Not an emigrant, he hoped, within the sense and spirit of the law.
Why not? the President desired to know.
Because he had voluntarily relinquished a title that was distasteful
to him, and a station that was distasteful to him, and had left
his country--he submitted before the word emigrant in the present
acceptation by the Tribunal was in use--to live by his own industry in
England, rather than on the industry of the overladen people of France.
What proof had he of this?
He handed in the names of two witnesses; Theophile Gabelle, and
Alexandre Manette.
But he had married in England? the President reminded him.
True, but not an English woman.
A citizeness of France?
Yes. By birth.
Her name and family?
“Lucie Manette, only daughter of Doctor Manette, the good physician who
sits there.”
This answer had a happy effect upon the audience. Cries in exaltation
of the well-known good physician rent the hall. So capriciously were
the people moved, that tears immediately rolled down several ferocious
countenances which had been glaring at the prisoner a moment before, as
if with impatience to pluck him out into the streets and kill him.
On these few steps of his dangerous way, Charles Darnay had set his foot
according to Doctor Manette’s reiterated instructions. The same cautious
counsel directed every step that lay before him, and had prepared every
inch of his road.
The President asked, why had he returned to France when he did, and not
sooner?
He had not returned sooner, he replied, simply because he had no means
of living in France, save those he had resigned; whereas, in England,
he lived by giving instruction in the French language and literature.
He had returned when he did, on the pressing and written entreaty of
a French citizen, who represented that his life was endangered by his
absence. He had come back, to save a citizen’s life, and to bear his
testimony, at whatever personal hazard, to the truth. Was that criminal
in the eyes of the Republic?
The populace cried enthusiastically, “No!” and the President rang his
bell to quiet them. Which it did not, for they continued to cry “No!”
until they left off, of their own will.
The President required the name of that citizen. The accused explained
that the citizen was his first witness. He also referred with confidence
to the citizen’s letter, which had been taken from him at the Barrier,
but which he did not doubt would be found among the papers then before
the President.
The Doctor had taken care that it should be there--had assured him that
it would be there--and at this stage of the proceedings it was produced
and read. Citizen Gabelle was called to confirm it, and did so. Citizen
Gabelle hinted, with infinite delicacy and politeness, that in the
pressure of business imposed on the Tribunal by the multitude of
enemies of the Republic with which it had to deal, he had been slightly
overlooked in his prison of the Abbaye--in fact, had rather passed out
of the Tribunal’s patriotic remembrance--until three days ago; when he
had been summoned before it, and had been set at liberty on the Jury’s
declaring themselves satisfied that the accusation against him was
answered, as to himself, by the surrender of the citizen Evrémonde,
called Darnay.
Doctor Manette was next questioned. His high personal popularity,
and the clearness of his answers, made a great impression; but, as he
proceeded, as he showed that the Accused was his first friend on his
release from his long imprisonment; that, the accused had remained in
England, always faithful and devoted to his daughter and himself in
their exile; that, so far from being in favour with the Aristocrat
government there, he had actually been tried for his life by it, as
the foe of England and friend of the United States--as he brought these
circumstances into view, with the greatest discretion and with the
straightforward force of truth and earnestness, the Jury and the
populace became one. At last, when he appealed by name to Monsieur
Lorry, an English gentleman then and there present, who, like himself,
had been a witness on that English trial and could corroborate his
account of it, the Jury declared that they had heard enough, and that
they were ready with their votes if the President were content to
receive them.
At every vote (the Jurymen voted aloud and individually), the populace
set up a shout of applause. All the voices were in the prisoner’s
favour, and the President declared him free.
Then, began one of those extraordinary scenes with which the populace
sometimes gratified their fickleness, or their better impulses towards
generosity and mercy, or which they regarded as some set-off against
their swollen account of cruel rage. No man can decide now to which of
these motives such extraordinary scenes were referable; it is probable,
to a blending of all the three, with the second predominating. No sooner
was the acquittal pronounced, than tears were shed as freely as blood
at another time, and such fraternal embraces were bestowed upon the
prisoner by as many of both sexes as could rush at him, that after
his long and unwholesome confinement he was in danger of fainting from
exhaustion; none the less because he knew very well, that the very same
people, carried by another current, would have rushed at him with
the very same intensity, to rend him to pieces and strew him over the
streets.
His removal, to make way for other accused persons who were to be tried,
rescued him from these caresses for the moment. Five were to be tried
together, next, as enemies of the Republic, forasmuch as they had not
assisted it by word or deed. So quick was the Tribunal to compensate
itself and the nation for a chance lost, that these five came down to
him before he left the place, condemned to die within twenty-four
hours. The first of them told him so, with the customary prison sign
of Death--a raised finger--and they all added in words, “Long live the
Republic!”
The five had had, it is true, no audience to lengthen their proceedings,
for when he and Doctor Manette emerged from the gate, there was a great
crowd about it, in which there seemed to be every face he had seen in
Court--except two, for which he looked in vain. On his coming out, the
concourse made at him anew, weeping, embracing, and shouting, all by
turns and all together, until the very tide of the river on the bank of
which the mad scene was acted, seemed to run mad, like the people on the
shore.
They put him into a great chair they had among them, and which they had
taken either out of the Court itself, or one of its rooms or passages.
Over the chair they had thrown a red flag, and to the back of it they
had bound a pike with a red cap on its top. In this car of triumph, not
even the Doctor’s entreaties could prevent his being carried to his home
on men’s shoulders, with a confused sea of red caps heaving about him,
and casting up to sight from the stormy deep such wrecks of faces, that
he more than once misdoubted his mind being in confusion, and that he
was in the tumbril on his way to the Guillotine.
In wild dreamlike procession, embracing whom they met and pointing
him out, they carried him on. Reddening the snowy streets with the
prevailing Republican colour, in winding and tramping through them, as
they had reddened them below the snow with a deeper dye, they carried
him thus into the courtyard of the building where he lived. Her father
had gone on before, to prepare her, and when her husband stood upon his
feet, she dropped insensible in his arms.
As he held her to his heart and turned her beautiful head between his
face and the brawling crowd, so that his tears and her lips might come
together unseen, a few of the people fell to dancing. Instantly, all the
rest fell to dancing, and the courtyard overflowed with the Carmagnole.
Then, they elevated into the vacant chair a young woman from the
crowd to be carried as the Goddess of Liberty, and then swelling and
overflowing out into the adjacent streets, and along the river’s bank,
and over the bridge, the Carmagnole absorbed them every one and whirled
them away.
After grasping the Doctor’s hand, as he stood victorious and proud
before him; after grasping the hand of Mr. Lorry, who came panting in
breathless from his struggle against the waterspout of the Carmagnole;
after kissing little Lucie, who was lifted up to clasp her arms round
his neck; and after embracing the ever zealous and faithful Pross who
lifted her; he took his wife in his arms, and carried her up to their
rooms.
“Lucie! My own! I am safe.”
“O dearest Charles, let me thank God for this on my knees as I have
prayed to Him.”
They all reverently bowed their heads and hearts. When she was again in
his arms, he said to her:
“And now speak to your father, dearest. No other man in all this France
could have done what he has done for me.”
She laid her head upon her father’s breast, as she had laid his poor
head on her own breast, long, long ago. He was happy in the return he
had made her, he was recompensed for his suffering, he was proud of his
strength. “You must not be weak, my darling,” he remonstrated; “don’t
tremble so. I have saved him.”
CHAPTER VII.
A Knock at the Door
“I have saved him.” It was not another of the dreams in which he had
often come back; he was really here. And yet his wife trembled, and a
vague but heavy fear was upon her.
