A TALE OF TWO CITIES
A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION
By Charles Dickens
CONTENTS
Book the First—Recalled to Life
CHAPTER I The Period CHAPTER II The Mail CHAPTER III The Night Shadows CHAPTER IV The Preparation CHAPTER V The Wine-shop CHAPTER VI The Shoemaker
Book the Second—the Golden Thread
CHAPTER I Five Years Later CHAPTER II A Sight CHAPTER III A Disappointment CHAPTER IV Congratulatory CHAPTER V The Jackal CHAPTER VI Hundreds of People CHAPTER VII Monseigneur in Town CHAPTER VIII Monseigneur in the Country CHAPTER IX The Gorgon’s Head CHAPTER X Two Promises CHAPTER XI A Companion Picture CHAPTER XII The Fellow of Delicacy CHAPTER XIII The Fellow of no Delicacy CHAPTER XIV The Honest Tradesman CHAPTER XV Knitting CHAPTER XVI Still Knitting CHAPTER XVII One Night CHAPTER XVIII Nine Days CHAPTER XIX An Opinion CHAPTER XX A Plea CHAPTER XXI Echoing Footsteps CHAPTER XXII The Sea Still Rises CHAPTER XXIII Fire Rises CHAPTER XXIV Drawn to the Loadstone Rock
Book the Third—the Track of a Storm
CHAPTER I In Secret CHAPTER II The Grindstone CHAPTER III The Shadow CHAPTER IV Calm in Storm CHAPTER V The Wood-sawyer CHAPTER VI Triumph CHAPTER VII A Knock at the Door CHAPTER VIII A Hand at Cards CHAPTER IX The Game Made CHAPTER X The Substance of the Shadow CHAPTER XI Dusk CHAPTER XII Darkness CHAPTER XIII Fifty-two CHAPTER XIV The Knitting Done CHAPTER XV The Footsteps Die Out For Ever
Book the First—Recalled to Life
CHAPTER I. The Period
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.
It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.
France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.
In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers’ warehouses for security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of “the Captain,” gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the mail was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, “in consequence of the failure of his ammunition:” after which the mail was robbed in peace; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners in London gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles’s, to search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer’s boy of sixpence.
All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures—the creatures of this chronicle among the rest—along the roads that lay before them.
CHAPTER II. The Mail
It was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in November, before the first of the persons with whom this history has business. The Dover road lay, as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered up Shooter’s Hill. He walked up hill in the mire by the side of the mail, as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the least relish for walking exercise, under the circumstances, but because the hill, and the harness, and the mud, and the mail, were all so heavy, that the horses had three times already come to a stop, besides once drawing the coach across the road, with the mutinous intent of taking it back to Blackheath. Reins and whip and coachman and guard, however, in combination, had read that article of war which forbade a purpose otherwise strongly in favour of the argument, that some brute animals are endued with Reason; and the team had capitulated and returned to their duty.
With drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed their way through the thick mud, floundering and stumbling between whiles, as if they were falling to pieces at the larger joints. As often as the driver rested them and brought them to a stand, with a wary “Wo-ho! so-ho-then!” the near leader violently shook his head and everything upon it—like an unusually emphatic horse, denying that the coach could be got up the hill. Whenever the leader made this rattle, the passenger started, as a nervous passenger might, and was disturbed in mind.
There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed in its forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest and finding none. A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way through the air in ripples that visibly followed and overspread one another, as the waves of an unwholesome sea might do. It was dense enough to shut out everything from the light of the coach-lamps but these its own workings, and a few yards of road; and the reek of the labouring horses steamed into it, as if they had made it all.
Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill by the side of the mail. All three were wrapped to the cheekbones and over the ears, and wore jack-boots. Not one of the three could have said, from anything he saw, what either of the other two was like; and each was hidden under almost as many wrappers from the eyes of the mind, as from the eyes of the body, of his two companions. In those days, travellers were very shy of being confidential on a short notice, for anybody on the road might be a robber or in league with robbers. As to the latter, when every posting-house and ale-house could produce somebody in “the Captain’s” pay, ranging from the landlord to the lowest stable non-descript, it was the likeliest thing upon the cards. So the guard of the Dover mail thought to himself, that Friday night in November, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lumbering up Shooter’s Hill, as he stood on his own particular perch behind the mail, beating his feet, and keeping an eye and a hand on the arm-chest before him, where a loaded blunderbuss lay at the top of six or eight loaded horse-pistols, deposited on a substratum of cutlass.
The Dover mail was in its usual genial position that the guard suspected the passengers, the passengers suspected one another and the guard, they all suspected everybody else, and the coachman was sure of nothing but the horses; as to which cattle he could with a clear conscience have taken his oath on the two Testaments that they were not fit for the journey.
“Wo-ho!” said the coachman. “So, then! One more pull and you’re at the top and be damned to you, for I have had trouble enough to get you to it!—Joe!”
“Halloa!” the guard replied.
“What o’clock do you make it, Joe?”
“Ten minutes, good, past eleven.”
“My blood!” ejaculated the vexed coachman, “and not atop of Shooter’s yet! Tst! Yah! Get on with you!”
The emphatic horse, cut short by the whip in a most decided negative, made a decided scramble for it, and the three other horses followed suit. Once more, the Dover mail struggled on, with the jack-boots of its passengers squashing along by its side. They had stopped when the coach stopped, and they kept close company with it. If any one of the three had had the hardihood to propose to another to walk on a little ahead into the mist and darkness, he would have put himself in a fair way of getting shot instantly as a highwayman.
The last burst carried the mail to the summit of the hill. The horses stopped to breathe again, and the guard got down to skid the wheel for the descent, and open the coach-door to let the passengers in.
“Tst! Joe!” cried the coachman in a warning voice, looking down from his box.
“What do you say, Tom?”
They both listened.
“I say a horse at a canter coming up, Joe.”
“I say a horse at a gallop, Tom,” returned the guard, leaving his hold of the door, and mounting nimbly to his place. “Gentlemen! In the king’s name, all of you!”
With this hurried adjuration, he cocked his blunderbuss, and stood on the offensive.
The passenger booked by this history, was on the coach-step, getting in; the two other passengers were close behind him, and about to follow. He remained on the step, half in the coach and half out of; they remained in the road below him. They all looked from the coachman to the guard, and from the guard to the coachman, and listened. The coachman looked back and the guard looked back, and even the emphatic leader pricked up his ears and looked back, without contradicting.
The stillness consequent on the cessation of the rumbling and labouring of the coach, added to the stillness of the night, made it very quiet indeed. The panting of the horses communicated a tremulous motion to the coach, as if it were in a state of agitation. The hearts of the passengers beat loud enough perhaps to be heard; but at any rate, the quiet pause was audibly expressive of people out of breath, and holding the breath, and having the pulses quickened by expectation.
The sound of a horse at a gallop came fast and furiously up the hill.
“So-ho!” the guard sang out, as loud as he could roar. “Yo there! Stand! I shall fire!”
The pace was suddenly checked, and, with much splashing and floundering, a man’s voice called from the mist, “Is that the Dover mail?”
“Never you mind what it is!” the guard retorted. “What are you?”
“Is that the Dover mail?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I want a passenger, if it is.”
“What passenger?”
“Mr. Jarvis Lorry.”
Our booked passenger showed in a moment that it was his name. The guard, the coachman, and the two other passengers eyed him distrustfully.
“Keep where you are,” the guard called to the voice in the mist, “because, if I should make a mistake, it could never be set right in your lifetime. Gentleman of the name of Lorry answer straight.”
“What is the matter?” asked the passenger, then, with mildly quavering speech. “Who wants me? Is it Jerry?”
(“I don’t like Jerry’s voice, if it is Jerry,” growled the guard to himself. “He’s hoarser than suits me, is Jerry.”)
“Yes, Mr. Lorry.”
“What is the matter?”
“A despatch sent after you from over yonder. T. and Co.”
“I know this messenger, guard,” said Mr. Lorry, getting down into the road—assisted from behind more swiftly than politely by the other two passengers, who immediately scrambled into the coach, shut the door, and pulled up the window. “He may come close; there’s nothing wrong.”
“I hope there ain’t, but I can’t make so ‘Nation sure of that,” said the guard, in gruff soliloquy. “Hallo you!”
“Well! And hallo you!” said Jerry, more hoarsely than before.
“Come on at a footpace! d’ye mind me? And if you’ve got holsters to that saddle o’ yourn, don’t let me see your hand go nigh ’em. For I’m a devil at a quick mistake, and when I make one it takes the form of Lead. So now let’s look at you.”
The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through the eddying mist, and came to the side of the mail, where the passenger stood. The rider stooped, and, casting up his eyes at the guard, handed the passenger a small folded paper. The rider’s horse was blown, and both horse and rider were covered with mud, from the hoofs of the horse to the hat of the man.
“Guard!” said the passenger, in a tone of quiet business confidence.
The watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock of his raised blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye on the horseman, answered curtly, “Sir.”
“There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tellson’s Bank. You must know Tellson’s Bank in London. I am going to Paris on business. A crown to drink. I may read this?”
“If so be as you’re quick, sir.”
He opened it in the light of the coach-lamp on that side, and read—first to himself and then aloud: “‘Wait at Dover for Mam’selle.’ It’s not long, you see, guard. Jerry, say that my answer was, RECALLED TO LIFE.”
Jerry started in his saddle. “That’s a Blazing strange answer, too,” said he, at his hoarsest.
“Take that message back, and they will know that I received this, as well as if I wrote. Make the best of your way. Good night.”
With those words the passenger opened the coach-door and got in; not at all assisted by his fellow-passengers, who had expeditiously secreted their watches and purses in their boots, and were now making a general pretence of being asleep. With no more definite purpose than to escape the hazard of originating any other kind of action.
The coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths of mist closing round it as it began the descent. The guard soon replaced his blunderbuss in his arm-chest, and, having looked to the rest of its contents, and having looked to the supplementary pistols that he wore in his belt, looked to a smaller chest beneath his seat, in which there were a few smith’s tools, a couple of torches, and a tinder-box. For he was furnished with that completeness that if the coach-lamps had been blown and stormed out, which did occasionally happen, he had only to shut himself up inside, keep the flint and steel sparks well off the straw, and get a light with tolerable safety and ease (if he were lucky) in five minutes.
“Tom!” softly over the coach roof.
“Hallo, Joe.”
“Did you hear the message?”
“I did, Joe.”
“What did you make of it, Tom?”
“Nothing at all, Joe.”
“That’s a coincidence, too,” the guard mused, “for I made the same of it myself.”
Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted meanwhile, not only to ease his spent horse, but to wipe the mud from his face, and shake the wet out of his hat-brim, which might be capable of holding about half a gallon. After standing with the bridle over his heavily-splashed arm, until the wheels of the mail were no longer within hearing and the night was quite still again, he turned to walk down the hill.
“After that there gallop from Temple Bar, old lady, I won’t trust your fore-legs till I get you on the level,” said this hoarse messenger, glancing at his mare. “‘Recalled to life.’ That’s a Blazing strange message. Much of that wouldn’t do for you, Jerry! I say, Jerry! You’d be in a Blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion, Jerry!”
CHAPTER III. The Night Shadows
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life’s end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?
As to this, his natural and not to be alienated inheritance, the messenger on horseback had exactly the same possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London. So with the three passengers shut up in the narrow compass of one lumbering old mail coach; they were mysteries to one another, as complete as if each had been in his own coach and six, or his own coach and sixty, with the breadth of a county between him and the next.
The messenger rode back at an easy trot, stopping pretty often at ale-houses by the way to drink, but evincing a tendency to keep his own counsel, and to keep his hat cocked over his eyes. He had eyes that assorted very well with that decoration, being of a surface black, with no depth in the colour or form, and much too near together—as if they were afraid of being found out in something, singly, if they kept too far apart. They had a sinister expression, under an old cocked-hat like a three-cornered spittoon, and over a great muffler for the chin and throat, which descended nearly to the wearer’s knees. When he stopped for drink, he moved this muffler with his left hand, only while he poured his liquor in with his right; as soon as that was done, he muffled again.
“No, Jerry, no!” said the messenger, harping on one theme as he rode. “It wouldn’t do for you, Jerry. Jerry, you honest tradesman, it wouldn’t suit your line of business! Recalled—! Bust me if I don’t think he’d been a drinking!”
His message perplexed his mind to that degree that he was fain, several times, to take off his hat to scratch his head. Except on the crown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing jaggedly all over it, and growing down hill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It was so like Smith’s work, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world to go over.
While he trotted back with the message he was to deliver to the night watchman in his box at the door of Tellson’s Bank, by Temple Bar, who was to deliver it to greater authorities within, the shadows of the night took such shapes to him as arose out of the message, and took such shapes to the mare as arose out of her private topics of uneasiness. They seemed to be numerous, for she shied at every shadow on the road.
What time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted, rattled, and bumped upon its tedious way, with its three fellow-inscrutables inside. To whom, likewise, the shadows of the night revealed themselves, in the forms their dozing eyes and wandering thoughts suggested.
Tellson’s Bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the bank passenger—with an arm drawn through the leathern strap, which did what lay in it to keep him from pounding against the next passenger, and driving him into his corner, whenever the coach got a special jolt—nodded in his place, with half-shut eyes, the little coach-windows, and the coach-lamp dimly gleaming through them, and the bulky bundle of opposite passenger, became the bank, and did a great stroke of business. The rattle of the harness was the chink of money, and more drafts were honoured in five minutes than even Tellson’s, with all its foreign and home connection, ever paid in thrice the time. Then the strong-rooms underground, at Tellson’s, with such of their valuable stores and secrets as were known to the passenger (and it was not a little that he knew about them), opened before him, and he went in among them with the great keys and the feebly-burning candle, and found them safe, and strong, and sound, and still, just as he had last seen them.
But, though the bank was almost always with him, and though the coach (in a confused way, like the presence of pain under an opiate) was always with him, there was another current of impression that never ceased to run, all through the night. He was on his way to dig some one out of a grave.
Now, which of the multitude of faces that showed themselves before him was the true face of the buried person, the shadows of the night did not indicate; but they were all the faces of a man of five-and-forty by years, and they differed principally in the passions they expressed, and in the ghastliness of their worn and wasted state. Pride, contempt, defiance, stubbornness, submission, lamentation, succeeded one another; so did varieties of sunken cheek, cadaverous colour, emaciated hands and figures. But the face was in the main one face, and every head was prematurely white. A hundred times the dozing passenger inquired of this spectre:
“Buried how long?”
The answer was always the same: “Almost eighteen years.”
“You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?”
“Long ago.”
“You know that you are recalled to life?”
“They tell me so.”
“I hope you care to live?”
“I can’t say.”
“Shall I show her to you? Will you come and see her?”
The answers to this question were various and contradictory. Sometimes the broken reply was, “Wait! It would kill me if I saw her too soon.” Sometimes, it was given in a tender rain of tears, and then it was, “Take me to her.” Sometimes it was staring and bewildered, and then it was, “I don’t know her. I don’t understand.”
After such imaginary discourse, the passenger in his fancy would dig, and dig, dig—now with a spade, now with a great key, now with his hands—to dig this wretched creature out. Got out at last, with earth hanging about his face and hair, he would suddenly fan away to dust. The passenger would then start to himself, and lower the window, to get the reality of mist and rain on his cheek.
Yet even when his eyes were opened on the mist and rain, on the moving patch of light from the lamps, and the hedge at the roadside retreating by jerks, the night shadows outside the coach would fall into the train of the night shadows within. The real Banking-house by Temple Bar, the real business of the past day, the real strong rooms, the real express sent after him, and the real message returned, would all be there. Out of the midst of them, the ghostly face would rise, and he would accost it again.
“Buried how long?”
“Almost eighteen years.”
“I hope you care to live?”
“I can’t say.”
Dig—dig—dig—until an impatient movement from one of the two passengers would admonish him to pull up the window, draw his arm securely through the leathern strap, and speculate upon the two slumbering forms, until his mind lost its hold of them, and they again slid away into the bank and the grave.
“Buried how long?”
“Almost eighteen years.”
“You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?”
“Long ago.”
The words were still in his hearing as just spoken—distinctly in his hearing as ever spoken words had been in his life—when the weary passenger started to the consciousness of daylight, and found that the shadows of the night were gone.
He lowered the window, and looked out at the rising sun. There was a ridge of ploughed land, with a plough upon it where it had been left last night when the horses were unyoked; beyond, a quiet coppice-wood, in which many leaves of burning red and golden yellow still remained upon the trees. Though the earth was cold and wet, the sky was clear, and the sun rose bright, placid, and beautiful.
“Eighteen years!” said the passenger, looking at the sun. “Gracious Creator of day! To be buried alive for eighteen years!”
CHAPTER IV. The Preparation
When the mail got successfully to Dover, in the course of the forenoon, the head drawer at the Royal George Hotel opened the coach-door as his custom was. He did it with some flourish of ceremony, for a mail journey from London in winter was an achievement to congratulate an adventurous traveller upon.
By that time, there was only one adventurous traveller left be congratulated: for the two others had been set down at their respective roadside destinations. The mildewy inside of the coach, with its damp and dirty straw, its disagreeable smell, and its obscurity, was rather like a larger dog-kennel. Mr. Lorry, the passenger, shaking himself out of it in chains of straw, a tangle of shaggy wrapper, flapping hat, and muddy legs, was rather like a larger sort of dog.
“There will be a packet to Calais, tomorrow, drawer?”
“Yes, sir, if the weather holds and the wind sets tolerable fair. The tide will serve pretty nicely at about two in the afternoon, sir. Bed, sir?”
“I shall not go to bed till night; but I want a bedroom, and a barber.”
“And then breakfast, sir? Yes, sir. That way, sir, if you please. Show Concord! Gentleman’s valise and hot water to Concord. Pull off gentleman’s boots in Concord. (You will find a fine sea-coal fire, sir.) Fetch barber to Concord. Stir about there, now, for Concord!”
The Concord bed-chamber being always assigned to a passenger by the mail, and passengers by the mail being always heavily wrapped up from head to foot, the room had the odd interest for the establishment of the Royal George, that although but one kind of man was seen to go into it, all kinds and varieties of men came out of it. Consequently, another drawer, and two porters, and several maids and the landlady, were all loitering by accident at various points of the road between the Concord and the coffee-room, when a gentleman of sixty, formally dressed in a brown suit of clothes, pretty well worn, but very well kept, with large square cuffs and large flaps to the pockets, passed along on his way to his breakfast.
The coffee-room had no other occupant, that forenoon, than the gentleman in brown. His breakfast-table was drawn before the fire, and as he sat, with its light shining on him, waiting for the meal, he sat so still, that he might have been sitting for his portrait.
Very orderly and methodical he looked, with a hand on each knee, and a loud watch ticking a sonorous sermon under his flapped waist-coat, as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and evanescence of the brisk fire. He had a good leg, and was a little vain of it, for his brown stockings fitted sleek and close, and were of a fine texture; his shoes and buckles, too, though plain, were trim. He wore an odd little sleek crisp flaxen wig, setting very close to his head: which wig, it is to be presumed, was made of hair, but which looked far more as though it were spun from filaments of silk or glass. His linen, though not of a fineness in accordance with his stockings, was as white as the tops of the waves that broke upon the neighbouring beach, or the specks of sail that glinted in the sunlight far at sea. A face habitually suppressed and quieted, was still lighted up under the quaint wig by a pair of moist bright eyes that it must have cost their owner, in years gone by, some pains to drill to the composed and reserved expression of Tellson’s Bank. He had a healthy colour in his cheeks, and his face, though lined, bore few traces of anxiety. But, perhaps the confidential bachelor clerks in Tellson’s Bank were principally occupied with the cares of other people; and perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.
Completing his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his portrait, Mr. Lorry dropped off to sleep. The arrival of his breakfast roused him, and he said to the drawer, as he moved his chair to it:
“I wish accommodation prepared for a young lady who may come here at any time to-day. She may ask for Mr. Jarvis Lorry, or she may only ask for a gentleman from Tellson’s Bank. Please to let me know.”
“Yes, sir. Tellson’s Bank in London, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, sir. We have oftentimes the honour to entertain your gentlemen in their travelling backwards and forwards betwixt London and Paris, sir. A vast deal of travelling, sir, in Tellson and Company’s House.”
“Yes. We are quite a French House, as well as an English one.”
“Yes, sir. Not much in the habit of such travelling yourself, I think, sir?”
“Not of late years. It is fifteen years since we—since I—came last from France.”
“Indeed, sir? That was before my time here, sir. Before our people’s time here, sir. The George was in other hands at that time, sir.”
“I believe so.”
“But I would hold a pretty wager, sir, that a House like Tellson and Company was flourishing, a matter of fifty, not to speak of fifteen years ago?”
“You might treble that, and say a hundred and fifty, yet not be far from the truth.”
“Indeed, sir!”
Rounding his mouth and both his eyes, as he stepped backward from the table, the waiter shifted his napkin from his right arm to his left, dropped into a comfortable attitude, and stood surveying the guest while he ate and drank, as from an observatory or watchtower. According to the immemorial usage of waiters in all ages.
When Mr. Lorry had finished his breakfast, he went out for a stroll on the beach. The little narrow, crooked town of Dover hid itself away from the beach, and ran its head into the chalk cliffs, like a marine ostrich. The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumbling wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction. It thundered at the town, and thundered at the cliffs, and brought the coast down, madly. The air among the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavour that one might have supposed sick fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick people went down to be dipped in the sea. A little fishing was done in the port, and a quantity of strolling about by night, and looking seaward: particularly at those times when the tide made, and was near flood. Small tradesmen, who did no business whatever, sometimes unaccountably realised large fortunes, and it was remarkable that nobody in the neighbourhood could endure a lamplighter.
As the day declined into the afternoon, and the air, which had been at intervals clear enough to allow the French coast to be seen, became again charged with mist and vapour, Mr. Lorry’s thoughts seemed to cloud too. When it was dark, and he sat before the coffee-room fire, awaiting his dinner as he had awaited his breakfast, his mind was busily digging, digging, digging, in the live red coals.
A bottle of good claret after dinner does a digger in the red coals no harm, otherwise than as it has a tendency to throw him out of work. Mr. Lorry had been idle a long time, and had just poured out his last glassful of wine with as complete an appearance of satisfaction as is ever to be found in an elderly gentleman of a fresh complexion who has got to the end of a bottle, when a rattling of wheels came up the narrow street, and rumbled into the inn-yard.
He set down his glass untouched. “This is Mam’selle!” said he.
In a very few minutes the waiter came in to announce that Miss Manette had arrived from London, and would be happy to see the gentleman from Tellson’s.
“So soon?”
Miss Manette had taken some refreshment on the road, and required none then, and was extremely anxious to see the gentleman from Tellson’s immediately, if it suited his pleasure and convenience.
The gentleman from Tellson’s had nothing left for it but to empty his glass with an air of stolid desperation, settle his odd little flaxen wig at the ears, and follow the waiter to Miss Manette’s apartment. It was a large, dark room, furnished in a funereal manner with black horsehair, and loaded with heavy dark tables. These had been oiled and oiled, until the two tall candles on the table in the middle of the room were gloomily reflected on every leaf; as if they were buried, in deep graves of black mahogany, and no light to speak of could be expected from them until they were dug out.
The obscurity was so difficult to penetrate that Mr. Lorry, picking his way over the well-worn Turkey carpet, supposed Miss Manette to be, for the moment, in some adjacent room, until, having got past the two tall candles, he saw standing to receive him by the table between them and the fire, a young lady of not more than seventeen, in a riding-cloak, and still holding her straw travelling-hat by its ribbon in her hand. As his eyes rested on a short, slight, pretty figure, a quantity of golden hair, a pair of blue eyes that met his own with an inquiring look, and a forehead with a singular capacity (remembering how young and smooth it was), of rifting and knitting itself into an expression that was not quite one of perplexity, or wonder, or alarm, or merely of a bright fixed attention, though it included all the four expressions—as his eyes rested on these things, a sudden vivid likeness passed before him, of a child whom he had held in his arms on the passage across that very Channel, one cold time, when the hail drifted heavily and the sea ran high. The likeness passed away, like a breath along the surface of the gaunt pier-glass behind her, on the frame of which, a hospital procession of negro cupids, several headless and all cripples, were offering black baskets of Dead Sea fruit to black divinities of the feminine gender—and he made his formal bow to Miss Manette.
“Pray take a seat, sir.” In a very clear and pleasant young voice; a little foreign in its accent, but a very little indeed.
“I kiss your hand, miss,” said Mr. Lorry, with the manners of an earlier date, as he made his formal bow again, and took his seat.
“I received a letter from the Bank, sir, yesterday, informing me that some intelligence—or discovery—”
“The word is not material, miss; either word will do.”
“—respecting the small property of my poor father, whom I never saw—so long dead—”
Mr. Lorry moved in his chair, and cast a troubled look towards the hospital procession of negro cupids. As if they had any help for anybody in their absurd baskets!
“—rendered it necessary that I should go to Paris, there to communicate with a gentleman of the Bank, so good as to be despatched to Paris for the purpose.”
“Myself.”
“As I was prepared to hear, sir.”
She curtseyed to him (young ladies made curtseys in those days), with a pretty desire to convey to him that she felt how much older and wiser he was than she. He made her another bow.
“I replied to the Bank, sir, that as it was considered necessary, by those who know, and who are so kind as to advise me, that I should go to France, and that as I am an orphan and have no friend who could go with me, I should esteem it highly if I might be permitted to place myself, during the journey, under that worthy gentleman’s protection. The gentleman had left London, but I think a messenger was sent after him to beg the favour of his waiting for me here.”
“I was happy,” said Mr. Lorry, “to be entrusted with the charge. I shall be more happy to execute it.”
“Sir, I thank you indeed. I thank you very gratefully. It was told me by the Bank that the gentleman would explain to me the details of the business, and that I must prepare myself to find them of a surprising nature. I have done my best to prepare myself, and I naturally have a strong and eager interest to know what they are.”
“Naturally,” said Mr. Lorry. “Yes—I—”
After a pause, he added, again settling the crisp flaxen wig at the ears, “It is very difficult to begin.”
He did not begin, but, in his indecision, met her glance. The young forehead lifted itself into that singular expression—but it was pretty and characteristic, besides being singular—and she raised her hand, as if with an involuntary action she caught at, or stayed some passing shadow.
“Are you quite a stranger to me, sir?”
“Am I not?” Mr. Lorry opened his hands, and extended them outwards with an argumentative smile.
Between the eyebrows and just over the little feminine nose, the line of which was as delicate and fine as it was possible to be, the expression deepened itself as she took her seat thoughtfully in the chair by which she had hitherto remained standing. He watched her as she mused, and the moment she raised her eyes again, went on:
“In your adopted country, I presume, I cannot do better than address you as a young English lady, Miss Manette?”
“If you please, sir.”
“Miss Manette, I am a man of business. I have a business charge to acquit myself of. In your reception of it, don’t heed me any more than if I was a speaking machine—truly, I am not much else. I will, with your leave, relate to you, miss, the story of one of our customers.”
“Story!”
He seemed wilfully to mistake the word she had repeated, when he added, in a hurry, “Yes, customers; in the banking business we usually call our connection our customers. He was a French gentleman; a scientific gentleman; a man of great acquirements—a Doctor.”
“Not of Beauvais?”
“Why, yes, of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father, the gentleman was of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father, the gentleman was of repute in Paris. I had the honour of knowing him there. Our relations were business relations, but confidential. I was at that time in our French House, and had been—oh! twenty years.”
“At that time—I may ask, at what time, sir?”
“I speak, miss, of twenty years ago. He married—an English lady—and I was one of the trustees. His affairs, like the affairs of many other French gentlemen and French families, were entirely in Tellson’s hands. In a similar way I am, or I have been, trustee of one kind or other for scores of our customers. These are mere business relations, miss; there is no friendship in them, no particular interest, nothing like sentiment. I have passed from one to another, in the course of my business life, just as I pass from one of our customers to another in the course of my business day; in short, I have no feelings; I am a mere machine. To go on—”
“But this is my father’s story, sir; and I begin to think”—the curiously roughened forehead was very intent upon him—“that when I was left an orphan through my mother’s surviving my father only two years, it was you who brought me to England. I am almost sure it was you.”
Mr. Lorry took the hesitating little hand that confidingly advanced to take his, and he put it with some ceremony to his lips. He then conducted the young lady straightway to her chair again, and, holding the chair-back with his left hand, and using his right by turns to rub his chin, pull his wig at the ears, or point what he said, stood looking down into her face while she sat looking up into his.
“Miss Manette, it was I. And you will see how truly I spoke of myself just now, in saying I had no feelings, and that all the relations I hold with my fellow-creatures are mere business relations, when you reflect that I have never seen you since. No; you have been the ward of Tellson’s House since, and I have been busy with the other business of Tellson’s House since. Feelings! I have no time for them, no chance of them. I pass my whole life, miss, in turning an immense pecuniary Mangle.”
After this odd description of his daily routine of employment, Mr. Lorry flattened his flaxen wig upon his head with both hands (which was most unnecessary, for nothing could be flatter than its shining surface was before), and resumed his former attitude.
“So far, miss (as you have remarked), this is the story of your regretted father. Now comes the difference. If your father had not died when he did—Don’t be frightened! How you start!”
She did, indeed, start. And she caught his wrist with both her hands.
“Pray,” said Mr. Lorry, in a soothing tone, bringing his left hand from the back of the chair to lay it on the supplicatory fingers that clasped him in so violent a tremble: “pray control your agitation—a matter of business. As I was saying—”
Her look so discomposed him that he stopped, wandered, and began anew:
“As I was saying; if Monsieur Manette had not died; if he had suddenly and silently disappeared; if he had been spirited away; if it had not been difficult to guess to what dreadful place, though no art could trace him; if he had an enemy in some compatriot who could exercise a privilege that I in my own time have known the boldest people afraid to speak of in a whisper, across the water there; for instance, the privilege of filling up blank forms for the consignment of any one to the oblivion of a prison for any length of time; if his wife had implored the king, the queen, the court, the clergy, for any tidings of him, and all quite in vain;—then the history of your father would have been the history of this unfortunate gentleman, the Doctor of Beauvais.”
“I entreat you to tell me more, sir.”
“I will. I am going to. You can bear it?”
“I can bear anything but the uncertainty you leave me in at this moment.”
“You speak collectedly, and you—are collected. That’s good!” (Though his manner was less satisfied than his words.) “A matter of business. Regard it as a matter of business—business that must be done. Now if this doctor’s wife, though a lady of great courage and spirit, had suffered so intensely from this cause before her little child was born—”
“The little child was a daughter, sir.”
“A daughter. A-a-matter of business—don’t be distressed. Miss, if the poor lady had suffered so intensely before her little child was born, that she came to the determination of sparing the poor child the inheritance of any part of the agony she had known the pains of, by rearing her in the belief that her father was dead—No, don’t kneel! In Heaven’s name why should you kneel to me!”
“For the truth. O dear, good, compassionate sir, for the truth!”
“A—a matter of business. You confuse me, and how can I transact business if I am confused? Let us be clear-headed. If you could kindly mention now, for instance, what nine times ninepence are, or how many shillings in twenty guineas, it would be so encouraging. I should be so much more at my ease about your state of mind.”
Without directly answering to this appeal, she sat so still when he had very gently raised her, and the hands that had not ceased to clasp his wrists were so much more steady than they had been, that she communicated some reassurance to Mr. Jarvis Lorry.
“That’s right, that’s right. Courage! Business! You have business before you; useful business. Miss Manette, your mother took this course with you. And when she died—I believe broken-hearted—having never slackened her unavailing search for your father, she left you, at two years old, to grow to be blooming, beautiful, and happy, without the dark cloud upon you of living in uncertainty whether your father soon wore his heart out in prison, or wasted there through many lingering years.”
As he said the words he looked down, with an admiring pity, on the flowing golden hair; as if he pictured to himself that it might have been already tinged with grey.
“You know that your parents had no great possession, and that what they had was secured to your mother and to you. There has been no new discovery, of money, or of any other property; but—”
He felt his wrist held closer, and he stopped. The expression in the forehead, which had so particularly attracted his notice, and which was now immovable, had deepened into one of pain and horror.
“But he has been—been found. He is alive. Greatly changed, it is too probable; almost a wreck, it is possible; though we will hope the best. Still, alive. Your father has been taken to the house of an old servant in Paris, and we are going there: I, to identify him if I can: you, to restore him to life, love, duty, rest, comfort.”
A shiver ran through her frame, and from it through his. She said, in a low, distinct, awe-stricken voice, as if she were saying it in a dream,
“I am going to see his Ghost! It will be his Ghost—not him!”
Mr. Lorry quietly chafed the hands that held his arm. “There, there, there! See now, see now! The best and the worst are known to you, now. You are well on your way to the poor wronged gentleman, and, with a fair sea voyage, and a fair land journey, you will be soon at his dear side.”
She repeated in the same tone, sunk to a whisper, “I have been free, I have been happy, yet his Ghost has never haunted me!”
“Only one thing more,” said Mr. Lorry, laying stress upon it as a wholesome means of enforcing her attention: “he has been found under another name; his own, long forgotten or long concealed. It would be worse than useless now to inquire which; worse than useless to seek to know whether he has been for years overlooked, or always designedly held prisoner. It would be worse than useless now to make any inquiries, because it would be dangerous. Better not to mention the subject, anywhere or in any way, and to remove him—for a while at all events—out of France. Even I, safe as an Englishman, and even Tellson’s, important as they are to French credit, avoid all naming of the matter. I carry about me, not a scrap of writing openly referring to it. This is a secret service altogether. My credentials, entries, and memoranda, are all comprehended in the one line, ‘Recalled to Life;’ which may mean anything. But what is the matter! She doesn’t notice a word! Miss Manette!”
Perfectly still and silent, and not even fallen back in her chair, she sat under his hand, utterly insensible; with her eyes open and fixed upon him, and with that last expression looking as if it were carved or branded into her forehead. So close was her hold upon his arm, that he feared to detach himself lest he should hurt her; therefore he called out loudly for assistance without moving.
A wild-looking woman, whom even in his agitation, Mr. Lorry observed to be all of a red colour, and to have red hair, and to be dressed in some extraordinary tight-fitting fashion, and to have on her head a most wonderful bonnet like a Grenadier wooden measure, and good measure too, or a great Stilton cheese, came running into the room in advance of the inn servants, and soon settled the question of his detachment from the poor young lady, by laying a brawny hand upon his chest, and sending him flying back against the nearest wall.
(“I really think this must be a man!” was Mr. Lorry’s breathless reflection, simultaneously with his coming against the wall.)
“Why, look at you all!” bawled this figure, addressing the inn servants. “Why don’t you go and fetch things, instead of standing there staring at me? I am not so much to look at, am I? Why don’t you go and fetch things? I’ll let you know, if you don’t bring smelling-salts, cold water, and vinegar, quick, I will.”
There was an immediate dispersal for these restoratives, and she softly laid the patient on a sofa, and tended her with great skill and gentleness: calling her “my precious!” and “my bird!” and spreading her golden hair aside over her shoulders with great pride and care.
“And you in brown!” she said, indignantly turning to Mr. Lorry; “couldn’t you tell her what you had to tell her, without frightening her to death? Look at her, with her pretty pale face and her cold hands. Do you call that being a Banker?”
Mr. Lorry was so exceedingly disconcerted by a question so hard to answer, that he could only look on, at a distance, with much feebler sympathy and humility, while the strong woman, having banished the inn servants under the mysterious penalty of “letting them know” something not mentioned if they stayed there, staring, recovered her charge by a regular series of gradations, and coaxed her to lay her drooping head upon her shoulder.
“I hope she will do well now,” said Mr. Lorry.
“No thanks to you in brown, if she does. My darling pretty!”
“I hope,” said Mr. Lorry, after another pause of feeble sympathy and humility, “that you accompany Miss Manette to France?”
“A likely thing, too!” replied the strong woman. “If it was ever intended that I should go across salt water, do you suppose Providence would have cast my lot in an island?”
This being another question hard to answer, Mr. Jarvis Lorry withdrew to consider it.
CHAPTER V. The Wine-shop
A large cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street. The accident had happened in getting it out of a cart; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the stones just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell.
All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might have thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them, had dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded, each by its own jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women’s heads, which were squeezed dry into infants’ mouths; others made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others devoted themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish. There was no drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along with it, that there might have been a scavenger in the street, if anybody acquainted with it could have believed in such a miraculous presence.
A shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices—voices of men, women, and children—resounded in the street while this wine game lasted. There was little roughness in the sport, and much playfulness. There was a special companionship in it, an observable inclination on the part of every one to join some other one, which led, especially among the luckier or lighter-hearted, to frolicsome embraces, drinking of healths, shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and dancing, a dozen together. When the wine was gone, and the places where it had been most abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern by fingers, these demonstrations ceased, as suddenly as they had broken out. The man who had left his saw sticking in the firewood he was cutting, set it in motion again; the women who had left on a door-step the little pot of hot ashes, at which she had been trying to soften the pain in her own starved fingers and toes, or in those of her child, returned to it; men with bare arms, matted locks, and cadaverous faces, who had emerged into the winter light from cellars, moved away, to descend again; and a gloom gathered on the scene that appeared more natural to it than sunshine.
The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left red marks on the billets; and the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby, was stained with the stain of the old rag she wound about her head again. Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees—BLOOD.
The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there.
And now that the cloud settled on Saint Antoine, which a momentary gleam had driven from his sacred countenance, the darkness of it was heavy—cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance, and want, were the lords in waiting on the saintly presence—nobles of great power all of them; but, most especially the last. Samples of a people that had undergone a terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill, and certainly not in the fabulous mill which ground old people young, shivered at every corner, passed in and out at every doorway, looked from every window, fluttered in every vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The mill which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people old; the children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sigh, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and started up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker’s shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomics in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil.
Its abiding place was in all things fitted to it. A narrow winding street, full of offence and stench, with other narrow winding streets diverging, all peopled by rags and nightcaps, and all smelling of rags and nightcaps, and all visible things with a brooding look upon them that looked ill. In the hunted air of the people there was yet some wild-beast thought of the possibility of turning at bay. Depressed and slinking though they were, eyes of fire were not wanting among them; nor compressed lips, white with what they suppressed; nor foreheads knitted into the likeness of the gallows-rope they mused about enduring, or inflicting. The trade signs (and they were almost as many as the shops) were, all, grim illustrations of Want. The butcher and the porkman painted up, only the leanest scrags of meat; the baker, the coarsest of meagre loaves. The people rudely pictured as drinking in the wine-shops, croaked over their scanty measures of thin wine and beer, and were gloweringly confidential together. Nothing was represented in a flourishing condition, save tools and weapons; but, the cutler’s knives and axes were sharp and bright, the smith’s hammers were heavy, and the gunmaker’s stock was murderous. The crippling stones of the pavement, with their many little reservoirs of mud and water, had no footways, but broke off abruptly at the doors. The kennel, to make amends, ran down the middle of the street—when it ran at all: which was only after heavy rains, and then it ran, by many eccentric fits, into the houses. Across the streets, at wide intervals, one clumsy lamp was slung by a rope and pulley; at night, when the lamplighter had let these down, and lighted, and hoisted them again, a feeble grove of dim wicks swung in a sickly manner overhead, as if they were at sea. Indeed they were at sea, and the ship and crew were in peril of tempest.
For, the time was to come, when the gaunt scarecrows of that region should have watched the lamplighter, in their idleness and hunger, so long, as to conceive the idea of improving on his method, and hauling up men by those ropes and pulleys, to flare upon the darkness of their condition. But, the time was not come yet; and every wind that blew over France shook the rags of the scarecrows in vain, for the birds, fine of song and feather, took no warning.
The wine-shop was a corner shop, better than most others in its appearance and degree, and the master of the wine-shop had stood outside it, in a yellow waistcoat and green breeches, looking on at the struggle for the lost wine. “It’s not my affair,” said he, with a final shrug of the shoulders. “The people from the market did it. Let them bring another.”
There, his eyes happening to catch the tall joker writing up his joke, he called to him across the way:
“Say, then, my Gaspard, what do you do there?”
The fellow pointed to his joke with immense significance, as is often the way with his tribe. It missed its mark, and completely failed, as is often the way with his tribe too.
“What now? Are you a subject for the mad hospital?” said the wine-shop keeper, crossing the road, and obliterating the jest with a handful of mud, picked up for the purpose, and smeared over it. “Why do you write in the public streets? Is there—tell me thou—is there no other place to write such words in?”
In his expostulation he dropped his cleaner hand (perhaps accidentally, perhaps not) upon the joker’s heart. The joker rapped it with his own, took a nimble spring upward, and came down in a fantastic dancing attitude, with one of his stained shoes jerked off his foot into his hand, and held out. A joker of an extremely, not to say wolfishly practical character, he looked, under those circumstances.
“Put it on, put it on,” said the other. “Call wine, wine; and finish there.” With that advice, he wiped his soiled hand upon the joker’s dress, such as it was—quite deliberately, as having dirtied the hand on his account; and then recrossed the road and entered the wine-shop.
This wine-shop keeper was a bull-necked, martial-looking man of thirty, and he should have been of a hot temperament, for, although it was a bitter day, he wore no coat, but carried one slung over his shoulder. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, too, and his brown arms were bare to the elbows. Neither did he wear anything more on his head than his own crisply-curling short dark hair. He was a dark man altogether, with good eyes and a good bold breadth between them. Good-humoured looking on the whole, but implacable-looking, too; evidently a man of a strong resolution and a set purpose; a man not desirable to be met, rushing down a narrow pass with a gulf on either side, for nothing would turn the man.
Madame Defarge, his wife, sat in the shop behind the counter as he came in. Madame Defarge was a stout woman of about his own age, with a watchful eye that seldom seemed to look at anything, a large hand heavily ringed, a steady face, strong features, and great composure of manner. There was a character about Madame Defarge, from which one might have predicated that she did not often make mistakes against herself in any of the reckonings over which she presided. Madame Defarge being sensitive to cold, was wrapped in fur, and had a quantity of bright shawl twined about her head, though not to the concealment of her large earrings. Her knitting was before her, but she had laid it down to pick her teeth with a toothpick. Thus engaged, with her right elbow supported by her left hand, Madame Defarge said nothing when her lord came in, but coughed just one grain of cough. This, in combination with the lifting of her darkly defined eyebrows over her toothpick by the breadth of a line, suggested to her husband that he would do well to look round the shop among the customers, for any new customer who had dropped in while he stepped over the way.
The wine-shop keeper accordingly rolled his eyes about, until they rested upon an elderly gentleman and a young lady, who were seated in a corner. Other company were there: two playing cards, two playing dominoes, three standing by the counter lengthening out a short supply of wine. As he passed behind the counter, he took notice that the elderly gentleman said in a look to the young lady, “This is our man.”
“What the devil do you do in that galley there?” said Monsieur Defarge to himself; “I don’t know you.”
But, he feigned not to notice the two strangers, and fell into discourse with the triumvirate of customers who were drinking at the counter.
“How goes it, Jacques?” said one of these three to Monsieur Defarge. “Is all the spilt wine swallowed?”
“Every drop, Jacques,” answered Monsieur Defarge.
When this interchange of Christian name was effected, Madame Defarge, picking her teeth with her toothpick, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line.
“It is not often,” said the second of the three, addressing Monsieur Defarge, “that many of these miserable beasts know the taste of wine, or of anything but black bread and death. Is it not so, Jacques?”
“It is so, Jacques,” Monsieur Defarge returned.
At this second interchange of the Christian name, Madame Defarge, still using her toothpick with profound composure, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line.
The last of the three now said his say, as he put down his empty drinking vessel and smacked his lips.
“Ah! So much the worse! A bitter taste it is that such poor cattle always have in their mouths, and hard lives they live, Jacques. Am I right, Jacques?”
“You are right, Jacques,” was the response of Monsieur Defarge.
This third interchange of the Christian name was completed at the moment when Madame Defarge put her toothpick by, kept her eyebrows up, and slightly rustled in her seat.
“Hold then! True!” muttered her husband. “Gentlemen—my wife!”
The three customers pulled off their hats to Madame Defarge, with three flourishes. She acknowledged their homage by bending her head, and giving them a quick look. Then she glanced in a casual manner round the wine-shop, took up her knitting with great apparent calmness and repose of spirit, and became absorbed in it.
“Gentlemen,” said her husband, who had kept his bright eye observantly upon her, “good day. The chamber, furnished bachelor-fashion, that you wished to see, and were inquiring for when I stepped out, is on the fifth floor. The doorway of the staircase gives on the little courtyard close to the left here,” pointing with his hand, “near to the window of my establishment. But, now that I remember, one of you has already been there, and can show the way. Gentlemen, adieu!”
They paid for their wine, and left the place. The eyes of Monsieur Defarge were studying his wife at her knitting when the elderly gentleman advanced from his corner, and begged the favour of a word.
“Willingly, sir,” said Monsieur Defarge, and quietly stepped with him to the door.
Their conference was very short, but very decided. Almost at the first word, Monsieur Defarge started and became deeply attentive. It had not lasted a minute, when he nodded and went out. The gentleman then beckoned to the young lady, and they, too, went out. Madame Defarge knitted with nimble fingers and steady eyebrows, and saw nothing.
Mr. Jarvis Lorry and Miss Manette, emerging from the wine-shop thus, joined Monsieur Defarge in the doorway to which he had directed his own company just before. It opened from a stinking little black courtyard, and was the general public entrance to a great pile of houses, inhabited by a great number of people. In the gloomy tile-paved entry to the gloomy tile-paved staircase, Monsieur Defarge bent down on one knee to the child of his old master, and put her hand to his lips. It was a gentle action, but not at all gently done; a very remarkable transformation had come over him in a few seconds. He had no good-humour in his face, nor any openness of aspect left, but had become a secret, angry, dangerous man.
“It is very high; it is a little difficult. Better to begin slowly.” Thus, Monsieur Defarge, in a stern voice, to Mr. Lorry, as they began ascending the stairs.
“Is he alone?” the latter whispered.
“Alone! God help him, who should be with him!” said the other, in the same low voice.
“Is he always alone, then?”
“Yes.”
“Of his own desire?”
“Of his own necessity. As he was, when I first saw him after they found me and demanded to know if I would take him, and, at my peril be discreet—as he was then, so he is now.”
“He is greatly changed?”
“Changed!”
The keeper of the wine-shop stopped to strike the wall with his hand, and mutter a tremendous curse. No direct answer could have been half so forcible. Mr. Lorry’s spirits grew heavier and heavier, as he and his two companions ascended higher and higher.
Such a staircase, with its accessories, in the older and more crowded parts of Paris, would be bad enough now; but, at that time, it was vile indeed to unaccustomed and unhardened senses. Every little habitation within the great foul nest of one high building—that is to say, the room or rooms within every door that opened on the general staircase—left its own heap of refuse on its own landing, besides flinging other refuse from its own windows. The uncontrollable and hopeless mass of decomposition so engendered, would have polluted the air, even if poverty and deprivation had not loaded it with their intangible impurities; the two bad sources combined made it almost insupportable. Through such an atmosphere, by a steep dark shaft of dirt and poison, the way lay. Yielding to his own disturbance of mind, and to his young companion’s agitation, which became greater every instant, Mr. Jarvis Lorry twice stopped to rest. Each of these stoppages was made at a doleful grating, by which any languishing good airs that were left uncorrupted, seemed to escape, and all spoilt and sickly vapours seemed to crawl in. Through the rusted bars, tastes, rather than glimpses, were caught of the jumbled neighbourhood; and nothing within range, nearer or lower than the summits of the two great towers of Notre-Dame, had any promise on it of healthy life or wholesome aspirations.
At last, the top of the staircase was gained, and they stopped for the third time. There was yet an upper staircase, of a steeper inclination and of contracted dimensions, to be ascended, before the garret story was reached. The keeper of the wine-shop, always going a little in advance, and always going on the side which Mr. Lorry took, as though he dreaded to be asked any question by the young lady, turned himself about here, and, carefully feeling in the pockets of the coat he carried over his shoulder, took out a key.
“The door is locked then, my friend?” said Mr. Lorry, surprised.
“Ay. Yes,” was the grim reply of Monsieur Defarge.
“You think it necessary to keep the unfortunate gentleman so retired?”
“I think it necessary to turn the key.” Monsieur Defarge whispered it closer in his ear, and frowned heavily.
“Why?”
“Why! Because he has lived so long, locked up, that he would be frightened—rave—tear himself to pieces—die—come to I know not what harm—if his door was left open.”
“Is it possible!” exclaimed Mr. Lorry.
“Is it possible!” repeated Defarge, bitterly. “Yes. And a beautiful world we live in, when it is possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done—done, see you!—under that sky there, every day. Long live the Devil. Let us go on.”
This dialogue had been held in so very low a whisper, that not a word of it had reached the young lady’s ears. But, by this time she trembled under such strong emotion, and her face expressed such deep anxiety, and, above all, such dread and terror, that Mr. Lorry felt it incumbent on him to speak a word or two of reassurance.
“Courage, dear miss! Courage! Business! The worst will be over in a moment; it is but passing the room-door, and the worst is over. Then, all the good you bring to him, all the relief, all the happiness you bring to him, begin. Let our good friend here, assist you on that side. That’s well, friend Defarge. Come, now. Business, business!”
They went up slowly and softly. The staircase was short, and they were soon at the top. There, as it had an abrupt turn in it, they came all at once in sight of three men, whose heads were bent down close together at the side of a door, and who were intently looking into the room to which the door belonged, through some chinks or holes in the wall. On hearing footsteps close at hand, these three turned, and rose, and showed themselves to be the three of one name who had been drinking in the wine-shop.
“I forgot them in the surprise of your visit,” explained Monsieur Defarge. “Leave us, good boys; we have business here.”
The three glided by, and went silently down.
There appearing to be no other door on that floor, and the keeper of the wine-shop going straight to this one when they were left alone, Mr. Lorry asked him in a whisper, with a little anger:
“Do you make a show of Monsieur Manette?”
“I show him, in the way you have seen, to a chosen few.”
“Is that well?”
“I think it is well.”
“Who are the few? How do you choose them?”
“I choose them as real men, of my name—Jacques is my name—to whom the sight is likely to do good. Enough; you are English; that is another thing. Stay there, if you please, a little moment.”
With an admonitory gesture to keep them back, he stooped, and looked in through the crevice in the wall. Soon raising his head again, he struck twice or thrice upon the door—evidently with no other object than to make a noise there. With the same intention, he drew the key across it, three or four times, before he put it clumsily into the lock, and turned it as heavily as he could.
The door slowly opened inward under his hand, and he looked into the room and said something. A faint voice answered something. Little more than a single syllable could have been spoken on either side.
He looked back over his shoulder, and beckoned them to enter. Mr. Lorry got his arm securely round the daughter’s waist, and held her; for he felt that she was sinking.
“A-a-a-business, business!” he urged, with a moisture that was not of business shining on his cheek. “Come in, come in!”
“I am afraid of it,” she answered, shuddering.
“Of it? What?”
“I mean of him. Of my father.”
Rendered in a manner desperate, by her state and by the beckoning of their conductor, he drew over his neck the arm that shook upon his shoulder, lifted her a little, and hurried her into the room. He sat her down just within the door, and held her, clinging to him.
Defarge drew out the key, closed the door, locked it on the inside, took out the key again, and held it in his hand. All this he did, methodically, and with as loud and harsh an accompaniment of noise as he could make. Finally, he walked across the room with a measured tread to where the window was. He stopped there, and faced round.
The garret, built to be a depository for firewood and the like, was dim and dark: for, the window of dormer shape, was in truth a door in the roof, with a little crane over it for the hoisting up of stores from the street: unglazed, and closing up the middle in two pieces, like any other door of French construction. To exclude the cold, one half of this door was fast closed, and the other was opened but a very little way. Such a scanty portion of light was admitted through these means, that it was difficult, on first coming in, to see anything; and long habit alone could have slowly formed in any one, the ability to do any work requiring nicety in such obscurity. Yet, work of that kind was being done in the garret; for, with his back towards the door, and his face towards the window where the keeper of the wine-shop stood looking at him, a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes.
CHAPTER VI. The Shoemaker
“Good day!” said Monsieur Defarge, looking down at the white head that bent low over the shoemaking.
It was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice responded to the salutation, as if it were at a distance:
“Good day!”
“You are still hard at work, I see?”
After a long silence, the head was lifted for another moment, and the voice replied, “Yes—I am working.” This time, a pair of haggard eyes had looked at the questioner, before the face had dropped again.
The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the faintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it was the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was like a voice underground. So expressive it was, of a hopeless and lost creature, that a famished traveller, wearied out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would have remembered home and friends in such a tone before lying down to die.
Some minutes of silent work had passed: and the haggard eyes had looked up again: not with any interest or curiosity, but with a dull mechanical perception, beforehand, that the spot where the only visitor they were aware of had stood, was not yet empty.
“I want,” said Defarge, who had not removed his gaze from the shoemaker, “to let in a little more light here. You can bear a little more?”
The shoemaker stopped his work; looked with a vacant air of listening, at the floor on one side of him; then similarly, at the floor on 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 a stress upon the second word.)
The opened half-door was opened a little further, and secured at that angle for the time. A broad ray of light fell into the garret, and showed the workman with an unfinished shoe upon his lap, pausing in his labour. His few common tools and various scraps of leather were at his feet and on his bench. He had a white beard, raggedly cut, but not very long, a hollow face, and exceedingly bright eyes. The hollowness and thinness of his face would have caused them to look large, under his yet dark eyebrows and his confused white hair, though they had been really otherwise; but, they were naturally large, and looked unnaturally so. His yellow rags of shirt lay open at the throat, and showed his body to be withered and worn. He, and his old canvas frock, and his loose stockings, and all his poor tatters of clothes, had, in a long seclusion from direct light and air, faded down to such a dull uniformity of parchment-yellow, that it would have been hard to say which was which.
He had put up a hand between his eyes and the light, and the very bones of it seemed transparent. So he sat, with a steadfastly vacant gaze, pausing in his work. He never looked at the figure before him, without first looking down on this side of himself, then on that, as if he had lost the habit of associating place with sound; he never spoke, without first wandering in this manner, and forgetting to speak.
“Are you going to finish that pair of shoes to-day?” asked Defarge, motioning to Mr. Lorry to come forward.
“What did you say?”
“Do you mean to finish that pair of shoes to-day?”
“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 it again.
Mr. Lorry came silently forward, leaving the daughter by the door. When he had stood, for a minute or two, by the side of Defarge, the shoemaker looked up. He showed no surprise at seeing another figure, but the unsteady fingers of one of his hands strayed to his lips as he looked at it (his lips and his nails were of the same pale lead-colour), and then the hand dropped to his work, and he once more bent over the shoe. The look and the action 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 a hand 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 working at. Take it, monsieur.”
Mr. Lorry took it in his hand.
“Tell monsieur what kind of shoe it is, and the maker’s name.”
There was a longer pause than usual, before the shoemaker replied:
“I forget what it was you asked me. What did you say?”
“I said, couldn’t you describe the kind of shoe, for monsieur’s information?”
“It is a lady’s shoe. It is a young lady’s walking-shoe. It is in the present mode. I never saw the mode. I have had a pattern in my hand.” He glanced at the shoe with some little passing touch of pride.
“And the maker’s name?” said Defarge.
Now that he had no work to hold, he laid the knuckles of the right hand in the hollow of the left, and then the knuckles of the left hand in the hollow of the right, and then passed a hand across his bearded chin, and so on in regular changes, without a moment’s intermission. The task of recalling him from the vagrancy into which he always sank when he had spoken, was like recalling some very weak person from a swoon, or endeavouring, in the hope 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 to work again, until the silence was again broken.
“You are not a shoemaker by trade?” said Mr. Lorry, looking steadfastly at him.
His haggard eyes turned to Defarge as if he would have transferred the question to him: but as no help came from that quarter, they turned back on the questioner when they had sought the ground.
“I am not a shoemaker by trade? No, I was not a shoemaker by trade. I-I learnt it here. I taught myself. I asked leave to—”
He lapsed away, even for minutes, ringing those measured changes on his hands the whole time. His eyes came slowly back, at last, to the face from which they had wandered; when they rested on it, he started, and resumed, in the manner of a sleeper that moment awake, reverting to a subject of last night.
“I asked leave to teach myself, and I got it with much difficulty after a long while, and I have made shoes ever since.”
As he held out his hand for the shoe that had been taken from him, 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 at the questioner.
“Monsieur Manette”; Mr. Lorry laid his hand upon Defarge’s arm; “do you remember nothing of this man? Look at him. Look at me. Is there no old banker, no old business, no old servant, no old time, 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 actively intent intelligence in the middle of the forehead, gradually forced themselves through the black mist that had fallen on him. They were overclouded again, they were fainter, they were gone; but they had been there. And so exactly was the expression repeated on the fair young face of her who had crept along the wall to a point where she could see him, and where she now stood looking at him, with hands which at first had been only raised in frightened compassion, if not even to keep him off and shut out the sight of him, but which were now extending towards him, trembling with eagerness to lay the spectral face upon her warm young breast, and love it back to life and hope—so exactly was the expression repeated (though in stronger characters) on her fair young face, that it looked as though it had passed like a moving light, 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 sought the ground and looked about him in the old way. Finally, with a deep long sigh, he took the shoe up, and resumed his work.
“Have you recognised him, monsieur?” asked Defarge in a whisper.
“Yes; for a moment. At first I thought it quite hopeless, but I have unquestionably seen, for a single moment, the face that I once knew so well. Hush! Let us draw further back. Hush!”
She had moved from the wall of the garret, very near to the bench on which he sat. There was something awful in his unconsciousness of the figure that could have put out its hand and touched him as he stooped over his labour.
Not a word was spoken, not a sound was made. She stood, like a spirit, beside him, and he bent over his work.
It happened, at length, that he had occasion to change the instrument in his hand, for his shoemaker’s knife. It lay on that side of him which was not the side on which she stood. He had taken it up, and was stooping to work again, when his eyes caught the skirt of her dress. He raised them, and saw her face. The two spectators started forward, but she stayed them with a motion of her hand. She had no fear of his striking at her with the knife, though they had.
