Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0065/00658.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob00658}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Tale Of Two Cities
Chapter VI}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{hand
defarge
long
looked
monsieur
face
lorry
upon
voice
work}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       (A) Tale Of Two Cities
Book:        Book The First: Recalled to Life
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter VI

The Shoemaker

     "Good day!" said Monsieur Defarge, looking down at the white head that
bent low over the shoemaking.

     It was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice responded to the
salutation, as if it were at a distance:

     "Good day!"

     "You are still hard at work, I see?"

     After a long silence, the head was lifted for another moment, and the
voice replied, "Yes - I am working." This time, a pair of haggard eyes had
looked at the questioner, before the face had dropped again.

     The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful.  It was not the
faintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare no doubt had
their part in it.  Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it was the faintness
of solitude and disuse.  It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made
long and long ago.  So entirely had it lost the life and resonance of the
human voice, that if affected the senses like a once beautiful colour faded
away into a poor weak stain.  So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was
like a voice underground.  So expressive it was, of a hopeless and lost
creature, that a famished traveller, wearied out by lonely wandering in a
wilderness, would have remembered home and friends in such a tone before
lying down to die.

     Some minutes of silent work had passed: and the haggard eyes had looked
up again: not with any interest or curiosity, but with a dull mechanical
perception, beforehand, that the spot where the only visitor they were aware
of had stood, was not yet empty.

     "I want," said Defarge, who had not removed his gaze from the shoemaker,
"to let in a little more light here.  You can bear a little more?"

     The shoemaker stopped his work; looked with a vacant air of listening,
at the floor on one side of him; then similarly, at the floor on the other
side of him; then, upward at the speaker.

     "What did you say?"

     "You can bear a little more light?"

     "I must bear it, if you let it in." (Laying the palest shadow of a
stress upon the second word.)

     The opened half-door was opened a little further, and secured at that
angle for the time.  A broad ray of light fell into the garret, and showed
the workman with an unfinished shoe upon his lap, pausing in his labour.  His
few common tools and various scraps of leather were at his feet and on his
bench.  He had a white beard, raggedly cut, but not very long, a hallow face,
and exceedingly bright eyes.  The hollowness and thinness of his face would
have caused them to look large, under his yet dark eyebrows and his confused
white hair, though they had been really otherwise; but, they were naturally
large, and looked unnaturally so.  His yellow rags of shirt lay open at the
throat, and showed his body to be withered and worn.  He, and his old canvas
frock, and his loose stockings, and all his poor tatters of clothes, had, in
a long seclusion from direct light and air, faded down to such a dull
uniformity of parchment-yellow, that it would have been hard to say which was
which.

     He had put up a hand between his eyes and the light, and the very bones
of it seemed transparent.  So he sat, with a steadfastly vacant gaze, pausing
in his work.  He never looked at the figure before him, without first looking
down on this side of himself, then on that, as if he had lost the habit of
associating place with sound; he never spoke, without first wandering in this
manner, and forgetting to speak.

     "Are you going to finish that pair of shoes to-day?" asked Defarge,
motioning to Mr. Lorry to come forward.

     "What did you say?"

     "Do you mean to finish that pair of shoes to-day?"

     "I can't say that I mean to.  I suppose so.  I don't know."

     But, the question reminded him of his work, and he bent over it again.

     Mr. Lorry came silently forward, leaving the daughter by the door.  When
he had stood, for a minute or two, by the side of Defarge, the shoemaker
looked up.  He showed no surprise at seeing another figure, but the unsteady
fingers of one of his hands strayed to his lips as he looked at it (his lips
and his nails were of the same pale lead-colour), and then the hand dropped
to his work, and he once more bent over the shoe.  The look and the action
had occupied but an instant.

     "You have a visitor, you see," said Monsieur Defarge.

     "What did you say?"

     "Here is a visitor."

     The shoemaker looked up as before, but without removing a hand from his
work.

