
#pgx247
Doctor of Beauvais, raising his hand towards the moon.
"I have looked at her from my prison-window, when I could not bear her light. I have looked at her when it has been such torture to me to think of her shining upon what I had lost, that I have
#pgx248
beaten my head against my prison-walls. I have looked at her, in a state so dull and lethargic, that I have thought of nothing but the number of horizontal lines I could draw across her at the full, and the number of perpendicular
#pgx249
lines with which I could intersect them." He added in his inward and pondering manner, as he looked at the moon, "It was twenty either way, I remember, and the twentieth was difficult to squeeze in."
The strange thrill with which she
#pgx250
heard him go back to that time, deepened as he dwelt upon it; but, there was nothing to shock her in the manner of his reference. He only seemed to contrast his present cheerfulness and felicity with the dire endurance that was over.
#pgx251
"I have looked at her, speculating thousands of times upon the unborn child from whom I had been rent. Whether it was alive. Whether it had been born alive, or the poor mother's shock had killed it. Whether it was a son who would some
#pgx252
day avenge his father. (There was a time in my imprisonment, when my desire for vengeance was unbearable.) Whether it was a son who would never know his father's story; who might even live to weigh the possibility of his father's
#pgx253
having disappeared of his own will and act. Whether it was a daughter who would grow to be a woman."
She drew closer to him, and kissed his cheek and his hand.
"I have pictured my daughter, to myself, as perfectly forgetful of
#pgx254
me--rather, altogether ignorant of me, and unconscious of me. I have cast up the years of her age, year after year. I have seen her married to a man who knew nothing of my fate. I have altogether perished from the
#pgx255
remembrance of the living, and in the next generation my place was a blank."
"My father! Even to hear that you had such thoughts of a daughter who never existed, strikes to my heart as if I had been that child."
#pgx256
"You, Lucie? It is out of the Consolation and restoration you have brought to me, that these remembrances arise, and pass between us and the moon on this last night.--What did I say just now?"
"She knew nothing
#pgx257
of you. She cared nothing for you."
"So! But on other moonlight nights, when the sadness and the silence have touched me in a different way--have affected me with something as like a sorrowful sense of peace, as any emotion that
#pgx258
had pain for its foundations could--I have imagined her as coming to me in my cell, and leading me out into the freedom beyond the fortress. I have seen her image in the moonlight often, as I now see you; except that I never held
#pgx259
her in my arms; it stood between the little grated window and the door. But, you understand that that was not the child I am speaking of?"
"The figure was not; the--the--image; the fancy?"
"No. That was
#pgx260
another thing. It stood before my disturbed sense of sight, but it never moved. The phantom that my mind pursued, was another and more real child. Of her outward appearance I know no more than that she was like her mother. The other
#pgx261
had that likeness too--as you have--but was not the same. Can you follow me, Lucie? Hardly, I think? I doubt you must have been a solitary prisoner to understand these perplexed distinctions."
His collected and
#pgx262
calm manner could not prevent her blood from running cold, as he thus tried to anatomise his old condition.
"In that more peaceful state, I have imagined her, in the moonlight, coming to me and taking me out to show me
#pgx263
that the home of her married life was full of her loving remembrance of her lost father. My picture was in her room, and I was in her prayers. Her life was active, cheerful, useful; but my poor history pervaded it all."
#pgx264
"I was that child, my father, I was not half so good, but in my love that was I."
"And she showed me her children," said the Doctor of Beauvais, "and they had heard of me, and had been taught to pity me. When they passed a prison
#pgx265
of the State, they kept far from its frowning walls, and looked up at its bars, and spoke in whispers. She could never deliver me; I imagined that she always brought me back after showing me such things. But then, blessed with the relief of tears, I
#pgx266
fell upon my knees, and blessed her."
"I am that child, I hope, my father. O my dear, my dear, will you bless me as fervently to-morrow?"
"Lucie, I recall these old troubles in the reason that I have to-night for
#pgx267
loving you better than words can tell, and thanking God for my great happiness. My thoughts, when they were wildest, never rose near the happiness that I have known with you, and that we have before us."
He embraced her, solemnly
#pgx268
commended her to Heaven, and humbly thanked Heaven for having bestowed her on him. By-and-bye, they went into the house.