He stared at her with a fearful look, and after a while his lips began to form some words, though no sound proceeded from them. By degrees, in the pauses of his quick and laboured breathing, he was heard to say:
“What is this?”
With the tears streaming down her face, she put her two hands to her lips, and kissed them to him; then clasped them on her breast, 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 the bench beside him. He recoiled, but she laid her hand upon his arm. A strange thrill struck him when she did so, and visibly passed over his frame; he laid the knife down softly, as he sat staring at her.
Her golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had been hurriedly pushed aside, and fell down over her neck. Advancing his hand by little and little, he took it up and looked at it. In the midst 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 his shoulder. After looking doubtfully at it, two or three times, as if to be sure that it was really there, he laid down his work, put his hand to his neck, and took off a blackened string with a scrap of folded rag attached to it. He opened this, carefully, on his knee, and it contained a very little quantity of hair: not more than one or two long golden hairs, which he had, in some old day, wound off upon his finger.
He took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it. “It is the same. How can it be! When was it! How was it!”
As the concentrated expression returned to his forehead, he seemed to become conscious that it was in hers too. He turned her full to the light, and looked at her.
“She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was summoned out—she had a fear of my going, though I had none—and when I was brought to the North Tower they found these upon my sleeve. ‘You will leave me them? They can never help 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 could utter it. But when he did find spoken words for it, they came to him coherently, though slowly.
“How was this?—Was it you?”
Once more, the two spectators started, as he turned upon her with a frightful suddenness. But she sat perfectly still in his grasp, and only said, in a low voice, “I entreat you, good gentlemen, do not 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 to his white hair, which they tore in a frenzy. It died out, as everything but his shoemaking did die out of him, and he refolded his little packet and tried to secure it in his breast; but he still looked at her, and gloomily shook his head.
“No, no, no; you are too young, too blooming. It can’t be. See what the prisoner is. These are not the hands she knew, this is not the face she knew, this is not a voice she ever heard. No, no. She was—and He was—before the slow years of the North Tower—ages ago. What is your name, my gentle angel?”
Hailing his softened tone and manner, his daughter fell upon her knees before him, with her appealing hands upon his breast.
“O, sir, at another time you shall know my name, and who my mother 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 tell you here. All that I may tell you, here and now, is, that I pray to you to touch me and to bless me. Kiss me, kiss me! O my dear, my dear!”
His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining on him.
“If you hear in my voice—I don’t know that it is so, but I hope it is—if you hear in my voice any resemblance to a voice that once was 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 lay on your breast when you were young and free, weep for it, weep for it! If, when I hint to you of a Home that is before us, where I will 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 your poor heart pined away, weep for it, weep for it!”
She held him closer round the neck, and rocked him on her breast like a child.
“If, when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is over, and that I have come here to take you from it, and that we go to England to be at peace and at rest, I cause you to think of your useful 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, you learn that I have to kneel to my honoured father, and implore his pardon for having never for his sake striven all day and lain awake and wept all night, because the love of my poor mother hid his torture from me, weep for it, weep for it! Weep for her, then, and for me! Good gentlemen, thank God! I feel his sacred tears upon my face, and his sobs strike against my heart. O, see! Thank God for us, thank God!”
He had sunk in her arms, and his face dropped on her breast: a sight so touching, yet so terrible in the tremendous wrong and suffering which had gone before it, that the two beholders covered their faces.
When the quiet of the garret had been long undisturbed, and his heaving breast and shaken form had long yielded to the calm that must follow all storms—emblem to humanity, of the rest and silence into which the storm called Life must hush at last—they came 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 lie upon her arm; and her hair drooping over him curtained him from the light.
“If, without disturbing him,” she said, raising her hand to Mr. Lorry as he stooped over them, after repeated blowings of his nose, “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, so dreadful 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 of France. Say, shall I hire a carriage and post-horses?”
“That’s business,” said Mr. Lorry, resuming on the shortest notice his methodical manners; “and if business is to be done, I had better do it.”
“Then be so kind,” urged Miss Manette, “as to leave us here. You see how composed he has become, and you cannot be afraid to leave him with me now. Why should you be? If you will lock the door to secure us from interruption, I do not doubt that you will find him, when you come back, as quiet as you leave him. In any case, I will take care of him until you return, and then we will remove him straight.”
Both Mr. Lorry and Defarge were rather disinclined to this course, and in favour of one of them remaining. But, as there were not only carriage and horses to be seen to, but travelling papers; and as time pressed, for the day was drawing to an end, it came at last to their hastily dividing the business that was necessary to be done, and hurrying away to do it.
Then, as the darkness closed in, the daughter laid her head down on the hard ground close at the father’s side, and watched him. The darkness deepened and deepened, and they both lay quiet, until a light gleamed through the chinks in the wall.
Mr. Lorry and Monsieur Defarge had made all ready for the journey, and had brought with them, besides travelling cloaks and wrappers, bread and meat, wine, and hot coffee. Monsieur Defarge put this provender, and the lamp he carried, on the shoemaker’s bench (there was nothing else in the garret but a pallet bed), and he and Mr. Lorry roused the captive, and assisted him to his feet.
No human intelligence could have read the mysteries of his mind, in the scared blank wonder of his face. Whether he knew what had happened, whether he recollected what they had said to him, whether he knew that he was free, were questions which no sagacity could have solved. They tried speaking to him; but, he was so confused, and so very slow to answer, that they took fright at his bewilderment, and agreed for the time to tamper with him no more. He had a wild, lost manner of occasionally clasping his head in his hands, that had not been seen in him before; yet, he had some pleasure in the mere sound of his daughter’s voice, and invariably turned to it when she spoke.
In the submissive way of one long accustomed to obey under coercion, he ate and drank what they gave him to eat and drink, and put on the cloak and other wrappings, that they gave him to wear. He readily responded to his daughter’s drawing her arm through his, and took—and kept—her hand in both his own.
They began to descend; Monsieur Defarge going first with the lamp, Mr. Lorry closing the little procession. They had not traversed many steps of the long main staircase when he stopped, and stared at the roof and round at the walls.
“You remember the place, my father? You remember coming up here?”
“What did you say?”
But, before she could repeat the question, he murmured an answer as if she had repeated it.
“Remember? No, I don’t remember. It was so very long ago.”
That he had no recollection whatever of his having been brought from his prison to that house, was apparent to them. They heard him mutter, “One Hundred and Five, North Tower;” and when he looked about him, it evidently was for the strong fortress-walls which had long encompassed him. On their reaching the courtyard he instinctively altered his tread, as being in expectation of a drawbridge; and when there was no drawbridge, and he saw the carriage waiting in the open street, he dropped his daughter’s hand and clasped his head again.
No crowd was about the door; no people were discernible at any of the many windows; not even a chance passerby was in the street. An unnatural silence and desertion reigned there. Only one soul was to be seen, and that was Madame Defarge—who leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing.
The prisoner had got into a coach, and his daughter had followed him, when Mr. Lorry’s feet were arrested on the step by his asking, miserably, for his shoemaking tools and the unfinished shoes. Madame Defarge immediately called to her husband that she would get them, and went, knitting, out of the lamplight, through the courtyard. She quickly brought them down and handed them in;—and immediately afterwards leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing.
Defarge got upon the box, and gave the word “To the Barrier!” The postilion cracked his whip, and they clattered away under the feeble over-swinging lamps.
Under the over-swinging lamps—swinging ever brighter in the better streets, and ever dimmer in the worse—and by lighted shops, gay crowds, illuminated coffee-houses, and theatre-doors, to one of the city gates. Soldiers with lanterns, at the guard-house there. “Your papers, travellers!” “See here then, Monsieur the Officer,” said Defarge, getting down, and taking him gravely apart, “these are the papers of monsieur inside, with the white head. They were consigned to me, with him, at the—” He dropped his voice, there was a flutter among the military lanterns, and one of them being handed into the coach by an arm in uniform, the eyes connected with the arm looked, not an every day or an every night look, at monsieur with the white head. “It is well. Forward!” from the uniform. “Adieu!” from Defarge. And so, under a short grove of feebler and feebler over-swinging lamps, out under the great grove of stars.
Beneath that arch of unmoved and eternal lights; some, so remote from this little earth that the learned tell us it is doubtful whether their rays have even yet discovered it, as a point in space where anything is suffered or done: the shadows of the night were broad and black. All through the cold and restless interval, until dawn, they once more whispered in the ears of Mr. Jarvis Lorry—sitting opposite the buried man who had been dug out, and wondering what subtle powers were for ever lost to him, and what were capable of restoration—the old inquiry:
“I hope you care to be recalled to life?”
And the old answer:
“I can’t say.”
The end of the first book.
Book the Second—the Golden Thread
CHAPTER I. Five Years Later
Tellson’s Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more convenient places of business. Tellson’s (they said) wanted no elbow-room, Tellson’s wanted no light, Tellson’s wanted no embellishment. Noakes and Co.’s might, or Snooks Brothers’ might; but Tellson’s, thank Heaven—!
Any one of these partners would have disinherited his son on the question of rebuilding Tellson’s. In this respect the House was much on a par with the Country; which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting improvements in laws and customs that had long been highly objectionable, but were only the more respectable.
Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson’s was the triumphant perfection of inconvenience. After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson’s down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop, with two little counters, where the oldest of men made your cheque shake as if the wind rustled it, while they examined the signature by the dingiest of windows, which were always under a shower-bath of mud from Fleet-street, and which were made the dingier by their own iron bars proper, and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar. If your business necessitated your seeing “the House,” you were put into a species of Condemned Hold at the back, where you meditated on a misspent life, until the House came with its hands in its pockets, and you could hardly blink at it in the dismal twilight. Your money came out of, or went into, wormy old wooden drawers, particles of which flew up your nose and down your throat when they were opened and shut. Your bank-notes had a musty odour, as if they were fast decomposing into rags again. Your plate was stowed away among the neighbouring cesspools, and evil communications corrupted its good polish in a day or two. Your deeds got into extemporised strong-rooms made of kitchens and sculleries, and fretted all the fat out of their parchments into the banking-house air. Your lighter boxes of family papers went up-stairs into a Barmecide room, that always had a great dining-table in it and never had a dinner, and where, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty, the first letters written to you by your old love, or by your little children, were but newly released from the horror of being ogled through the windows, by the heads exposed on Temple Bar with an insensate brutality and ferocity worthy of Abyssinia or Ashantee.
But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in vogue with all trades and professions, and not least of all with Tellson’s. Death is Nature’s remedy for all things, and why not Legislation’s? Accordingly, the forger was put to Death; the utterer of a bad note was put to Death; the unlawful opener of a letter was put to Death; the purloiner of forty shillings and sixpence was put to Death; the holder of a horse at Tellson’s door, who made off with it, was put to Death; the coiner of a bad shilling was put to Death; the sounders of three-fourths of the notes in the whole gamut of Crime, were put to Death. Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention—it might almost have been worth remarking that the fact was exactly the reverse—but, it cleared off (as to this world) the trouble of each particular case, and left nothing else connected with it to be looked after. Thus, Tellson’s, in its day, like greater places of business, its contemporaries, had taken so many lives, that, if the heads laid low before it had been ranged on Temple Bar instead of being privately disposed of, they would probably have excluded what little light the ground floor had, in a rather significant manner.
Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and hutches at Tellson’s, the oldest of men carried on the business gravely. When they took a young man into Tellson’s London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the general weight of the establishment.
Outside Tellson’s—never by any means in it, unless called in—was an odd-job-man, an occasional porter and messenger, who served as the live sign of the house. He was never absent during business hours, unless upon an errand, and then he was represented by his son: a grisly urchin of twelve, who was his express image. People understood that Tellson’s, in a stately way, tolerated the odd-job-man. The house had always tolerated some person in that capacity, and time and tide had drifted this person to the post. His surname was Cruncher, and on the youthful occasion of his renouncing by proxy the works of darkness, in the easterly parish church of Hounsditch, he had received the added appellation of Jerry.
The scene was Mr. Cruncher’s private lodging in Hanging-sword-alley, Whitefriars: the time, half-past seven of the clock on a windy March morning, Anno Domini seventeen hundred and eighty. (Mr. Cruncher himself always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.)
Mr. Cruncher’s apartments were not in a savoury neighbourhood, and were but two in number, even if a closet with a single pane of glass in it might be counted as one. But they were very decently kept. Early as it was, on the windy March morning, the room in which he lay abed was already scrubbed throughout; and between the cups and saucers arranged for breakfast, and the lumbering deal table, a very clean white cloth was spread.
Mr. Cruncher reposed under a patchwork counterpane, like a Harlequin at home. At first, he slept heavily, but, by degrees, began to roll and surge in bed, until he rose above the surface, with his spiky hair looking as if it must tear the sheets to ribbons. At which juncture, he exclaimed, in a voice of dire exasperation:
“Bust me, if she ain’t at it agin!”
A woman of orderly and industrious appearance rose from her knees in a corner, with sufficient haste and trepidation to show that she was the person referred to.
“What!” said Mr. Cruncher, looking out of bed for a boot. “You’re at it agin, are you?”
After hailing the morn with this second salutation, he threw a boot at the woman as a third. It was a very muddy boot, and may introduce the odd circumstance connected with Mr. Cruncher’s domestic economy, that, whereas he often came home after banking hours with clean boots, he often got up next morning to find the same boots covered with clay.
“What,” said Mr. Cruncher, varying his apostrophe after missing his mark—“what are you up to, Aggerawayter?”
“I was only saying my prayers.”
“Saying your prayers! You’re a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?”
“I was not praying against you; I was praying for you.”
“You weren’t. And if you were, I won’t be took the liberty with. Here! your mother’s a nice woman, young Jerry, going a praying agin your father’s prosperity. You’ve got a dutiful mother, you have, my son. You’ve got a religious mother, you have, my boy: going and flopping herself down, and praying that the bread-and-butter may be snatched out of the mouth of her only child.”
Master Cruncher (who was in his shirt) took this very ill, and, turning to his mother, strongly deprecated any praying away of his personal board.
“And what do you suppose, you conceited female,” said Mr. Cruncher, with unconscious inconsistency, “that the worth of your prayers may be? Name the price that you put your prayers at!”
“They only come from the heart, Jerry. They are worth no more than that.”
“Worth no more than that,” repeated Mr. Cruncher. “They ain’t worth much, then. Whether or no, I won’t be prayed agin, I tell you. I can’t afford it. I’m not a going to be made unlucky by your sneaking. If you must go flopping yourself down, flop in favour of your husband and child, and not in opposition to ’em. If I had had any but a unnat’ral wife, and this poor boy had had any but a unnat’ral mother, I might have made some money last week instead of being counter-prayed and countermined and religiously circumwented into the worst of luck. B-u-u-ust me!” said Mr. Cruncher, who all this time had been putting on his clothes, “if I ain’t, what with piety and one blowed thing and another, been choused this last week into as bad luck as ever a poor devil of a honest tradesman met with! Young Jerry, dress yourself, my boy, and while I clean my boots keep a eye upon your mother now and then, and if you see any signs of more flopping, give me a call. For, I tell you,” here he addressed his wife once more, “I won’t be gone agin, in this manner. I am as rickety as a hackney-coach, I’m as sleepy as laudanum, my lines is strained to that degree that I shouldn’t know, if it wasn’t for the pain in ’em, which was me and which somebody else, yet I’m none the better for it in pocket; and it’s my suspicion that you’ve been at it from morning to night to prevent me from being the better for it in pocket, and I won’t put up with it, Aggerawayter, and what do you say now!”
Growling, in addition, such phrases as “Ah! yes! You’re religious, too. You wouldn’t put yourself in opposition to the interests of your husband and child, would you? Not you!” and throwing off other sarcastic sparks from the whirling grindstone of his indignation, Mr. Cruncher betook himself to his boot-cleaning and his general preparation for business. In the meantime, his son, whose head was garnished with tenderer spikes, and whose young eyes stood close by one another, as his father’s did, kept the required watch upon his mother. He greatly disturbed that poor woman at intervals, by darting out of his sleeping closet, where he made his toilet, with a suppressed cry of “You are going to flop, mother. —Halloa, father!” and, after raising this fictitious alarm, darting in again with an undutiful grin.
Mr. Cruncher’s temper was not at all improved when he came to his breakfast. He resented Mrs. Cruncher’s saying grace with particular animosity.
“Now, Aggerawayter! What are you up to? At it again?”
His wife explained that she had merely “asked a blessing.”
“Don’t do it!” said Mr. Crunches looking about, as if he rather expected to see the loaf disappear under the efficacy of his wife’s petitions. “I ain’t a going to be blest out of house and home. I won’t have my wittles blest off my table. Keep still!”
Exceedingly red-eyed and grim, as if he had been up all night at a party which had taken anything but a convivial turn, Jerry Cruncher worried his breakfast rather than ate it, growling over it like any four-footed inmate of a menagerie. Towards nine o’clock he smoothed his ruffled aspect, and, presenting as respectable and business-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 favourite description of himself as “a honest tradesman.” His stock consisted of a wooden stool, made out of a broken-backed chair cut down, which stool, young Jerry, walking at his father’s side, carried every morning to beneath the banking-house window that was nearest Temple Bar: where, with the addition of the first handful of straw that could be gleaned from any passing vehicle to keep the cold and wet from the odd-job-man’s feet, it formed the encampment for the day. On this post of his, Mr. Cruncher was as well known to Fleet-street and the Temple, as the Bar itself,—and was almost as in-looking.
Encamped at a quarter before nine, in good time to touch his three-cornered hat to the oldest of men as they passed in to Tellson’s, Jerry took up his station on this windy March morning, with young Jerry standing by him, when not engaged in making forays through the Bar, to inflict bodily and mental injuries of an acute description on passing boys who were small enough for his amiable purpose. Father and son, extremely like each other, looking silently on at the morning traffic in Fleet-street, with their two heads as near to one another as the two eyes of each were, bore a considerable resemblance to a pair of monkeys. The resemblance was not lessened by the accidental circumstance, that the mature Jerry bit and spat out straw, while the twinkling eyes of the youthful Jerry were as restlessly watchful of him as of everything else in Fleet-street.
The head of one of the regular indoor messengers attached to Tellson’s establishment was put through 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 seated himself on the stool, entered on his reversionary interest in the straw his father had been chewing, and cogitated.
“Al-ways rusty! His fingers is al-ways rusty!” muttered young Jerry. “Where does my father get all that iron rust from? He don’t get no iron rust here!”
CHAPTER II. A Sight
“You know the Old Bailey well, no doubt?” said one of the oldest of clerks to Jerry the messenger.
“Ye-es, sir,” returned Jerry, in something of a dogged 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 the establishment in question, “than I, as a honest tradesman, wish to know the Bailey.”
“Very well. Find the door where the witnesses go in, and show the 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 that conference.
“I am going to tell you. The door-keeper will pass the note to Mr. Lorry, and do you make any gesture that will attract Mr. Lorry’s attention, and show him where you stand. Then what you have to do, is, to remain there until he wants you.”
“Is that all, sir?”
“That’s all. He wishes to have a messenger at hand. This is to tell him you are there.”
As the ancient clerk deliberately folded and superscribed the note, Mr. Cruncher, after surveying him in silence until he came to the 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 his surprised spectacles upon him. “It is the law.”
“It’s hard in the law to spile a man, I think. It’s hard enough to kill him, but it’s wery hard to spile him, sir.”
“Not at all,” retained the ancient clerk. “Speak well of the law. Take care of your chest and voice, my good friend, and leave the law to take care of itself. I give you that advice.”
“It’s the damp, sir, what settles on my chest and voice,” said Jerry. “I leave you to judge what a damp way of earning a living mine is.”
“Well, well,” said the old clerk; “we all have our various ways of gaining a livelihood. Some of us have damp ways, and some of us have dry ways. Here is the letter. Go along.”
Jerry took the letter, and, remarking to himself with less internal deference than he made an outward show of, “You are a lean old one, too,” made his bow, informed his son, in passing, of his destination, and went his way.
They hanged at Tyburn, in those days, so the street outside Newgate had not obtained one infamous notoriety that has since attached to it. But, the gaol was a vile place, in which most kinds of debauchery and villainy were practised, and where dire diseases were bred, that came into court with the prisoners, and sometimes rushed straight from the dock at my Lord Chief Justice himself, and pulled him off the bench. It had more than once happened, that the Judge in the black cap pronounced his own doom as certainly as the prisoner’s, and even died before him. For the rest, the Old Bailey was famous as a kind of deadly inn-yard, from which pale travellers set out continually, in carts and coaches, on a violent passage into the other world: traversing some two miles and a half of public street and road, and shaming few good citizens, if any. So powerful is use, and so desirable to be good use in the beginning. It was famous, too, for the pillory, a wise old institution, that inflicted a punishment of which no one could foresee the extent; also, for the whipping-post, another dear old institution, very humanising and softening to behold in action; also, for extensive transactions in blood-money, another fragment of ancestral wisdom, systematically leading to the most frightful mercenary crimes that could be committed under Heaven. Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choice illustration of the precept, that “Whatever is is right;” an aphorism that would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong.
Making his way through the tainted crowd, dispersed up and down this hideous scene of action, with the skill of a man accustomed to make his way quietly, the messenger found out the door 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 paid to see the play in Bedlam—only the former entertainment was much the dearer. Therefore, all the Old Bailey doors were well guarded—except, indeed, the social doors by which the criminals got there, and those were always left wide open.
After some delay and demur, the door grudgingly turned on its hinges a very little way, and allowed Mr. Jerry Cruncher to squeeze himself into court.
“What’s on?” he asked, in a whisper, of the man he found himself 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 a hurdle to be half hanged, and then he’ll be taken down and sliced before his own face, and then his inside will be taken out and burnt 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 of proviso.
“Oh! they’ll find him guilty,” said the other. “Don’t you be afraid 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 his hand. Mr. Lorry sat at a table, among the gentlemen in wigs: not far from a wigged gentleman, the prisoner’s counsel, who had a great bundle of papers before him: and nearly opposite another wigged gentleman with his hands in his pockets, whose whole attention, when Mr. Cruncher looked at him then or afterwards, seemed to be concentrated on the ceiling of the court. After some gruff coughing and rubbing of his chin and signing with his hand, Jerry attracted the notice of Mr. Lorry, who had stood up to look for him, and who quietly nodded and sat down again.
“What’s he got to do with the case?” asked the man he had spoken with.
“Blest if I know,” said Jerry.
“What have you got to do with it, then, if a person may inquire?”
“Blest if I know that either,” said Jerry.
The entrance of the Judge, and a consequent great stir and settling down in the court, stopped the dialogue. Presently, the dock became the central point of interest. Two gaolers, who had been standing there, went out, and the prisoner was brought in, and put to the bar.
Everybody present, except the one wigged gentleman who looked at the ceiling, stared at him. All the human breath in the place, rolled at him, like a sea, or a wind, or a fire. Eager faces strained round pillars and corners, to get a sight of him; spectators in back rows stood up, not to miss a hair of him; people on the floor of the court, laid their hands on the shoulders of the people before them, to help themselves, at anybody’s cost, to a view of him—stood a-tiptoe, got upon ledges, stood upon next to nothing, to see every inch of him. Conspicuous among these latter, like an animated bit of the spiked wall of Newgate, Jerry stood: aiming at the prisoner the beery breath of a whet he had taken as he came along, and discharging it to mingle with the waves of other beer, and gin, and tea, and coffee, and what not, that flowed at him, and already broke upon the great windows behind him in an impure mist and rain.
The object of all this staring and blaring, was a young man of about five-and-twenty, well-grown and well-looking, with a sunburnt cheek and a dark eye. His condition was that of a young gentleman. He was plainly dressed in black, or very dark grey, and his hair, which was long and dark, was gathered in a ribbon at the back of his neck; more to be out of his way than for ornament. As an emotion of the mind will express itself through any covering of the body, so the paleness which his situation engendered came through the brown upon his cheek, showing the soul to be stronger 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 and breathed at, was not a sort that elevated humanity. Had he stood in peril of a less horrible sentence—had there been a chance of any one of its savage details being spared—by just so much would he have lost in his fascination. The form that was to be doomed to be so shamefully mangled, was the sight; the immortal creature that was to be so butchered and torn asunder, yielded the sensation. Whatever gloss the various spectators put upon the interest, 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 Not Guilty to an indictment denouncing him (with infinite jingle and jangle) for that he was a false traitor to our serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, prince, our Lord the King, by reason of his having, on divers occasions, and by divers means and ways, assisted Lewis, the French King, in his wars against our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth; that was to say, by coming and going, between the dominions of our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, and those of the said French Lewis, and wickedly, falsely, traitorously, and otherwise evil-adverbiously, revealing to the said French Lewis what forces our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, had in preparation to send to Canada and North America. This much, Jerry, with his head becoming more and more spiky as the law terms bristled it, made out with huge satisfaction, and so arrived circuitously at the understanding that the aforesaid, and over and over again aforesaid, Charles Darnay, stood there before him upon his trial; that the jury were swearing in; and that Mr. Attorney-General was making ready to speak.
The accused, who was (and who knew he was) being mentally hanged, beheaded, and quartered, by everybody there, neither flinched from the situation, nor assumed any theatrical air in it. He was quiet and attentive; watched the opening proceedings with a grave interest; and stood with his hands resting on the slab of wood before him, so composedly, that they had not displaced a leaf of the herbs with which it was strewn. The court was all bestrewn with herbs and sprinkled with vinegar, as a precaution against gaol air and gaol fever.
Over the prisoner’s head there was a mirror, to throw the light down upon him. Crowds of the wicked and the wretched had been reflected in it, and had passed from its surface and this earth’s together. Haunted in a most ghastly manner that abominable place would have been, if the glass could ever have rendered back its reflections, as the ocean is one day to give up its dead. Some passing thought of the infamy and disgrace for which it had been reserved, may have struck the prisoner’s mind. Be that as it may, a change in his position making him conscious of a bar of light across his face, he looked up; and when he saw the glass his face flushed, and his right hand pushed the herbs away.
It happened, that the action turned his face to that side of the court which was on his left. About on a level with his eyes, there sat, in that corner of the Judge’s bench, two persons upon whom his look immediately rested; so immediately, and so much to the changing of his aspect, that all the eyes that were turned upon him, turned to them.
The spectators saw in the two figures, a young lady of little more than twenty, and a gentleman who was evidently her father; a man of a very remarkable appearance in respect of the absolute whiteness of his hair, and a certain indescribable intensity of face: not of an active kind, but pondering and self-communing. When this expression was upon him, he looked as if he were old; but when it was stirred and broken up—as it was now, in a moment, on his speaking to his daughter—he became a handsome man, not past the prime of life.
His daughter had one of her hands drawn through his arm, as she sat by him, and the other pressed upon it. She had drawn close to him, in her dread of the scene, and in her pity for the prisoner. Her forehead had been strikingly expressive of an engrossing terror and compassion that saw nothing but the peril of the accused. This had been so very noticeable, so very powerfully and naturally shown, that starers who had had no pity for him were touched by her; and the whisper went about, “Who are they?”
Jerry, the messenger, who had made his own observations, in his own manner, and who had been sucking the rust off his fingers in his absorption, stretched his neck to hear who they were. The crowd about him had pressed and passed the inquiry on to the nearest attendant, and from him it had been more slowly pressed and passed back; at last it got to Jerry:
“Witnesses.”
“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 the man whose life was in his hand, as Mr. Attorney-General rose to spin the rope, grind the axe, and hammer the nails into the scaffold.
CHAPTER III. A Disappointment
Mr. Attorney-General had to inform the jury, that the prisoner before them, though young in years, was old in the treasonable practices which claimed the forfeit of his life. That this correspondence with the public enemy was not a correspondence of to-day, or of yesterday, or even of last year, or of the year before. That, it was certain the prisoner had, for longer than that, been in the habit of passing and repassing between France and England, on secret business of which he could give no honest account. That, if it were in the nature of traitorous ways to thrive (which happily it never was), the real wickedness and guilt of his business might have remained undiscovered. That Providence, however, had put it into the heart of a person who was beyond fear and beyond reproach, to ferret out the nature of the prisoner’s schemes, and, struck with horror, to disclose them to his Majesty’s Chief Secretary of State and most honourable Privy Council. That, this patriot would be produced before them. That, his position and attitude were, on the whole, sublime. That, he had been the prisoner’s friend, but, at once in an auspicious and an evil hour detecting his infamy, had resolved to immolate the traitor he could no longer cherish in his bosom, on the sacred altar of his country. That, if statues were decreed in Britain, as in ancient Greece and Rome, to public benefactors, this shining citizen would assuredly have had one. That, as they were not so decreed, he probably would not have one. That, Virtue, as had been observed by the poets (in many passages which he well knew the jury would have, word for word, at the tips of their tongues; whereat the jury’s countenances displayed a guilty consciousness that they knew nothing about the passages), was in a manner contagious; more especially the bright virtue known as patriotism, or love of country. That, the lofty example of this immaculate and unimpeachable witness for the Crown, to refer to whom however unworthily was an honour, had communicated itself to the prisoner’s servant, and had engendered in him a holy determination to examine his master’s table-drawers and pockets, and secrete his papers. That, he (Mr. Attorney-General) was prepared to hear some disparagement attempted of this admirable servant; but that, in a general way, he preferred him to his (Mr. Attorney-General’s) brothers and sisters, and honoured him more than his (Mr. Attorney-General’s) father and mother. That, he called with confidence on the jury to come and do likewise. That, the evidence of these two witnesses, coupled with the documents of their discovering that would be produced, would show the prisoner to have been furnished with lists of his Majesty’s forces, and of their disposition and preparation, both by sea and land, and would leave no doubt that he had habitually conveyed such information to a hostile power. That, these lists could not be proved to be in the prisoner’s handwriting; but that it was all the same; that, indeed, it was rather the better for the prosecution, as showing the prisoner to be artful in his precautions. That, the proof would go back five years, and would show the prisoner already engaged in these pernicious missions, within a few weeks before the date of the very first action fought between the British troops and the Americans. That, for these reasons, the jury, being a loyal jury (as he knew they were), and being a responsible jury (as they knew they were), must positively find the prisoner Guilty, and make an end of him, whether they liked it or not. That, they never could lay their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could tolerate the idea of their wives laying their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could endure the notion of their children laying their heads upon their pillows; in short, that there never more could be, for them or theirs, any laying of heads upon pillows at all, unless the prisoner’s head was taken off. That head Mr. Attorney-General concluded by demanding of them, in the name of everything he could think of with a round turn in it, and on the faith of his solemn asseveration that he already considered the prisoner as good as dead and gone.
When the Attorney-General ceased, a buzz arose in the court as if a cloud of great blue-flies were swarming about the prisoner, in anticipation of what he was soon to become. When toned down again, the unimpeachable patriot appeared in the witness-box.
Mr. Solicitor-General then, following his leader’s lead, examined the patriot: John Barsad, gentleman, by name. The story of his pure soul was exactly what Mr. Attorney-General had described it to be—perhaps, if it had a fault, a little too exactly. Having released his noble bosom of its burden, he would have modestly withdrawn himself, but that the wigged gentleman with the papers before him, sitting not far from Mr. Lorry, begged to ask him a few questions. The wigged gentleman sitting opposite, still looking at the ceiling of the court.
Had he ever been a spy himself? No, he scorned the base insinuation. What did he live upon? His property. Where was his property? He didn’t precisely remember where it was. What was it? No business of anybody’s. Had he inherited it? Yes, he had. From whom? Distant relation. Very distant? Rather. Ever been in prison? Certainly not. Never in a debtors’ prison? Didn’t see what that had to do with it. Never in a debtors’ prison?—Come, once again. Never? Yes. How many times? Two or three times. Not five or six? Perhaps. Of what profession? Gentleman. Ever been kicked? Might have been. Frequently? No. Ever kicked downstairs? Decidedly not; once received a kick on the top of a staircase, and fell downstairs of his own accord. Kicked on that occasion for cheating at dice? Something to that effect was said by the intoxicated liar who committed the assault, but it was not true. Swear it was not true? Positively. Ever live by cheating at play? Never. Ever live by play? Not more than other gentlemen do. Ever borrow money of the prisoner? Yes. Ever pay him? No. Was not this intimacy with the prisoner, in reality a very slight one, forced upon the prisoner in coaches, inns, and packets? No. Sure he saw the prisoner with these lists? Certain. Knew no more about the lists? No. Had not procured them himself, for instance? No. Expect to get anything by this evidence? No. Not in regular government pay and employment, to lay traps? Oh dear no. Or to do anything? Oh dear no. Swear that? Over and over again. No motives but motives of sheer patriotism? None whatever.
The virtuous servant, Roger Cly, swore his way through the case at a great rate. He had taken service with the prisoner, in good faith and simplicity, four years ago. He had asked the prisoner, aboard the Calais packet, if he wanted a handy fellow, and the prisoner had engaged him. He had not asked the prisoner to take the handy fellow as an act of charity—never thought of such a thing. He began to have suspicions of the prisoner, and to keep an eye upon him, soon afterwards. In arranging his clothes, while travelling, he had seen similar lists to these in the prisoner’s pockets, over and over again. He had taken these lists from the drawer of the prisoner’s desk. He had not put them there first. He had seen the prisoner show these identical lists to French gentlemen at Calais, and similar lists to French gentlemen, both at Calais and Boulogne. He loved his country, and couldn’t bear it, and had given information. He had never been suspected of stealing a silver tea-pot; he had been maligned respecting a mustard-pot, but it turned out to be only a plated one. He had known the last witness seven or eight years; that was merely a coincidence. He didn’t call it a particularly curious coincidence; most coincidences were curious. Neither did he call it a curious coincidence that true patriotism was his only motive too. He was a true Briton, and hoped there were many like him.
The blue-flies buzzed again, and Mr. Attorney-General called Mr. Jarvis Lorry.
“Mr. Jarvis Lorry, are you a clerk in Tellson’s bank?”
“I am.”
“On a certain Friday night in November one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, did business occasion you to travel between London and Dover by the mail?”
“It did.”
“Were there any other passengers in the mail?”
“Two.”
“Did they alight on the road in the course of the night?”
“They did.”
“Mr. Lorry, look upon the prisoner. Was he one of those two passengers?”
“I cannot undertake to say that he was.”
“Does he resemble either of these two passengers?”
“Both were so wrapped up, and the night was so dark, and we were all so reserved, that I cannot undertake to say even that.”
“Mr. Lorry, look again upon the prisoner. Supposing him wrapped up as those two passengers were, is there anything in his bulk and stature to render it unlikely that he was one of them?”
“No.”
“You will not swear, Mr. Lorry, that he was not one of them?”
“No.”
“So at least you say he may have been one of them?”
“Yes. Except that I remember them both to have been—like myself—timorous of highwaymen, and the prisoner has not a timorous air.”
“Did you ever see a counterfeit of timidity, Mr. Lorry?”
“I certainly have seen that.”
“Mr. Lorry, look once more upon the prisoner. Have you seen him, to your certain knowledge, before?”
“I have.”
“When?”
“I was returning from France a few days afterwards, and, at Calais, the prisoner came on board the packet-ship in which I returned, and made the voyage with me.”
“At what hour did he come on board?”
“At a little after midnight.”
“In the dead of the night. Was he the only passenger who came on board at that untimely hour?”
“He happened to be the only one.”
“Never mind about ‘happening,’ Mr. Lorry. He was the only passenger who came on board in the dead of the night?”
“He was.”
“Were you travelling alone, Mr. Lorry, or with any companion?”
“With two companions. A gentleman and lady. They are here.”
“They are here. Had you any conversation with the prisoner?”
“Hardly any. The weather was stormy, and the passage long and rough, and I lay on a sofa, almost from shore to shore.”
“Miss Manette!”
The young lady, to whom all eyes had been turned before, and were now turned again, stood up where she had sat. Her father rose with her, and kept her hand drawn through his arm.
“Miss Manette, look upon the prisoner.”
To be confronted with such pity, and such earnest youth and beauty, was far more trying to the accused than to be confronted with all the crowd. Standing, as it were, apart with her on the edge of his grave, not all the staring curiosity that looked on, could, for the moment, nerve him to remain quite still. His hurried right hand parcelled out the herbs before him into imaginary beds of flowers in a garden; and his efforts to control and steady his breathing shook the lips from which the colour rushed to his heart. The buzz of the great flies was loud again.
“Miss Manette, have you seen the prisoner before?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where?”
“On board of the packet-ship just now referred to, sir, and on the same occasion.”
“You are the young lady just now referred to?”
“O! most unhappily, I am!”
The plaintive tone of her compassion merged into the less musical voice of the Judge, as he said something fiercely: “Answer the questions put to you, and make no remark upon them.”
“Miss Manette, had you any conversation with the prisoner on that passage across the Channel?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Recall it.”
In the midst of a profound stillness, she faintly began: “When the gentleman came on board—”
“Do you mean the prisoner?” inquired the Judge, knitting his brows.
“Yes, my Lord.”
“Then say the prisoner.”
“When the prisoner came on board, he noticed that my father,” turning her eyes lovingly to him as he stood beside her, “was much fatigued and in a very weak state of health. My father was so reduced that I was afraid to take him out of the air, and I had made a bed for him on the deck near the cabin steps, and I sat on the deck at his side to take care of him. There were no other passengers that night, but we four. The prisoner was so good as to beg permission to advise me how I could shelter my father from the wind and weather, better than I had done. I had not known how to do it well, not understanding how the wind would set when we were out of the harbour. He did it for me. He expressed great gentleness and kindness for my father’s state, and I am sure he felt it. That was the manner of our beginning to speak together.”
“Let me interrupt you for a moment. Had he come on board alone?”
“No.”
“How many were with him?”
“Two French gentlemen.”
“Had they conferred together?”
“They had conferred together until the last moment, when it was necessary for the French gentlemen to be landed in their boat.”
“Had any papers been handed about among them, similar to these lists?”
“Some papers had been handed about among them, but I don’t know what papers.”
“Like these in shape and size?”
“Possibly, but indeed I don’t know, although they stood whispering very near to me: because they stood at the top of the cabin steps to have the light of the lamp that was hanging there; it was a dull lamp, and they spoke very low, and I did not hear what they said, and saw only that they looked at papers.”
“Now, to the prisoner’s conversation, Miss Manette.”
“The prisoner was as open in his confidence with me—which arose out of my helpless situation—as he was kind, and good, and useful to my father. I hope,” bursting into tears, “I may not repay him by doing him harm to-day.”
Buzzing from the blue-flies.
“Miss Manette, if the prisoner does not perfectly understand that you give the evidence which it is your duty to give—which you must give—and which you cannot escape from giving—with great unwillingness, he is the only person present in that condition. Please to go on.”
“He told me that he was travelling on business of a delicate and difficult nature, which might get people into trouble, and that he was therefore travelling under an assumed name. He said that this business had, within a few days, taken him to France, and might, at intervals, take him backwards and forwards between France and England for a long time to come.”
“Did he say anything about America, Miss Manette? Be particular.”
“He tried to explain to me how that quarrel had arisen, and he said that, so far as he could judge, it was a wrong and foolish one on England’s part. He added, in a jesting way, that perhaps George Washington might gain almost as great a name in history as George the Third. But there was no harm in his way of saying this: it was said laughingly, and to beguile the time.”
Any strongly marked expression of face on the part of a chief actor in a scene of great interest to whom many eyes are directed, will be unconsciously imitated by the spectators. Her forehead was painfully anxious and intent as she gave this evidence, and, in the pauses when she stopped for the Judge to write it down, watched its effect upon the counsel for and against. Among the lookers-on there was the same expression in all quarters of the court; insomuch, that a great majority of the foreheads there, might have been mirrors reflecting the witness, when the Judge looked up from his notes to glare at that tremendous heresy about George Washington.
Mr. Attorney-General now signified to my Lord, that he deemed it necessary, as a matter of precaution and form, to call the young lady’s father, Doctor Manette. Who was called accordingly.
“Doctor Manette, look upon the prisoner. Have you ever seen him before?”
“Once. When he called at my lodgings in London. Some three years, or three years and a half ago.”
“Can you identify him as your fellow-passenger on board the packet, or speak to his conversation with your daughter?”
“Sir, I can do neither.”
“Is there any particular and special reason for your being unable to do either?”
He answered, in a low voice, “There is.”
“Has it been your misfortune to undergo a long imprisonment, without trial, or even accusation, in your native country, Doctor Manette?”
He answered, in a tone that went to every heart, “A long imprisonment.”
“Were you newly released on the occasion in question?”
“They tell me so.”
“Have you no remembrance of the occasion?”
“None. My mind is a blank, from some time—I cannot even say what time—when I employed myself, in my captivity, in making shoes, to the time when I found myself living in London with my dear daughter here. She had become familiar to me, when a gracious God restored my faculties; but, I am quite unable even to say how she had become familiar. I have no remembrance of the process.”
Mr. Attorney-General sat down, and the father and daughter sat down together.
A singular circumstance then arose in the case. The object in hand being to show that the prisoner went down, with some fellow-plotter untracked, in the Dover mail on that Friday night in November five years ago, and got out of the mail in the night, as a blind, at a place where he did not remain, but from which he travelled back some dozen miles or more, to a garrison and dockyard, and there collected information; a witness was called to identify him as having been at the precise time required, in the coffee-room of an hotel in that garrison-and-dockyard town, waiting for another person. The prisoner’s counsel was cross-examining this witness with no result, except that he had never seen the prisoner on any other occasion, when the wigged gentleman who had all this time been looking at the ceiling of the court, wrote a word or two on a little piece of paper, screwed it up, and tossed it to him. Opening this piece of paper in the next pause, the counsel looked with great attention and curiosity at the prisoner.
“You say again you are quite sure that it was the prisoner?”
The witness was quite sure.
“Did you ever see anybody very like the prisoner?”
Not so like (the witness said) as that he could be mistaken.
“Look well upon that gentleman, my learned friend there,” pointing to him who had tossed the paper over, “and then look well upon the prisoner. How say you? Are they very like each other?”
Allowing for my learned friend’s appearance being careless and slovenly if not debauched, they were sufficiently like each other to surprise, not only the witness, but everybody present, when they were thus brought into comparison. My Lord being prayed to bid my learned friend lay aside his wig, and giving no very gracious consent, the likeness became much more remarkable. My Lord inquired of Mr. Stryver (the prisoner’s counsel), whether they were next to try Mr. Carton (name of my learned friend) for treason? But, Mr. Stryver replied to my Lord, no; but he would ask the witness to tell him whether what happened once, might happen twice; whether he would have been so confident if he had seen this illustration of his rashness sooner, whether he would be so confident, having seen it; and more. The upshot of which, was, to smash this witness like a crockery vessel, and shiver his part of the case to useless lumber.
Mr. Cruncher had by this time taken quite a lunch of rust off his fingers in his following of the evidence. He had now to attend while Mr. Stryver fitted the prisoner’s case on the jury, like a compact suit of clothes; showing them how the patriot, Barsad, was a hired spy and traitor, an unblushing trafficker in blood, and one of the greatest scoundrels upon earth since accursed Judas—which he certainly did look rather like. How the virtuous servant, Cly, was his friend and partner, and was worthy to be; how the watchful eyes of those forgers and false swearers had rested on the prisoner as a victim, because some family affairs in France, he being of French extraction, did require his making those passages across the Channel—though what those affairs were, a consideration for others who were near and dear to him, forbade him, even for his life, to disclose. How the evidence that had been warped and wrested from the young lady, whose anguish in giving it they had witnessed, came to nothing, involving the mere little innocent gallantries and politenesses likely to pass between any young gentleman and young lady so thrown together;—with the exception of that reference to George Washington, which was altogether too extravagant and impossible to be regarded in any other light than as a monstrous joke. How it would be a weakness in the government to break down in this attempt to practise for popularity on the lowest national antipathies and fears, and therefore Mr. Attorney-General had made the most of it; how, nevertheless, it rested upon nothing, save that vile and infamous character of evidence too often disfiguring such cases, and of which the State Trials of this country were full. But, there my Lord interposed (with as grave a face as if it had not been true), saying that he could not sit upon that Bench and suffer those allusions.
Mr. Stryver then called his few witnesses, and Mr. Cruncher had next to attend while Mr. Attorney-General turned the whole suit of clothes Mr. Stryver had fitted on the jury, inside out; showing how Barsad and Cly were even a hundred times better than he had thought them, and the prisoner a hundred times worse. Lastly, came my Lord himself, turning the suit of clothes, now inside out, now outside in, but on the whole decidedly trimming and shaping them into grave-clothes for the prisoner.
And now, the jury turned to consider, and the great flies swarmed again.
Mr. Carton, who had so long sat looking at the ceiling of the court, changed neither his place nor his attitude, even in this excitement. While his learned friend, Mr. Stryver, massing his papers before him, whispered with those who sat near, and from time to time glanced anxiously at the jury; while all the spectators moved more or less, and grouped themselves anew; while even my Lord himself arose from his seat, and slowly paced up and down his platform, not unattended by a suspicion in the minds of the audience that his state was feverish; this one man sat leaning back, with his torn gown half off him, his untidy wig put on just as it had happened to light on his head after its removal, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes on the ceiling as they had been all day. Something especially reckless in his demeanour, not only gave him a disreputable look, but so diminished the strong resemblance he undoubtedly bore to the prisoner (which his momentary earnestness, when they were compared together, had strengthened), that many of the lookers-on, taking note of him now, said to one another they would hardly have thought the two were so alike. Mr. Cruncher made the observation to his next neighbour, and added, “I’d hold half a guinea that he don’t get no law-work to do. Don’t look like the sort of one to get any, do he?”
Yet, this Mr. Carton took in more of the details of the scene than he appeared to take in; for now, when Miss Manette’s head dropped upon her father’s breast, he was the first to see it, and to say audibly: “Officer! look to that young lady. Help the gentleman to take her out. Don’t you see she will fall!”
There was much commiseration for her as she was removed, and much sympathy with her father. It had evidently been a great distress to him, to have the days of his imprisonment recalled. He had shown strong internal agitation when he was questioned, and that pondering or brooding look which made him old, had been upon him, like a heavy cloud, ever since. As he passed out, the jury, who had turned back and paused a moment, spoke, through their foreman.
They were not agreed, and wished to retire. My Lord (perhaps with George Washington on his mind) showed some surprise that they were not agreed, but signified his pleasure that they should retire under watch and ward, and retired himself. The trial had lasted all day, and the lamps in the court were now being lighted. It began to be rumoured that the jury would be out a long while. The spectators dropped off to get refreshment, and the prisoner withdrew to the back of the dock, and sat down.
Mr. Lorry, who had gone out when the young lady and her father went out, now reappeared, and beckoned to Jerry: who, in the slackened interest, could easily get near him.
“Jerry, if you wish to take something to eat, you can. But, keep in the way. You will be sure to hear when the jury come in. Don’t be a moment behind them, for I want you to take the verdict back to the bank. You are the quickest messenger I know, and will get to Temple Bar long before I can.”
Jerry had just enough forehead to knuckle, and he knuckled it in acknowledgment of this communication and a shilling. Mr. Carton came up at the moment, and touched Mr. Lorry on the arm.
“How is the young lady?”
“She is greatly distressed; but her father is comforting her, and she feels the better for being out of court.”
“I’ll tell the prisoner so. It won’t do for a respectable bank gentleman like you, to be seen speaking to him publicly, you know.”
Mr. Lorry reddened as if he were conscious of having debated the point in his mind, and Mr. Carton made his way to the outside of the bar. The way out of court lay in that direction, and Jerry followed him, all eyes, ears, and spikes.
“Mr. Darnay!”
The prisoner came forward directly.
“You will naturally be anxious to hear of the witness, Miss Manette. She will do very well. You have seen the worst of her agitation.”
“I am deeply sorry to have been the cause of it. Could you tell her so for me, with my fervent acknowledgments?”
“Yes, I could. I will, if you ask it.”
Mr. Carton’s manner was so careless as to be almost insolent. He stood, half turned from the prisoner, lounging with his elbow against the bar.
“I do ask it. Accept my cordial thanks.”
“What,” said Carton, still only half turned towards him, “do you expect, Mr. Darnay?”
“The worst.”
“It’s the wisest thing to expect, and the likeliest. But I think their withdrawing is in your favour.”
Loitering on the way out of court not being allowed, Jerry heard no more: but left them—so like each other in feature, so unlike each other in manner—standing side by side, both reflected in the glass above them.
An hour and a half limped heavily away in the thief-and-rascal crowded passages below, even though assisted off with mutton pies and ale. The hoarse messenger, uncomfortably seated on a form after taking that refection, had dropped into a doze, when a loud murmur and a rapid tide of people setting up the stairs that led to the court, carried him along with them.
“Jerry! Jerry!” Mr. Lorry was already calling at the door when he got there.
“Here, sir! It’s a fight to get back again. Here I am, sir!”
Mr. Lorry handed him a paper through the throng. “Quick! Have you got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Hastily written on the paper was the word “ACQUITTED.”
“If you had sent the message, ‘Recalled to Life,’ again,” muttered Jerry, as he turned, “I should have known what you meant, this time.”
He had no opportunity of saying, or so much as thinking, anything else, until he was clear of the Old Bailey; for, the crowd came pouring out with a vehemence that nearly took him off his legs, and a loud buzz swept into the street as if the baffled blue-flies were dispersing in search of other carrion.
CHAPTER IV. Congratulatory
From the dimly-lighted passages of the court, the last sediment of the human stew that had been boiling there all day, was straining off, when Doctor Manette, Lucie Manette, his daughter, Mr. Lorry, the solicitor for the defence, and its counsel, Mr. Stryver, stood gathered round Mr. Charles Darnay—just released—congratulating him on his escape from death.
It would have been difficult by a far brighter light, to recognise in Doctor Manette, intellectual of face and upright of bearing, the shoemaker of the garret in Paris. Yet, no one could have looked at him twice, without looking again: even though the opportunity of observation had not extended to the mournful cadence of his low grave voice, and to the abstraction that overclouded him fitfully, without any apparent reason. While one external cause, and that a reference to his long lingering agony, would always—as on the trial—evoke this condition from the depths of his soul, it was also in its nature to arise of itself, and to draw a gloom over him, as incomprehensible to those unacquainted with his story as if they had seen the shadow of the actual Bastille thrown upon him by a summer sun, when the substance was three hundred miles away.
Only his daughter had the power of charming this black brooding from his mind. She was the golden thread that united him to a Past beyond his misery, and to a Present beyond his misery: and the sound of her voice, the light of her face, the touch of her hand, had a strong beneficial influence with him almost always. Not absolutely always, for she could recall some occasions on which her power had failed; but they were few and slight, and she believed them over.
Mr. Darnay had kissed her hand fervently and gratefully, and had turned to Mr. Stryver, whom he warmly thanked. Mr. Stryver, a man of little more than thirty, but looking twenty years older than he was, stout, loud, red, bluff, and free from any drawback of delicacy, had a pushing way of shouldering himself (morally and physically) into companies and conversations, that argued well for his shouldering his way up in life.
He still had his wig and gown on, and he said, squaring himself at his late client to that degree that he squeezed the innocent Mr. Lorry clean out of the group: “I am glad to have brought you off with honour, Mr. Darnay. It was an infamous prosecution, grossly infamous; but not the less likely to succeed on that account.”
“You have laid me under an obligation to you for life—in two senses,” said his late client, taking his hand.
“I have done my best for you, Mr. Darnay; and my best is as good as another man’s, I believe.”
It clearly being incumbent on some one to say, “Much better,” Mr. Lorry said it; perhaps not quite disinterestedly, but with the interested object of squeezing himself back again.
“You think so?” said Mr. Stryver. “Well! you have been present all day, and you ought to know. You are a man of business, too.”
“And as such,” quoth Mr. Lorry, whom the counsel learned in the law had now shouldered back into the group, just as he had previously shouldered him out of it—“as such I will appeal to Doctor Manette, to break up this conference and order us all to our homes. Miss Lucie looks ill, Mr. Darnay has had a terrible day, we are worn out.”
“Speak for yourself, Mr. Lorry,” said Stryver; “I have a night’s work to do yet. Speak for yourself.”
“I speak for myself,” answered Mr. Lorry, “and for Mr. Darnay, and for Miss Lucie, and—Miss Lucie, do you not think I may speak for us all?” He asked her the question pointedly, and with a glance at her father.
His face had become frozen, as it were, in a very curious look at Darnay: an intent look, deepening into a frown of dislike and distrust, not even unmixed with fear. With this strange expression on him his thoughts had wandered away.
“My father,” said Lucie, softly laying her hand on his.
He slowly shook the shadow off, and turned to her.
“Shall we go home, my father?”
With a long breath, he answered “Yes.”
The friends of the acquitted prisoner had dispersed, under the impression—which he himself had originated—that he would not be released that night. The lights were nearly all extinguished in the passages, the iron gates were being closed with a jar and a rattle, and the dismal place was deserted until to-morrow morning’s interest of gallows, pillory, whipping-post, and branding-iron, should repeople it. Walking between her father and Mr. Darnay, Lucie Manette passed into the open air. A hackney-coach was called, and the father and daughter departed in it.
Mr. Stryver had left them in the passages, to shoulder his way back to the robing-room. Another person, who had not joined the group, or interchanged a word with any one of them, but who had been leaning against the wall where its shadow was darkest, had silently strolled out after the rest, and had looked on until the coach drove away. He now stepped up to where Mr. Lorry and Mr. Darnay stood upon the pavement.
“So, Mr. Lorry! Men of business may speak to Mr. Darnay now?”
Nobody had made any acknowledgment of Mr. Carton’s part in the day’s proceedings; nobody had known of it. He was unrobed, and was none the better for it in appearance.
“If you knew what a conflict goes on in the business mind, when the business mind is divided between good-natured impulse and business appearances, you would be amused, Mr. Darnay.”
Mr. Lorry reddened, and said, warmly, “You have mentioned that before, sir. We men of business, who serve a House, are not our own masters. We have to think of the House more than ourselves.”
“I know, I know,” rejoined Mr. Carton, carelessly. “Don’t be nettled, Mr. Lorry. You are as good as another, I have no doubt: better, I dare say.”
“And indeed, sir,” pursued Mr. Lorry, not minding him, “I really don’t know what you have to do with the matter. If you’ll excuse me, as very much your elder, for saying so, I really don’t know that it is your business.”
“Business! Bless you, I have no business,” said Mr. Carton.
“It is a pity you have not, sir.”
“I think so, too.”
“If you had,” pursued Mr. Lorry, “perhaps you would attend to it.”
“Lord love you, no!—I shouldn’t,” said Mr. Carton.
“Well, sir!” cried Mr. Lorry, thoroughly heated by his indifference, “business is a very good thing, and a very respectable thing. And, sir, if business imposes its restraints and its silences and impediments, Mr. Darnay as a young gentleman of generosity knows how to make allowance for that circumstance. Mr. Darnay, good night, God bless you, sir! I hope you have been this day preserved for a prosperous and happy life.—Chair there!”
Perhaps a little angry with himself, as well as with the barrister, Mr. Lorry bustled into the chair, and was carried off to Tellson’s. Carton, who smelt of port wine, and did not appear to be quite sober, laughed then, and turned to Darnay:
“This is a strange chance that throws you and me together. This must be a strange night to you, standing alone here with your counterpart on these street stones?”
“I hardly seem yet,” returned Charles Darnay, “to belong to this world again.”
“I don’t wonder at it; it’s not so long since you were pretty far advanced on your way to another. You speak faintly.”
“I begin to think I am faint.”
“Then why the devil don’t you dine? I dined, myself, while those numskulls were deliberating which world you should belong to—this, or some other. Let me show you the nearest tavern to dine well at.”
Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down Ludgate-hill to Fleet-street, and so, up a covered way, into a tavern. Here, they were shown into a little room, where Charles Darnay was soon recruiting his strength with a good plain dinner and good wine: while Carton sat opposite to him at the same table, with his separate bottle of port before him, and his fully half-insolent manner upon him.
“Do you feel, yet, that you belong to this terrestrial scheme again, Mr. Darnay?”
“I am frightfully confused regarding time and place; but I am so far mended as to feel that.”
“It must be an immense satisfaction!”
He said it bitterly, and filled up his glass again: which was a large one.
“As to me, the greatest desire I have, is to forget that I belong to it. It has no good in it for me—except wine like this—nor I for it. So we are not much alike in that particular. Indeed, I begin to think we are not much alike in any particular, you and I.”
Confused by the emotion of the day, and feeling his being there with this Double of coarse deportment, to be like a dream, Charles Darnay was at a loss how to answer; finally, answered not at all.
“Now your dinner is done,” Carton presently said, “why don’t you call a health, Mr. Darnay; why don’t you give your toast?”
“What health? What toast?”
“Why, it’s on the tip of your tongue. It ought to be, it must be, I’ll swear it’s there.”
“Miss Manette, then!”
“Miss Manette, then!”
Looking his companion full in the face while he drank the toast, Carton flung his glass over his shoulder against the wall, where it shivered to pieces; then, rang the bell, and ordered in another.
“That’s a fair young lady to hand to a coach in the dark, Mr. Darnay!” he said, filling his new goblet.
A slight frown and a laconic “Yes,” were the answer.
“That’s a fair young lady to be pitied by and wept for by! How does it feel? Is it worth being tried for one’s life, to be the object of such sympathy and compassion, Mr. Darnay?”
Again Darnay answered not a word.
“She was mightily pleased to have your message, when I gave it her. Not that she showed she was pleased, but I suppose she was.”
The allusion served as a timely reminder to Darnay that this disagreeable companion had, of his own free will, assisted him in the strait of the day. He turned the dialogue to that point, and thanked him for it.
“I neither want any thanks, nor merit any,” was the careless rejoinder. “It was nothing to do, in the first place; and I don’t know why I did it, in the second. Mr. Darnay, let me ask you a question.”
“Willingly, and a small return for your good offices.”
“Do you think I particularly like you?”
“Really, Mr. Carton,” returned the other, oddly disconcerted, “I have not asked myself the question.”
“But ask yourself the question now.”
“You have acted as if you do; but I don’t think you do.”
“I don’t think I do,” said Carton. “I begin to have a very good opinion of your understanding.”
“Nevertheless,” pursued Darnay, rising to ring the bell, “there is nothing in that, I hope, to prevent my calling the reckoning, and our parting without ill-blood on either side.”
