Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0069/00691.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 27KB | 565 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00691}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Tale Of Two Cities
Chapter IX}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{carton
lorry
night
little
citizen
like
turned
am
day
eyes}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       (A) Tale Of Two Cities
Book:        Book The Third: The Track of a Storm
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter IX

The Game Made

     While Sydney Carton and the Sheep of the prisons were in the adjoining
dark room, speaking so low that not a sound was heard, Mr. Lorry looked at
Jerry in considerable doubt and mistrust.  That honest tradesman's manner of
receiving the look, did not inspire confidence; he changed the leg on which
he rested, as often as if he had fifty of those limbs, and were trying them
all; he examined his finger-nails with a very questionable closeness of
attention; and whenever Mr. Lorry's eye caught his, he was taken with that
peculiar kind of short cough requiring the hollow of a hand before it, which
is seldom, if ever, known to be an infirmity attendant on perfect openness
of character.

     "Jerry," said Mr. Lorry.  "Come here."

     Mr. Cruncher came forward sideways, with one of his shoulders in advance
of him.

     "What have you been, besides a messenger?"

     After some cogitation, accompanied with an intent look at his patron,
Mr. Cruncher conceived the luminous idea of replying.  "Agricultooral
character."

     "My mind misgives me much," said Mr. Lorry, angrily shaking a forefinger
at him, "that you have used the respectable and great house of Tellson's as a
blind, and that you have had an unlawful occupation of an infamous
description.  If you have, don't expect me to befriend you when you get back
to England.  If you have, don't expect me to keep your secret.  Tellson's
shall not be imposed upon."

     "I hope, sir," pleaded the abashed Mr. Cruncher, "that a gentleman like
yourself wot I've had the honour of odd jobbing till I'm grey at it, would
think twice about harming of me, even if it wos so - I don't say it is, but
even if it wos.  And which it is to be took into account that if it wos, it
wouldn't, even then, be all o' one side.  There'd be two sides to it.  There
might be medical doctors at the present hour, a picking up their guineas
where a honest tradesman don't pick up his fardens - fardens!  no, nor yet
his half fardens - half fardens!  no, nor yet his quarter - a banking away
like smoke at Tellson's, and a cocking their medical eyes at that tradesman
on the sly, a going in and going out to their own carriages - ah!  equally
like smoke, if not more so.  Well, that 'ud be imposing, too, on Tellson's.
For you cannot sarse the goose and not the gander.  And here's Mrs. Cruncher,
or leastways wos in the Old England times, and would be to-morrow, if cause
given, a floppin' again the business to that degree as is ruinating - stark
ruinating!  Whereas them medical doctors' wives don't flop - catch 'em at it!
Or, if they flop, their floppings goes in favour of more patients, and how
can you rightly have one without the t'other?  Then, wot with undertakers,
and wot with parish clerks, and wot with sextons, and wot with private
watchmen (all awaricious and all in it), a man wouldn't get much by it, even
if it wos so.  And wot little a man did get, would never prosper with him,
Mr. Lorry.  He'd never have no good of it; he'd want all along to be out of
the line, if he could see his way out, being once in - even if it wos so."

     "Ugh!" cried Mr. Lorry, rather relenting, nevertheless.  "I am shocked
at the sight of you."

     "Now, what I would humbly offer to you, sir," pursued Mr. Cruncher,
"even if it wos so, which I don't say it is -"

     "Don't prevaricate," said Mr. Lorry.