There was no one bidden to the marriage but Mr. Lorry; there was even to be no bridesmaid but the
#pgx269
gaunt Miss Pross. The marriage was to make no change in their place of residence; they had been able to extend it, by taking to themselves the upper rooms formerly belonging to the apocryphal invisible lodger, and they desired nothing more.
#pgx270
Doctor Manette was very cheerful at the little supper. They were only three at table, and Miss Pross made the third. He regretted that Charles was not there; was more than half disposed to object to the loving little plot that kept him away; and
#pgx271
drank to him affectionately.
So, the time came for him to bid Lucie good night, and they separated. But, in the stillness of the third hour of the morning, Lucie came downstairs again, and stole into his room; not free from unshaped fears,
#pgx272
beforehand.
All things, however, were in their places; all was quiet; and he lay asleep, his white hair picturesque on the untroubled pillow, and his hands lying quiet on the coverlet. She put her needless candle in the shadow at a distance, crept up
#pgx273
to his bed, and put her lips to his; then, leaned over him, and looked at him.
Into his handsome face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn; but, he covered up their tracks with a determination so strong, that he held the mastery of
#pgx274
them even in his sleep. A more remarkable face in its quiet, resolute, and guarded struggle with an unseen assailant, was not to be beheld in all the wide dominions of sleep, that night.
She timidly laid her hand on his dear breast, and put up
#pgx275
a prayer that she might ever be as true to him as her love aspired to be, and as his sorrows deserved. Then, she withdrew her hand, and kissed his lips once more, and went away. So, the sunrise came, and the shadows of the leaves of the
#pgx276
plane-tree moved upon his face, as softly as her lips had moved in praying for him.
XVIII. Nine Days
The marriage-day was shining brightly, and they were
#pgx277
ready outside the closed door of the Doctor's room, where he was speaking with Charles Darnay. They were ready to go to church; the beautiful bride, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross--to whom the event, through a gradual process of reconcilement to the
#pgx278
inevitable, would have been one of absolute bliss, but for the yet lingering consideration that her brother Solomon should have been the bridegroom.
"And so," said Mr. Lorry, who could not sufficiently admire the bride, and who
#pgx279
had been moving round her to take in every point of her quiet, pretty dress; "and so it was for this, my sweet Lucie, that I brought you across the Channel, such a baby! Lord bless me! How little I thought what I was doing! How lightly I valued the
#pgx280
obligation I was conferring on my friend Mr. Charles!"
"You didn't mean it," remarked the matter-of-fact Miss Pross, "and therefore how could you know it? Nonsense!"
"Really? Well; but
#pgx281
don't cry," said the gentle Mr. Lorry.
"I am not crying," said Miss Pross; "_you_ are."
"I, my Pross?" (By this time, Mr. Lorry dared to be pleasant with her, on occasion.)
"You were, just
#pgx282
now; I saw you do it, and I don't wonder at it. Such a present of plate as you have made 'em, is enough to bring tears into anybody's eyes. There's not a fork or a spoon in the collection," said Miss Pross, "that I didn't cry over, last night after the
#pgx283
box came, till I couldn't see it."
"I am highly gratified," said Mr. Lorry, "though, upon my honour, I had no intention of rendering those trifling articles of remembrance invisible to any one. Dear me! This is an
#pgx284
occasion that makes a man speculate on all he has lost. Dear, dear, dear! To think that there might have been a Mrs. Lorry, any time these fifty years almost!"
"Not at all!" From Miss Pross.
"You think there
#pgx285
never might have been a Mrs. Lorry?" asked the gentleman of that name.
"Pooh!" rejoined Miss Pross; "you were a bachelor in your cradle."
"Well!" observed Mr. Lorry, beamingly adjusting his little
#pgx286
wig, "that seems probable, too."
"And you were cut out for a bachelor," pursued Miss Pross, "before you were put in your cradle."
"Then, I think," said Mr. Lorry, "that I was very unhandsomely dealt with, and
#pgx287
that I ought to have had a voice in the selection of my pattern. Enough! Now, my dear Lucie," drawing his arm soothingly round her waist, "I hear them moving in the next room, and Miss Pross and I, as two formal folks of business, are anxious not to
#pgx288
lose the final opportunity of saying something to you that you wish to hear. You leave your good father, my dear, in hands as earnest and as loving as your own; he shall be taken every conceivable care of; during the next fortnight, while you are in
#pgx289
Warwickshire and thereabouts, even Tellson's shall go to the wall (comparatively speaking) before him. And when, at the fortnight's end, he comes to join you and your beloved husband, on your other fortnight's trip in Wales, you shall
#pgx290
say that we have sent him to you in the best health and in the happiest frame. Now, I hear Somebody's step coming to the door. Let me kiss my dear girl with an old-fashioned bachelor blessing, before Somebody comes to claim his own."
