a tale of two cities(双城记)-45

lamp is burnt out, and the day is gleaming in above those shuttersCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesand between those iron bars, that I have now a secret tocommunicate. Ask him, is that so.”“It is so,” assented Defarge again.“I communicate to him that secret. I smite this bosom withthese two hands as I smite it now, and I tell him, ‘Defarge, I wasbrought up among the fishermen of the seashore, and that peasantfamily so injured by the two Evremonde brothers, as that Bastillepaper describes, is my family. Defarge, that sister of the mortallywounded boy upon the ground was my sister, that husband wasmy sister’s husband, that unborn child was their child, thatbrother was my brother, that father was my father, those dead aremy dead, and that summons to answer for those things descendsto me!’ Ask him, is that so.”“It is so,” assented Defarge once more.“Then tell Wind and Fire where to stop,” returned madame;“but don’t tell me.”Both her hearers derived a horrible enjoyment from the deadlynature of her wrath—the listener could feel how white she was,without seeing her—and both highly commended it. Defarge, aweak minority, interposed a few words of the memory of thecompassionate wife of the Marquis; but only elicited from his ownwife a repetition of her last reply. “Tell the Wind and the Firewhere to stop; not me!”Customers entered, and the group was broken up. The Englishcustomer paid for what he had had, perplexedly counted hischange, and asked, as a stranger, to be directed towards theNational Palace. Madame Defarge took him to the door, and puther arm on his, in pointing out the road. The English customerwas not without his reflections then, that it might be a good deedCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesto seize that arm, lift it, and strike under it sharp and deep.But, he went his way, and was soon swallowed up in theshadow of the prison wall. At the appointed hour, he emergedfrom it to present himself in Mr. Lorry’s room again, where hefound the old gentleman walking to and fro in restless anxiety. Hesaid he had been with Lucie until just now, and had only left herfor a few minutes, to come and keep his appointment. Her fatherhad not been seen, since he quitted the banking-house towardsfour o’clock. She had some faint hopes that his mediation mightsave Charles, but they were very slight. He had been more thanfive hours gone: where could he be?Mr. Lorry waited until ten; but, Doctor Manette not returning,and he being unwilling to leave Lucie any longer, it was arrangedthat he should go back to her, and come to the banking-houseagain at midnight. In the meanwhile, Carton would wait alone bythe fire for the Doctor.He waited and waited, and the clock struck twelve; but DoctorManette did not come back. Mr. Lorry returned, and found notidings of him, and brought none. Where could he be?They were discussing this question, and were almost buildingup some weak structure of hope on his prolonged absence, whenthey heard him on the stairs. The instant he entered the room, itwas plain that all was lost.Whether he had really been to any one, or whether he had beenall that time traversing the streets, was never known. As he stoodstaring at them, they asked him no questions, for his face toldthem everything.“I cannot find it,” said he, “and I must have it. Where is it?”His head and throat were bare, and, as he spoke with a helplessCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citieslook straying all around, he took his coat off, and let it drop on thefloor.“Where is my bench? I have been looking everywhere for mybench, and I can’t find it. What have they done with my work?Time presses: I must finish those shoes.”They looked at one another, and their hearts died within them.“Come, come!” said he, in a whimpering miserable way; “let meget to work. Give me my work.”Receiving no answer, he tore his hair, and beat his feet uponthe ground, like a distracted child.“Don’t torture a poor forlorn wretch,” he implored them, with adreadful cry; “but give me my work! What is to become of us, ifthose shoes are not done tonight?”Lost, utterly lost!It was so clearly beyond hope to reason with him, or try torestore him, that—as if by agreement—they each put a hand uponhis shoulder, and soothed him to sit down before the fire, with apromise that he should have his work presently. He sank into thechair, and brooded over the embers, and shed tears. As if all thathad happened since the garret time were a momentary fancy, or adream, Mr. Lorry saw him shrink into the exact figure thatDefarge had had in keeping.Affected, and impressed with terror as they both were, by thisspectacle of ruin, it was not a time to yield to such emotions. Hislonely daughter, bereft of her final hope and reliance, appealed tothem both too strongly. Again, as if by agreement, they looked atone another with one meaning in their faces. Carton was the firstto speak:“The last chance is gone: it was not much. Yes; he had better beCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiestaken to her. But, before you go, will you, for a moment, steadilyattend to me? Don’t ask me why I make the stipulations I amgoing to make, and exact the promise I am going to exact; I have areason—a good one.”