Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0069/00695.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 26KB | 568 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00695}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Tale Of Two Cities
Chapter XIII}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{hand
carton
prisoner
am
last
look
time
evremonde
himself
little}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       (A) Tale Of Two Cities
Book:        Book The Third: The Track of a Storm
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter XIII

Fifty-Two

     In the black prison of the Conciergerie, the doomed of the day awaited
their fate.  They were in number as the weeks of the year.  Fifty-two were to
roll that afternoon on the life-tide of the city to the boundless everlasting
sea.  Before their cells were quit of them, new occupants were appointed;
before their blood ran into the blood spilled yesterday, the blood that was
to mingle with theirs to-morrow was already set apart.

     Two score and twelve were told off.  From the farmer-general of seventy,
whose riches could not buy his life, to the seamstress of twenty, whose
poverty and obscurity could not save her.  Physical diseases, engendered in
the vices and neglects of men, will seize on victims of all degrees; and the
frightful moral disorder, born of unspeakable suffering, intolerable
oppression, and heartless indifference, smote equally without distinction.

     Charles Darnay, alone in a cell, had sustained himself with no
flattering delusion since he came to it from the Tribunal.  In every line of
the narrative he had heard, he had heard his condemnation.  He had fully
comprehended that no personal influence could possibly save him, that he was
virtually sentenced by the millions, and that units could avail him nothing.

     Nevertheless, it was not easy, with the face of his beloved wife fresh
before him, to compose his mind to what it must bear.  His hold on life was
strong, and it was very, very hard to loosen; by gradual efforts and degrees
unclosed a little here, it clenched the tighter there; and when he brought
his strength to bear on that hand and it yielded, this was closed again.
There was a hurry, too, in all his thoughts, a turbulent and heated working
of his heart, that contended against resignation.  If, for a moment, he did
feel resigned, then his wife and child who had to live after him, seemed to
protest and to make it a selfish thing.

     But, all this was at first.  Before long, the consideration that there
was no disgrace in the fate he must meet, and that numbers went the same road
wrongfully, and trod it firmly every day, sprang up to stimulate him.  Next
followed the thought that much of the future peace of mind enjoyable by the
dear ones, depended on his quiet fortitude.  So, by degrees he calmed into
the better state, when he could raise his thoughts much higher, and draw
comfort down.

     Before it had set in dark on the night of his condemnation, he had
travelled thus far on his last way.  Being allowed to purchase the means of
writing, and a light, he sat down to write until such time as the prison
lamps should be extinguished.

     He wrote a long letter to Lucie, showing her that he had known nothing
of her father's imprisonment, until he had heard of it from herself, and that
he had been as ignorant as she of his father's and uncle's responsibility for
that misery, until the paper had been read.  He had already explained to her
that his concealment from herself of the name he had relinquished, was the
one condition - fully intelligible now - that her father had attached to
their betrothal, and was the one promise he had still exacted on the morning
of their marriage.  He entreated her, for her father's sake, never to seek to
know whether her father had become oblivious of the existence of the paper,
or had had it recalled to him (for the moment, or for good), by the story of
the Tower, on that old Sunday under the dear old plane-tree in the garden.
If he had preserved any definite remembrance of it, there could be no doubt
that he had supposed it destroyed with the Bastille, when he had found no
mention of it among the relics of prisoners which the populace had discovered
there, and which had been described to all the world.  He besought her -
though he added that he knew it was needless - to console her father, by
impressing him through every tender means she could think of, with the truth
that he had done nothing for which he could justly reproach himself, but had
uniformly forgotten himself for their joint sakes.  Next to her preservation
of his own last grateful love and blessing, and her overcoming of her sorrow,
to devote herself to their dear child, he adjured her, as they would meet in
Heaven, to comfort her father.

     To her father himself, he wrote in the same strain; but, he told her
father that he expressly confided his wife and child to his care.  And he
told him this, very strongly, with the hope of rousing him from any
despondency or dangerous retrospect towards which he foresaw he might be
tending.

     To Mr. Lorry, he commended them all, and explained his worldly affairs.
That done, with many added sentences of grateful friendship and warm
attachment, all was done.  He never thought of Carton.  His mind was so full
of the others, that he never once thought of him.

     He had time to finish these letters before the lights were put out.
When he lay down on his straw bed, he thought he had done with this world.