     "No, I will not, sir," returned Mr. Cruncher, as if nothing were
further from his thoughts or practice - "which I don't say it is - wot I
would humbly offer to you, sir, would be this.  Upon that there stool, at
that there Bar, sets that there boy of mine, brought up and growed up to be a
man, wot will errand you, message you, general-light-job you, till your heels
is where your head is, if such should be your wishes.  If it wos so, which I
still don't say it is (for I will not prewaricate to you, sir), let that
there boy keep his father's place, and take care of his mother; don't blow
upon that boy's father - do not do it, sir - and let that father go into the
line of the reg'lar diggin', and make amends for what he would have un-dug -
if it wos so - by diggin' of 'em in with a will, and with conwictions
respectin' the futur' keepin' of 'em safe.  That, Mr. Lorry," said Mr.
Cruncher, wiping his forehead with his arm, as an announcement that he had
arrived at the peroration of his discourse, "is wot I would respectfully
offer to you, sir.  A man don't see all this here a goin' on dreadful round
him, in the way of Subjects without heads, dear me, plentiful enough fur to
bring the price down to porterage and hardly that, without havin' his serious
thoughts of things.  And these here would be mine, if it wos so, entreatin'
of you fur to bear in mind that wot I said just now, I up and said in the
good cause when I might have kep' it back."

     "That at least is true," said Mr. Lorry.  "Say no more now.  It may be
that I shall yet stand your friend, if you deserve it, and repent in action -
not in words.  I want no more words."

     Mr. Cruncher knuckled his forehead, as Sydney Carton and the spy
returned from the dark room.  "Adieu, Mr. Barsad," said the former; "our
arrangement thus made, you have nothing to fear from me."

     He sat down in a chair on the hearth, over against Mr. Lorry.  When they
were alone, Mr. Lorry asked him what he had done?

     "Not much.  If it should go ill with the prisoner, I have ensured access
to him, once."

     Mr. Lorry's countenance fell.

     "It is all I could do," said Carton.  "To propose too much, would be to
put this man's head under the axe, and, as he himself said, nothing worse
could happen to him if he were denounced.  It was obviously the weakness of
the position.  There is no help for it."

     "But access to him," said Mr. Lorry, "if it should go ill before the
Tribunal, will not save him."

     "I never said it would."

     Mr. Lorry's eyes gradually sought the fire; his sympathy with his
darling, and the heavy disappointment of this second arrest, gradually
weakened them; he was an old man now, overborne with anxiety of late, and his
tears fell.

     "You are a good man and a true friend," said Carton, in an altered
voice.  "Forgive me if I notice that you are affected.  I could not see my
father weep, and sit by, careless.  And I could not respect your sorrow more,
if you were my father.  You are free from that misfortune, however."

     Though he said the last words, with a slip into his usual manner, there
was a true feeling and respect both in his tone and in histouch, that Mr.
Lorry, who had never seen the better side of him, was wholly unprepared for.
He gave him his hand, and Carton gently pressed it.

     "To return to poor Darnay," said Carton, "Don't tell Her of this
interview, or this arrangement.  It would not enable Her to go to see him.
She might think it was contrived, in case of the worst, to convey to him the
means of anticipating the sentence."

     Mr. Lorry had not thought of that, and he looked quickly at Carton to
see if it were in his mind.  It seemed to be; he returned the look, and
evidently understood it.

     "She might think a thousand things," Carton said, "and any of them would
only add to her trouble.  Don't speak of me to her.  As I said to you when I
first came, I had better not see her.  I can put my hand out, to do any
little helpful work for her that my hand can find to do, without that.  You
are going to her, I hope?  She must be very desolate to-night."

     "I am going now, directly."

     "I am glad of that.  She has such a strong attachment to you and
reliance on you.  How does she look?"

     "Anxious and unhappy, but very beautiful."

     "Ah!"

     It was a long, grieving sound, like a sigh - almost like a sob.  It
attracted Mr. Lorry's eyes to Carton's face, which was turned to the fire.  A
light, or a shade (the old gentleman could not have said which), passed from
it as swiftly as a change will sweep over a hillside on a wild bright day,
and he lifted his foot to put back one of the little flaming logs, which was
tumbling forward.  He wore the white riding-coat and top-boots, then in
vogue, and the light of the fire touching their light surfaces made him look
very pale, with his long brown hair, all untrimmed, hanging loose about him.
His indifference to fire was sufficiently remarkable to elicit a word of
remonstrance from Mr. Lorry; his boot was still upon the hot embers of the
flaming log, when it had broken under the weight of his foot.