Carton rejoining, “Nothing in life!” Darnay rang. “Do you call the whole reckoning?” said Carton. On his answering in the affirmative, “Then bring me another pint of this same wine, drawer, and come and wake me at ten.”
The bill being paid, Charles Darnay rose and wished him good night. Without returning the wish, Carton rose too, with something of a threat of defiance in his manner, and said, “A last word, Mr. Darnay: you think I am drunk?”
“I think you have been drinking, Mr. Carton.”
“Think? You know I have been drinking.”
“Since I must say so, I know it.”
“Then you shall likewise know why. I am a disappointed drudge, sir. I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me.”
“Much to be regretted. You might have used your talents better.”
“May be so, Mr. Darnay; may be not. Don’t let your sober face elate you, however; you don’t know what it may come to. Good night!”
When he was left alone, this strange being took up a candle, went to a glass that hung against the wall, and surveyed himself minutely in it.
“Do you particularly like the man?” he muttered, at his own image; “why should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that. Ah, confound you! What a change you have made in yourself! A good reason for taking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away from, and what you might have been! Change places with him, and would you have been looked at by those blue eyes as he was, and commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, and have it out in plain words! You hate the fellow.”
He resorted to his pint of wine for consolation, drank it all in a few minutes, and fell asleep on his arms, with his hair straggling over the table, and a long winding-sheet in the candle dripping down upon him.
CHAPTER V. The Jackal
Those were drinking days, and most men drank hard. So very great is the improvement Time has brought about in such habits, that a moderate statement of the quantity of wine and punch which one man would swallow in the course of a night, without any detriment to his reputation as a perfect gentleman, would seem, in these days, a ridiculous exaggeration. The learned profession of the law was certainly not behind any other learned profession in its Bacchanalian propensities; neither was Mr. Stryver, already fast shouldering his way to a large and lucrative practice, behind his compeers in this particular, any more than in the drier parts of the legal race.
A favourite at the Old Bailey, and eke at the Sessions, Mr. Stryver had begun cautiously to hew away the lower staves of the ladder on which he mounted. Sessions and Old Bailey had now to summon their favourite, specially, to their longing arms; and shouldering itself towards the visage of the Lord Chief Justice in the Court of King’s Bench, the florid countenance of Mr. Stryver might be daily seen, bursting out of the bed of wigs, like a great sunflower pushing its way at the sun from among a rank garden-full of flaring companions.
It had once been noted at the Bar, that while Mr. Stryver was a glib man, and an unscrupulous, and a ready, and a bold, he had not that faculty of extracting the essence from a heap of statements, which is among the most striking and necessary of the advocate’s accomplishments. But, a remarkable improvement came upon him as to this. The more business he got, the greater his power seemed to grow of getting at its pith and marrow; and however late at night he sat carousing with Sydney Carton, he always had his points at his fingers’ ends in the morning.
Sydney Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men, was Stryver’s great ally. What the two drank together, between Hilary Term and Michaelmas, might have floated a king’s ship. Stryver never had a case in hand, anywhere, but Carton was there, with his hands in his pockets, staring at the ceiling of the court; they went the same Circuit, and even there they prolonged their usual orgies late into the night, and Carton was rumoured to be seen at broad day, going home stealthily and unsteadily to his lodgings, like a dissipated cat. At last, it began to get about, among such as were interested in the matter, that although Sydney Carton would never be a lion, he was an amazingly good jackal, and that he rendered suit and service to Stryver in that humble capacity.
“Ten o’clock, sir,” said the man at the tavern, whom he had charged to wake him—“ten o’clock, sir.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Ten o’clock, sir.”
“What do you mean? Ten o’clock at night?”
“Yes, sir. Your honour told me to call you.”
“Oh! I remember. Very well, very well.”
After a few dull efforts to get to sleep again, which the man dexterously combated by stirring the fire continuously for five minutes, he got up, tossed his hat on, and walked out. He turned into the Temple, and, having revived himself by twice pacing the pavements of King’s Bench-walk and Paper-buildings, turned into the Stryver chambers.
The Stryver clerk, who never assisted at these conferences, had gone home, and the Stryver principal opened the door. He had his slippers on, and a loose bed-gown, and his throat was bare for his greater ease. He had that rather wild, strained, seared marking about the eyes, which may be observed in all free livers of his class, from the portrait of Jeffries downward, and which can be traced, under various disguises of Art, through the portraits of every Drinking Age.
“You are a little late, Memory,” said Stryver.
“About the usual time; it may be a quarter of an hour later.”
They went into a dingy room lined with books and littered with papers, where there was a blazing fire. A kettle steamed upon the hob, and in the midst of the wreck of papers a table shone, with plenty of wine upon it, and brandy, and rum, and sugar, and lemons.
“You have had your bottle, I perceive, Sydney.”
“Two to-night, I think. I have been dining with the day’s client; or seeing him dine—it’s all one!”
“That was a rare point, Sydney, that you brought to bear upon the identification. How did you come by it? When did it strike you?”
“I thought he was rather a handsome fellow, and I thought I should have been much the same sort of fellow, if I had had any luck.”
Mr. Stryver laughed till he shook his precocious paunch.
“You and your luck, Sydney! Get to work, get to work.”
Sullenly enough, the jackal loosened his dress, went into an adjoining room, and came back with a large jug of cold water, a basin, and a towel or two. Steeping the towels in the water, and partially wringing them out, he folded them on his head in a manner hideous to behold, sat down at the table, and said, “Now I am ready!”
“Not much boiling down to be done to-night, Memory,” said Mr. Stryver, gaily, as he looked among his papers.
“How much?”
“Only two sets of them.”
“Give me the worst first.”
“There they are, Sydney. Fire away!”
The lion then composed himself on his back on a sofa on one side of the drinking-table, while the jackal sat at his own paper-bestrewn table proper, on the other side of it, with the bottles and glasses ready to his hand. Both resorted to the drinking-table without stint, but each in a different way; the lion for the most part reclining with his hands in his waistband, looking at the fire, or occasionally flirting with some lighter document; the jackal, with knitted brows and intent face, so deep in his task, that his eyes did not even follow the hand he stretched out for his glass—which often groped about, for a minute or more, before it found the glass for his lips. Two or three times, the matter in hand became so knotty, that the jackal found it imperative on him to get up, and steep his towels anew. From these pilgrimages to the jug and basin, he returned with such eccentricities of damp headgear as no words can describe; which were made the more ludicrous by his anxious gravity.
At length the jackal had got together a compact repast for the lion, and proceeded to offer it to him. The lion took it with care and caution, made his selections from it, and his remarks upon it, and the jackal assisted both. When the repast was fully discussed, the lion put his hands in his waistband again, and lay down to meditate. The jackal then invigorated himself with a bumper for his throttle, and a fresh application to his head, and applied himself to the collection of a second meal; this was administered to the lion in the same manner, and was not disposed of until the clocks struck three in the morning.
“And now we have done, Sydney, fill a bumper of punch,” said Mr. Stryver.
The jackal removed the towels from his head, which had been steaming again, shook himself, yawned, shivered, and complied.
“You were very sound, Sydney, in the matter of those crown witnesses to-day. Every question told.”
“I always am sound; am I not?”
“I don’t gainsay it. What has roughened your temper? Put some punch to it and smooth it again.”
With a deprecatory grunt, the jackal again complied.
“The old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School,” said Stryver, nodding his head over him as he reviewed him in the present and the past, “the old seesaw Sydney. Up one minute and down the next; now in spirits and now in despondency!”
“Ah!” returned the other, sighing: “yes! The same Sydney, with the same luck. Even then, I did exercises for other boys, and seldom did my own.”
“And why not?”
“God knows. It was my way, I suppose.”
He sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out before him, looking at the fire.
“Carton,” said his friend, squaring himself at him with a bullying air, as if the fire-grate had been the furnace in which sustained endeavour was forged, and the one delicate thing to be done for the old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School was to shoulder him into it, “your way is, and always was, a lame way. You summon no energy and purpose. Look at me.”
“Oh, botheration!” returned Sydney, with a lighter and more good-humoured laugh, “don’t you be moral!”
“How have I done what I have done?” said Stryver; “how do I do what I do?”
“Partly through paying me to help you, I suppose. But it’s not worth your while to apostrophise me, or the air, about it; what you want to do, you do. You were always in the front rank, and I was always behind.”
“I had to get into the front rank; I was not born there, was I?”
“I was not present at the ceremony; but my opinion is you were,” said Carton. At this, he laughed again, and they both laughed.
“Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury, and ever since Shrewsbury,” pursued Carton, “you have fallen into your rank, and I have fallen into mine. Even when we were fellow-students in the Student-Quarter of Paris, picking up French, and French law, and other French crumbs that we didn’t get much good of, you were always somewhere, and I was always nowhere.”
“And whose fault was that?”
“Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours. You were always driving and riving and shouldering and passing, to that restless degree that I had no chance for my life but in rust and repose. It’s a gloomy thing, however, to talk about one’s own past, with the day breaking. Turn me in some other direction before I go.”
“Well then! Pledge me to the pretty witness,” said Stryver, holding up his glass. “Are you turned in a pleasant direction?”
Apparently not, for he became gloomy again.
“Pretty witness,” he muttered, looking down into his glass. “I have had enough of witnesses to-day and to-night; who’s your pretty witness?”
“The picturesque doctor’s daughter, Miss Manette.”
“She pretty?”
“Is she not?”
“No.”
“Why, man alive, she was the admiration of the whole Court!”
“Rot the admiration of the whole Court! Who made the Old Bailey a judge of beauty? She was a golden-haired doll!”
“Do you know, Sydney,” said Mr. Stryver, looking at him with sharp eyes, and slowly drawing a hand across his florid face: “do you know, I rather thought, at the time, that you sympathised with the golden-haired doll, and were quick to see what happened to the golden-haired doll?”
“Quick to see what happened! If a girl, doll or no doll, swoons within a yard or two of a man’s nose, he can see it without a perspective-glass. I pledge you, but I deny the beauty. And now I’ll have no more drink; I’ll get to bed.”
When his host followed him out on the staircase with a candle, to light him down the stairs, the day was coldly looking in through its grimy windows. When he got out of the house, the air was cold and sad, the dull sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole scene like a lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning round and round before the morning blast, as if the desert-sand had risen far away, and the first spray of it in its advance had begun to overwhelm the city.
Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears.
Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.
CHAPTER VI. Hundreds of People
The quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a quiet street-corner not far from Soho-square. On the afternoon of a certain fine Sunday when the waves of four months had rolled over the trial for treason, and carried it, as to the public interest and memory, far out to sea, Mr. Jarvis Lorry walked along the sunny streets from Clerkenwell where he lived, on his way to dine with the Doctor. After several relapses into business-absorption, Mr. Lorry had become the Doctor’s friend, and the quiet street-corner was the sunny part of his life.
On this certain fine Sunday, Mr. Lorry walked towards Soho, early in the afternoon, for three reasons of habit. Firstly, because, on fine Sundays, he often walked out, before dinner, with the Doctor and Lucie; secondly, because, on unfavourable Sundays, he was accustomed to be with them as the family friend, talking, reading, looking out of window, and generally getting through the day; thirdly, because he happened to have his own little shrewd doubts to solve, and knew how the ways of the Doctor’s household pointed to that time as a likely time for solving them.
A quainter corner than the corner where the Doctor lived, was not to be found in London. There was no way through it, and the front windows of the Doctor’s lodgings commanded a pleasant little vista of street that had a congenial air of retirement on it. There were few buildings then, north of the Oxford-road, and forest-trees flourished, and wild flowers grew, and the hawthorn blossomed, in the now vanished fields. As a consequence, country airs circulated in Soho with vigorous freedom, instead of languishing into the parish like stray paupers without a settlement; and there was many a good south wall, not far off, on which the peaches ripened in their season.
The summer light struck into the corner brilliantly in the earlier part of the day; but, when the streets grew hot, the corner was in shadow, though not in shadow so remote but that you could see beyond it into a glare of brightness. It was a cool spot, staid but cheerful, a wonderful place for echoes, and a very harbour from the raging streets.
There ought to have been a tranquil bark in such an anchorage, and there was. The Doctor occupied two floors of a large stiff house, where several callings purported to be pursued by day, but whereof little was audible any day, and which was shunned by all of them at night. In a building at the back, attainable by a courtyard where a plane-tree rustled its green leaves, church-organs claimed to be made, and silver to be chased, and likewise gold to be beaten by some mysterious giant who had a golden arm starting out of the wall of the front hall—as if he had beaten himself precious, and menaced a similar conversion of all visitors. Very little of these trades, or of a lonely lodger rumoured to live up-stairs, or of a dim coach-trimming maker asserted to have a counting-house below, was ever heard or seen. Occasionally, a stray workman putting his coat on, traversed the hall, or a stranger peered about there, or a distant clink was heard across the courtyard, or a thump from the golden giant. These, however, were only the exceptions required to prove the rule that the sparrows in the plane-tree behind the house, and the echoes in the corner before it, had their own way from Sunday morning unto Saturday night.
Doctor Manette received such patients here as his old reputation, and its revival in the floating whispers of his story, brought him. His scientific knowledge, and his vigilance and skill in conducting ingenious experiments, brought him otherwise into moderate request, and he earned as much as he wanted.
These things were within Mr. Jarvis Lorry’s knowledge, thoughts, and notice, when he rang the door-bell of the tranquil house in the corner, on the fine Sunday afternoon.
“Doctor Manette at home?”
Expected home.
“Miss Lucie at home?”
Expected home.
“Miss Pross at home?”
Possibly at home, but of a certainty impossible for handmaid to anticipate intentions of Miss Pross, as to admission or denial of the fact.
“As I am at home myself,” said Mr. Lorry, “I’ll go upstairs.”
Although the Doctor’s daughter had known nothing of the country of her birth, she appeared to have innately derived from it that ability to make much of little means, which is one of its most useful and most agreeable characteristics. Simple as the furniture was, it was set off by so many little adornments, of no value but for their taste and fancy, that its effect was delightful. The disposition of everything in the rooms, from the largest object to the least; the arrangement of colours, the elegant variety and contrast obtained by thrift in trifles, by delicate hands, clear eyes, and good sense; were at once so pleasant in themselves, and so expressive of their originator, that, as Mr. Lorry stood looking about him, the very chairs and tables seemed to ask him, with something of that peculiar expression which he knew so well by this time, whether he approved?
There were three rooms on a floor, and, the doors by which they communicated being put open that the air might pass freely through them all, Mr. Lorry, smilingly observant of that fanciful resemblance which he detected all around him, walked from one to another. The first was the best room, and in it were Lucie’s birds, and flowers, and books, and desk, and work-table, and box of water-colours; the second was the Doctor’s consulting-room, used also as the dining-room; the third, changingly speckled by the rustle of the plane-tree in the yard, was the Doctor’s bedroom, and there, in a corner, stood the disused shoemaker’s bench and tray of tools, much as it had stood on the fifth floor of the dismal house by the wine-shop, in the suburb of Saint Antoine in Paris.
“I wonder,” said Mr. Lorry, pausing in his looking about, “that he keeps that reminder of his sufferings about him!”
“And why wonder at that?” was the abrupt inquiry that made him start.
It proceeded from Miss Pross, the wild red woman, strong of hand, whose acquaintance he had first made at the Royal George Hotel at Dover, and had since improved.
“I should have thought—” Mr. Lorry began.
“Pooh! You’d have thought!” said Miss Pross; and Mr. Lorry left off.
“How do you do?” inquired that lady then—sharply, and yet as if to express that she bore him no malice.
“I am pretty well, I thank you,” answered Mr. Lorry, with meekness; “how are you?”
“Nothing to boast of,” said Miss Pross.
“Indeed?”
“Ah! indeed!” said Miss Pross. “I am very much put out about my Ladybird.”
“Indeed?”
“For gracious sake say something else besides ‘indeed,’ or you’ll fidget me to death,” said Miss Pross: whose character (dissociated from stature) was shortness.
“Really, then?” said Mr. Lorry, as an amendment.
“Really, is bad enough,” returned Miss Pross, “but better. Yes, I am very much put out.”
“May I ask the cause?”
“I don’t want dozens of people who are not at all worthy of Ladybird, to come here looking after her,” said Miss Pross.
“Do dozens come for that purpose?”
“Hundreds,” said Miss Pross.
It was characteristic of this lady (as of some other people before her time and since) that whenever her original proposition was questioned, she exaggerated it.
“Dear me!” said Mr. Lorry, as the safest remark he could think of.
“I have lived with the darling—or the darling has lived with me, and paid me for it; which she certainly should never have done, you may take your affidavit, if I could have afforded to keep either myself or her for nothing—since she was ten years old. And it’s really very hard,” said Miss Pross.
Not seeing with precision what was very hard, Mr. Lorry shook his head; using that important part of himself as a sort of fairy cloak that would fit anything.
“All sorts of people who are not in the least degree worthy of the pet, are always turning up,” said Miss Pross. “When you began it—”
“I began it, Miss Pross?”
“Didn’t you? Who brought her father to life?”
“Oh! If that was beginning it—” said Mr. Lorry.
“It wasn’t ending it, I suppose? I say, when you began it, it was hard enough; not that I have any fault to find with Doctor Manette, except that he is not worthy of such a daughter, which is no imputation on him, for it was not to be expected that anybody should be, under any circumstances. But it really is doubly and trebly hard to have crowds and multitudes of people turning up after him (I could have forgiven him), to take Ladybird’s affections away from me.”
Mr. Lorry knew Miss Pross to be very jealous, but he also knew her by this time to be, beneath the service of her eccentricity, one of those unselfish creatures—found only among women—who will, for pure love and admiration, bind themselves willing slaves, to youth when they have lost it, to beauty that they never had, to accomplishments that they were never fortunate enough to gain, to bright hopes that never shone upon their own sombre lives. He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart; so rendered and so free from any mercenary taint, he had such an exalted respect for it, that in the retributive arrangements made by his own mind—we all make such arrangements, more or less—he stationed Miss Pross much nearer to the lower Angels than many ladies immeasurably better got up both by Nature and Art, who had balances at Tellson’s.
“There never was, nor will be, but one man worthy of Ladybird,” said Miss Pross; “and that was my brother Solomon, if he hadn’t made a mistake in life.”
Here again: Mr. Lorry’s inquiries into Miss Pross’s personal history had established the fact that her brother Solomon was a heartless scoundrel who had stripped her of everything she possessed, as a stake to speculate with, and had abandoned her in her poverty for evermore, with no touch of compunction. Miss Pross’s fidelity of belief in Solomon (deducting a mere trifle for this slight mistake) was quite a serious matter with Mr. Lorry, and had its weight in his good opinion of her.
“As we happen to be alone for the moment, and are both people of business,” he said, when they had got back to the drawing-room and had sat down there in friendly relations, “let me ask you—does the Doctor, in talking with Lucie, never refer to the shoemaking time, yet?”
“Never.”
“And yet keeps that bench and those tools beside him?”
“Ah!” returned Miss Pross, shaking her head. “But I don’t say he don’t refer to it within himself.”
“Do you believe that he thinks of it much?”
“I do,” said Miss Pross.
“Do you imagine—” Mr. Lorry had begun, when Miss Pross took him up short with:
“Never imagine anything. Have no imagination at all.”
“I stand corrected; do you suppose—you go so far as to suppose, sometimes?”
“Now and then,” said Miss Pross.
“Do you suppose,” Mr. Lorry went on, with a laughing twinkle in his bright eye, as it looked kindly at her, “that Doctor Manette has any theory of his own, preserved through all those years, relative to the cause of his being so oppressed; perhaps, even to the name of his oppressor?”
“I don’t suppose anything about it but what Ladybird tells me.”
“And that is—?”
“That she thinks he has.”
“Now don’t be angry at my asking all these questions; because I am a mere dull man of business, and you are a woman of business.”
“Dull?” Miss Pross inquired, with placidity.
Rather wishing his modest adjective away, Mr. Lorry replied, “No, no, no. Surely not. To return to business:—Is it not remarkable that Doctor Manette, unquestionably innocent of any crime as we are all well assured he is, should never touch upon that question? I will not say with me, though he had business relations with me many years ago, and we are now intimate; I will say with the fair daughter to whom he is so devotedly attached, and who is so devotedly attached to him? Believe me, Miss Pross, I don’t approach the topic with you, out of curiosity, but out of zealous interest.”
“Well! To the best of my understanding, and bad’s the best, you’ll tell me,” said Miss Pross, softened by the tone of the apology, “he is afraid of the whole subject.”
“Afraid?”
“It’s plain enough, I should think, why he may be. It’s a dreadful remembrance. Besides that, his loss of himself grew out of it. Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again. That alone wouldn’t make the subject pleasant, I should think.”
It was a profounder remark than Mr. Lorry had looked for. “True,” said he, “and fearful to reflect upon. Yet, a doubt lurks in my mind, Miss Pross, whether it is good for Doctor Manette to have that suppression always shut up within him. Indeed, it is this doubt and the uneasiness it sometimes causes me that has led me to our present confidence.”
“Can’t be helped,” said Miss Pross, shaking her head. “Touch that string, and he instantly changes for the worse. Better leave it alone. In short, must leave it alone, like or no like. Sometimes, he gets up in the dead of the night, and will be heard, by us overhead there, walking up and down, walking up and down, in his room. Ladybird has learnt to know then that his mind is walking up and down, walking up and down, in his old prison. She hurries to him, and they go on together, walking up and down, walking up and down, until he is composed. But he never says a word of the true reason of his restlessness, to her, and she finds it best not to hint at it to him. In silence they go walking up and down together, walking up and down together, till her love and company have brought him to himself.”
Notwithstanding Miss Pross’s denial of her own imagination, there was a perception of the pain of being monotonously haunted by one sad idea, in her repetition of the phrase, walking up and down, which testified to her possessing such a thing.
The corner has been mentioned as a wonderful corner for echoes; it had begun to echo so resoundingly to the tread of coming feet, that it seemed as though the very mention of that weary pacing to and fro had set it going.
“Here they are!” said Miss Pross, rising to break up the conference; “and now we shall have hundreds of people pretty soon!”
It was such a curious corner in its acoustical properties, such a peculiar Ear of a place, that as Mr. Lorry stood at the open window, looking for the father and daughter whose steps he heard, he fancied they would never approach. Not only would the echoes die away, as though the steps had gone; but, echoes of other steps that never came would be heard in their stead, and would die away for good when they seemed close at hand. However, father and daughter did at last appear, and Miss Pross was ready at the street door to receive them.
Miss Pross was a pleasant sight, albeit wild, and red, and grim, taking off her darling’s bonnet when she came up-stairs, and touching it up with the ends of her handkerchief, and blowing the dust off it, and folding her mantle ready for laying by, and smoothing her rich hair with as much pride as she could possibly have taken in her own hair if she had been the vainest and handsomest of women. Her darling was a pleasant sight too, embracing her and thanking her, and protesting against her taking so much trouble for her—which last she only dared to do playfully, or Miss Pross, sorely hurt, would have retired to her own chamber and cried. The Doctor was a pleasant sight too, looking on at them, and telling Miss Pross how she spoilt Lucie, in accents and with eyes that had as much spoiling in them as Miss Pross had, and would have had more if it were possible. Mr. Lorry was a pleasant sight too, beaming at all this in his little wig, and thanking his bachelor stars for having lighted him in his declining years to a Home. But, no Hundreds of people came to see the sights, and Mr. Lorry looked in vain for the fulfilment of Miss Pross’s prediction.
Dinner-time, and still no Hundreds of people. In the arrangements of the little household, Miss Pross took charge of the lower regions, and always acquitted herself marvellously. Her dinners, of a very modest quality, were so well cooked and so well served, and so neat in their contrivances, half English and half French, that nothing could be better. Miss Pross’s friendship being of the thoroughly practical kind, she had ravaged Soho and the adjacent provinces, in search of impoverished French, who, tempted by shillings and half-crowns, would impart culinary mysteries to her. From these decayed sons and daughters of Gaul, she had acquired such wonderful arts, that the woman and girl who formed the staff of domestics regarded her as quite a Sorceress, or Cinderella’s Godmother: who would send out for a fowl, a rabbit, a vegetable or two from the garden, and change them into anything she pleased.
On Sundays, Miss Pross dined at the Doctor’s table, but on other days persisted in taking her meals at unknown periods, either in the lower regions, or in her own room on the second floor—a blue chamber, to which no one but her Ladybird ever gained admittance. On this occasion, Miss Pross, responding to Ladybird’s pleasant face and pleasant efforts to please her, unbent exceedingly; so the dinner was very pleasant, too.
It was an oppressive day, and, after dinner, Lucie proposed that the wine should be carried out under the plane-tree, and they should sit there in the air. As everything turned upon her, and revolved about her, they went out under the plane-tree, and she carried the wine down for the special benefit of Mr. Lorry. She had installed herself, some time before, as Mr. Lorry’s cup-bearer; and while they sat under the plane-tree, talking, she kept his glass replenished. Mysterious backs and ends of houses peeped at them as they talked, and the plane-tree whispered to them in its own way above their heads.
Still, the Hundreds of people did not present themselves. Mr. Darnay presented himself while they were sitting under the plane-tree, but he was only One.
Doctor Manette received him kindly, and so did Lucie. But, Miss Pross suddenly became afflicted with a twitching in the head and body, and retired into the house. She was not unfrequently the victim of this disorder, and she called it, in familiar conversation, “a fit of the jerks.”
The Doctor was in his best condition, and looked specially young. The resemblance between him and Lucie was very strong at such times, and as they sat side by side, she leaning on his shoulder, and he resting his arm on the back of her chair, it was very agreeable to trace the likeness.
He had been talking all day, on many subjects, and with unusual vivacity. “Pray, Doctor Manette,” said Mr. Darnay, as they sat under the plane-tree—and he said it in the natural pursuit of the topic in hand, which happened to be the old buildings of London—“have you seen much of the Tower?”
“Lucie and I have been there; but only casually. We have seen enough of it, to know that it teems with interest; little more.”
“I have been there, as you remember,” said Darnay, with a smile, though reddening a little angrily, “in another character, and not in a character that gives facilities for seeing much of it. They told me a curious thing when I was there.”
“What was that?” Lucie asked.
“In making some alterations, the workmen came upon an old dungeon, which had been, for many years, built up and forgotten. Every stone of its inner wall was covered by inscriptions which had been carved by prisoners—dates, names, complaints, and prayers. Upon a corner stone in an angle of the wall, one prisoner, who seemed to have gone to execution, had cut as his last work, three letters. They were done with some very poor instrument, and hurriedly, with an unsteady hand. At first, they were read as D. I. C.; but, on being more carefully examined, the last letter was found to be G. There was no record or legend of any prisoner with those initials, and many fruitless guesses were made what the name could have been. At length, it was suggested that the letters were not initials, but the complete word, DIG. The floor was examined very carefully under the inscription, and, in the earth beneath a stone, or tile, or some fragment of paving, were found the ashes of a paper, mingled with the ashes of a small leathern case or bag. What the unknown prisoner had written will never be read, but he had written something, and hidden it away to keep it from the gaoler.”
“My father,” exclaimed Lucie, “you are ill!”
He had suddenly started up, with his hand to his head. His manner and his look quite terrified them all.
“No, my dear, not ill. There are large drops of rain falling, and they made me start. We had better go in.”
He recovered himself almost instantly. Rain was really falling in large drops, and he showed the back of his hand with rain-drops on it. But, he said not a single word in reference to the discovery that had been told of, and, as they went into the house, the business eye of Mr. Lorry either detected, or fancied it detected, on his face, as it turned towards Charles Darnay, the same singular look that had been upon it when it turned towards him in the passages of the Court House.
He recovered himself so quickly, however, that Mr. Lorry had doubts of his business eye. The arm of the golden giant in the hall was not more steady than he was, when he stopped under it to remark to them that he was not yet proof against slight surprises (if he ever would be), and that the rain had startled him.
Tea-time, and Miss Pross making tea, with another fit of the jerks upon her, and yet no Hundreds of people. Mr. Carton had lounged in, but he made only Two.
The night was so very sultry, that although they sat with doors and windows open, they were overpowered by heat. When the tea-table was done with, they all moved to one of the windows, and looked out into the heavy twilight. Lucie sat by her father; Darnay sat beside her; Carton leaned against a window. The curtains were long and white, and some of the thunder-gusts that whirled into the corner, caught them up to the ceiling, and waved them like spectral wings.
“The rain-drops are still falling, large, heavy, and few,” said Doctor Manette. “It comes slowly.”
“It comes surely,” said Carton.
They spoke low, as people watching and waiting mostly do; as people in a dark room, watching and waiting for Lightning, always do.
There was a great hurry in the streets of people speeding away to get shelter before the storm broke; the wonderful corner for echoes resounded with the echoes of footsteps coming and going, yet not a footstep was there.
“A multitude of people, and yet a solitude!” said Darnay, when they had listened for a while.
“Is it not impressive, Mr. Darnay?” asked Lucie. “Sometimes, I have sat here of an evening, until I have fancied—but even the shade of a foolish fancy makes me shudder to-night, when all is so black and solemn—”
“Let us shudder too. We may know what it is.”
“It will seem nothing to you. Such whims are only impressive as we originate them, I think; they are not to be communicated. I have sometimes sat alone here of an evening, listening, until I have made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by-and-bye into our lives.”
“There is a great crowd coming one day into our lives, if that be so,” Sydney Carton struck in, in his moody way.
The footsteps were incessant, and the hurry of them became more and more rapid. The corner echoed and re-echoed with the tread of feet; some, as it seemed, under the windows; some, as it seemed, in the room; some coming, some going, some breaking off, some stopping altogether; all in the distant streets, and not one within sight.
“Are all these footsteps destined to come to all of us, Miss Manette, or are we to divide them among us?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Darnay; I told you it was a foolish fancy, but you asked for it. When I have yielded myself to it, I have been alone, and then I have imagined them the footsteps of the people who are to come into my life, and my father’s.”
“I take them into mine!” said Carton. “I ask no questions and make no stipulations. There is a great crowd bearing down upon us, Miss Manette, and I see them—by the Lightning.” He added the last words, after there had been a vivid flash which had shown him lounging in the window.
“And I hear them!” he added again, after a peal of thunder. “Here they come, fast, fierce, and furious!”
It was the rush and roar of rain that he typified, and it stopped him, for no voice could be heard in it. A memorable storm of thunder and lightning broke with that sweep of water, and there was not a moment’s interval in crash, and fire, and rain, until after the moon rose at midnight.
The great bell of Saint Paul’s was striking one in the cleared air, when Mr. Lorry, escorted by Jerry, high-booted and bearing a lantern, set forth on his return-passage to Clerkenwell. There were solitary patches of road on the way between Soho and Clerkenwell, and Mr. Lorry, mindful of foot-pads, always retained Jerry for this service: though it was usually performed a good two hours earlier.
“What a night it has been! Almost a night, Jerry,” said Mr. Lorry, “to bring the dead out of their graves.”
“I never see the night myself, master—nor yet I don’t expect to—what would do that,” answered Jerry.
“Good night, Mr. Carton,” said the man of business. “Good night, Mr. Darnay. Shall we ever see such a night again, together!”
Perhaps. Perhaps, see the great crowd of people with its rush and roar, bearing down upon them, too.
CHAPTER VII. Monseigneur in Town
Monseigneur, one of the great lords in power at the Court, held his fortnightly reception in his grand hotel in Paris. Monseigneur was in his inner room, his sanctuary of sanctuaries, the Holiest of Holiests to the crowd of worshippers in the suite of rooms without. Monseigneur was about to take his chocolate. Monseigneur could swallow a great many things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France; but, his morning’s chocolate could not so much as get into the throat of Monseigneur, without the aid of four strong men besides the Cook.
Yes. It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous decoration, and the Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur’s lips. One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have died of two.
Monseigneur had been out at a little supper last night, where the Comedy and the Grand Opera were charmingly represented. Monseigneur was out at a little supper most nights, with fascinating company. So polite and so impressible was Monseigneur, that the Comedy and the Grand Opera had far more influence with him in the tiresome articles of state affairs and state secrets, than the needs of all France. A happy circumstance for France, as the like always is for all countries similarly favoured!—always was for England (by way of example), in the regretted days of the merry Stuart who sold it.
Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public business, which was, to let everything go on in its own way; of particular public business, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea that it must all go his way—tend to his own power and pocket. Of his pleasures, general and particular, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea, that the world was made for them. The text of his order (altered from the original by only a pronoun, which is not much) ran: “The earth and the fulness thereof are mine, saith Monseigneur.”
Yet, Monseigneur had slowly found that vulgar embarrassments crept into his affairs, both private and public; and he had, as to both classes of affairs, allied himself perforce with a Farmer-General. As to finances public, because Monseigneur could not make anything at all of them, and must consequently let them out to somebody who could; as to finances private, because Farmer-Generals were rich, and Monseigneur, after generations of great luxury and expense, was growing poor. Hence Monseigneur had taken his sister from a convent, while there was yet time to ward off the impending veil, the cheapest garment she could wear, and had bestowed her as a prize upon a very rich Farmer-General, poor in family. Which Farmer-General, carrying an appropriate cane with a golden apple on the top of it, was now among the company in the outer rooms, much prostrated before by mankind—always excepting superior mankind of the blood of Monseigneur, who, his own wife included, looked down upon him with the loftiest contempt.
A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty horses stood in his stables, twenty-four male domestics sat in his halls, six body-women waited on his wife. As one who pretended to do nothing but plunder and forage where he could, the Farmer-General—howsoever his matrimonial relations conduced to social morality—was at least the greatest reality among the personages who attended at the hotel of Monseigneur that day.
For, the rooms, though a beautiful scene to look at, and adorned with every device of decoration that the taste and skill of the time could achieve, were, in truth, not a sound business; considered with any reference to the scarecrows in the rags and nightcaps elsewhere (and not so far off, either, but that the watching towers of Notre Dame, almost equidistant from the two extremes, could see them both), they would have been an exceedingly uncomfortable business—if that could have been anybody’s business, at the house of Monseigneur. Military officers destitute of military knowledge; naval officers with no idea of a ship; civil officers without a notion of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics, of the worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives; all totally unfit for their several callings, all lying horribly in pretending to belong to them, but all nearly or remotely of the order of Monseigneur, and therefore foisted on all public employments from which anything was to be got; these were to be told off by the score and the score. People not immediately connected with Monseigneur or the State, yet equally unconnected with anything that was real, or with lives passed in travelling by any straight road to any true earthly end, were no less abundant. Doctors who made great fortunes out of dainty remedies for imaginary disorders that never existed, smiled upon their courtly patients in the ante-chambers of Monseigneur. Projectors who had discovered every kind of remedy for the little evils with which the State was touched, except the remedy of setting to work in earnest to root out a single sin, poured their distracting babble into any ears they could lay hold of, at the reception of Monseigneur. Unbelieving Philosophers who were remodelling the world with words, and making card-towers of Babel to scale the skies with, talked with Unbelieving Chemists who had an eye on the transmutation of metals, at this wonderful gathering accumulated by Monseigneur. Exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding, which was at that remarkable time—and has been since—to be known by its fruits of indifference to every natural subject of human interest, were in the most exemplary state of exhaustion, at the hotel of Monseigneur. Such homes had these various notabilities left behind them in the fine world of Paris, that the spies among the assembled devotees of Monseigneur—forming a goodly half of the polite company—would have found it hard to discover among the angels of that sphere one solitary wife, who, in her manners and appearance, owned to being a Mother. Indeed, except for the mere act of bringing a troublesome creature into this world—which does not go far towards the realisation of the name of mother—there was no such thing known to the fashion. Peasant women kept the unfashionable babies close, and brought them up, and charming grandmammas of sixty dressed and supped as at twenty.
The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance upon Monseigneur. In the outermost room were half a dozen exceptional people who had had, for a few years, some vague misgiving in them that things in general were going rather wrong. As a promising way of setting them right, half of the half-dozen had become members of a fantastic sect of Convulsionists, and were even then considering within themselves whether they should foam, rage, roar, and turn cataleptic on the spot—thereby setting up a highly intelligible finger-post to the Future, for Monseigneur’s guidance. Besides these Dervishes, were other three who had rushed into another sect, which mended matters with a jargon about “the Centre of Truth:” holding that Man had got out of the Centre of Truth—which did not need much demonstration—but had not got out of the Circumference, and that he was to be kept from flying out of the Circumference, and was even to be shoved back into the Centre, by fasting and seeing of spirits. Among these, accordingly, much discoursing with spirits went on—and it did a world of good which never became manifest.
But, the comfort was, that all the company at the grand hotel of Monseigneur were perfectly dressed. If the Day of Judgment had only been ascertained to be a dress day, everybody there would have been eternally correct. Such frizzling and powdering and sticking up of hair, such delicate complexions artificially preserved and mended, such gallant swords to look at, and such delicate honour to the sense of smell, would surely keep anything going, for ever and ever. The exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding wore little pendent trinkets that chinked as they languidly moved; these golden fetters rang like precious little bells; and what with that ringing, and with the rustle of silk and brocade and fine linen, there was a flutter in the air that fanned Saint Antoine and his devouring hunger far away.
Dress was the one unfailing talisman and charm used for keeping all things in their places. Everybody was dressed for a Fancy Ball that was never to leave off. From the Palace of the Tuileries, through Monseigneur and the whole Court, through the Chambers, the Tribunals of Justice, and all society (except the scarecrows), the Fancy Ball descended to the Common Executioner: who, in pursuance of the charm, was required to officiate “frizzled, powdered, in a gold-laced coat, pumps, and white silk stockings.” At the gallows and the wheel—the axe was a rarity—Monsieur Paris, as it was the episcopal mode among his brother Professors of the provinces, Monsieur Orleans, and the rest, to call him, presided in this dainty dress. And who among the company at Monseigneur’s reception in that seventeen hundred and eightieth year of our Lord, could possibly doubt, that a system rooted in a frizzled hangman, powdered, gold-laced, pumped, and white-silk stockinged, would see the very stars out!
Monseigneur having eased his four men of their burdens and taken his chocolate, caused the doors of the Holiest of Holiests to be thrown open, and issued forth. Then, what submission, what cringing and fawning, what servility, what abject humiliation! As to bowing down in body and spirit, nothing in that way was left for Heaven—which may have been one among other reasons why the worshippers of Monseigneur never troubled it.
Bestowing a word of promise here and a smile there, a whisper on one happy slave and a wave of the hand on another, Monseigneur affably passed through his rooms to the remote region of the Circumference of Truth. There, Monseigneur turned, and came back again, and so in due course of time got himself shut up in his sanctuary by the chocolate sprites, and was seen no more.
The show being over, the flutter in the air became quite a little storm, and the precious little bells went ringing downstairs. There was soon but one person left of all the crowd, and he, with his hat under his arm and his snuff-box in his hand, slowly passed among the mirrors on his way out.
“I devote you,” said this person, stopping at the last door on his way, and turning in the direction of the sanctuary, “to the Devil!”
With that, he shook the snuff from his fingers as if he had shaken the dust from his feet, and quietly walked downstairs.
He was a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed, haughty in manner, and with a face like a fine mask. A face of a transparent paleness; every feature in it clearly defined; one set expression on it. The nose, beautifully formed otherwise, was very slightly pinched at the top of each nostril. In those two compressions, or dints, the only little change that the face ever showed, resided. They persisted in changing colour sometimes, and they would be occasionally dilated and contracted by something like a faint pulsation; then, they gave a look of treachery, and cruelty, to the whole countenance. Examined with attention, its capacity of helping such a look was to be found in the line of the mouth, and the lines of the orbits of the eyes, being much too horizontal and thin; still, in the effect of the face made, it was a handsome face, and a remarkable one.
Its owner went downstairs into the courtyard, got into his carriage, and drove away. Not many people had talked with him at the reception; he had stood in a little space apart, and Monseigneur might have been warmer in his manner. It appeared, under the circumstances, rather agreeable to him to see the common people dispersed before his horses, and often barely escaping from being run down. His man drove as if he were charging an enemy, and the furious recklessness of the man brought no check into the face, or to the lips, of the master. The complaint had sometimes made itself audible, even in that deaf city and dumb age, that, in the narrow streets without footways, the fierce patrician custom of hard driving endangered and maimed the mere vulgar in a barbarous manner. But, few cared enough for that to think of it a second time, and, in this matter, as in all others, the common wretches were left to get out of their difficulties as they could.
With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment of consideration not easy to be understood in these days, the carriage dashed through streets and swept round corners, with women screaming before it, and men clutching each other and clutching children out of its way. At last, swooping at a street corner by a fountain, one of its wheels came to a sickening little jolt, and there was a loud cry from a number of voices, and the horses reared and plunged.
But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would not have stopped; carriages were often known to drive on, and leave their wounded behind, and why not? But the frightened valet had got down in a hurry, and there were twenty hands at the horses’ bridles.
“What has gone wrong?” said Monsieur, calmly looking out.
A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it like a wild animal.
“Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis!” said a ragged and submissive man, “it is a child.”
“Why does he make that abominable noise? Is it his child?”
“Excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis—it is a pity—yes.”
The fountain was a little removed; for the street opened, where it was, into a space some ten or twelve yards square. As the tall man suddenly got up from the ground, and came running at the carriage, Monsieur the Marquis clapped his hand for an instant on his sword-hilt.
“Killed!” shrieked the man, in wild desperation, extending both arms at their length above his head, and staring at him. “Dead!”
The people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the Marquis. There was nothing revealed by the many eyes that looked at him but watchfulness and eagerness; there was no visible menacing or anger. Neither did the people say anything; after the first cry, they had been silent, and they remained so. The voice of the submissive man who had spoken, was flat and tame in its extreme submission. Monsieur the Marquis ran his eyes over them all, as if they had been mere rats come out of their holes.
He took out his purse.
“It is extraordinary to me,” said he, “that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for ever in the way. How do I know what injury you have done my horses. See! Give him that.”
He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the heads craned forward that all the eyes might look down at it as it fell. The tall man called out again with a most unearthly cry, “Dead!”
He was arrested by the quick arrival of another man, for whom the rest made way. On seeing him, the miserable creature fell upon his shoulder, sobbing and crying, and pointing to the fountain, where some women were stooping over the motionless bundle, and moving gently about it. They were as silent, however, as the men.
“I know all, I know all,” said the last comer. “Be a brave man, my Gaspard! It is better for the poor little plaything to die so, than to live. It has died in a moment without pain. Could it have lived an hour as happily?”
“You are a philosopher, you there,” said the Marquis, smiling. “How do they call you?”
“They call me Defarge.”
“Of what trade?”
“Monsieur the Marquis, vendor of wine.”
“Pick up that, philosopher and vendor of wine,” said the Marquis, throwing him another gold coin, “and spend it as you will. The horses there; are they right?”
Without deigning to look at the assemblage a second time, Monsieur the Marquis leaned back in his seat, and was just being driven away with the air of a gentleman who had accidentally broke some common thing, and had paid for it, and could afford to pay for it; when his ease was suddenly disturbed by a coin flying into his carriage, and ringing on its floor.
“Hold!” said Monsieur the Marquis. “Hold the horses! Who threw that?”
He looked to the spot where Defarge the vendor of wine had stood, a moment before; but the wretched father was grovelling on his face on the pavement in that spot, and the figure that stood beside him was the figure of a dark stout woman, knitting.
“You dogs!” said the Marquis, but smoothly, and with an unchanged front, except as to the spots on his nose: “I would ride over any of you very willingly, and exterminate you from the earth. If I knew which rascal threw at the carriage, and if that brigand were sufficiently near it, he should be crushed under the wheels.”
So cowed was their condition, and so long and hard their experience of what such a man could do to them, within the law and beyond it, that not a voice, or a hand, or even an eye was raised. Among the men, not one. But the woman who stood knitting looked up steadily, and looked the Marquis in the face. It was not for his dignity to notice it; his contemptuous eyes passed over her, and over all the other rats; and he leaned back in his seat again, and gave the word “Go on!”
He was driven on, and other carriages came whirling by in quick succession; the Minister, the State-Projector, the Farmer-General, the Doctor, the Lawyer, the Ecclesiastic, the Grand Opera, the Comedy, the whole Fancy Ball in a bright continuous flow, came whirling by. The rats had crept out of their holes to look on, and they remained looking on for hours; soldiers and police often passing between them and the spectacle, and making a barrier behind which they slunk, and through which they peeped. The father had long ago taken up his bundle and bidden himself away with it, when the women who had tended the bundle while it lay on the base of the fountain, sat there watching the running of the water and the rolling of the Fancy Ball—when the one woman who had stood conspicuous, knitting, still knitted on with the steadfastness of Fate. The water of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day ran into evening, so much life in the city ran into death according to rule, time and tide waited for no man, the rats were sleeping close together in their dark holes again, the Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all things ran their course.
CHAPTER VIII. Monseigneur in the Country
A beautiful landscape, with the corn bright in it, but not abundant. Patches of poor rye where corn should have been, patches of poor peas and beans, patches of most coarse vegetable substitutes for wheat. On inanimate nature, as on the men and women who cultivated it, a prevalent tendency towards an appearance of vegetating unwillingly—a dejected disposition to give up, and wither away.
Monsieur the Marquis in his travelling carriage (which might have been lighter), conducted by four post-horses and two postilions, fagged up a steep hill. A blush on the countenance of Monsieur the Marquis was no impeachment of his high breeding; it was not from within; it was occasioned by an external circumstance beyond his control—the setting sun.
The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling carriage when it gained the hill-top, that its occupant was steeped in crimson. “It will die out,” said Monsieur the Marquis, glancing at his hands, “directly.”
In effect, the sun was so low that it dipped at the moment. When the heavy drag had been adjusted to the wheel, and the carriage slid down hill, with a cinderous smell, in a cloud of dust, the red glow departed quickly; the sun and the Marquis going down together, there was no glow left when the drag was taken off.
But, there remained a broken country, bold and open, a little village at the bottom of the hill, a broad sweep and rise beyond it, a church-tower, a windmill, a forest for the chase, and a crag with a fortress on it used as a prison. Round upon all these darkening objects as the night drew on, the Marquis looked, with the air of one who was coming near home.
The village had its one poor street, with its poor brewery, poor tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relays of post-horses, poor fountain, all usual poor appointments. It had its poor people too. All its people were poor, and many of them were sitting at their doors, shredding spare onions and the like for supper, while many were at the fountain, washing leaves, and grasses, and any such small yieldings of the earth that could be eaten. Expressive signs of what made them poor, were not wanting; the tax for the state, the tax for the church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to be paid here and to be paid there, according to solemn inscription in the little village, until the wonder was, that there was any village left unswallowed.
Few children were to be seen, and no dogs. As to the men and women, their choice on earth was stated in the prospect—Life on the lowest terms that could sustain it, down in the little village under the mill; or captivity and Death in the dominant prison on the crag.
Heralded by a courier in advance, and by the cracking of his postilions’ whips, which twined snake-like about their heads in the evening air, as if he came attended by the Furies, Monsieur the Marquis drew up in his travelling carriage at the posting-house gate. It was hard by the fountain, and the peasants suspended their operations to look at him. He looked at them, and saw in them, without knowing it, the slow sure filing down of misery-worn face and figure, that was to make the meagreness of Frenchmen an English superstition which should survive the truth through the best part of a hundred years.
Monsieur the Marquis cast his eyes over the submissive faces that drooped before him, as the like of himself had drooped before Monseigneur of the Court—only the difference was, that these faces drooped merely to suffer and not to propitiate—when a grizzled mender of the roads joined the group.
“Bring me hither that fellow!” said the Marquis to the courier.
The fellow was brought, cap in hand, and the other fellows closed round to look and listen, in the manner of the people at the Paris fountain.
“I passed you on the road?”
“Monseigneur, it is true. I had the honour of being passed on the road.”
“Coming up the hill, and at the top of the hill, both?”
“Monseigneur, it is true.”
“What did you look at, so fixedly?”
“Monseigneur, I looked at the man.”
He stooped a little, and with his tattered blue cap pointed under the carriage. All his fellows stooped to look under the carriage.
“What man, pig? And why look there?”
“Pardon, Monseigneur; he swung by the chain of the shoe—the drag.”
“Who?” demanded the traveller.
“Monseigneur, the man.”
“May the Devil carry away these idiots! How do you call the man? You know all the men of this part of the country. Who was he?”
“Your clemency, Monseigneur! He was not of this part of the country. Of all the days of my life, I never saw him.”
“Swinging by the chain? To be suffocated?”
“With your gracious permission, that was the wonder of it, Monseigneur. His head hanging over—like this!”
He turned himself sideways to the carriage, and leaned back, with his face thrown up to the sky, and his head hanging down; then recovered himself, fumbled with his cap, and made a bow.
“What was he like?”
“Monseigneur, he was whiter than the miller. All covered with dust, white as a spectre, tall as a spectre!”
The picture produced an immense sensation in the little crowd; but all eyes, without comparing notes with other eyes, looked at Monsieur the Marquis. Perhaps, to observe whether he had any spectre on his conscience.
“Truly, you did well,” said the Marquis, felicitously sensible that such vermin were not to ruffle him, “to see a thief accompanying my carriage, and not open that great mouth of yours. Bah! Put him aside, Monsieur Gabelle!”
Monsieur Gabelle was the Postmaster, and some other taxing functionary united; he had come out with great obsequiousness to assist at this examination, and had held the examined by the drapery of his arm in an official manner.
“Bah! Go aside!” said Monsieur Gabelle.
“Lay hands on this stranger if he seeks to lodge in your village to-night, and be sure that his business is honest, Gabelle.”
“Monseigneur, I am flattered to devote myself to your orders.”
“Did he run away, fellow?—where is that Accursed?”
The accursed was already under the carriage with some half-dozen particular friends, pointing out the chain with his blue cap. Some half-dozen other particular friends promptly hauled him out, and presented him breathless to Monsieur the Marquis.
“Did the man run away, Dolt, when we stopped for the drag?”
“Monseigneur, he precipitated himself over the hill-side, head first, as a person plunges into the river.”
“See to it, Gabelle. Go on!”
The half-dozen who were peering at the chain were still among the wheels, like sheep; the wheels turned so suddenly that they were lucky to save their skins and bones; they had very little else to save, or they might not have been so fortunate.
The burst with which the carriage started out of the village and up the rise beyond, was soon checked by the steepness of the hill. Gradually, it subsided to a foot pace, swinging and lumbering upward among the many sweet scents of a summer night. The postilions, with a thousand gossamer gnats circling about them in lieu of the Furies, quietly mended the points to the lashes of their whips; the valet walked by the horses; the courier was audible, trotting on ahead into the dull distance.
At the steepest point of the hill there was a little burial-ground, with a Cross and a new large figure of Our Saviour on it; it was a poor figure in wood, done by some inexperienced rustic carver, but he had studied the figure from the life—his own life, maybe—for it was dreadfully spare and thin.
To this distressful emblem of a great distress that had long been growing worse, and was not at its worst, a woman was kneeling. She turned her head as the carriage came up to her, rose quickly, and presented herself at the carriage-door.
“It is you, Monseigneur! Monseigneur, a petition.”
With an exclamation of impatience, but with his unchangeable face, Monseigneur looked out.
“How, then! What is it? Always petitions!”
“Monseigneur. For the love of the great God! My husband, the forester.”
“What of your husband, the forester? Always the same with you people. He cannot pay something?”
“He has paid all, Monseigneur. He is dead.”
“Well! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you?”
“Alas, no, Monseigneur! But he lies yonder, under a little heap of poor grass.”
“Well?”
“Monseigneur, there are so many little heaps of poor grass?”
“Again, well?”
She looked an old woman, but was young. Her manner was one of passionate grief; by turns she clasped her veinous and knotted hands together with wild energy, and laid one of them on the carriage-door—tenderly, caressingly, as if it had been a human breast, and could be expected to feel the appealing touch.
“Monseigneur, hear me! Monseigneur, hear my petition! My husband died of want; so many die of want; so many more will die of want.”
“Again, well? Can I feed them?”
“Monseigneur, the good God knows; but I don’t ask it. My petition is, that a morsel of stone or wood, with my husband’s name, may be placed over him to show where he lies. Otherwise, the place will be quickly forgotten, it will never be found when I am dead of the same malady, I shall be laid under some other heap of poor grass. Monseigneur, they are so many, they increase so fast, there is so much want. Monseigneur! Monseigneur!”
The valet had put her away from the door, the carriage had broken into a brisk trot, the postilions had quickened the pace, she was left far behind, and Monseigneur, again escorted by the Furies, was rapidly diminishing the league or two of distance that remained between him and his chateau.
The sweet scents of the summer night rose all around him, and rose, as the rain falls, impartially, on the dusty, ragged, and toil-worn group at the fountain not far away; to whom the mender of roads, with the aid of the blue cap without which he was nothing, still enlarged upon his man like a spectre, as long as they could bear it. By degrees, as they could bear no more, they dropped off one by one, and lights twinkled in little casements; which lights, as the casements darkened, and more stars came out, seemed to have shot up into the sky instead of having been extinguished.
The shadow of a large high-roofed house, and of many over-hanging trees, was upon Monsieur the Marquis by that time; and the shadow was exchanged for the light of a flambeau, as his carriage stopped, and the great door of his chateau was opened to him.
“Monsieur Charles, whom I expect; is he arrived from England?”
“Monseigneur, not yet.”
CHAPTER IX. The Gorgon’s Head
It was a heavy mass of building, that chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, with a large stone courtyard before it, and two stone sweeps of staircase meeting in a stone terrace before the principal door. A stony business altogether, with heavy stone balustrades, and stone urns, and stone flowers, and stone faces of men, and stone heads of lions, in all directions. As if the Gorgon’s head had surveyed it, when it was finished, two centuries ago.
Up the broad flight of shallow steps, Monsieur the Marquis, flambeau preceded, went from his carriage, sufficiently disturbing the darkness to elicit loud remonstrance from an owl in the roof of the great pile of stable building away among the trees. All else was so quiet, that the flambeau carried up the steps, and the other flambeau held at the great door, burnt as if they were in a close room of state, instead of being in the open night-air. Other sound than the owl’s voice there was none, save the falling of a fountain into its stone basin; for, it was one of those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and then heave a long low sigh, and hold their breath again.
The great door clanged behind him, and Monsieur the Marquis crossed a hall grim with certain old boar-spears, swords, and knives of the chase; grimmer with certain heavy riding-rods and riding-whips, of which many a peasant, gone to his benefactor Death, had felt the weight when his lord was angry.
Avoiding the larger rooms, which were dark and made fast for the night, Monsieur the Marquis, with his flambeau-bearer going on before, went up the staircase to a door in a corridor. This thrown open, admitted him to his own private apartment of three rooms: his bed-chamber and two others. High vaulted rooms with cool uncarpeted floors, great dogs upon the hearths for the burning of wood in winter time, and all luxuries befitting the state of a marquis in a luxurious age and country. The fashion of the last Louis but one, of the line that was never to break—the fourteenth Louis—was conspicuous in their rich furniture; but, it was diversified by many objects that were illustrations of old pages in the history of France.
A supper-table was laid for two, in the third of the rooms; a round room, in one of the chateau’s four extinguisher-topped towers. A small lofty room, with its window wide open, and the wooden jalousie-blinds closed, so that the dark night only showed in slight horizontal lines of black, alternating with their broad lines of stone colour.
“My nephew,” said the Marquis, glancing at the supper preparation; “they said he was not arrived.”
Nor was he; but, he had been expected with Monseigneur.
“Ah! It is not probable he will arrive to-night; nevertheless, leave the table as it is. I shall be ready in a quarter of an hour.”
In a quarter of an hour Monseigneur was ready, and sat down alone to his sumptuous and choice supper. His chair was opposite to the window, and he had taken his soup, and was raising his glass of Bordeaux to his lips, when he put it down.
“What is that?” he calmly asked, looking with attention at the horizontal lines of black and stone colour.
“Monseigneur? That?”
“Outside the blinds. Open the blinds.”
It was done.
“Well?”
“Monseigneur, it is nothing. The trees and the night are all that are here.”
The servant who spoke, had thrown the blinds wide, had looked out into the vacant darkness, and stood with that blank behind him, looking round for instructions.
“Good,” said the imperturbable master. “Close them again.”
That was done too, and the Marquis went on with his supper. He was half way through it, when he again stopped with his glass in his hand, hearing the sound of wheels. It came on briskly, and came up to the front of the chateau.
“Ask who is arrived.”
It was the nephew of Monseigneur. He had been some few leagues behind Monseigneur, early in the afternoon. He had diminished the distance rapidly, but not so rapidly as to come up with Monseigneur on the road. He had heard of Monseigneur, at the posting-houses, as being before him.
He was to be told (said Monseigneur) that supper awaited him then and there, and that he was prayed to come to it. In a little while he came. He had been known in England as Charles Darnay.
Monseigneur received him in a courtly manner, but they did not shake hands.
“You left Paris yesterday, sir?” he said to Monseigneur, as he took his seat at table.
“Yesterday. And you?”
“I come direct.”
“From London?”
“Yes.”
“You have been a long time coming,” said the Marquis, with a smile.
“On the contrary; I come direct.”
“Pardon me! I mean, not a long time on the journey; a long time intending the journey.”
“I have been detained by”—the nephew stopped a moment in his answer—“various business.”
“Without doubt,” said the polished uncle.
So long as a servant was present, no other words passed between them. When coffee had been served and they were alone together, the nephew, looking at the uncle and meeting the eyes of the face that was like a fine mask, opened a conversation.
“I have come back, sir, as you anticipate, pursuing the object that took me away. It carried me into great and unexpected peril; but it is a sacred object, and if it had carried me to death I hope it would have sustained me.”
“Not to death,” said the uncle; “it is not necessary to say, to death.”
“I doubt, sir,” returned the nephew, “whether, if it had carried me to the utmost brink of death, you would have cared to stop me there.”
The deepened marks in the nose, and the lengthening of the fine straight lines in the cruel face, looked ominous as to that; the uncle made a graceful gesture of protest, which was so clearly a slight form of good breeding that it was not reassuring.
“Indeed, sir,” pursued the nephew, “for anything I know, you may have expressly worked to give a more suspicious appearance to the suspicious circumstances that surrounded me.”
