a tale of two cities(双城记)-6

had looked up again: not with any interest or curiosity, but with adull mechanical perception, beforehand, that the spot where theCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesonly visitor they were aware of had stood, was not yet empty.“I want,” said Defarge, who had not removed his gaze from theshoemaker, “to let in a little more light here. You can bear a littlemore?”The shoemaker stopped his work; looked with a vacant air oflistening, at the floor on one side of him; then similarly, at the flooron the other side of him; then, upward at the speaker.“What did you say?”“You can bear a little more light?”“I must bear it, if you let it in.” (Laying the palest shadow of astress upon the second word.) The opened half-door was opened alittle further, and secured at that angle for the time. A broad ray oflight fell into the garret, and showed the workman with anunfinished shoe upon his lap, pausing in his labour. His fewcommon tools and various scraps of leather were at his feet and onhis bench. He had a white beard, raggedly cut, but not very long, ahollow face, and exceedingly bright eyes. The hollowness andthinness of his face would have caused them to look large, underhis yet dark eyebrows and his confused white hair, though theyhad been really otherwise; but, they were naturally large, andlooked unnaturally so. His yellow rags of shirt lay open at thethroat, and showed his body to be withered and worn. He, and hisold canvas frock, and his loose stockings, and all his poor tatters ofclothes, had, in a long seclusion from direct light and air, fadeddown to such a dull uniformity of parchment-yellow, that it wouldhave been hard to say which was which.He had put up a hand between his eyes and the light, and thevery bones of it seemed transparent. So he sat, with a steadfastlyvacant gaze, pausing in his work. He never looked at the figureCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesbefore him, without first looking down on this side of himself, thenon that, as if he had lost the habit of associating place with sound;he never spoke, without first wandering in this manner, andforgetting to speak.“Are you going to finish that pair of shoes today?” askedDefarge, motioning to Mr. Lorry to come forward.“What did you say?”“Do you mean to finish that pair of shoes today?”“I can’t say that I mean to. I suppose so. I don’t know.”But, the question reminded him of his work, and he bent over itagain.Mr. Lorry came silently forward, leaving the daughter by thedoor. When he had stood, for a minute or two, by the side ofDefarge, the shoemaker looked up. He showed no surprise atseeing another figure, but the unsteady fingers of one of his handsstrayed to his lips as he looked at it (his lips and his nails were ofthe same pale lead-colour), and then the hand dropped to hiswork, and he once more bent over the shoe. The look and theaction had occupied but an instant.“You have a visitor, you see,” said Monsieur Defarge.“What did you say?”“Here is a visitor.”The shoemaker looked up as before, but without removing ahand from his work.“Come!” said Defarge. “Here is monsieur, who knows a well-made shoe when he sees one. Show him that shoe you are workingat. Take it, monsieur.”Mr. Lorry took it in his hand.“Tell monsieur what kind of shoe it is, and the maker’s name.”Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two CitiesThere was a longer pause than usual, before the shoemakerreplied: “I forget what it was you asked me. What did you say?”“I said, couldn’t you describe the kind of shoe, for monsieur’sinformation?”“It is a lady’s shoe. It is a young lady’s walking-shoe. It is in thepresent mode. I never saw the mode. I have had a pattern in myhand.” He glanced at the shoe with some little passing touch ofpride.“And the maker’s name?” said Defarge.Now that he had no work to hold, he laid the knuckles of theright hand in the hollow of the left, and then the knuckles of theleft hand in the hollow of the right, and then passed a hand acrosshis bearded chin, and so on in regular changes, without amoment’s intermission. The task of recalling him from the vacancyinto which he always sank when he had spoken, was like recallingsome very weak person from a swoon, or endeavouring, in thehope of some disclosure, to stay the spirit of a fast-dying man.“Did you ask me for my name?”“Assuredly I did.”“One Hundred and Five, North Tower.”“Is that all?”“One Hundred and Five, North Tower.”With a weary sound that was not a sigh, nor a groan, he bent towork again, until the silence was again broken.“You are not a shoemaker by trade?” said Mr. Lorry, lookingsteadfastly at him.His haggard eyes turned to Defarge, as if he would havetransferred the question to him: but as no help came from thatquarter, they turned back on the questioner when they had soughtCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesthe ground.