     "I forgot it," he said.

     Mr. Lorry's eyes were again attracted to his face.  Taking note of the
wasted air which clouded the naturally handsome features, and having the
expression of prisoners' faces fresh in his mind, he was strongly reminded of
that expression.

     "And your duties here have drawn to an end, sir?" said Carton, turning
to him.

     "Yes.  As I was telling you last night when Lucie came in so
unexpectedly, I have at length done all that I can do here.  I hoped to have
left them in perfect safety, and then to have quitted Paris.  I have my Leave
to Pass.  I was ready to go."

     They were both silent.

     "Yours is a long life to look back upon, sir?" said Carton, wistfully.

     "I am in my seventy-eighth year."

     "You have been useful all your life; steadily and constantly occupied;
trusted, respected, and looked up to?"

     "I have been a man of business, ever since I have been a man.  Indeed, I
may say that I was a man of business when a boy."

     "See what a place you fill at seventy-eight.  How many people will miss
you when you leave it empty!"

     "A solitary old bachelor," answered Mr. Lorry, shaking his head.  "There
is nobody to weep for me."

     "How can you say that?  Wouldn't She weep for you?  Wouldn't her child?"

     "Yes, yes, thank God.  I didn't quite mean what I said."

     "It is a thing to thank God for; is it not?"

     "Surely, surely."

     "If you could say, with truth, to your own solitary heart, tonight, 'I
have secured to myself the love and attachment, the gratitude or respect, of
no human creature; I have won myself a tender place in no regard; I have done
nothing good or serviceable to be remembered by!' your seventy-eight years
would be seventy-eight heavy curses; would they not?"

     "You say truly, Mr. Carton; I think they would be."

     Sydney turned his eyes again upon the fire, and, after a silence of a
few moments, said:

     "I should like to ask you: - Does your childhood seem far off?  Do the
days when you sat at your mother's knee, seem days of very long ago?"

     Responding to his softened manner, Mr. Lorry answered:

     "Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life, no.  For, as I draw
closer and closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and nearer to
the beginning.  It seems to be one of the kind smoothings and preparings of
the way.  My heart is touched now, by many remembrances that had long fallen
asleep, of my pretty young mother (and I so old!), and by many associations
of the days when what we call the World was not so real with me, and my
faults were not confirmed in me."

     "I understand the feeling!" exclaimed Carton, with a bright flush.  "And
you are the better for it?"

     "I hope so."

     Carton terminated the conversation here, by rising to help him on with
his outer coat; "but you," said Mr. Lorry, reverting to the theme, "you are
young."

     "Yes," said Carton.  "I am not old, but my young way was never the way
to age.  Enough of me."

     "And of me, I am sure," said Mr. Lorry.  "Are you going out?"

     "I'll walk with you to her gate.  You know my vagabond and restless
habits.  If I should prowl about the streets a long time, don't be uneasy; I
shall reappear in the morning.  You go to the Court to-morrow?"

     "Yes, unhappily."

     "I shall be there, but only as one of the crowd.  My Spy will find a
place for me.  Take my arm, sir."

     Mr. Lorry did so, and they went down-stairs and out in the streets.  A
few minutes brought them to Mr. Lorry's destination.  Carton left him there;
but lingered at a little distance, and turned back to the gate again when it
was shut, and touched it.  He had heard of her going to the prison every day.
"She came out here," he said, looking about him, "turned this way, must have
trod on these stones often.  Let me follow in her steps."

     It was ten o'clock at night when he stood before the prison of La Force,
where she had stood hundreds of times.  A little wood-sawyer, having closed
his shop, was smoking his pipe at his shop-door.

     "Good night, citizen," said Sydney Carton, pausing in going by; for, the
man eyed him inquisitively.