     But, it beckoned him back in his sleep, and showed itself in shining
forms.  Free and happy, back in the old house in Soho (though it had nothing
in it like the real house), unaccountably released and light of heart, he was
with Lucie again, and she told him it was all a dream, and he had never gone
away.  A pause of forgetfulness, and then he had even suffered, and had come
back to her, dead and at peace, and yet there was no difference in him.
Another pause of oblivion, and he awoke in the sombre morning, unconscious
where he was or what had happened, until it flashed upon his mind, "this is
the day of my death!"

     Thus, had he come through the hours, to the day when the fifty-two heads
were to fall.  And now, while he was composed, and hoped that he could meet
the end with quiet heroism, a new action began in his waking thoughts, which
was very difficult to master.

     He had never seen the instrument that was to terminate his life.  How
high it was from the ground, how many steps it had, where he would be stood,
how he would be touched, whether the touching hands would be dyed red, which
way his face would be turned, whether he would be the first, or might be the
last: these and many similar questions, in no wise directed by his will,
obtruded themselves over and over again, countless times.  Neither were they
connected with fear: he was conscious of no fear.  Rather, they originated in
a strange besetting desire to know what to do when the time came; a desire
gigantically disproportionate to the few swift moments to which it referred;
a wondering that was more like the wondering of some other spirit within his,
than his own.

     The hours went on as he walked to and fro, and the clocks struck the
numbers he would never hear again.  Nine gone for ever, ten gone for ever,
eleven gone for ever, twelve coming on to pass away.  After a hard contest
with that eccentric action of thought which had last perplexed him, he had
got the better of it.  He walked up and down, softly repeating their names to
himself.  The worst of the strife was over.  He could walk up and down, free
from distracting fancies, praying for himself and for them.

     Twelve gone for ever.

     He had been apprised that the final hour was Three, and he knew he would
be summoned some time earlier, inasmuch as the tumbrils jolted heavily and
slowly through the streets.  Therefore, he resolved to keep Two before his
mind, as the hour, and so to strengthen himself in the interval that he might
be able, after that time, to strengthen others.

     Walking regularly to and fro with his arms folded on his breast, a very
different man from the prisoner, who had walked to and fro at La Force, he
heard One struck away from him, without surprise.  The hour had measured like
most other hours.  Devoutly thankful to Heaven for his recovered
self-possession, he thought, "There is but another now," and turned to walk
again.

     Footsteps in the stone passage outside the door.  He stopped.

     The key was put into the lock, and turned.  Before the door was opened,
or as it opened, a man said in a low voice, in English: "He has never seen me
here; I have kept out of his way.  Go you in alone; I wait near.  Lose no
time!"

     The door was quickly opened and closed, and there stood before him face
to face, quiet, intent upon him, with the light of a smile on his features,
and a cautionary finger on his lip, Sydney Carton.

     There was something so bright and remarkable in his look, that, for the
first moment, the prisoner misdoubted him to be an apparition of his own
imagining.  But, he spoke, and it was his voice; he took the prisoner's hand,
and it was his real grasp.

     "Of all the people upon earth, you least expected to see me?" he said.

     "I could not believe it to be you.  I can scarcely believe it now.  You
are not" - the apprehension came suddenly into his mind - "a prisoner?"

     "No.  I am accidentally possessed of a power over one of the keepers
here, and in virtue of it I stand before you.  I come from her - your wife,
dear Darnay."

     The prisoner wrung his hand.

     "I bring you a request from her."

     "What is it?"

     "A most earnest, pressing, and emphatic entreaty, addressed to you in
the most pathetic tones of the voice so dear to you, that you well remember."

     The prisoner turned his face partly aside.

     "You have no time to ask me why I bring it, or what it means; I have no
time to tell you.  You must comply with it - take off those boots you wear,
and draw on these of mine."

     There was a chair against the wall of the cell, behind the prisoner.
Carton, pressing forward, had already, with the speed of lightning, got him
down into it, and stood over him, barefoot.

     "Draw on these boots of mine.  Put your hands to them; put your will to
them.  Quick!"

     "Carton, there is no escaping from this place; it never can be done.
You will only die with me.  It is madness."

     "It would be madness if I asked you to escape, but do I?  When I ask you
to pass out at that door, tell me it is madness and remain here.  Change that
cravat for this of mine, that coat for this of mine.  While you do it, let me
take this ribbon from your hair, and shake out your hair like this of mine!"