#pgx291
For a moment, he held the fair face from him to look at the well-remembered expression on the forehead, and then laid the bright golden hair against his little brown wig, with a genuine tenderness and delicacy which, if such things be old-fashioned,
#pgx292
were as old as Adam.
The door of the Doctor's room opened, and he came out with Charles Darnay. He was so deadly pale--which had not been the case when they went in together--that no vestige of colour was to be seen in his face. But, in the
#pgx293
composure of his manner he was unaltered, except that to the shrewd glance of Mr. Lorry it disclosed some shadowy indication that the old air of avoidance and dread had lately passed over him, like a cold wind.
He gave his arm to
#pgx294
his daughter, and took her down-stairs to the chariot which Mr. Lorry had hired in honour of the day. The rest followed in another carriage, and soon, in a neighbouring church, where no strange eyes looked on, Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette
#pgx295
were happily married.
Besides the glancing tears that shone among the smiles of the little group when it was done, some diamonds, very bright and sparkling, glanced on the bride's hand, which were newly released from the dark
#pgx296
obscurity of one of Mr. Lorry's pockets. They returned home to breakfast, and all went well, and in due course the golden hair that had mingled with the poor shoemaker's white locks in the Paris garret, were mingled with them again in the morning
#pgx297
sunlight, on the threshold of the door at parting.
It was a hard parting, though it was not for long. But her father cheered her, and said at last, gently disengaging himself from her enfolding arms, "Take her, Charles! She is yours!"
#pgx298
And her agitated hand waved to them from a chaise window, and she was gone.
The corner being out of the way of the idle and curious, and the preparations having been very simple and few, the Doctor, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross, were left quite alone.
#pgx299
It was when they turned into the welcome shade of the cool old hall, that Mr. Lorry observed a great change to have come over the Doctor; as if the golden arm uplifted there, had struck him a poisoned blow.
He had naturally repressed much,
#pgx300
and some revulsion might have been expected in him when the occasion for repression was gone. But, it was the old scared lost look that troubled Mr. Lorry; and through his absent manner of clasping his head and drearily wandering away into his own
#pgx301
room when they got up-stairs, Mr. Lorry was reminded of Defarge the wine-shop keeper, and the starlight ride.
"I think," he whispered to Miss Pross, after anxious consideration, "I think we had best
#pgx302
not speak to him just now, or at all disturb him. I must look in at Tellson's; so I will go there at once and come back presently. Then, we will take him a ride into the country, and dine there, and all will be well."
It was easier for Mr. Lorry to
#pgx303
look in at Tellson's, than to look out of Tellson's. He was detained two hours. When he came back, he ascended the old staircase alone, having asked no question of the servant; going thus into the Doctor's rooms, he was stopped by a low
#pgx304
sound of knocking.
"Good God!" he said, with a start. "What's that?"
Miss Pross, with a terrified face, was at his ear. "O me, O me! All is lost!" cried she, wringing her hands. "What is to be told to Ladybird? He doesn't know me, and is
#pgx305
making shoes!"
Mr. Lorry said what he could to calm her, and went himself into the Doctor's room. The bench was turned towards the light, as it had been when he had seen the shoemaker at his work before, and his head was bent down, and he was very
#pgx306
busy.
"Doctor Manette. My dear friend, Doctor Manette!"
The Doctor looked at him for a moment--half inquiringly, half as if he were angry at being spoken to--and bent over his work again.
#pgx307
He had laid aside his coat and waistcoat; his shirt was open at the throat, as it used to be when he did that work; and even the old haggard, faded surface of face had come back to him. He worked hard--impatiently--as if in some sense of having been
#pgx308
interrupted.
Mr. Lorry glanced at the work in his hand, and observed that it was a shoe of the old size and shape. He took up another that was lying by him, and asked what it was.