All the air round was so thick and dark, the people were so passionately
revengeful and fitful, the innocent were so constantly put to death on
vague suspicion and black malice, it was so impossible to forget that
many as blameless as her husband and as dear to others as he was to
her, every day shared the fate from which he had been clutched, that her
heart could not be as lightened of its load as she felt it ought to be.
The shadows of the wintry afternoon were beginning to fall, and even now
the dreadful carts were rolling through the streets. Her mind pursued
them, looking for him among the Condemned; and then she clung closer to
his real presence and trembled more.
Her father, cheering her, showed a compassionate superiority to this
woman’s weakness, which was wonderful to see. No garret, no shoemaking,
no One Hundred and Five, North Tower, now! He had accomplished the task
he had set himself, his promise was redeemed, he had saved Charles. Let
them all lean upon him.
Their housekeeping was of a very frugal kind: not only because that was
the safest way of life, involving the least offence to the people, but
because they were not rich, and Charles, throughout his imprisonment,
had had to pay heavily for his bad food, and for his guard, and towards
the living of the poorer prisoners. Partly on this account, and
partly to avoid a domestic spy, they kept no servant; the citizen and
citizeness who acted as porters at the courtyard gate, rendered them
occasional service; and Jerry (almost wholly transferred to them by
Mr. Lorry) had become their daily retainer, and had his bed there every
night.
It was an ordinance of the Republic One and Indivisible of Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity, or Death, that on the door or doorpost of every
house, the name of every inmate must be legibly inscribed in letters
of a certain size, at a certain convenient height from the ground. Mr.
Jerry Cruncher’s name, therefore, duly embellished the doorpost down
below; and, as the afternoon shadows deepened, the owner of that name
himself appeared, from overlooking a painter whom Doctor Manette had
employed to add to the list the name of Charles Evrémonde, called
Darnay.
In the universal fear and distrust that darkened the time, all the usual
harmless ways of life were changed. In the Doctor’s little household, as
in very many others, the articles of daily consumption that were wanted
were purchased every evening, in small quantities and at various small
shops. To avoid attracting notice, and to give as little occasion as
possible for talk and envy, was the general desire.
For some months past, Miss Pross and Mr. Cruncher had discharged the
office of purveyors; the former carrying the money; the latter, the
basket. Every afternoon at about the time when the public lamps were
lighted, they fared forth on this duty, and made and brought home
such purchases as were needful. Although Miss Pross, through her long
association with a French family, might have known as much of their
language as of her own, if she had had a mind, she had no mind in that
direction; consequently she knew no more of that “nonsense” (as she was
pleased to call it) than Mr. Cruncher did. So her manner of marketing
was to plump a noun-substantive at the head of a shopkeeper without any
introduction in the nature of an article, and, if it happened not to be
the name of the thing she wanted, to look round for that thing, lay hold
of it, and hold on by it until the bargain was concluded. She always
made a bargain for it, by holding up, as a statement of its just price,
one finger less than the merchant held up, whatever his number might be.
“Now, Mr. Cruncher,” said Miss Pross, whose eyes were red with felicity;
“if you are ready, I am.”
Jerry hoarsely professed himself at Miss Pross’s service. He had worn
all his rust off long ago, but nothing would file his spiky head down.
“There’s all manner of things wanted,” said Miss Pross, “and we shall
have a precious time of it. We want wine, among the rest. Nice toasts
these Redheads will be drinking, wherever we buy it.”
“It will be much the same to your knowledge, miss, I should think,”
retorted Jerry, “whether they drink your health or the Old Un’s.”
“Who’s he?” said Miss Pross.
Mr. Cruncher, with some diffidence, explained himself as meaning “Old
Nick’s.”
“Ha!” said Miss Pross, “it doesn’t need an interpreter to explain the
meaning of these creatures. They have but one, and it’s Midnight Murder,
and Mischief.”
“Hush, dear! Pray, pray, be cautious!” cried Lucie.
“Yes, yes, yes, I’ll be cautious,” said Miss Pross; “but I may say
among ourselves, that I do hope there will be no oniony and tobaccoey
smotherings in the form of embracings all round, going on in the
streets. Now, Ladybird, never you stir from that fire till I come back!
Take care of the dear husband you have recovered, and don’t move your
pretty head from his shoulder as you have it now, till you see me again!
May I ask a question, Doctor Manette, before I go?”
“I think you may take that liberty,” the Doctor answered, smiling.
“For gracious sake, don’t talk about Liberty; we have quite enough of
that,” said Miss Pross.
“Hush, dear! Again?” Lucie remonstrated.
“Well, my sweet,” said Miss Pross, nodding her head emphatically, “the
short and the long of it is, that I am a subject of His Most Gracious
Majesty King George the Third;” Miss Pross curtseyed at the name; “and
as such, my maxim is, Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish
tricks, On him our hopes we fix, God save the King!”
Mr. Cruncher, in an access of loyalty, growlingly repeated the words
after Miss Pross, like somebody at church.
“I am glad you have so much of the Englishman in you, though I wish you
had never taken that cold in your voice,” said Miss Pross, approvingly.
“But the question, Doctor Manette. Is there”--it was the good creature’s
way to affect to make light of anything that was a great anxiety
with them all, and to come at it in this chance manner--“is there any
prospect yet, of our getting out of this place?”
“I fear not yet. It would be dangerous for Charles yet.”
“Heigh-ho-hum!” said Miss Pross, cheerfully repressing a sigh as she
glanced at her darling’s golden hair in the light of the fire, “then we
must have patience and wait: that’s all. We must hold up our heads and
fight low, as my brother Solomon used to say. Now, Mr. Cruncher!--Don’t
you move, Ladybird!”
They went out, leaving Lucie, and her husband, her father, and the
child, by a bright fire. Mr. Lorry was expected back presently from the
Banking House. Miss Pross had lighted the lamp, but had put it aside in
a corner, that they might enjoy the fire-light undisturbed. Little Lucie
sat by her grandfather with her hands clasped through his arm: and he,
in a tone not rising much above a whisper, began to tell her a story of
a great and powerful Fairy who had opened a prison-wall and let out
a captive who had once done the Fairy a service. All was subdued and
quiet, and Lucie was more at ease than she had been.
“What is that?” she cried, all at once.
“My dear!” said her father, stopping in his story, and laying his hand
on hers, “command yourself. What a disordered state you are in! The
least thing--nothing--startles you! _You_, your father’s daughter!”
“I thought, my father,” said Lucie, excusing herself, with a pale face
and in a faltering voice, “that I heard strange feet upon the stairs.”
“My love, the staircase is as still as Death.”
As he said the word, a blow was struck upon the door.
“Oh father, father. What can this be! Hide Charles. Save him!”
“My child,” said the Doctor, rising, and laying his hand upon her
shoulder, “I _have_ saved him. What weakness is this, my dear! Let me go
to the door.”
He took the lamp in his hand, crossed the two intervening outer rooms,
and opened it. A rude clattering of feet over the floor, and four rough
men in red caps, armed with sabres and pistols, entered the room.
“The Citizen Evrémonde, called Darnay,” said the first.
“Who seeks him?” answered Darnay.
“I seek him. We seek him. I know you, Evrémonde; I saw you before the
Tribunal to-day. You are again the prisoner of the Republic.”
The four surrounded him, where he stood with his wife and child clinging
to him.
“Tell me how and why am I again a prisoner?”
“It is enough that you return straight to the Conciergerie, and will
know to-morrow. You are summoned for to-morrow.”