“I do not doubt it,” answered Mr. Lorry. “Say on.”The figure in the chair between them, was all the timemonotonously rocking itself to and fro, and moaning. They spokein such a tone as they would have used if they had been watchingby a sickbed in the night.Carton stooped to pick up the coat, which lay almost entanglinghis feet. As he did so, a small case in which the Doctor wasaccustomed to carry the list of his day’s duties, fell lightly on thefloor. Carton took it up, and there was a folded paper in it. “Weshould look at this!” he said. Mr. Lorry nodded his consent. Heopened it, and exclaimed, “Thank GoD!”“What is it?” asked Mr. Lorry, eagerly.“A moment! Let me speak of it in its place. First,” he put hishand in his coat, and took another paper from it, “that is thecertificate which enables me to pass out of this city. Look at it. Yousee—Sydney Carton, an Englishman?”Mr. Lorry held it open in his hand, gazing in his earnest face.“Keep it for me until tomorrow. I shall see him tomorrow, youremember, and I had better not take it into the prison.”“Why not?”“I don’t know; I prefer not to do so. Now, take this paper thatDoctor Manette has carried about him. It is a similar certificate,enabling him and his daughter and her child, at any time, to passthe barrier and the frontier. You see?”“Yes!”Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Cities“Perhaps he obtained it as his last and utmost precautionagainst evil, yesterday. When is it dated? But no matter; don’t stayto look; put it up carefully with mine and your own. Now, observe!I never doubted until within this hour or two, that he had, or couldhave such a paper. It is good, until recalled. But it may be soonrecalled, and I have reason to think, will be.”“They are not in danger?”“They are in great danger. They are in danger of denunciationby Madame Defarge. I know it from her own lips. I have overheardwords of that woman’s, tonight, which have presented theirdanger to me in strong colours. I have lost no time, and since then,I have seen the spy. He confirms me. He knows that a wood-sawyer living by the prison-wall, is under the control of theDefarges, and has been rehearsed by Madame Defarge as to hishaving seen Her”—he never mentioned Lucie’s name—“makingsigns and signals to prisoners. It is easy to foresee that thepretence will be the common one, a prison plot, and that it willinvolve her life—and perhaps her child’s—and perhaps herfather’s—for both have been seen with her at that place. Don’tlook so horrified. You will save them all.”“Heaven grant I may, Carton! But how?”“I am going to tell you how. It will depend on you, and it coulddepend on no better man. This new denunciation will certainly nottake place until after tomorrow; probably not until two or threedays afterwards; more probably a week afterwards. You know it isa capital crime to mourn for, or sympathise with, a victim of theGuillotine. She and her father would unquestionably be guilty ofthis crime, and this woman (the inveteracy of whose pursuitcannot be described) would wait to add that strength to her case,Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesand make herself doubly sure. You follow me?”“So attentively, and with so much confidence in what you say,that for the moment I lose sight,” touching the back of the Doctor’schair, “even of this distress.”“You have money, and can buy the means of travelling to theseacoast as quickly as the journey can be made. Your preparationshave been completed for some days, to return to England. Earlytomorrow have your horses ready, so that they may be in startingtrim at two o’clock in the afternoon.”“It shall be done!”His manner was so fervent and inspiring, that Mr. Lorry caughtthe flame, and was quick as youth.“You are a noble heart. Did I say we could depend upon nobetter man? Tell her, tonight, what you know of her danger asinvolving her child and her father. Dwell upon that, for she wouldlay her own fair head beside her husband’s cheerfully.” Hefaltered for an instant; then went on as before. “For the sake of herchild and her father, press upon her the necessity of leaving Paris,with them and you at that hour. Tell her that it was her husband’slast arrangement. Tell her that more depends upon it than shedare believe, or hope. You think that her father, even in this sadstate. will submit himself to her; do you not?”“I am sure of it.”“I thought so. Quietly and steadily have all these arrangementsmade in the court-yard here, even to the taking of your own seat inthe carriage. The moment I come to you, take me in, and driveaway.”“I understand that I wait for you under all circumstances?”“You have my certificate in your hand with the rest, you know,Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesand will reserve my place. Wait for nothing but to have my placeoccupied, and then for England!”“Why, then,” said Mr. Lorry, grasping his eager but so firm andsteady hand, “it does not all depend on one old man, but I shallhave a young and ardent man at my side.”“By the help of Heaven you shall! Promise me solemnly thatnothing will influence you to alter the course on which we nowstand pledged to one another.”“Nothing, Carton.”“Remember these words tomorrow: change the course, or delayin it—for any reason—and no life can possibly be saved, and manylives must inevitably be sacrificed.”“I will remember them. I hope to do my part faithfully.”