     With wonderful quickness, and with a strength both of will and action,
that appeared quite supernatural, he forced all these changes upon him.  The
prisoner was like a young child in his hands.

     "Carton!  Dear Carton!  It is madness.  It cannot be accomplished, it
never can be done, it has been attempted, and has always failed.  I implore
you not to add your death to the bitterness of mine."

     "Do I ask you, my dear Darnay, to pass the door?  When I ask that,
refuse.  There are pen and ink and paper on this table.  Is your hand steady
enough to write?"

     "It was when you came in."

     "Steady it again, and write what I shall dictate.  Quick, friend,
quick!"

     Pressing his hand to his bewildered head, Darnay sat down at the table.
Carton, with his right hand in his breast, stood close beside him.

     "Write exactly as I speak."

     "To whom do I address it?"

     "To no one."  Carton still had his hand in his breast.

     "Do I date it?"

     "No."

     The prisoner looked up, at each question.  Carton, standing over him
with his hand in his breast, looked down.

     "If you remember,'" said Carton, dictating, "'the words that passed
between us, long ago, you will readily comprehend this when you see it.  You
do remember them, I know.  It is not in your nature to forget them.'"

     He was drawing his hand from his breast; the prisoner chancing to look
up in his hurried wonder as he wrote, the hand stopped, closing upon
something.

     "Have you written 'forget them!'" Carton, asked.

     "I have.  Is that a weapon in your hand?"

     "No; I am not armed."

     "What is it in your hand?"

     "You shall know directly.  Write on; there are but a few words more."
He dictated again."  'I am thankful that the time has come, when I can prove
them.  That I do so is no subject for regret or grief.'"  As he said these
words with his eyes fixed on the writer, his hand slowly and softly moved
down close to the writer's face.

     The pen dropped from Darnay's fingers on the table, and he looked about
him vacantly.

     "What vapour is that?" he asked.

     "Vapour?"

     "Something that crossed me?"

     "I am conscious of nothing; there can be nothing here.  Take up the pen
and finish.  Hurry, hurry!"

     As if his memory were impaired, or his faculties disordered, the
prisoner made an effort to rally his attention.  As he looked at Carton with
clouded eyes and with an altered manner of breathing, Carton - his hand again
in his breast - looked steadily at him.

     "Hurry, hurry!"

     The prisoner bent over the paper, once more.

     "'If it had been otherwise;'" Carton's hand was again watchfully and
softly stealing down; "'I never should have used the longer opportunity.  If
it had been otherwise;'" the hand was at the prisoner's face; "'I should but
have had so much the more to answer for.  If it had been otherwise -'" Carton
looked at the pen and saw that it was trailing off into unintelligible signs.

     Carton's hand moved back to his breast no more.  The prisoner sprang up
with a reproachful look, but Carton's hand was close and firm at his
nostrils, and Carton's left arm caught him round the waist.  For a few
seconds he faintly struggled with the man who had come to lay down his life
for him; but, within a minute or so, he was stretched insensible on the
ground.

     Quickly, but with hands as true to the purpose as his heart was, Carton
dressed himself in the clothes the prisoner had laid aside, combed back his
hair, and tied it with the ribbon the prisoner had worn.  Then, he softly
called, "Enter there!  Come in!" and the Spy presented himself.

     "You see?" said Carton, looking up, as he kneeled on one knee beside the
insensible figure, putting the paper in the breast: "is your hazard very
great?"

     "Mr. Carton," the Spy answered, with a timid snap of his fingers, "my
hazard is not that, in the thick of business here, if you are true to the
whole of your bargain."

     "Don't fear me.  I will be true to the death."

     "You must be, Mr. Carton, if the tale of the fifty-two is to be right.
Being bade right by you in that dress, I shall have no fear."

     "Have no fear!  I shall soon be out of the way of harming you, and the
rest will soon be far from here, please God!  Now, get assistance and take me
to the coach."

     "You?" said the Spy nervously.

     "Him, man, with whom I have exchanged.  You go out at the gate by which
you brought me in?"

     "Of course."

     "I was weak and faint when you brought me in, and I am fainter now you
take me out.  The parting interview has overpowered me.  Such a thing has
happened here, often, and too often.  Your life is in your own hands.  Quick!
Call assistance!"

     "You swear not to betray me?" said the trembling Spy, as he paused for a
last moment.

