Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0068/00684.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 15KB | 273 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00684}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Tale Of Two Cities
Chapter II}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{upon
lorry
lucie
court-yard
grindstone
long
window
brought
gate
hand}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       (A) Tale Of Two Cities
Book:        Book The Third: The Track of a Storm
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter II

The Grindstone

     Tellson's Bank, established in the Saint Germain Quarter of Paris, was
in a wing of a large house, approached by a court-yard and shut off from the
street by a high wall and a strong gate.  The house belonged to a great
noble - man who had lived in it until he made a flight from the troubles, in
his own cook's dress, and got across the borders.  A mere beast of the chase
flying from hunters, he was still in his metempsychosis no other than the
same Monseigneur, the preparation of whose chocolate for whose lips had once
occupied three strong men besides the cook in question.

     Monseigneur gone, and the three strong men absolving themselves from the
sin of having drawn his high wages, by being more than ready and willing to
cut his throat on the altar of the dawning Republic one and indivisible of
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, Monseigneur's house had been first
sequestrated, and then confiscated.  For, all things moved so fast, and
decree followed decree with that fierce precipitation, that now upon the
third night of the autumn month of September, patriot emissaries of the law
were in possession of Monseigneur's house, and had marked it with the
tricolour, and were drinking brandy in its state apartments.

     A place of business in London like Tellson's place of business in Paris,
would soon have driven the House out of its mind and into the Gazette.  For,
what would staid British responsibility and respectability have said to
orange-trees in boxes in a Bank court-yard, and even to a Cupid over the
counter?  Yet such things were.  Tellson's had whitewashed the Cupid, but he
was still to be seen on the ceiling, in the coolest linen, aiming (as he very
often does) at money from morning to night.  Bankruptcy must inevitably have
come of this young Pagan, in Lombard-street, London, and also of a curtained
alcove in the rear of the immortal boy, and also of a looking-glass let into
the wall, and also of clerks not at all old, who danced in public on the
slightest provocation.  Yet, a French Tellson's could get on with these
things exceedingly well, and, as long as the times held together, no man had
taken fright at them, and drawn out his money.

     What money would be drawn out of Tellson's henceforth, and what would
lie there, lost and forgotten; what plate and jewels would tarnish in
Tellson's hiding-places, while the depositors rusted in prisons, and when
they should have violently perished; how many accounts with Tellson's never
to be balanced in this world, must be carried over into the next; no man
could have said, that night, any more than Mr. Jarvis Lorry could, though he
thought heavily of these questions.  He sat by a newly-lighted wood fire (the
blighted and unfruitful year was prematurely cold), and on his honest and
courageous face there was a deeper shade than the pendent lamp could throw,
or any object in the room distortedly reflect - a shade of horror.

     He occupied rooms in the Bank, in his fidelity to the House of which he
had grown to be a part, like strong root-ivy.  It chanced that they derived a
kind of security from the patriotic occupation of the main building, but the
true-hearted old gentleman never calculated about that.  All such
circumstances were indifferent to him, so that he did his duty.  On the
opposite side of the court-yard, under a colonnade, was extensive standing
for carriages - where, indeed, some carriages of Monseigneur yet stood.
Against two of the pillars were fastened two great flaring flambeaux, and in
the light of these, standing out in the open air, was a large grindstone: a
roughly mounted thing which appeared to have hurriedly been brought there
from some neighbouring smithy, or other workshop.  Rising and looking out of
window at these harmless objects, Mr. Lorry shivered, and retired to his seat
by the fire.  He had opened, not only the glass window, but the lattice blind
outside it, and he had closed both again, and he shivered through his frame.

     From the streets beyond the high wall and the strong gate, there came
the usual night hum of the city, with now and then an indescribable ring in
it, weird and unearthly, as if some unwonted sounds of a terrible nature were
going up to Heaven.

     "Thank God," said Mr. Lorry, clasping his hands, "that no one near and
dear to me is in this dreadful town to-night.  May He have mercy on all who
are in danger!"

     Soon afterwards, the bell at the great gate sounded, and he thought,
"They have come back!" and sat listening.  But, there was no loud irruption
into the court-yard, as he had expected, and he heard the gate clash again,
and all was quiet.