Doctor Manette, whom this visitation had so turned into stone, that he
stood with the lamp in his hand, as if he were a statue made to hold it,
moved after these words were spoken, put the lamp down, and confronting
the speaker, and taking him, not ungently, by the loose front of his red
woollen shirt, said:
“You know him, you have said. Do you know me?”
“Yes, I know you, Citizen Doctor.”
“We all know you, Citizen Doctor,” said the other three.
He looked abstractedly from one to another, and said, in a lower voice,
after a pause:
“Will you answer his question to me then? How does this happen?”
“Citizen Doctor,” said the first, reluctantly, “he has been denounced to
the Section of Saint Antoine. This citizen,” pointing out the second who
had entered, “is from Saint Antoine.”
The citizen here indicated nodded his head, and added:
“He is accused by Saint Antoine.”
“Of what?” asked the Doctor.
“Citizen Doctor,” said the first, with his former reluctance, “ask no
more. If the Republic demands sacrifices from you, without doubt you as
a good patriot will be happy to make them. The Republic goes before all.
The People is supreme. Evrémonde, we are pressed.”
“One word,” the Doctor entreated. “Will you tell me who denounced him?”
“It is against rule,” answered the first; “but you can ask Him of Saint
Antoine here.”
The Doctor turned his eyes upon that man. Who moved uneasily on his
feet, rubbed his beard a little, and at length said:
“Well! Truly it is against rule. But he is denounced--and gravely--by
the Citizen and Citizeness Defarge. And by one other.”
“What other?”
“Do _you_ ask, Citizen Doctor?”
“Yes.”
“Then,” said he of Saint Antoine, with a strange look, “you will be
answered to-morrow. Now, I am dumb!”
CHAPTER VIII.
A Hand at Cards
Happily unconscious of the new calamity at home, Miss Pross threaded her
way along the narrow streets and crossed the river by the bridge of the
Pont-Neuf, reckoning in her mind the number of indispensable purchases
she had to make. Mr. Cruncher, with the basket, walked at her side. They
both looked to the right and to the left into most of the shops they
passed, had a wary eye for all gregarious assemblages of people, and
turned out of their road to avoid any very excited group of talkers. It
was a raw evening, and the misty river, blurred to the eye with blazing
lights and to the ear with harsh noises, showed where the barges were
stationed in which the smiths worked, making guns for the Army of the
Republic. Woe to the man who played tricks with _that_ Army, or got
undeserved promotion in it! Better for him that his beard had never
grown, for the National Razor shaved him close.
Having purchased a few small articles of grocery, and a measure of oil
for the lamp, Miss Pross bethought herself of the wine they wanted.
After peeping into several wine-shops, she stopped at the sign of the
Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity, not far from the National Palace,
once (and twice) the Tuileries, where the aspect of things rather
took her fancy. It had a quieter look than any other place of the same
description they had passed, and, though red with patriotic caps, was
not so red as the rest. Sounding Mr. Cruncher, and finding him of her
opinion, Miss Pross resorted to the Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity,
attended by her cavalier.
Slightly observant of the smoky lights; of the people, pipe in mouth,
playing with limp cards and yellow dominoes; of the one bare-breasted,
bare-armed, soot-begrimed workman reading a journal aloud, and of
the others listening to him; of the weapons worn, or laid aside to be
resumed; of the two or three customers fallen forward asleep, who in the
popular high-shouldered shaggy black spencer looked, in that attitude,
like slumbering bears or dogs; the two outlandish customers approached
the counter, and showed what they wanted.
As their wine was measuring out, a man parted from another man in a
corner, and rose to depart. In going, he had to face Miss Pross. No
sooner did he face her, than Miss Pross uttered a scream, and clapped
her hands.
In a moment, the whole company were on their feet. That somebody was
assassinated by somebody vindicating a difference of opinion was the
likeliest occurrence. Everybody looked to see somebody fall, but only
saw a man and a woman standing staring at each other; the man with all
the outward aspect of a Frenchman and a thorough Republican; the woman,
evidently English.
What was said in this disappointing anti-climax, by the disciples of the
Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity, except that it was something very
voluble and loud, would have been as so much Hebrew or Chaldean to Miss
Pross and her protector, though they had been all ears. But, they had no
ears for anything in their surprise. For, it must be recorded, that
not only was Miss Pross lost in amazement and agitation, but,
Mr. Cruncher--though it seemed on his own separate and individual
account--was in a state of the greatest wonder.
“What is the matter?” said the man who had caused Miss Pross to scream;
speaking in a vexed, abrupt voice (though in a low tone), and in
English.
“Oh, Solomon, dear Solomon!” cried Miss Pross, clapping her hands again.
“After not setting eyes upon you or hearing of you for so long a time,
do I find you here!”
“Don’t call me Solomon. Do you want to be the death of me?” asked the
man, in a furtive, frightened way.
“Brother, brother!” cried Miss Pross, bursting into tears. “Have I ever
been so hard with you that you ask me such a cruel question?”
“Then hold your meddlesome tongue,” said Solomon, “and come out, if you
want to speak to me. Pay for your wine, and come out. Who’s this man?”
Miss Pross, shaking her loving and dejected head at her by no means
affectionate brother, said through her tears, “Mr. Cruncher.”
“Let him come out too,” said Solomon. “Does he think me a ghost?”
Apparently, Mr. Cruncher did, to judge from his looks. He said not a
word, however, and Miss Pross, exploring the depths of her reticule
through her tears with great difficulty paid for her wine. As she did
so, Solomon turned to the followers of the Good Republican Brutus
of Antiquity, and offered a few words of explanation in the French
language, which caused them all to relapse into their former places and
pursuits.
“Now,” said Solomon, stopping at the dark street corner, “what do you
want?”
“How dreadfully unkind in a brother nothing has ever turned my love away
from!” cried Miss Pross, “to give me such a greeting, and show me no
affection.”
“There. Confound it! There,” said Solomon, making a dab at Miss Pross’s
lips with his own. “Now are you content?”
Miss Pross only shook her head and wept in silence.
“If you expect me to be surprised,” said her brother Solomon, “I am not
surprised; I knew you were here; I know of most people who are here. If
you really don’t want to endanger my existence--which I half believe you
do--go your ways as soon as possible, and let me go mine. I am busy. I
am an official.”
“My English brother Solomon,” mourned Miss Pross, casting up her
tear-fraught eyes, “that had the makings in him of one of the best and
greatest of men in his native country, an official among foreigners, and
such foreigners! I would almost sooner have seen the dear boy lying in
his--”
“I said so!” cried her brother, interrupting. “I knew it. You want to be
the death of me. I shall be rendered Suspected, by my own sister. Just
as I am getting on!”
“The gracious and merciful Heavens forbid!” cried Miss Pross. “Far
rather would I never see you again, dear Solomon, though I have ever
loved you truly, and ever shall. Say but one affectionate word to me,
and tell me there is nothing angry or estranged between us, and I will
detain you no longer.”
Good Miss Pross! As if the estrangement between them had come of any
culpability of hers. As if Mr. Lorry had not known it for a fact, years
ago, in the quiet corner in Soho, that this precious brother had spent
her money and left her!
He was saying the affectionate word, however, with a far more grudging
condescension and patronage than he could have shown if their relative
merits and positions had been reversed (which is invariably the case,
all the world over), when Mr. Cruncher, touching him on the shoulder,
hoarsely and unexpectedly interposed with the following singular
question:
“I say! Might I ask the favour? As to whether your name is John Solomon,
or Solomon John?”
The official turned towards him with sudden distrust. He had not
previously uttered a word.