     "Man, man!" returned Carton, stamping his foot; "have I sworn by no
solemn vow already, to go through with this, that you waste the precious
moments now?  Take him yourself to the court-yard you know of, place him
yourself in the carriage, show him yourself to Mr. Lorry, tell him yourself
to give him no restorative but air, and to remember my words of last night,
and his promise of last night, and drive away!"

     The Spy withdrew, and Carton seated himself at the table, resting his
forehead on his hands.  The Spy returned immediately, with two men.

     "How, then?" said one of them, contemplating the fallen figure.  "So
afflicted to find that his friend has drawn a prize in the lottery of Sainte
Guillotine?"

     "A good patriot," said the other, "could hardly have been more afflicted
if the Aristocrat had drawn a blank."

     They raised the unconscious figure, placed it on a litter they had
brought to the door, and bent to carry it away.

     "The time is short, Evremonde," said the Spy, in a warning voice.

     "I know it well," answered Carton.  "Be careful of my friend, I entreat
you, and leave me."

     "Come, then, my children," said Barsad.  "Lift him, and come away!"

     The door closed, and Carton was left alone.  Straining his powers of
listening to the utmost, he listened for any sound that might denote
suspicion or alarm.  There was none.  Keys turned, doors clashed, footsteps
passed along distant passages: no cry was raised, or hurry made, that seemed
unusual.  Breathing more freely in a little while, he sat down at the table,
and listened again until the clock struck Two.

     Sounds that he was not afraid of, for he divined their meaning, then
began to be audible.  Several doors were opened in succession, and finally
his own.  A gaoler, with a list in his hand, looked in, merely saying,
"Follow me, Evremonde!" and he followed into a large dark room, at a
distance.  It was a dark winter day, and what with the shadows within, and
what with the shadows without, he could but dimly discern the others who were
brought there to have their arms bound.  Some were standing; some seated.
Some were lamenting, and in restless motion; but, these were few.  The great
majority were silent and still, looking fixedly at the ground.

     As he stood by the wall in a dim corner, while some of the fifty-two
were brought in after him, one man stopped in passing, to embrace him, as
having a knowledge of him.  It thrilled him with a great dread of discovery;
but the man went on.  A very few moments after that, a young woman, with a
slight girlish form, a sweet spare face in which there was no vestige of
colour, and large widely opened patient eyes, rose from the seat where he had
observed her sitting, and came to speak to him.

     "Citizen Evremonde," she said, touching him with her cold hand.  "I am a
poor little seamstress, who was with you in La Force."

     He murmured for answer: "True.  I forget what you were accused of?"

     "Plots.  Though the just Heaven knows I am innocent of any.  Is it
likely?  Who would think of plotting with a poor little weak creature like
me?"

     The forlorn smile with which she said it, so touched him, that tears
started from his eyes.

     "I am not afraid to die, Citizen Evremonde, but I have done nothing.  I
am not unwilling to die, if the Republic which is to do so much good to us
poor, will profit by my death; but I do not know how that can be, Citizen
Evremonde.  Such a poor weak little creature!"

     As the last thing on earth that his heart was to warm and soften to, it
warmed and softened to this pitiable girl.

     "I heard you were released, Citizen Evremonde.  I hoped it was true?"

     "It was.  But, I was again taken and condemned."

     "If I may ride with you, Citizen Evremonde, will you let me hold your
hand?  I am not afraid, but I am little and weak, and it will give me more
courage."

     As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sudden doubt in
them, and then astonishment.  He pressed the work-worn, hunger-worn young
fingers, and touched his lips.

     "Are you dying for him?" she whispered.

     "And his wife and child.  Hush!  Yes."

     "O you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?"

     "Hush!  Yes, my poor sister; to the last."

     The same shadows that are falling on the prison, are falling, in that
same hour of the early afternoon, on the Barrier with the crowd about it, when
a coach going out of Paris drives up to be examined.

     "Who goes there?  Whom have we within?  Papers!"

     The papers are handed out, and read.

     "Alexandre Manette.  Physician.  French.  Which is he?"

     'This is he; this helpless, inarticulately murmuring, wandering old man
pointed out.

     "Apparently the Citizen-Doctor is not in his right mind?  The
Revolution-fever will have been too much for him?"

     Greatly too much for him.

     "Hah!  Many suffer with it.  Lucie.  His daughter.  French.  Which is
she?"

     This is she.