"A young lady's walking shoe," he muttered, without
#pgx309
looking up. "It ought to have been finished long ago. Let it be."
"But, Doctor Manette. Look at me!"
He obeyed, in the old mechanically submissive manner, without pausing in his work.
"You know me, my
#pgx310
dear friend? Think again. This is not your proper occupation. Think, dear friend!"
Nothing would induce him to speak more. He looked up, for an instant at a time, when he was requested to do so; but, no persuasion would extract a word from him. He
#pgx311
worked, and worked, and worked, in silence, and words fell on him as they would have fallen on an echoless wall, or on the air. The only ray of hope that Mr. Lorry could discover, was, that he sometimes furtively looked up without being asked. In
#pgx312
that, there seemed a faint expression of curiosity or perplexity--as though he were trying to reconcile some doubts in his mind.
Two things at once impressed themselves on Mr. Lorry, as important above all others;
#pgx313
the first, that this must be kept secret from Lucie; the second, that it must be kept secret from all who knew him. In conjunction with Miss Pross, he took immediate steps towards the latter precaution, by giving out that the Doctor was not well, and
#pgx314
required a few days of complete rest. In aid of the kind deception to be practised on his daughter, Miss Pross was to write, describing his having been called away professionally, and referring to an imaginary letter of two or three
#pgx315
hurried lines in his own hand, represented to have been addressed to her by the same post.
These measures, advisable to be taken in any case, Mr. Lorry took in the hope of his coming to himself. If that should happen soon, he kept
#pgx316
another course in reserve; which was, to have a certain opinion that he thought the best, on the Doctor's case.
In the hope of his recovery, and of resort to this third course being thereby rendered practicable, Mr. Lorry resolved to
#pgx317
watch him attentively, with as little appearance as possible of doing so. He therefore made arrangements to absent himself from Tellson's for the first time in his life, and took his post by the window in the same room.
He was not long in
#pgx318
discovering that it was worse than useless to speak to him, since, on being pressed, he became worried. He abandoned that attempt on the first day, and resolved merely to keep himself always before him, as a silent protest
#pgx319
against the delusion into which he had fallen, or was falling. He remained, therefore, in his seat near the window, reading and writing, and expressing in as many pleasant and natural ways as he could think of, that it was a free place.
Doctor
#pgx320
Manette took what was given him to eat and drink, and worked on, that first day, until it was too dark to see--worked on, half an hour after Mr. Lorry could not have seen, for his life, to read or write. When he put his tools aside as useless, until
#pgx321
morning, Mr. Lorry rose and said to him:
"Will you go out?"
He looked down at the floor on either side of him in the old manner, looked up in the old manner, and repeated in the old low voice:
"Out?"
#pgx322
"Yes; for a walk with me. Why not?"
He made no effort to say why not, and said not a word more. But, Mr. Lorry thought he saw, as he leaned forward on his bench in the dusk, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, that he was
#pgx323
in some misty way asking himself, "Why not?" The sagacity of the man of business perceived an advantage here, and determined to hold it.
Miss Pross and he divided the night into two watches, and observed him at intervals from the adjoining room. He
#pgx324
paced up and down for a long time before he lay down; but, when he did finally lay himself down, he fell asleep. In the morning, he was up betimes, and went straight to his bench and to work.
On this second day, Mr. Lorry saluted him cheerfully by his
#pgx325
name, and spoke to him on topics that had been of late familiar to them. He returned no reply, but it was evident that he heard what was said, and that he thought about it, however confusedly. This encouraged Mr. Lorry to have Miss Pross in with her
#pgx326
work, several times during the day; at those times, they quietly spoke of Lucie, and of her father then present, precisely in the usual manner, and as if there were nothing amiss. This was done without any demonstrative accompaniment,
#pgx327
not long enough, or often enough to harass him; and it lightened Mr. Lorry's friendly heart to believe that he looked up oftener, and that he appeared to be stirred by some perception of inconsistencies surrounding him.
When it fell dark
#pgx328
again, Mr. Lorry asked him as before:
"Dear Doctor, will you go out?"
As before, he repeated, "Out?"
"Yes; for a walk with me. Why not?"
This time, Mr. Lorry feigned to go out when he could
#pgx329
extract no answer from him, and, after remaining absent for an hour, returned. In the meanwhile, the Doctor had removed to the seat in the window, and had sat there looking down at the plane-tree; but, on Mr. Lorry's return, he slipped away to his
#pgx330
bench.