     "Good night, citizen."

     "How goes the Republic?"

     "You mean the Guillotine.  Not ill.  Sixty-three to-day.  We shall mount
to a hundred soon.  Samson and his men complain sometimes, of being
exhausted.  Ha, ha, ha! He is so droll, that Samson.  Such a Barber!"

     "Do you often go to see him -"

     "Shave?  Always.  Every day.  What a barber! You have seen him at
work?"

     "Never."

     "Go and see him when he has a good batch.  Figure this to yourself,
citizen; he shaved the sixty-three to-day, in less than two pipes!  Less than
two pipes.  Word of honour!"

     As the grinning little man held out the pipe he was smoking, to explain
how he timed the executioner, Carton was so sensible of a rising desire to
strike the life out of him, that he turned away.

     "But you are not English," said the wood-sawyer, "though you wear
English dress?"

     "Yes," said Carton, pausing again, and answering over his shoulder.

     "You speak like a Frenchman."

     "I am an old student here."

     "Aha, a perfect Frenchman! Good night, Englishman."

     "Good night, citizen."

     "But go and see that droll dog," the little man persisted, calling after
him.  "And take a pipe with you!"

     Sydney had not gone far out of sight, when he stopped in the middle of
the street under a glimmering lamp, and wrote with his pencil on a scrap of
paper.  Then, traversing with the decided step of one who remembered the way
well, several dark and dirty streets - much dirtier than usual, for the best
public thoroughfares remained uncleansed in those times of terror - he
stopped at a chemist's shop, which the owner was closing with his own hands.
A small, dim, crooked shop, kept in a tortuous, up-hill thoroughfare, by a
small, dim, crooked man.

     Giving this citizen, too, good night, as he confronted him at his
counter, he laid the scrap of paper before him.  "Whew!" the chemist whistled
softly, as he read it.  "Hi! hi! hi!"

     Sydney Carton took no heed, and the chemist said:

     "For you, citizen?"

     "For me."

     "You will be careful to keep them separate, citizen?  You know the
consequences of mixing them?"

     "Perfectly."

     Certain small packets were made and given to him.  He put them, one by
one, in the breast of his inner coat, counted out the money for them, and
deliberately left the shop.  "There is nothing more to do," said he, glancing
upward at the moon, "until to-morrow.  I can't sleep."

     It was not a reckless manner, the manner in which he said these words
aloud under the fast-sailing clouds, nor was it more expressiveof negligence
than defiance.  It was the settled manner of a tired man, who had wandered
and struggled and got lost, but who at length struck into his road and saw
its end.

     Long ago, when he had been famous among his earliest competitors as a
youth of great promise, he had followed his father to the grave.  His mother
had died, years before.  These solemn words, which had been read at his
father's grave, arose in his mind as he went down the dark streets, among the
heavy shadows, with the moon and the clouds sailing on high above him.  "I am
the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in
me, shall never die."

     In a city dominated by the axe, alone at night, with natural sorrow
rising in him for the sixty-three who had been that day put to death, and for
to-morrow's victims then awaiting their doom in the prisons, and still of
to-morrow's and to-morrow's, the chain of association that brought the words
home, like a rusty old ship's anchor from the deep, might have been easily
found.  He did not seek it, but repeated them and went on.

     With a solemn interest in the lighted windows where the people were
going to rest, forgetful through a few calm hours of the horrors surrounding
them; in the towers of the churches, where no prayers were said, for the
popular revulsion had even travelled that length of self-destruction from
years of priestly impostors, plunderers, and profligates; in the distant
burial-places, reserved, as they wrote upon the gates, for Eternal Sleep; in
the abounding gaols; and in the streets along which the sixties rolled to a
death which had become so common and material, that no sorrowful story of a
haunting Spirit ever arose among the people out of all the working of the
Guillotine; with a solemn interest in the whole life and death of the city
settling down to its short nightly pause in fury; Sydney Carton crossed the
Seine again for the lighter streets.