“No, no, no,” said the uncle, pleasantly.
“But, however that may be,” resumed the nephew, glancing at him with deep distrust, “I know that your diplomacy would stop me by any means, and would know no scruple as to means.”
“My friend, I told you so,” said the uncle, with a fine pulsation in the two marks. “Do me the favour to recall that I told you so, long ago.”
“I recall it.”
“Thank you,” said the Marquis—very sweetly indeed.
His tone lingered in the air, almost like the tone of a musical instrument.
“In effect, sir,” pursued the nephew, “I believe it to be at once your bad fortune, and my good fortune, that has kept me out of a prison in France here.”
“I do not quite understand,” returned the uncle, sipping his coffee. “Dare I ask you to explain?”
“I believe that if you were not in disgrace with the Court, and had not been overshadowed by that cloud for years past, a letter de cachet would have sent me to some fortress indefinitely.”
“It is possible,” said the uncle, with great calmness. “For the honour of the family, I could even resolve to incommode you to that extent. Pray excuse me!”
“I perceive that, happily for me, the Reception of the day before yesterday was, as usual, a cold one,” observed the nephew.
“I would not say happily, my friend,” returned the uncle, with refined politeness; “I would not be sure of that. A good opportunity for consideration, surrounded by the advantages of solitude, might influence your destiny to far greater advantage than you influence it for yourself. But it is useless to discuss the question. I am, as you say, at a disadvantage. These little instruments of correction, these gentle aids to the power and honour of families, these slight favours that might so incommode you, are only to be obtained now by interest and importunity. They are sought by so many, and they are granted (comparatively) to so few! It used not to be so, but France in all such things is changed for the worse. Our not remote ancestors held the right of life and death over the surrounding vulgar. From this room, many such dogs have been taken out to be hanged; in the next room (my bedroom), one fellow, to our knowledge, was poniarded on the spot for professing some insolent delicacy respecting his daughter—his daughter? We have lost many privileges; a new philosophy has become the mode; and the assertion of our station, in these days, might (I do not go so far as to say would, but might) cause us real inconvenience. All very bad, very bad!”
The Marquis took a gentle little pinch of snuff, and shook his head; as elegantly despondent as he could becomingly be of a country still containing himself, that great means of regeneration.
“We have so asserted our station, both in the old time and in the modern time also,” said the nephew, gloomily, “that I believe our name to be more detested than any name in France.”
“Let us hope so,” said the uncle. “Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.”
“There is not,” pursued the nephew, in his former tone, “a face I can look at, in all this country round about us, which looks at me with any deference on it but the dark deference of fear and slavery.”
“A compliment,” said the Marquis, “to the grandeur of the family, merited by the manner in which the family has sustained its grandeur. Hah!” And he took another gentle little pinch of snuff, and lightly crossed his legs.
But, when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table, covered his eyes thoughtfully and dejectedly with his hand, the fine mask looked at him sideways with a stronger concentration of keenness, closeness, and dislike, than was comportable with its wearer’s assumption of indifference.
“Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend,” observed the Marquis, “will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof,” looking up to it, “shuts out the sky.”
That might not be so long as the Marquis supposed. If a picture of the chateau as it was to be a very few years hence, and of fifty like it as they too were to be a very few years hence, could have been shown to him that night, he might have been at a loss to claim his own from the ghastly, fire-charred, plunder-wrecked rains. As for the roof he vaunted, he might have found that shutting out the sky in a new way—to wit, for ever, from the eyes of the bodies into which its lead was fired, out of the barrels of a hundred thousand muskets.
“Meanwhile,” said the Marquis, “I will preserve the honour and repose of the family, if you will not. But you must be fatigued. Shall we terminate our conference for the night?”
“A moment more.”
“An hour, if you please.”
“Sir,” said the nephew, “we have done wrong, and are reaping the fruits of wrong.”
“We have done wrong?” repeated the Marquis, with an inquiring smile, and delicately pointing, first to his nephew, then to himself.
“Our family; our honourable family, whose honour is of so much account to both of us, in such different ways. Even in my father’s time, we did a world of wrong, injuring every human creature who came between us and our pleasure, whatever it was. Why need I speak of my father’s time, when it is equally yours? Can I separate my father’s twin-brother, joint inheritor, and next successor, from himself?”
“Death has done that!” said the Marquis.
“And has left me,” answered the nephew, “bound to a system that is frightful to me, responsible for it, but powerless in it; seeking to execute the last request of my dear mother’s lips, and obey the last look of my dear mother’s eyes, which implored me to have mercy and to redress; and tortured by seeking assistance and power in vain.”
“Seeking them from me, my nephew,” said the Marquis, touching him on the breast with his forefinger—they were now standing by the hearth—“you will for ever seek them in vain, be assured.”
Every fine straight line in the clear whiteness of his face, was cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he stood looking quietly at his nephew, with his snuff-box in his hand. Once again he touched him on the breast, as though his finger were the fine point of a small sword, with which, in delicate finesse, he ran him through the body, and said,
“My friend, I will die, perpetuating the system under which I have lived.”
When he had said it, he took a culminating pinch of snuff, and put his box in his pocket.
“Better to be a rational creature,” he added then, after ringing a small bell on the table, “and accept your natural destiny. But you are lost, Monsieur Charles, I see.”
“This property and France are lost to me,” said the nephew, sadly; “I renounce them.”
“Are they both yours to renounce? France may be, but is the property? It is scarcely worth mentioning; but, is it yet?”
“I had no intention, in the words I used, to claim it yet. If it passed to me from you, to-morrow—”
“Which I have the vanity to hope is not probable.”
“—or twenty years hence—”
“You do me too much honour,” said the Marquis; “still, I prefer that supposition.”
“—I would abandon it, and live otherwise and elsewhere. It is little to relinquish. What is it but a wilderness of misery and ruin!”
“Hah!” said the Marquis, glancing round the luxurious room.
“To the eye it is fair enough, here; but seen in its integrity, under the sky, and by the daylight, it is a crumbling tower of waste, mismanagement, extortion, debt, mortgage, oppression, hunger, nakedness, and suffering.”
“Hah!” said the Marquis again, in a well-satisfied manner.
“If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put into some hands better qualified to free it slowly (if such a thing is possible) from the weight that drags it down, so that the miserable people who cannot leave it and who have been long wrung to the last point of endurance, may, in another generation, suffer less; but it is not for me. There is a curse on it, and on all this land.”
“And you?” said the uncle. “Forgive my curiosity; do you, under your new philosophy, graciously intend to live?”
“I must do, to live, what others of my countrymen, even with nobility at their backs, may have to do some day—work.”
“In England, for example?”
“Yes. The family honour, sir, is safe from me in this country. The family name can suffer from me in no other, for I bear it in no other.”
The ringing of the bell had caused the adjoining bed-chamber to be lighted. It now shone brightly, through the door of communication. The Marquis looked that way, and listened for the retreating step of his valet.
“England is very attractive to you, seeing how indifferently you have prospered there,” he observed then, turning his calm face to his nephew with a smile.
“I have already said, that for my prospering there, I am sensible I may be indebted to you, sir. For the rest, it is my Refuge.”
“They say, those boastful English, that it is the Refuge of many. You know a compatriot who has found a Refuge there? A Doctor?”
“Yes.”
“With a daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Yes,” said the Marquis. “You are fatigued. Good night!”
As he bent his head in his most courtly manner, there was a secrecy in his smiling face, and he conveyed an air of mystery to those words, which struck the eyes and ears of his nephew forcibly. At the same time, the thin straight lines of the setting of the eyes, and the thin straight lips, and the markings in the nose, curved with a sarcasm that looked handsomely diabolic.
“Yes,” repeated the Marquis. “A Doctor with a daughter. Yes. So commences the new philosophy! You are fatigued. Good night!”
It would have been of as much avail to interrogate any stone face outside the chateau as to interrogate that face of his. The nephew looked at him, in vain, in passing on to the door.
“Good night!” said the uncle. “I look to the pleasure of seeing you again in the morning. Good repose! Light Monsieur my nephew to his chamber there!—And burn Monsieur my nephew in his bed, if you will,” he added to himself, before he rang his little bell again, and summoned his valet to his own bedroom.
The valet come and gone, Monsieur the Marquis walked to and fro in his loose chamber-robe, to prepare himself gently for sleep, that hot still night. Rustling about the room, his softly-slippered feet making no noise on the floor, he moved like a refined tiger:—looked like some enchanted marquis of the impenitently wicked sort, in story, whose periodical change into tiger form was either just going off, or just coming on.
He moved from end to end of his voluptuous bedroom, looking again at the scraps of the day’s journey that came unbidden into his mind; the slow toil up the hill at sunset, the setting sun, the descent, the mill, the prison on the crag, the little village in the hollow, the peasants at the fountain, and the mender of roads with his blue cap pointing out the chain under the carriage. That fountain suggested the Paris fountain, the little bundle lying on the step, the women bending over it, and the tall man with his arms up, crying, “Dead!”
“I am cool now,” said Monsieur the Marquis, “and may go to bed.”
So, leaving only one light burning on the large hearth, he let his thin gauze curtains fall around him, and heard the night break its silence with a long sigh as he composed himself to sleep.
The stone faces on the outer walls stared blindly at the black night for three heavy hours; for three heavy hours, the horses in the stables rattled at their racks, the dogs barked, and the owl made a noise with very little resemblance in it to the noise conventionally assigned to the owl by men-poets. But it is the obstinate custom of such creatures hardly ever to say what is set down for them.
For three heavy hours, the stone faces of the chateau, lion and human, stared blindly at the night. Dead darkness lay on all the landscape, dead darkness added its own hush to the hushing dust on all the roads. The burial-place had got to the pass that its little heaps of poor grass were undistinguishable from one another; the figure on the Cross might have come down, for anything that could be seen of it. In the village, taxers and taxed were fast asleep. Dreaming, perhaps, of banquets, as the starved usually do, and of ease and rest, as the driven slave and the yoked ox may, its lean inhabitants slept soundly, and were fed and freed.
The fountain in the village flowed unseen and unheard, and the fountain at the chateau dropped unseen and unheard—both melting away, like the minutes that were falling from the spring of Time—through three dark hours. Then, the grey water of both began to be ghostly in the light, and the eyes of the stone faces of the chateau were opened.
Lighter and lighter, until at last the sun touched the tops of the still trees, and poured its radiance over the hill. In the glow, the water of the chateau fountain seemed to turn to blood, and the stone faces crimsoned. The carol of the birds was loud and high, and, on the weather-beaten sill of the great window of the bed-chamber of Monsieur the Marquis, one little bird sang its sweetest song with all its might. At this, the nearest stone face seemed to stare amazed, and, with open mouth and dropped under-jaw, looked awe-stricken.
Now, the sun was full up, and movement began in the village. Casement windows opened, crazy doors were unbarred, and people came forth shivering—chilled, as yet, by the new sweet air. Then began the rarely lightened toil of the day among the village population. Some, to the fountain; some, to the fields; men and women here, to dig and delve; men and women there, to see to the poor live stock, and lead the bony cows out, to such pasture as could be found by the roadside. In the church and at the Cross, a kneeling figure or two; attendant on the latter prayers, the led cow, trying for a breakfast among the weeds at its foot.
The chateau awoke later, as became its quality, but awoke gradually and surely. First, the lonely boar-spears and knives of the chase had been reddened as of old; then, had gleamed trenchant in the morning sunshine; now, doors and windows were thrown open, horses in their stables looked round over their shoulders at the light and freshness pouring in at doorways, leaves sparkled and rustled at iron-grated windows, dogs pulled hard at their chains, and reared impatient to be loosed.
All these trivial incidents belonged to the routine of life, and the return of morning. Surely, not so the ringing of the great bell of the chateau, nor the running up and down the stairs; nor the hurried figures on the terrace; nor the booting and tramping here and there and everywhere, nor the quick saddling of horses and riding away?
What winds conveyed this hurry to the grizzled mender of roads, already at work on the hill-top beyond the village, with his day’s dinner (not much to carry) lying in a bundle that it was worth no crow’s while to peck at, on a heap of stones? Had the birds, carrying some grains of it to a distance, dropped one over him as they sow chance seeds? Whether or no, the mender of roads ran, on the sultry morning, as if for his life, down the hill, knee-high in dust, and never stopped till he got to the fountain.
All the people of the village were at the fountain, standing about in their depressed manner, and whispering low, but showing no other emotions than grim curiosity and surprise. The led cows, hastily brought in and tethered to anything that would hold them, were looking stupidly on, or lying down chewing the cud of nothing particularly repaying their trouble, which they had picked up in their interrupted saunter. Some of the people of the chateau, and some of those of the posting-house, and all the taxing authorities, were armed more or less, and were crowded on the other side of the little street in a purposeless way, that was highly fraught with nothing. Already, the mender of roads had penetrated into the midst of a group of fifty particular friends, and was smiting himself in the breast with his blue cap. What did all this portend, and what portended the swift hoisting-up of Monsieur Gabelle behind a servant on horseback, and the conveying away of the said Gabelle (double-laden though the horse was), at a gallop, like a new version of the German ballad of Leonora?
It portended that there was one stone face too many, up at the chateau.
The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night, and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone face for which it had waited through about two hundred years.
It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis. It was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified. Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which was scrawled:
“Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques.”
CHAPTER X. Two Promises
More months, to the number of twelve, had come and gone, and Mr. Charles Darnay was established in England as a higher teacher of the French language who was conversant with French literature. In this age, he would have been a Professor; in that age, he was a Tutor. He read with young men who could find any leisure and interest for the study of a living tongue spoken all over the world, and he cultivated a taste for its stores of knowledge and fancy. He could write of them, besides, in sound English, and render them into sound English. Such masters were not at that time easily found; Princes that had been, and Kings that were to be, were not yet of the Teacher class, and no ruined nobility had dropped out of Tellson’s ledgers, to turn cooks and carpenters. As a tutor, whose attainments made the student’s way unusually pleasant and profitable, and as an elegant translator who brought something to his work besides mere dictionary knowledge, young Mr. Darnay soon became known and encouraged. He was well acquainted, more-over, with the circumstances of his country, and those were of ever-growing interest. So, with great perseverance and untiring industry, he prospered.
In London, he had expected neither to walk on pavements of gold, nor to lie on beds of roses; if he had had any such exalted expectation, he would not have prospered. He had expected labour, and he found it, and did it and made the best of it. In this, his prosperity consisted.
A certain portion of his time was passed at Cambridge, where he read with undergraduates as a sort of tolerated smuggler who drove a contraband trade in European languages, instead of conveying Greek and Latin through the Custom-house. The rest of his time he passed in London.
Now, from the days when it was always summer in Eden, to these days when it is mostly winter in fallen latitudes, the world of a man has invariably gone one way—Charles Darnay’s way—the way of the love of a woman.
He had loved Lucie Manette from the hour of his danger. He had never heard a sound so sweet and dear as the sound of her compassionate voice; he had never seen a face so tenderly beautiful, as hers when it was confronted with his own on the edge of the grave that had been dug for him. But, he had not yet spoken to her on the subject; the assassination at the deserted chateau far away beyond the heaving water and the long, long, dusty roads—the solid stone chateau which had itself become the mere mist of a dream—had been done a year, and he had never yet, by so much as a single spoken word, disclosed to her the state of his heart.
That he had his reasons for this, he knew full well. It was again a summer day when, lately arrived in London from his college occupation, he turned into the quiet corner in Soho, bent on seeking an opportunity of opening his mind to Doctor Manette. It was the close of the summer day, and he knew Lucie to be out with Miss Pross.
He found the Doctor reading in his arm-chair at a window. The energy which had at once supported him under his old sufferings and aggravated their sharpness, had been gradually restored to him. He was now a very energetic man indeed, with great firmness of purpose, strength of resolution, and vigour of action. In his recovered energy he was sometimes a little fitful and sudden, as he had at first been in the exercise of his other recovered faculties; but, this had never been frequently observable, and had grown more and more rare.
He studied much, slept little, sustained a great deal of fatigue with ease, and was equably cheerful. To him, now entered Charles Darnay, at sight of whom he laid aside his book and held out his hand.
“Charles Darnay! I rejoice to see you. We have been counting on your return these three or four days past. Mr. Stryver and Sydney Carton were both here yesterday, and both made you out to be more than due.”
“I am obliged to them for their interest in the matter,” he answered, a little coldly as to them, though very warmly as to the Doctor. “Miss Manette—”
“Is well,” said the Doctor, as he stopped short, “and your return will delight us all. She has gone out on some household matters, but will soon be home.”
“Doctor Manette, I knew she was from home. I took the opportunity of her being from home, to beg to speak to you.”
There was a blank silence.
“Yes?” said the Doctor, with evident constraint. “Bring your chair here, and speak on.”
He complied as to the chair, but appeared to find the speaking on less easy.
“I have had the happiness, Doctor Manette, of being so intimate here,” so he at length began, “for some year and a half, that I hope the topic on which I am about to touch may not—”
He was stayed by the Doctor’s putting out his hand to stop him. When he had kept it so a little while, he said, drawing it back:
“Is Lucie the topic?”
“She is.”
“It is hard for me to speak of her at any time. It is very hard for me to hear her spoken of in that tone of yours, Charles Darnay.”
“It is a tone of fervent admiration, true homage, and deep love, Doctor Manette!” he said deferentially.
There was another blank silence before her father rejoined:
“I believe it. I do you justice; I believe it.”
His constraint was so manifest, and it was so manifest, too, that it originated in an unwillingness to approach the subject, that Charles Darnay hesitated.
“Shall I go on, sir?”
Another blank.
“Yes, go on.”
“You anticipate what I would say, though you cannot know how earnestly I say it, how earnestly I feel it, without knowing my secret heart, and the hopes and fears and anxieties with which it has long been laden. Dear Doctor Manette, I love your daughter fondly, dearly, disinterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the world, I love her. You have loved yourself; let your old love speak for me!”
The Doctor sat with his face turned away, and his eyes bent on the ground. At the last words, he stretched out his hand again, hurriedly, and cried:
“Not that, sir! Let that be! I adjure you, do not recall that!”
His cry was so like a cry of actual pain, that it rang in Charles Darnay’s ears long after he had ceased. He motioned with the hand he had extended, and it seemed to be an appeal to Darnay to pause. The latter so received it, and remained silent.
“I ask your pardon,” said the Doctor, in a subdued tone, after some moments. “I do not doubt your loving Lucie; you may be satisfied of it.”
He turned towards him in his chair, but did not look at him, or raise his eyes. His chin dropped upon his hand, and his white hair overshadowed his face:
“Have you spoken to Lucie?”
“No.”
“Nor written?”
“Never.”
“It would be ungenerous to affect not to know that your self-denial is to be referred to your consideration for her father. Her father thanks you.”
He offered his hand; but his eyes did not go with it.
“I know,” said Darnay, respectfully, “how can I fail to know, Doctor Manette, I who have seen you together from day to day, that between you and Miss Manette there is an affection so unusual, so touching, so belonging to the circumstances in which it has been nurtured, that it can have few parallels, even in the tenderness between a father and child. I know, Doctor Manette—how can I fail to know—that, mingled with the affection and duty of a daughter who has become a woman, there is, in her heart, towards you, all the love and reliance of infancy itself. I know that, as in her childhood she had no parent, so she is now devoted to you with all the constancy and fervour of her present years and character, united to the trustfulness and attachment of the early days in which you were lost to her. I know perfectly well that if you had been restored to her from the world beyond this life, you could hardly be invested, in her sight, with a more sacred character than that in which you are always with her. I know that when she is clinging to you, the hands of baby, girl, and woman, all in one, are round your neck. I know that in loving you she sees and loves her mother at her own age, sees and loves you at my age, loves her mother broken-hearted, loves you through your dreadful trial and in your blessed restoration. I have known this, night and day, since I have known you in your home.”
Her father sat silent, with his face bent down. His breathing was a little quickened; but he repressed all other signs of agitation.
“Dear Doctor Manette, always knowing this, always seeing her and you with this hallowed light about you, I have forborne, and forborne, as long as it was in the nature of man to do it. I have felt, and do even now feel, that to bring my love—even mine—between you, is to touch your history with something not quite so good as itself. But I love her. Heaven is my witness that I love her!”
“I believe it,” answered her father, mournfully. “I have thought so before now. I believe it.”
“But, do not believe,” said Darnay, upon whose ear the mournful voice struck with a reproachful sound, “that if my fortune were so cast as that, being one day so happy as to make her my wife, I must at any time put any separation between her and you, I could or would breathe a word of what I now say. Besides that I should know it to be hopeless, I should know it to be a baseness. If I had any such possibility, even at a remote distance of years, harboured in my thoughts, and hidden in my heart—if it ever had been there—if it ever could be there—I could not now touch this honoured hand.”
He laid his own upon it as he spoke.
“No, dear Doctor Manette. Like you, a voluntary exile from France; like you, driven from it by its distractions, oppressions, and miseries; like you, striving to live away from it by my own exertions, and trusting in a happier future; I look only to sharing your fortunes, sharing your life and home, and being faithful to you to the death. Not to divide with Lucie her privilege as your child, companion, and friend; but to come in aid of it, and bind her closer to you, if such a thing can be.”
His touch still lingered on her father’s hand. Answering the touch for a moment, but not coldly, her father rested his hands upon the arms of his chair, and looked up for the first time since the beginning of the conference. A struggle was evidently in his face; a struggle with that occasional look which had a tendency in it to dark doubt and dread.
“You speak so feelingly and so manfully, Charles Darnay, that I thank you with all my heart, and will open all my heart—or nearly so. Have you any reason to believe that Lucie loves you?”
“None. As yet, none.”
“Is it the immediate object of this confidence, that you may at once ascertain that, with my knowledge?”
“Not even so. I might not have the hopefulness to do it for weeks; I might (mistaken or not mistaken) have that hopefulness to-morrow.”
“Do you seek any guidance from me?”
“I ask none, sir. But I have thought it possible that you might have it in your power, if you should deem it right, to give me some.”
“Do you seek any promise from me?”
“I do seek that.”
“What is it?”
“I well understand that, without you, I could have no hope. I well understand that, even if Miss Manette held me at this moment in her innocent heart—do not think I have the presumption to assume so much—I could retain no place in it against her love for her father.”
“If that be so, do you see what, on the other hand, is involved in it?”
“I understand equally well, that a word from her father in any suitor’s favour, would outweigh herself and all the world. For which reason, Doctor Manette,” said Darnay, modestly but firmly, “I would not ask that word, to save my life.”
“I am sure of it. Charles Darnay, mysteries arise out of close love, as well as out of wide division; in the former case, they are subtle and delicate, and difficult to penetrate. My daughter Lucie is, in this one respect, such a mystery to me; I can make no guess at the state of her heart.”
“May I ask, sir, if you think she is—” As he hesitated, her father supplied the rest.
“Is sought by any other suitor?”
“It is what I meant to say.”
Her father considered a little before he answered:
“You have seen Mr. Carton here, yourself. Mr. Stryver is here too, occasionally. If it be at all, it can only be by one of these.”
“Or both,” said Darnay.
“I had not thought of both; I should not think either, likely. You want a promise from me. Tell me what it is.”
“It is, that if Miss Manette should bring to you at any time, on her own part, such a confidence as I have ventured to lay before you, you will bear testimony to what I have said, and to your belief in it. I hope you may be able to think so well of me, as to urge no influence against me. I say nothing more of my stake in this; this is what I ask. The condition on which I ask it, and which you have an undoubted right to require, I will observe immediately.”
“I give the promise,” said the Doctor, “without any condition. I believe your object to be, purely and truthfully, as you have stated it. I believe your intention is to perpetuate, and not to weaken, the ties between me and my other and far dearer self. If she should ever tell me that you are essential to her perfect happiness, I will give her to you. If there were—Charles Darnay, if there were—”
The young man had taken his hand gratefully; their hands were joined as the Doctor spoke:
“—any fancies, any reasons, any apprehensions, anything whatsoever, new or old, against the man she really loved—the direct responsibility thereof not lying on his head—they should all be obliterated for her sake. She is everything to me; more to me than suffering, more to me than wrong, more to me—Well! This is idle talk.”
So strange was the way in which he faded into silence, and so strange his fixed look when he had ceased to speak, that Darnay felt his own hand turn cold in the hand that slowly released and dropped it.
“You said something to me,” said Doctor Manette, breaking into a smile. “What was it you said to me?”
He was at a loss how to answer, until he remembered having spoken of a condition. Relieved as his mind reverted to that, he answered:
“Your confidence in me ought to be returned with full confidence on my part. My present name, though but slightly changed from my mother’s, is not, as you will remember, my own. I wish to tell you what that is, and why I am in England.”
“Stop!” said the Doctor of Beauvais.
“I wish it, that I may the better deserve your confidence, and have no secret from you.”
“Stop!”
For an instant, the Doctor even had his two hands at his ears; for another instant, even had his two hands laid on Darnay’s lips.
“Tell me when I ask you, not now. If your suit should prosper, if Lucie should love you, you shall tell me on your marriage morning. Do you promise?”
“Willingly.
“Give me your hand. She will be home directly, and it is better she should not see us together to-night. Go! God bless you!”
It was dark when Charles Darnay left him, and it was an hour later and darker when Lucie came home; she hurried into the room alone—for Miss Pross had gone straight up-stairs—and was surprised to find his reading-chair empty.
“My father!” she called to him. “Father dear!”
Nothing was said in answer, but she heard a low hammering sound in his bedroom. Passing lightly across the intermediate room, she looked in at his door and came running back frightened, crying to herself, with her blood all chilled, “What shall I do! What shall I do!”
Her uncertainty lasted but a moment; she hurried back, and tapped at his door, and softly called to him. The noise ceased at the sound of her voice, and he presently came out to her, and they walked up and down together for a long time.
She came down from her bed, to look at him in his sleep that night. He slept heavily, and his tray of shoemaking tools, and his old unfinished work, were all as usual.
CHAPTER XI. A Companion Picture
“Sydney,” said Mr. Stryver, on that self-same night, or morning, to his jackal; “mix another bowl of punch; I have something to say to you.”
Sydney had been working double tides that night, and the night before, and the night before that, and a good many nights in succession, making a grand clearance among Mr. Stryver’s papers before the setting in of the long vacation. The clearance was effected at last; the Stryver arrears were handsomely fetched up; everything was got rid of until November should come with its fogs atmospheric, and fogs legal, and bring grist to the mill again.
Sydney was none the livelier and none the soberer for so much application. It had taken a deal of extra wet-towelling to pull him through the night; a correspondingly extra quantity of wine had preceded the towelling; and he was in a very damaged condition, as he now pulled his turban off and threw it into the basin in which he had steeped it at intervals for the last six hours.
“Are you mixing that other bowl of punch?” said Stryver the portly, with his hands in his waistband, glancing round from the sofa where he lay on his back.
“I am.”
“Now, look here! I am going to tell you something that will rather surprise you, and that perhaps will make you think me not quite as shrewd as you usually do think me. I intend to marry.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. And not for money. What do you say now?”
“I don’t feel disposed to say much. Who is she?”
“Guess.”
“Do I know her?”
“Guess.”
“I am not going to guess, at five o’clock in the morning, with my brains frying and sputtering in my head. If you want me to guess, you must ask me to dinner.”
“Well then, I’ll tell you,” said Stryver, coming slowly into a sitting posture. “Sydney, I rather despair of making myself intelligible to you, because you are such an insensible dog.”
“And you,” returned Sydney, busy concocting the punch, “are such a sensitive and poetical spirit—”
“Come!” rejoined Stryver, laughing boastfully, “though I don’t prefer any claim to being the soul of Romance (for I hope I know better), still I am a tenderer sort of fellow than you.”
“You are a luckier, if you mean that.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean I am a man of more—more—”
“Say gallantry, while you are about it,” suggested Carton.
“Well! I’ll say gallantry. My meaning is that I am a man,” said Stryver, inflating himself at his friend as he made the punch, “who cares more to be agreeable, who takes more pains to be agreeable, who knows better how to be agreeable, in a woman’s society, than you do.”
“Go on,” said Sydney Carton.
“No; but before I go on,” said Stryver, shaking his head in his bullying way, “I’ll have this out with you. You’ve been at Doctor Manette’s house as much as I have, or more than I have. Why, I have been ashamed of your moroseness there! Your manners have been of that silent and sullen and hangdog kind, that, upon my life and soul, I have been ashamed of you, Sydney!”
“It should be very beneficial to a man in your practice at the bar, to be ashamed of anything,” returned Sydney; “you ought to be much obliged to me.”
“You shall not get off in that way,” rejoined Stryver, shouldering the rejoinder at him; “no, Sydney, it’s my duty to tell you—and I tell you to your face to do you good—that you are a devilish ill-conditioned fellow in that sort of society. You are a disagreeable fellow.”
Sydney drank a bumper of the punch he had made, and laughed.
“Look at me!” said Stryver, squaring himself; “I have less need to make myself agreeable than you have, being more independent in circumstances. Why do I do it?”
“I never saw you do it yet,” muttered Carton.
“I do it because it’s politic; I do it on principle. And look at me! I get on.”
“You don’t get on with your account of your matrimonial intentions,” answered Carton, with a careless air; “I wish you would keep to that. As to me—will you never understand that I am incorrigible?”
He asked the question with some appearance of scorn.
“You have no business to be incorrigible,” was his friend’s answer, delivered in no very soothing tone.
“I have no business to be, at all, that I know of,” said Sydney Carton. “Who is the lady?”
“Now, don’t let my announcement of the name make you uncomfortable, Sydney,” said Mr. Stryver, preparing him with ostentatious friendliness for the disclosure he was about to make, “because I know you don’t mean half you say; and if you meant it all, it would be of no importance. I make this little preface, because you once mentioned the young lady to me in slighting terms.”
“I did?”
“Certainly; and in these chambers.”
Sydney Carton looked at his punch and looked at his complacent friend; drank his punch and looked at his complacent friend.
“You made mention of the young lady as a golden-haired doll. The young lady is Miss Manette. If you had been a fellow of any sensitiveness or delicacy of feeling in that kind of way, Sydney, I might have been a little resentful of your employing such a designation; but you are not. You want that sense altogether; therefore I am no more annoyed when I think of the expression, than I should be annoyed by a man’s opinion of a picture of mine, who had no eye for pictures: or of a piece of music of mine, who had no ear for music.”
Sydney Carton drank the punch at a great rate; drank it by bumpers, looking at his friend.
“Now you know all about it, Syd,” said Mr. Stryver. “I don’t care about fortune: she is a charming creature, and I have made up my mind to please myself: on the whole, I think I can afford to please myself. She will have in me a man already pretty well off, and a rapidly rising man, and a man of some distinction: it is a piece of good fortune for her, but she is worthy of good fortune. Are you astonished?”
Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, “Why should I be astonished?”
“You approve?”
Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, “Why should I not approve?”
“Well!” said his friend Stryver, “you take it more easily than I fancied you would, and are less mercenary on my behalf than I thought you would be; though, to be sure, you know well enough by this time that your ancient chum is a man of a pretty strong will. Yes, Sydney, I have had enough of this style of life, with no other as a change from it; I feel that it is a pleasant thing for a man to have a home when he feels inclined to go to it (when he doesn’t, he can stay away), and I feel that Miss Manette will tell well in any station, and will always do me credit. So I have made up my mind. And now, Sydney, old boy, I want to say a word to you about your prospects. You are in a bad way, you know; you really are in a bad way. You don’t know the value of money, you live hard, you’ll knock up one of these days, and be ill and poor; you really ought to think about a nurse.”
The prosperous patronage with which he said it, made him look twice as big as he was, and four times as offensive.
“Now, let me recommend you,” pursued Stryver, “to look it in the face. I have looked it in the face, in my different way; look it in the face, you, in your different way. Marry. Provide somebody to take care of you. Never mind your having no enjoyment of women’s society, nor understanding of it, nor tact for it. Find out somebody. Find out some respectable woman with a little property—somebody in the landlady way, or lodging-letting way—and marry her, against a rainy day. That’s the kind of thing for you. Now think of it, Sydney.”
“I’ll think of it,” said Sydney.
CHAPTER XII. The Fellow of Delicacy
Mr. Stryver having made up his mind to that magnanimous bestowal of good fortune on the Doctor’s daughter, resolved to make her happiness known to her before he left town for the Long Vacation. After some mental debating of the point, he came to the conclusion that it would be as well to get all the preliminaries done with, and they could then arrange at their leisure whether he should give her his hand a week or two before Michaelmas Term, or in the little Christmas vacation between it and Hilary.
As to the strength of his case, he had not a doubt about it, but clearly saw his way to the verdict. Argued with the jury on substantial worldly grounds—the only grounds ever worth taking into account—it was a plain case, and had not a weak spot in it. He called himself for the plaintiff, there was no getting over his evidence, the counsel for the defendant threw up his brief, and the jury did not even turn to consider. After trying it, Stryver, C. J., was satisfied that no plainer case could be.
Accordingly, Mr. Stryver inaugurated the Long Vacation with a formal proposal to take Miss Manette to Vauxhall Gardens; that failing, to Ranelagh; that unaccountably failing too, it behoved him to present himself in Soho, and there declare his noble mind.
Towards Soho, therefore, Mr. Stryver shouldered his way from the Temple, while the bloom of the Long Vacation’s infancy was still upon it. Anybody who had seen him projecting himself into Soho while he was yet on Saint Dunstan’s side of Temple Bar, bursting in his full-blown way along the pavement, to the jostlement of all weaker people, might have seen how safe and strong he was.
His way taking him past Tellson’s, and he both banking at Tellson’s and knowing Mr. Lorry as the intimate friend of the Manettes, it entered Mr. Stryver’s mind to enter the bank, and reveal to Mr. Lorry the brightness of the Soho horizon. So, he pushed open the door with the weak rattle in its throat, stumbled down the two steps, got past the two ancient cashiers, and shouldered himself into the musty back closet where Mr. Lorry sat at great books ruled for figures, with perpendicular iron bars to his window as if that were ruled for figures too, and everything under the clouds were a sum.
“Halloa!” said Mr. Stryver. “How do you do? I hope you are well!”
It was Stryver’s grand peculiarity that he always seemed too big for any place, or space. He was so much too big for Tellson’s, that old clerks in distant corners looked up with looks of remonstrance, as though he squeezed them against the wall. The House itself, magnificently reading the paper quite in the far-off perspective, lowered displeased, as if the Stryver head had been butted into its responsible waistcoat.
The discreet Mr. Lorry said, in a sample tone of the voice he would recommend under the circumstances, “How do you do, Mr. Stryver? How do you do, sir?” and shook hands. There was a peculiarity in his manner of shaking hands, always to be seen in any clerk at Tellson’s who shook hands with a customer when the House pervaded the air. He shook in a self-abnegating way, as one who shook for Tellson and Co.
“Can I do anything for you, Mr. Stryver?” asked Mr. Lorry, in his business character.
“Why, no, thank you; this is a private visit to yourself, Mr. Lorry; I have come for a private word.”
“Oh indeed!” said Mr. Lorry, bending down his ear, while his eye strayed to the House afar off.
“I am going,” said Mr. Stryver, leaning his arms confidentially on the desk: whereupon, although it was a large double one, there appeared to be not half desk enough for him: “I am going to make an offer of myself in marriage to your agreeable little friend, Miss Manette, Mr. Lorry.”
“Oh dear me!” cried Mr. Lorry, rubbing his chin, and looking at his visitor dubiously.
“Oh dear me, sir?” repeated Stryver, drawing back. “Oh dear you, sir? What may your meaning be, Mr. Lorry?”
“My meaning,” answered the man of business, “is, of course, friendly and appreciative, and that it does you the greatest credit, and—in short, my meaning is everything you could desire. But—really, you know, Mr. Stryver—” Mr. Lorry paused, and shook his head at him in the oddest manner, as if he were compelled against his will to add, internally, “you know there really is so much too much of you!”
“Well!” said Stryver, slapping the desk with his contentious hand, opening his eyes wider, and taking a long breath, “if I understand you, Mr. Lorry, I’ll be hanged!”
Mr. Lorry adjusted his little wig at both ears as a means towards that end, and bit the feather of a pen.
“D—n it all, sir!” said Stryver, staring at him, “am I not eligible?”
“Oh dear yes! Yes. Oh yes, you’re eligible!” said Mr. Lorry. “If you say eligible, you are eligible.”
“Am I not prosperous?” asked Stryver.
“Oh! if you come to prosperous, you are prosperous,” said Mr. Lorry.
“And advancing?”
“If you come to advancing you know,” said Mr. Lorry, delighted to be able to make another admission, “nobody can doubt that.”
“Then what on earth is your meaning, Mr. Lorry?” demanded Stryver, perceptibly crestfallen.
“Well! I—Were you going there now?” asked Mr. Lorry.
“Straight!” said Stryver, with a plump of his fist on the desk.
“Then I think I wouldn’t, if I was you.”
“Why?” said Stryver. “Now, I’ll put you in a corner,” forensically shaking a forefinger at him. “You are a man of business and bound to have a reason. State your reason. Why wouldn’t you go?”
“Because,” said Mr. Lorry, “I wouldn’t go on such an object without having some cause to believe that I should succeed.”
“D—n me!” cried Stryver, “but this beats everything.”
Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and glanced at the angry Stryver.
“Here’s a man of business—a man of years—a man of experience—in a Bank,” said Stryver; “and having summed up three leading reasons for complete success, he says there’s no reason at all! Says it with his head on!” Mr. Stryver remarked upon the peculiarity as if it would have been infinitely less remarkable if he had said it with his head off.
“When I speak of success, I speak of success with the young lady; and when I speak of causes and reasons to make success probable, I speak of causes and reasons that will tell as such with the young lady. The young lady, my good sir,” said Mr. Lorry, mildly tapping the Stryver arm, “the young lady. The young lady goes before all.”
“Then you mean to tell me, Mr. Lorry,” said Stryver, squaring his elbows, “that it is your deliberate opinion that the young lady at present in question is a mincing Fool?”
“Not exactly so. I mean to tell you, Mr. Stryver,” said Mr. Lorry, reddening, “that I will hear no disrespectful word of that young lady from any lips; and that if I knew any man—which I hope I do not—whose taste was so coarse, and whose temper was so overbearing, that he could not restrain himself from speaking disrespectfully of that young lady at this desk, not even Tellson’s should prevent my giving him a piece of my mind.”
The necessity of being angry in a suppressed tone had put Mr. Stryver’s blood-vessels into a dangerous state when it was his turn to be angry; Mr. Lorry’s veins, methodical as their courses could usually be, were in no better state now it was his turn.
“That is what I mean to tell you, sir,” said Mr. Lorry. “Pray let there be no mistake about it.”
Mr. Stryver sucked the end of a ruler for a little while, and then stood hitting a tune out of his teeth with it, which probably gave him the toothache. He broke the awkward silence by saying:
“This is something new to me, Mr. Lorry. You deliberately advise me not to go up to Soho and offer myself—_my_self, Stryver of the King’s Bench bar?”
“Do you ask me for my advice, Mr. Stryver?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Very good. Then I give it, and you have repeated it correctly.”
“And all I can say of it is,” laughed Stryver with a vexed laugh, “that this—ha, ha!—beats everything past, present, and to come.”
“Now understand me,” pursued Mr. Lorry. “As a man of business, I am not justified in saying anything about this matter, for, as a man of business, I know nothing of it. But, as an old fellow, who has carried Miss Manette in his arms, who is the trusted friend of Miss Manette and of her father too, and who has a great affection for them both, I have spoken. The confidence is not of my seeking, recollect. Now, you think I may not be right?”
“Not I!” said Stryver, whistling. “I can’t undertake to find third parties in common sense; I can only find it for myself. I suppose sense in certain quarters; you suppose mincing bread-and-butter nonsense. It’s new to me, but you are right, I dare say.”
“What I suppose, Mr. Stryver, I claim to characterise for myself—And understand me, sir,” said Mr. Lorry, quickly flushing again, “I will not—not even at Tellson’s—have it characterised for me by any gentleman breathing.”
“There! I beg your pardon!” said Stryver.
“Granted. Thank you. Well, Mr. Stryver, I was about to say:—it might be painful to you to find yourself mistaken, it might be painful to Doctor Manette to have the task of being explicit with you, it might be very painful to Miss Manette to have the task of being explicit with you. You know the terms upon which I have the honour and happiness to stand with the family. If you please, committing you in no way, representing you in no way, I will undertake to correct my advice by the exercise of a little new observation and judgment expressly brought to bear upon it. If you should then be dissatisfied with it, you can but test its soundness for yourself; if, on the other hand, you should be satisfied with it, and it should be what it now is, it may spare all sides what is best spared. What do you say?”
“How long would you keep me in town?”
“Oh! It is only a question of a few hours. I could go to Soho in the evening, and come to your chambers afterwards.”
“Then I say yes,” said Stryver: “I won’t go up there now, I am not so hot upon it as that comes to; I say yes, and I shall expect you to look in to-night. Good morning.”
Then Mr. Stryver turned and burst out of the Bank, causing such a concussion of air on his passage through, that to stand up against it bowing behind the two counters, required the utmost remaining strength of the two ancient clerks. Those venerable and feeble persons were always seen by the public in the act of bowing, and were popularly believed, when they had bowed a customer out, still to keep on bowing in the empty office until they bowed another customer in.
The barrister was keen enough to divine that the banker would not have gone so far in his expression of opinion on any less solid ground than moral certainty. Unprepared as he was for the large pill he had to swallow, he got it down. “And now,” said Mr. Stryver, shaking his forensic forefinger at the Temple in general, when it was down, “my way out of this, is, to put you all in the wrong.”
It was a bit of the art of an Old Bailey tactician, in which he found great relief. “You shall not put me in the wrong, young lady,” said Mr. Stryver; “I’ll do that for you.”
Accordingly, when Mr. Lorry called that night as late as ten o’clock, Mr. Stryver, among a quantity of books and papers littered out for the purpose, seemed to have nothing less on his mind than the subject of the morning. He even showed surprise when he saw Mr. Lorry, and was altogether in an absent and preoccupied state.
“Well!” said that good-natured emissary, after a full half-hour of bootless attempts to bring him round to the question. “I have been to Soho.”
“To Soho?” repeated Mr. Stryver, coldly. “Oh, to be sure! What am I thinking of!”
“And I have no doubt,” said Mr. Lorry, “that I was right in the conversation we had. My opinion is confirmed, and I reiterate my advice.”
“I assure you,” returned Mr. Stryver, in the friendliest way, “that I am sorry for it on your account, and sorry for it on the poor father’s account. I know this must always be a sore subject with the family; let us say no more about it.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Mr. Lorry.
“I dare say not,” rejoined Stryver, nodding his head in a smoothing and final way; “no matter, no matter.”
“But it does matter,” Mr. Lorry urged.
“No it doesn’t; I assure you it doesn’t. Having supposed that there was sense where there is no sense, and a laudable ambition where there is not a laudable ambition, I am well out of my mistake, and no harm is done. Young women have committed similar follies often before, and have repented them in poverty and obscurity often before. In an unselfish aspect, I am sorry that the thing is dropped, because it would have been a bad thing for me in a worldly point of view; in a selfish aspect, I am glad that the thing has dropped, because it would have been a bad thing for me in a worldly point of view—it is hardly necessary to say I could have gained nothing by it. There is no harm at all done. I have not proposed to the young lady, and, between ourselves, I am by no means certain, on reflection, that I ever should have committed myself to that extent. Mr. Lorry, you cannot control the mincing vanities and giddinesses of empty-headed girls; you must not expect to do it, or you will always be disappointed. Now, pray say no more about it. I tell you, I regret it on account of others, but I am satisfied on my own account. And I am really very much obliged to you for allowing me to sound you, and for giving me your advice; you know the young lady better than I do; you were right, it never would have done.”
Mr. Lorry was so taken aback, that he looked quite stupidly at Mr. Stryver shouldering him towards the door, with an appearance of showering generosity, forbearance, and goodwill, on his erring head. “Make the best of it, my dear sir,” said Stryver; “say no more about it; thank you again for allowing me to sound you; good night!”
Mr. Lorry was out in the night, before he knew where he was. Mr. Stryver was lying back on his sofa, winking at his ceiling.
CHAPTER XIII. The Fellow of No Delicacy
If Sydney Carton ever shone anywhere, he certainly never shone in the house of Doctor Manette. He had been there often, during a whole year, and had always been the same moody and morose lounger there. When he cared to talk, he talked well; but, the cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him.
And yet he did care something for the streets that environed that house, and for the senseless stones that made their pavements. Many a night he vaguely and unhappily wandered there, when wine had brought no transitory gladness to him; many a dreary daybreak revealed his solitary figure lingering there, and still lingering there when the first beams of the sun brought into strong relief, removed beauties of architecture in spires of churches and lofty buildings, as perhaps the quiet time brought some sense of better things, else forgotten and unattainable, into his mind. Of late, the neglected bed in the Temple Court had known him more scantily than ever; and often when he had thrown himself upon it no longer than a few minutes, he had got up again, and haunted that neighbourhood.
On a day in August, when Mr. Stryver (after notifying to his jackal that “he had thought better of that marrying matter”) had carried his delicacy into Devonshire, and when the sight and scent of flowers in the City streets had some waifs of goodness in them for the worst, of health for the sickliest, and of youth for the oldest, Sydney’s feet still trod those stones. From being irresolute and purposeless, his feet became animated by an intention, and, in the working out of that intention, they took him to the Doctor’s door.
He was shown up-stairs, and found Lucie at her work, alone. She had never been quite at her ease with him, and received him with some little embarrassment as he seated himself near her table. But, looking up at his face in the interchange of the first few common-places, she observed a change in it.
“I fear you are not well, Mr. Carton!”
“No. But the life I lead, Miss Manette, is not conducive to health. What is to be expected of, or by, such profligates?”
“Is it not—forgive me; I have begun the question on my lips—a pity to live no better life?”
“God knows it is a shame!”
“Then why not change it?”
Looking gently at him again, she was surprised and saddened to see that there were tears in his eyes. There were tears in his voice too, as he answered:
“It is too late for that. I shall never be better than I am. I shall sink lower, and be worse.”
He leaned an elbow on her table, and covered his eyes with his hand. The table trembled in the silence that followed.
She had never seen him softened, and was much distressed. He knew her to be so, without looking at her, and said:
“Pray forgive me, Miss Manette. I break down before the knowledge of what I want to say to you. Will you hear me?”
“If it will do you any good, Mr. Carton, if it would make you happier, it would make me very glad!”
“God bless you for your sweet compassion!”
He unshaded his face after a little while, and spoke steadily.
“Don’t be afraid to hear me. Don’t shrink from anything I say. I am like one who died young. All my life might have been.”
“No, Mr. Carton. I am sure that the best part of it might still be; I am sure that you might be much, much worthier of yourself.”
“Say of you, Miss Manette, and although I know better—although in the mystery of my own wretched heart I know better—I shall never forget it!”
She was pale and trembling. He came to her relief with a fixed despair of himself which made the interview unlike any other that could have been holden.
“If it had been possible, Miss Manette, that you could have returned the love of the man you see before yourself—flung away, wasted, drunken, poor creature of misuse as you know him to be—he would have been conscious this day and hour, in spite of his happiness, that he would bring you to misery, bring you to sorrow and repentance, blight you, disgrace you, pull you down with him. I know very well that you can have no tenderness for me; I ask for none; I am even thankful that it cannot be.”
“Without it, can I not save you, Mr. Carton? Can I not recall you—forgive me again!—to a better course? Can I in no way repay your confidence? I know this is a confidence,” she modestly said, after a little hesitation, and in earnest tears, “I know you would say this to no one else. Can I turn it to no good account for yourself, Mr. Carton?”
He shook his head.
“To none. No, Miss Manette, to none. If you will hear me through a very little more, all you can ever do for me is done. I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul. In my degradation I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this home made such a home by you, has stirred old shadows that I thought had died out of me. Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.”
“Will nothing of it remain? O Mr. Carton, think again! Try again!”
“No, Miss Manette; all through it, I have known myself to be quite undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire—a fire, however, inseparable in its nature from myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning away.”
“Since it is my misfortune, Mr. Carton, to have made you more unhappy than you were before you knew me—”
“Don’t say that, Miss Manette, for you would have reclaimed me, if anything could. You will not be the cause of my becoming worse.”
“Since the state of your mind that you describe, is, at all events, attributable to some influence of mine—this is what I mean, if I can make it plain—can I use no influence to serve you? Have I no power for good, with you, at all?”
“The utmost good that I am capable of now, Miss Manette, I have come here to realise. Let me carry through the rest of my misdirected life, the remembrance that I opened my heart to you, last of all the world; and that there was something left in me at this time which you could deplore and pity.”
“Which I entreated you to believe, again and again, most fervently, with all my heart, was capable of better things, Mr. Carton!”
“Entreat me to believe it no more, Miss Manette. I have proved myself, and I know better. I distress you; I draw fast to an end. Will you let me believe, when I recall this day, that the last confidence of my life was reposed in your pure and innocent breast, and that it lies there alone, and will be shared by no one?”
“If that will be a consolation to you, yes.”
“Not even by the dearest one ever to be known to you?”
“Mr. Carton,” she answered, after an agitated pause, “the secret is yours, not mine; and I promise to respect it.”
“Thank you. And again, God bless you.”
He put her hand to his lips, and moved towards the door.
“Be under no apprehension, Miss Manette, of my ever resuming this conversation by so much as a passing word. I will never refer to it again. If I were dead, that could not be surer than it is henceforth. In the hour of my death, I shall hold sacred the one good remembrance—and shall thank and bless you for it—that my last avowal of myself was made to you, and that my name, and faults, and miseries were gently carried in your heart. May it otherwise be light and happy!”
He was so unlike what he had ever shown himself to be, and it was so sad to think how much he had thrown away, and how much he every day kept down and perverted, that Lucie Manette wept mournfully for him as he stood looking back at her.
“Be comforted!” he said, “I am not worth such feeling, Miss Manette. An hour or two hence, and the low companions and low habits that I scorn but yield to, will render me less worth such tears as those, than any wretch who creeps along the streets. Be comforted! But, within myself, I shall always be, towards you, what I am now, though outwardly I shall be what you have heretofore seen me. The last supplication but one I make to you, is, that you will believe this of me.”
“I will, Mr. Carton.”
“My last supplication of all, is this; and with it, I will relieve you of a visitor with whom I well know you have nothing in unison, and between whom and you there is an impassable space. It is useless to say it, I know, but it rises out of my soul. For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. If my career were of that better kind that there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. Try to hold me in your mind, at some quiet times, as ardent and sincere in this one thing. The time will come, the time will not be long in coming, when new ties will be formed about you—ties that will bind you yet more tenderly and strongly to the home you so adorn—the dearest ties that will ever grace and gladden you. O Miss Manette, when the little picture of a happy father’s face looks up in yours, when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you!”
He said, “Farewell!” said a last “God bless you!” and left her.
CHAPTER XIV. The Honest Tradesman
To the eyes of Mr. Jeremiah Cruncher, sitting on his stool in Fleet-street with his grisly urchin beside him, a vast number and variety of objects in movement were every day presented. Who could sit upon anything in Fleet-street during the busy hours of the day, and not be dazed and deafened by two immense processions, one ever tending westward with the sun, the other ever tending eastward from the sun, both ever tending to the plains beyond the range of red and purple where the sun goes down!
With his straw in his mouth, Mr. Cruncher sat watching the two streams, like the heathen rustic who has for several centuries been on duty watching one stream—saving that Jerry had no expectation of their ever running dry. Nor would it have been an expectation of a hopeful kind, since a small part of his income was derived from the pilotage of timid women (mostly of a full habit and past the middle term of life) from Tellson’s side of the tides to the opposite shore. Brief as such companionship was in every separate instance, Mr. Cruncher never failed to become so interested in the lady as to express a strong desire to have the honour of drinking her very good health. And it was from the gifts bestowed upon him towards the execution of this benevolent purpose, that he recruited his finances, as just now observed.
Time was, when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place, and mused in the sight of men. Mr. Cruncher, sitting on a stool in a public place, but not being a poet, mused as little as possible, and looked about him.
It fell out that he was thus engaged in a season when crowds were few, and belated women few, and when his affairs in general were so unprosperous as to awaken a strong suspicion in his breast that Mrs. Cruncher must have been “flopping” in some pointed manner, when an unusual concourse pouring down Fleet-street westward, attracted his attention. Looking that way, Mr. Cruncher made out that some kind of funeral was coming along, and that there was popular objection to this funeral, which engendered uproar.
“Young Jerry,” said Mr. Cruncher, turning to his offspring, “it’s a buryin’.”
“Hooroar, father!” cried Young Jerry.
The young gentleman uttered this exultant sound with mysterious significance. The elder gentleman took the cry so ill, that he watched his opportunity, and smote the young gentleman on the ear.
“What d’ye mean? What are you hooroaring at? What do you want to conwey to your own father, you young Rip? This boy is a getting too many for me!” said Mr. Cruncher, surveying him. “Him and his hooroars! Don’t let me hear no more of you, or you shall feel some more of me. D’ye hear?”
“I warn’t doing no harm,” Young Jerry protested, rubbing his cheek.
“Drop it then,” said Mr. Cruncher; “I won’t have none of your no harms. Get a top of that there seat, and look at the crowd.”
His son obeyed, and the crowd approached; they were bawling and hissing round a dingy hearse and dingy mourning coach, in which mourning coach there was only one mourner, dressed in the dingy trappings that were considered essential to the dignity of the position. The position appeared by no means to please him, however, with an increasing rabble surrounding the coach, deriding him, making grimaces at him, and incessantly groaning and calling out: “Yah! Spies! Tst! Yaha! Spies!” with many compliments too numerous and forcible to repeat.
Funerals had at all times a remarkable attraction for Mr. Cruncher; he always pricked up his senses, and became excited, when a funeral passed Tellson’s. Naturally, therefore, a funeral with this uncommon attendance excited him greatly, and he asked of the first man who ran against him:
“What is it, brother? What’s it about?”
“I don’t know,” said the man. “Spies! Yaha! Tst! Spies!”
He asked another man. “Who is it?”
“I don’t know,” returned the man, clapping his hands to his mouth nevertheless, and vociferating in a surprising heat and with the greatest ardour, “Spies! Yaha! Tst, tst! Spi—ies!”
At length, a person better informed on the merits of the case, tumbled against him, and from this person he learned that the funeral was the funeral of one Roger Cly.
“Was he a spy?” asked Mr. Cruncher.
“Old Bailey spy,” returned his informant. “Yaha! Tst! Yah! Old Bailey Spi—i—ies!”
“Why, to be sure!” exclaimed Jerry, recalling the Trial at which he had assisted. “I’ve seen him. Dead, is he?”
“Dead as mutton,” returned the other, “and can’t be too dead. Have ’em out, there! Spies! Pull ’em out, there! Spies!”
The idea was so acceptable in the prevalent absence of any idea, that the crowd caught it up with eagerness, and loudly repeating the suggestion to have ’em out, and to pull ’em out, mobbed the two vehicles so closely that they came to a stop. On the crowd’s opening the coach doors, the one mourner scuffled out by himself and was in their hands for a moment; but he was so alert, and made such good use of his time, that in another moment he was scouring away up a bye-street, after shedding his cloak, hat, long hatband, white pocket-handkerchief, and other symbolical tears.
These, the people tore to pieces and scattered far and wide with great enjoyment, while the tradesmen hurriedly shut up their shops; for a crowd in those times stopped at nothing, and was a monster much dreaded. They had already got the length of opening the hearse to take the coffin out, when some brighter genius proposed instead, its being escorted to its destination amidst general rejoicing. Practical suggestions being much needed, this suggestion, too, was received with acclamation, and the coach was immediately filled with eight inside and a dozen out, while as many people got on the roof of the hearse as could by any exercise of ingenuity stick upon it. Among the first of these volunteers was Jerry Cruncher himself, who modestly concealed his spiky head from the observation of Tellson’s, in the further corner of the mourning coach.
The officiating undertakers made some protest against these changes in the ceremonies; but, the river being alarmingly near, and several voices remarking on the efficacy of cold immersion in bringing refractory members of the profession to reason, the protest was faint and brief. The remodelled procession started, with a chimney-sweep driving the hearse—advised by the regular driver, who was perched beside him, under close inspection, for the purpose—and with a pieman, also attended by his cabinet minister, driving the mourning coach. A bear-leader, a popular street character of the time, was impressed as an additional ornament, before the cavalcade had gone far down the Strand; and his bear, who was black and very mangy, gave quite an Undertaking air to that part of the procession in which he walked.
Thus, with beer-drinking, pipe-smoking, song-roaring, and infinite caricaturing of woe, the disorderly procession went its way, recruiting at every step, and all the shops shutting up before it. Its destination was the old church of Saint Pancras, far off in the fields. It got there in course of time; insisted on pouring into the burial-ground; finally, accomplished the interment of the deceased Roger Cly in its own way, and highly to its own satisfaction.
The dead man disposed of, and the crowd being under the necessity of providing some other entertainment for itself, another brighter genius (or perhaps the same) conceived the humour of impeaching casual passers-by, as Old Bailey spies, and wreaking vengeance on them. Chase was given to some scores of inoffensive persons who had never been near the Old Bailey in their lives, in the realisation of this fancy, and they were roughly hustled and maltreated. The transition to the sport of window-breaking, and thence to the plundering of public-houses, was easy and natural. At last, after several hours, when sundry summer-houses had been pulled down, and some area-railings had been torn up, to arm the more belligerent spirits, a rumour got about that the Guards were coming. Before this rumour, the crowd gradually melted away, and perhaps the Guards came, and perhaps they never came, and this was the usual progress of a mob.
Mr. Cruncher did not assist at the closing sports, but had remained behind in the churchyard, to confer and condole with the undertakers. The place had a soothing influence on him. He procured a pipe from a neighbouring public-house, and smoked it, looking in at the railings and maturely considering the spot.
“Jerry,” said Mr. Cruncher, apostrophising himself in his usual way, “you see that there Cly that day, and you see with your own eyes that he was a young ’un and a straight made ’un.”
Having smoked his pipe out, and ruminated a little longer, he turned himself about, that he might appear, before the hour of closing, on his station at Tellson’s. Whether his meditations on mortality had touched his liver, or whether his general health had been previously at all amiss, or whether he desired to show a little attention to an eminent man, is not so much to the purpose, as that he made a short call upon his medical adviser—a distinguished surgeon—on his way back.