     "Come!" said Defarge.  "Here is monsieur, who knows a well-made shoe
when he sees one.  Show him that shoe you are working at.  Take it,
monsieur."

     Mr. Lorry took it in his hand.

     "Tell monsieur what kind of shoe it is, and the maker's name."

     There was a longer pause than usual, before the shoemaker replied:

     "I forget what it was you asked me.  What did you say?"

     "I said, couldn't you describe the kind of shoe, for monsieur's
information?"

     "It is a lady's shoe.  It is a young lady's walking-shoe.  It is in the
present mode.  I never saw the mode.  I have had a pattern in my hand."  He
glanced at the shoe with some little passing touch of pride.

     "And the maker's name?" said Defarge.

     Now that he had no work to hold, he laid the knuckles of the right hand
in the hollow of the left, and then the knuckles of the left hand in the
hollow of the right, and then passed a hand across his bearded chin, and so
on in regular changes, without a moment's intermission.  The task of
recalling him from the vacancy into which he always sank when he had spoken,
was like recalling some very weak person from a swoon, or endeavouring, in
the hope of some disclosure, to stay the spirit of a fast-dying man.

     "Did you ask me for my name?"

     "Assuredly I did."

     "One Hundred and Five, North Tower."

     "Is that all?"

     "One Hundred and Five, North Tower."

     With a weary sound that was not a sigh, nor a groan, he bent to work
again, until the silence was again broken.

     "You are not a shoemaker by trade?" said Mr. Lorry, looking steadfastly
at him.

     His haggard eyes turned to Defarge as if he would have transferred the
question to him: but as no help came from that quarter, they turned back on
the questioner when they had sought the ground.

     "I am not a shoemaker by trade?  No, I was not a shoemaker by trade.
I - I learnt it here.  I taught myself.  I asked leave to -"

     He lapsed away, even for minutes, ringing those measured changes on his
hands the whole time.  His eyes came slowly back, at last, to the face from
which they had wandered; when they rested on it, he started, and resumed, in
the manner of a sleeper that moment awake, reverting to a subject of last
night.

     "I asked leave to teach myself, and I got it with much difficulty after
a long while, and I have made shoes ever since."

     As he held out his hand for the shoe that had been taken from him, Mr.
Lorry said, still looking steadfastly in his face:

     "Monsieur Manette, do you remember nothing of me?"

     The shoe dropped to the ground, and he sat looking fixedly at the
questioner.

     "Monsieur Manette;" Mr. Lorry laid his hand upon Defarge's arm; "do you
remember nothing of this man?  Look at him.  Look at me.  Is there no old
banker, no old business, no old servant, no old time, rising in your mind,
Monsieur Manette?"

     As the captive of many years sat looking fixedly, by turns, at Mr. Lorry
and at Defarge, some long obliterated marks of an actively intent
intelligence in the middle of the forehead, gradually forced themselves
through the black mist that had fallen on him.  They were overclouded again,
they were fainter, they were gone; but they had been there.  And so exactly
was the expression repeated on the fair young face of her who had crept along
the wall to a point where she could see him, and where she now stood looking
at him, with hands which at first had been only raised in frightened
compassion, if not even to keep him off and shut out the sight of him, but
which were now extending towards him, trembling with eagerness to lay the
spectral face upon her warm young breast, and love it back to life and
hope - so exactly was the expression repeated (though in stronger characters)
on her fair young face, that it looked as though it had passed like a moving
light, from him to her.

     Darkness had fallen on him in its place.  He looked at the two, less and
less attentively, and his eyes in gloomy abstraction sought the ground and
looked about him in the old way.  Finally, with a deep long sigh, he took the
shoe up, and resumed his work.

     "Have you recognised him, monsieur?" asked Defarge in a whisper.

     "Yes; for a moment.  At first I thought it quite hopeless, but I have
unquestionably seen, for a single moment, the face that I once knew so well.
Hush!  Let us draw further back.  Hush!"

