Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0067/00671.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 11KB | 226 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00671}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Tale Of Two Cities
Chapter XIII}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{manette
miss
carton
better
am
last
life
never
say
little}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       (A) Tale Of Two Cities
Book:        Book The Second: The Golden Thread
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter XIII

The Fellow Of No Delicacy

     If Sydney Carton ever shone anywhere, he certainly never shone in the
house of Doctor Manette.  He had been there often, during a whole year, and
had always been the same moody and morose lounger there.  When he cared to
talk, he talked well; but, the cloud of caring for nothing, which
overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the
light within him.

     And yet he did care something for the streets that environed that house,
and for the senseless stones that made their pavements.  Many a night he
vaguely and unhappily wandered there, when wine had brought no transitory
gladness to him; many a dreary daybreak revealed his solitary figure
lingering there, and still lingering there when the first beams of the sun
brought into strong relief, removed beauties of architecture in spires of
churches and lofty buildings, as perhaps the quiet time brought some sense of
better things, else forgotten and unattainable, into his mind.  Of late, the
neglected bed in the Temple Court had known him more scantily than ever; and
often when he had thrown himself upon it no longer than a few minutes, he had
got up again, and haunted that neighbourhood.

     On a day in August, when Mr. Stryver (after notifying to his jackal that
"he had thought better of that marrying matter") had carried his delicacy
into Devonshire, and when the sight and scent of flowers in the City streets
had some waifs of goodness in them for the worst, of health for the
sickliest, and of youth for the oldest, Sydney's feet still trod those
stones.  From being irresolute and purposeless, his feet became animated by
an intention, and, in the working out of that intention, they took him to the
Doctor's door.

     He was shown up-stairs, and found Lucie at her work, alone.  She had
never been quite at her ease with him, and received him with some little
embarrassment as he seated himself near her table.  But, looking up at his
face in the interchange of the first few common-places, she observed a change
in it.

     "I fear you are not well, Mr. Carton!"

     "No.  But the life I lead, Miss Manette, is not conducive to health.
What is to be expected of, or by, such profligates?"

     "Is it not - forgive me; I have begun the question on my lips - a pity
to live no better life?"

     "God knows it is a shame!"

     "Then why not change it?"

     Looking gently at him again, she was surprised and saddened to see that
there were tears in his eyes.  There were tears in his voice too, as he
answered:

     "It is too late for that.  I shall never be better than I am.  I shall
sink lower, and be worse."

     He leaned an elbow on her table, and covered his eyes with his hand.
The table trembled in the silence that followed.

     She had never seen him softened, and was much distressed.  He knew her
to be so, without looking at her, and said:

     "Pray forgive me, Miss Manette.  I break down before the knowledge of
what I want to say to you.  Will you hear me?"

     "If it will do you any good, Mr. Carton, if it would make you happier,
it would make me very glad!"

     "God bless you for your sweet compassion!"

     He unshaded his face after a little while, and spoke steadily.

     "Don't be afraid to hear me.  Don't shrink from anything I say.  I am
like one who died young.  All my life might have been."

     "No, Mr. Carton.  I am sure that the best part of it might still be: I
am sure that you might be much, much worthier of yourself."

     "Say of you, Miss Manette, and although I know better - although in the
mystery of my own wretched heart I know better - I shall never forget it!"

     She was pale and trembling.  He came to her relief with a fixed despair
of himself which made the interview unlike any other that could have been
holden.

     "If it had been possible, Miss Manette, that you could have returned the
love of the man you see before you - self-flung away, wasted, drunken, poor
creature of misuse as you know him to be - he would have been conscious this
day and hour, in spite of his happiness, that he would bring you to misery,
bring you to sorrow and repentance, blight you, disgrace you, pull you down
with him.  I know very well that you can have no tenderness for me; I ask for
none; I am even thankful that it cannot be."

     "Without it, can I not save you, Mr. Carton?  Can I not recall
you - forgive me again! - to a better course?  Can I in no way repay your
confidence?  I know this is a confidence," she modestly said, after a little
hesitation, and in earnest tears, "I know you would say this to no one else.
Can I turn it to no good account for yourself, Mr. Carton?"