     The nervousness and dread that were upon him inspired that vague
uneasiness respecting the Bank, which a great change would naturally awaken,
with such feelings roused.  It was well guarded, and he got up to go among
the trusty people who were watching it, when his door suddenly opened, and
two figures rushed in, at sight of which he fell back in amazement.

     Lucie and her father!  Lucie with her arms stretched out to him, and
with that old look of earnestness so concentrated and intensified, that it
seemed as though it had been stamped upon her face expressly to give force
and power to it in this one passage of her life.

     "What is this?" cried Mr. Lorry, breathless and confused.  "What is the
matter?  Lucie!  Manette!  What has happened?  What has brought you here?
hat is it?"

     With the look fixed upon him, in her paleness and wildness, she panted
out in his arms, imploringly, "O my dear friend!  My husband!"

     "Your husband, Lucie?"

     "Charles."

     "What of Charles?"

     "Here."

     "Here, in Paris?"

     "Has been here some days - three or four - I don't know how many - I
can't collect my thoughts.  An errand of generosity brought him here unknown
to us; he was stopped at the barrier, and sent to prison."

     The old man uttered an irrepressible cry.  Almost at the same moment,
the bell of the great gate rang again, and a loud noise of feet and voices
came pouring into the court-yard.

     "What is that noise?" said the Doctor, turning towards the window.

     "Don't look!" cried Mr. Lorry.  "Don't look out!  Manette, for your
life, don't touch the blind!"

     The Doctor turned, with his hand upon the fastening of the window, and
said, with a cool bold smile:

     "My dear friend, I have a charmed life in this city.  I have been a
Bastille prisoner.  There is no patriot in Paris - in Paris?  In
France - who, knowing me to have been a prisoner in the Bastille, would touch
me, except to overwhelm me with embraces, or carry me in triumph.  My old
pain has given me a power that has brought us through the barrier, and gained
us news of Charles there, and brought us here.  I knew it would be so; I knew
I could help Charles out of all danger; I told Lucie so. - What is that
noise?"  His hand was again upon the window.

     "Don't look!" cried Mr. Lorry, absolutely desperate.  "No, Lucie, my
dear, nor you!"  He got his arm round her, and held her.  "Don't be so
terrified, my love.  I solemnly swear to you that I know of no harm having
happened to Charles; that I had no suspicion even of his being in this fatal
place.  What prison is he in?"

     "La Force!"

     "La Force!  Lucie, my child, if ever you were brave and serviceable in
your life - and you were always both - you will compose yourself now, to do
exactly as I bid you; for more depends upon it than you can think, or I can
say.  There is no help for you in any action on your part to-night; you
cannot possibly stir out.  I say this, because what I must bid you to do for
Charles's sake, is the hardest thing to do of all.  You must instantly be
obedient, still, and quiet.  You must let me put you in a room at the back
here.  You must leave your father and me alone for two minutes, and as there
are Life and Death in the world you must not delay."

     "I will be submissive to you.  I see in your face that you know I can do
nothing else than this.  I know you are true."

     The old man kissed her, and hurried her into his room, and turned the
key; then, came hurrying back to the Doctor, and opened the window and partly
opened the blind, and put his hand upon the Doctor's arm, and looked out with
him into the court-yard.

     Looked out upon a throng of men and women: not enough in number, or near
enough, to fill the court-yard: not more than forty or fifty in all.  The
people in possession of the house had let them in at the gate, and they had
rushed in to work at the grindstone; it had evidently been set up there for
their purpose, as in a convenient and retired spot.

     But, such awful workers, and such awful work!