“Come!” said Mr. Cruncher. “Speak out, you know.” (Which, by the way,
was more than he could do himself.) “John Solomon, or Solomon John? She
calls you Solomon, and she must know, being your sister. And _I_ know
you’re John, you know. Which of the two goes first? And regarding that
name of Pross, likewise. That warn’t your name over the water.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I don’t know all I mean, for I can’t call to mind what your name
was, over the water.”
“No?”
“No. But I’ll swear it was a name of two syllables.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes. T’other one’s was one syllable. I know you. You was a spy--witness
at the Bailey. What, in the name of the Father of Lies, own father to
yourself, was you called at that time?”
“Barsad,” said another voice, striking in.
“That’s the name for a thousand pound!” cried Jerry.
The speaker who struck in, was Sydney Carton. He had his hands behind
him under the skirts of his riding-coat, and he stood at Mr. Cruncher’s
elbow as negligently as he might have stood at the Old Bailey itself.
“Don’t be alarmed, my dear Miss Pross. I arrived at Mr. Lorry’s, to his
surprise, yesterday evening; we agreed that I would not present myself
elsewhere until all was well, or unless I could be useful; I present
myself here, to beg a little talk with your brother. I wish you had a
better employed brother than Mr. Barsad. I wish for your sake Mr. Barsad
was not a Sheep of the Prisons.”
Sheep was a cant word of the time for a spy, under the gaolers. The spy,
who was pale, turned paler, and asked him how he dared--
“I’ll tell you,” said Sydney. “I lighted on you, Mr. Barsad, coming out
of the prison of the Conciergerie while I was contemplating the walls,
an hour or more ago. You have a face to be remembered, and I remember
faces well. Made curious by seeing you in that connection, and having
a reason, to which you are no stranger, for associating you with
the misfortunes of a friend now very unfortunate, I walked in your
direction. I walked into the wine-shop here, close after you, and
sat near you. I had no difficulty in deducing from your unreserved
conversation, and the rumour openly going about among your admirers, the
nature of your calling. And gradually, what I had done at random, seemed
to shape itself into a purpose, Mr. Barsad.”
“What purpose?” the spy asked.
“It would be troublesome, and might be dangerous, to explain in the
street. Could you favour me, in confidence, with some minutes of your
company--at the office of Tellson’s Bank, for instance?”
“Under a threat?”
“Oh! Did I say that?”
“Then, why should I go there?”
“Really, Mr. Barsad, I can’t say, if you can’t.”
“Do you mean that you won’t say, sir?” the spy irresolutely asked.
“You apprehend me very clearly, Mr. Barsad. I won’t.”
Carton’s negligent recklessness of manner came powerfully in aid of his
quickness and skill, in such a business as he had in his secret mind,
and with such a man as he had to do with. His practised eye saw it, and
made the most of it.
“Now, I told you so,” said the spy, casting a reproachful look at his
sister; “if any trouble comes of this, it’s your doing.”
“Come, come, Mr. Barsad!” exclaimed Sydney. “Don’t be ungrateful.
But for my great respect for your sister, I might not have led up so
pleasantly to a little proposal that I wish to make for our mutual
satisfaction. Do you go with me to the Bank?”
“I’ll hear what you have got to say. Yes, I’ll go with you.”
“I propose that we first conduct your sister safely to the corner of her
own street. Let me take your arm, Miss Pross. This is not a good city,
at this time, for you to be out in, unprotected; and as your escort
knows Mr. Barsad, I will invite him to Mr. Lorry’s with us. Are we
ready? Come then!”
Miss Pross recalled soon afterwards, and to the end of her life
remembered, that as she pressed her hands on Sydney’s arm and looked up
in his face, imploring him to do no hurt to Solomon, there was a braced
purpose in the arm and a kind of inspiration in the eyes, which not only
contradicted his light manner, but changed and raised the man. She was
too much occupied then with fears for the brother who so little deserved
her affection, and with Sydney’s friendly reassurances, adequately to
heed what she observed.
They left her at the corner of the street, and Carton led the way to Mr.
Lorry’s, which was within a few minutes’ walk. John Barsad, or Solomon
Pross, walked at his side.
Mr. Lorry had just finished his dinner, and was sitting before a cheery
little log or two of fire--perhaps looking into their blaze for the
picture of that younger elderly gentleman from Tellson’s, who had looked
into the red coals at the Royal George at Dover, now a good many years
ago. He turned his head as they entered, and showed the surprise with
which he saw a stranger.
“Miss Pross’s brother, sir,” said Sydney. “Mr. Barsad.”
“Barsad?” repeated the old gentleman, “Barsad? I have an association
with the name--and with the face.”
“I told you you had a remarkable face, Mr. Barsad,” observed Carton,
coolly. “Pray sit down.”
As he took a chair himself, he supplied the link that Mr. Lorry wanted,
by saying to him with a frown, “Witness at that trial.” Mr. Lorry
immediately remembered, and regarded his new visitor with an undisguised
look of abhorrence.
“Mr. Barsad has been recognised by Miss Pross as the affectionate
brother you have heard of,” said Sydney, “and has acknowledged the
relationship. I pass to worse news. Darnay has been arrested again.”
Struck with consternation, the old gentleman exclaimed, “What do you
tell me! I left him safe and free within these two hours, and am about
to return to him!”
“Arrested for all that. When was it done, Mr. Barsad?”
“Just now, if at all.”
“Mr. Barsad is the best authority possible, sir,” said Sydney, “and I
have it from Mr. Barsad’s communication to a friend and brother Sheep
over a bottle of wine, that the arrest has taken place. He left the
messengers at the gate, and saw them admitted by the porter. There is no
earthly doubt that he is retaken.”
Mr. Lorry’s business eye read in the speaker’s face that it was loss
of time to dwell upon the point. Confused, but sensible that something
might depend on his presence of mind, he commanded himself, and was
silently attentive.
“Now, I trust,” said Sydney to him, “that the name and influence of
Doctor Manette may stand him in as good stead to-morrow--you said he
would be before the Tribunal again to-morrow, Mr. Barsad?--”
“Yes; I believe so.”
“--In as good stead to-morrow as to-day. But it may not be so. I own
to you, I am shaken, Mr. Lorry, by Doctor Manette’s not having had the
power to prevent this arrest.”
“He may not have known of it beforehand,” said Mr. Lorry.
“But that very circumstance would be alarming, when we remember how
identified he is with his son-in-law.”
“That’s true,” Mr. Lorry acknowledged, with his troubled hand at his
chin, and his troubled eyes on Carton.
“In short,” said Sydney, “this is a desperate time, when desperate games
are played for desperate stakes. Let the Doctor play the winning game; I
will play the losing one. No man’s life here is worth purchase. Any one
carried home by the people to-day, may be condemned tomorrow. Now, the
stake I have resolved to play for, in case of the worst, is a friend
in the Conciergerie. And the friend I purpose to myself to win, is Mr.
Barsad.”
“You need have good cards, sir,” said the spy.
“I’ll run them over. I’ll see what I hold,--Mr. Lorry, you know what a
brute I am; I wish you’d give me a little brandy.”
It was put before him, and he drank off a glassful--drank off another
glassful--pushed the bottle thoughtfully away.
“Mr. Barsad,” he went on, in the tone of one who really was looking
over a hand at cards: “Sheep of the prisons, emissary of Republican
committees, now turnkey, now prisoner, always spy and secret informer,
so much the more valuable here for being English that an Englishman
is less open to suspicion of subornation in those characters than a
Frenchman, represents himself to his employers under a false name.