Young Jerry relieved his father with dutiful interest, and reported No job in his absence. The bank closed, the ancient clerks came out, the usual watch was set, and Mr. Cruncher and his son went home to tea.
“Now, I tell you where it is!” said Mr. Cruncher to his wife, on entering. “If, as a honest tradesman, my wenturs goes wrong to-night, I shall make sure that you’ve been praying again me, and I shall work you for it just the same as if I seen you do it.”
The dejected Mrs. Cruncher shook her head.
“Why, you’re at it afore my face!” said Mr. Cruncher, with signs of angry apprehension.
“I am saying nothing.”
“Well, then; don’t meditate nothing. You might as well flop as meditate. You may as well go again me one way as another. Drop it altogether.”
“Yes, Jerry.”
“Yes, Jerry,” repeated Mr. Cruncher sitting down to tea. “Ah! It is yes, Jerry. That’s about it. You may say yes, Jerry.”
Mr. Cruncher had no particular meaning in these sulky corroborations, but made use of them, as people not unfrequently do, to express general ironical dissatisfaction.
“You and your yes, Jerry,” said Mr. Cruncher, taking a bite out of his bread-and-butter, and seeming to help it down with a large invisible oyster out of his saucer. “Ah! I think so. I believe you.”
“You are going out to-night?” asked his decent wife, when he took another bite.
“Yes, I am.”
“May I go with you, father?” asked his son, briskly.
“No, you mayn’t. I’m a going—as your mother knows—a fishing. That’s where I’m going to. Going a fishing.”
“Your fishing-rod gets rayther rusty; don’t it, father?”
“Never you mind.”
“Shall you bring any fish home, father?”
“If I don’t, you’ll have short commons, to-morrow,” returned that gentleman, shaking his head; “that’s questions enough for you; I ain’t a going out, till you’ve been long abed.”
He devoted himself during the remainder of the evening to keeping a most vigilant watch on Mrs. Cruncher, and sullenly holding her in conversation that she might be prevented from meditating any petitions to his disadvantage. With this view, he urged his son to hold her in conversation also, and led the unfortunate woman a hard life by dwelling on any causes of complaint he could bring against her, rather than he would leave her for a moment to her own reflections. The devoutest person could have rendered no greater homage to the efficacy of an honest prayer than he did in this distrust of his wife. It was as if a professed unbeliever in ghosts should be frightened by a ghost story.
“And mind you!” said Mr. Cruncher. “No games to-morrow! If I, as a honest tradesman, succeed in providing a jinte of meat or two, none of your not touching of it, and sticking to bread. If I, as a honest tradesman, am able to provide a little beer, none of your declaring on water. When you go to Rome, do as Rome does. Rome will be a ugly customer to you, if you don’t. I’m your Rome, you know.”
Then he began grumbling again:
“With your flying into the face of your own wittles and drink! I don’t know how scarce you mayn’t make the wittles and drink here, by your flopping tricks and your unfeeling conduct. Look at your boy: he is your’n, ain’t he? He’s as thin as a lath. Do you call yourself a mother, and not know that a mother’s first duty is to blow her boy out?”
This touched Young Jerry on a tender place; who adjured his mother to perform her first duty, and, whatever else she did or neglected, above all things to lay especial stress on the discharge of that maternal function so affectingly and delicately indicated by his other parent.
Thus the evening wore away with the Cruncher family, until Young Jerry was ordered to bed, and his mother, laid under similar injunctions, obeyed them. Mr. Cruncher beguiled the earlier watches of the night with solitary pipes, and did not start upon his excursion until nearly one o’clock. Towards that small and ghostly hour, he rose up from his chair, took a key out of his pocket, opened a locked cupboard, and brought forth a sack, a crowbar of convenient size, a rope and chain, and other fishing tackle of that nature. Disposing these articles about him in skilful manner, he bestowed a parting defiance on Mrs. Cruncher, extinguished the light, and went out.
Young Jerry, who had only made a feint of undressing when he went to bed, was not long after his father. Under cover of the darkness he followed out of the room, followed down the stairs, followed down the court, followed out into the streets. He was in no uneasiness concerning his getting into the house again, for it was full of lodgers, and the door stood ajar all night.
Impelled by a laudable ambition to study the art and mystery of his father’s honest calling, Young Jerry, keeping as close to house fronts, walls, and doorways, as his eyes were close to one another, held his honoured parent in view. The honoured parent steering Northward, had not gone far, when he was joined by another disciple of Izaak Walton, and the two trudged on together.
Within half an hour from the first starting, they were beyond the winking lamps, and the more than winking watchmen, and were out upon a lonely road. Another fisherman was picked up here—and that so silently, that if Young Jerry had been superstitious, he might have supposed the second follower of the gentle craft to have, all of a sudden, split himself into two.
The three went on, and Young Jerry went on, until the three stopped under a bank overhanging the road. Upon the top of the bank was a low brick wall, surmounted by an iron railing. In the shadow of bank and wall the three turned out of the road, and up a blind lane, of which the wall—there, risen to some eight or ten feet high—formed one side. Crouching down in a corner, peeping up the lane, the next object that Young Jerry saw, was the form of his honoured parent, pretty well defined against a watery and clouded moon, nimbly scaling an iron gate. He was soon over, and then the second fisherman got over, and then the third. They all dropped softly on the ground within the gate, and lay there a little—listening perhaps. Then, they moved away on their hands and knees.
It was now Young Jerry’s turn to approach the gate: which he did, holding his breath. Crouching down again in a corner there, and looking in, he made out the three fishermen creeping through some rank grass! and all the gravestones in the churchyard—it was a large churchyard that they were in—looking on like ghosts in white, while the church tower itself looked on like the ghost of a monstrous giant. They did not creep far, before they stopped and stood upright. And then they began to fish.
They fished with a spade, at first. Presently the honoured parent appeared to be adjusting some instrument like a great corkscrew. Whatever tools they worked with, they worked hard, until the awful striking of the church clock so terrified Young Jerry, that he made off, with his hair as stiff as his father’s.
But, his long-cherished desire to know more about these matters, not only stopped him in his running away, but lured him back again. They were still fishing perseveringly, when he peeped in at the gate for the second time; but, now they seemed to have got a bite. There was a screwing and complaining sound down below, and their bent figures were strained, as if by a weight. By slow degrees the weight broke away the earth upon it, and came to the surface. Young Jerry very well knew what it would be; but, when he saw it, and saw his honoured parent about to wrench it open, he was so frightened, being new to the sight, that he made off again, and never stopped until he had run a mile or more.
He would not have stopped then, for anything less necessary than breath, it being a spectral sort of race that he ran, and one highly desirable to get to the end of. He had a strong idea that the coffin he had seen was running after him; and, pictured as hopping on behind him, bolt upright, upon its narrow end, always on the point of overtaking him and hopping on at his side—perhaps taking his arm—it was a pursuer to shun. It was an inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend too, for, while it was making the whole night behind him dreadful, he darted out into the roadway to avoid dark alleys, fearful of its coming hopping out of them like a dropsical boy’s kite without tail and wings. It hid in doorways too, rubbing its horrible shoulders against doors, and drawing them up to its ears, as if it were laughing. It got into shadows on the road, and lay cunningly on its back to trip him up. All this time it was incessantly hopping on behind and gaining on him, so that when the boy got to his own door he had reason for being half dead. And even then it would not leave him, but followed him upstairs with a bump on every stair, scrambled into bed with him, and bumped down, dead and heavy, on his breast when he fell asleep.
From his oppressed slumber, Young Jerry in his closet was awakened after daybreak and before sunrise, by the presence of his father in the family room. Something had gone wrong with him; at least, so Young Jerry inferred, from the circumstance of his holding Mrs. Cruncher by the ears, and knocking the back of her head against the head-board of the bed.
“I told you I would,” said Mr. Cruncher, “and I did.”
“Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!” his wife implored.
“You oppose yourself to the profit of the business,” said Jerry, “and me and my partners suffer. You was to honour and obey; why the devil don’t you?”
“I try to be a good wife, Jerry,” the poor woman protested, with tears.
“Is it being a good wife to oppose your husband’s business? Is it honouring your husband to dishonour his business? Is it obeying your husband to disobey him on the wital subject of his business?”
“You hadn’t taken to the dreadful business then, Jerry.”
“It’s enough for you,” retorted Mr. Cruncher, “to be the wife of a honest tradesman, and not to occupy your female mind with calculations when he took to his trade or when he didn’t. A honouring and obeying wife would let his trade alone altogether. Call yourself a religious woman? If you’re a religious woman, give me a irreligious one! You have no more nat’ral sense of duty than the bed of this here Thames river has of a pile, and similarly it must be knocked into you.”
The altercation was conducted in a low tone of voice, and terminated in the honest tradesman’s kicking off his clay-soiled boots, and lying down at his length on the floor. After taking a timid peep at him lying on his back, with his rusty hands under his head for a pillow, his son lay down too, and fell asleep again.
There was no fish for breakfast, and not much of anything else. Mr. Cruncher was out of spirits, and out of temper, and kept an iron pot-lid by him as a projectile for the correction of Mrs. Cruncher, in case he should observe any symptoms of her saying Grace. He was brushed and washed at the usual hour, and set off with his son to pursue his ostensible calling.
Young Jerry, walking with the stool under his arm at his father’s side along sunny and crowded Fleet-street, was a very different Young Jerry from him of the previous night, running home through darkness and solitude from his grim pursuer. His cunning was fresh with the day, and his qualms were gone with the night—in which particulars it is not improbable that he had compeers in Fleet-street and the City of London, that fine morning.
“Father,” said Young Jerry, as they walked along: taking care to keep at arm’s length and to have the stool well between them: “what’s a Resurrection-Man?”
Mr. Cruncher came to a stop on the pavement before he answered, “How should I know?”
“I thought you knowed everything, father,” said the artless boy.
“Hem! Well,” returned Mr. Cruncher, going on again, and lifting off his hat to give his spikes free play, “he’s a tradesman.”
“What’s his goods, father?” asked the brisk Young Jerry.
“His goods,” said Mr. Cruncher, after turning it over in his mind, “is a branch of Scientific goods.”
“Persons’ bodies, ain’t it, father?” asked the lively boy.
“I believe it is something of that sort,” said Mr. Cruncher.
“Oh, father, I should so like to be a Resurrection-Man when I’m quite growed up!”
Mr. Cruncher was soothed, but shook his head in a dubious and moral way. “It depends upon how you dewelop your talents. Be careful to dewelop your talents, and never to say no more than you can help to nobody, and there’s no telling at the present time what you may not come to be fit for.” As Young Jerry, thus encouraged, went on a few yards in advance, to plant the stool in the shadow of the Bar, Mr. Cruncher added to himself: “Jerry, you honest tradesman, there’s hopes wot that boy will yet be a blessing to you, and a recompense to you for his mother!”
CHAPTER XV. Knitting
There had been earlier drinking than usual in the wine-shop of Monsieur Defarge. As early as six o’clock in the morning, sallow faces peeping through its barred windows had descried other faces within, bending over measures of wine. Monsieur Defarge sold a very thin wine at the best of times, but it would seem to have been an unusually thin wine that he sold at this time. A sour wine, moreover, or a souring, for its influence on the mood of those who drank it was to make them gloomy. No vivacious Bacchanalian flame leaped out of the pressed grape of Monsieur Defarge: but, a smouldering fire that burnt in the dark, lay hidden in the dregs of it.
This had been the third morning in succession, on which there had been early drinking at the wine-shop of Monsieur Defarge. It had begun on Monday, and here was Wednesday come. There had been more of early brooding than drinking; for, many men had listened and whispered and slunk about there from the time of the opening of the door, who could not have laid a piece of money on the counter to save their souls. These were to the full as interested in the place, however, as if they could have commanded whole barrels of wine; and they glided from seat to seat, and from corner to corner, swallowing talk in lieu of drink, with greedy looks.
Notwithstanding an unusual flow of company, the master of the wine-shop was not visible. He was not missed; for, nobody who crossed the threshold looked for him, nobody asked for him, nobody wondered to see only Madame Defarge in her seat, presiding over the distribution of wine, with a bowl of battered small coins before her, as much defaced and beaten out of their original impress as the small coinage of humanity from whose ragged pockets they had come.
A suspended interest and a prevalent absence of mind, were perhaps observed by the spies who looked in at the wine-shop, as they looked in at every place, high and low, from the king’s palace to the criminal’s gaol. Games at cards languished, players at dominoes musingly built towers with them, drinkers drew figures on the tables with spilt drops of wine, Madame Defarge herself picked out the pattern on her sleeve with her toothpick, and saw and heard something inaudible and invisible a long way off.
Thus, Saint Antoine in this vinous feature of his, until midday. It was high noontide, when two dusty men passed through his streets and under his swinging lamps: of whom, one was Monsieur Defarge: the other a mender of roads in a blue cap. All adust and athirst, the two entered the wine-shop. Their arrival had lighted a kind of fire in the breast of Saint Antoine, fast spreading as they came along, which stirred and flickered in flames of faces at most doors and windows. Yet, no one had followed them, and no man spoke when they entered the wine-shop, though the eyes of every man there were turned upon them.
“Good day, gentlemen!” said Monsieur Defarge.
It may have been a signal for loosening the general tongue. It elicited an answering chorus of “Good day!”
“It is bad weather, gentlemen,” said Defarge, shaking his head.
Upon which, every man looked at his neighbour, and then all cast down their eyes and sat silent. Except one man, who got up and went out.
“My wife,” said Defarge aloud, addressing Madame Defarge: “I have travelled certain leagues with this good mender of roads, called Jacques. I met him—by accident—a day and half’s journey out of Paris. He is a good child, this mender of roads, called Jacques. Give him to drink, my wife!”
A second man got up and went out. Madame Defarge set wine before the mender of roads called Jacques, who doffed his blue cap to the company, and drank. In the breast of his blouse he carried some coarse dark bread; he ate of this between whiles, and sat munching and drinking near Madame Defarge’s counter. A third man got up and went out.
Defarge refreshed himself with a draught of wine—but, he took less than was given to the stranger, as being himself a man to whom it was no rarity—and stood waiting until the countryman had made his breakfast. He looked at no one present, and no one now looked at him; not even Madame Defarge, who had taken up her knitting, and was at work.
“Have you finished your repast, friend?” he asked, in due season.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Come, then! You shall see the apartment that I told you you could occupy. It will suit you to a marvel.”
Out of the wine-shop into the street, out of the street into a courtyard, out of the courtyard up a steep staircase, out of the staircase into a garret—formerly the garret where a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes.
No white-haired man was there now; but, the three men were there who had gone out of the wine-shop singly. And between them and the white-haired man afar off, was the one small link, that they had once looked in at him through the chinks in the wall.
Defarge closed the door carefully, and spoke in a subdued voice:
“Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques Three! This is the witness encountered by appointment, by me, Jacques Four. He will tell you all. Speak, Jacques Five!”
The mender of roads, blue cap in hand, wiped his swarthy forehead with it, and said, “Where shall I commence, monsieur?”
“Commence,” was Monsieur Defarge’s not unreasonable reply, “at the commencement.”
“I saw him then, messieurs,” began the mender of roads, “a year ago this running summer, underneath the carriage of the Marquis, hanging by the chain. Behold the manner of it. I leaving my work on the road, the sun going to bed, the carriage of the Marquis slowly ascending the hill, he hanging by the chain—like this.”
Again the mender of roads went through the whole performance; in which he ought to have been perfect by that time, seeing that it had been the infallible resource and indispensable entertainment of his village during a whole year.
Jacques One struck in, and asked if he had ever seen the man before?
“Never,” answered the mender of roads, recovering his perpendicular.
Jacques Three demanded how he afterwards recognised him then?
“By his tall figure,” said the mender of roads, softly, and with his finger at his nose. “When Monsieur the Marquis demands that evening, ‘Say, what is he like?’ I make response, ‘Tall as a spectre.’”
“You should have said, short as a dwarf,” returned Jacques Two.
“But what did I know? The deed was not then accomplished, neither did he confide in me. Observe! Under those circumstances even, I do not offer my testimony. Monsieur the Marquis indicates me with his finger, standing near our little fountain, and says, ‘To me! Bring that rascal!’ My faith, messieurs, I offer nothing.”
“He is right there, Jacques,” murmured Defarge, to him who had interrupted. “Go on!”
“Good!” said the mender of roads, with an air of mystery. “The tall man is lost, and he is sought—how many months? Nine, ten, eleven?”
“No matter, the number,” said Defarge. “He is well hidden, but at last he is unluckily found. Go on!”
“I am again at work upon the hill-side, and the sun is again about to go to bed. I am collecting my tools to descend to my cottage down in the village below, where it is already dark, when I raise my eyes, and see coming over the hill six soldiers. In the midst of them is a tall man with his arms bound—tied to his sides—like this!”
With the aid of his indispensable cap, he represented a man with his elbows bound fast at his hips, with cords that were knotted behind him.
“I stand aside, messieurs, by my heap of stones, to see the soldiers and their prisoner pass (for it is a solitary road, that, where any spectacle is well worth looking at), and at first, as they approach, I see no more than that they are six soldiers with a tall man bound, and that they are almost black to my sight—except on the side of the sun going to bed, where they have a red edge, messieurs. Also, I see that their long shadows are on the hollow ridge on the opposite side of the road, and are on the hill above it, and are like the shadows of giants. Also, I see that they are covered with dust, and that the dust moves with them as they come, tramp, tramp! But when they advance quite near to me, I recognise the tall man, and he recognises me. Ah, but he would be well content to precipitate himself over the hill-side once again, as on the evening when he and I first encountered, close to the same spot!”
He described it as if he were there, and it was evident that he saw it vividly; perhaps he had not seen much in his life.
“I do not show the soldiers that I recognise the tall man; he does not show the soldiers that he recognises me; we do it, and we know it, with our eyes. ‘Come on!’ says the chief of that company, pointing to the village, ‘bring him fast to his tomb!’ and they bring him faster. I follow. His arms are swelled because of being bound so tight, his wooden shoes are large and clumsy, and he is lame. Because he is lame, and consequently slow, they drive him with their guns—like this!”
He imitated the action of a man’s being impelled forward by the butt-ends of muskets.
“As they descend the hill like madmen running a race, he falls. They laugh and pick him up again. His face is bleeding and covered with dust, but he cannot touch it; thereupon they laugh again. They bring him into the village; all the village runs to look; they take him past the mill, and up to the prison; all the village sees the prison gate open in the darkness of the night, and swallow him—like this!”
He opened his mouth as wide as he could, and shut it with a sounding snap of his teeth. Observant of his unwillingness to mar the effect by opening it again, Defarge said, “Go on, Jacques.”
“All the village,” pursued the mender of roads, on tiptoe and in a low voice, “withdraws; all the village whispers by the fountain; all the village sleeps; all the village dreams of that unhappy one, within the locks and bars of the prison on the crag, and never to come out of it, except to perish. In the morning, with my tools upon my shoulder, eating my morsel of black bread as I go, I make a circuit by the prison, on my way to my work. There I see him, high up, behind the bars of a lofty iron cage, bloody and dusty as last night, looking through. He has no hand free, to wave to me; I dare not call to him; he regards me like a dead man.”
Defarge and the three glanced darkly at one another. The looks of all of them were dark, repressed, and revengeful, as they listened to the countryman’s story; the manner of all of them, while it was secret, was authoritative too. They had the air of a rough tribunal; Jacques One and Two sitting on the old pallet-bed, each with his chin resting on his hand, and his eyes intent on the road-mender; Jacques Three, equally intent, on one knee behind them, with his agitated hand always gliding over the network of fine nerves about his mouth and nose; Defarge standing between them and the narrator, whom he had stationed in the light of the window, by turns looking from him to them, and from them to him.
“Go on, Jacques,” said Defarge.
“He remains up there in his iron cage some days. The village looks at him by stealth, for it is afraid. But it always looks up, from a distance, at the prison on the crag; and in the evening, when the work of the day is achieved and it assembles to gossip at the fountain, all faces are turned towards the prison. Formerly, they were turned towards the posting-house; now, they are turned towards the prison. They whisper at the fountain, that although condemned to death he will not be executed; they say that petitions have been presented in Paris, showing that he was enraged and made mad by the death of his child; they say that a petition has been presented to the King himself. What do I know? It is possible. Perhaps yes, perhaps no.”
“Listen then, Jacques,” Number One of that name sternly interposed. “Know that a petition was presented to the King and Queen. All here, yourself excepted, saw the King take it, in his carriage in the street, sitting beside the Queen. It is Defarge whom you see here, who, at the hazard of his life, darted out before the horses, with the petition in his hand.”
“And once again listen, Jacques!” said the kneeling Number Three: his fingers ever wandering over and over those fine nerves, with a strikingly greedy air, as if he hungered for something—that was neither food nor drink; “the guard, horse and foot, surrounded the petitioner, and struck him blows. You hear?”
“I hear, messieurs.”
“Go on then,” said Defarge.
“Again; on the other hand, they whisper at the fountain,” resumed the countryman, “that he is brought down into our country to be executed on the spot, and that he will very certainly be executed. They even whisper that because he has slain Monseigneur, and because Monseigneur was the father of his tenants—serfs—what you will—he will be executed as a parricide. One old man says at the fountain, that his right hand, armed with the knife, will be burnt off before his face; that, into wounds which will be made in his arms, his breast, and his legs, there will be poured boiling oil, melted lead, hot resin, wax, and sulphur; finally, that he will be torn limb from limb by four strong horses. That old man says, all this was actually done to a prisoner who made an attempt on the life of the late King, Louis Fifteen. But how do I know if he lies? I am not a scholar.”
“Listen once again then, Jacques!” said the man with the restless hand and the craving air. “The name of that prisoner was Damiens, and it was all done in open day, in the open streets of this city of Paris; and nothing was more noticed in the vast concourse that saw it done, than the crowd of ladies of quality and fashion, who were full of eager attention to the last—to the last, Jacques, prolonged until nightfall, when he had lost two legs and an arm, and still breathed! And it was done—why, how old are you?”
“Thirty-five,” said the mender of roads, who looked sixty.
“It was done when you were more than ten years old; you might have seen it.”
“Enough!” said Defarge, with grim impatience. “Long live the Devil! Go on.”
“Well! Some whisper this, some whisper that; they speak of nothing else; even the fountain appears to fall to that tune. At length, on Sunday night when all the village is asleep, come soldiers, winding down from the prison, and their guns ring on the stones of the little street. Workmen dig, workmen hammer, soldiers laugh and sing; in the morning, by the fountain, there is raised a gallows forty feet high, poisoning the water.”
The mender of roads looked through rather than at the low ceiling, and pointed as if he saw the gallows somewhere in the sky.
“All work is stopped, all assemble there, nobody leads the cows out, the cows are there with the rest. At midday, the roll of drums. Soldiers have marched into the prison in the night, and he is in the midst of many soldiers. He is bound as before, and in his mouth there is a gag—tied so, with a tight string, making him look almost as if he laughed.” He suggested it, by creasing his face with his two thumbs, from the corners of his mouth to his ears. “On the top of the gallows is fixed the knife, blade upwards, with its point in the air. He is hanged there forty feet high—and is left hanging, poisoning the water.”
They looked at one another, as he used his blue cap to wipe his face, on which the perspiration had started afresh while he recalled the spectacle.
“It is frightful, messieurs. How can the women and the children draw water! Who can gossip of an evening, under that shadow! Under it, have I said? When I left the village, Monday evening as the sun was going to bed, and looked back from the hill, the shadow struck across the church, across the mill, across the prison—seemed to strike across the earth, messieurs, to where the sky rests upon it!”
The hungry man gnawed one of his fingers as he looked at the other three, and his finger quivered with the craving that was on him.
“That’s all, messieurs. I left at sunset (as I had been warned to do), and I walked on, that night and half next day, until I met (as I was warned I should) this comrade. With him, I came on, now riding and now walking, through the rest of yesterday and through last night. And here you see me!”
After a gloomy silence, the first Jacques said, “Good! You have acted and recounted faithfully. Will you wait for us a little, outside the door?”
“Very willingly,” said the mender of roads. Whom Defarge escorted to the top of the stairs, and, leaving seated there, returned.
The three had risen, and their heads were together when he came back to the garret.
“How say you, Jacques?” demanded Number One. “To be registered?”
“To be registered, as doomed to destruction,” returned Defarge.
“Magnificent!” croaked the man with the craving.
“The chateau, and all the race?” inquired the first.
“The chateau and all the race,” returned Defarge. “Extermination.”
The hungry man repeated, in a rapturous croak, “Magnificent!” and began gnawing another finger.
“Are you sure,” asked Jacques Two, of Defarge, “that no embarrassment can arise from our manner of keeping the register? Without doubt it is safe, for no one beyond ourselves can decipher it; but shall we always be able to decipher it—or, I ought to say, will she?”
“Jacques,” returned Defarge, drawing himself up, “if madame my wife undertook to keep the register in her memory alone, she would not lose a word of it—not a syllable of it. Knitted, in her own stitches and her own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as the sun. Confide in Madame Defarge. It would be easier for the weakest poltroon that lives, to erase himself from existence, than to erase one letter of his name or crimes from the knitted register of Madame Defarge.”
There was a murmur of confidence and approval, and then the man who hungered, asked: “Is this rustic to be sent back soon? I hope so. He is very simple; is he not a little dangerous?”
“He knows nothing,” said Defarge; “at least nothing more than would easily elevate himself to a gallows of the same height. I charge myself with him; let him remain with me; I will take care of him, and set him on his road. He wishes to see the fine world—the King, the Queen, and Court; let him see them on Sunday.”
“What?” exclaimed the hungry man, staring. “Is it a good sign, that he wishes to see Royalty and Nobility?”
“Jacques,” said Defarge; “judiciously show a cat milk, if you wish her to thirst for it. Judiciously show a dog his natural prey, if you wish him to bring it down one day.”
Nothing more was said, and the mender of roads, being found already dozing on the topmost stair, was advised to lay himself down on the pallet-bed and take some rest. He needed no persuasion, and was soon asleep.
Worse quarters than Defarge’s wine-shop, could easily have been found in Paris for a provincial slave of that degree. Saving for a mysterious dread of madame by which he was constantly haunted, his life was very new and agreeable. But, madame sat all day at her counter, so expressly unconscious of him, and so particularly determined not to perceive that his being there had any connection with anything below the surface, that he shook in his wooden shoes whenever his eye lighted on her. For, he contended with himself that it was impossible to foresee what that lady might pretend next; and he felt assured that if she should take it into her brightly ornamented head to pretend that she had seen him do a murder and afterwards flay the victim, she would infallibly go through with it until the play was played out.
Therefore, when Sunday came, the mender of roads was not enchanted (though he said he was) to find that madame was to accompany monsieur and himself to Versailles. It was additionally disconcerting to have madame knitting all the way there, in a public conveyance; it was additionally disconcerting yet, to have madame in the crowd in the afternoon, still with her knitting in her hands as the crowd waited to see the carriage of the King and Queen.
“You work hard, madame,” said a man near her.
“Yes,” answered Madame Defarge; “I have a good deal to do.”
“What do you make, madame?”
“Many things.”
“For instance—”
“For instance,” returned Madame Defarge, composedly, “shrouds.”
The man moved a little further away, as soon as he could, and the mender of roads fanned himself with his blue cap: feeling it mightily close and oppressive. If he needed a King and Queen to restore him, he was fortunate in having his remedy at hand; for, soon the large-faced King and the fair-faced Queen came in their golden coach, attended by the shining Bull’s Eye of their Court, a glittering multitude of laughing ladies and fine lords; and in jewels and silks and powder and splendour and elegantly spurning figures and handsomely disdainful faces of both sexes, the mender of roads bathed himself, so much to his temporary intoxication, that he cried Long live the King, Long live the Queen, Long live everybody and everything! as if he had never heard of ubiquitous Jacques in his time. Then, there were gardens, courtyards, terraces, fountains, green banks, more King and Queen, more Bull’s Eye, more lords and ladies, more Long live they all! until he absolutely wept with sentiment. During the whole of this scene, which lasted some three hours, he had plenty of shouting and weeping and sentimental company, and throughout Defarge held him by the collar, as if to restrain him from flying at the objects of his brief devotion and tearing them to pieces.
“Bravo!” said Defarge, clapping him on the back when it was over, like a patron; “you are a good boy!”
The mender of roads was now coming to himself, and was mistrustful of having made a mistake in his late demonstrations; but no.
“You are the fellow we want,” said Defarge, in his ear; “you make these fools believe that it will last for ever. Then, they are the more insolent, and it is the nearer ended.”
“Hey!” cried the mender of roads, reflectively; “that’s true.”
“These fools know nothing. While they despise your breath, and would stop it for ever and ever, in you or in a hundred like you rather than in one of their own horses or dogs, they only know what your breath tells them. Let it deceive them, then, a little longer; it cannot deceive them too much.”
Madame Defarge looked superciliously at the client, and nodded in confirmation.
“As to you,” said she, “you would shout and shed tears for anything, if it made a show and a noise. Say! Would you not?”
“Truly, madame, I think so. For the moment.”
“If you were shown a great heap of dolls, and were set upon them to pluck them to pieces and despoil them for your own advantage, you would pick out the richest and gayest. Say! Would you not?”
“Truly yes, madame.”
“Yes. And if you were shown a flock of birds, unable to fly, and were set upon them to strip them of their feathers for your own advantage, you would set upon the birds of the finest feathers; would you not?”
“It is true, madame.”
“You have seen both dolls and birds to-day,” said Madame Defarge, with a wave of her hand towards the place where they had last been apparent; “now, go home!”
CHAPTER XVI. Still Knitting
Madame Defarge and monsieur her husband returned amicably to the bosom of Saint Antoine, while a speck in a blue cap toiled through the darkness, and through the dust, and down the weary miles of avenue by the wayside, slowly tending towards that point of the compass where the chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his grave, listened to the whispering trees. Such ample leisure had the stone faces, now, for listening to the trees and to the fountain, that the few village scarecrows who, in their quest for herbs to eat and fragments of dead stick to burn, strayed within sight of the great stone courtyard and terrace staircase, had it borne in upon their starved fancy that the expression of the faces was altered. A rumour just lived in the village—had a faint and bare existence there, as its people had—that when the knife struck home, the faces changed, from faces of pride to faces of anger and pain; also, that when that dangling figure was hauled up forty feet above the fountain, they changed again, and bore a cruel look of being avenged, which they would henceforth bear for ever. In the stone face over the great window of the bed-chamber where the murder was done, two fine dints were pointed out in the sculptured nose, which everybody recognised, and which nobody had seen of old; and on the scarce occasions when two or three ragged peasants emerged from the crowd to take a hurried peep at Monsieur the Marquis petrified, a skinny finger would not have pointed to it for a minute, before they all started away among the moss and leaves, like the more fortunate hares who could find a living there.
Chateau and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well—thousands of acres of land—a whole province of France—all France itself—lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hair-breadth line. So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it.
The Defarges, husband and wife, came lumbering under the starlight, in their public vehicle, to that gate of Paris whereunto their journey naturally tended. There was the usual stoppage at the barrier guardhouse, and the usual lanterns came glancing forth for the usual examination and inquiry. Monsieur Defarge alighted; knowing one or two of the soldiery there, and one of the police. The latter he was intimate with, and affectionately embraced.
When Saint Antoine had again enfolded the Defarges in his dusky wings, and they, having finally alighted near the Saint’s boundaries, were picking their way on foot through the black mud and offal of his streets, Madame Defarge spoke to her husband:
“Say then, my friend; what did Jacques of the police tell thee?”
“Very little to-night, but all he knows. There is another spy commissioned for our quarter. There may be many more, for all that he can say, but he knows of one.”
“Eh well!” said Madame Defarge, raising her eyebrows with a cool business air. “It is necessary to register him. How do they call that man?”
“He is English.”
“So much the better. His name?”
“Barsad,” said Defarge, making it French by pronunciation. But, he had been so careful to get it accurately, that he then spelt it with perfect correctness.
“Barsad,” repeated madame. “Good. Christian name?”
“John.”
“John Barsad,” repeated madame, after murmuring it once to herself. “Good. His appearance; is it known?”
“Age, about forty years; height, about five feet nine; black hair; complexion dark; generally, rather handsome visage; eyes dark, face thin, long, and sallow; nose aquiline, but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left cheek; expression, therefore, sinister.”
“Eh my faith. It is a portrait!” said madame, laughing. “He shall be registered to-morrow.”
They turned into the wine-shop, which was closed (for it was midnight), and where Madame Defarge immediately took her post at her desk, counted the small moneys that had been taken during her absence, examined the stock, went through the entries in the book, made other entries of her own, checked the serving man in every possible way, and finally dismissed him to bed. Then she turned out the contents of the bowl of money for the second time, and began knotting them up in her handkerchief, in a chain of separate knots, for safe keeping through the night. All this while, Defarge, with his pipe in his mouth, walked up and down, complacently admiring, but never interfering; in which condition, indeed, as to the business and his domestic affairs, he walked up and down through life.
The night was hot, and the shop, close shut and surrounded by so foul a neighbourhood, was ill-smelling. Monsieur Defarge’s olfactory sense was by no means delicate, but the stock of wine smelt much stronger than it ever tasted, and so did the stock of rum and brandy and aniseed. He whiffed the compound of scents away, as he put down his smoked-out pipe.
“You are fatigued,” said madame, raising her glance as she knotted the money. “There are only the usual odours.”
“I am a little tired,” her husband acknowledged.
“You are a little depressed, too,” said madame, whose quick eyes had never been so intent on the accounts, but they had had a ray or two for him. “Oh, the men, the men!”
“But my dear!” began Defarge.
“But my dear!” repeated madame, nodding firmly; “but my dear! You are faint of heart to-night, my dear!”
“Well, then,” said Defarge, as if a thought were wrung out of his breast, “it is a long time.”
“It is a long time,” repeated his wife; “and when is it not a long time? Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule.”
“It does not take a long time to strike a man with Lightning,” said Defarge.
“How long,” demanded madame, composedly, “does it take to make and store the lightning? Tell me.”
Defarge raised his head thoughtfully, as if there were something in that too.
“It does not take a long time,” said madame, “for an earthquake to swallow a town. Eh well! Tell me how long it takes to prepare the earthquake?”
“A long time, I suppose,” said Defarge.
“But when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to pieces everything before it. In the meantime, it is always preparing, though it is not seen or heard. That is your consolation. Keep it.”
She tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it throttled a foe.
“I tell thee,” said madame, extending her right hand, for emphasis, “that although it is a long time on the road, it is on the road and coming. I tell thee it never retreats, and never stops. I tell thee it is always advancing. Look around and consider the lives of all the world that we know, consider the faces of all the world that we know, consider the rage and discontent to which the Jacquerie addresses itself with more and more of certainty every hour. Can such things last? Bah! I mock you.”
“My brave wife,” returned Defarge, standing before her with his head a little bent, and his hands clasped at his back, like a docile and attentive pupil before his catechist, “I do not question all this. But it has lasted a long time, and it is possible—you know well, my wife, it is possible—that it may not come, during our lives.”
“Eh well! How then?” demanded madame, tying another knot, as if there were another enemy strangled.
“Well!” said Defarge, with a half complaining and half apologetic shrug. “We shall not see the triumph.”
“We shall have helped it,” returned madame, with her extended hand in strong action. “Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we shall see the triumph. But even if not, even if I knew certainly not, show me the neck of an aristocrat and tyrant, and still I would—”
Then madame, with her teeth set, tied a very terrible knot indeed.
“Hold!” cried Defarge, reddening a little as if he felt charged with cowardice; “I too, my dear, will stop at nothing.”
“Yes! But it is your weakness that you sometimes need to see your victim and your opportunity, to sustain you. Sustain yourself without that. When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil; but wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained—not shown—yet always ready.”
Madame enforced the conclusion of this piece of advice by striking her little counter with her chain of money as if she knocked its brains out, and then gathering the heavy handkerchief under her arm in a serene manner, and observing that it was time to go to bed.
Next noontide saw the admirable woman in her usual place in the wine-shop, knitting away assiduously. A rose lay beside her, and if she now and then glanced at the flower, it was with no infraction of her usual preoccupied air. There were a few customers, drinking or not drinking, standing or seated, sprinkled about. The day was very hot, and heaps of flies, who were extending their inquisitive and adventurous perquisitions into all the glutinous little glasses near madame, fell dead at the bottom. Their decease made no impression on the other flies out promenading, who looked at them in the coolest manner (as if they themselves were elephants, or something as far removed), until they met the same fate. Curious to consider how heedless flies are!—perhaps they thought as much at Court that sunny summer day.
A figure entering at the door threw a shadow on Madame Defarge which she felt to be a new one. She laid down her knitting, and began to pin her rose in her head-dress, before she looked at the figure.
It was curious. The moment Madame Defarge took up the rose, the customers ceased talking, and began gradually to drop out of the wine-shop.
“Good day, madame,” said the new-comer.
“Good day, monsieur.”
She said it aloud, but added to herself, as she resumed her knitting: “Hah! Good day, age about forty, height about five feet nine, black hair, generally rather handsome visage, complexion dark, eyes dark, thin, long and sallow face, aquiline nose but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left cheek which imparts a sinister expression! Good day, one and all!”
“Have the goodness to give me a little glass of old cognac, and a mouthful of cool fresh water, madame.”
Madame complied with a polite air.
“Marvellous cognac this, madame!”
It was the first time it had ever been so complimented, and Madame Defarge knew enough of its antecedents to know better. She said, however, that the cognac was flattered, and took up her knitting. The visitor watched her fingers for a few moments, and took the opportunity of observing the place in general.
“You knit with great skill, madame.”
“I am accustomed to it.”
“A pretty pattern too!”
“You think so?” said madame, looking at him with a smile.
“Decidedly. May one ask what it is for?”
“Pastime,” said madame, still looking at him with a smile while her fingers moved nimbly.
“Not for use?”
“That depends. I may find a use for it one day. If I do—Well,” said madame, drawing a breath and nodding her head with a stern kind of coquetry, “I’ll use it!”
It was remarkable; but, the taste of Saint Antoine seemed to be decidedly opposed to a rose on the head-dress of Madame Defarge. Two men had entered separately, and had been about to order drink, when, catching sight of that novelty, they faltered, made a pretence of looking about as if for some friend who was not there, and went away. Nor, of those who had been there when this visitor entered, was there one left. They had all dropped off. The spy had kept his eyes open, but had been able to detect no sign. They had lounged away in a poverty-stricken, purposeless, accidental manner, quite natural and unimpeachable.
“John,” thought madame, checking off her work as her fingers knitted, and her eyes looked at the stranger. “Stay long enough, and I shall knit ‘BARSAD’ before you go.”
“You have a husband, madame?”
“I have.”
“Children?”
“No children.”
“Business seems bad?”
“Business is very bad; the people are so poor.”
“Ah, the unfortunate, miserable people! So oppressed, too—as you say.”
“As you say,” madame retorted, correcting him, and deftly knitting an extra something into his name that boded him no good.
“Pardon me; certainly it was I who said so, but you naturally think so. Of course.”
“I think?” returned madame, in a high voice. “I and my husband have enough to do to keep this wine-shop open, without thinking. All we think, here, is how to live. That is the subject we think of, and it gives us, from morning to night, enough to think about, without embarrassing our heads concerning others. I think for others? No, no.”
The spy, who was there to pick up any crumbs he could find or make, did not allow his baffled state to express itself in his sinister face; but, stood with an air of gossiping gallantry, leaning his elbow on Madame Defarge’s little counter, and occasionally sipping his cognac.
“A bad business this, madame, of Gaspard’s execution. Ah! the poor Gaspard!” With a sigh of great compassion.
“My faith!” returned madame, coolly and lightly, “if people use knives for such purposes, they have to pay for it. He knew beforehand what the price of his luxury was; he has paid the price.”
“I believe,” said the spy, dropping his soft voice to a tone that invited confidence, and expressing an injured revolutionary susceptibility in every muscle of his wicked face: “I believe there is much compassion and anger in this neighbourhood, touching the poor fellow? Between ourselves.”
“Is there?” asked madame, vacantly.
“Is there not?”
“—Here is my husband!” said Madame Defarge.
As the keeper of the wine-shop entered at the door, the spy saluted him by touching his hat, and saying, with an engaging smile, “Good day, Jacques!” Defarge stopped short, and stared at him.
“Good day, Jacques!” the spy repeated; with not quite so much confidence, or quite so easy a smile under the stare.
“You deceive yourself, monsieur,” returned the keeper of the wine-shop. “You mistake me for another. That is not my name. I am Ernest Defarge.”
“It is all the same,” said the spy, airily, but discomfited too: “good day!”
“Good day!” answered Defarge, drily.
“I was saying to madame, with whom I had the pleasure of chatting when you entered, that they tell me there is—and no wonder!—much sympathy and anger in Saint Antoine, touching the unhappy fate of poor Gaspard.”
“No one has told me so,” said Defarge, shaking his head. “I know nothing of it.”
Having said it, he passed behind the little counter, and stood with his hand on the back of his wife’s chair, looking over that barrier at the person to whom they were both opposed, and whom either of them would have shot with the greatest satisfaction.
The spy, well used to his business, did not change his unconscious attitude, but drained his little glass of cognac, took a sip of fresh water, and asked for another glass of cognac. Madame Defarge poured it out for him, took to her knitting again, and hummed a little song over it.
“You seem to know this quarter well; that is to say, better than I do?” observed Defarge.
“Not at all, but I hope to know it better. I am so profoundly interested in its miserable inhabitants.”
“Hah!” muttered Defarge.
“The pleasure of conversing with you, Monsieur Defarge, recalls to me,” pursued the spy, “that I have the honour of cherishing some interesting associations with your name.”
“Indeed!” said Defarge, with much indifference.
“Yes, indeed. When Doctor Manette was released, you, his old domestic, had the charge of him, I know. He was delivered to you. You see I am informed of the circumstances?”
“Such is the fact, certainly,” said Defarge. He had had it conveyed to him, in an accidental touch of his wife’s elbow as she knitted and warbled, that he would do best to answer, but always with brevity.
“It was to you,” said the spy, “that his daughter came; and it was from your care that his daughter took him, accompanied by a neat brown monsieur; how is he called?—in a little wig—Lorry—of the bank of Tellson and Company—over to England.”
“Such is the fact,” repeated Defarge.
“Very interesting remembrances!” said the spy. “I have known Doctor Manette and his daughter, in England.”
“Yes?” said Defarge.
“You don’t hear much about them now?” said the spy.
“No,” said Defarge.
“In effect,” madame struck in, looking up from her work and her little song, “we never hear about them. We received the news of their safe arrival, and perhaps another letter, or perhaps two; but, since then, they have gradually taken their road in life—we, ours—and we have held no correspondence.”
“Perfectly so, madame,” replied the spy. “She is going to be married.”
“Going?” echoed madame. “She was pretty enough to have been married long ago. You English are cold, it seems to me.”
“Oh! You know I am English.”
“I perceive your tongue is,” returned madame; “and what the tongue is, I suppose the man is.”
He did not take the identification as a compliment; but he made the best of it, and turned it off with a laugh. After sipping his cognac to the end, he added:
“Yes, Miss Manette is going to be married. But not to an Englishman; to one who, like herself, is French by birth. And speaking of Gaspard (ah, poor Gaspard! It was cruel, cruel!), it is a curious thing that she is going to marry the nephew of Monsieur the Marquis, for whom Gaspard was exalted to that height of so many feet; in other words, the present Marquis. But he lives unknown in England, he is no Marquis there; he is Mr. Charles Darnay. D’Aulnais is the name of his mother’s family.”
Madame Defarge knitted steadily, but the intelligence had a palpable effect upon her husband. Do what he would, behind the little counter, as to the striking of a light and the lighting of his pipe, he was troubled, and his hand was not trustworthy. The spy would have been no spy if he had failed to see it, or to record it in his mind.
Having made, at least, this one hit, whatever it might prove to be worth, and no customers coming in to help him to any other, Mr. Barsad paid for what he had drunk, and took his leave: taking occasion to say, in a genteel manner, before he departed, that he looked forward to the pleasure of seeing Monsieur and Madame Defarge again. For some minutes after he had emerged into the outer presence of Saint Antoine, the husband and wife remained exactly as he had left them, lest he should come back.
“Can it be true,” said Defarge, in a low voice, looking down at his wife as he stood smoking with his hand on the back of her chair: “what he has said of Ma’amselle Manette?”
“As he has said it,” returned madame, lifting her eyebrows a little, “it is probably false. But it may be true.”
“If it is—” Defarge began, and stopped.
“If it is?” repeated his wife.
“—And if it does come, while we live to see it triumph—I hope, for her sake, Destiny will keep her husband out of France.”
“Her husband’s destiny,” said Madame Defarge, with her usual composure, “will take him where he is to go, and will lead him to the end that is to end him. That is all I know.”
“But it is very strange—now, at least, is it not very strange”—said Defarge, rather pleading with his wife to induce her to admit it, “that, after all our sympathy for Monsieur her father, and herself, her husband’s name should be proscribed under your hand at this moment, by the side of that infernal dog’s who has just left us?”
“Stranger things than that will happen when it does come,” answered madame. “I have them both here, of a certainty; and they are both here for their merits; that is enough.”
She rolled up her knitting when she had said those words, and presently took the rose out of the handkerchief that was wound about her head. Either Saint Antoine had an instinctive sense that the objectionable decoration was gone, or Saint Antoine was on the watch for its disappearance; howbeit, the Saint took courage to lounge in, very shortly afterwards, and the wine-shop recovered its habitual aspect.
In the evening, at which season of all others Saint Antoine turned himself inside out, and sat on door-steps and window-ledges, and came to the corners of vile streets and courts, for a breath of air, Madame Defarge with her work in her hand was accustomed to pass from place to place and from group to group: a Missionary—there were many like her—such as the world will do well never to breed again. All the women knitted. They knitted worthless things; but, the mechanical work was a mechanical substitute for eating and drinking; the hands moved for the jaws and the digestive apparatus: if the bony fingers had been still, the stomachs would have been more famine-pinched.
But, as the fingers went, the eyes went, and the thoughts. And as Madame Defarge moved on from group to group, all three went quicker and fiercer among every little knot of women that she had spoken with, and left behind.
Her husband smoked at his door, looking after her with admiration. “A great woman,” said he, “a strong woman, a grand woman, a frightfully grand woman!”
Darkness closed around, and then came the ringing of church bells and the distant beating of the military drums in the Palace Courtyard, as the women sat knitting, knitting. Darkness encompassed them. Another darkness was closing in as surely, when the church bells, then ringing pleasantly in many an airy steeple over France, should be melted into thundering cannon; when the military drums should be beating to drown a wretched voice, that night all potent as the voice of Power and Plenty, Freedom and Life. So much was closing in about the women who sat knitting, knitting, that they their very selves were closing in around a structure yet unbuilt, where they were to sit knitting, knitting, counting dropping heads.
CHAPTER XVII. One Night
Never did the sun go down with a brighter glory on the quiet corner in Soho, than one memorable evening when the Doctor and his daughter sat under the plane-tree together. Never did the moon rise with a milder radiance over great London, than on that night when it found them still seated under the tree, and shone upon their faces through its leaves.
Lucie was to be married to-morrow. She had reserved this last evening for her father, and they sat alone under the plane-tree.
“You are happy, my dear father?”
“Quite, my child.”
They had said little, though they had been there a long time. When it was yet light enough to work and read, she had neither engaged herself in her usual work, nor had she read to him. She had employed herself in both ways, at his side under the tree, many and many a time; but, this time was not quite like any other, and nothing could make it so.
“And I am very happy to-night, dear father. I am deeply happy in the love that Heaven has so blessed—my love for Charles, and Charles’s love for me. But, if my life were not to be still consecrated to you, or if my marriage were so arranged as that it would part us, even by the length of a few of these streets, I should be more unhappy and self-reproachful now than I can tell you. Even as it is—”
Even as it was, she could not command her voice.
In the sad moonlight, she clasped him by the neck, and laid her face upon his breast. In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is—as the light called human life is—at its coming and its going.
“Dearest dear! Can you tell me, this last time, that you feel quite, quite sure, no new affections of mine, and no new duties of mine, will ever interpose between us? I know it well, but do you know it? In your own heart, do you feel quite certain?”
Her father answered, with a cheerful firmness of conviction he could scarcely have assumed, “Quite sure, my darling! More than that,” he added, as he tenderly kissed her: “my future is far brighter, Lucie, seen through your marriage, than it could have been—nay, than it ever was—without it.”
“If I could hope that, my father!—”
“Believe it, love! Indeed it is so. Consider how natural and how plain it is, my dear, that it should be so. You, devoted and young, cannot fully appreciate the anxiety I have felt that your life should not be wasted—”
She moved her hand towards his lips, but he took it in his, and repeated the word.
“—wasted, my child—should not be wasted, struck aside from the natural order of things—for my sake. Your unselfishness cannot entirely comprehend how much my mind has gone on this; but, only ask yourself, how could my happiness be perfect, while yours was incomplete?”
“If I had never seen Charles, my father, I should have been quite happy with you.”
He smiled at her unconscious admission that she would have been unhappy without Charles, having seen him; and replied:
“My child, you did see him, and it is Charles. If it had not been Charles, it would have been another. Or, if it had been no other, I should have been the cause, and then the dark part of my life would have cast its shadow beyond myself, and would have fallen on you.”
It was the first time, except at the trial, of her ever hearing him refer to the period of his suffering. It gave her a strange and new sensation while his words were in her ears; and she remembered it long afterwards.
“See!” said the Doctor of Beauvais, raising his hand towards the moon. “I have looked at her from my prison-window, when I could not bear her light. I have looked at her when it has been such torture to me to think of her shining upon what I had lost, that I have beaten my head against my prison-walls. I have looked at her, in a state so dull and lethargic, that I have thought of nothing but the number of horizontal lines I could draw across her at the full, and the number of perpendicular lines with which I could intersect them.” He added in his inward and pondering manner, as he looked at the moon, “It was twenty either way, I remember, and the twentieth was difficult to squeeze in.”
The strange thrill with which she heard him go back to that time, deepened as he dwelt upon it; but, there was nothing to shock her in the manner of his reference. He only seemed to contrast his present cheerfulness and felicity with the dire endurance that was over.
“I have looked at her, speculating thousands of times upon the unborn child from whom I had been rent. Whether it was alive. Whether it had been born alive, or the poor mother’s shock had killed it. Whether it was a son who would some day avenge his father. (There was a time in my imprisonment, when my desire for vengeance was unbearable.) Whether it was a son who would never know his father’s story; who might even live to weigh the possibility of his father’s having disappeared of his own will and act. Whether it was a daughter who would grow to be a woman.”
She drew closer to him, and kissed his cheek and his hand.
“I have pictured my daughter, to myself, as perfectly forgetful of me—rather, altogether ignorant of me, and unconscious of me. I have cast up the years of her age, year after year. I have seen her married to a man who knew nothing of my fate. I have altogether perished from the remembrance of the living, and in the next generation my place was a blank.”
“My father! Even to hear that you had such thoughts of a daughter who never existed, strikes to my heart as if I had been that child.”
“You, Lucie? It is out of the Consolation and restoration you have brought to me, that these remembrances arise, and pass between us and the moon on this last night.—What did I say just now?”
“She knew nothing of you. She cared nothing for you.”
“So! But on other moonlight nights, when the sadness and the silence have touched me in a different way—have affected me with something as like a sorrowful sense of peace, as any emotion that had pain for its foundations could—I have imagined her as coming to me in my cell, and leading me out into the freedom beyond the fortress. I have seen her image in the moonlight often, as I now see you; except that I never held her in my arms; it stood between the little grated window and the door. But, you understand that that was not the child I am speaking of?”
“The figure was not; the—the—image; the fancy?”
“No. That was another thing. It stood before my disturbed sense of sight, but it never moved. The phantom that my mind pursued, was another and more real child. Of her outward appearance I know no more than that she was like her mother. The other had that likeness too—as you have—but was not the same. Can you follow me, Lucie? Hardly, I think? I doubt you must have been a solitary prisoner to understand these perplexed distinctions.”
His collected and calm manner could not prevent her blood from running cold, as he thus tried to anatomise his old condition.
“In that more peaceful state, I have imagined her, in the moonlight, coming to me and taking me out to show me that the home of her married life was full of her loving remembrance of her lost father. My picture was in her room, and I was in her prayers. Her life was active, cheerful, useful; but my poor history pervaded it all.”
“I was that child, my father, I was not half so good, but in my love that was I.”
“And she showed me her children,” said the Doctor of Beauvais, “and they had heard of me, and had been taught to pity me. When they passed a prison of the State, they kept far from its frowning walls, and looked up at its bars, and spoke in whispers. She could never deliver me; I imagined that she always brought me back after showing me such things. But then, blessed with the relief of tears, I fell upon my knees, and blessed her.”
“I am that child, I hope, my father. O my dear, my dear, will you bless me as fervently to-morrow?”
“Lucie, I recall these old troubles in the reason that I have to-night for loving you better than words can tell, and thanking God for my great happiness. My thoughts, when they were wildest, never rose near the happiness that I have known with you, and that we have before us.”
He embraced her, solemnly commended her to Heaven, and humbly thanked Heaven for having bestowed her on him. By-and-bye, they went into the house.
There was no one bidden to the marriage but Mr. Lorry; there was even to be no bridesmaid but the gaunt Miss Pross. The marriage was to make no change in their place of residence; they had been able to extend it, by taking to themselves the upper rooms formerly belonging to the apocryphal invisible lodger, and they desired nothing more.
Doctor Manette was very cheerful at the little supper. They were only three at table, and Miss Pross made the third. He regretted that Charles was not there; was more than half disposed to object to the loving little plot that kept him away; and drank to him affectionately.
So, the time came for him to bid Lucie good night, and they separated. But, in the stillness of the third hour of the morning, Lucie came downstairs again, and stole into his room; not free from unshaped fears, beforehand.
All things, however, were in their places; all was quiet; and he lay asleep, his white hair picturesque on the untroubled pillow, and his hands lying quiet on the coverlet. She put her needless candle in the shadow at a distance, crept up to his bed, and put her lips to his; then, leaned over him, and looked at him.
Into his handsome face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn; but, he covered up their tracks with a determination so strong, that he held the mastery of them even in his sleep. A more remarkable face in its quiet, resolute, and guarded struggle with an unseen assailant, was not to be beheld in all the wide dominions of sleep, that night.
She timidly laid her hand on his dear breast, and put up a prayer that she might ever be as true to him as her love aspired to be, and as his sorrows deserved. Then, she withdrew her hand, and kissed his lips once more, and went away. So, the sunrise came, and the shadows of the leaves of the plane-tree moved upon his face, as softly as her lips had moved in praying for him.
CHAPTER XVIII. Nine Days
The marriage-day was shining brightly, and they were ready outside the closed door of the Doctor’s room, where he was speaking with Charles Darnay. They were ready to go to church; the beautiful bride, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross—to whom the event, through a gradual process of reconcilement to the inevitable, would have been one of absolute bliss, but for the yet lingering consideration that her brother Solomon should have been the bridegroom.
“And so,” said Mr. Lorry, who could not sufficiently admire the bride, and who had been moving round her to take in every point of her quiet, pretty dress; “and so it was for this, my sweet Lucie, that I brought you across the Channel, such a baby! Lord bless me! How little I thought what I was doing! How lightly I valued the obligation I was conferring on my friend Mr. Charles!”
“You didn’t mean it,” remarked the matter-of-fact Miss Pross, “and therefore how could you know it? Nonsense!”
“Really? Well; but don’t cry,” said the gentle Mr. Lorry.
“I am not crying,” said Miss Pross; “you are.”
“I, my Pross?” (By this time, Mr. Lorry dared to be pleasant with her, on occasion.)
“You were, just now; I saw you do it, and I don’t wonder at it. Such a present of plate as you have made ’em, is enough to bring tears into anybody’s eyes. There’s not a fork or a spoon in the collection,” said Miss Pross, “that I didn’t cry over, last night after the box came, till I couldn’t see it.”
“I am highly gratified,” said Mr. Lorry, “though, upon my honour, I had no intention of rendering those trifling articles of remembrance invisible to any one. Dear me! This is an occasion that makes a man speculate on all he has lost. Dear, dear, dear! To think that there might have been a Mrs. Lorry, any time these fifty years almost!”
“Not at all!” From Miss Pross.
“You think there never might have been a Mrs. Lorry?” asked the gentleman of that name.
“Pooh!” rejoined Miss Pross; “you were a bachelor in your cradle.”
“Well!” observed Mr. Lorry, beamingly adjusting his little wig, “that seems probable, too.”
“And you were cut out for a bachelor,” pursued Miss Pross, “before you were put in your cradle.”
“Then, I think,” said Mr. Lorry, “that I was very unhandsomely dealt with, and that I ought to have had a voice in the selection of my pattern. Enough! Now, my dear Lucie,” drawing his arm soothingly round her waist, “I hear them moving in the next room, and Miss Pross and I, as two formal folks of business, are anxious not to lose the final opportunity of saying something to you that you wish to hear. You leave your good father, my dear, in hands as earnest and as loving as your own; he shall be taken every conceivable care of; during the next fortnight, while you are in Warwickshire and thereabouts, even Tellson’s shall go to the wall (comparatively speaking) before him. And when, at the fortnight’s end, he comes to join you and your beloved husband, on your other fortnight’s trip in Wales, you shall say that we have sent him to you in the best health and in the happiest frame. Now, I hear Somebody’s step coming to the door. Let me kiss my dear girl with an old-fashioned bachelor blessing, before Somebody comes to claim his own.”
For a moment, he held the fair face from him to look at the well-remembered expression on the forehead, and then laid the bright golden hair against his little brown wig, with a genuine tenderness and delicacy which, if such things be old-fashioned, were as old as Adam.
The door of the Doctor’s room opened, and he came out with Charles Darnay. He was so deadly pale—which had not been the case when they went in together—that no vestige of colour was to be seen in his face. But, in the composure of his manner he was unaltered, except that to the shrewd glance of Mr. Lorry it disclosed some shadowy indication that the old air of avoidance and dread had lately passed over him, like a cold wind.
