Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0068/00687.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 14KB | 273 lines

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$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Tale Of Two Cities
Chapter V}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
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$Subject{day
father
little
lucie
time
head
hand
la
prison
round}
$Date{}
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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 throng of people came pouring round the corner by the prison wall, in
the midst of whom was the wood-sawyer hand in hand with The Vengeance.  There
could not be fewer than five hundred people, and they were dancing like five
thousand demons.  There was no other music than their own singing.  They
danced to the popular Revolution song, keeping a ferocious time that was like
a gnashing of teeth in unison.  Men and women danced together, women danced
together, men danced together, as hazard had brought them together.  At
first, they were a mere storm of coarse red caps and coarse woollen rags;
but, as they filled the place, and stopped to dance about Lucie, some ghastly
apparition of a dance-figure gone raving mad arose among them.  They
advanced, retreated, struck at one another's hands, clutched at one another's
heads, spun round alone, caught one another and spun round in pairs, until
many of them dropped.  While those were down, the rest linked hand in hand,
and all spun round together: then the ring broke, and in separate rings of
two and four they turned and turned until they all stopped at once, began
again, struck, clutched, and tore, and then reversed the spin, and all spun
round another way.  Suddenly they stopped again, paused, struck out the time
afresh, formed into lines the width of the public way, and, with their heads
low down and their hands high up, swooped screaming off.  No fight could have
been half so terrible as this dance.  It was so emphatically a fallen
sport - a something, once innocent, delivered over to all devilry - a healthy
pastime changed into a means of angering the blood, bewildering the senses,
and steeling the heart.  Such grace as was visible in it, made it the uglier,
showing how warped and perverted all things good by nature were become.  The
maidenly bosom bared to this, the pretty almost-child's head thus distracted,
the delicate foot mincing in this slough of blood and dirt, were types of the
disjointed time.

     This was the Carmagnole.  As it passed, leaving Lucie frightened and
bewildered in the doorway of the wood-sawyer's house, the feathery snow fell
as quietly and lay as white and soft, as if it had never been.

     "O my father!" for he stood before her when she lifted up the eyes she
had momentarily darkened with her hand; "such a cruel, bad sight."

     "I know, my dear, I know.  I have seen it many times.  Don't be
frightened!  Not one of them would harm you."

     "I am not frightened for myself, my father.  But when I think of my
husband, and the mercies of these people -"

     "We will set him above their mercies very soon.  I left him climbing to
the window, and I came to tell you.  There is no one here to see.  You may
kiss your hand towards that highest shelving roof."

     "I do so, father, and I send him my Soul with it!"

     "You cannot see him, my poor dear?"

     "No, father," said Lucie, yearning and weeping as she kissed her hand,
"no."

     A footstep in the snow.  Madame Defarge.  "I salute you, citizeness,"
from the Doctor.  "I salute you, citizen."  This in passing.  Nothing more.
Madame Defarge gone, like a shadow over the white road.

     "Give me your arm, my love.  Pass from here with an air of cheerfulness
and courage, for his sake.  That was well done;" they had left the spot; "it
shall not be in vain.  Charles is summoned for to-morrow."

     "For to-morrow!"

     "There is no time to lose.  I am well prepared, but there are
precautions to be taken, that could not be taken until he was actually
summoned before the Tribunal.  He has not received the notice yet, but I know
that he will presently be summoned for to-morrow, and removed to the
Conciergerie; I have timely information.  You are not afraid?"

     She could scarcely answer, "I trust in you."

     "Do so, implicitly.  Your suspense is nearly ended, my darling; he shall
be restored to you within a few hours; I have encompassed him with every
protection.  I must see Lorry."

     He stopped.  There was a heavy lumbering of wheels within hearing.  They
both knew too well what it meant.  One.  Two.  Three.  Three tumbrils faring
away with their dread loads over the hushing snow.

     "I must see Lorry," the Doctor repeated, turning her another way.

     The staunch old gentleman was still in his trust; had never left it.  He
and his books were in frequent requisition as to property confiscated and
made national.  What he could save for the owners, he saved.  No better man
living to hold fast by what Tellson's had in keeping, and to hold his peace.

     A murky red and yellow sky, and a rising mist from the Seine, denoted
the approach of darkness.  It was almost dark when they arrived at the Bank.
The stately residence of Monseigneur was altogether blighted and deserted.
Above a heap of dust and ashes in the court, ran the letters: National
Property.  Republic One and Indivisible.  Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or
Death!

     Who could that be with Mr. Lorry - the owner of the riding-coat upon the
chair - who must not be seen?  From whom newly arrived, did he come out,
agitated and surprised, to take his favourite in his arms?  To whom did he
appear to repeat her faltering words, when, raising his voice and turning his
head towards the door of the room from which he had issued, he said: "Removed
to the Conciergerie, and summoned for to-morrow?"