a tale of two cities(双城记)-8

expected to see the loaf disappear under the efficacy of his wife’spetitions. “I ain’t a going to be blest out of house and home. I won’thave my wittles blest off my table. Keep still!”Exceedingly red-eyed and grim, as if he had been up all night ata party which had taken anything but a convivial turn, JerryCruncher worried his breakfast rather than ate it, growling over itlike any four-footed inmate of a menagerie. Towards nine o’clockhe smoothed his ruffled aspect, and, presenting as respectable andbusiness-like an exterior as he could overlay his natural self with,issued forth to the occupation of the day.It could scarcely be called a trade, in spite of his favouritedescription of himself as “a honest tradesman.” His stockconsisted of a wooden stool, made out of a broken-backed chaircut down, which stool, young Jerry, walking at his father’s side,carried every morning to beneath the banking-house window thatwas nearest Temple Bar: where, with the addition of the firsthandful of straw that could be gleaned from any passing vehicle toCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citieskeep the cold and wet from the odd-job-man’s feet, it formed theencampment for the day. On this post of his, Mr. Cruncher was aswell known to Fleet Street and the Temple, as the Bar itself,—andwas almost as ill-looking.Encamped at a quarter before nine, in good time to touch histhree-cornered hat to the oldest of the men as they passed in toTellson’s, Jerry took up his station on this windy March morning,with young Jerry standing by him, when not engaged in makingforays through the Bar, to inflict bodily and mental injuries of anacute description on passing boys who were small enough for hisamiable purpose. Father and son, extremely like each other,looking silently on at the morning traffic in Fleet Street, with theirtwo heads as near to one another as the two eyes of each were,bore a considerable resemblance to a pair of monkeys. Theresemblance was not lessened by the accidental circumstance,that the mature Jerry bit and spat out straw, while the twinklingeyes of the youthful Jerry were as restlessly watchful of him as ofeverything else in Fleet Street. The head of one of the regularindoor messengers attached to Tellson’s establishment was putthrough the door, and the word was given:“Porter wanted!”“Hooray, father! Here’s an early job to begin with!”Having thus given his parent God speed, young Jerry seatedhimself on the stool, entered on his reversionary interest in thestraw his father had been chewing, and cogitated.“Always rusty! His fingers is always rusty!” muttered youngJerry. “Where does my father get all that iron rust from? He don’tget no iron rust here!”Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two CitiesChapter VIIIA SIGHT“Y ou know the Old Bailey well, no doubt?” said one ofthe oldest of clerks to Jerry the messenger.“Ye-es, sir,” returned Jerry, in something of adogged manner. “I do know the Bailey.”“Just so. And you know Mr. Lorry.”“I know Mr. Lorry, sir, much better than I know the Bailey.Much better,” said Jerry, not unlike a reluctant witness at theestablishment in question, “than I, as a honest tradesman, wish toknow the Bailey.”“Very well. Find the door where the witnesses go in, and showthe door-keeper this note for Mr. Lorry. He will then let you in.”“Into the court, sir?”“Into the court.”Mr. Cruncher’s eyes seemed to get a little closer to one another,and to interchange the inquiry, “What do you think of this?”“Am I to wait in the court, sir?” he asked, as the result of thatconference.“I am going to tell you. The door-keeper will pass the note toMr. Lorry, and do you make any gesture that will attract Mr.Lorry’s attention, and show him where you stand. Then what youhave to do is, to remain there until he wants you.”“Is that all, sir?”“That is all. He wishes to have a messenger at hand. This is totell him you are there.”Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two CitiesAs the ancient clerk deliberately folded and superscribed thenote, Mr. Cruncher, after surveying him in silence until he came tothe blotting-paper stage, remarked:“I suppose they’ll be trying Forgeries this morning?”“Treason!”“That’s quartering,” said Jerry. “Barbarous!”“It is the law,” remarked the ancient clerk, turning hissurprised spectacles upon him. “It is the law.”“It’s hard in the law to spile a man, I think. It’s hard enough tokill him, but it’s werry hard to spile him, sir.”“Not at all,” returned the ancient clerk. “Speak well of the law.Take care of your chest and voice, my good friend, and leave thelaw to take care of itself. I give you that advice.”“It’s the damp, sir, what settles on my chest and voice,” saidJerry. “I leave you to judge what a damp way of earning a livingmine is.”