He gave his arm to his daughter, and took her down-stairs to the chariot which Mr. Lorry had hired in honour of the day. The rest followed in another carriage, and soon, in a neighbouring church, where no strange eyes looked on, Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette were happily married.
Besides the glancing tears that shone among the smiles of the little group when it was done, some diamonds, very bright and sparkling, glanced on the bride’s hand, which were newly released from the dark obscurity of one of Mr. Lorry’s pockets. They returned home to breakfast, and all went well, and in due course the golden hair that had mingled with the poor shoemaker’s white locks in the Paris garret, were mingled with them again in the morning sunlight, on the threshold of the door at parting.
It was a hard parting, though it was not for long. But her father cheered her, and said at last, gently disengaging himself from her enfolding arms, “Take her, Charles! She is yours!”
And her agitated hand waved to them from a chaise window, and she was gone.
The corner being out of the way of the idle and curious, and the preparations having been very simple and few, the Doctor, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross, were left quite alone. It was when they turned into the welcome shade of the cool old hall, that Mr. Lorry observed a great change to have come over the Doctor; as if the golden arm uplifted there, had struck him a poisoned blow.
He had naturally repressed much, and some revulsion might have been expected in him when the occasion for repression was gone. But, it was the old scared lost look that troubled Mr. Lorry; and through his absent manner of clasping his head and drearily wandering away into his own room when they got up-stairs, Mr. Lorry was reminded of Defarge the wine-shop keeper, and the starlight ride.
“I think,” he whispered to Miss Pross, after anxious consideration, “I think we had best not speak to him just now, or at all disturb him. I must look in at Tellson’s; so I will go there at once and come back presently. Then, we will take him a ride into the country, and dine there, and all will be well.”
It was easier for Mr. Lorry to look in at Tellson’s, than to look out of Tellson’s. He was detained two hours. When he came back, he ascended the old staircase alone, having asked no question of the servant; going thus into the Doctor’s rooms, he was stopped by a low sound of knocking.
“Good God!” he said, with a start. “What’s that?”
Miss Pross, with a terrified face, was at his ear. “O me, O me! All is lost!” cried she, wringing her hands. “What is to be told to Ladybird? He doesn’t know me, and is making shoes!”
Mr. Lorry said what he could to calm her, and went himself into the Doctor’s room. The bench was turned towards the light, as it had been when he had seen the shoemaker at his work before, and his head was bent down, and he was very busy.
“Doctor Manette. My dear friend, Doctor Manette!”
The Doctor looked at him for a moment—half inquiringly, half as if he were angry at being spoken to—and bent over his work again.
He had laid aside his coat and waistcoat; his shirt was open at the throat, as it used to be when he did that work; and even the old haggard, faded surface of face had come back to him. He worked hard—impatiently—as if in some sense of having been interrupted.
Mr. Lorry glanced at the work in his hand, and observed that it was a shoe of the old size and shape. He took up another that was lying by him, and asked what it was.
“A young lady’s walking shoe,” he muttered, without looking up. “It ought to have been finished long ago. Let it be.”
“But, Doctor Manette. Look at me!”
He obeyed, in the old mechanically submissive manner, without pausing in his work.
“You know me, my dear friend? Think again. This is not your proper occupation. Think, dear friend!”
Nothing would induce him to speak more. He looked up, for an instant at a time, when he was requested to do so; but, no persuasion would extract a word from him. He worked, and worked, and worked, in silence, and words fell on him as they would have fallen on an echoless wall, or on the air. The only ray of hope that Mr. Lorry could discover, was, that he sometimes furtively looked up without being asked. In that, there seemed a faint expression of curiosity or perplexity—as though he were trying to reconcile some doubts in his mind.
Two things at once impressed themselves on Mr. Lorry, as important above all others; the first, that this must be kept secret from Lucie; the second, that it must be kept secret from all who knew him. In conjunction with Miss Pross, he took immediate steps towards the latter precaution, by giving out that the Doctor was not well, and required a few days of complete rest. In aid of the kind deception to be practised on his daughter, Miss Pross was to write, describing his having been called away professionally, and referring to an imaginary letter of two or three hurried lines in his own hand, represented to have been addressed to her by the same post.
These measures, advisable to be taken in any case, Mr. Lorry took in the hope of his coming to himself. If that should happen soon, he kept another course in reserve; which was, to have a certain opinion that he thought the best, on the Doctor’s case.
In the hope of his recovery, and of resort to this third course being thereby rendered practicable, Mr. Lorry resolved to watch him attentively, with as little appearance as possible of doing so. He therefore made arrangements to absent himself from Tellson’s for the first time in his life, and took his post by the window in the same room.
He was not long in discovering that it was worse than useless to speak to him, since, on being pressed, he became worried. He abandoned that attempt on the first day, and resolved merely to keep himself always before him, as a silent protest against the delusion into which he had fallen, or was falling. He remained, therefore, in his seat near the window, reading and writing, and expressing in as many pleasant and natural ways as he could think of, that it was a free place.
Doctor Manette took what was given him to eat and drink, and worked on, that first day, until it was too dark to see—worked on, half an hour after Mr. Lorry could not have seen, for his life, to read or write. When he put his tools aside as useless, until morning, Mr. Lorry rose and said to him:
“Will you go out?”
He looked down at the floor on either side of him in the old manner, looked up in the old manner, and repeated in the old low voice:
“Out?”
“Yes; for a walk with me. Why not?”
He made no effort to say why not, and said not a word more. But, Mr. Lorry thought he saw, as he leaned forward on his bench in the dusk, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, that he was in some misty way asking himself, “Why not?” The sagacity of the man of business perceived an advantage here, and determined to hold it.
Miss Pross and he divided the night into two watches, and observed him at intervals from the adjoining room. He paced up and down for a long time before he lay down; but, when he did finally lay himself down, he fell asleep. In the morning, he was up betimes, and went straight to his bench and to work.
On this second day, Mr. Lorry saluted him cheerfully by his name, and spoke to him on topics that had been of late familiar to them. He returned no reply, but it was evident that he heard what was said, and that he thought about it, however confusedly. This encouraged Mr. Lorry to have Miss Pross in with her work, several times during the day; at those times, they quietly spoke of Lucie, and of her father then present, precisely in the usual manner, and as if there were nothing amiss. This was done without any demonstrative accompaniment, not long enough, or often enough to harass him; and it lightened Mr. Lorry’s friendly heart to believe that he looked up oftener, and that he appeared to be stirred by some perception of inconsistencies surrounding him.
When it fell dark again, Mr. Lorry asked him as before:
“Dear Doctor, will you go out?”
As before, he repeated, “Out?”
“Yes; for a walk with me. Why not?”
This time, Mr. Lorry feigned to go out when he could extract no answer from him, and, after remaining absent for an hour, returned. In the meanwhile, the Doctor had removed to the seat in the window, and had sat there looking down at the plane-tree; but, on Mr. Lorry’s return, he slipped away to his bench.
The time went very slowly on, and Mr. Lorry’s hope darkened, and his heart grew heavier again, and grew yet heavier and heavier every day. The third day came and went, the fourth, the fifth. Five days, six days, seven days, eight days, nine days.
With a hope ever darkening, and with a heart always growing heavier and heavier, Mr. Lorry passed through this anxious time. The secret was well kept, and Lucie was unconscious and happy; but he could not fail to observe that the shoemaker, whose hand had been a little out at first, was growing dreadfully skilful, and that he had never been so intent on his work, and that his hands had never been so nimble and expert, as in the dusk of the ninth evening.
CHAPTER XIX. An Opinion
Worn out by anxious watching, Mr. Lorry fell asleep at his post. On the tenth morning of his suspense, he was startled by the shining of the sun into the room where a heavy slumber had overtaken him when it was dark night.
He rubbed his eyes and roused himself; but he doubted, when he had done so, whether he was not still asleep. For, going to the door of the Doctor’s room and looking in, he perceived that the shoemaker’s bench and tools were put aside again, and that the Doctor himself sat reading at the window. He was in his usual morning dress, and his face (which Mr. Lorry could distinctly see), though still very pale, was calmly studious and attentive.
Even when he had satisfied himself that he was awake, Mr. Lorry felt giddily uncertain for some few moments whether the late shoemaking might not be a disturbed dream of his own; for, did not his eyes show him his friend before him in his accustomed clothing and aspect, and employed as usual; and was there any sign within their range, that the change of which he had so strong an impression had actually happened?
It was but the inquiry of his first confusion and astonishment, the answer being obvious. If the impression were not produced by a real corresponding and sufficient cause, how came he, Jarvis Lorry, there? How came he to have fallen asleep, in his clothes, on the sofa in Doctor Manette’s consulting-room, and to be debating these points outside the Doctor’s bedroom door in the early morning?
Within a few minutes, Miss Pross stood whispering at his side. If he had had any particle of doubt left, her talk would of necessity have resolved it; but he was by that time clear-headed, and had none. He advised that they should let the time go by until the regular breakfast-hour, and should then meet the Doctor as if nothing unusual had occurred. If he appeared to be in his customary state of mind, Mr. Lorry would then cautiously proceed to seek direction and guidance from the opinion he had been, in his anxiety, so anxious to obtain.
Miss Pross, submitting herself to his judgment, the scheme was worked out with care. Having abundance of time for his usual methodical toilette, Mr. Lorry presented himself at the breakfast-hour in his usual white linen, and with his usual neat leg. The Doctor was summoned in the usual way, and came to breakfast.
So far as it was possible to comprehend him without overstepping those delicate and gradual approaches which Mr. Lorry felt to be the only safe advance, he at first supposed that his daughter’s marriage had taken place yesterday. An incidental allusion, purposely thrown out, to the day of the week, and the day of the month, set him thinking and counting, and evidently made him uneasy. In all other respects, however, he was so composedly himself, that Mr. Lorry determined to have the aid he sought. And that aid was his own.
Therefore, when the breakfast was done and cleared away, and he and the Doctor were left together, Mr. Lorry said, feelingly:
“My dear Manette, I am anxious to have your opinion, in confidence, on a very curious case in which I am deeply interested; that is to say, it is very curious to me; perhaps, to your better information it may be less so.”
Glancing at his hands, which were discoloured by his late work, the Doctor looked troubled, and listened attentively. He had already glanced at his hands more than once.
“Doctor Manette,” said Mr. Lorry, touching him affectionately on the arm, “the case is the case of a particularly dear friend of mine. Pray give your mind to it, and advise me well for his sake—and above all, for his daughter’s—his daughter’s, my dear Manette.”
“If I understand,” said the Doctor, in a subdued tone, “some mental shock—?”
“Yes!”
“Be explicit,” said the Doctor. “Spare no detail.”
Mr. Lorry saw that they understood one another, and proceeded.
“My dear Manette, it is the case of an old and a prolonged shock, of great acuteness and severity to the affections, the feelings, the—the—as you express it—the mind. The mind. It is the case of a shock under which the sufferer was borne down, one cannot say for how long, because I believe he cannot calculate the time himself, and there are no other means of getting at it. It is the case of a shock from which the sufferer recovered, by a process that he cannot trace himself—as I once heard him publicly relate in a striking manner. It is the case of a shock from which he has recovered, so completely, as to be a highly intelligent man, capable of close application of mind, and great exertion of body, and of constantly making fresh additions to his stock of knowledge, which was already very large. But, unfortunately, there has been,” he paused and took a deep breath—“a slight relapse.”
The Doctor, in a low voice, asked, “Of how long duration?”
“Nine days and nights.”
“How did it show itself? I infer,” glancing at his hands again, “in the resumption of some old pursuit connected with the shock?”
“That is the fact.”
“Now, did you ever see him,” asked the Doctor, distinctly and collectedly, though in the same low voice, “engaged in that pursuit originally?”
“Once.”
“And when the relapse fell on him, was he in most respects—or in all respects—as he was then?”
“I think in all respects.”
“You spoke of his daughter. Does his daughter know of the relapse?”
“No. It has been kept from her, and I hope will always be kept from her. It is known only to myself, and to one other who may be trusted.”
The Doctor grasped his hand, and murmured, “That was very kind. That was very thoughtful!” Mr. Lorry grasped his hand in return, and neither of the two spoke for a little while.
“Now, my dear Manette,” said Mr. Lorry, at length, in his most considerate and most affectionate way, “I am a mere man of business, and unfit to cope with such intricate and difficult matters. I do not possess the kind of information necessary; I do not possess the kind of intelligence; I want guiding. There is no man in this world on whom I could so rely for right guidance, as on you. Tell me, how does this relapse come about? Is there danger of another? Could a repetition of it be prevented? How should a repetition of it be treated? How does it come about at all? What can I do for my friend? No man ever can have been more desirous in his heart to serve a friend, than I am to serve mine, if I knew how.
“But I don’t know how to originate, in such a case. If your sagacity, knowledge, and experience, could put me on the right track, I might be able to do so much; unenlightened and undirected, I can do so little. Pray discuss it with me; pray enable me to see it a little more clearly, and teach me how to be a little more useful.”
Doctor Manette sat meditating after these earnest words were spoken, and Mr. Lorry did not press him.
“I think it probable,” said the Doctor, breaking silence with an effort, “that the relapse you have described, my dear friend, was not quite unforeseen by its subject.”
“Was it dreaded by him?” Mr. Lorry ventured to ask.
“Very much.” He said it with an involuntary shudder.
“You have no idea how such an apprehension weighs on the sufferer’s mind, and how difficult—how almost impossible—it is, for him to force himself to utter a word upon the topic that oppresses him.”
“Would he,” asked Mr. Lorry, “be sensibly relieved if he could prevail upon himself to impart that secret brooding to any one, when it is on him?”
“I think so. But it is, as I have told you, next to impossible. I even believe it—in some cases—to be quite impossible.”
“Now,” said Mr. Lorry, gently laying his hand on the Doctor’s arm again, after a short silence on both sides, “to what would you refer this attack?”
“I believe,” returned Doctor Manette, “that there had been a strong and extraordinary revival of the train of thought and remembrance that was the first cause of the malady. Some intense associations of a most distressing nature were vividly recalled, I think. It is probable that there had long been a dread lurking in his mind, that those associations would be recalled—say, under certain circumstances—say, on a particular occasion. He tried to prepare himself in vain; perhaps the effort to prepare himself made him less able to bear it.”
“Would he remember what took place in the relapse?” asked Mr. Lorry, with natural hesitation.
The Doctor looked desolately round the room, shook his head, and answered, in a low voice, “Not at all.”
“Now, as to the future,” hinted Mr. Lorry.
“As to the future,” said the Doctor, recovering firmness, “I should have great hope. As it pleased Heaven in its mercy to restore him so soon, I should have great hope. He, yielding under the pressure of a complicated something, long dreaded and long vaguely foreseen and contended against, and recovering after the cloud had burst and passed, I should hope that the worst was over.”
“Well, well! That’s good comfort. I am thankful!” said Mr. Lorry.
“I am thankful!” repeated the Doctor, bending his head with reverence.
“There are two other points,” said Mr. Lorry, “on which I am anxious to be instructed. I may go on?”
“You cannot do your friend a better service.” The Doctor gave him his hand.
“To the first, then. He is of a studious habit, and unusually energetic; he applies himself with great ardour to the acquisition of professional knowledge, to the conducting of experiments, to many things. Now, does he do too much?”
“I think not. It may be the character of his mind, to be always in singular need of occupation. That may be, in part, natural to it; in part, the result of affliction. The less it was occupied with healthy things, the more it would be in danger of turning in the unhealthy direction. He may have observed himself, and made the discovery.”
“You are sure that he is not under too great a strain?”
“I think I am quite sure of it.”
“My dear Manette, if he were overworked now—”
“My dear Lorry, I doubt if that could easily be. There has been a violent stress in one direction, and it needs a counterweight.”
“Excuse me, as a persistent man of business. Assuming for a moment, that he was overworked; it would show itself in some renewal of this disorder?”
“I do not think so. I do not think,” said Doctor Manette with the firmness of self-conviction, “that anything but the one train of association would renew it. I think that, henceforth, nothing but some extraordinary jarring of that chord could renew it. After what has happened, and after his recovery, I find it difficult to imagine any such violent sounding of that string again. I trust, and I almost believe, that the circumstances likely to renew it are exhausted.”
He spoke with the diffidence of a man who knew how slight a thing would overset the delicate organisation of the mind, and yet with the confidence of a man who had slowly won his assurance out of personal endurance and distress. It was not for his friend to abate that confidence. He professed himself more relieved and encouraged than he really was, and approached his second and last point. He felt it to be the most difficult of all; but, remembering his old Sunday morning conversation with Miss Pross, and remembering what he had seen in the last nine days, he knew that he must face it.
“The occupation resumed under the influence of this passing affliction so happily recovered from,” said Mr. Lorry, clearing his throat, “we will call—Blacksmith’s work, Blacksmith’s work. We will say, to put a case and for the sake of illustration, that he had been used, in his bad time, to work at a little forge. We will say that he was unexpectedly found at his forge again. Is it not a pity that he should keep it by him?”
The Doctor shaded his forehead with his hand, and beat his foot nervously on the ground.
“He has always kept it by him,” said Mr. Lorry, with an anxious look at his friend. “Now, would it not be better that he should let it go?”
Still, the Doctor, with shaded forehead, beat his foot nervously on the ground.
“You do not find it easy to advise me?” said Mr. Lorry. “I quite understand it to be a nice question. And yet I think—” And there he shook his head, and stopped.
“You see,” said Doctor Manette, turning to him after an uneasy pause, “it is very hard to explain, consistently, the innermost workings of this poor man’s mind. He once yearned so frightfully for that occupation, and it was so welcome when it came; no doubt it relieved his pain so much, by substituting the perplexity of the fingers for the perplexity of the brain, and by substituting, as he became more practised, the ingenuity of the hands, for the ingenuity of the mental torture; that he has never been able to bear the thought of putting it quite out of his reach. Even now, when I believe he is more hopeful of himself than he has ever been, and even speaks of himself with a kind of confidence, the idea that he might need that old employment, and not find it, gives him a sudden sense of terror, like that which one may fancy strikes to the heart of a lost child.”
He looked like his illustration, as he raised his eyes to Mr. Lorry’s face.
“But may not—mind! I ask for information, as a plodding man of business who only deals with such material objects as guineas, shillings, and bank-notes—may not the retention of the thing involve the retention of the idea? If the thing were gone, my dear Manette, might not the fear go with it? In short, is it not a concession to the misgiving, to keep the forge?”
There was another silence.
“You see, too,” said the Doctor, tremulously, “it is such an old companion.”
“I would not keep it,” said Mr. Lorry, shaking his head; for he gained in firmness as he saw the Doctor disquieted. “I would recommend him to sacrifice it. I only want your authority. I am sure it does no good. Come! Give me your authority, like a dear good man. For his daughter’s sake, my dear Manette!”
Very strange to see what a struggle there was within him!
“In her name, then, let it be done; I sanction it. But, I would not take it away while he was present. Let it be removed when he is not there; let him miss his old companion after an absence.”
Mr. Lorry readily engaged for that, and the conference was ended. They passed the day in the country, and the Doctor was quite restored. On the three following days he remained perfectly well, and on the fourteenth day he went away to join Lucie and her husband. The precaution that had been taken to account for his silence, Mr. Lorry had previously explained to him, and he had written to Lucie in accordance with it, and she had no suspicions.
On the night of the day on which he left the house, Mr. Lorry went into his room with a chopper, saw, chisel, and hammer, attended by Miss Pross carrying a light. There, with closed doors, and in a mysterious and guilty manner, Mr. Lorry hacked the shoemaker’s bench to pieces, while Miss Pross held the candle as if she were assisting at a murder—for which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no unsuitable figure. The burning of the body (previously reduced to pieces convenient for the purpose) was commenced without delay in the kitchen fire; and the tools, shoes, and leather, were buried in the garden. So wicked do destruction and secrecy appear to honest minds, that Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross, while engaged in the commission of their deed and in the removal of its traces, almost felt, and almost looked, like accomplices in a horrible crime.
CHAPTER XX. A Plea
When the newly-married pair came home, the first person who appeared, to offer his congratulations, was Sydney Carton. They had not been at home many hours, when he presented himself. He was not improved in habits, or in looks, or in manner; but there was a certain rugged air of fidelity about him, which was new to the observation of Charles Darnay.
He watched his opportunity of taking Darnay aside into a window, and of speaking to him when no one overheard.
“Mr. Darnay,” said Carton, “I wish we might be friends.”
“We are already friends, I hope.”
“You are good enough to say so, as a fashion of speech; but, I don’t mean any fashion of speech. Indeed, when I say I wish we might be friends, I scarcely mean quite that, either.”
Charles Darnay—as was natural—asked him, in all good-humour and good-fellowship, what he did mean?
“Upon my life,” said Carton, smiling, “I find that easier to comprehend in my own mind, than to convey to yours. However, let me try. You remember a certain famous occasion when I was more drunk than—than usual?”
“I remember a certain famous occasion when you forced me to confess that you had been drinking.”
“I remember it too. The curse of those occasions is heavy upon me, for I always remember them. I hope it may be taken into account one day, when all days are at an end for me! Don’t be alarmed; I am not going to preach.”
“I am not at all alarmed. Earnestness in you, is anything but alarming to me.”
“Ah!” said Carton, with a careless wave of his hand, as if he waved that away. “On the drunken occasion in question (one of a large number, as you know), I was insufferable about liking you, and not liking you. I wish you would forget it.”
“I forgot it long ago.”
“Fashion of speech again! But, Mr. Darnay, oblivion is not so easy to me, as you represent it to be to you. I have by no means forgotten it, and a light answer does not help me to forget it.”
“If it was a light answer,” returned Darnay, “I beg your forgiveness for it. I had no other object than to turn a slight thing, which, to my surprise, seems to trouble you too much, aside. I declare to you, on the faith of a gentleman, that I have long dismissed it from my mind. Good Heaven, what was there to dismiss! Have I had nothing more important to remember, in the great service you rendered me that day?”
“As to the great service,” said Carton, “I am bound to avow to you, when you speak of it in that way, that it was mere professional claptrap, I don’t know that I cared what became of you, when I rendered it.—Mind! I say when I rendered it; I am speaking of the past.”
“You make light of the obligation,” returned Darnay, “but I will not quarrel with your light answer.”
“Genuine truth, Mr. Darnay, trust me! I have gone aside from my purpose; I was speaking about our being friends. Now, you know me; you know I am incapable of all the higher and better flights of men. If you doubt it, ask Stryver, and he’ll tell you so.”
“I prefer to form my own opinion, without the aid of his.”
“Well! At any rate you know me as a dissolute dog, who has never done any good, and never will.”
“I don’t know that you ‘never will.’”
“But I do, and you must take my word for it. Well! If you could endure to have such a worthless fellow, and a fellow of such indifferent reputation, coming and going at odd times, I should ask that I might be permitted to come and go as a privileged person here; that I might be regarded as an useless (and I would add, if it were not for the resemblance I detected between you and me, an unornamental) piece of furniture, tolerated for its old service, and taken no notice of. I doubt if I should abuse the permission. It is a hundred to one if I should avail myself of it four times in a year. It would satisfy me, I dare say, to know that I had it.”
“Will you try?”
“That is another way of saying that I am placed on the footing I have indicated. I thank you, Darnay. I may use that freedom with your name?”
“I think so, Carton, by this time.”
They shook hands upon it, and Sydney turned away. Within a minute afterwards, he was, to all outward appearance, as unsubstantial as ever.
When he was gone, and in the course of an evening passed with Miss Pross, the Doctor, and Mr. Lorry, Charles Darnay made some mention of this conversation in general terms, and spoke of Sydney Carton as a problem of carelessness and recklessness. He spoke of him, in short, not bitterly or meaning to bear hard upon him, but as anybody might who saw him as he showed himself.
He had no idea that this could dwell in the thoughts of his fair young wife; but, when he afterwards joined her in their own rooms, he found her waiting for him with the old pretty lifting of the forehead strongly marked.
“We are thoughtful to-night!” said Darnay, drawing his arm about her.
“Yes, dearest Charles,” with her hands on his breast, and the inquiring and attentive expression fixed upon him; “we are rather thoughtful to-night, for we have something on our mind to-night.”
“What is it, my Lucie?”
“Will you promise not to press one question on me, if I beg you not to ask it?”
“Will I promise? What will I not promise to my Love?”
What, indeed, with his hand putting aside the golden hair from the cheek, and his other hand against the heart that beat for him!
“I think, Charles, poor Mr. Carton deserves more consideration and respect than you expressed for him to-night.”
“Indeed, my own? Why so?”
“That is what you are not to ask me. But I think—I know—he does.”
“If you know it, it is enough. What would you have me do, my Life?”
“I would ask you, dearest, to be very generous with him always, and very lenient on his faults when he is not by. I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that there are deep wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding.”
“It is a painful reflection to me,” said Charles Darnay, quite astounded, “that I should have done him any wrong. I never thought this of him.”
“My husband, it is so. I fear he is not to be reclaimed; there is scarcely a hope that anything in his character or fortunes is reparable now. But, I am sure that he is capable of good things, gentle things, even magnanimous things.”
She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man, that her husband could have looked at her as she was for hours.
“And, O my dearest Love!” she urged, clinging nearer to him, laying her head upon his breast, and raising her eyes to his, “remember how strong we are in our happiness, and how weak he is in his misery!”
The supplication touched him home. “I will always remember it, dear Heart! I will remember it as long as I live.”
He bent over the golden head, and put the rosy lips to his, and folded her in his arms. If one forlorn wanderer then pacing the dark streets, could have heard her innocent disclosure, and could have seen the drops of pity kissed away by her husband from the soft blue eyes so loving of that husband, he might have cried to the night—and the words would not have parted from his lips for the first time—
“God bless her for her sweet compassion!”
CHAPTER XXI. Echoing Footsteps
A wonderful corner for echoes, it has been remarked, that corner where the Doctor lived. Ever busily winding the golden thread which bound her husband, and her father, and herself, and her old directress and companion, in a life of quiet bliss, Lucie sat in the still house in the tranquilly resounding corner, listening to the echoing footsteps of years.
At first, there were times, though she was a perfectly happy young wife, when her work would slowly fall from her hands, and her eyes would be dimmed. For, there was something coming in the echoes, something light, afar off, and scarcely audible yet, that stirred her heart too much. Fluttering hopes and doubts—hopes, of a love as yet unknown to her: doubts, of her remaining upon earth, to enjoy that new delight—divided her breast. Among the echoes then, there would arise the sound of footsteps at her own early grave; and thoughts of the husband who would be left so desolate, and who would mourn for her so much, swelled to her eyes, and broke like waves.
That time passed, and her little Lucie lay on her bosom. Then, among the advancing echoes, there was the tread of her tiny feet and the sound of her prattling words. Let greater echoes resound as they would, the young mother at the cradle side could always hear those coming. They came, and the shady house was sunny with a child’s laugh, and the Divine friend of children, to whom in her trouble she had confided hers, seemed to take her child in his arms, as He took the child of old, and made it a sacred joy to her.
Ever busily winding the golden thread that bound them all together, weaving the service of her happy influence through the tissue of all their lives, and making it predominate nowhere, Lucie heard in the echoes of years none but friendly and soothing sounds. Her husband’s step was strong and prosperous among them; her father’s firm and equal. Lo, Miss Pross, in harness of string, awakening the echoes, as an unruly charger, whip-corrected, snorting and pawing the earth under the plane-tree in the garden!
Even when there were sounds of sorrow among the rest, they were not harsh nor cruel. Even when golden hair, like her own, lay in a halo on a pillow round the worn face of a little boy, and he said, with a radiant smile, “Dear papa and mamma, I am very sorry to leave you both, and to leave my pretty sister; but I am called, and I must go!” those were not tears all of agony that wetted his young mother’s cheek, as the spirit departed from her embrace that had been entrusted to it. Suffer them and forbid them not. They see my Father’s face. O Father, blessed words!
Thus, the rustling of an Angel’s wings got blended with the other echoes, and they were not wholly of earth, but had in them that breath of Heaven. Sighs of the winds that blew over a little garden-tomb were mingled with them also, and both were audible to Lucie, in a hushed murmur—like the breathing of a summer sea asleep upon a sandy shore—as the little Lucie, comically studious at the task of the morning, or dressing a doll at her mother’s footstool, chattered in the tongues of the Two Cities that were blended in her life.
The Echoes rarely answered to the actual tread of Sydney Carton. Some half-dozen times a year, at most, he claimed his privilege of coming in uninvited, and would sit among them through the evening, as he had once done often. He never came there heated with wine. And one other thing regarding him was whispered in the echoes, which has been whispered by all true echoes for ages and ages.
No man ever really loved a woman, lost her, and knew her with a blameless though an unchanged mind, when she was a wife and a mother, but her children had a strange sympathy with him—an instinctive delicacy of pity for him. What fine hidden sensibilities are touched in such a case, no echoes tell; but it is so, and it was so here. Carton was the first stranger to whom little Lucie held out her chubby arms, and he kept his place with her as she grew. The little boy had spoken of him, almost at the last. “Poor Carton! Kiss him for me!”
Mr. Stryver shouldered his way through the law, like some great engine forcing itself through turbid water, and dragged his useful friend in his wake, like a boat towed astern. As the boat so favoured is usually in a rough plight, and mostly under water, so, Sydney had a swamped life of it. But, easy and strong custom, unhappily so much easier and stronger in him than any stimulating sense of desert or disgrace, made it the life he was to lead; and he no more thought of emerging from his state of lion’s jackal, than any real jackal may be supposed to think of rising to be a lion. Stryver was rich; had married a florid widow with property and three boys, who had nothing particularly shining about them but the straight hair of their dumpling heads.
These three young gentlemen, Mr. Stryver, exuding patronage of the most offensive quality from every pore, had walked before him like three sheep to the quiet corner in Soho, and had offered as pupils to Lucie’s husband: delicately saying “Halloa! here are three lumps of bread-and-cheese towards your matrimonial picnic, Darnay!” The polite rejection of the three lumps of bread-and-cheese had quite bloated Mr. Stryver with indignation, which he afterwards turned to account in the training of the young gentlemen, by directing them to beware of the pride of Beggars, like that tutor-fellow. He was also in the habit of declaiming to Mrs. Stryver, over his full-bodied wine, on the arts Mrs. Darnay had once put in practice to “catch” him, and on the diamond-cut-diamond arts in himself, madam, which had rendered him “not to be caught.” Some of his King’s Bench familiars, who were occasionally parties to the full-bodied wine and the lie, excused him for the latter by saying that he had told it so often, that he believed it himself—which is surely such an incorrigible aggravation of an originally bad offence, as to justify any such offender’s being carried off to some suitably retired spot, and there hanged out of the way.
These were among the echoes to which Lucie, sometimes pensive, sometimes amused and laughing, listened in the echoing corner, until her little daughter was six years old. How near to her heart the echoes of her child’s tread came, and those of her own dear father’s, always active and self-possessed, and those of her dear husband’s, need not be told. Nor, how the lightest echo of their united home, directed by herself with such a wise and elegant thrift that it was more abundant than any waste, was music to her. Nor, how there were echoes all about her, sweet in her ears, of the many times her father had told her that he found her more devoted to him married (if that could be) than single, and of the many times her husband had said to her that no cares and duties seemed to divide her love for him or her help to him, and asked her “What is the magic secret, my darling, of your being everything to all of us, as if there were only one of us, yet never seeming to be hurried, or to have too much to do?”
But, there were other echoes, from a distance, that rumbled menacingly in the corner all through this space of time. And it was now, about little Lucie’s sixth birthday, that they began to have an awful sound, as of a great storm in France with a dreadful sea rising.
On a night in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine, Mr. Lorry came in late, from Tellson’s, and sat himself down by Lucie and her husband in the dark window. It was a hot, wild night, and they were all three reminded of the old Sunday night when they had looked at the lightning from the same place.
“I began to think,” said Mr. Lorry, pushing his brown wig back, “that I should have to pass the night at Tellson’s. We have been so full of business all day, that we have not known what to do first, or which way to turn. There is such an uneasiness in Paris, that we have actually a run of confidence upon us! Our customers over there, seem not to be able to confide their property to us fast enough. There is positively a mania among some of them for sending it to England.”
“That has a bad look,” said Darnay—
“A bad look, you say, my dear Darnay? Yes, but we don’t know what reason there is in it. People are so unreasonable! Some of us at Tellson’s are getting old, and we really can’t be troubled out of the ordinary course without due occasion.”
“Still,” said Darnay, “you know how gloomy and threatening the sky is.”
“I know that, to be sure,” assented Mr. Lorry, trying to persuade himself that his sweet temper was soured, and that he grumbled, “but I am determined to be peevish after my long day’s botheration. Where is Manette?”
“Here he is,” said the Doctor, entering the dark room at the moment.
“I am quite glad you are at home; for these hurries and forebodings by which I have been surrounded all day long, have made me nervous without reason. You are not going out, I hope?”
“No; I am going to play backgammon with you, if you like,” said the Doctor.
“I don’t think I do like, if I may speak my mind. I am not fit to be pitted against you to-night. Is the teaboard still there, Lucie? I can’t see.”
“Of course, it has been kept for you.”
“Thank ye, my dear. The precious child is safe in bed?”
“And sleeping soundly.”
“That’s right; all safe and well! I don’t know why anything should be otherwise than safe and well here, thank God; but I have been so put out all day, and I am not as young as I was! My tea, my dear! Thank ye. Now, come and take your place in the circle, and let us sit quiet, and hear the echoes about which you have your theory.”
“Not a theory; it was a fancy.”
“A fancy, then, my wise pet,” said Mr. Lorry, patting her hand. “They are very numerous and very loud, though, are they not? Only hear them!”
Headlong, mad, and dangerous footsteps to force their way into anybody’s life, footsteps not easily made clean again if once stained red, the footsteps raging in Saint Antoine afar off, as the little circle sat in the dark London window.
Saint Antoine had been, that morning, a vast dusky mass of scarecrows heaving to and fro, with frequent gleams of light above the billowy heads, where steel blades and bayonets shone in the sun. A tremendous roar arose from the throat of Saint Antoine, and a forest of naked arms struggled in the air like shrivelled branches of trees in a winter wind: all the fingers convulsively clutching at every weapon or semblance of a weapon that was thrown up from the depths below, no matter how far off.
Who gave them out, whence they last came, where they began, through what agency they crookedly quivered and jerked, scores at a time, over the heads of the crowd, like a kind of lightning, no eye in the throng could have told; but, muskets were being distributed—so were cartridges, powder, and ball, bars of iron and wood, knives, axes, pikes, every weapon that distracted ingenuity could discover or devise. People who could lay hold of nothing else, set themselves with bleeding hands to force stones and bricks out of their places in walls. Every pulse and heart in Saint Antoine was on high-fever strain and at high-fever heat. Every living creature there held life as of no account, and was demented with a passionate readiness to sacrifice it.
As a whirlpool of boiling waters has a centre point, so, all this raging circled round Defarge’s wine-shop, and every human drop in the caldron had a tendency to be sucked towards the vortex where Defarge himself, already begrimed with gunpowder and sweat, issued orders, issued arms, thrust this man back, dragged this man forward, disarmed one to arm another, laboured and strove in the thickest of the uproar.
“Keep near to me, Jacques Three,” cried Defarge; “and do you, Jacques One and Two, separate and put yourselves at the head of as many of these patriots as you can. Where is my wife?”
“Eh, well! Here you see me!” said madame, composed as ever, but not knitting to-day. Madame’s resolute right hand was occupied with an axe, in place of the usual softer implements, and in her girdle were a pistol and a cruel knife.
“Where do you go, my wife?”
“I go,” said madame, “with you at present. You shall see me at the head of women, by-and-bye.”
“Come, then!” cried Defarge, in a resounding voice. “Patriots and friends, we are ready! The Bastille!”
With a roar that sounded as if all the breath in France had been shaped into the detested word, the living sea rose, wave on wave, depth on depth, and overflowed the city to that point. Alarm-bells ringing, drums beating, the sea raging and thundering on its new beach, the attack began.
Deep ditches, double drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. Through the fire and through the smoke—in the fire and in the smoke, for the sea cast him up against a cannon, and on the instant he became a cannonier—Defarge of the wine-shop worked like a manful soldier, Two fierce hours.
Deep ditch, single drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. One drawbridge down! “Work, comrades all, work! Work, Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques One Thousand, Jacques Two Thousand, Jacques Five-and-Twenty Thousand; in the name of all the Angels or the Devils—which you prefer—work!” Thus Defarge of the wine-shop, still at his gun, which had long grown hot.
“To me, women!” cried madame his wife. “What! We can kill as well as the men when the place is taken!” And to her, with a shrill thirsty cry, trooping women variously armed, but all armed alike in hunger and revenge.
Cannon, muskets, fire and smoke; but, still the deep ditch, the single drawbridge, the massive stone walls, and the eight great towers. Slight displacements of the raging sea, made by the falling wounded. Flashing weapons, blazing torches, smoking waggonloads of wet straw, hard work at neighbouring barricades in all directions, shrieks, volleys, execrations, bravery without stint, boom smash and rattle, and the furious sounding of the living sea; but, still the deep ditch, and the single drawbridge, and the massive stone walls, and the eight great towers, and still Defarge of the wine-shop at his gun, grown doubly hot by the service of Four fierce hours.
A white flag from within the fortress, and a parley—this dimly perceptible through the raging storm, nothing audible in it—suddenly the sea rose immeasurably wider and higher, and swept Defarge of the wine-shop over the lowered drawbridge, past the massive stone outer walls, in among the eight great towers surrendered!
So resistless was the force of the ocean bearing him on, that even to draw his breath or turn his head was as impracticable as if he had been struggling in the surf at the South Sea, until he was landed in the outer courtyard of the Bastille. There, against an angle of a wall, he made a struggle to look about him. Jacques Three was nearly at his side; Madame Defarge, still heading some of her women, was visible in the inner distance, and her knife was in her hand. Everywhere was tumult, exultation, deafening and maniacal bewilderment, astounding noise, yet furious dumb-show.
“The Prisoners!”
“The Records!”
“The secret cells!”
“The instruments of torture!”
“The Prisoners!”
Of all these cries, and ten thousand incoherences, “The Prisoners!” was the cry most taken up by the sea that rushed in, as if there were an eternity of people, as well as of time and space. When the foremost billows rolled past, bearing the prison officers with them, and threatening them all with instant death if any secret nook remained undisclosed, Defarge laid his strong hand on the breast of one of these men—a man with a grey head, who had a lighted torch in his hand—separated him from the rest, and got him between himself and the wall.
“Show me the North Tower!” said Defarge. “Quick!”
“I will faithfully,” replied the man, “if you will come with me. But there is no one there.”
“What is the meaning of One Hundred and Five, North Tower?” asked Defarge. “Quick!”
“The meaning, monsieur?”
“Does it mean a captive, or a place of captivity? Or do you mean that I shall strike you dead?”
“Kill him!” croaked Jacques Three, who had come close up.
“Monsieur, it is a cell.”
“Show it me!”
“Pass this way, then.”
Jacques Three, with his usual craving on him, and evidently disappointed by the dialogue taking a turn that did not seem to promise bloodshed, held by Defarge’s arm as he held by the turnkey’s. Their three heads had been close together during this brief discourse, and it had been as much as they could do to hear one another, even then: so tremendous was the noise of the living ocean, in its irruption into the Fortress, and its inundation of the courts and passages and staircases. All around outside, too, it beat the walls with a deep, hoarse roar, from which, occasionally, some partial shouts of tumult broke and leaped into the air like spray.
Through gloomy vaults where the light of day had never shone, past hideous doors of dark dens and cages, down cavernous flights of steps, and again up steep rugged ascents of stone and brick, more like dry waterfalls than staircases, Defarge, the turnkey, and Jacques Three, linked hand and arm, went with all the speed they could make. Here and there, especially at first, the inundation started on them and swept by; but when they had done descending, and were winding and climbing up a tower, they were alone. Hemmed in here by the massive thickness of walls and arches, the storm within the fortress and without was only audible to them in a dull, subdued way, as if the noise out of which they had come had almost destroyed their sense of hearing.
The turnkey stopped at a low door, put a key in a clashing lock, swung the door slowly open, and said, as they all bent their heads and passed in:
“One hundred and five, North Tower!”
There was a small, heavily-grated, unglazed window high in the wall, with a stone screen before it, so that the sky could be only seen by stooping low and looking up. There was a small chimney, heavily barred across, a few feet within. There was a heap of old feathery wood-ashes on the hearth. There was a stool, and table, and a straw bed. There were the four blackened walls, and a rusted iron ring in one of them.
“Pass that torch slowly along these walls, that I may see them,” said Defarge to the turnkey.
The man obeyed, and Defarge followed the light closely with his eyes.
“Stop!—Look here, Jacques!”
“A. M.!” croaked Jacques Three, as he read greedily.
“Alexandre Manette,” said Defarge in his ear, following the letters with his swart forefinger, deeply engrained with gunpowder. “And here he wrote ‘a poor physician.’ And it was he, without doubt, who scratched a calendar on this stone. What is that in your hand? A crowbar? Give it me!”
He had still the linstock of his gun in his own hand. He made a sudden exchange of the two instruments, and turning on the worm-eaten stool and table, beat them to pieces in a few blows.
“Hold the light higher!” he said, wrathfully, to the turnkey. “Look among those fragments with care, Jacques. And see! Here is my knife,” throwing it to him; “rip open that bed, and search the straw. Hold the light higher, you!”
With a menacing look at the turnkey he crawled upon the hearth, and, peering up the chimney, struck and prised at its sides with the crowbar, and worked at the iron grating across it. In a few minutes, some mortar and dust came dropping down, which he averted his face to avoid; and in it, and in the old wood-ashes, and in a crevice in the chimney into which his weapon had slipped or wrought itself, he groped with a cautious touch.
“Nothing in the wood, and nothing in the straw, Jacques?”
“Nothing.”
“Let us collect them together, in the middle of the cell. So! Light them, you!”
The turnkey fired the little pile, which blazed high and hot. Stooping again to come out at the low-arched door, they left it burning, and retraced their way to the courtyard; seeming to recover their sense of hearing as they came down, until they were in the raging flood once more.
They found it surging and tossing, in quest of Defarge himself. Saint Antoine was clamorous to have its wine-shop keeper foremost in the guard upon the governor who had defended the Bastille and shot the people. Otherwise, the governor would not be marched to the Hotel de Ville for judgment. Otherwise, the governor would escape, and the people’s blood (suddenly of some value, after many years of worthlessness) be unavenged.
In the howling universe of passion and contention that seemed to encompass this grim old officer conspicuous in his grey coat and red decoration, there was but one quite steady figure, and that was a woman’s. “See, there is my husband!” she cried, pointing him out. “See Defarge!” She stood immovable close to the grim old officer, and remained immovable close to him; remained immovable close to him through the streets, as Defarge and the rest bore him along; remained immovable close to him when he was got near his destination, and began to be struck at from behind; remained immovable close to him when the long-gathering rain of stabs and blows fell heavy; was so close to him when he dropped dead under it, that, suddenly animated, she put her foot upon his neck, and with her cruel knife—long ready—hewed off his head.
The hour was come, when Saint Antoine was to execute his horrible idea of hoisting up men for lamps to show what he could be and do. Saint Antoine’s blood was up, and the blood of tyranny and domination by the iron hand was down—down on the steps of the Hotel de Ville where the governor’s body lay—down on the sole of the shoe of Madame Defarge where she had trodden on the body to steady it for mutilation. “Lower the lamp yonder!” cried Saint Antoine, after glaring round for a new means of death; “here is one of his soldiers to be left on guard!” The swinging sentinel was posted, and the sea rushed on.
The sea of black and threatening waters, and of destructive upheaving of wave against wave, whose depths were yet unfathomed and whose forces were yet unknown. The remorseless sea of turbulently swaying shapes, voices of vengeance, and faces hardened in the furnaces of suffering until the touch of pity could make no mark on them.
But, in the ocean of faces where every fierce and furious expression was in vivid life, there were two groups of faces—each seven in number—so fixedly contrasting with the rest, that never did sea roll which bore more memorable wrecks with it. Seven faces of prisoners, suddenly released by the storm that had burst their tomb, were carried high overhead: all scared, all lost, all wondering and amazed, as if the Last Day were come, and those who rejoiced around them were lost spirits. Other seven faces there were, carried higher, seven dead faces, whose drooping eyelids and half-seen eyes awaited the Last Day. Impassive faces, yet with a suspended—not an abolished—expression on them; faces, rather, in a fearful pause, as having yet to raise the dropped lids of the eyes, and bear witness with the bloodless lips, “THOU DIDST IT!”
Seven prisoners released, seven gory heads on pikes, the keys of the accursed fortress of the eight strong towers, some discovered letters and other memorials of prisoners of old time, long dead of broken hearts,—such, and such—like, the loudly echoing footsteps of Saint Antoine escort through the Paris streets in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine. Now, Heaven defeat the fancy of Lucie Darnay, and keep these feet far out of her life! For, they are headlong, mad, and dangerous; and in the years so long after the breaking of the cask at Defarge’s wine-shop door, they are not easily purified when once stained red.
CHAPTER XXII. The Sea Still Rises
Haggard Saint Antoine had had only one exultant week, in which to soften his modicum of hard and bitter bread to such extent as he could, with the relish of fraternal embraces and congratulations, when Madame Defarge sat at her counter, as usual, presiding over the customers. Madame Defarge wore no rose in her head, for the great brotherhood of Spies had become, even in one short week, extremely chary of trusting themselves to the saint’s mercies. The lamps across his streets had a portentously elastic swing with them.
Madame Defarge, with her arms folded, sat in the morning light and heat, contemplating the wine-shop and the street. In both, there were several knots of loungers, squalid and miserable, but now with a manifest sense of power enthroned on their distress. The raggedest nightcap, awry on the wretchedest head, had this crooked significance in it: “I know how hard it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to support life in myself; but do you know how easy it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to destroy life in you?” Every lean bare arm, that had been without work before, had this work always ready for it now, that it could strike. The fingers of the knitting women were vicious, with the experience that they could tear. There was a change in the appearance of Saint Antoine; the image had been hammering into this for hundreds of years, and the last finishing blows had told mightily on the expression.
Madame Defarge sat observing it, with such suppressed approval as was to be desired in the leader of the Saint Antoine women. One of her sisterhood knitted beside her. The short, rather plump wife of a starved grocer, and the mother of two children withal, this lieutenant had already earned the complimentary name of The Vengeance.
“Hark!” said The Vengeance. “Listen, then! Who comes?”
As if a train of powder laid from the outermost bound of Saint Antoine Quarter to the wine-shop door, had been suddenly fired, a fast-spreading murmur came rushing along.
“It is Defarge,” said madame. “Silence, patriots!”
Defarge came in breathless, pulled off a red cap he wore, and looked around him! “Listen, everywhere!” said madame again. “Listen to him!” Defarge stood, panting, against a background of eager eyes and open mouths, formed outside the door; all those within the wine-shop had sprung to their feet.
“Say then, my husband. What is it?”
“News from the other world!”
“How, then?” cried madame, contemptuously. “The other world?”
“Does everybody here recall old Foulon, who told the famished people that they might eat grass, and who died, and went to Hell?”
“Everybody!” from all throats.
“The news is of him. He is among us!”
“Among us!” from the universal throat again. “And dead?”
“Not dead! He feared us so much—and with reason—that he caused himself to be represented as dead, and had a grand mock-funeral. But they have found him alive, hiding in the country, and have brought him in. I have seen him but now, on his way to the Hotel de Ville, a prisoner. I have said that he had reason to fear us. Say all! Had he reason?”
Wretched old sinner of more than threescore years and ten, if he had never known it yet, he would have known it in his heart of hearts if he could have heard the answering cry.
A moment of profound silence followed. Defarge and his wife looked steadfastly at one another. The Vengeance stooped, and the jar of a drum was heard as she moved it at her feet behind the counter.
“Patriots!” said Defarge, in a determined voice, “are we ready?”
Instantly Madame Defarge’s knife was in her girdle; the drum was beating in the streets, as if it and a drummer had flown together by magic; and The Vengeance, uttering terrific shrieks, and flinging her arms about her head like all the forty Furies at once, was tearing from house to house, rousing the women.
The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded anger with which they looked from windows, caught up what arms they had, and came pouring down into the streets; but, the women were a sight to chill the boldest. From such household occupations as their bare poverty yielded, from their children, from their aged and their sick crouching on the bare ground famished and naked, they ran out with streaming hair, urging one another, and themselves, to madness with the wildest cries and actions. Villain Foulon taken, my sister! Old Foulon taken, my mother! Miscreant Foulon taken, my daughter! Then, a score of others ran into the midst of these, beating their breasts, tearing their hair, and screaming, Foulon alive! Foulon who told the starving people they might eat grass! Foulon who told my old father that he might eat grass, when I had no bread to give him! Foulon who told my baby it might suck grass, when these breasts were dry with want! O mother of God, this Foulon! O Heaven our suffering! Hear me, my dead baby and my withered father: I swear on my knees, on these stones, to avenge you on Foulon! Husbands, and brothers, and young men, Give us the blood of Foulon, Give us the head of Foulon, Give us the heart of Foulon, Give us the body and soul of Foulon, Rend Foulon to pieces, and dig him into the ground, that grass may grow from him! With these cries, numbers of the women, lashed into blind frenzy, whirled about, striking and tearing at their own friends until they dropped into a passionate swoon, and were only saved by the men belonging to them from being trampled under foot.
Nevertheless, not a moment was lost; not a moment! This Foulon was at the Hotel de Ville, and might be loosed. Never, if Saint Antoine knew his own sufferings, insults, and wrongs! Armed men and women flocked out of the Quarter so fast, and drew even these last dregs after them with such a force of suction, that within a quarter of an hour there was not a human creature in Saint Antoine’s bosom but a few old crones and the wailing children.
No. They were all by that time choking the Hall of Examination where this old man, ugly and wicked, was, and overflowing into the adjacent open space and streets. The Defarges, husband and wife, The Vengeance, and Jacques Three, were in the first press, and at no great distance from him in the Hall.
“See!” cried madame, pointing with her knife. “See the old villain bound with ropes. That was well done to tie a bunch of grass upon his back. Ha, ha! That was well done. Let him eat it now!” Madame put her knife under her arm, and clapped her hands as at a play.
The people immediately behind Madame Defarge, explaining the cause of her satisfaction to those behind them, and those again explaining to others, and those to others, the neighbouring streets resounded with the clapping of hands. Similarly, during two or three hours of drawl, and the winnowing of many bushels of words, Madame Defarge’s frequent expressions of impatience were taken up, with marvellous quickness, at a distance: the more readily, because certain men who had by some wonderful exercise of agility climbed up the external architecture to look in from the windows, knew Madame Defarge well, and acted as a telegraph between her and the crowd outside the building.
At length the sun rose so high that it struck a kindly ray as of hope or protection, directly down upon the old prisoner’s head. The favour was too much to bear; in an instant the barrier of dust and chaff that had stood surprisingly long, went to the winds, and Saint Antoine had got him!
It was known directly, to the furthest confines of the crowd. Defarge had but sprung over a railing and a table, and folded the miserable wretch in a deadly embrace—Madame Defarge had but followed and turned her hand in one of the ropes with which he was tied—The Vengeance and Jacques Three were not yet up with them, and the men at the windows had not yet swooped into the Hall, like birds of prey from their high perches—when the cry seemed to go up, all over the city, “Bring him out! Bring him to the lamp!”
Down, and up, and head foremost on the steps of the building; now, on his knees; now, on his feet; now, on his back; dragged, and struck at, and stifled by the bunches of grass and straw that were thrust into his face by hundreds of hands; torn, bruised, panting, bleeding, yet always entreating and beseeching for mercy; now full of vehement agony of action, with a small clear space about him as the people drew one another back that they might see; now, a log of dead wood drawn through a forest of legs; he was hauled to the nearest street corner where one of the fatal lamps swung, and there Madame Defarge let him go—as a cat might have done to a mouse—and silently and composedly looked at him while they made ready, and while he besought her: the women passionately screeching at him all the time, and the men sternly calling out to have him killed with grass in his mouth. Once, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; twice, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; then, the rope was merciful, and held him, and his head was soon upon a pike, with grass enough in the mouth for all Saint Antoine to dance at the sight of.
Nor was this the end of the day’s bad work, for Saint Antoine so shouted and danced his angry blood up, that it boiled again, on hearing when the day closed in that the son-in-law of the despatched, another of the people’s enemies and insulters, was coming into Paris under a guard five hundred strong, in cavalry alone. Saint Antoine wrote his crimes on flaring sheets of paper, seized him—would have torn him out of the breast of an army to bear Foulon company—set his head and heart on pikes, and carried the three spoils of the day, in Wolf-procession through the streets.
Not before dark night did the men and women come back to the children, wailing and breadless. Then, the miserable bakers’ shops were beset by long files of them, patiently waiting to buy bad bread; and while they waited with stomachs faint and empty, they beguiled the time by embracing one another on the triumphs of the day, and achieving them again in gossip. Gradually, these strings of ragged people shortened and frayed away; and then poor lights began to shine in high windows, and slender fires were made in the streets, at which neighbours cooked in common, afterwards supping at their doors.
Scanty and insufficient suppers those, and innocent of meat, as of most other sauce to wretched bread. Yet, human fellowship infused some nourishment into the flinty viands, and struck some sparks of cheerfulness out of them. Fathers and mothers who had had their full share in the worst of the day, played gently with their meagre children; and lovers, with such a world around them and before them, loved and hoped.
It was almost morning, when Defarge’s wine-shop parted with its last knot of customers, and Monsieur Defarge said to madame his wife, in husky tones, while fastening the door:
“At last it is come, my dear!”
“Eh well!” returned madame. “Almost.”
Saint Antoine slept, the Defarges slept: even The Vengeance slept with her starved grocer, and the drum was at rest. The drum’s was the only voice in Saint Antoine that blood and hurry had not changed. The Vengeance, as custodian of the drum, could have wakened him up and had the same speech out of him as before the Bastille fell, or old Foulon was seized; not so with the hoarse tones of the men and women in Saint Antoine’s bosom.
CHAPTER XXIII. Fire Rises
There was a change on the village where the fountain fell, and where the mender of roads went forth daily to hammer out of the stones on the highway such morsels of bread as might serve for patches to hold his poor ignorant soul and his poor reduced body together. The prison on the crag was not so dominant as of yore; there were soldiers to guard it, but not many; there were officers to guard the soldiers, but not one of them knew what his men would do—beyond this: that it would probably not be what he was ordered.
Far and wide lay a ruined country, yielding nothing but desolation. Every green leaf, every blade of grass and blade of grain, was as shrivelled and poor as the miserable people. Everything was bowed down, dejected, oppressed, and broken. Habitations, fences, domesticated animals, men, women, children, and the soil that bore them—all worn out.
Monseigneur (often a most worthy individual gentleman) was a national blessing, gave a chivalrous tone to things, was a polite example of luxurious and shining life, and a great deal more to equal purpose; nevertheless, Monseigneur as a class had, somehow or other, brought things to this. Strange that Creation, designed expressly for Monseigneur, should be so soon wrung dry and squeezed out! There must be something short-sighted in the eternal arrangements, surely! Thus it was, however; and the last drop of blood having been extracted from the flints, and the last screw of the rack having been turned so often that its purchase crumbled, and it now turned and turned with nothing to bite, Monseigneur began to run away from a phenomenon so low and unaccountable.
But, this was not the change on the village, and on many a village like it. For scores of years gone by, Monseigneur had squeezed it and wrung it, and had seldom graced it with his presence except for the pleasures of the chase—now, found in hunting the people; now, found in hunting the beasts, for whose preservation Monseigneur made edifying spaces of barbarous and barren wilderness. No. The change consisted in the appearance of strange faces of low caste, rather than in the disappearance of the high caste, chiselled, and otherwise beautified and beautifying features of Monseigneur.
For, in these times, as the mender of roads worked, solitary, in the dust, not often troubling himself to reflect that dust he was and to dust he must return, being for the most part too much occupied in thinking how little he had for supper and how much more he would eat if he had it—in these times, as he raised his eyes from his lonely labour, and viewed the prospect, he would see some rough figure approaching on foot, the like of which was once a rarity in those parts, but was now a frequent presence. As it advanced, the mender of roads would discern without surprise, that it was a shaggy-haired man, of almost barbarian aspect, tall, in wooden shoes that were clumsy even to the eyes of a mender of roads, grim, rough, swart, steeped in the mud and dust of many highways, dank with the marshy moisture of many low grounds, sprinkled with the thorns and leaves and moss of many byways through woods.
Such a man came upon him, like a ghost, at noon in the July weather, as he sat on his heap of stones under a bank, taking such shelter as he could get from a shower of hail.
The man looked at him, looked at the village in the hollow, at the mill, and at the prison on the crag. When he had identified these objects in what benighted mind he had, he said, in a dialect that was just intelligible:
“How goes it, Jacques?”
“All well, Jacques.”
“Touch then!”
They joined hands, and the man sat down on the heap of stones.
“No dinner?”
“Nothing but supper now,” said the mender of roads, with a hungry face.
“It is the fashion,” growled the man. “I meet no dinner anywhere.”
He took out a blackened pipe, filled it, lighted it with flint and steel, pulled at it until it was in a bright glow: then, suddenly held it from him and dropped something into it from between his finger and thumb, that blazed and went out in a puff of smoke.
“Touch then.” It was the turn of the mender of roads to say it this time, after observing these operations. They again joined hands.
“To-night?” said the mender of roads.
“To-night,” said the man, putting the pipe in his mouth.
“Where?”
“Here.”
He and the mender of roads sat on the heap of stones looking silently at one another, with the hail driving in between them like a pigmy charge of bayonets, until the sky began to clear over the village.
“Show me!” said the traveller then, moving to the brow of the hill.
“See!” returned the mender of roads, with extended finger. “You go down here, and straight through the street, and past the fountain—”
“To the Devil with all that!” interrupted the other, rolling his eye over the landscape. “I go through no streets and past no fountains. Well?”
“Well! About two leagues beyond the summit of that hill above the village.”
“Good. When do you cease to work?”