That’s a very good card. Mr. Barsad, now in the employ of the republican
French government, was formerly in the employ of the aristocratic
English government, the enemy of France and freedom. That’s an excellent
card. Inference clear as day in this region of suspicion, that Mr.
Barsad, still in the pay of the aristocratic English government, is the
spy of Pitt, the treacherous foe of the Republic crouching in its bosom,
the English traitor and agent of all mischief so much spoken of and so
difficult to find. That’s a card not to be beaten. Have you followed my
hand, Mr. Barsad?”
“Not to understand your play,” returned the spy, somewhat uneasily.
“I play my Ace, Denunciation of Mr. Barsad to the nearest Section
Committee. Look over your hand, Mr. Barsad, and see what you have. Don’t
hurry.”
He drew the bottle near, poured out another glassful of brandy, and
drank it off. He saw that the spy was fearful of his drinking himself
into a fit state for the immediate denunciation of him. Seeing it, he
poured out and drank another glassful.
“Look over your hand carefully, Mr. Barsad. Take time.”
It was a poorer hand than he suspected. Mr. Barsad saw losing cards
in it that Sydney Carton knew nothing of. Thrown out of his honourable
employment in England, through too much unsuccessful hard swearing
there--not because he was not wanted there; our English reasons for
vaunting our superiority to secrecy and spies are of very modern
date--he knew that he had crossed the Channel, and accepted service in
France: first, as a tempter and an eavesdropper among his own countrymen
there: gradually, as a tempter and an eavesdropper among the natives. He
knew that under the overthrown government he had been a spy upon Saint
Antoine and Defarge’s wine-shop; had received from the watchful police
such heads of information concerning Doctor Manette’s imprisonment,
release, and history, as should serve him for an introduction to
familiar conversation with the Defarges; and tried them on Madame
Defarge, and had broken down with them signally. He always remembered
with fear and trembling, that that terrible woman had knitted when he
talked with her, and had looked ominously at him as her fingers moved.
He had since seen her, in the Section of Saint Antoine, over and over
again produce her knitted registers, and denounce people whose lives the
guillotine then surely swallowed up. He knew, as every one employed as
he was did, that he was never safe; that flight was impossible; that
he was tied fast under the shadow of the axe; and that in spite of
his utmost tergiversation and treachery in furtherance of the reigning
terror, a word might bring it down upon him. Once denounced, and on such
grave grounds as had just now been suggested to his mind, he foresaw
that the dreadful woman of whose unrelenting character he had seen many
proofs, would produce against him that fatal register, and would quash
his last chance of life. Besides that all secret men are men soon
terrified, here were surely cards enough of one black suit, to justify
the holder in growing rather livid as he turned them over.
“You scarcely seem to like your hand,” said Sydney, with the greatest
composure. “Do you play?”
“I think, sir,” said the spy, in the meanest manner, as he turned to Mr.
Lorry, “I may appeal to a gentleman of your years and benevolence, to
put it to this other gentleman, so much your junior, whether he can
under any circumstances reconcile it to his station to play that Ace
of which he has spoken. I admit that _I_ am a spy, and that it is
considered a discreditable station--though it must be filled by
somebody; but this gentleman is no spy, and why should he so demean
himself as to make himself one?”
“I play my Ace, Mr. Barsad,” said Carton, taking the answer on himself,
and looking at his watch, “without any scruple, in a very few minutes.”
“I should have hoped, gentlemen both,” said the spy, always striving to
hook Mr. Lorry into the discussion, “that your respect for my sister--”
“I could not better testify my respect for your sister than by finally
relieving her of her brother,” said Sydney Carton.
“You think not, sir?”
“I have thoroughly made up my mind about it.”
The smooth manner of the spy, curiously in dissonance with his
ostentatiously rough dress, and probably with his usual demeanour,
received such a check from the inscrutability of Carton,--who was a
mystery to wiser and honester men than he,--that it faltered here and
failed him. While he was at a loss, Carton said, resuming his former air
of contemplating cards:
“And indeed, now I think again, I have a strong impression that I
have another good card here, not yet enumerated. That friend and
fellow-Sheep, who spoke of himself as pasturing in the country prisons;
who was he?”
“French. You don’t know him,” said the spy, quickly.
“French, eh?” repeated Carton, musing, and not appearing to notice him
at all, though he echoed his word. “Well; he may be.”
“Is, I assure you,” said the spy; “though it’s not important.”
“Though it’s not important,” repeated Carton, in the same mechanical
way--“though it’s not important--No, it’s not important. No. Yet I know
the face.”
“I think not. I am sure not. It can’t be,” said the spy.
“It-can’t-be,” muttered Sydney Carton, retrospectively, and idling his
glass (which fortunately was a small one) again. “Can’t-be. Spoke good
French. Yet like a foreigner, I thought?”
“Provincial,” said the spy.
“No. Foreign!” cried Carton, striking his open hand on the table, as a
light broke clearly on his mind. “Cly! Disguised, but the same man. We
had that man before us at the Old Bailey.”
“Now, there you are hasty, sir,” said Barsad, with a smile that gave his
aquiline nose an extra inclination to one side; “there you really give
me an advantage over you. Cly (who I will unreservedly admit, at this
distance of time, was a partner of mine) has been dead several years. I
attended him in his last illness. He was buried in London, at the church
of Saint Pancras-in-the-Fields. His unpopularity with the blackguard
multitude at the moment prevented my following his remains, but I helped
to lay him in his coffin.”
Here, Mr. Lorry became aware, from where he sat, of a most remarkable
goblin shadow on the wall. Tracing it to its source, he discovered it
to be caused by a sudden extraordinary rising and stiffening of all the
risen and stiff hair on Mr. Cruncher’s head.
“Let us be reasonable,” said the spy, “and let us be fair. To show you
how mistaken you are, and what an unfounded assumption yours is, I will
lay before you a certificate of Cly’s burial, which I happened to have
carried in my pocket-book,” with a hurried hand he produced and opened
it, “ever since. There it is. Oh, look at it, look at it! You may take
it in your hand; it’s no forgery.”
Here, Mr. Lorry perceived the reflection on the wall to elongate, and
Mr. Cruncher rose and stepped forward. His hair could not have been more
violently on end, if it had been that moment dressed by the Cow with the
crumpled horn in the house that Jack built.
Unseen by the spy, Mr. Cruncher stood at his side, and touched him on
the shoulder like a ghostly bailiff.
“That there Roger Cly, master,” said Mr. Cruncher, with a taciturn and
iron-bound visage. “So _you_ put him in his coffin?”
“I did.”
“Who took him out of it?”
Barsad leaned back in his chair, and stammered, “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” said Mr. Cruncher, “that he warn’t never in it. No! Not he!
I’ll have my head took off, if he was ever in it.”
The spy looked round at the two gentlemen; they both looked in
unspeakable astonishment at Jerry.
“I tell you,” said Jerry, “that you buried paving-stones and earth in
that there coffin. Don’t go and tell me that you buried Cly. It was a
take in. Me and two more knows it.”
“How do you know it?”
“What’s that to you? Ecod!” growled Mr. Cruncher, “it’s you I have got a
old grudge again, is it, with your shameful impositions upon tradesmen!
I’d catch hold of your throat and choke you for half a guinea.”
Sydney Carton, who, with Mr. Lorry, had been lost in amazement at
this turn of the business, here requested Mr. Cruncher to moderate and
explain himself.