     "Apparently it must be.  Lucie, the wife of Evremonde; is it not?"

     It is.


     "Hah!  Evremonde has an assignation elsewhere.  Lucie, her child.
English.  This is she?"

     She and no other.

     "Kiss me, child of Evremonde.  Now, thou hast kissed a good Republican;
something new in thy family; remember it!  Sydney Carton.  Advocate. English.
Which is he?"

     He lies here, in this corner of the carriage.  He, too is pointed out.

     "Apparently the English advocate is in a swoon?"

     It is hoped he will recover in the fresher air.  It is represented that
he is not in strong health, and has separated sadly from a friend who is under
the displeasure of the Republic.

     "Is that all?  It is not a great deal, that!  Many are under the
displeasure of the Republic, and must look out at the little window.  Jarvis
Lorry.  Banker.  English.  Which is he?"

     "I am he.  Necessarily, being the last."

     It is Jarvis Lorry who has replied to all the previous questions.  It is
Jarvis Lorry who has alighted and stands with his hand on the coach door,
replying to a group of officials.  They leisurely walk round the carriage and
leisurely mount the box, to look at what little luggage it carries on the
roof; the country-people hanging about, press nearer to the coach doors and
greedily stare in; a little child, carried by its mother, has its short arm
held out for it, that it may touch the wife of an aristocrat who has gone to
the Guillotine.

     "Behold your papers, Jarvis Lorry, countersigned."

     "One can depart, citizen?"

     "One can depart.  Forward, my postilions!  A good journey!"

     "I salute you, citizens. - And the first danger passed!"

     These are again the words of Jarvis Lorry, as he clasps his hands, and
looks upward.  There is terror in the carriage, there is weeping, there is
heavy breathing of the insensible traveller.

     "Are we not going too slowly?  Can they not be induced to go faster?"
asks Lucie, clinging to the old man.

     "It would seem like flight, my darling.  I must not urge them too much;
it would arouse suspicion."

     "Look back, look back, and see if we are pursued!"

     "The road is clear, my dearest.  So far, we are not pursued."

     Houses in twos and threes pass by us, solitary farms, ruinous buildings,
dye-works, tanneries, and the like, open country, avenues of leafless trees.
The hard uneven pavement is under us, the soft deep mud is on either side.
Sometimes, we strike into the skirting mud, to avoid the stones that clatter
us and shake us; sometimes we stick in ruts and sloughs there.  The agony of
our impatience is then so great, that in our wild alarm and hurry we are
forgetting out and running - hiding - doing anything but stopping.

     Out of the open country, in again among ruinous buildings, solitary
farms, dye-works, tanneries, and the like, cottages in twos and threes,
avenues of leafless trees.  Have these men deceived us, and taken us back by
another road?  Is not this the same place twice over?  Thank Heaven, no.  A
village.  Look back, look back, and see if we are pursued!  Hush!
the posting-house.

     Leisurely, our four horses are taken out; leisurely, the coach stands in
the little street, bereft of horses, and with no likelihood upon it of ever
moving again; leisurely, the new horses come into visible existence, one by
one; leisurely, the new postilions follow, sucking and plaiting the lashes of
their whips; leisurely, the old postilions count their money, make wrong
additions, and arrive at dissatisfied results.  All the time, our overfraught
hearts are beating at a rate that would far outstrip the fastest gallop of
the fastest horses ever foaled.

     At length the new postilions are in their saddles, and the old are left
behind.  We are through the village, up the hill, and down the hill, and on
the low watery grounds.  Suddenly, the postilions exchange speech with
animated gesticulation, and the horses are pulled up, almost on their
haunches.  We are pursued?

     "Ho!  Within the carriage there.  Speak then!"

     "What is it?" asks Mr. Lorry, looking out at window.

     "How many did they say?"

     "I do not understand you."

     "- At the last post.  How many to the Guillotine to-day?"

     "Fifty-two."

     "I said so!  A brave number!  My fellow-citizen here would have it
forty-two; ten more heads are worth having.  The Guillotine goes handsomely.
I love it.  Hi forward.  Whoop!"

     The night comes on dark.  He moves more; he is beginning to revive, and
to speak intelligibly; he thinks they are still together; he asks him, by his
name, what he has in his hand.  O pity us, kind Heaven, and help us!  Look
out, look out, and see if we are pursued.

     The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and
the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of us;
but, so far we are pursued by nothing else.