“At sunset.”
“Will you wake me, before departing? I have walked two nights without resting. Let me finish my pipe, and I shall sleep like a child. Will you wake me?”
“Surely.”
The wayfarer smoked his pipe out, put it in his breast, slipped off his great wooden shoes, and lay down on his back on the heap of stones. He was fast asleep directly.
As the road-mender plied his dusty labour, and the hail-clouds, rolling away, revealed bright bars and streaks of sky which were responded to by silver gleams upon the landscape, the little man (who wore a red cap now, in place of his blue one) seemed fascinated by the figure on the heap of stones. His eyes were so often turned towards it, that he used his tools mechanically, and, one would have said, to very poor account. The bronze face, the shaggy black hair and beard, the coarse woollen red cap, the rough medley dress of home-spun stuff and hairy skins of beasts, the powerful frame attenuated by spare living, and the sullen and desperate compression of the lips in sleep, inspired the mender of roads with awe. The traveller had travelled far, and his feet were footsore, and his ankles chafed and bleeding; his great shoes, stuffed with leaves and grass, had been heavy to drag over the many long leagues, and his clothes were chafed into holes, as he himself was into sores. Stooping down beside him, the road-mender tried to get a peep at secret weapons in his breast or where not; but, in vain, for he slept with his arms crossed upon him, and set as resolutely as his lips. Fortified towns with their stockades, guard-houses, gates, trenches, and drawbridges, seemed to the mender of roads, to be so much air as against this figure. And when he lifted his eyes from it to the horizon and looked around, he saw in his small fancy similar figures, stopped by no obstacle, tending to centres all over France.
The man slept on, indifferent to showers of hail and intervals of brightness, to sunshine on his face and shadow, to the paltering lumps of dull ice on his body and the diamonds into which the sun changed them, until the sun was low in the west, and the sky was glowing. Then, the mender of roads having got his tools together and all things ready to go down into the village, roused him.
“Good!” said the sleeper, rising on his elbow. “Two leagues beyond the summit of the hill?”
“About.”
“About. Good!”
The mender of roads went home, with the dust going on before him according to the set of the wind, and was soon at the fountain, squeezing himself in among the lean kine brought there to drink, and appearing even to whisper to them in his whispering to all the village. When the village had taken its poor supper, it did not creep to bed, as it usually did, but came out of doors again, and remained there. A curious contagion of whispering was upon it, and also, when it gathered together at the fountain in the dark, another curious contagion of looking expectantly at the sky in one direction only. Monsieur Gabelle, chief functionary of the place, became uneasy; went out on his house-top alone, and looked in that direction too; glanced down from behind his chimneys at the darkening faces by the fountain below, and sent word to the sacristan who kept the keys of the church, that there might be need to ring the tocsin by-and-bye.
The night deepened. The trees environing the old chateau, keeping its solitary state apart, moved in a rising wind, as though they threatened the pile of building massive and dark in the gloom. Up the two terrace flights of steps the rain ran wildly, and beat at the great door, like a swift messenger rousing those within; uneasy rushes of wind went through the hall, among the old spears and knives, and passed lamenting up the stairs, and shook the curtains of the bed where the last Marquis had slept. East, West, North, and South, through the woods, four heavy-treading, unkempt figures crushed the high grass and cracked the branches, striding on cautiously to come together in the courtyard. Four lights broke out there, and moved away in different directions, and all was black again.
But, not for long. Presently, the chateau began to make itself strangely visible by some light of its own, as though it were growing luminous. Then, a flickering streak played behind the architecture of the front, picking out transparent places, and showing where balustrades, arches, and windows were. Then it soared higher, and grew broader and brighter. Soon, from a score of the great windows, flames burst forth, and the stone faces awakened, stared out of fire.
A faint murmur arose about the house from the few people who were left there, and there was a saddling of a horse and riding away. There was spurring and splashing through the darkness, and bridle was drawn in the space by the village fountain, and the horse in a foam stood at Monsieur Gabelle’s door. “Help, Gabelle! Help, every one!” The tocsin rang impatiently, but other help (if that were any) there was none. The mender of roads, and two hundred and fifty particular friends, stood with folded arms at the fountain, looking at the pillar of fire in the sky. “It must be forty feet high,” said they, grimly; and never moved.
The rider from the chateau, and the horse in a foam, clattered away through the village, and galloped up the stony steep, to the prison on the crag. At the gate, a group of officers were looking at the fire; removed from them, a group of soldiers. “Help, gentlemen—officers! The chateau is on fire; valuable objects may be saved from the flames by timely aid! Help, help!” The officers looked towards the soldiers who looked at the fire; gave no orders; and answered, with shrugs and biting of lips, “It must burn.”
As the rider rattled down the hill again and through the street, the village was illuminating. The mender of roads, and the two hundred and fifty particular friends, inspired as one man and woman by the idea of lighting up, had darted into their houses, and were putting candles in every dull little pane of glass. The general scarcity of everything, occasioned candles to be borrowed in a rather peremptory manner of Monsieur Gabelle; and in a moment of reluctance and hesitation on that functionary’s part, the mender of roads, once so submissive to authority, had remarked that carriages were good to make bonfires with, and that post-horses would roast.
The chateau was left to itself to flame and burn. In the roaring and raging of the conflagration, a red-hot wind, driving straight from the infernal regions, seemed to be blowing the edifice away. With the rising and falling of the blaze, the stone faces showed as if they were in torment. When great masses of stone and timber fell, the face with the two dints in the nose became obscured: anon struggled out of the smoke again, as if it were the face of the cruel Marquis, burning at the stake and contending with the fire.
The chateau burned; the nearest trees, laid hold of by the fire, scorched and shrivelled; trees at a distance, fired by the four fierce figures, begirt the blazing edifice with a new forest of smoke. Molten lead and iron boiled in the marble basin of the fountain; the water ran dry; the extinguisher tops of the towers vanished like ice before the heat, and trickled down into four rugged wells of flame. Great rents and splits branched out in the solid walls, like crystallisation; stupefied birds wheeled about and dropped into the furnace; four fierce figures trudged away, East, West, North, and South, along the night-enshrouded roads, guided by the beacon they had lighted, towards their next destination. The illuminated village had seized hold of the tocsin, and, abolishing the lawful ringer, rang for joy.
Not only that; but the village, light-headed with famine, fire, and bell-ringing, and bethinking itself that Monsieur Gabelle had to do with the collection of rent and taxes—though it was but a small instalment of taxes, and no rent at all, that Gabelle had got in those latter days—became impatient for an interview with him, and, surrounding his house, summoned him to come forth for personal conference. Whereupon, Monsieur Gabelle did heavily bar his door, and retire to hold counsel with himself. The result of that conference was, that Gabelle again withdrew himself to his housetop behind his stack of chimneys; this time resolved, if his door were broken in (he was a small Southern man of retaliative temperament), to pitch himself head foremost over the parapet, and crush a man or two below.
Probably, Monsieur Gabelle passed a long night up there, with the distant chateau for fire and candle, and the beating at his door, combined with the joy-ringing, for music; not to mention his having an ill-omened lamp slung across the road before his posting-house gate, which the village showed a lively inclination to displace in his favour. A trying suspense, to be passing a whole summer night on the brink of the black ocean, ready to take that plunge into it upon which Monsieur Gabelle had resolved! But, the friendly dawn appearing at last, and the rush-candles of the village guttering out, the people happily dispersed, and Monsieur Gabelle came down bringing his life with him for that while.
Within a hundred miles, and in the light of other fires, there were other functionaries less fortunate, that night and other nights, whom the rising sun found hanging across once-peaceful streets, where they had been born and bred; also, there were other villagers and townspeople less fortunate than the mender of roads and his fellows, upon whom the functionaries and soldiery turned with success, and whom they strung up in their turn. But, the fierce figures were steadily wending East, West, North, and South, be that as it would; and whosoever hung, fire burned. The altitude of the gallows that would turn to water and quench it, no functionary, by any stretch of mathematics, was able to calculate successfully.
CHAPTER XXIV. Drawn to the Loadstone Rock
In such risings of fire and risings of sea—the firm earth shaken by the rushes of an angry ocean which had now no ebb, but was always on the flow, higher and higher, to the terror and wonder of the beholders on the shore—three years of tempest were consumed. Three more birthdays of little Lucie had been woven by the golden thread into the peaceful tissue of the life of her home.
Many a night and many a day had its inmates listened to the echoes in the corner, with hearts that failed them when they heard the thronging feet. For, the footsteps had become to their minds as the footsteps of a people, tumultuous under a red flag and with their country declared in danger, changed into wild beasts, by terrible enchantment long persisted in.
Monseigneur, as a class, had dissociated himself from the phenomenon of his not being appreciated: of his being so little wanted in France, as to incur considerable danger of receiving his dismissal from it, and this life together. Like the fabled rustic who raised the Devil with infinite pains, and was so terrified at the sight of him that he could ask the Enemy no question, but immediately fled; so, Monseigneur, after boldly reading the Lord’s Prayer backwards for a great number of years, and performing many other potent spells for compelling the Evil One, no sooner beheld him in his terrors than he took to his noble heels.
The shining Bull’s Eye of the Court was gone, or it would have been the mark for a hurricane of national bullets. It had never been a good eye to see with—had long had the mote in it of Lucifer’s pride, Sardanapalus’s luxury, and a mole’s blindness—but it had dropped out and was gone. The Court, from that exclusive inner circle to its outermost rotten ring of intrigue, corruption, and dissimulation, was all gone together. Royalty was gone; had been besieged in its Palace and “suspended,” when the last tidings came over.
The August of the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two was come, and Monseigneur was by this time scattered far and wide.
As was natural, the head-quarters and great gathering-place of Monseigneur, in London, was Tellson’s Bank. Spirits are supposed to haunt the places where their bodies most resorted, and Monseigneur without a guinea haunted the spot where his guineas used to be. Moreover, it was the spot to which such French intelligence as was most to be relied upon, came quickest. Again: Tellson’s was a munificent house, and extended great liberality to old customers who had fallen from their high estate. Again: those nobles who had seen the coming storm in time, and anticipating plunder or confiscation, had made provident remittances to Tellson’s, were always to be heard of there by their needy brethren. To which it must be added that every new-comer from France reported himself and his tidings at Tellson’s, almost as a matter of course. For such variety of reasons, Tellson’s was at that time, as to French intelligence, a kind of High Exchange; and this was so well known to the public, and the inquiries made there were in consequence so numerous, that Tellson’s sometimes wrote the latest news out in a line or so and posted it in the Bank windows, for all who ran through Temple Bar to read.
On a steaming, misty afternoon, Mr. Lorry sat at his desk, and Charles Darnay stood leaning on it, talking with him in a low voice. The penitential den once set apart for interviews with the House, was now the news-Exchange, and was filled to overflowing. It was within half an hour or so of the time of closing.
“But, although you are the youngest man that ever lived,” said Charles Darnay, rather hesitating, “I must still suggest to you—”
“I understand. That I am too old?” said Mr. Lorry.
“Unsettled weather, a long journey, uncertain means of travelling, a disorganised country, a city that may not be even safe for you.”
“My dear Charles,” said Mr. Lorry, with cheerful confidence, “you touch some of the reasons for my going: not for my staying away. It is safe enough for me; nobody will care to interfere with an old fellow of hard upon fourscore when there are so many people there much better worth interfering with. As to its being a disorganised city, if it were not a disorganised city there would be no occasion to send somebody from our House here to our House there, who knows the city and the business, of old, and is in Tellson’s confidence. As to the uncertain travelling, the long journey, and the winter weather, if I were not prepared to submit myself to a few inconveniences for the sake of Tellson’s, after all these years, who ought to be?”
“I wish I were going myself,” said Charles Darnay, somewhat restlessly, and like one thinking aloud.
“Indeed! You are a pretty fellow to object and advise!” exclaimed Mr. Lorry. “You wish you were going yourself? And you a Frenchman born? You are a wise counsellor.”
“My dear Mr. Lorry, it is because I am a Frenchman born, that the thought (which I did not mean to utter here, however) has passed through my mind often. One cannot help thinking, having had some sympathy for the miserable people, and having abandoned something to them,” he spoke here in his former thoughtful manner, “that one might be listened to, and might have the power to persuade to some restraint. Only last night, after you had left us, when I was talking to Lucie—”
“When you were talking to Lucie,” Mr. Lorry repeated. “Yes. I wonder you are not ashamed to mention the name of Lucie! Wishing you were going to France at this time of day!”
“However, I am not going,” said Charles Darnay, with a smile. “It is more to the purpose that you say you are.”
“And I am, in plain reality. The truth is, my dear Charles,” Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and lowered his voice, “you can have no conception of the difficulty with which our business is transacted, and of the peril in which our books and papers over yonder are involved. The Lord above knows what the compromising consequences would be to numbers of people, if some of our documents were seized or destroyed; and they might be, at any time, you know, for who can say that Paris is not set afire to-day, or sacked to-morrow! Now, a judicious selection from these with the least possible delay, and the burying of them, or otherwise getting of them out of harm’s way, is within the power (without loss of precious time) of scarcely any one but myself, if any one. And shall I hang back, when Tellson’s knows this and says this—Tellson’s, whose bread I have eaten these sixty years—because I am a little stiff about the joints? Why, I am a boy, sir, to half a dozen old codgers here!”
“How I admire the gallantry of your youthful spirit, Mr. Lorry.”
“Tut! Nonsense, sir!—And, my dear Charles,” said Mr. Lorry, glancing at the House again, “you are to remember, that getting things out of Paris at this present time, no matter what things, is next to an impossibility. Papers and precious matters were this very day brought to us here (I speak in strict confidence; it is not business-like to whisper it, even to you), by the strangest bearers you can imagine, every one of whom had his head hanging on by a single hair as he passed the Barriers. At another time, our parcels would come and go, as easily as in business-like Old England; but now, everything is stopped.”
“And do you really go to-night?”
“I really go to-night, for the case has become too pressing to admit of delay.”
“And do you take no one with you?”
“All sorts of people have been proposed to me, but I will have nothing to say to any of them. I intend to take Jerry. Jerry has been my bodyguard on Sunday nights for a long time past and I am used to him. Nobody will suspect Jerry of being anything but an English bull-dog, or of having any design in his head but to fly at anybody who touches his master.”
“I must say again that I heartily admire your gallantry and youthfulness.”
“I must say again, nonsense, nonsense! When I have executed this little commission, I shall, perhaps, accept Tellson’s proposal to retire and live at my ease. Time enough, then, to think about growing old.”
This dialogue had taken place at Mr. Lorry’s usual desk, with Monseigneur swarming within a yard or two of it, boastful of what he would do to avenge himself on the rascal-people before long. It was too much the way of Monseigneur under his reverses as a refugee, and it was much too much the way of native British orthodoxy, to talk of this terrible Revolution as if it were the only harvest ever known under the skies that had not been sown—as if nothing had ever been done, or omitted to be done, that had led to it—as if observers of the wretched millions in France, and of the misused and perverted resources that should have made them prosperous, had not seen it inevitably coming, years before, and had not in plain words recorded what they saw. Such vapouring, combined with the extravagant plots of Monseigneur for the restoration of a state of things that had utterly exhausted itself, and worn out Heaven and earth as well as itself, was hard to be endured without some remonstrance by any sane man who knew the truth. And it was such vapouring all about his ears, like a troublesome confusion of blood in his own head, added to a latent uneasiness in his mind, which had already made Charles Darnay restless, and which still kept him so.
Among the talkers, was Stryver, of the King’s Bench Bar, far on his way to state promotion, and, therefore, loud on the theme: broaching to Monseigneur, his devices for blowing the people up and exterminating them from the face of the earth, and doing without them: and for accomplishing many similar objects akin in their nature to the abolition of eagles by sprinkling salt on the tails of the race. Him, Darnay heard with a particular feeling of objection; and Darnay stood divided between going away that he might hear no more, and remaining to interpose his word, when the thing that was to be, went on to shape itself out.
The House approached Mr. Lorry, and laying a soiled and unopened letter before him, asked if he had yet discovered any traces of the person to whom it was addressed? The House laid the letter down so close to Darnay that he saw the direction—the more quickly because it was his own right name. The address, turned into English, ran:
“Very pressing. To Monsieur heretofore the Marquis St. Evrémonde, of France. Confided to the cares of Messrs. Tellson and Co., Bankers, London, England.”
On the marriage morning, Doctor Manette had made it his one urgent and express request to Charles Darnay, that the secret of this name should be—unless he, the Doctor, dissolved the obligation—kept inviolate between them. Nobody else knew it to be his name; his own wife had no suspicion of the fact; Mr. Lorry could have none.
“No,” said Mr. Lorry, in reply to the House; “I have referred it, I think, to everybody now here, and no one can tell me where this gentleman is to be found.”
The hands of the clock verging upon the hour of closing the Bank, there was a general set of the current of talkers past Mr. Lorry’s desk. He held the letter out inquiringly; and Monseigneur looked at it, in the person of this plotting and indignant refugee; and Monseigneur looked at it in the person of that plotting and indignant refugee; and This, That, and The Other, all had something disparaging to say, in French or in English, concerning the Marquis who was not to be found.
“Nephew, I believe—but in any case degenerate successor—of the polished Marquis who was murdered,” said one. “Happy to say, I never knew him.”
“A craven who abandoned his post,” said another—this Monseigneur had been got out of Paris, legs uppermost and half suffocated, in a load of hay—“some years ago.”
“Infected with the new doctrines,” said a third, eyeing the direction through his glass in passing; “set himself in opposition to the last Marquis, abandoned the estates when he inherited them, and left them to the ruffian herd. They will recompense him now, I hope, as he deserves.”
“Hey?” cried the blatant Stryver. “Did he though? Is that the sort of fellow? Let us look at his infamous name. D—n the fellow!”
Darnay, unable to restrain himself any longer, touched Mr. Stryver on the shoulder, and said:
“I know the fellow.”
“Do you, by Jupiter?” said Stryver. “I am sorry for it.”
“Why?”
“Why, Mr. Darnay? D’ye hear what he did? Don’t ask, why, in these times.”
“But I do ask why?”
“Then I tell you again, Mr. Darnay, I am sorry for it. I am sorry to hear you putting any such extraordinary questions. Here is a fellow, who, infected by the most pestilent and blasphemous code of devilry that ever was known, abandoned his property to the vilest scum of the earth that ever did murder by wholesale, and you ask me why I am sorry that a man who instructs youth knows him? Well, but I’ll answer you. I am sorry because I believe there is contamination in such a scoundrel. That’s why.”
Mindful of the secret, Darnay with great difficulty checked himself, and said: “You may not understand the gentleman.”
“I understand how to put you in a corner, Mr. Darnay,” said Bully Stryver, “and I’ll do it. If this fellow is a gentleman, I don’t understand him. You may tell him so, with my compliments. You may also tell him, from me, that after abandoning his worldly goods and position to this butcherly mob, I wonder he is not at the head of them. But, no, gentlemen,” said Stryver, looking all round, and snapping his fingers, “I know something of human nature, and I tell you that you’ll never find a fellow like this fellow, trusting himself to the mercies of such precious protégés. No, gentlemen; he’ll always show ’em a clean pair of heels very early in the scuffle, and sneak away.”
With those words, and a final snap of his fingers, Mr. Stryver shouldered himself into Fleet-street, amidst the general approbation of his hearers. Mr. Lorry and Charles Darnay were left alone at the desk, in the general departure from the Bank.
“Will you take charge of the letter?” said Mr. Lorry. “You know where to deliver it?”
“I do.”
“Will you undertake to explain, that we suppose it to have been addressed here, on the chance of our knowing where to forward it, and that it has been here some time?”
“I will do so. Do you start for Paris from here?”
“From here, at eight.”
“I will come back, to see you off.”
Very ill at ease with himself, and with Stryver and most other men, Darnay made the best of his way into the quiet of the Temple, opened the letter, and read it. These were its contents:
“June 21, 1792. “MONSIEUR HERETOFORE THE MARQUIS.
“After having long been in danger of my life at the hands of the village, I have been seized, with great violence and indignity, and brought a long journey on foot to Paris. On the road I have suffered a great deal. Nor is that all; my house has been destroyed—razed to the ground.
“The crime for which I am imprisoned, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, and for which I shall be summoned before the tribunal, and shall lose my life (without your so generous help), is, they tell me, treason against the majesty of the people, in that I have acted against them for an emigrant. It is in vain I represent that I have acted for them, and not against, according to your commands. It is in vain I represent that, before the sequestration of emigrant property, I had remitted the imposts they had ceased to pay; that I had collected no rent; that I had had recourse to no process. The only response is, that I have acted for an emigrant, and where is that emigrant?
“Ah! most gracious Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, where is that emigrant? I cry in my sleep where is he? I demand of Heaven, will he not come to deliver me? No answer. Ah Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, I send my desolate cry across the sea, hoping it may perhaps reach your ears through the great bank of Tilson known at Paris!
“For the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the honour of your noble name, I supplicate you, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, to succour and release me. My fault is, that I have been true to you. Oh Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, I pray you be you true to me!
“From this prison here of horror, whence I every hour tend nearer and nearer to destruction, I send you, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, the assurance of my dolorous and unhappy service.
“Your afflicted,
“Gabelle.”
The latent uneasiness in Darnay’s mind was roused to vigourous life by this letter. The peril of an old servant and a good one, whose only crime was fidelity to himself and his family, stared him so reproachfully in the face, that, as he walked to and fro in the Temple considering what to do, he almost hid his face from the passersby.
He knew very well, that in his horror of the deed which had culminated the bad deeds and bad reputation of the old family house, in his resentful suspicions of his uncle, and in the aversion with which his conscience regarded the crumbling fabric that he was supposed to uphold, he had acted imperfectly. He knew very well, that in his love for Lucie, his renunciation of his social place, though by no means new to his own mind, had been hurried and incomplete. He knew that he ought to have systematically worked it out and supervised it, and that he had meant to do it, and that it had never been done.
The happiness of his own chosen English home, the necessity of being always actively employed, the swift changes and troubles of the time which had followed on one another so fast, that the events of this week annihilated the immature plans of last week, and the events of the week following made all new again; he knew very well, that to the force of these circumstances he had yielded:—not without disquiet, but still without continuous and accumulating resistance. That he had watched the times for a time of action, and that they had shifted and struggled until the time had gone by, and the nobility were trooping from France by every highway and byway, and their property was in course of confiscation and destruction, and their very names were blotting out, was as well known to himself as it could be to any new authority in France that might impeach him for it.
But, he had oppressed no man, he had imprisoned no man; he was so far from having harshly exacted payment of his dues, that he had relinquished them of his own will, thrown himself on a world with no favour in it, won his own private place there, and earned his own bread. Monsieur Gabelle had held the impoverished and involved estate on written instructions, to spare the people, to give them what little there was to give—such fuel as the heavy creditors would let them have in the winter, and such produce as could be saved from the same grip in the summer—and no doubt he had put the fact in plea and proof, for his own safety, so that it could not but appear now.
This favoured the desperate resolution Charles Darnay had begun to make, that he would go to Paris.
Yes. Like the mariner in the old story, the winds and streams had driven him within the influence of the Loadstone Rock, and it was drawing him to itself, and he must go. Everything that arose before his mind drifted him on, faster and faster, more and more steadily, to the terrible attraction. His latent uneasiness had been, that bad aims were being worked out in his own unhappy land by bad instruments, and that he who could not fail to know that he was better than they, was not there, trying to do something to stay bloodshed, and assert the claims of mercy and humanity. With this uneasiness half stifled, and half reproaching him, he had been brought to the pointed comparison of himself with the brave old gentleman in whom duty was so strong; upon that comparison (injurious to himself) had instantly followed the sneers of Monseigneur, which had stung him bitterly, and those of Stryver, which above all were coarse and galling, for old reasons. Upon those, had followed Gabelle’s letter: the appeal of an innocent prisoner, in danger of death, to his justice, honour, and good name.
His resolution was made. He must go to Paris.
Yes. The Loadstone Rock was drawing him, and he must sail on, until he struck. He knew of no rock; he saw hardly any danger. The intention with which he had done what he had done, even although he had left it incomplete, presented it before him in an aspect that would be gratefully acknowledged in France on his presenting himself to assert it. Then, that glorious vision of doing good, which is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds, arose before him, and he even saw himself in the illusion with some influence to guide this raging Revolution that was running so fearfully wild.
As he walked to and fro with his resolution made, he considered that neither Lucie nor her father must know of it until he was gone. Lucie should be spared the pain of separation; and her father, always reluctant to turn his thoughts towards the dangerous ground of old, should come to the knowledge of the step, as a step taken, and not in the balance of suspense and doubt. How much of the incompleteness of his situation was referable to her father, through the painful anxiety to avoid reviving old associations of France in his mind, he did not discuss with himself. But, that circumstance too, had had its influence in his course.
He walked to and fro, with thoughts very busy, until it was time to return to Tellson’s and take leave of Mr. Lorry. As soon as he arrived in Paris he would present himself to this old friend, but he must say nothing of his intention now.
A carriage with post-horses was ready at the Bank door, and Jerry was booted and equipped.
“I have delivered that letter,” said Charles Darnay to Mr. Lorry. “I would not consent to your being charged with any written answer, but perhaps you will take a verbal one?”
“That I will, and readily,” said Mr. Lorry, “if it is not dangerous.”
“Not at all. Though it is to a prisoner in the Abbaye.”
“What is his name?” said Mr. Lorry, with his open pocket-book in his hand.
“Gabelle.”
“Gabelle. And what is the message to the unfortunate Gabelle in prison?”
“Simply, ‘that he has received the letter, and will come.’”
“Any time mentioned?”
“He will start upon his journey to-morrow night.”
“Any person mentioned?”
“No.”
He helped Mr. Lorry to wrap himself in a number of coats and cloaks, and went out with him from the warm atmosphere of the old Bank, into the misty air of Fleet-street. “My love to Lucie, and to little Lucie,” said Mr. Lorry at parting, “and take precious care of them till I come back.” Charles Darnay shook his head and doubtfully smiled, as the carriage rolled away.
That night—it was the fourteenth of August—he sat up late, and wrote two fervent letters; one was to Lucie, explaining the strong obligation he was under to go to Paris, and showing her, at length, the reasons that he had, for feeling confident that he could become involved in no personal danger there; the other was to the Doctor, confiding Lucie and their dear child to his care, and dwelling on the same topics with the strongest assurances. To both, he wrote that he would despatch letters in proof of his safety, immediately after his arrival.
It was a hard day, that day of being among them, with the first reservation of their joint lives on his mind. It was a hard matter to preserve the innocent deceit of which they were profoundly unsuspicious. But, an affectionate glance at his wife, so happy and busy, made him resolute not to tell her what impended (he had been half moved to do it, so strange it was to him to act in anything without her quiet aid), and the day passed quickly. Early in the evening he embraced her, and her scarcely less dear namesake, pretending that he would return by-and-bye (an imaginary engagement took him out, and he had secreted a valise of clothes ready), and so he emerged into the heavy mist of the heavy streets, with a heavier heart.
The unseen force was drawing him fast to itself, now, and all the tides and winds were setting straight and strong towards it. He left his two letters with a trusty porter, to be delivered half an hour before midnight, and no sooner; took horse for Dover; and began his journey. “For the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the honour of your noble name!” was the poor prisoner’s cry with which he strengthened his sinking heart, as he left all that was dear on earth behind him, and floated away for the Loadstone Rock.
The end of the second book.
Book the Third—the Track of a Storm
CHAPTER I. In Secret
The traveller fared slowly on his way, who fared towards Paris from England in the autumn of the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two. More than enough of bad roads, bad equipages, and bad horses, he would have encountered to delay him, though the fallen and unfortunate King of France had been upon his throne in all his glory; but, the changed times were fraught with other obstacles than these. Every town-gate and village taxing-house had its band of citizen-patriots, with their national muskets in a most explosive state of readiness, who stopped all comers and goers, cross-questioned them, inspected their papers, looked for their names in lists of their own, turned them back, or sent them on, or stopped them and laid them in hold, as their capricious judgment or fancy deemed best for the dawning Republic One and Indivisible, of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death.
A very few French leagues of his journey were accomplished, when Charles Darnay began to perceive that for him along these country roads there was no hope of return until he should have been declared a good citizen at Paris. Whatever might befall now, he must on to his journey’s end. Not a mean village closed upon him, not a common barrier dropped across the road behind him, but he knew it to be another iron door in the series that was barred between him and England. The universal watchfulness so encompassed him, that if he had been taken in a net, or were being forwarded to his destination in a cage, he could not have felt his freedom more completely gone.
This universal watchfulness not only stopped him on the highway twenty times in a stage, but retarded his progress twenty times in a day, by riding after him and taking him back, riding before him and stopping him by anticipation, riding with him and keeping him in charge. He had been days upon his journey in France alone, when he went to bed tired out, in a little town on the high road, still a long way from Paris.
Nothing but the production of the afflicted Gabelle’s letter from his prison of the Abbaye would have got him on so far. His difficulty at the guard-house in this small place had been such, that he felt his journey to have come to a crisis. And he was, therefore, as little surprised as a man could be, to find himself awakened at the small inn to which he had been remitted until morning, in the middle of the night.
Awakened by a timid local functionary and three armed patriots in rough red caps and with pipes in their mouths, who sat down on the bed.
“Emigrant,” said the functionary, “I am going to send you on to Paris, under an escort.”
“Citizen, I desire nothing more than to get to Paris, though I could dispense with the escort.”
“Silence!” growled a red-cap, striking at the coverlet with the butt-end of his musket. “Peace, aristocrat!”
“It is as the good patriot says,” observed the timid functionary. “You are an aristocrat, and must have an escort—and must pay for it.”
“I have no choice,” said Charles Darnay.
“Choice! Listen to him!” cried the same scowling red-cap. “As if it was not a favour to be protected from the lamp-iron!”
“It is always as the good patriot says,” observed the functionary. “Rise and dress yourself, emigrant.”
Darnay complied, and was taken back to the guard-house, where other patriots in rough red caps were smoking, drinking, and sleeping, by a watch-fire. Here he paid a heavy price for his escort, and hence he started with it on the wet, wet roads at three o’clock in the morning.
The escort were two mounted patriots in red caps and tri-coloured cockades, armed with national muskets and sabres, who rode one on either side of him.
The escorted governed his own horse, but a loose line was attached to his bridle, the end of which one of the patriots kept girded round his wrist. In this state they set forth with the sharp rain driving in their faces: clattering at a heavy dragoon trot over the uneven town pavement, and out upon the mire-deep roads. In this state they traversed without change, except of horses and pace, all the mire-deep leagues that lay between them and the capital.
They travelled in the night, halting an hour or two after daybreak, and lying by until the twilight fell. The escort were so wretchedly clothed, that they twisted straw round their bare legs, and thatched their ragged shoulders to keep the wet off. Apart from the personal discomfort of being so attended, and apart from such considerations of present danger as arose from one of the patriots being chronically drunk, and carrying his musket very recklessly, Charles Darnay did not allow the restraint that was laid upon him to awaken any serious fears in his breast; for, he reasoned with himself that it could have no reference to the merits of an individual case that was not yet stated, and of representations, confirmable by the prisoner in the Abbaye, that were not yet made.
But when they came to the town of Beauvais—which they did at eventide, when the streets were filled with people—he could not conceal from himself that the aspect of affairs was very alarming. An ominous crowd gathered to see him dismount of the posting-yard, and many voices called out loudly, “Down with the emigrant!”
He stopped in the act of swinging himself out of his saddle, and, resuming it as his safest place, said:
“Emigrant, my friends! Do you not see me here, in France, of my own will?”
“You are a cursed emigrant,” cried a farrier, making at him in a furious manner through the press, hammer in hand; “and you are a cursed aristocrat!”
The postmaster interposed himself between this man and the rider’s bridle (at which he was evidently making), and soothingly said, “Let him be; let him be! He will be judged at Paris.”
“Judged!” repeated the farrier, swinging his hammer. “Ay! and condemned as a traitor.” At this the crowd roared approval.
Checking the postmaster, who was for turning his horse’s head to the yard (the drunken patriot sat composedly in his saddle looking on, with the line round his wrist), Darnay said, as soon as he could make his voice heard:
“Friends, you deceive yourselves, or you are deceived. I am not a traitor.”
“He lies!” cried the smith. “He is a traitor since the decree. His life is forfeit to the people. His cursed life is not his own!”
At the instant when Darnay saw a rush in the eyes of the crowd, which another instant would have brought upon him, the postmaster turned his horse into the yard, the escort rode in close upon his horse’s flanks, and the postmaster shut and barred the crazy double gates. The farrier struck a blow upon them with his hammer, and the crowd groaned; but, no more was done.
“What is this decree that the smith spoke of?” Darnay asked the postmaster, when he had thanked him, and stood beside him in the yard.
“Truly, a decree for selling the property of emigrants.”
“When passed?”
“On the fourteenth.”
“The day I left England!”
“Everybody says it is but one of several, and that there will be others—if there are not already—banishing all emigrants, and condemning all to death who return. That is what he meant when he said your life was not your own.”
“But there are no such decrees yet?”
“What do I know!” said the postmaster, shrugging his shoulders; “there may be, or there will be. It is all the same. What would you have?”
They rested on some straw in a loft until the middle of the night, and then rode forward again when all the town was asleep. Among the many wild changes observable on familiar things which made this wild ride unreal, not the least was the seeming rarity of sleep. After long and lonely spurring over dreary roads, they would come to a cluster of poor cottages, not steeped in darkness, but all glittering with lights, and would find the people, in a ghostly manner in the dead of the night, circling hand in hand round a shrivelled tree of Liberty, or all drawn up together singing a Liberty song. Happily, however, there was sleep in Beauvais that night to help them out of it and they passed on once more into solitude and loneliness: jingling through the untimely cold and wet, among impoverished fields that had yielded no fruits of the earth that year, diversified by the blackened remains of burnt houses, and by the sudden emergence from ambuscade, and sharp reining up across their way, of patriot patrols on the watch on all the roads.
Daylight at last found them before the wall of Paris. The barrier was closed and strongly guarded when they rode up to it.
“Where are the papers of this prisoner?” demanded a resolute-looking man in authority, who was summoned out by the guard.
Naturally struck by the disagreeable word, Charles Darnay requested the speaker to take notice that he was a free traveller and French citizen, in charge of an escort which the disturbed state of the country had imposed upon him, and which he had paid for.
“Where,” repeated the same personage, without taking any heed of him whatever, “are the papers of this prisoner?”
The drunken patriot had them in his cap, and produced them. Casting his eyes over Gabelle’s letter, the same personage in authority showed some disorder and surprise, and looked at Darnay with a close attention.
He left escort and escorted without saying a word, however, and went into the guard-room; meanwhile, they sat upon their horses outside the gate. Looking about him while in this state of suspense, Charles Darnay observed that the gate was held by a mixed guard of soldiers and patriots, the latter far outnumbering the former; and that while ingress into the city for peasants’ carts bringing in supplies, and for similar traffic and traffickers, was easy enough, egress, even for the homeliest people, was very difficult. A numerous medley of men and women, not to mention beasts and vehicles of various sorts, was waiting to issue forth; but, the previous identification was so strict, that they filtered through the barrier very slowly. Some of these people knew their turn for examination to be so far off, that they lay down on the ground to sleep or smoke, while others talked together, or loitered about. The red cap and tri-colour cockade were universal, both among men and women.
When he had sat in his saddle some half-hour, taking note of these things, Darnay found himself confronted by the same man in authority, who directed the guard to open the barrier. Then he delivered to the escort, drunk and sober, a receipt for the escorted, and requested him to dismount. He did so, and the two patriots, leading his tired horse, turned and rode away without entering the city.
He accompanied his conductor into a guard-room, smelling of common wine and tobacco, where certain soldiers and patriots, asleep and awake, drunk and sober, and in various neutral states between sleeping and waking, drunkenness and sobriety, were standing and lying about. The light in the guard-house, half derived from the waning oil-lamps of the night, and half from the overcast day, was in a correspondingly uncertain condition. Some registers were lying open on a desk, and an officer of a coarse, dark aspect, presided over these.
“Citizen Defarge,” said he to Darnay’s conductor, as he took a slip of paper to write on. “Is this the emigrant Evrémonde?”
“This is the man.”
“Your age, Evrémonde?”
“Thirty-seven.”
“Married, Evrémonde?”
“Yes.”
“Where married?”
“In England.”
“Without doubt. Where is your wife, Evrémonde?”
“In England.”
“Without doubt. You are consigned, Evrémonde, to the prison of La Force.”
“Just Heaven!” exclaimed Darnay. “Under what law, and for what offence?”
The officer looked up from his slip of paper for a moment.
“We have new laws, Evrémonde, and new offences, since you were here.” He said it with a hard smile, and went on writing.
“I entreat you to observe that I have come here voluntarily, in response to that written appeal of a fellow-countryman which lies before you. I demand no more than the opportunity to do so without delay. Is not that my right?”
“Emigrants have no rights, Evrémonde,” was the stolid reply. The officer wrote until he had finished, read over to himself what he had written, sanded it, and handed it to Defarge, with the words “In secret.”
Defarge motioned with the paper to the prisoner that he must accompany him. The prisoner obeyed, and a guard of two armed patriots attended them.
“Is it you,” said Defarge, in a low voice, as they went down the guardhouse steps and turned into Paris, “who married the daughter of Doctor Manette, once a prisoner in the Bastille that is no more?”
“Yes,” replied Darnay, looking at him with surprise.
“My name is Defarge, and I keep a wine-shop in the Quarter Saint Antoine. Possibly you have heard of me.”
“My wife came to your house to reclaim her father? Yes!”
The word “wife” seemed to serve as a gloomy reminder to Defarge, to say with sudden impatience, “In the name of that sharp female newly-born, and called La Guillotine, why did you come to France?”
“You heard me say why, a minute ago. Do you not believe it is the truth?”
“A bad truth for you,” said Defarge, speaking with knitted brows, and looking straight before him.
“Indeed I am lost here. All here is so unprecedented, so changed, so sudden and unfair, that I am absolutely lost. Will you render me a little help?”
“None.” Defarge spoke, always looking straight before him.
“Will you answer me a single question?”
“Perhaps. According to its nature. You can say what it is.”
“In this prison that I am going to so unjustly, shall I have some free communication with the world outside?”
“You will see.”
“I am not to be buried there, prejudged, and without any means of presenting my case?”
“You will see. But, what then? Other people have been similarly buried in worse prisons, before now.”
“But never by me, Citizen Defarge.”
Defarge glanced darkly at him for answer, and walked on in a steady and set silence. The deeper he sank into this silence, the fainter hope there was—or so Darnay thought—of his softening in any slight degree. He, therefore, made haste to say:
“It is of the utmost importance to me (you know, Citizen, even better than I, of how much importance), that I should be able to communicate to Mr. Lorry of Tellson’s Bank, an English gentleman who is now in Paris, the simple fact, without comment, that I have been thrown into the prison of La Force. Will you cause that to be done for me?”
“I will do,” Defarge doggedly rejoined, “nothing for you. My duty is to my country and the People. I am the sworn servant of both, against you. I will do nothing for you.”
Charles Darnay felt it hopeless to entreat him further, and his pride was touched besides. As they walked on in silence, he could not but see how used the people were to the spectacle of prisoners passing along the streets. The very children scarcely noticed him. A few passers turned their heads, and a few shook their fingers at him as an aristocrat; otherwise, that a man in good clothes should be going to prison, was no more remarkable than that a labourer in working clothes should be going to work. In one narrow, dark, and dirty street through which they passed, an excited orator, mounted on a stool, was addressing an excited audience on the crimes against the people, of the king and the royal family. The few words that he caught from this man’s lips, first made it known to Charles Darnay that the king was in prison, and that the foreign ambassadors had one and all left Paris. On the road (except at Beauvais) he had heard absolutely nothing. The escort and the universal watchfulness had completely isolated him.
That he had fallen among far greater dangers than those which had developed themselves when he left England, he of course knew now. That perils had thickened about him fast, and might thicken faster and faster yet, he of course knew now. He could not but admit to himself that he might not have made this journey, if he could have foreseen the events of a few days. And yet his misgivings were not so dark as, imagined by the light of this later time, they would appear. Troubled as the future was, it was the unknown future, and in its obscurity there was ignorant hope. The horrible massacre, days and nights long, which, within a few rounds of the clock, was to set a great mark of blood upon the blessed garnering time of harvest, was as far out of his knowledge as if it had been a hundred thousand years away. The “sharp female newly-born, and called La Guillotine,” was hardly known to him, or to the generality of people, by name. The frightful deeds that were to be soon done, were probably unimagined at that time in the brains of the doers. How could they have a place in the shadowy conceptions of a gentle mind?
Of unjust treatment in detention and hardship, and in cruel separation from his wife and child, he foreshadowed the likelihood, or the certainty; but, beyond this, he dreaded nothing distinctly. With this on his mind, which was enough to carry into a dreary prison courtyard, he arrived at the prison of La Force.
A man with a bloated face opened the strong wicket, to whom Defarge presented “The Emigrant Evrémonde.”
“What the Devil! How many more of them!” exclaimed the man with the bloated face.
Defarge took his receipt without noticing the exclamation, and withdrew, with his two fellow-patriots.
“What the Devil, I say again!” exclaimed the gaoler, left with his wife. “How many more!”
The gaoler’s wife, being provided with no answer to the question, merely replied, “One must have patience, my dear!” Three turnkeys who entered responsive to a bell she rang, echoed the sentiment, and one added, “For the love of Liberty;” which sounded in that place like an inappropriate conclusion.
The prison of La Force was a gloomy prison, dark and filthy, and with a horrible smell of foul sleep in it. Extraordinary how soon the noisome flavour of imprisoned sleep, becomes manifest in all such places that are ill cared for!
“In secret, too,” grumbled the gaoler, looking at the written paper. “As if I was not already full to bursting!”
He stuck the paper on a file, in an ill-humour, and Charles Darnay awaited his further pleasure for half an hour: sometimes, pacing to and fro in the strong arched room: sometimes, resting on a stone seat: in either case detained to be imprinted on the memory of the chief and his subordinates.
“Come!” said the chief, at length taking up his keys, “come with me, emigrant.”
Through the dismal prison twilight, his new charge accompanied him by corridor and staircase, many doors clanging and locking behind them, until they came into a large, low, vaulted chamber, crowded with prisoners of both sexes. The women were seated at a long table, reading and writing, knitting, sewing, and embroidering; the men were for the most part standing behind their chairs, or lingering up and down the room.
In the instinctive association of prisoners with shameful crime and disgrace, the new-comer recoiled from this company. But the crowning unreality of his long unreal ride, was, their all at once rising to receive him, with every refinement of manner known to the time, and with all the engaging graces and courtesies of life.
So strangely clouded were these refinements by the prison manners and gloom, so spectral did they become in the inappropriate squalor and misery through which they were seen, that Charles Darnay seemed to stand in a company of the dead. Ghosts all! The ghost of beauty, the ghost of stateliness, the ghost of elegance, the ghost of pride, the ghost of frivolity, the ghost of wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of age, all waiting their dismissal from the desolate shore, all turning on him eyes that were changed by the death they had died in coming there.
It struck him motionless. The gaoler standing at his side, and the other gaolers moving about, who would have been well enough as to appearance in the ordinary exercise of their functions, looked so extravagantly coarse contrasted with sorrowing mothers and blooming daughters who were there—with the apparitions of the coquette, the young beauty, and the mature woman delicately bred—that the inversion of all experience and likelihood which the scene of shadows presented, was heightened to its utmost. Surely, ghosts all. Surely, the long unreal ride some progress of disease that had brought him to these gloomy shades!
“In the name of the assembled companions in misfortune,” said a gentleman of courtly appearance and address, coming forward, “I have the honour of giving you welcome to La Force, and of condoling with you on the calamity that has brought you among us. May it soon terminate happily! It would be an impertinence elsewhere, but it is not so here, to ask your name and condition?”
Charles Darnay roused himself, and gave the required information, in words as suitable as he could find.
“But I hope,” said the gentleman, following the chief gaoler with his eyes, who moved across the room, “that you are not in secret?”
“I do not understand the meaning of the term, but I have heard them say so.”
“Ah, what a pity! We so much regret it! But take courage; several members of our society have been in secret, at first, and it has lasted but a short time.” Then he added, raising his voice, “I grieve to inform the society—in secret.”
There was a murmur of commiseration as Charles Darnay crossed the room to a grated door where the gaoler awaited him, and many voices—among which, the soft and compassionate voices of women were conspicuous—gave him good wishes and encouragement. He turned at the grated door, to render the thanks of his heart; it closed under the gaoler’s hand; and the apparitions vanished from his sight forever.
The wicket opened on a stone staircase, leading upward. When they had ascended forty steps (the prisoner of half an hour already counted them), the gaoler opened a low black door, and they passed into a solitary cell. It struck cold and damp, but was not dark.
“Yours,” said the gaoler.
“Why am I confined alone?”
“How do I know!”
“I can buy pen, ink, and paper?”
“Such are not my orders. You will be visited, and can ask then. At present, you may buy your food, and nothing more.”
There were in the cell, a chair, a table, and a straw mattress. As the gaoler made a general inspection of these objects, and of the four walls, before going out, a wandering fancy wandered through the mind of the prisoner leaning against the wall opposite to him, that this gaoler was so unwholesomely bloated, both in face and person, as to look like a man who had been drowned and filled with water. When the gaoler was gone, he thought in the same wandering way, “Now am I left, as if I were dead.” Stopping then, to look down at the mattress, he turned from it with a sick feeling, and thought, “And here in these crawling creatures is the first condition of the body after death.”
“Five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half.” The prisoner walked to and fro in his cell, counting its measurement, and the roar of the city arose like muffled drums with a wild swell of voices added to them. “He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes.” The prisoner counted the measurement again, and paced faster, to draw his mind with him from that latter repetition. “The ghosts that vanished when the wicket closed. There was one among them, the appearance of a lady dressed in black, who was leaning in the embrasure of a window, and she had a light shining upon her golden hair, and she looked like * * * * Let us ride on again, for God’s sake, through the illuminated villages with the people all awake! * * * * He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes. * * * * Five paces by four and a half.” With such scraps tossing and rolling upward from the depths of his mind, the prisoner walked faster and faster, obstinately counting and counting; and the roar of the city changed to this extent—that it still rolled in like muffled drums, but with the wail of voices that he knew, in the swell that rose above them.
CHAPTER II. The Grindstone
Tellson’s Bank, established in the Saint Germain Quarter of Paris, was in a wing of a large house, approached by a courtyard and shut off from the street by a high wall and a strong gate. The house belonged to a great nobleman who had lived in it until he made a flight from the troubles, in his own cook’s dress, and got across the borders. A mere beast of the chase flying from hunters, he was still in his metempsychosis no other than the same Monseigneur, the preparation of whose chocolate for whose lips had once occupied three strong men besides the cook in question.
Monseigneur gone, and the three strong men absolving themselves from the sin of having drawn his high wages, by being more than ready and willing to cut his throat on the altar of the dawning Republic one and indivisible of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, Monseigneur’s house had been first sequestrated, and then confiscated. For, all things moved so fast, and decree followed decree with that fierce precipitation, that now upon the third night of the autumn month of September, patriot emissaries of the law were in possession of Monseigneur’s house, and had marked it with the tri-colour, and were drinking brandy in its state apartments.
A place of business in London like Tellson’s place of business in Paris, would soon have driven the House out of its mind and into the Gazette. For, what would staid British responsibility and respectability have said to orange-trees in boxes in a Bank courtyard, and even to a Cupid over the counter? Yet such things were. Tellson’s had whitewashed the Cupid, but he was still to be seen on the ceiling, in the coolest linen, aiming (as he very often does) at money from morning to night. Bankruptcy must inevitably have come of this young Pagan, in Lombard-street, London, and also of a curtained alcove in the rear of the immortal boy, and also of a looking-glass let into the wall, and also of clerks not at all old, who danced in public on the slightest provocation. Yet, a French Tellson’s could get on with these things exceedingly well, and, as long as the times held together, no man had taken fright at them, and drawn out his money.
What money would be drawn out of Tellson’s henceforth, and what would lie there, lost and forgotten; what plate and jewels would tarnish in Tellson’s hiding-places, while the depositors rusted in prisons, and when they should have violently perished; how many accounts with Tellson’s never to be balanced in this world, must be carried over into the next; no man could have said, that night, any more than Mr. Jarvis Lorry could, though he thought heavily of these questions. He sat by a newly-lighted wood fire (the blighted and unfruitful year was prematurely cold), and on his honest and courageous face there was a deeper shade than the pendent lamp could throw, or any object in the room distortedly reflect—a shade of horror.
He occupied rooms in the Bank, in his fidelity to the House of which he had grown to be a part, like strong root-ivy. It chanced that they derived a kind of security from the patriotic occupation of the main building, but the true-hearted old gentleman never calculated about that. All such circumstances were indifferent to him, so that he did his duty. On the opposite side of the courtyard, under a colonnade, was extensive standing—for carriages—where, indeed, some carriages of Monseigneur yet stood. Against two of the pillars were fastened two great flaring flambeaux, and in the light of these, standing out in the open air, was a large grindstone: a roughly mounted thing which appeared to have hurriedly been brought there from some neighbouring smithy, or other workshop. Rising and looking out of window at these harmless objects, Mr. Lorry shivered, and retired to his seat by the fire. He had opened, not only the glass window, but the lattice blind outside it, and he had closed both again, and he shivered through his frame.
From the streets beyond the high wall and the strong gate, there came the usual night hum of the city, with now and then an indescribable ring in it, weird and unearthly, as if some unwonted sounds of a terrible nature were going up to Heaven.
“Thank God,” said Mr. Lorry, clasping his hands, “that no one near and dear to me is in this dreadful town to-night. May He have mercy on all who are in danger!”
Soon afterwards, the bell at the great gate sounded, and he thought, “They have come back!” and sat listening. But, there was no loud irruption into the courtyard, as he had expected, and he heard the gate clash again, and all was quiet.
The nervousness and dread that were upon him inspired that vague uneasiness respecting the Bank, which a great change would naturally awaken, with such feelings roused. It was well guarded, and he got up to go among the trusty people who were watching it, when his door suddenly opened, and two figures rushed in, at sight of which he fell back in amazement.
Lucie and her father! Lucie with her arms stretched out to him, and with that old look of earnestness so concentrated and intensified, that it seemed as though it had been stamped upon her face expressly to give force and power to it in this one passage of her life.
“What is this?” cried Mr. Lorry, breathless and confused. “What is the matter? Lucie! Manette! What has happened? What has brought you here? What is it?”
With the look fixed upon him, in her paleness and wildness, she panted out in his arms, imploringly, “O my dear friend! My husband!”
“Your husband, Lucie?”
“Charles.”
“What of Charles?”
“Here.
“Here, in Paris?”
“Has been here some days—three or four—I don’t know how many—I can’t collect my thoughts. An errand of generosity brought him here unknown to us; he was stopped at the barrier, and sent to prison.”
The old man uttered an irrepressible cry. Almost at the same moment, the bell of the great gate rang again, and a loud noise of feet and voices came pouring into the courtyard.
“What is that noise?” said the Doctor, turning towards the window.
“Don’t look!” cried Mr. Lorry. “Don’t look out! Manette, for your life, don’t touch the blind!”
The Doctor turned, with his hand upon the fastening of the window, and said, with a cool, bold smile:
“My dear friend, I have a charmed life in this city. I have been a Bastille prisoner. There is no patriot in Paris—in Paris? In France—who, knowing me to have been a prisoner in the Bastille, would touch me, except to overwhelm me with embraces, or carry me in triumph. My old pain has given me a power that has brought us through the barrier, and gained us news of Charles there, and brought us here. I knew it would be so; I knew I could help Charles out of all danger; I told Lucie so.—What is that noise?” His hand was again upon the window.
“Don’t look!” cried Mr. Lorry, absolutely desperate. “No, Lucie, my dear, nor you!” He got his arm round her, and held her. “Don’t be so terrified, my love. I solemnly swear to you that I know of no harm having happened to Charles; that I had no suspicion even of his being in this fatal place. What prison is he in?”
“La Force!”
“La Force! Lucie, my child, if ever you were brave and serviceable in your life—and you were always both—you will compose yourself now, to do exactly as I bid you; for more depends upon it than you can think, or I can say. There is no help for you in any action on your part to-night; you cannot possibly stir out. I say this, because what I must bid you to do for Charles’s sake, is the hardest thing to do of all. You must instantly be obedient, still, and quiet. You must let me put you in a room at the back here. You must leave your father and me alone for two minutes, and as there are Life and Death in the world you must not delay.”
“I will be submissive to you. I see in your face that you know I can do nothing else than this. I know you are true.”
The old man kissed her, and hurried her into his room, and turned the key; then, came hurrying back to the Doctor, and opened the window and partly opened the blind, and put his hand upon the Doctor’s arm, and looked out with him into the courtyard.
Looked out upon a throng of men and women: not enough in number, or near enough, to fill the courtyard: not more than forty or fifty in all. The people in possession of the house had let them in at the gate, and they had rushed in to work at the grindstone; it had evidently been set up there for their purpose, as in a convenient and retired spot.
But, such awful workers, and such awful work!
The grindstone had a double handle, and, turning at it madly were two men, whose faces, as their long hair flapped back when the whirlings of the grindstone brought their faces up, were more horrible and cruel than the visages of the wildest savages in their most barbarous disguise. False eyebrows and false moustaches were stuck upon them, and their hideous countenances were all bloody and sweaty, and all awry with howling, and all staring and glaring with beastly excitement and want of sleep. As these ruffians turned and turned, their matted locks now flung forward over their eyes, now flung backward over their necks, some women held wine to their mouths that they might drink; and what with dropping blood, and what with dropping wine, and what with the stream of sparks struck out of the stone, all their wicked atmosphere seemed gore and fire. The eye could not detect one creature in the group free from the smear of blood. Shouldering one another to get next at the sharpening-stone, were men stripped to the waist, with the stain all over their limbs and bodies; men in all sorts of rags, with the stain upon those rags; men devilishly set off with spoils of women’s lace and silk and ribbon, with the stain dyeing those trifles through and through. Hatchets, knives, bayonets, swords, all brought to be sharpened, were all red with it. Some of the hacked swords were tied to the wrists of those who carried them, with strips of linen and fragments of dress: ligatures various in kind, but all deep of the one colour. And as the frantic wielders of these weapons snatched them from the stream of sparks and tore away into the streets, the same red hue was red in their frenzied eyes;—eyes which any unbrutalised beholder would have given twenty years of life, to petrify with a well-directed gun.
All this was seen in a moment, as the vision of a drowning man, or of any human creature at any very great pass, could see a world if it were there. They drew back from the window, and the Doctor looked for explanation in his friend’s ashy face.
“They are,” Mr. Lorry whispered the words, glancing fearfully round at the locked room, “murdering the prisoners. If you are sure of what you say; if you really have the power you think you have—as I believe you have—make yourself known to these devils, and get taken to La Force. It may be too late, I don’t know, but let it not be a minute later!”
Doctor Manette pressed his hand, hastened bareheaded out of the room, and was in the courtyard when Mr. Lorry regained the blind.
His streaming white hair, his remarkable face, and the impetuous confidence of his manner, as he put the weapons aside like water, carried him in an instant to the heart of the concourse at the stone. For a few moments there was a pause, and a hurry, and a murmur, and the unintelligible sound of his voice; and then Mr. Lorry saw him, surrounded by all, and in the midst of a line of twenty men long, all linked shoulder to shoulder, and hand to shoulder, hurried out with cries of—“Live the Bastille prisoner! Help for the Bastille prisoner’s kindred in La Force! Room for the Bastille prisoner in front there! Save the prisoner Evrémonde at La Force!” and a thousand answering shouts.
He closed the lattice again with a fluttering heart, closed the window and the curtain, hastened to Lucie, and told her that her father was assisted by the people, and gone in search of her husband. He found her child and Miss Pross with her; but, it never occurred to him to be surprised by their appearance until a long time afterwards, when he sat watching them in such quiet as the night knew.
Lucie had, by that time, fallen into a stupor on the floor at his feet, clinging to his hand. Miss Pross had laid the child down on his own bed, and her head had gradually fallen on the pillow beside her pretty charge. O the long, long night, with the moans of the poor wife! And O the long, long night, with no return of her father and no tidings!
Twice more in the darkness the bell at the great gate sounded, and the irruption was repeated, and the grindstone whirled and spluttered. “What is it?” cried Lucie, affrighted. “Hush! The soldiers’ swords are sharpened there,” said Mr. Lorry. “The place is national property now, and used as a kind of armoury, my love.”
Twice more in all; but, the last spell of work was feeble and fitful. Soon afterwards the day began to dawn, and he softly detached himself from the clasping hand, and cautiously looked out again. A man, so besmeared that he might have been a sorely wounded soldier creeping back to consciousness on a field of slain, was rising from the pavement by the side of the grindstone, and looking about him with a vacant air. Shortly, this worn-out murderer descried in the imperfect light one of the carriages of Monseigneur, and, staggering to that gorgeous vehicle, climbed in at the door, and shut himself up to take his rest on its dainty cushions.
The great grindstone, Earth, had turned when Mr. Lorry looked out again, and the sun was red on the courtyard. But, the lesser grindstone stood alone there in the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had never given, and would never take away.
CHAPTER III. The Shadow
One of the first considerations which arose in the business mind of Mr. Lorry when business hours came round, was this:—that he had no right to imperil Tellson’s by sheltering the wife of an emigrant prisoner under the Bank roof. His own possessions, safety, life, he would have hazarded for Lucie and her child, without a moment’s demur; but the great trust he held was not his own, and as to that business charge he was a strict man of business.
At first, his mind reverted to Defarge, and he thought of finding out the wine-shop again and taking counsel with its master in reference to the safest dwelling-place in the distracted state of the city. But, the same consideration that suggested him, repudiated him; he lived in the most violent Quarter, and doubtless was influential there, and deep in its dangerous workings.