     Few coaches were abroad, for riders in coaches were liable to be
suspected, and gentility hid its head in red nightcaps, and put on heavy
shoes, and trudged.  But, the theatres were all well filled, and the people
poured cheerfully out as he passed, and went chatting home.  At one of the
theatre doors, there was a little girl with a mother, looking for a way
across the street through the mud.  He carried the child over, and before the
timid arm was loosed from his neck asked her for a kiss.

     "I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that
believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever
liveth and believeth in me, shall never die."

     Now, that the streets were quiet, and the night wore on, the words were
in the echoes of his feet, and were in the air.  Perfectly calm and steady,
he sometimes repeated them to himself as he walked; but, he heard them
always.

     The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the bridge listening to the
water as it splashed the river-walls of the Island of Paris, where the
picturesque confusion of houses and cathedral shone bright in the light of
the moon, the day came coldly, looking like a dead face out of the sky.
Then, the night, with the moon and the stars, turned pale and died, and for a
little while it seemed as if Creation were delivered over to Death's
dominion.

     But, the glorious sun, rising, seemed to strike those words, that burden
of the night, straight and warm to his heart in its long bright rays.  And
looking along them, with reverently shaded eyes, a bridge of light appeared
to span the air between him and the sun, while the river sparkled under it.

     The strong tide, so swift, so deep, and certain, was like a congenial
friend, in the morning stillness.  He walked by the stream, far from the
houses, and in the light and warmth of the sun fell asleep on the bank.  When
he awoke and was afoot again, he lingered there yet a little longer, watching
an eddy that turned and turned purposeless, until the stream absorbed it, and
carried it on to the sea. - "Like me!"

     A trading-boat, with a sail of the softened colour of a dead leaf, then
glided into his view, floated by him, and died away.  As its silent track in
the water disappeared, the prayer that had broken up out of his heart for a
merciful consideration of all his poor blindnesses and errors, ended in the
words, "I am the resurrection and the life."

     Mr. Lorry was already out when he got back, and it was easy to surmise
where the good old man was gone.  Sydney Carton drank nothing but a little
coffee, ate some bread, and, having washed and changed to refresh himself,
went out to the place of trial.

     The court was all astir and a-buzz, when the black sheep - when many
fell away from in dread - pressed him into an obscure corner among the crowd.
Mr. Lorry was there, and Doctor Manette was there.  She was there, sitting
beside her father.

     When her husband was brought in, she turned a look upon him, so
sustaining, so encouraging, so full of admiring love and pitying tenderness,
yet so courageous for his sake, that it called the healthy blood into his
face, brightened his glance, and animated his heart.  If there had been any
eyes to notice the influence of her look, on Sydney Carton, it would have
been seen to be the same influence exactly.

     Before that unjust Tribunal, there was little or no order of procedure,
ensuring to any accused person any reasonable hearing.  There could have been
no such Revolution, if all laws, forms, and ceremonies, had not first been so
monstrously abused, that the suicidal vengeance of the Revolution was to
scatter them all to the winds.

     Every eye was turned to the jury.  The same determined patriots and good
republicans as yesterday and the day before, and tomorrow and the day after.
Eager and prominent among them, one man with a craving face, and his fingers
perpetually hovering about his lips, whose appearance gave great satisfaction
to the spectators.  A life-thirsting, cannibal-looking, bloody-minded
juryman, the Jacques Three of St. Antoine.  The whole jury, as a jury of dogs
empanelled to try the deer.

     Every eye then turned to the five judges and the public prosecutor.  No
favourable leaning in that quarter to-day.  A fell, uncompromising, murderous
business-meaning there.  Every eye then sought some other eye in the crowd,
and gleamed at it approvingly; and heads nodded at one another, before
bending forward with a strained attention.