The time went very slowly on, and Mr. Lorry's hope darkened, and his heart grew heavier again, and grew yet heavier and heavier every day. The third day came and went, the fourth, the fifth. Five days, six days, seven days, eight
#pgx331
days, nine days.
With a hope ever darkening, and with a heart always growing heavier and heavier, Mr. Lorry passed through this anxious time. The secret was well kept, and Lucie was unconscious and happy; but he could not fail to observe that the
#pgx332
shoemaker, whose hand had been a little out at first, was growing dreadfully skilful, and that he had never been so intent on his work, and that his hands had never been so nimble and expert, as in the dusk of the ninth evening.
#pgx333
XIX. An Opinion
Worn out by anxious watching, Mr. Lorry fell asleep at his post. On the tenth morning of his suspense, he was startled by the shining of the sun into the room where a
#pgx334
heavy slumber had overtaken him when it was dark night.
He rubbed his eyes and roused himself; but he doubted, when he had done so, whether he was not still asleep. For, going to the door of the Doctor's room and looking in, he perceived that
#pgx335
the shoemaker's bench and tools were put aside again, and that the Doctor himself sat reading at the window. He was in his usual morning dress, and his face (which Mr. Lorry could distinctly see), though still very pale, was calmly studious and
#pgx336
attentive.
Even when he had satisfied himself that he was awake, Mr. Lorry felt giddily uncertain for some few moments whether the late shoemaking might not be a disturbed dream of his own; for, did not his eyes show him his friend before him
#pgx337
in his accustomed clothing and aspect, and employed as usual; and was there any sign within their range, that the change of which he had so strong an impression had actually happened?
It was but the inquiry of his first confusion and
#pgx338
astonishment, the answer being obvious. If the impression were not produced by a real corresponding and sufficient cause, how came he, Jarvis Lorry, there? How came he to have fallen asleep, in his clothes, on the sofa in Doctor
#pgx339
Manette's consulting-room, and to be debating these points outside the Doctor's bedroom door in the early morning?
Within a few minutes, Miss Pross stood whispering at his side. If he had had any particle of doubt left, her talk would
#pgx340
of necessity have resolved it; but he was by that time clear-headed, and had none. He advised that they should let the time go by until the regular breakfast-hour, and should then meet the Doctor as if nothing unusual had occurred. If he
#pgx341
appeared to be in his customary state of mind, Mr. Lorry would then cautiously proceed to seek direction and guidance from the opinion he had been, in his anxiety, so anxious to obtain.
Miss Pross, submitting herself to his judgment, the
#pgx342
scheme was worked out with care. Having abundance of time for his usual methodical toilette, Mr. Lorry presented himself at the breakfast-hour in his usual white linen, and with his usual neat leg. The Doctor was summoned in the usual way, and
#pgx343
came to breakfast.
So far as it was possible to comprehend him without overstepping those delicate and gradual approaches which Mr. Lorry felt to be the only safe advance, he at first supposed that his daughter's marriage had taken place
#pgx344
yesterday. An incidental allusion, purposely thrown out, to the day of the week, and the day of the month, set him thinking and counting, and evidently made him uneasy. In all other respects, however, he was so composedly himself, that Mr.
#pgx345
Lorry determined to have the aid he sought. And that aid was his own.
Therefore, when the breakfast was done and cleared away, and he and the Doctor were left together, Mr. Lorry said, feelingly:
"My dear Manette,
#pgx346
I am anxious to have your opinion, in confidence, on a very curious case in which I am deeply interested; that is to say, it is very curious to me; perhaps, to your better information it may be less so."
Glancing at his hands, which were
#pgx347
discoloured by his late work, the Doctor looked troubled, and listened attentively. He had already glanced at his hands more than once.
"Doctor Manette," said Mr. Lorry, touching him affectionately on the arm, "the case is the case of a
#pgx348
particularly dear friend of mine. Pray give your mind to it, and advise me well for his sake--and above all, for his daughter's--his daughter's, my dear Manette."
"If I understand," said the Doctor, in a subdued tone,
#pgx349
"some mental shock--?"
"Yes!"
"Be explicit," said the Doctor. "Spare no detail."
Mr. Lorry saw that they understood one another, and proceeded.