“At another time, sir,” he returned, evasively, “the present time is
ill-conwenient for explainin’. What I stand to, is, that he knows well
wot that there Cly was never in that there coffin. Let him say he was,
in so much as a word of one syllable, and I’ll either catch hold of his
throat and choke him for half a guinea;” Mr. Cruncher dwelt upon this as
quite a liberal offer; “or I’ll out and announce him.”
“Humph! I see one thing,” said Carton. “I hold another card, Mr. Barsad.
Impossible, here in raging Paris, with Suspicion filling the air, for
you to outlive denunciation, when you are in communication with another
aristocratic spy of the same antecedents as yourself, who, moreover, has
the mystery about him of having feigned death and come to life again!
A plot in the prisons, of the foreigner against the Republic. A strong
card--a certain Guillotine card! Do you play?”
“No!” returned the spy. “I throw up. I confess that we were so unpopular
with the outrageous mob, that I only got away from England at the risk
of being ducked to death, and that Cly was so ferreted up and down, that
he never would have got away at all but for that sham. Though how this
man knows it was a sham, is a wonder of wonders to me.”
“Never you trouble your head about this man,” retorted the contentious
Mr. Cruncher; “you’ll have trouble enough with giving your attention to
that gentleman. And look here! Once more!”--Mr. Cruncher could not
be restrained from making rather an ostentatious parade of his
liberality--“I’d catch hold of your throat and choke you for half a
guinea.”
The Sheep of the prisons turned from him to Sydney Carton, and said,
with more decision, “It has come to a point. I go on duty soon, and
can’t overstay my time. You told me you had a proposal; what is it?
Now, it is of no use asking too much of me. Ask me to do anything in my
office, putting my head in great extra danger, and I had better trust my
life to the chances of a refusal than the chances of consent. In short,
I should make that choice. You talk of desperation. We are all desperate
here. Remember! I may denounce you if I think proper, and I can swear my
way through stone walls, and so can others. Now, what do you want with
me?”
“Not very much. You are a turnkey at the Conciergerie?”
“I tell you once for all, there is no such thing as an escape possible,”
said the spy, firmly.
“Why need you tell me what I have not asked? You are a turnkey at the
Conciergerie?”
“I am sometimes.”
“You can be when you choose?”
“I can pass in and out when I choose.”
Sydney Carton filled another glass with brandy, poured it slowly out
upon the hearth, and watched it as it dropped. It being all spent, he
said, rising:
“So far, we have spoken before these two, because it was as well that
the merits of the cards should not rest solely between you and me. Come
into the dark room here, and let us have one final word alone.”
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, “Agicultooral
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 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. Crunches 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 undug--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 his 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 his touch,
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 worse, 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 hill-side 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, to-night,
‘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 expressive of
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--whom 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 to-morrow 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 empannelled 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 Evrémonde, 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 Evrémonde,
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.”
“Thérèse 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.
CHAPTER X.
The Substance of the Shadow
“I, Alexandre Manette, unfortunate physician, native of Beauvais, and
afterwards resident in Paris, write this melancholy paper in my doleful
cell in the Bastille, during the last month of the year, 1767. I write
it at stolen intervals, under every difficulty. I design to secrete it
in the wall of the chimney, where I have slowly and laboriously made a
place of concealment for it. Some pitying hand may find it there, when I
and my sorrows are dust.
“These words are formed by the rusty iron point with which I write with
difficulty in scrapings of soot and charcoal from the chimney, mixed
with blood, in the last month of the tenth year of my captivity. Hope
has quite departed from my breast. I know from terrible warnings I have
noted in myself that my reason will not long remain unimpaired, but I
solemnly declare that I am at this time in the possession of my right
mind--that my memory is exact and circumstantial--and that I write the
truth as I shall answer for these my last recorded words, whether they
be ever read by men or not, at the Eternal Judgment-seat.
“One cloudy moonlight night, in the third week of December (I think the
twenty-second of the month) in the year 1757, I was walking on a retired
part of the quay by the Seine for the refreshment of the frosty air,
at an hour’s distance from my place of residence in the Street of the
School of Medicine, when a carriage came along behind me, driven very
fast. As I stood aside to let that carriage pass, apprehensive that it
might otherwise run me down, a head was put out at the window, and a
voice called to the driver to stop.
“The carriage stopped as soon as the driver could rein in his horses,
and the same voice called to me by my name. I answered. The carriage
was then so far in advance of me that two gentlemen had time to open the
door and alight before I came up with it.
“I observed that they were both wrapped in cloaks, and appeared to
conceal themselves. As they stood side by side near the carriage door,
I also observed that they both looked of about my own age, or rather
younger, and that they were greatly alike, in stature, manner, voice,
and (as far as I could see) face too.
“‘You are Doctor Manette?’ said one.
“I am.”
“‘Doctor Manette, formerly of Beauvais,’ said the other; ‘the young
physician, originally an expert surgeon, who within the last year or two
has made a rising reputation in Paris?’
“‘Gentlemen,’ I returned, ‘I am that Doctor Manette of whom you speak so
graciously.’
“‘We have been to your residence,’ said the first, ‘and not being
so fortunate as to find you there, and being informed that you were
probably walking in this direction, we followed, in the hope of
overtaking you. Will you please to enter the carriage?’
“The manner of both was imperious, and they both moved, as these words
were spoken, so as to place me between themselves and the carriage door.
They were armed. I was not.
“‘Gentlemen,’ said I, ‘pardon me; but I usually inquire who does me
the honour to seek my assistance, and what is the nature of the case to
which I am summoned.’
“The reply to this was made by him who had spoken second. ‘Doctor,
your clients are people of condition. As to the nature of the case,
our confidence in your skill assures us that you will ascertain it for
yourself better than we can describe it. Enough. Will you please to
enter the carriage?’
“I could do nothing but comply, and I entered it in silence. They both
entered after me--the last springing in, after putting up the steps. The
carriage turned about, and drove on at its former speed.
“I repeat this conversation exactly as it occurred. I have no doubt that
it is, word for word, the same. I describe everything exactly as it took
place, constraining my mind not to wander from the task. Where I make
the broken marks that follow here, I leave off for the time, and put my
paper in its hiding-place.
*****
“The carriage left the streets behind, passed the North Barrier, and
emerged upon the country road. At two-thirds of a league from the
Barrier--I did not estimate the distance at that time, but afterwards
when I traversed it--it struck out of the main avenue, and presently
stopped at a solitary house, We all three alighted, and walked, by
a damp soft footpath in a garden where a neglected fountain had
overflowed, to the door of the house. It was not opened immediately, in
answer to the ringing of the bell, and one of my two conductors struck
the man who opened it, with his heavy riding glove, across the face.
“There was nothing in this action to attract my particular attention,
for I had seen common people struck more commonly than dogs. But, the
other of the two, being angry likewise, struck the man in like manner
with his arm; the look and bearing of the brothers were then so exactly
alike, that I then first perceived them to be twin brothers.
“From the time of our alighting at the outer gate (which we found
locked, and which one of the brothers had opened to admit us, and had
relocked), I had heard cries proceeding from an upper chamber. I was
conducted to this chamber straight, the cries growing louder as we
ascended the stairs, and I found a patient in a high fever of the brain,
lying on a bed.
“The patient was a woman of great beauty, and young; assuredly not much
past twenty. Her hair was torn and ragged, and her arms were bound to
her sides with sashes and handkerchiefs. I noticed that these bonds were
all portions of a gentleman’s dress. On one of them, which was a fringed
scarf for a dress of ceremony, I saw the armorial bearings of a Noble,
and the letter E.