“Well, well,” said the old clerk; “we all have our various ways ofgaining a livelihood. Some of us have damp ways, and some of ushave dry ways. Here is the letter. Go along.”Jerry took the letter, and, remarking to himself with lessinternal deference than he made an outward show of, “You are alean old one, too,” made his bow, informed his son, in passing, ofhis destination, and went his way.They hanged at Tyburn in those days, so the street outsideNewgate had not obtained one infamous notoriety that has sinceattached to it. But, the gaol was a vile place, in which most kinds ofdebauchery and villainy were practised, and where dire diseaseswere bred, that came into court with the prisoners, and sometimesrushed straight from the dock at my Lord Chief Justice himself,Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesand pulled him off the bench. It had more than once happened,that the Judge in the black cap pronounced his own doom ascertainly as the prisoner’s, and even died before him. For the rest,the Old Bailey was famous as a kind of deadly inn-yard, fromwhich pale travellers set out continually, in carts and coaches, on aviolent passage into the other world: traversing some two milesand a half of public street and road, and shaming few goodcitizens, if any. So powerful is use, and so desirable to be good usein the beginning. It was famous, too, for the pillory, a wise oldinstitution, that inflicted a punishment of which no one couldforesee the extent; also, for the whipping-post, another dear oldinstitution, very humanising and softening to behold in action;also, for extensive transactions in blood-money, another fragmentof ancestral wisdom, systematically leading to the most frightfulmercenary crimes that could be committed under Heaven.Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choice illustration ofthe precept that “Whatever is, is right”; an aphorism that would beas final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesomeconsequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong.Making his way through the tainted crowd, dispersed up anddown this hideous scene of action, with the skill of a manaccustomed to make his way quietly, the messenger found out thedoor he sought, and handed in his letter through a trap in it. For,people then paid to see the play at the Old Bailey, just as they paidto see the play in Bedlam—only the former entertainment wasmuch the dearer. Therefore, all the Old Bailey doors were wellguarded—except, indeed, the social doors by which the criminalsgot there, and those were always left wide open.After some delay and demur, the door grudgingly turned on itsCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citieshinges a very little way, and allowed Mr. Jerry Cruncher tosqueeze himself into court.“What’s on?” he asked, in a whisper, of the man he foundhimself next to.“Nothing yet.”“What’s coming on?”“The Treason case.”“The quartering one, eh?”“Ah!” returned the man, with a relish; “he’ll be drawn on ahurdle to be half hanged, and then he’ll be taken down and slicedbefore his own face, and then his inside will be taken out andburnt while he looks on, and then his head will be chopped off,and he’ll be cut into quarters. That’s the sentence.”“If he’s found Guilty, you mean to say?” Jerry added, by way ofproviso.“Oh! they’ll find him guilty,” said the other. “Don’t you beafraid of that.”Mr. Cruncher’s attention was here diverted to the door-keeper,whom he saw making his way to Mr. Lorry, with the note in hishand. Mr. Lorry sat at a table, among the gentlemen in wigs: notfar from a wigged gentleman, the prisoner’s counsel, who had agreat bundle of papers before him: and nearly opposite anotherwigged gentleman with his hands in his pockets, whose wholeattention, when Mr. Cruncher looked at him then or afterwards,seemed to be concentrated on the ceiling of the court. After somegruff coughing and rubbing of his chin and signing with his hand,Jerry attracted the notice of Mr. Lorry, who had stood up to lookfor him, and who quietly nodded and sat down again.“What’s he got to do with the case?” asked the man he hadCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesspoken with.“Blest if I know,” said Jerry.“What have you got to do with it, then, if a person mayinquire?”“Blest if I know that either,” said Jerry.The entrance of the Judge, and a consequent great stir andsettling down in the court, stopped the dialogue. Presently, thedock became the central point of interest. Two gaolers, who hadbeen standing there, went out, and the prisoner was brought in,and put to the bar.Everybody present, except the one wigged gentleman wholooked at the ceiling, stared at him. All the human breath in theplace, rolled at him, like a sea, or a wind, or a fire. Eager facesstrained round pillars and corners, to get a sight of him; spectatorsin back rows stood up, not to miss a hair of him; people on thefloor of the court, laid their hands on the shoulders of the peoplebefore them, to help themselves, at anybody’s cost, to a view ofhim, stood a-tiptoe, got upon ledges, stood upon next to nothing, tosee every inch of him. Conspicuous among these latter, like ananimated bit of the spiked wall of Newgate, Jerry stood: aiming atthe prisoner the beery breath of a whet he had taken as he camealong, and discharging it to mingle with the waves of other beer,and gin, and tea, and coffee, and what not, that flowed at him, andalready broke upon the great windows behind him in an impuremist and rain.The object of all this staring and blaring, was a young man ofabout five and twenty, well-grown and well-looking, with asunburnt cheek and a dark eye. His condition was that of a younggentleman. He was plainly dressed in black, or very dark grey, andCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citieshis hair, which was long and dark, was gathered in a ribbon at theback of his neck; more to be out of his way than for ornament. Asan emotion of the mind will express