     The grindstone had a double handle, and, turning at it madly were two
men, whose faces, as their long hair flapped back when the whirlings of the
grindstone brought their faces up, were more horrible and cruel than the
visages of the wildest savages in their most barbarous disguise.  False
eyebrows and false moustaches were stuck upon them, and their hideous
countenances were all bloody and sweaty, and all awry with howling, and all
staring and glaring with beastly excitement and want of sleep.  As these
ruffians turned and turned, their matted locks now flung forward over their
eyes, now flung backward over their necks, some women held wine to their
mouths that they might drink; and what with dropping blood, and what with
dropping wine, and what with the stream of sparks struck out of the stone,
all their wicked atmosphere seemed gore and fire.  The eye could not detect
one creature in the group free from the smear of blood.  Shouldering one
another to get next at the sharpening-stone, were men stripped to the waist,
with the stain all over their limbs and bodies; men in all sorts of rags,
with the stain upon those rags; men devilishly set off with spoils of women's
lace and silk and ribbon, with the stain dyeing those trifles through and
through.  Hatchets, knives, bayonets, swords, all brought to be sharpened,
were all red with it.  Some of the hacked swords were tied to the wrists of
those who carried them, with strips of linen and fragments of dress:
ligatures various in kind, but all deep of the one colour.  And as the
frantic wielders of these weapons snatched them from the stream of sparks and
tore away into the streets, the same red hue was red in their frenzied
eyes; - eyes which any unbrutalised beholder would have given twenty years of
life, to petrify with a well-directed gun.

     All this was seen in a moment, as the vision of a drowning man, or of
any human creature at any very great pass, could see a world if it were
there.  They drew back from the window, and the Doctor looked for explanation
in his friend's ashy face.

     "They are," Mr. Lorry whispered the words, glancing fearfully round at
the locked room, "murdering the prisoners.  If you are sure of what you say;
if you really have the power you think you have - as I believe you have -
make yourself known to these devils, and get taken to La Force.  It may be
too late, I don't know, but let it not be a minute later!"

     Doctor Manette pressed his hand, hastened bareheaded out of the room,
and was in the court-yard when Mr. Lorry regained the blind.

     His streaming white hair, his remarkable face, and the impetuous
confidence of his manner, as he put the weapons aside like water, carried him
in an instant to the heart of the concourse at the stone.  For a few moments
there was a pause, and a hurry, and a murmur, and the unintelligible sound of
his voice; and then Mr. Lorry saw him, surrounded by all, and in the midst of
a line of twenty men long, all linked shoulder to shoulder, and hand to
shoulder, hurried out with cries of - "Live the Bastille prisoner!  Help for
the Bastille prisoner's kindred in La Force!  Room for the Bastille prisoner
in front there!  Save the prisoner Evremonde at La Force!" and a thousand
answering shouts.

     He closed the lattice again with a fluttering heart, closed the window
and the curtain, hastened to Lucie, and told her that her father was assisted
by the people, and gone in search of her husband.  He found her child and
Miss Pross with her; but, it never occurred to him to be surprised by their
appearance until a long time afterwards, when he sat watching them in such
quiet as the night knew.

     Lucie had, by that time, fallen into a stupor on the floor at his feet,
clinging to his hand.  Miss Pross had laid the child down on his own bed, and
her head had gradually fallen on the pillow beside her pretty charge.  O the
long, long night, with the moans of the poor wife!  And O the long, long
night, with no return of her father and no tidings!

     Twice more in the darkness the bell at the great gate sounded, and the
irruption was repeated, and the grindstone whirled and spluttered.  "What is
it?" cried Lucie, affrighted.  "Hush!  The soldiers' swords are sharpened
there," said Mr. Lorry.  "The place is national property now, and used as a
kind of armoury, my love."

     Twice more in all; but, the last spell of work was feeble and fitful.
Soon afterwards the day began to dawn, and he softly detached himself from
the clasping hand, and cautiously looked out again.  A man, so besmeared that
he might have been a sorely wounded soldier creeping back to consciousness on
a field of slain, was rising from the pavement by the side of the grindstone,
and looking about him with a vacant air.  Shortly, this worn-out murderer
descried in the imperfect light one of the carriages of Monseigneur, and,
staggering to that gorgeous vehicle, climbed in at the door, and shut himself
up to take his rest on its dainty cushions.

     The great grindstone, Earth, had turned when Mr. Lorry looked out again,
and the sun was red on the court-yard.  But, the lesser grindstone stood
alone there in the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had
never given, and would never take away.