“I saw this, within the first minute of my contemplation of the patient;
for, in her restless strivings she had turned over on her face on the
edge of the bed, had drawn the end of the scarf into her mouth, and was
in danger of suffocation. My first act was to put out my hand to relieve
her breathing; and in moving the scarf aside, the embroidery in the
corner caught my sight.
“I turned her gently over, placed my hands upon her breast to calm her
and keep her down, and looked into her face. Her eyes were dilated and
wild, and she constantly uttered piercing shrieks, and repeated the
words, ‘My husband, my father, and my brother!’ and then counted up to
twelve, and said, ‘Hush!’ For an instant, and no more, she would pause
to listen, and then the piercing shrieks would begin again, and she
would repeat the cry, ‘My husband, my father, and my brother!’ and
would count up to twelve, and say, ‘Hush!’ There was no variation in the
order, or the manner. There was no cessation, but the regular moment’s
pause, in the utterance of these sounds.
“‘How long,’ I asked, ‘has this lasted?’
“To distinguish the brothers, I will call them the elder and the
younger; by the elder, I mean him who exercised the most authority. It
was the elder who replied, ‘Since about this hour last night.’
“‘She has a husband, a father, and a brother?’
“‘A brother.’
“‘I do not address her brother?’
“He answered with great contempt, ‘No.’
“‘She has some recent association with the number twelve?’
“The younger brother impatiently rejoined, ‘With twelve o’clock?’
“‘See, gentlemen,’ said I, still keeping my hands upon her breast, ‘how
useless I am, as you have brought me! If I had known what I was coming
to see, I could have come provided. As it is, time must be lost. There
are no medicines to be obtained in this lonely place.’
“The elder brother looked to the younger, who said haughtily, ‘There is
a case of medicines here;’ and brought it from a closet, and put it on
the table.
*****
“I opened some of the bottles, smelt them, and put the stoppers to my
lips. If I had wanted to use anything save narcotic medicines that were
poisons in themselves, I would not have administered any of those.
“‘Do you doubt them?’ asked the younger brother.
“‘You see, monsieur, I am going to use them,’ I replied, and said no
more.
“I made the patient swallow, with great difficulty, and after many
efforts, the dose that I desired to give. As I intended to repeat it
after a while, and as it was necessary to watch its influence, I then
sat down by the side of the bed. There was a timid and suppressed woman
in attendance (wife of the man down-stairs), who had retreated into
a corner. The house was damp and decayed, indifferently
furnished--evidently, recently occupied and temporarily used. Some thick
old hangings had been nailed up before the windows, to deaden the
sound of the shrieks. They continued to be uttered in their regular
succession, with the cry, ‘My husband, my father, and my brother!’ the
counting up to twelve, and ‘Hush!’ The frenzy was so violent, that I had
not unfastened the bandages restraining the arms; but, I had looked to
them, to see that they were not painful. The only spark of encouragement
in the case, was, that my hand upon the sufferer’s breast had this much
soothing influence, that for minutes at a time it tranquillised the
figure. It had no effect upon the cries; no pendulum could be more
regular.
“For the reason that my hand had this effect (I assume), I had sat by
the side of the bed for half an hour, with the two brothers looking on,
before the elder said:
“‘There is another patient.’
“I was startled, and asked, ‘Is it a pressing case?’
“‘You had better see,’ he carelessly answered; and took up a light.
*****
“The other patient lay in a back room across a second staircase, which
was a species of loft over a stable. There was a low plastered ceiling
to a part of it; the rest was open, to the ridge of the tiled roof, and
there were beams across. Hay and straw were stored in that portion of
the place, fagots for firing, and a heap of apples in sand. I had to
pass through that part, to get at the other. My memory is circumstantial
and unshaken. I try it with these details, and I see them all, in
this my cell in the Bastille, near the close of the tenth year of my
captivity, as I saw them all that night.
“On some hay on the ground, with a cushion thrown under his head, lay a
handsome peasant boy--a boy of not more than seventeen at the most.
He lay on his back, with his teeth set, his right hand clenched on his
breast, and his glaring eyes looking straight upward. I could not see
where his wound was, as I kneeled on one knee over him; but, I could see
that he was dying of a wound from a sharp point.
“‘I am a doctor, my poor fellow,’ said I. ‘Let me examine it.’
“‘I do not want it examined,’ he answered; ‘let it be.’
“It was under his hand, and I soothed him to let me move his hand away.
The wound was a sword-thrust, received from twenty to twenty-four hours
before, but no skill could have saved him if it had been looked to
without delay. He was then dying fast. As I turned my eyes to the elder
brother, I saw him looking down at this handsome boy whose life was
ebbing out, as if he were a wounded bird, or hare, or rabbit; not at all
as if he were a fellow-creature.
“‘How has this been done, monsieur?’ said I.
“‘A crazed young common dog! A serf! Forced my brother to draw upon him,
and has fallen by my brother’s sword--like a gentleman.’
“There was no touch of pity, sorrow, or kindred humanity, in this
answer. The speaker seemed to acknowledge that it was inconvenient to
have that different order of creature dying there, and that it would
have been better if he had died in the usual obscure routine of his
vermin kind. He was quite incapable of any compassionate feeling about
the boy, or about his fate.
“The boy’s eyes had slowly moved to him as he had spoken, and they now
slowly moved to me.
“‘Doctor, they are very proud, these Nobles; but we common dogs are
proud too, sometimes. They plunder us, outrage us, beat us, kill us; but
we have a little pride left, sometimes. She--have you seen her, Doctor?’
“The shrieks and the cries were audible there, though subdued by the
distance. He referred to them, as if she were lying in our presence.
“I said, ‘I have seen her.’
“‘She is my sister, Doctor. They have had their shameful rights, these
Nobles, in the modesty and virtue of our sisters, many years, but we
have had good girls among us. I know it, and have heard my father say
so. She was a good girl. She was betrothed to a good young man, too: a
tenant of his. We were all tenants of his--that man’s who stands there.
The other is his brother, the worst of a bad race.’
“It was with the greatest difficulty that the boy gathered bodily force
to speak; but, his spirit spoke with a dreadful emphasis.
“‘We were so robbed by that man who stands there, as all we common dogs
are by those superior Beings--taxed by him without mercy, obliged to
work for him without pay, obliged to grind our corn at his mill, obliged
to feed scores of his tame birds on our wretched crops, and forbidden
for our lives to keep a single tame bird of our own, pillaged and
plundered to that degree that when we chanced to have a bit of meat, we
ate it in fear, with the door barred and the shutters closed, that his
people should not see it and take it from us--I say, we were so robbed,
and hunted, and were made so poor, that our father told us it was a
dreadful thing to bring a child into the world, and that what we should
most pray for, was, that our women might be barren and our miserable
race die out!’
“I had never before seen the sense of being oppressed, bursting forth
like a fire. I had supposed that it must be latent in the people
somewhere; but, I had never seen it break out, until I saw it in the
dying boy.
“‘Nevertheless, Doctor, my sister married. He was ailing at that time,
poor fellow, and she married her lover, that she might tend and comfort
him in our cottage--our dog-hut, as that man would call it. She had not
been married many weeks, when that man’s brother saw her and admired
her, and asked that man to lend her to him--for what are husbands among
us! He was willing enough, but my sister was good and virtuous, and
hated his brother with a hatred as strong as mine. What did the two
then, to persuade her husband to use his influence with her, to make her
willing?’
“The boy’s eyes, which had been fixed on mine, slowly turned to the
looker-on, and I saw in the two faces that all he said was true. The two
opposing kinds of pride confronting one another, I can see, even in this
Bastille; the gentleman’s, all negligent indifference; the peasant’s, all
trodden-down sentiment, and passionate revenge.