     He shook his head.

     "To none.  No, Miss Manette, to none.  If you will hear me through a
very little more, all you can ever do for me is done.  I wish you to know
that you have been the last dream of my soul.  In my degradation I have not
been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this home
made such a home by you, has stirred old shadows that I thought had died out
of me.  Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought
would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices
impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever.  I have had
unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and
sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight.  A dream, all a dream, that
ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to
know that you inspired it."

     "Will nothing of it remain?  O Mr. Carton, think again!  Try again!"

     "No, Miss Manette; all through it, I have known myself to be quite
undeserving.  And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness,
to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes
that I am, into fire - a fire, however, inseparable in its nature from
myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning
away."

     "Since it is my misfortune, Mr. Carton, to have made you more unhappy
than you were before you knew me -"

     "Don't say that, Miss Manette, for you would have reclaimed me, if
anything could.  You will not be the cause of my becoming worse."

     "Since the state of your mind that you describe, is, at all events,
attributable to some influence of mine - this is what I mean, if I can make
it plain - can I use no influence to serve you?  Have I no power for good,
with you, at all?"

     "The utmost good that I am capable of now, Miss Manette, I have come
here to realise.  Let me carry through the rest of my misdirected life, the
remembrance that I opened my heart to you, last of all the world; and that
there was something left in me at this time which you could deplore and
pity."

     "Which I entreated you to believe, again and again, most fervently, with
all my heart, was capable of better things, Mr. Carton!"

     "Entreat me to believe it no more, Miss Manette.  I have proved myself,
and I know better.  I distress you; I draw fast to an end.  Will you let me
believe, when I recall this day, that the last confidence of my life was
reposed in your pure and innocent breast, and that it lies there alone, and
will be shared by no one?"

     "If that will be a consolation to you, yes."

     "Not even by the dearest one ever to be known to you?"

     "Mr. Carton," she answered, after an agitated pause, "the secret is
yours, not mine; and I promise to respect it."

     "Thank you.  And again, God bless you."

     He put her hand to his lips, and moved towards the door.

     "Be under no apprehension, Miss Manette, of my ever resuming this
conversation by so much as a passing word.  I will never refer to it again.
If I were dead, that could not be surer than it is henceforth.  In the hour
of my death, I shall hold sacred the one good remembrance - and shall thank
and bless you for it - that my last avowal of myself was made to you, and
that my name, and faults, and miseries were gently carried in your heart.
May it otherwise be light and happy!"

     He was so unlike what he had ever shown himself to be, and it was so sad
to think how much he had thrown away, and how much he every day kept down and
perverted, that Lucie Manette wept mournfully for him as he stood looking
back at her.

     "Be comforted!" he said, "I am not worth such feeling, Miss Manette.  An
hour or two hence, and the low companions and low habits that I scorn but
yield to, will render me less worth such tears as those, than any wretch who
creeps along the streets.  Be comforted!  But, within myself, I shall always
be, towards you, what I am now, though outwardly I shall be what you have
heretofore seen me.  The last supplication but one I make to you, is, that
you will believe this of me."

     "I will, Mr. Carton."

     "My last supplication of all, is this; and with it, I will relieve you
of a visitor with whom I well know you have nothing in unison, and between
whom and you there is an impassable space.  It is useless to say it, I know,
but it rises out of my soul.  For you, and for any dear to you, I would do
anything.  If my career were of that better kind that there was any
opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would embrace any sacrifice for
you and for those dear to you.  Try to hold me in your mind, at some quiet
times, as ardent and sincere in this one thing.  The time will come, the time
will not be long in coming, when new ties will be formed about you - ties
that will bind you yet more tenderly and strongly to the home you so
adorn - the dearest ties that will ever grace and gladden you.  O Miss
Manette, when the little picture of a happy father's face looks up in yours,
when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now
and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love
beside you!"

     He said "Farewell!" said a last "God bless you!" and left her.