“I am not a shoemaker by trade? No, I was not a shoemaker bytrade. I—I learnt it here. I taught myself. I asked leave to—” Helapsed away, even for minutes, ringing those measured changes onhis hands the whole time. His eyes came slowly back, at last, to theface from which they had wandered; when they rested on it, hestarted, and resumed, in the manner of a sleeper that momentawake, reverting to a subject of last night.“I asked leave to teach myself, and I got it with much difficultyafter a long while, and I have made shoes ever since.”As he held out his hand for the shoe that had been taken fromhim, Mr. Lorry said, still looking steadfastly in his face:“Monsieur Manette, do you remember nothing of me?”The shoe dropped to the ground, and he sat looking fixedly atthe questioner.“Monsieur Manette”; Mr. Lorry laid his hand upon Defarge’sarm; “do you remember nothing of this man? Look at him. Look atme. Is there no old banker, no old business, no old servant, no oldtime, rising in your mind, Monsieur Manette?”As the captive of many years sat looking fixedly, by turns, at Mr.Lorry and at Defarge, some long obliterated marks of an activelyintent intelligence in the middle of the forehead, gradually forcedthemselves through the black mist that had fallen on him. Theywere overclouded again, they were fainter, they were gone; butthey had been there. And so exactly was the expression repeatedon the fair young face of her who had crept along the wall to apoint where she could see him, and where she now stood lookingat him, with hands which at first had been only raised infrightened compassion, if not even to keep him off and shut outCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesthe sight of him, but which were now extending towards him,trembling with eagerness to lay the spectral face upon her warmyoung breast, and love it back to life and hope—so exactly was theexpression repeated (though in stronger characters) on her fairyoung face, that it looked as though it had passed like a movinglight, from him to her.Darkness had fallen on him in its place. He looked at the two,less and less attentively, and his eyes in gloomy abstraction soughtthe ground and looked about him in the old way. Finally with adeep long sigh, he took the shoe up, and resumed his work.“Have you recognised him, monsieur?” asked Defarge in awhisper.“Yes; for a moment. At first I thought it quite hopeless, but Ihave unquestionably seen, for a single moment, the face that Ionce knew so well. Hush! Let us draw further back. Hush!”She had moved from the wall of the garret, very near to thebench on which he sat. There was something awful in hisunconsciousness of the figure that could have put out its hand andtouched him as he stooped over his labour.Not a word was spoken, not a sound was made. She stood like aspirit, beside him, and he bent over his work.It happened, at length, that he had occasion to change theinstrument in his hand, for his shoemaker’s knife. It lay on thatside of him which was not the side on which she stood. He hadtaken it up, and was stooping to work again, when his eyes caughtthe skirt of her dress. He raised them, and saw her face. The twospectators started forward, but she stayed them with a motion ofher hand. She had no fear of his striking at her with the knife,though they had.Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two CitiesHe stared at her with a fearful look, and after a while his lipsbegan to form some words, though no sound proceeded fromthem. By degrees, in the pauses of his quick and labouredbreathing, he was heard to say:“What is this?”With the tears streaming down her face, she put her two handsto her lips, and kissed them to him; then clasped them on herbreast, as if she laid his ruined head there.“You are not the gaoler’s daughter?”She sighed “No.”“Who are you?”Not yet trusting the tones of her voice, she sat down on thebench beside him. He recoiled, but she laid her hand upon hisarm. A strange thrill struck him when she did so, and visiblypassed over his frame; he laid the knife down softly, as he satstaring at her.Her golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had beenhurriedly pushed aside, and fell down over her neck. Advancinghis hand by little and little, he took it up and looked at it. In themidst of the action he went astray, and, with another deep sigh,fell to work at his shoemaking.But not for long. Releasing his arm, she laid her hand upon hisshoulder. After looking doubtfully at it, two or three times, as if tobe sure that it was really there, he laid down his work, put hishand to his neck, and took off a blackened string with a scrap offolded rag attached to it. He opened this, carefully, on his knee,and it contained a very little quantity of hair: not more than one ortwo long golden hairs, which he had, in some old day, wound offupon his finger.Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two CitiesHe took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it. “Itis the same. How can it be! When was it! How was it!”As the concentrating expression returned to his forehead, heseemed to become conscious that it was in her too. He turned herfull to the light, and looked at her.