itself through any covering ofthe body, so the paleness which his situation engendered camethrough the brown upon his cheek, showing the soul to bestronger than the sun. He was otherwise quite self-possessed,bowed to the Judge, and stood quiet.The sort of interest with which this man was stared andbreathed at, was not a sort that elevated humanity. Had he stoodin peril of a less horrible sentence—had there been a chance ofany one of its savage details being spared—by just so much wouldhe have lost in his fascination. The form that was to be doomed tobe so shamefully mangled, was the sight; the immortal creaturethat was to be so butchered and torn asunder, yielded thesensation. Whatever gloss the various spectators put upon theinterest, according to their several arts and powers of self-deceit,the interest was, at the root of it, Ogreish.Silence in the court! Charles Darnay had yesterday pleaded NotGuilty to an indictment denouncing him (with infinite jingle andjangle) for that he was a false traitor to our serene, illustrious,excellent, and so forth, prince, our Lord the King, by reason of hishaving, on divers occasions, and by divers means and ways,assisted Lewis, the French King, in his wars against our saidserene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth; that was to say, bycoming and going, between the dominions of our said serene,illustrious, excellent, and so forth, and those of the said FrenchLewis, and wickedly, falsely, traitorously, and otherwise eviladverbiously, revealing to the said French Lewis what forces oursaid serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, had in preparationCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesto send to Canada and North America. This much, Jerry, with hishead becoming more and more spiky as the law terms bristled it,made out with huge satisfaction, and so arrived circuitously at theunderstanding that the aforesaid, and over and over againaforesaid, Charles Darnay, stood there before him upon his trial;that the jury were swearing in; and that Mr. Attorney-General wasmaking ready to speak.The accused, who was (and who knew he was) being mentallyhanged, beheaded, and quartered, by everybody there, neitherflinched from the situation, nor assumed any theatrical air in it. Hewas quiet and attentive; watched the opening proceedings with agrave interest; and stood with his hands resting on the slab ofwood before him, so composedly, that they had not displaced a leafof the herbs with which it was strewn. The court was all bestrewnwith herbs and sprinkled with vinegar, as a precaution againstgaol air and gaol fever.Over the prisoner’s head there was a mirror, to throw the lightdown upon him. Crowds of the wicked and the wretched had beenreflected in it, and had passed from its surface and this earth’stogether. Haunted in a most ghastly manner that abominableplace would have been, if the glass could ever have rendered backits reflections, as the ocean is one day to give up its dead. Somepassing thought of the infamy and disgrace for which it had beenreserved, may have struck the prisoner’s mind. Be that as it may, achange in his position making him conscious of a bar of lightacross his face, he looked up; and when he saw the glass his faceflushed, and his right hand pushed the herbs away.It happened that the action turned his face to that side of thecourt which was on his left. About on a level with his eyes, thereCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiessat, in that corner of the Judge’s bench, two persons upon whomhis look immediately rested; so immediately, and so much to thechanging of his aspect, that all the eyes that were turned uponhim, turned to them.The spectators saw in the two figures, a young lady of littlemore than twenty, and a gentleman who was evidently her father;a man of a very remarkable appearance in respect of the absolutewhiteness of his hair, and a certain indescribable intensity of face:not of an active kind, but pondering and self-communing. Whenthis expression was upon him, he looked as if he were old; butwhen it was stirred and broken up—as it was now, in a moment,on his speaking to his daughter—he became a handsome man, notpast the prime of life.His daughter had one of her hands drawn through his arm, asshe sat by him, and the other pressed upon it. She had drawnclose to him, in her dread of the scene, and in her pity for theprisoner. Her forehead had been strikingly expressive of anengrossing terror and compassion that saw nothing but the peril ofthe accused. This had been so very noticeable, so very powerfullyand naturally shown, that starers who had had no pity for himwere touched by her; and the whisper went about, “Who arethey?”Jerry, the messenger, who had made his own observations, inhis own manner, and who had been sucking the rust off his fingersin his absorption, stretched his neck to hear who they were. Thecrowd about him had pressed and passed the inquiry on to thenearest attendant, and from him it had been more slowly pressedand passed back; at last it got to Jerry:“Witnesses.”Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Cities“For which side?”“Against.”“Against what side?”“The prisoner’s.”The Judge, whose eyes had gone in the general direction,recalled them, leaned back in his seat, and looked steadily at theman whose life was in his hand, as Mr. Attorney-General rose to