“‘You know, Doctor, that it is among the Rights of these Nobles to
harness us common dogs to carts, and drive us. They so harnessed him and
drove him. You know that it is among their Rights to keep us in their
grounds all night, quieting the frogs, in order that their noble sleep
may not be disturbed. They kept him out in the unwholesome mists at
night, and ordered him back into his harness in the day. But he was
not persuaded. No! Taken out of harness one day at noon, to feed--if he
could find food--he sobbed twelve times, once for every stroke of the
bell, and died on her bosom.’
“Nothing human could have held life in the boy but his determination to
tell all his wrong. He forced back the gathering shadows of death, as
he forced his clenched right hand to remain clenched, and to cover his
wound.
“‘Then, with that man’s permission and even with his aid, his
brother took her away; in spite of what I know she must have told his
brother--and what that is, will not be long unknown to you, Doctor, if
it is now--his brother took her away--for his pleasure and diversion,
for a little while. I saw her pass me on the road. When I took the
tidings home, our father’s heart burst; he never spoke one of the words
that filled it. I took my young sister (for I have another) to a place
beyond the reach of this man, and where, at least, she will never be
_his_ vassal. Then, I tracked the brother here, and last night climbed
in--a common dog, but sword in hand.--Where is the loft window? It was
somewhere here?’
“The room was darkening to his sight; the world was narrowing around
him. I glanced about me, and saw that the hay and straw were trampled
over the floor, as if there had been a struggle.
“‘She heard me, and ran in. I told her not to come near us till he was
dead. He came in and first tossed me some pieces of money; then struck
at me with a whip. But I, though a common dog, so struck at him as to
make him draw. Let him break into as many pieces as he will, the sword
that he stained with my common blood; he drew to defend himself--thrust
at me with all his skill for his life.’
“My glance had fallen, but a few moments before, on the fragments of
a broken sword, lying among the hay. That weapon was a gentleman’s. In
another place, lay an old sword that seemed to have been a soldier’s.
“‘Now, lift me up, Doctor; lift me up. Where is he?’
“‘He is not here,’ I said, supporting the boy, and thinking that he
referred to the brother.
“‘He! Proud as these nobles are, he is afraid to see me. Where is the
man who was here? Turn my face to him.’
“I did so, raising the boy’s head against my knee. But, invested for the
moment with extraordinary power, he raised himself completely: obliging
me to rise too, or I could not have still supported him.
“‘Marquis,’ said the boy, turned to him with his eyes opened wide, and
his right hand raised, ‘in the days when all these things are to be
answered for, I summon you and yours, to the last of your bad race, to
answer for them. I mark this cross of blood upon you, as a sign that
I do it. In the days when all these things are to be answered for,
I summon your brother, the worst of the bad race, to answer for them
separately. I mark this cross of blood upon him, as a sign that I do
it.’
“Twice, he put his hand to the wound in his breast, and with his
forefinger drew a cross in the air. He stood for an instant with the
finger yet raised, and as it dropped, he dropped with it, and I laid him
down dead.
*****
“When I returned to the bedside of the young woman, I found her raving
in precisely the same order of continuity. I knew that this might last
for many hours, and that it would probably end in the silence of the
grave.
“I repeated the medicines I had given her, and I sat at the side of
the bed until the night was far advanced. She never abated the piercing
quality of her shrieks, never stumbled in the distinctness or the order
of her words. They were always ‘My husband, my father, and my brother!
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven,
twelve. Hush!’
“This lasted twenty-six hours from the time when I first saw her. I had
come and gone twice, and was again sitting by her, when she began to
falter. I did what little could be done to assist that opportunity, and
by-and-bye she sank into a lethargy, and lay like the dead.
“It was as if the wind and rain had lulled at last, after a long and
fearful storm. I released her arms, and called the woman to assist me to
compose her figure and the dress she had torn. It was then that I knew
her condition to be that of one in whom the first expectations of being
a mother have arisen; and it was then that I lost the little hope I had
had of her.
“‘Is she dead?’ asked the Marquis, whom I will still describe as the
elder brother, coming booted into the room from his horse.
“‘Not dead,’ said I; ‘but like to die.’
“‘What strength there is in these common bodies!’ he said, looking down
at her with some curiosity.
“‘There is prodigious strength,’ I answered him, ‘in sorrow and
despair.’
“He first laughed at my words, and then frowned at them. He moved a
chair with his foot near to mine, ordered the woman away, and said in a
subdued voice,
“‘Doctor, finding my brother in this difficulty with these hinds, I
recommended that your aid should be invited. Your reputation is high,
and, as a young man with your fortune to make, you are probably mindful
of your interest. The things that you see here, are things to be seen,
and not spoken of.’
“I listened to the patient’s breathing, and avoided answering.
“‘Do you honour me with your attention, Doctor?’
“‘Monsieur,’ said I, ‘in my profession, the communications of patients
are always received in confidence.’ I was guarded in my answer, for I
was troubled in my mind with what I had heard and seen.
“Her breathing was so difficult to trace, that I carefully tried the
pulse and the heart. There was life, and no more. Looking round as I
resumed my seat, I found both the brothers intent upon me.
*****
“I write with so much difficulty, the cold is so severe, I am so
fearful of being detected and consigned to an underground cell and total
darkness, that I must abridge this narrative. There is no confusion or
failure in my memory; it can recall, and could detail, every word that
was ever spoken between me and those brothers.
“She lingered for a week. Towards the last, I could understand some few
syllables that she said to me, by placing my ear close to her lips. She
asked me where she was, and I told her; who I was, and I told her. It
was in vain that I asked her for her family name. She faintly shook her
head upon the pillow, and kept her secret, as the boy had done.
“I had no opportunity of asking her any question, until I had told the
brothers she was sinking fast, and could not live another day. Until
then, though no one was ever presented to her consciousness save the
woman and myself, one or other of them had always jealously sat behind
the curtain at the head of the bed when I was there. But when it came to
that, they seemed careless what communication I might hold with her; as
if--the thought passed through my mind--I were dying too.
“I always observed that their pride bitterly resented the younger
brother’s (as I call him) having crossed swords with a peasant, and that
peasant a boy. The only consideration that appeared to affect the mind
of either of them was the consideration that this was highly degrading
to the family, and was ridiculous. As often as I caught the younger
brother’s eyes, their expression reminded me that he disliked me deeply,
for knowing what I knew from the boy. He was smoother and more polite to
me than the elder; but I saw this. I also saw that I was an incumbrance
in the mind of the elder, too.
“My patient died, two hours before midnight--at a time, by my watch,
answering almost to the minute when I had first seen her. I was alone
with her, when her forlorn young head drooped gently on one side, and
all her earthly wrongs and sorrows ended.
“The brothers were waiting in a room down-stairs, impatient to ride
away. I had heard them, alone at the bedside, striking their boots with
their riding-whips, and loitering up and down.
“‘At last she is dead?’ said the elder, when I went in.
“‘She is dead,’ said I.
“‘I congratulate you, my brother,’ were his words as he turned round.
“He had before offered me money, which I had postponed taking. He now
gave me a rouleau of gold. I took it from his hand, but laid it on
the table. I had considered the question, and had resolved to accept
nothing.
“‘Pray excuse me,’ said I. ‘Under the circumstances, no.’
“They exchanged looks, but bent their heads to me as I bent mine to
them, and we parted without another word on either side.
*****
“I am weary, weary, weary--worn down by misery. I cannot read what I
have written with this gaunt hand.