“She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when Iwas summoned out—she had a fear of my going, though I hadnone—and when I was brought to the North Tower they foundthese upon my sleeve. ‘You will leave me them? They can neverhelp me to escape in the body, though they may in the spirit.’Those were the words I said. I remember them very well.”He formed this speech with his lips many times before he couldutter it. But when he did find spoken words for it, they came tohim coherently, though slowly.“How was this?—Was it you?”Once more, the two spectators started, as he turned upon herwith a frightful suddenness. But she sat perfectly still in his grasp,and only said, in a low voice, “I entreat you, good gentlemen, donot come near us, do not speak, do not move!”“Hark” he exclaimed. “Whose voice was that?”His hands released her as he uttered this cry, and went up tohis white hair, which they tore in a frenzy. It died out, aseverything but his shoemaking did die out of him, and he refoldedhis little packet and tried to secure it in his breast; but he stilllooked at her, and gloomily shook his head.“No, no, no; you are too young, too blooming. It can’t be. Seewhat the prisoner is. These are not the hands she knew, this is notthe face she knew, this is not a voice she ever heard. No, no. Shewas—and He was—before the slow years of the North Tower—Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesages ago. What is your name, my gentle angel?”Hailing his softened tone and manner, his daughter fell uponher knees before him, with her appealing hands upon his breast.“O, sir, at another time you shall know my name, and who mymother was, and who my father, and how I never knew their hard,hard history. But I cannot tell you at this time, and I cannot tellyou here. All that I may tell you, here and now, is, that I pray toyou to touch me and to bless me. Kiss me, kiss me! O my dear, mydear!”His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, whichwarmed and lighted it as though it were the light of Freedomshining on him.“If you hear in my voice—I don’t know that it is so, but I hope itis—if you hear in my voice any resemblance to a voice that oncewas sweet music in your ears, weep for it, weep for it! If you touch,in touching my hair, anything that recalls a beloved head that layon your breast when you were young and free, weep for it, weepfor it! If, when I hint to you of a Home that is before us, where Iwill be true to you with all my duty and with all my faithful service,I bring back the remembrance of a Home long desolate, while yourpoor heart pined away, weep for it, weep for it!”She held him closer round the neck, and rocked him on herbreast like a child.“If, when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is over, andthat I have come here to take you from it, and that we go toEngland to be at peace and at rest, I cause you to think of youruseful life laid waste, and of our native France so wicked to you,weep for it, weep for it! And if, when I shall tell you of my name,and of my father who is living, and of my mother who is dead, youCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citieslearn that I have to kneel to my honoured father, and implore hispardon for having never for his sake striven all day and lain awakeand wept all night, because the love of my poor mother hid historture from me, weep for it, weep for it! Weep for her, then, andfor me! Good gentlemen, thank God! I feel his sacred tears uponmy face, and his sobs strike against my heart. O, see! Thank Godfor us, thank God!”He had sunk in her arms, and his face dropped on her breast: asight so touching, yet so terrible in the tremendous wrong andsuffering which had gone before it, that the two beholders coveredtheir faces.When the quiet of the garret had been long undisturbed, andhis heaving breast and shaken form had long yielded to the calmthat must follow all storms—emblem to humanity, of the rest andsilence into which the storm called Life must hush at last—theycame forward to raise the father and daughter from the ground.He had gradually dropped to the floor, and lay there in a lethargy,worn out. She had nestled down with him, that his head might lieupon her arm; and her hair drooping over him curtained him fromthe light.“If, without disturbing him,” she said, raising her hand to Mr.Lorry as he stooped over them, after repeated blowings of hisnose, “all could be arranged for our leaving Paris at once, so that,from the very door, he could be taken away—”“But, consider. Is he fit for the journey?” asked Mr. Lorry.“More fit for that, I think, than to remain in this city, sodreadful to him.”“It is true,” said Defarge, who was kneeling to look on and hear.“More than that; Monsieur Manette is, for all reasons, best out ofCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two CitiesFrance. Say, shall I hire a carriage and post-horses?”“That’s business,” said Mr. Lorry, resuming on the shortestnotice his methodical manners; “and if business is to be done, Ihad better do it.”