“And I hope to do mine. Now, good-bye!”Though he said it with a grave smile of earnestness, and thoughhe even put the old man’s hand to his lips, he did not part fromhim then. He helped him so far to arouse the rocking figure beforethe dying embers, as to get a cloak and hat put upon it, and totempt it forth to find where the bench and work were hidden thatit still moaningly besought to have. He walked on the other side ofit and protected it to the court-yard of the house where theafflicted heart—so happy in the memorable time when he hadrevealed his own desolate heart to it—outwatched the awful night.He entered the courtyard and remained there for a few momentsalone, looking up at the light in the window of her room. Before hewent away, he breathed a blessing towards it and a Farewell.Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two CitiesChapter XLIIIFIFTY-TWOIn the black prison of the Conciergerie, the doomed of the dayawaited their fate. They were in number as the weeks of theyear. Fifty-two were to roll that afternoon on the life-tide ofthe city to the boundless everlasting sea. Before their cells werequit of them, new occupants were appointed; before their bloodran into the blood spilled yesterday, the blood that was to minglewith theirs tomorrow was already set apart.Two score and twelve were told off. From the farmer-general ofseventy, whose riches could not buy his life, to the seamstress oftwenty, whose poverty and obscurity could not save her. Physicaldiseases, engendered in the vices and neglects of men, will seizeon victims of all degrees; and the frightful moral disorder, born ofunspeakable suffering, intolerable oppression, and heartlessindifference, smote equally without distinction.Charles Darnay, alone in a cell, had sustained himself with noflattering delusion since he came to it from the Tribunal. In everyline of the narrative he had heard, he had heard hiscondemnation. He had fully comprehended that no personalinfluence could possibly save him, that he was virtually sentencedby the millions, and that units could avail him nothing.Nevertheless, it was not easy, with the face of his beloved wifefresh before him, to compose his mind to what it must bear. Hishold on life was strong, and it was very, very hard, to loosen; bygradual efforts and degrees unclosed a little here, it clenched theCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiestighter there; and when he brought his strength to bear on thathand and it yielded, this was closed again. There was a hurry, too,in all his thoughts, a turbulent and heated working of his heart,that contended against resignation. If, for a moment, he did feelresigned, then his wife and child who had to live after him, seemedto protest and to make it a selfish thing.But, all this was at first. Before long, the consideration thatthere was no disgrace in the fate he must meet, and that numberswent the same road wrongfully, and trod it firmly every day,sprang up to stimulate him. Next followed the thought that muchof the future peace of mind enjoyable by the dear ones, dependedon his quiet fortitude. So, by degrees he calmed into the betterstate, when he could raise his thoughts much higher and drawcomfort down.Before it had set in dark on the night of his condemnation, hehad travelled thus far on his last way. Being allowed to purchasethe means of writing, and a light, he sat down to write until suchtime as the prison lamps should be extinguished.He wrote a long letter to Lucie, showing her that he had knownnothing of her father’s imprisonment, until he had heard of it fromherself, and that he had been as ignorant as she of his father’s anduncle’s responsibility for that misery, until the paper had beenread. He had already explained to her that his concealment fromherself of the name he had relinquished, was the one condition—fully intelligible now—that her father had attached to theirbetrothal, and was the one promise he had still exacted on themorning of their marriage. He entreated her, for her father’s sake,never to seek to know whether her father had become oblivious ofthe existence of the paper, or had had it recalled to him (for theCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesmoment or, for good), by the story of the Tower, on that oldSunday under the dear old plane-tree in the garden. If he hadpreserved any definite remembrance of it, there could be no doubtthat he had supposed it destroyed with the Bastille, when he hadfound no mention of it among the relics of prisoners which thepopulace had discovered there, and which had been described toall the world. He besought her—though he added that he knew itwas needless—to console her father, by impressing him throughevery tender means she could think of , with the truth that he haddone nothing for which he could justly reproach himself, but haduniformly forgotten himself for their joint sakes. Next to herpreservation of his own last grateful love and blessing, and herovercoming of her sorrow, to devote herself to their dear child, headjured her, as they would meet in Heaven, to comfort her father.To her father himself, he wrote in the same strain; but, he toldher father that he expressly confided his wife and child to his care.And he told him this, very strongly, with the hope of rousing himfrom any despondency or dangerous retrospect towards which heforesaw he might be tending.To Mr. Lorry, he commended them all, and explained hisworldly affairs. That done, with many added sentences of grateful