The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0068/00687.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 14KB | 273 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00687}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Tale Of Two Cities
Chapter V}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{day
father
little
lucie
time
head
hand
la
prison
round}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       (A) Tale Of Two Cities
Book:        Book The Third: The Track of a Storm
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter V

The Wood-Sawyer

     One year and three months.  During all that time Lucie was never sure,
from hour to hour, but that the Guillotine would strike off her husband's
head next day.  Every day, through the stony streets, the tumbrils now jolted
heavily, filled with Condemned.  Lovely girls; bright women, brown-haired,
black-haired, and grey; youths; stalwart men and old; gentle born and peasant
born; all red wine for La Guillotine, all daily brought into light from the
dark cellars of the loathsome prisons, and carried to her through the street
to slake her devouring thirst.  Liberty, equality, fraternity, or
death; - the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!

     If the suddenness of her calamity, and the whirling wheels of the time,
had stunned the Doctor's daughter into awaiting the result in idle despair,
it would but have been with her as it was with many.  But, from the hour when
she had taken the white head to her fresh young bosom in the garret of Saint
Antoine, she had been true to her duties.  She was truest to them in the
season of trial, as all the quietly loyal and good will always be.

     As soon as they were established in their new residence, and her father
had entered on the routine of his avocations, she arranged the little
household as exactly as if her husband had been there.  Everything had its
appointed place and its appointed time.  Little Lucie she taught, as
regularly, as if they had all been united in their English home.  The slight
devices with which she cheated herself into the show of a belief that they
would soon be reunited - the little preparations for his speedy return, the
setting aside of his chair and his books - these, and the solemn prayer at
night for one dear prisoner especially, among the many unhappy souls in
prison and the shadow of death - were almost the only outspoken reliefs of
her heavy mind.

     She did not greatly alter in appearance.  The plain dark dresses, akin
to mourning dresses, which she and her child wore, were as neat and as well
attended to as the brighter clothes of happy days.  She lost her colour, and
the old and intent expression was a constant, not an occasional, thing;
otherwise, she remained very pretty and comely.  Sometimes, at night on
kissing her father, she would burst into the grief she had repressed all day,
and would say that her sole reliance, under Heaven, was on him.  He always
resolutely answered: "Nothing can happen to him without my knowledge, and I
know that I can save him, Lucie."

     They had not made the round of their changed life many weeks, when her
father said to her, on coming home one evening:

     "My dear, there is an upper window in the prison, to which Charles can
sometimes gain access at three in the afternoon.  When he can get to it-which
depends on many uncertainties and incidents - he might see you in the street,
he thinks, if you stood in a certain place that I can show you.  But you will
not be able to see him, my poor child, and even if you could, it would be
unsafe for you to make a sign of recognition."

     "O show me the place, my father, and I will go there every day."

     From that time, in all weathers, she waited there two hours.  As the
clock struck two, she was there, and at four she turned resignedly away.
When it was not too wet or inclement for her child to be with her, they went
together; at other times she was alone; but she never missed a single day.

     It was the dark and dirty corner of a small winding street.  The hovel
of a cutter of wood into lengths for burning, was the only house at that end;
all else was wall.  On the third day of her being there, he noticed her.

     "Good day, citizeness."

     "Good day, citizen."

     This mode of address was now prescribed by decree.  It had been
established voluntarily some time ago, among the more thorough patriots; but,
was now law for everybody.

     "Walking here again, citizeness?"

     "You see me, citizen!"

     The wood-sawyer, who was a little man with a redundancy of gesture (he
had once been a mender of roads), cast a glance at the prison, pointed at the
prison, and putting his ten fingers before his face to represent bars, peeped
through them jocosely.

     "But it's not my business," said he.  And went on sawing his wood.

     Next day he was looking out for her, and accosted her the moment she
appeared.

     "What?  Walking here again, citizeness?"

     "Yes, citizen."

     "Ah!  A child too!  Your mother, is it not, my little citizeness?"

     "Do I say yes, mamma?" whispered little Lucie, drawing close to her.

     "Yes, dearest."

     "Yes, citizen."

     "Ah!  But it's not my business.  My work is my business.  See my saw!  I
call it my Little Guillotine.  La, la, la; La, la, la!  And off his head
comes!"

     The billet fell as he spoke, and he threw it into a basket.

     "I call myself the Samson of the firewood guillotine.  See here again!
Loo, loo, loo; Loo, loo, loo!  And off her head comes!  Now, a child.
Tickle, tickle; Pickle, pickle!  And off its head comes.  All the family!"

     Lucie shuddered as he threw two more billets into his basket, but it was
impossible to be there while the wood-sawyer was at work, and not be in his
sight.  Thenceforth, to secure his good will, she always spoke to him first,
and often gave him drink-money, which he readily received.

     He was an inquisitive fellow, and sometimes when she had quite forgotten
him in gazing at the prison roof and grates, and in lifting her heart up to
her husband, she would come to herself to find him looking at her, with his
knee on his bench and his saw stopped in its work.  "But it's not my
business!" he would generally say at those times, and would briskly fall to
his sawing again.

     In all weathers, in the snow and frost of winter, in the bitter winds of
spring, in the hot sunshine of summer, in the rains of autumn, and again in
the snow and frost of winter, Lucie passed two hours of every day at this
place; and every day on leaving it, she kissed the prison wall.  Her husband
saw her (so she learned from her father) it might be once in five or six
times: it might be twice or thrice running: it might be, not for a week or a
fortnight together.  It was enough that he could and did see her when the
chances served, and on that possibility she would have waited out the day,
seven days a week.

     These occupations brought her round to the December month, wherein her
father walked among the terrors with a steady head.  On a lightly-snowing
afternoon she arrived at the usual corner.  It was a day of some wild
rejoicing, and a festival.  She had seen the houses, as she came along,
decorated with little pikes, and with little red caps stuck upon them; also,
with tricoloured ribbons; also, with the standard inscription (tricoloured
letters were the favourite), Republic One and Indivisible.  Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity, or Death!

     The miserable shop of the wood-sawyer was so small, that its whole
surface furnished very indifferent space for this legend.  He had got
somebody to scrawl it up for him, however, who had squeezed Death in with
most inappropriate difficulty.  On his house-top, he displayed pike and cap,
as a good citizen must, and in a window he had stationed his saw inscribed as
his "Little Sainte Guillotine" - for the great sharp female was by that time
popularly canonised.  His shop was shut and he was not there, which was a
relief to Lucie, and left her quite alone.

     But, he was not far off, for presently she heard a troubled movement and
a shouting coming along, which filled her with fear.  A moment afterwards,
and a t