     She had moved from the wall of the garret, very near to the bench on
which he sat.  There was something awful in his unconsciousness of the figure
that could have put out its hand and touched him as he stopped over his
labour.

     Not a word was spoken, not a sound was made.  She stood, like a spirit,
beside him, and he bent over his work.

     It happened, at length, that he had occasion to change the instrument in
his hand, for his shoemaker's knife.  It lay on that side of him which was
not the side on which she stood.  He had taken it up, and was stooping to
work again, when his eyes caught the skirt of her dress.  He raised them, and
saw her face.  The two spectators started forward, but she stayed them with a
motion of her hand.  She had no fear of his striking at her with the knife,
though they had.

     He stared at her with a fearful look, and after a while his lips began
to form some words, though no sound proceeded from them.  By degrees, in the
pauses of his quick and laboured breathing, he was heard to say:

     "What is this?"

     With the tears streaming down her face, she put her two hands to her
lips, and kissed them to him; then clasped them on her breast, as if she laid
his ruined head there.

     "You are not the gaoler's daughter?"

     She sighed "No."

     "Who are you?"

     Not yet trusting the tones of her voice, she sat down on the bench
beside him.  He recoiled, but she laid her hand upon his arm.  A strange
thrill struck him when she did so, and visibly passed over his frame; he laid
the knife down softly, as he sat staring at her.

     Her golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had been hurriedly pushed
aside, and fell down over her neck.  Advancing his hand by little and little,
he took it up and looked at it.  In the midst of the action he went astray,
and, with another deep sigh, fell to work at his shoemaking.

     But not for long.  Releasing his arm, she laid her hand upon his
shoulder.  After looking doubtfully at it, two or three times, as if to be
sure that it was really there, he laid down his work, put his hand to his
neck, and took off a blackened string with a scrap of folded rag attached to
it.  He opened this, carefully, on his knee, and it contained a very little
quantity of hair: not more than one or two long golden hairs, which he had,
in some old day, wound off upon his finger.

     He took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it.  "It is
the same.  How can it be!  When was it!  How was it!"

     As the concentrating expression returned to his forehead, he seemed to
become conscious that it was in hers too.  He turned her full to the light,
and looked at her.

     "She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was summoned
out - she had a fear of my going, though I had none - and when I was brought
to the North Tower they found these upon my sleeve.  'You will leave me them?
hey can never help me to escape in the body, though they may in the spirit.'
Those were the words I said.  I remember them very well."

     He formed this speech with his lips many times before he could utter it.
But when he did find spoken words for it, they came to him coherently, though
slowly.

     "How was this? - Was it you?"

     Once more, the two spectators started, as he turned upon her with a
frightful suddenness.  But she sat perfectly still in his grasp, and only
said, in a low voice, "I entreat you, good gentlemen, do not come near us, do
not speak, do not move!"

     "Hark!" he exclaimed.  "Whose voice was that?"

     His hands released her as he uttered this cry, and went up to his white
hair, which they tore in a frenzy.  It died out, as everything but his
shoemaking did die out of him, and he refolded his little packet and tried to
secure it in his breast; but he still looked at her, and gloomily shook his
head.

     "No, no, no; you are too young, too blooming.  It can't be.  See what
the prisoner is.  These are not the hands she knew, this is not the face she
knew, this is not a voice she ever heard.  No, no.  She was - and He
was - before the slow years of the North Tower - ages ago.  What is your
name, my gentle angel?"

     Hailing his softened tone and manner, his daughter fell upon her knees
before him, with her appealing hands upon his breast.

     "O, sir, at another time you shall know my name, and who my mother was,
and who my father, and how I never knew their hard, hard history.  But I
cannot tell you at this time, and I cannot tell you here.  All that I may
tell you, here and now, is, that I pray to you to touch me and to bless me.
Kiss me, kiss me!  O my dear, my dear!"