     Charles Evremonde, called Darnay.  Released yesterday.  Reaccused and
retaken yesterday.  Indictment delivered to him last night.  Suspected and
Denounced enemy of the Republic, Aristocrat, one of a family of tyrants, one
of a race proscribed, for that they had used their abolished privileges to
the infamous oppression of the people.  Charles Evremonde, called Darnay, in
right of such proscription, absolutely Dead in Law.

     To this effect, in as few or fewer words, the Public Prosecutor.  The
President asked, was the Accused openly denounced or secretly?

     "Openly, President."

     "By whom?"

     "Three voices.  Ernest Defarge, wine-vendor of St. Antoine."

     "Good."

     "Therese Defarge, his wife."

     "Good."

     "Alexandre Manette, physician."

     A great uproar took place in the court, and in the midst of it.  Doctor
Manette was seen, pale and trembling, standing where he had been seated.

     "President, I indignantly protest to you that this is a forgery and a
fraud.  You know the accused to be the husband of my daughter.  My daughter,
and those dear to her, are far dearer to me than my life.  Who and where is
the false conspirator who says that I denounce the husband of my child!"

     "Citizen Manette, be tranquil.  To fail in submission to the authority
of the Tribunal would be to put yourself out of Law.  As to what is dearer to
you than life, nothing can be so dear to a good citizen as the Republic."

     Loud acclamations hailed this rebuke.  The President rang his bell, and
with warmth resumed.

     "If the Republic should demand of you the sacrifice of your child
herself, you would have no duty but to sacrifice her.  Listen to what is to
follow.  In the meanwhile, be silent!"

     Frantic acclamations were again raised.  Doctor Manette sat down, with
his eyes looking around, and his lips trembling; his daughter drew closer to
him.  The craving man on the jury rubbed his hands together, and restored the
usual hand to his mouth.

     Defarge was produced, when the court was quiet enough to admit of his
being heard, and rapidly expounded the story of the imprisonment, and of his
having been a mere boy in the Doctor's service, and of the release, and of
the state of the prisoner when released and delivered to him.  This short
examination followed, for the court was quick with its work.

     "You did good service at the taking of the Bastille, citizen?"

     "I believe so."

     Here, an excited woman screeched from the crowd: "You were one of the
best patriots there.  Why not say so?  You were a cannonier that day there,
and you were among the first to enter the accursed fortress when it fell.
Patriots, I speak the truth!"

     It was The Vengeance who, amidst the warm commendations of the audience,
thus assisted the proceedings.  The President rang his bell; but, The
Vengeance, warming with encouragement, shrieked, "I defy that bell!" wherein
she was likewise much commended.

     "Inform the Tribunal of what you did that day within the Bastille,
citizen."

     "I knew," said Defarge, looking down at his wife, who stood at the
bottom of the steps on which he was raised, looking steadily up at him; "I
knew that this prisoner, of whom I speak, had been confined in a cell known
as One Hundred and Five, North Tower.  I knew it from himself.  He knew
himself by no other name than One Hundred and Five, North Tower, when he made
shoes under my care.  As I serve my gun that day, I resolve, when the place
shall fall, to examine that cell.  It falls.  I mount to the cell, with a
fellow-citizen who is one of the Jury, directed by a gaoler.  I examine it,
very closely.  In a hole in the chimney, where a stone has been worked out
and replaced, I find a written paper.  This is that written paper.  I have
made it my business to examine some specimens of the writing of Doctor
Manette.  This is the writing of Doctor Manette.  I confide this paper, in
the writing of Doctor Manette, to the hands of the President."

     "Let it be read."

     In a dead silence and stillness - the prisoner under trial looking
lovingly at his wife, his wife only looking from him to look with solicitude
at her father, Doctor Manette keeping his eyes fixed on the reader, Madame
Defarge never taking hers from the prisoner, Defarge never taking his from
his feasting wife, and all the other eyes there intent upon the Doctor, who
saw none of them - the paper was read, as follows.