     His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and
lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining on him.

     "If you hear in my voice - I don't know that it is so, but I hope it is
- if you hear in my voice any resemblance to a voice that once was sweet
music in your ears, weep for it, weep for it!  If you touch, in touching my
hair, anything that recalls a beloved head that lay on your breast when you
were young and free, weep for it, weep for it!  If, when I hint to you of a
Home that is before us, where I will be true to you with all my duty and with
all my faithful service, I bring back the remembrance of a Home long
desolate, while your poor heart pined away, weep for it, weep for it!"

     She held him closer round the neck, and rocked him on her breast like a
child.

     "If, when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is over, and that I
have come here to take you from it, and that we go to England to be at peace
and at rest, I cause you to think of your useful life laid waste, and of our
native France so wicked to you, weep for it, weep for it!  And if, when I
shall tell you of my name, and of my father who is living, and of my mother
who is dead, you learn that I have to kneel to my honoured father, and
implore his pardon for having never for his sake striven all day and lain
awake and wept all night, because the love of my poor mother hid his torture
from me, weep for it, weep for it!  Weep for her, then, and for me!  Good
gentlemen, thank God!  I feel his sacred tears upon my face, and his sobs
strike against my heart.  O, see!  Thank God for us, thank God!"

     He had sunk in her arms, and his face dropped on her breast: a sight so
touching, yet so terrible in the tremendous wrong and suffering which had
gone before it, that the two beholders covered their faces.

     When the quiet of the garret had been long undisturbed, and his heaving
breast and shaken form had long yielded to the calm that must follow all
storms - emblem to humanity, of the rest and silence into which the storm
called Life must hush at last - they came forward to raise the father and
daughter from the ground.  He had gradually dropped to the floor, and lay
there in a lethargy, worn out.  She had nestled down with him, that his head
might lie upon her arm; and her hair drooping over him curtained him from the
light.

     "If, without disturbing him," she said, raising her hand to Mr. Lorry as
he stooped over them, after repeated blowings of his nose, "all could be
arranged for our leaving Paris at once, so that, from the very door, he could
be taken away -"

     "But, consider.  Is he fit for the journey?" asked Mr. Lorry.

     "More fit for that, I think, than to remain in this city, so dreadful to
him."

     "It is true," said Defarge, who was kneeling to look on and hear.  "More
than that; Monsieur Manette is, for all reasons, best out of France.  Say,
shall I hire a carriage and post-horses?"

     "That's business," said Mr. Lorry, resuming on the shortest notice his
methodical manners; "and if business is to be done, I had better do it."

     "Then be so kind," urged Miss Manette, "as to leave us here.  You see
how composed he has become, and you cannot be afraid to leave him with me
now.  Why should you be?  If you will lock the door to secure us from
interruption, I do not doubt that you will find him, when you come back, as
quiet as you leave him.  In any case, I will take care of him until you
return, and then we will remove him straight.

     Both Mr. Lorry and Defarge were rather disinclined to this course, and
in favour of one of them remaining.  But, as there were not only carriage and
horses to be seen to, but travelling papers; and as time pressed, for the day
was drawing to an end, it came at last to their hastily dividing the business
that was necessary to be done, and hurrying away to do it.

     Then, as the darkness closed in, the daughter laid her head down on the
hard ground close at the father's side, and watched him.  The darkness
deepened and deepened, and they both lay quiet, until a light gleamed through
the chinks in the wall.

     Mr. Lorry and Monsieur Defarge had made all ready for the journey, and
had brought with them, besides travelling cloaks and wrappers, bread and
meat, wine, and hot coffee.  Monsieur Defarge put this provender, and the
lamp he carried, on the shoemaker's bench (there was nothing else in the
garret but a pallet bed), and he and Mr. Lorry roused the captive, and
assisted him to his feet.

     No human intelligence could have read the mysteries of his mind, in the
scared blank wonder of his face.  Whether he knew what had happened, whether
he recollected what they had said to him, whether he knew that he was free,
were questions which no sagacity could have solved.  They tried speaking to
him; but, he was so confused, and so very slow to answer, that they took
fright at his bewilderment, and agreed for the time to tamper with him no
more.  He had a wild, lost manner of occasionally clasping his head in his
hands, that had not been seen in him before; yet, he had some pleasure in the
mere sound of his daughter's voice, and invariably turned to it when she
spoke.

     In the submissive way of one long accustomed to obey under coercion, he
ate and drank what they gave him to eat and drink, and put on the cloak and
other wrappings, that they gave him to wear.  He readily responded to his
daughter's drawing her arm through his, and took - and kept - her hand in
both his own.

     They began to descend; Monsieur Defarge going first with the lamp, Mr.
Lorry closing the little procession.  They had not traversed many steps of
the long main staircase when he stopped, and stared at the roof and round at
the walls.

     "You remember the place, my father?  You remember coming up here?"

     "What did you say?"

     But, before she could repeat the question, he murmured an answer as if
she had repeated it.

     "Remember?  No, I don't remember.  It was so very long ago."

     That he had no recollection whatever of his having been brought from
his prison to that house, was apparent to them.  They heard him mutter, "One
Hundred and Five, North Tower;" and when he looked about him, it evidently
was for the strong fortress-walls which had long encompassed him.  On their
reaching the court-yard he instinctively altered his tread, as being in
expectation of a drawbridge; and when there was no drawbridge, and he saw the
carriage waiting in the open street, he dropped his daughter's hand and
clasped his head again.

     No crowd was about the door; no people were discernible at any of the
many windows; not even a chance passer-by was in the street.  An unnatural
silence and desertion reigned there.  Only one soul was to be seen, and that
was Madame Defarge - who leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw
nothing.

     The prisoner had got into a coach, and his daughter had followed him,
when Mr. Lorry's feet were arrested on the step by his asking, miserably, for
his shoemaking tools and the unfinished shoes.  Madame Defarge immediately
called to her husband that she would get them, and went, knitting, out of the
lamplight, through the court-yard.  She quickly brought them down and handed
them in; - and immediately afterwards leaned against the door-post, knitting,
and saw nothing.

     Defarge got upon the box, and gave the word "To the Barrier!"  The
postilion cracked his whip, and they clattered away under the feeble
over-swinging lamps.

     Under the over-swinging lamps - swinging ever brighter in the better
streets, and ever dimmer in the worse - and by lighted shops, gay crowds,
illuminated coffee-houses, and theatre-doors, to one of the city gates.
Soldiers with lanterns, at the guard-house there.  "Your papers, travellers!"
"See here then, Monsieur the Officer," said Defarge, getting down, and taking
him gravely apart, "these are the papers of monsieur inside, with the white
head.  They were consigned to me, with him, at the -" He dropped his voice,
there was a flutter among the military lanterns, and one of them being handed
into the coach by an arm in uniform, the eyes connected with the arm looked,
not an every-day or an every-night look, at monsieur with the white head.
"It is well.  Forward!" from the uniform.  "Adieu!" from Defarge.  And so,
under a short grove of feebler and feebler over-swinging lamps, out under the
great grove of stars.

     Beneath that arch of unmoved and eternal lights; some, so remote from
this little earth that the learned tell us it is doubtful whether their rays
have even yet discovered it, as a point in space where anything is suffered
or done: the shadows of the night were broad and black.  All through the cold
and restless interval, until dawn, they once more whispered in the ears of
Mr. Jarvis Lorry - sitting opposite the buried man who had been dug out, and
wondering what subtle powers were for ever lost to him, and what were capable
of restoration - the old inquiry:

     "I hope you care to be recalled to life?"

     And the old answer:

     "I can't say."