Noon coming, and the Doctor not returning, and every minute’s delay tending to compromise Tellson’s, Mr. Lorry advised with Lucie. She said that her father had spoken of hiring a lodging for a short term, in that Quarter, near the Banking-house. As there was no business objection to this, and as he foresaw that even if it were all well with Charles, and he were to be released, he could not hope to leave the city, Mr. Lorry went out in quest of such a lodging, and found a suitable one, high up in a removed by-street where the closed blinds in all the other windows of a high melancholy square of buildings marked deserted homes.
To this lodging he at once removed Lucie and her child, and Miss Pross: giving them what comfort he could, and much more than he had himself. He left Jerry with them, as a figure to fill a doorway that would bear considerable knocking on the head, and returned to his own occupations. A disturbed and doleful mind he brought to bear upon them, and slowly and heavily the day lagged on with him.
It wore itself out, and wore him out with it, until the Bank closed. He was again alone in his room of the previous night, considering what to do next, when he heard a foot upon the stair. In a few moments, a man stood in his presence, who, with a keenly observant look at him, addressed him by his name.
“Your servant,” said Mr. Lorry. “Do you know me?”
He was a strongly made man with dark curling hair, from forty-five to fifty years of age. For answer he repeated, without any change of emphasis, the words:
“Do you know me?”
“I have seen you somewhere.”
“Perhaps at my wine-shop?”
Much interested and agitated, Mr. Lorry said: “You come from Doctor Manette?”
“Yes. I come from Doctor Manette.”
“And what says he? What does he send me?”
Defarge gave into his anxious hand, an open scrap of paper. It bore the words in the Doctor’s writing:
“Charles is safe, but I cannot safely leave this place yet. I have obtained the favour that the bearer has a short note from Charles to his wife. Let the bearer see his wife.”
It was dated from La Force, within an hour.
“Will you accompany me,” said Mr. Lorry, joyfully relieved after reading this note aloud, “to where his wife resides?”
“Yes,” returned Defarge.
Scarcely noticing as yet, in what a curiously reserved and mechanical way Defarge spoke, Mr. Lorry put on his hat and they went down into the courtyard. There, they found two women; one, knitting.
“Madame Defarge, surely!” said Mr. Lorry, who had left her in exactly the same attitude some seventeen years ago.
“It is she,” observed her husband.
“Does Madame go with us?” inquired Mr. Lorry, seeing that she moved as they moved.
“Yes. That she may be able to recognise the faces and know the persons. It is for their safety.”
Beginning to be struck by Defarge’s manner, Mr. Lorry looked dubiously at him, and led the way. Both the women followed; the second woman being The Vengeance.
They passed through the intervening streets as quickly as they might, ascended the staircase of the new domicile, were admitted by Jerry, and found Lucie weeping, alone. She was thrown into a transport by the tidings Mr. Lorry gave her of her husband, and clasped the hand that delivered his note—little thinking what it had been doing near him in the night, and might, but for a chance, have done to him.
“DEAREST,—Take courage. I am well, and your father has influence around me. You cannot answer this. Kiss our child for me.”
That was all the writing. It was so much, however, to her who received it, that she turned from Defarge to his wife, and kissed one of the hands that knitted. It was a passionate, loving, thankful, womanly action, but the hand made no response—dropped cold and heavy, and took to its knitting again.
There was something in its touch that gave Lucie a check. She stopped in the act of putting the note in her bosom, and, with her hands yet at her neck, looked terrified at Madame Defarge. Madame Defarge met the lifted eyebrows and forehead with a cold, impassive stare.
“My dear,” said Mr. Lorry, striking in to explain; “there are frequent risings in the streets; and, although it is not likely they will ever trouble you, Madame Defarge wishes to see those whom she has the power to protect at such times, to the end that she may know them—that she may identify them. I believe,” said Mr. Lorry, rather halting in his reassuring words, as the stony manner of all the three impressed itself upon him more and more, “I state the case, Citizen Defarge?”
Defarge looked gloomily at his wife, and gave no other answer than a gruff sound of acquiescence.
“You had better, Lucie,” said Mr. Lorry, doing all he could to propitiate, by tone and manner, “have the dear child here, and our good Pross. Our good Pross, Defarge, is an English lady, and knows no French.”
The lady in question, whose rooted conviction that she was more than a match for any foreigner, was not to be shaken by distress and, danger, appeared with folded arms, and observed in English to The Vengeance, whom her eyes first encountered, “Well, I am sure, Boldface! I hope you are pretty well!” She also bestowed a British cough on Madame Defarge; but, neither of the two took much heed of her.
“Is that his child?” said Madame Defarge, stopping in her work for the first time, and pointing her knitting-needle at little Lucie as if it were the finger of Fate.
“Yes, madame,” answered Mr. Lorry; “this is our poor prisoner’s darling daughter, and only child.”
The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed to fall so threatening and dark on the child, that her mother instinctively kneeled on the ground beside her, and held her to her breast. The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed then to fall, threatening and dark, on both the mother and the child.
“It is enough, my husband,” said Madame Defarge. “I have seen them. We may go.”
But, the suppressed manner had enough of menace in it—not visible and presented, but indistinct and withheld—to alarm Lucie into saying, as she laid her appealing hand on Madame Defarge’s dress:
“You will be good to my poor husband. You will do him no harm. You will help me to see him if you can?”
“Your husband is not my business here,” returned Madame Defarge, looking down at her with perfect composure. “It is the daughter of your father who is my business here.”
“For my sake, then, be merciful to my husband. For my child’s sake! She will put her hands together and pray you to be merciful. We are more afraid of you than of these others.”
Madame Defarge received it as a compliment, and looked at her husband. Defarge, who had been uneasily biting his thumb-nail and looking at her, collected his face into a sterner expression.
“What is it that your husband says in that little letter?” asked Madame Defarge, with a lowering smile. “Influence; he says something touching influence?”
“That my father,” said Lucie, hurriedly taking the paper from her breast, but with her alarmed eyes on her questioner and not on it, “has much influence around him.”
“Surely it will release him!” said Madame Defarge. “Let it do so.”
“As a wife and mother,” cried Lucie, most earnestly, “I implore you to have pity on me and not to exercise any power that you possess, against my innocent husband, but to use it in his behalf. O sister-woman, think of me. As a wife and mother!”
Madame Defarge looked, coldly as ever, at the suppliant, and said, turning to her friend The Vengeance:
“The wives and mothers we have been used to see, since we were as little as this child, and much less, have not been greatly considered? We have known their husbands and fathers laid in prison and kept from them, often enough? All our lives, we have seen our sister-women suffer, in themselves and in their children, poverty, nakedness, hunger, thirst, sickness, misery, oppression and neglect of all kinds?”
“We have seen nothing else,” returned The Vengeance.
“We have borne this a long time,” said Madame Defarge, turning her eyes again upon Lucie. “Judge you! Is it likely that the trouble of one wife and mother would be much to us now?”
She resumed her knitting and went out. The Vengeance followed. Defarge went last, and closed the door.
“Courage, my dear Lucie,” said Mr. Lorry, as he raised her. “Courage, courage! So far all goes well with us—much, much better than it has of late gone with many poor souls. Cheer up, and have a thankful heart.”
“I am not thankless, I hope, but that dreadful woman seems to throw a shadow on me and on all my hopes.”
“Tut, tut!” said Mr. Lorry; “what is this despondency in the brave little breast? A shadow indeed! No substance in it, Lucie.”
But the shadow of the manner of these Defarges was dark upon himself, for all that, and in his secret mind it troubled him greatly.
CHAPTER IV. Calm in Storm
Doctor Manette did not return until the morning of the fourth day of his absence. So much of what had happened in that dreadful time as could be kept from the knowledge of Lucie was so well concealed from her, that not until long afterwards, when France and she were far apart, did she know that eleven hundred defenceless prisoners of both sexes and all ages had been killed by the populace; that four days and nights had been darkened by this deed of horror; and that the air around her had been tainted by the slain. She only knew that there had been an attack upon the prisons, that all political prisoners had been in danger, and that some had been dragged out by the crowd and murdered.
To Mr. Lorry, the Doctor communicated under an injunction of secrecy on which he had no need to dwell, that the crowd had taken him through a scene of carnage to the prison of La Force. That, in the prison he had found a self-appointed Tribunal sitting, before which the prisoners were brought singly, and by which they were rapidly ordered to be put forth to be massacred, or to be released, or (in a few cases) to be sent back to their cells. That, presented by his conductors to this Tribunal, he had announced himself by name and profession as having been for eighteen years a secret and unaccused prisoner in the Bastille; that, one of the body so sitting in judgment had risen and identified him, and that this man was Defarge.
That, hereupon he had ascertained, through the registers on the table, that his son-in-law was among the living prisoners, and had pleaded hard to the Tribunal—of whom some members were asleep and some awake, some dirty with murder and some clean, some sober and some not—for his life and liberty. That, in the first frantic greetings lavished on himself as a notable sufferer under the overthrown system, it had been accorded to him to have Charles Darnay brought before the lawless Court, and examined. That, he seemed on the point of being at once released, when the tide in his favour met with some unexplained check (not intelligible to the Doctor), which led to a few words of secret conference. That, the man sitting as President had then informed Doctor Manette that the prisoner must remain in custody, but should, for his sake, be held inviolate in safe custody. That, immediately, on a signal, the prisoner was removed to the interior of the prison again; but, that he, the Doctor, had then so strongly pleaded for permission to remain and assure himself that his son-in-law was, through no malice or mischance, delivered to the concourse whose murderous yells outside the gate had often drowned the proceedings, that he had obtained the permission, and had remained in that Hall of Blood until the danger was over.
The sights he had seen there, with brief snatches of food and sleep by intervals, shall remain untold. The mad joy over the prisoners who were saved, had astounded him scarcely less than the mad ferocity against those who were cut to pieces. One prisoner there was, he said, who had been discharged into the street free, but at whom a mistaken savage had thrust a pike as he passed out. Being besought to go to him and dress the wound, the Doctor had passed out at the same gate, and had found him in the arms of a company of Samaritans, who were seated on the bodies of their victims. With an inconsistency as monstrous as anything in this awful nightmare, they had helped the healer, and tended the wounded man with the gentlest solicitude—had made a litter for him and escorted him carefully from the spot—had then caught up their weapons and plunged anew into a butchery so dreadful, that the Doctor had covered his eyes with his hands, and swooned away in the midst of it.
As Mr. Lorry received these confidences, and as he watched the face of his friend now sixty-two years of age, a misgiving arose within him that such dread experiences would revive the old danger.
But, he had never seen his friend in his present aspect: he had never at all known him in his present character. For the first time the Doctor felt, now, that his suffering was strength and power. For the first time he felt that in that sharp fire, he had slowly forged the iron which could break the prison door of his daughter’s husband, and deliver him. “It all tended to a good end, my friend; it was not mere waste and ruin. As my beloved child was helpful in restoring me to myself, I will be helpful now in restoring the dearest part of herself to her; by the aid of Heaven I will do it!” Thus, Doctor Manette. And when Jarvis Lorry saw the kindled eyes, the resolute face, the calm strong look and bearing of the man whose life always seemed to him to have been stopped, like a clock, for so many years, and then set going again with an energy which had lain dormant during the cessation of its usefulness, he believed.
Greater things than the Doctor had at that time to contend with, would have yielded before his persevering purpose. While he kept himself in his place, as a physician, whose business was with all degrees of mankind, bond and free, rich and poor, bad and good, he used his personal influence so wisely, that he was soon the inspecting physician of three prisons, and among them of La Force. He could now assure Lucie that her husband was no longer confined alone, but was mixed with the general body of prisoners; he saw her husband weekly, and brought sweet messages to her, straight from his lips; sometimes her husband himself sent a letter to her (though never by the Doctor’s hand), but she was not permitted to write to him: for, among the many wild suspicions of plots in the prisons, the wildest of all pointed at emigrants who were known to have made friends or permanent connections abroad.
This new life of the Doctor’s was an anxious life, no doubt; still, the sagacious Mr. Lorry saw that there was a new sustaining pride in it. Nothing unbecoming tinged the pride; it was a natural and worthy one; but he observed it as a curiosity. The Doctor knew, that up to that time, his imprisonment had been associated in the minds of his daughter and his friend, with his personal affliction, deprivation, and weakness. Now that this was changed, and he knew himself to be invested through that old trial with forces to which they both looked for Charles’s ultimate safety and deliverance, he became so far exalted by the change, that he took the lead and direction, and required them as the weak, to trust to him as the strong. The preceding relative positions of himself and Lucie were reversed, yet only as the liveliest gratitude and affection could reverse them, for he could have had no pride but in rendering some service to her who had rendered so much to him. “All curious to see,” thought Mr. Lorry, in his amiably shrewd way, “but all natural and right; so, take the lead, my dear friend, and keep it; it couldn’t be in better hands.”
But, though the Doctor tried hard, and never ceased trying, to get Charles Darnay set at liberty, or at least to get him brought to trial, the public current of the time set too strong and fast for him. The new era began; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded; the Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for victory or death against the world in arms; the black flag waved night and day from the great towers of Notre Dame; three hundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rose from all the varying soils of France, as if the dragon’s teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along the fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore. What private solicitude could rear itself against the deluge of the Year One of Liberty—the deluge rising from below, not falling from above, and with the windows of Heaven shut, not opened!
There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest, no measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as regularly as when time was young, and the evening and morning were the first day, other count of time there was none. Hold of it was lost in the raging fever of a nation, as it is in the fever of one patient. Now, breaking the unnatural silence of a whole city, the executioner showed the people the head of the king—and now, it seemed almost in the same breath, the head of his fair wife which had had eight weary months of imprisoned widowhood and misery, to turn it grey.
And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction which obtains in all such cases, the time was long, while it flamed by so fast. A revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty or fifty thousand revolutionary committees all over the land; a law of the Suspected, which struck away all security for liberty or life, and delivered over any good and innocent person to any bad and guilty one; prisons gorged with people who had committed no offence, and could obtain no hearing; these things became the established order and nature of appointed things, and seemed to be ancient usage before they were many weeks old. Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world—the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine.
It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack. It was the sign of the regeneration of the human race. It superseded the Cross. Models of it were worn on breasts from which the Cross was discarded, and it was bowed down to and believed in where the Cross was denied.
It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted, were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle for a young Devil, and was put together again when the occasion wanted it. It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful, abolished the beautiful and good. Twenty-two friends of high public mark, twenty-one living and one dead, it had lopped the heads off, in one morning, in as many minutes. The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of God’s own Temple every day.
Among these terrors, and the brood belonging to them, the Doctor walked with a steady head: confident in his power, cautiously persistent in his end, never doubting that he would save Lucie’s husband at last. Yet the current of the time swept by, so strong and deep, and carried the time away so fiercely, that Charles had lain in prison one year and three months when the Doctor was thus steady and confident. So much more wicked and distracted had the Revolution grown in that December month, that the rivers of the South were encumbered with the bodies of the violently drowned by night, and prisoners were shot in lines and squares under the southern wintry sun. Still, the Doctor walked among the terrors with a steady head. No man better known than he, in Paris at that day; no man in a stranger situation. Silent, humane, indispensable in hospital and prison, using his art equally among assassins and victims, he was a man apart. In the exercise of his skill, the appearance and the story of the Bastille Captive removed him from all other men. He was not suspected or brought in question, any more than if he had indeed been recalled to life some eighteen years before, or were a Spirit moving among mortals.
CHAPTER V. The Wood-Sawyer
One year and three months. During all that time Lucie was never sure, from hour to hour, but that the Guillotine would strike off her husband’s head next day. Every day, through the stony streets, the tumbrils now jolted heavily, filled with Condemned. Lovely girls; bright women, brown-haired, black-haired, and grey; youths; stalwart men and old; gentle born and peasant born; all red wine for La Guillotine, all daily brought into light from the dark cellars of the loathsome prisons, and carried to her through the streets to slake her devouring thirst. Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death;—the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!
If the suddenness of her calamity, and the whirling wheels of the time, had stunned the Doctor’s daughter into awaiting the result in idle despair, it would but have been with her as it was with many. But, from the hour when she had taken the white head to her fresh young bosom in the garret of Saint Antoine, she had been true to her duties. She was truest to them in the season of trial, as all the quietly loyal and good will always be.
As soon as they were established in their new residence, and her father had entered on the routine of his avocations, she arranged the little household as exactly as if her husband had been there. Everything had its appointed place and its appointed time. Little Lucie she taught, as regularly, as if they had all been united in their English home. The slight devices with which she cheated herself into the show of a belief that they would soon be reunited—the little preparations for his speedy return, the setting aside of his chair and his books—these, and the solemn prayer at night for one dear prisoner especially, among the many unhappy souls in prison and the shadow of death—were almost the only outspoken reliefs of her heavy mind.
She did not greatly alter in appearance. The plain dark dresses, akin to mourning dresses, which she and her child wore, were as neat and as well attended to as the brighter clothes of happy days. She lost her colour, and the old and intent expression was a constant, not an occasional, thing; otherwise, she remained very pretty and comely. Sometimes, at night on kissing her father, she would burst into the grief she had repressed all day, and would say that her sole reliance, under Heaven, was on him. He always resolutely answered: “Nothing can happen to him without my knowledge, and I know that I can save him, Lucie.”
They had not made the round of their changed life many weeks, when her father said to her, on coming home one evening:
“My dear, there is an upper window in the prison, to which Charles can sometimes gain access at three in the afternoon. When he can get to it—which depends on many uncertainties and incidents—he might see you in the street, he thinks, if you stood in a certain place that I can show you. But you will not be able to see him, my poor child, and even if you could, it would be unsafe for you to make a sign of recognition.”
“O show me the place, my father, and I will go there every day.”
From that time, in all weathers, she waited there two hours. As the clock struck two, she was there, and at four she turned resignedly away. When it was not too wet or inclement for her child to be with her, they went together; at other times she was alone; but, she never missed a single day.
It was the dark and dirty corner of a small winding street. The hovel of a cutter of wood into lengths for burning, was the only house at that end; all else was wall. On the third day of her being there, he noticed her.
“Good day, citizeness.”
“Good day, citizen.”
This mode of address was now prescribed by decree. It had been established voluntarily some time ago, among the more thorough patriots; but, was now law for everybody.
“Walking here again, citizeness?”
“You see me, citizen!”
The wood-sawyer, who was a little man with a redundancy of gesture (he had once been a mender of roads), cast a glance at the prison, pointed at the prison, and putting his ten fingers before his face to represent bars, peeped through them jocosely.
“But it’s not my business,” said he. And went on sawing his wood.
Next day he was looking out for her, and accosted her the moment she appeared.
“What? Walking here again, citizeness?”
“Yes, citizen.”
“Ah! A child too! Your mother, is it not, my little citizeness?”
“Do I say yes, mamma?” whispered little Lucie, drawing close to her.
“Yes, dearest.”
“Yes, citizen.”
“Ah! But it’s not my business. My work is my business. See my saw! I call it my Little Guillotine. La, la, la; La, la, la! And off his head comes!”
The billet fell as he spoke, and he threw it into a basket.
“I call myself the Samson of the firewood guillotine. See here again! Loo, loo, loo; Loo, loo, loo! And off her head comes! Now, a child. Tickle, tickle; Pickle, pickle! And off its head comes. All the family!”
Lucie shuddered as he threw two more billets into his basket, but it was impossible to be there while the wood-sawyer was at work, and not be in his sight. Thenceforth, to secure his good will, she always spoke to him first, and often gave him drink-money, which he readily received.
He was an inquisitive fellow, and sometimes when she had quite forgotten him in gazing at the prison roof and grates, and in lifting her heart up to her husband, she would come to herself to find him looking at her, with his knee on his bench and his saw stopped in its work. “But it’s not my business!” he would generally say at those times, and would briskly fall to his sawing again.
In all weathers, in the snow and frost of winter, in the bitter winds of spring, in the hot sunshine of summer, in the rains of autumn, and again in the snow and frost of winter, Lucie passed two hours of every day at this place; and every day on leaving it, she kissed the prison wall. Her husband saw her (so she learned from her father) it might be once in five or six times: it might be twice or thrice running: it might be, not for a week or a fortnight together. It was enough that he could and did see her when the chances served, and on that possibility she would have waited out the day, seven days a week.
These occupations brought her round to the December month, wherein her father walked among the terrors with a steady head. On a lightly-snowing afternoon she arrived at the usual corner. It was a day of some wild rejoicing, and a festival. She had seen the houses, as she came along, decorated with little pikes, and with little red caps stuck upon them; also, with tricoloured ribbons; also, with the standard inscription (tricoloured letters were the favourite), Republic One and Indivisible. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death!
The miserable shop of the wood-sawyer was so small, that its whole surface furnished very indifferent space for this legend. He had got somebody to scrawl it up for him, however, who had squeezed Death in with most inappropriate difficulty. On his house-top, he displayed pike and cap, as a good citizen must, and in a window he had stationed his saw inscribed as his “Little Sainte Guillotine”—for the great sharp female was by that time popularly canonised. His shop was shut and he was not there, which was a relief to Lucie, and left her quite alone.
But, he was not far off, for presently she heard a troubled movement and a shouting coming along, which filled her with fear. A moment afterwards, and a throng of people came pouring round the corner by the prison wall, in the midst of whom was the wood-sawyer hand in hand with The Vengeance. There could not be fewer than five hundred people, and they were dancing like five thousand demons. There was no other music than their own singing. They danced to the popular Revolution song, keeping a ferocious time that was like a gnashing of teeth in unison. Men and women danced together, women danced together, men danced together, as hazard had brought them together. At first, they were a mere storm of coarse red caps and coarse woollen rags; but, as they filled the place, and stopped to dance about Lucie, some ghastly apparition of a dance-figure gone raving mad arose among them. They advanced, retreated, struck at one another’s hands, clutched at one another’s heads, spun round alone, caught one another and spun round in pairs, until many of them dropped. While those were down, the rest linked hand in hand, and all spun round together: then the ring broke, and in separate rings of two and four they turned and turned until they all stopped at once, began again, struck, clutched, and tore, and then reversed the spin, and all spun round another way. Suddenly they stopped again, paused, struck out the time afresh, formed into lines the width of the public way, and, with their heads low down and their hands high up, swooped screaming off. No fight could have been half so terrible as this dance. It was so emphatically a fallen sport—a something, once innocent, delivered over to all devilry—a healthy pastime changed into a means of angering the blood, bewildering the senses, and steeling the heart. Such grace as was visible in it, made it the uglier, showing how warped and perverted all things good by nature were become. The maidenly bosom bared to this, the pretty almost-child’s head thus distracted, the delicate foot mincing in this slough of blood and dirt, were types of the disjointed time.
This was the Carmagnole. As it passed, leaving Lucie frightened and bewildered in the doorway of the wood-sawyer’s house, the feathery snow fell as quietly and lay as white and soft, as if it had never been.
“O my father!” for he stood before her when she lifted up the eyes she had momentarily darkened with her hand; “such a cruel, bad sight.”
“I know, my dear, I know. I have seen it many times. Don’t be frightened! Not one of them would harm you.”
“I am not frightened for myself, my father. But when I think of my husband, and the mercies of these people—”
“We will set him above their mercies very soon. I left him climbing to the window, and I came to tell you. There is no one here to see. You may kiss your hand towards that highest shelving roof.”
“I do so, father, and I send him my Soul with it!”
“You cannot see him, my poor dear?”
“No, father,” said Lucie, yearning and weeping as she kissed her hand, “no.”
A footstep in the snow. Madame Defarge. “I salute you, citizeness,” from the Doctor. “I salute you, citizen.” This in passing. Nothing more. Madame Defarge gone, like a shadow over the white road.
“Give me your arm, my love. Pass from here with an air of cheerfulness and courage, for his sake. That was well done;” they had left the spot; “it shall not be in vain. Charles is summoned for to-morrow.”
“For to-morrow!”
“There is no time to lose. I am well prepared, but there are precautions to be taken, that could not be taken until he was actually summoned before the Tribunal. He has not received the notice yet, but I know that he will presently be summoned for to-morrow, and removed to the Conciergerie; I have timely information. You are not afraid?”
She could scarcely answer, “I trust in you.”
“Do so, implicitly. Your suspense is nearly ended, my darling; he shall be restored to you within a few hours; I have encompassed him with every protection. I must see Lorry.”
He stopped. There was a heavy lumbering of wheels within hearing. They both knew too well what it meant. One. Two. Three. Three tumbrils faring away with their dread loads over the hushing snow.
“I must see Lorry,” the Doctor repeated, turning her another way.
The staunch old gentleman was still in his trust; had never left it. He and his books were in frequent requisition as to property confiscated and made national. What he could save for the owners, he saved. No better man living to hold fast by what Tellson’s had in keeping, and to hold his peace.
A murky red and yellow sky, and a rising mist from the Seine, denoted the approach of darkness. It was almost dark when they arrived at the Bank. The stately residence of Monseigneur was altogether blighted and deserted. Above a heap of dust and ashes in the court, ran the letters: National Property. Republic One and Indivisible. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death!
Who could that be with Mr. Lorry—the owner of the riding-coat upon the chair—who must not be seen? From whom newly arrived, did he come out, agitated and surprised, to take his favourite in his arms? To whom did he appear to repeat her faltering words, when, raising his voice and turning his head towards the door of the room from which he had issued, he said: “Removed to the Conciergerie, and summoned for to-morrow?”
CHAPTER VI. Triumph
The dread tribunal of five Judges, Public Prosecutor, and determined Jury, sat every day. Their lists went forth every evening, and were read out by the gaolers of the various prisons to their prisoners. The standard gaoler-joke was, “Come out and listen to the Evening Paper, you inside there!”
“Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay!”
So at last began the Evening Paper at La Force.
When a name was called, its owner stepped apart into a spot reserved for those who were announced as being thus fatally recorded. Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay, had reason to know the usage; he had seen hundreds pass away so.
His bloated gaoler, who wore spectacles to read with, glanced over them to assure himself that he had taken his place, and went through the list, making a similar short pause at each name. There were twenty-three names, but only twenty were responded to; for one of the prisoners so summoned had died in gaol and been forgotten, and two had already been guillotined and forgotten. The list was read, in the vaulted chamber where Darnay had seen the associated prisoners on the night of his arrival. Every one of those had perished in the massacre; every human creature he had since cared for and parted with, had died on the scaffold.
There were hurried words of farewell and kindness, but the parting was soon over. It was the incident of every day, and the society of La Force were engaged in the preparation of some games of forfeits and a little concert, for that evening. They crowded to the grates and shed tears there; but, twenty places in the projected entertainments had to be refilled, and the time was, at best, short to the lock-up hour, when the common rooms and corridors would be delivered over to the great dogs who kept watch there through the night. The prisoners were far from insensible or unfeeling; their ways arose out of the condition of the time. Similarly, though with a subtle difference, a species of fervour or intoxication, known, without doubt, to have led some persons to brave the guillotine unnecessarily, and to die by it, was not mere boastfulness, but a wild infection of the wildly shaken public mind. In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease—a terrible passing inclination to die of it. And all of us have like wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances to evoke them.
The passage to the Conciergerie was short and dark; the night in its vermin-haunted cells was long and cold. Next day, fifteen prisoners were put to the bar before Charles Darnay’s name was called. All the fifteen were condemned, and the trials of the whole occupied an hour and a half.
“Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay,” was at length arraigned.
His judges sat upon the Bench in feathered hats; but the rough red cap and tricoloured cockade was the head-dress otherwise prevailing. Looking at the Jury and the turbulent audience, he might have thought that the usual order of things was reversed, and that the felons were trying the honest men. The lowest, cruelest, and worst populace of a city, never without its quantity of low, cruel, and bad, were the directing spirits of the scene: noisily commenting, applauding, disapproving, anticipating, and precipitating the result, without a check. Of the men, the greater part were armed in various ways; of the women, some wore knives, some daggers, some ate and drank as they looked on, many knitted. Among these last, was one, with a spare piece of knitting under her arm as she worked. She was in a front row, by the side of a man whom he had never seen since his arrival at the Barrier, but whom he directly remembered as Defarge. He noticed that she once or twice whispered in his ear, and that she seemed to be his wife; but, what he most noticed in the two figures was, that although they were posted as close to himself as they could be, they never looked towards him. They seemed to be waiting for something with a dogged determination, and they looked at the Jury, but at nothing else. Under the President sat Doctor Manette, in his usual quiet dress. As well as the prisoner could see, he and Mr. Lorry were the only men there, unconnected with the Tribunal, who wore their usual clothes, and had not assumed the coarse garb of the Carmagnole.
Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay, was accused by the public prosecutor as an emigrant, whose life was forfeit to the Republic, under the decree which banished all emigrants on pain of Death. It was nothing that the decree bore date since his return to France. There he was, and there was the decree; he had been taken in France, and his head was demanded.
“Take off his head!” cried the audience. “An enemy to the Republic!”
The President rang his bell to silence those cries, and asked the prisoner whether it was not true that he had lived many years in England?
Undoubtedly it was.
Was he not an emigrant then? What did he call himself?
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.
“Early in the morning, the rouleau of gold was left at my door in a little box, with my name on the outside. From the first, I had anxiously considered what I ought to do. I decided, that day, to write privately to the Minister, stating the nature of the two cases to which I had been summoned, and the place to which I had gone: in effect, stating all the circumstances. I knew what Court influence was, and what the immunities of the Nobles were, and I expected that the matter would never be heard of; but, I wished to relieve my own mind. I had kept the matter a profound secret, even from my wife; and this, too, I resolved to state in my letter. I had no apprehension whatever of my real danger; but I was conscious that there might be danger for others, if others were compromised by possessing the knowledge that I possessed.
“I was much engaged that day, and could not complete my letter that night. I rose long before my usual time next morning to finish it. It was the last day of the year. The letter was lying before me just completed, when I was told that a lady waited, who wished to see me.
“I am growing more and more unequal to the task I have set myself. It is so cold, so dark, my senses are so benumbed, and the gloom upon me is so dreadful.
“The lady was young, engaging, and handsome, but not marked for long life. She was in great agitation. She presented herself to me as the wife of the Marquis St. Evrémonde. I connected the title by which the boy had addressed the elder brother, with the initial letter embroidered on the scarf, and had no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that I had seen that nobleman very lately.
“My memory is still accurate, but I cannot write the words of our conversation. I suspect that I am watched more closely than I was, and I know not at what times I may be watched. She had in part suspected, and in part discovered, the main facts of the cruel story, of her husband’s share in it, and my being resorted to. She did not know that the girl was dead. Her hope had been, she said in great distress, to show her, in secret, a woman’s sympathy. Her hope had been to avert the wrath of Heaven from a House that had long been hateful to the suffering many.
“She had reasons for believing that there was a young sister living, and her greatest desire was, to help that sister. I could tell her nothing but that there was such a sister; beyond that, I knew nothing. Her inducement to come to me, relying on my confidence, had been the hope that I could tell her the name and place of abode. Whereas, to this wretched hour I am ignorant of both.
“These scraps of paper fail me. One was taken from me, with a warning, yesterday. I must finish my record to-day.
“She was a good, compassionate lady, and not happy in her marriage. How could she be! The brother distrusted and disliked her, and his influence was all opposed to her; she stood in dread of him, and in dread of her husband too. When I handed her down to the door, there was a child, a pretty boy from two to three years old, in her carriage.
“‘For his sake, Doctor,’ she said, pointing to him in tears, ‘I would do all I can to make what poor amends I can. He will never prosper in his inheritance otherwise. I have a presentiment that if no other innocent atonement is made for this, it will one day be required of him. What I have left to call my own—it is little beyond the worth of a few jewels—I will make it the first charge of his life to bestow, with the compassion and lamenting of his dead mother, on this injured family, if the sister can be discovered.’
“She kissed the boy, and said, caressing him, ‘It is for thine own dear sake. Thou wilt be faithful, little Charles?’ The child answered her bravely, ‘Yes!’ I kissed her hand, and she took him in her arms, and went away caressing him. I never saw her more.
“As she had mentioned her husband’s name in the faith that I knew it, I added no mention of it to my letter. I sealed my letter, and, not trusting it out of my own hands, delivered it myself that day.
“That night, the last night of the year, towards nine o’clock, a man in a black dress rang at my gate, demanded to see me, and softly followed my servant, Ernest Defarge, a youth, up-stairs. When my servant came into the room where I sat with my wife—O my wife, beloved of my heart! My fair young English wife!—we saw the man, who was supposed to be at the gate, standing silent behind him.
“An urgent case in the Rue St. Honore, he said. It would not detain me, he had a coach in waiting.
“It brought me here, it brought me to my grave. When I was clear of the house, a black muffler was drawn tightly over my mouth from behind, and my arms were pinioned. The two brothers crossed the road from a dark corner, and identified me with a single gesture. The Marquis took from his pocket the letter I had written, showed it me, burnt it in the light of a lantern that was held, and extinguished the ashes with his foot. Not a word was spoken. I was brought here, I was brought to my living grave.
“If it had pleased God to put it in the hard heart of either of the brothers, in all these frightful years, to grant me any tidings of my dearest wife—so much as to let me know by a word whether alive or dead—I might have thought that He had not quite abandoned them. But, now I believe that the mark of the red cross is fatal to them, and that they have no part in His mercies. And them and their descendants, to the last of their race, I, Alexandre Manette, unhappy prisoner, do this last night of the year 1767, in my unbearable agony, denounce to the times when all these things shall be answered for. I denounce them to Heaven and to earth.”
A terrible sound arose when the reading of this document was done. A sound of craving and eagerness that had nothing articulate in it but blood. The narrative called up the most revengeful passions of the time, and there was not a head in the nation but must have dropped before it.
Little need, in presence of that tribunal and that auditory, to show how the Defarges had not made the paper public, with the other captured Bastille memorials borne in procession, and had kept it, biding their time. Little need to show that this detested family name had long been anathematised by Saint Antoine, and was wrought into the fatal register. The man never trod ground whose virtues and services would have sustained him in that place that day, against such denunciation.
And all the worse for the doomed man, that the denouncer was a well-known citizen, his own attached friend, the father of his wife. One of the frenzied aspirations of the populace was, for imitations of the questionable public virtues of antiquity, and for sacrifices and self-immolations on the people’s altar. Therefore when the President said (else had his own head quivered on his shoulders), that the good physician of the Republic would deserve better still of the Republic by rooting out an obnoxious family of Aristocrats, and would doubtless feel a sacred glow and joy in making his daughter a widow and her child an orphan, there was wild excitement, patriotic fervour, not a touch of human sympathy.
“Much influence around him, has that Doctor?” murmured Madame Defarge, smiling to The Vengeance. “Save him now, my Doctor, save him!”
At every juryman’s vote, there was a roar. Another and another. Roar and roar.
Unanimously voted. At heart and by descent an Aristocrat, an enemy of the Republic, a notorious oppressor of the People. Back to the Conciergerie, and Death within four-and-twenty hours!
CHAPTER XI. Dusk
The wretched wife of the innocent man thus doomed to die, fell under the sentence, as if she had been mortally stricken. But, she uttered no sound; and so strong was the voice within her, representing that it was she of all the world who must uphold him in his misery and not augment it, that it quickly raised her, even from that shock.
The Judges having to take part in a public demonstration out of doors, the Tribunal adjourned. The quick noise and movement of the court’s emptying itself by many passages had not ceased, when Lucie stood stretching out her arms towards her husband, with nothing in her face but love and consolation.
“If I might touch him! If I might embrace him once! O, good citizens, if you would have so much compassion for us!”
There was but a gaoler left, along with two of the four men who had taken him last night, and Barsad. The people had all poured out to the show in the streets. Barsad proposed to the rest, “Let her embrace him then; it is but a moment.” It was silently acquiesced in, and they passed her over the seats in the hall to a raised place, where he, by leaning over the dock, could fold her in his arms.
“Farewell, dear darling of my soul. My parting blessing on my love. We shall meet again, where the weary are at rest!”
They were her husband’s words, as he held her to his bosom.
“I can bear it, dear Charles. I am supported from above: don’t suffer for me. A parting blessing for our child.”
“I send it to her by you. I kiss her by you. I say farewell to her by you.”
“My husband. No! A moment!” He was tearing himself apart from her. “We shall not be separated long. I feel that this will break my heart by-and-bye; but I will do my duty while I can, and when I leave her, God will raise up friends for her, as He did for me.”
Her father had followed her, and would have fallen on his knees to both of them, but that Darnay put out a hand and seized him, crying:
“No, no! What have you done, what have you done, that you should kneel to us! We know now, what a struggle you made of old. We know, now what you underwent when you suspected my descent, and when you knew it. We know now, the natural antipathy you strove against, and conquered, for her dear sake. We thank you with all our hearts, and all our love and duty. Heaven be with you!”
Her father’s only answer was to draw his hands through his white hair, and wring them with a shriek of anguish.
“It could not be otherwise,” said the prisoner. “All things have worked together as they have fallen out. It was the always-vain endeavour to discharge my poor mother’s trust that first brought my fatal presence near you. Good could never come of such evil, a happier end was not in nature to so unhappy a beginning. Be comforted, and forgive me. Heaven bless you!”
As he was drawn away, his wife released him, and stood looking after him with her hands touching one another in the attitude of prayer, and with a radiant look upon her face, in which there was even a comforting smile. As he went out at the prisoners’ door, she turned, laid her head lovingly on her father’s breast, tried to speak to him, and fell at his feet.
Then, issuing from the obscure corner from which he had never moved, Sydney Carton came and took her up. Only her father and Mr. Lorry were with her. His arm trembled as it raised her, and supported her head. Yet, there was an air about him that was not all of pity—that had a flush of pride in it.
“Shall I take her to a coach? I shall never feel her weight.”
He carried her lightly to the door, and laid her tenderly down in a coach. Her father and their old friend got into it, and he took his seat beside the driver.
When they arrived at the gateway where he had paused in the dark not many hours before, to picture to himself on which of the rough stones of the street her feet had trodden, he lifted her again, and carried her up the staircase to their rooms. There, he laid her down on a couch, where her child and Miss Pross wept over her.
“Don’t recall her to herself,” he said, softly, to the latter, “she is better so. Don’t revive her to consciousness, while she only faints.”
“Oh, Carton, Carton, dear Carton!” cried little Lucie, springing up and throwing her arms passionately round him, in a burst of grief. “Now that you have come, I think you will do something to help mamma, something to save papa! O, look at her, dear Carton! Can you, of all the people who love her, bear to see her so?”
He bent over the child, and laid her blooming cheek against his face. He put her gently from him, and looked at her unconscious mother.
“Before I go,” he said, and paused—“I may kiss her?”
It was remembered afterwards that when he bent down and touched her face with his lips, he murmured some words. The child, who was nearest to him, told them afterwards, and told her grandchildren when she was a handsome old lady, that she heard him say, “A life you love.”
When he had gone out into the next room, he turned suddenly on Mr. Lorry and her father, who were following, and said to the latter:
“You had great influence but yesterday, Doctor Manette; let it at least be tried. These judges, and all the men in power, are very friendly to you, and very recognisant of your services; are they not?”
“Nothing connected with Charles was concealed from me. I had the strongest assurances that I should save him; and I did.” He returned the answer in great trouble, and very slowly.
“Try them again. The hours between this and to-morrow afternoon are few and short, but try.”
“I intend to try. I will not rest a moment.”
“That’s well. I have known such energy as yours do great things before now—though never,” he added, with a smile and a sigh together, “such great things as this. But try! Of little worth as life is when we misuse it, it is worth that effort. It would cost nothing to lay down if it were not.”
“I will go,” said Doctor Manette, “to the Prosecutor and the President straight, and I will go to others whom it is better not to name. I will write too, and—But stay! There is a Celebration in the streets, and no one will be accessible until dark.”
“That’s true. Well! It is a forlorn hope at the best, and not much the forlorner for being delayed till dark. I should like to know how you speed; though, mind! I expect nothing! When are you likely to have seen these dread powers, Doctor Manette?”
“Immediately after dark, I should hope. Within an hour or two from this.”
“It will be dark soon after four. Let us stretch the hour or two. If I go to Mr. Lorry’s at nine, shall I hear what you have done, either from our friend or from yourself?”
“Yes.”
“May you prosper!”
Mr. Lorry followed Sydney to the outer door, and, touching him on the shoulder as he was going away, caused him to turn.
“I have no hope,” said Mr. Lorry, in a low and sorrowful whisper.
“Nor have I.”
“If any one of these men, or all of these men, were disposed to spare him—which is a large supposition; for what is his life, or any man’s to them!—I doubt if they durst spare him after the demonstration in the court.”
“And so do I. I heard the fall of the axe in that sound.”
Mr. Lorry leaned his arm upon the door-post, and bowed his face upon it.
“Don’t despond,” said Carton, very gently; “don’t grieve. I encouraged Doctor Manette in this idea, because I felt that it might one day be consolatory to her. Otherwise, she might think ‘his life was wantonly thrown away or wasted,’ and that might trouble her.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” returned Mr. Lorry, drying his eyes, “you are right. But he will perish; there is no real hope.”
“Yes. He will perish: there is no real hope,” echoed Carton.
And walked with a settled step, down-stairs.
CHAPTER XII. Darkness
Sydney Carton paused in the street, not quite decided where to go. “At Tellson’s banking-house at nine,” he said, with a musing face. “Shall I do well, in the mean time, to show myself? I think so. It is best that these people should know there is such a man as I here; it is a sound precaution, and may be a necessary preparation. But care, care, care! Let me think it out!”
Checking his steps which had begun to tend towards an object, he took a turn or two in the already darkening street, and traced the thought in his mind to its possible consequences. His first impression was confirmed. “It is best,” he said, finally resolved, “that these people should know there is such a man as I here.” And he turned his face towards Saint Antoine.
Defarge had described himself, that day, as the keeper of a wine-shop in the Saint Antoine suburb. It was not difficult for one who knew the city well, to find his house without asking any question. Having ascertained its situation, Carton came out of those closer streets again, and dined at a place of refreshment and fell sound asleep after dinner. For the first time in many years, he had no strong drink. Since last night he had taken nothing but a little light thin wine, and last night he had dropped the brandy slowly down on Mr. Lorry’s hearth like a man who had done with it.
It was as late as seven o’clock when he awoke refreshed, and went out into the streets again. As he passed along towards Saint Antoine, he stopped at a shop-window where there was a mirror, and slightly altered the disordered arrangement of his loose cravat, and his coat-collar, and his wild hair. This done, he went on direct to Defarge’s, and went in.
There happened to be no customer in the shop but Jacques Three, of the restless fingers and the croaking voice. This man, whom he had seen upon the Jury, stood drinking at the little counter, in conversation with the Defarges, man and wife. The Vengeance assisted in the conversation, like a regular member of the establishment.
As Carton walked in, took his seat and asked (in very indifferent French) for a small measure of wine, Madame Defarge cast a careless glance at him, and then a keener, and then a keener, and then advanced to him herself, and asked him what it was he had ordered.
He repeated what he had already said.
“English?” asked Madame Defarge, inquisitively raising her dark eyebrows.
After looking at her, as if the sound of even a single French word were slow to express itself to him, he answered, in his former strong foreign accent. “Yes, madame, yes. I am English!”
Madame Defarge returned to her counter to get the wine, and, as he took up a Jacobin journal and feigned to pore over it puzzling out its meaning, he heard her say, “I swear to you, like Evrémonde!”
Defarge brought him the wine, and gave him Good Evening.
“How?”
“Good evening.”
“Oh! Good evening, citizen,” filling his glass. “Ah! and good wine. I drink to the Republic.”
Defarge went back to the counter, and said, “Certainly, a little like.” Madame sternly retorted, “I tell you a good deal like.” Jacques Three pacifically remarked, “He is so much in your mind, see you, madame.” The amiable Vengeance added, with a laugh, “Yes, my faith! And you are looking forward with so much pleasure to seeing him once more to-morrow!”
Carton followed the lines and words of his paper, with a slow forefinger, and with a studious and absorbed face. They were all leaning their arms on the counter close together, speaking low. After a silence of a few moments, during which they all looked towards him without disturbing his outward attention from the Jacobin editor, they resumed their conversation.
“It is true what madame says,” observed Jacques Three. “Why stop? There is great force in that. Why stop?”
“Well, well,” reasoned Defarge, “but one must stop somewhere. After all, the question is still where?”
“At extermination,” said madame.
“Magnificent!” croaked Jacques Three. The Vengeance, also, highly approved.
“Extermination is good doctrine, my wife,” said Defarge, rather troubled; “in general, I say nothing against it. But this Doctor has suffered much; you have seen him to-day; you have observed his face when the paper was read.”
“I have observed his face!” repeated madame, contemptuously and angrily. “Yes. I have observed his face. I have observed his face to be not the face of a true friend of the Republic. Let him take care of his face!”
“And you have observed, my wife,” said Defarge, in a deprecatory manner, “the anguish of his daughter, which must be a dreadful anguish to him!”
“I have observed his daughter,” repeated madame; “yes, I have observed his daughter, more times than one. I have observed her to-day, and I have observed her other days. I have observed her in the court, and I have observed her in the street by the prison. Let me but lift my finger—!” She seemed to raise it (the listener’s eyes were always on his paper), and to let it fall with a rattle on the ledge before her, as if the axe had dropped.
“The citizeness is superb!” croaked the Juryman.
“She is an Angel!” said The Vengeance, and embraced her.
“As to thee,” pursued madame, implacably, addressing her husband, “if it depended on thee—which, happily, it does not—thou wouldst rescue this man even now.”
“No!” protested Defarge. “Not if to lift this glass would do it! But I would leave the matter there. I say, stop there.”
“See you then, Jacques,” said Madame Defarge, wrathfully; “and see you, too, my little Vengeance; see you both! Listen! For other crimes as tyrants and oppressors, I have this race a long time on my register, doomed to destruction and extermination. Ask my husband, is that so.”
“It is so,” assented Defarge, without being asked.
“In the beginning of the great days, when the Bastille falls, he finds this paper of to-day, and he brings it home, and in the middle of the night when this place is clear and shut, we read it, here on this spot, by the light of this lamp. Ask him, is that so.”
“It is so,” assented Defarge.
“That night, I tell him, when the paper is read through, and the lamp is burnt out, and the day is gleaming in above those shutters and between those iron bars, that I have now a secret to communicate. Ask him, is that so.”
“It is so,” assented Defarge again.
“I communicate to him that secret. I smite this bosom with these two hands as I smite it now, and I tell him, ‘Defarge, I was brought up among the fishermen of the sea-shore, and that peasant family so injured by the two Evrémonde brothers, as that Bastille paper describes, is my family. Defarge, that sister of the mortally wounded boy upon the ground was my sister, that husband was my sister’s husband, that unborn child was their child, that brother was my brother, that father was my father, those dead are my dead, and that summons to answer for those things descends to 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 deadly nature of her wrath—the listener could feel how white she was, without seeing her—and both highly commended it. Defarge, a weak minority, interposed a few words for the memory of the compassionate wife of the Marquis; but only elicited from his own wife a repetition of her last reply. “Tell the Wind and the Fire where to stop; not me!”
Customers entered, and the group was broken up. The English customer paid for what he had had, perplexedly counted his change, and asked, as a stranger, to be directed towards the National Palace. Madame Defarge took him to the door, and put her arm on his, in pointing out the road. The English customer was not without his reflections then, that it might be a good deed to seize that arm, lift it, and strike under it sharp and deep.
But, he went his way, and was soon swallowed up in the shadow of the prison wall. At the appointed hour, he emerged from it to present himself in Mr. Lorry’s room again, where he found the old gentleman walking to and fro in restless anxiety. He said he had been with Lucie until just now, and had only left her for a few minutes, to come and keep his appointment. Her father had not been seen, since he quitted the banking-house towards four o’clock. She had some faint hopes that his mediation might save Charles, but they were very slight. He had been more than five 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 arranged that he should go back to her, and come to the banking-house again at midnight. In the meanwhile, Carton would wait alone by the fire for the Doctor.
He waited and waited, and the clock struck twelve; but Doctor Manette did not come back. Mr. Lorry returned, and found no tidings of him, and brought none. Where could he be?
They were discussing this question, and were almost building up some weak structure of hope on his prolonged absence, when they heard him on the stairs. The instant he entered the room, it was plain that all was lost.
Whether he had really been to any one, or whether he had been all that time traversing the streets, was never known. As he stood staring at them, they asked him no question, for his face told them 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 helpless look straying all around, he took his coat off, and let it drop on the floor.
“Where is my bench? I have been looking everywhere for my bench, 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 me get to work. Give me my work.”
Receiving no answer, he tore his hair, and beat his feet upon the ground, like a distracted child.
“Don’t torture a poor forlorn wretch,” he implored them, with a dreadful cry; “but give me my work! What is to become of us, if those shoes are not done to-night?”
Lost, utterly lost!
It was so clearly beyond hope to reason with him, or try to restore him, that—as if by agreement—they each put a hand upon his shoulder, and soothed him to sit down before the fire, with a promise that he should have his work presently. He sank into the chair, and brooded over the embers, and shed tears. As if all that had happened since the garret time were a momentary fancy, or a dream, Mr. Lorry saw him shrink into the exact figure that Defarge had had in keeping.
Affected, and impressed with terror as they both were, by this spectacle of ruin, it was not a time to yield to such emotions. His lonely daughter, bereft of her final hope and reliance, appealed to them both too strongly. Again, as if by agreement, they looked at one another with one meaning in their faces. Carton was the first to speak:
“The last chance is gone: it was not much. Yes; he had better be taken to her. But, before you go, will you, for a moment, steadily attend to me? Don’t ask me why I make the stipulations I am going to make, and exact the promise I am going to exact; I have a reason—a good one.”
“I do not doubt it,” answered Mr. Lorry. “Say on.”
The figure in the chair between them, was all the time monotonously rocking itself to and fro, and moaning. They spoke in such a tone as they would have used if they had been watching by a sick-bed in the night.
Carton stooped to pick up the coat, which lay almost entangling his feet. As he did so, a small case in which the Doctor was accustomed to carry the lists of his day’s duties, fell lightly on the floor. Carton took it up, and there was a folded paper in it. “We should look at this!” he said. Mr. Lorry nodded his consent. He opened 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 his hand in his coat, and took another paper from it, “that is the certificate which enables me to pass out of this city. Look at it. You see—Sydney Carton, an Englishman?”
Mr. Lorry held it open in his hand, gazing in his earnest face.
“Keep it for me until to-morrow. I shall see him to-morrow, you remember, 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 that Doctor Manette has carried about him. It is a similar certificate, enabling him and his daughter and her child, at any time, to pass the barrier and the frontier! You see?”
“Yes!”
“Perhaps he obtained it as his last and utmost precaution against evil, yesterday. When is it dated? But no matter; don’t stay to 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 could have such a paper. It is good, until recalled. But it may be soon recalled, and, I have reason to think, will be.”
“They are not in danger?”
“They are in great danger. They are in danger of denunciation by Madame Defarge. I know it from her own lips. I have overheard words of that woman’s, to-night, which have presented their danger 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 the Defarges, and has been rehearsed by Madame Defarge as to his having seen Her”—he never mentioned Lucie’s name—“making signs and signals to prisoners. It is easy to foresee that the pretence will be the common one, a prison plot, and that it will involve her life—and perhaps her child’s—and perhaps her father’s—for both have been seen with her at that place. Don’t look 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 could depend on no better man. This new denunciation will certainly not take place until after to-morrow; probably not until two or three days afterwards; more probably a week afterwards. You know it is a capital crime, to mourn for, or sympathise with, a victim of the Guillotine. She and her father would unquestionably be guilty of this crime, and this woman (the inveteracy of whose pursuit cannot be described) would wait to add that strength to her case, and 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’s chair, “even of this distress.”
“You have money, and can buy the means of travelling to the seacoast as quickly as the journey can be made. Your preparations have been completed for some days, to return to England. Early to-morrow have your horses ready, so that they may be in starting trim at two o’clock in the afternoon.”
“It shall be done!”
His manner was so fervent and inspiring, that Mr. Lorry caught the flame, and was as quick as youth.
“You are a noble heart. Did I say we could depend upon no better man? Tell her, to-night, what you know of her danger as involving her child and her father. Dwell upon that, for she would lay her own fair head beside her husband’s cheerfully.” He faltered for an instant; then went on as before. “For the sake of her child 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’s last arrangement. Tell her that more depends upon it than she dare believe, or hope. You think that her father, even in this sad state, will submit himself to her; do you not?”
“I am sure of it.”
“I thought so. Quietly and steadily have all these arrangements made in the courtyard here, even to the taking of your own seat in the carriage. The moment I come to you, take me in, and drive away.”
“I understand that I wait for you under all circumstances?”
“You have my certificate in your hand with the rest, you know, and will reserve my place. Wait for nothing but to have my place occupied, and then for England!”
“Why, then,” said Mr. Lorry, grasping his eager but so firm and steady hand, “it does not all depend on one old man, but I shall have a young and ardent man at my side.”
“By the help of Heaven you shall! Promise me solemnly that nothing will influence you to alter the course on which we now stand pledged to one another.”
“Nothing, Carton.”
“Remember these words to-morrow: change the course, or delay in it—for any reason—and no life can possibly be saved, and many lives 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 though he even put the old man’s hand to his lips, he did not part from him then. He helped him so far to arouse the rocking figure before the dying embers, as to get a cloak and hat put upon it, and to tempt it forth to find where the bench and work were hidden that it still moaningly besought to have. He walked on the other side of it and protected it to the courtyard of the house where the afflicted heart—so happy in the memorable time when he had revealed his own desolate heart to it—outwatched the awful night. He entered the courtyard and remained there for a few moments alone, looking up at the light in the window of her room. Before he went away, he breathed a blessing towards it, and a Farewell.
CHAPTER XIII. Fifty-two
In the black prison of the Conciergerie, the doomed of the day awaited their fate. They were in number as the weeks of the year. Fifty-two were to roll that afternoon on the life-tide of the city to the boundless everlasting sea. Before their cells were quit of them, new occupants were appointed; before their blood ran into the blood spilled yesterday, the blood that was to mingle with theirs to-morrow was already set apart.
Two score and twelve were told off. From the farmer-general of seventy, whose riches could not buy his life, to the seamstress of twenty, whose poverty and obscurity could not save her. Physical diseases, engendered in the vices and neglects of men, will seize on victims of all degrees; and the frightful moral disorder, born of unspeakable suffering, intolerable oppression, and heartless indifference, smote equally without distinction.
Charles Darnay, alone in a cell, had sustained himself with no flattering delusion since he came to it from the Tribunal. In every line of the narrative he had heard, he had heard his condemnation. He had fully comprehended that no personal influence could possibly save him, that he was virtually sentenced by the millions, and that units could avail him nothing.
Nevertheless, it was not easy, with the face of his beloved wife fresh before him, to compose his mind to what it must bear. His hold on life was strong, and it was very, very hard, to loosen; by gradual efforts and degrees unclosed a little here, it clenched the tighter there; and when he brought his strength to bear on that hand and it yielded, this was closed again. There was a hurry, too, in all his thoughts, a turbulent and heated working of his heart, that contended against resignation. If, for a moment, he did feel resigned, then his wife and child who had to live after him, seemed to protest and to make it a selfish thing.
But, all this was at first. Before long, the consideration that there was no disgrace in the fate he must meet, and that numbers went the same road wrongfully, and trod it firmly every day, sprang up to stimulate him. Next followed the thought that much of the future peace of mind enjoyable by the dear ones, depended on his quiet fortitude. So, by degrees he calmed into the better state, when he could raise his thoughts much higher, and draw comfort down.
Before it had set in dark on the night of his condemnation, he had travelled thus far on his last way. Being allowed to purchase the means of writing, and a light, he sat down to write until such time as the prison lamps should be extinguished.
He wrote a long letter to Lucie, showing her that he had known nothing of her father’s imprisonment, until he had heard of it from herself, and that he had been as ignorant as she of his father’s and uncle’s responsibility for that misery, until the paper had been read. He had already explained to her that his concealment from herself of the name he had relinquished, was the one condition—fully intelligible now—that her father had attached to their betrothal, and was the one promise he had still exacted on the morning of their marriage. He entreated her, for her father’s sake, never to seek to know whether her father had become oblivious of the existence of the paper, or had had it recalled to him (for the moment, or for good), by the story of the Tower, on that old Sunday under the dear old plane-tree in the garden. If he had preserved any definite remembrance of it, there could be no doubt that he had supposed it destroyed with the Bastille, when he had found no mention of it among the relics of prisoners which the populace had discovered there, and which had been described to all the world. He besought her—though he added that he knew it was needless—to console her father, by impressing him through every tender means she could think of, with the truth that he had done nothing for which he could justly reproach himself, but had uniformly forgotten himself for their joint sakes. Next to her preservation of his own last grateful love and blessing, and her overcoming of her sorrow, to devote herself to their dear child, he adjured her, as they would meet in Heaven, to comfort her father.
To her father himself, he wrote in the same strain; but, he told her father that he expressly confided his wife and child to his care. And he told him this, very strongly, with the hope of rousing him from any despondency or dangerous retrospect towards which he foresaw he might be tending.
To Mr. Lorry, he commended them all, and explained his worldly affairs. That done, with many added sentences of grateful friendship and warm attachment, all was done. He never thought of Carton. His mind was so full of the others, that he never once thought of him.
He had time to finish these letters before the lights were put out. When he lay down on his straw bed, he thought he had done with this world.
But, it beckoned him back in his sleep, and showed itself in shining forms. Free and happy, back in the old house in Soho (though it had nothing in it like the real house), unaccountably released and light of heart, he was with Lucie again, and she told him it was all a dream, and he had never gone away. A pause of forgetfulness, and then he had even suffered, and had come back to her, dead and at peace, and yet there was no difference in him. Another pause of oblivion, and he awoke in the sombre morning, unconscious where he was or what had happened, until it flashed upon his mind, “this is the day of my death!”
Thus, had he come through the hours, to the day when the fifty-two heads were to fall. And now, while he was composed, and hoped that he could meet the end with quiet heroism, a new action began in his waking thoughts, which was very difficult to master.
He had never seen the instrument that was to terminate his life. How high it was from the ground, how many steps it had, where he would be stood, how he would be touched, whether the touching hands would be dyed red, which way his face would be turned, whether he would be the first, or might be the last: these and many similar questions, in nowise directed by his will, obtruded themselves over and over again, countless times. Neither were they connected with fear: he was conscious of no fear. Rather, they originated in a strange besetting desire to know what to do when the time came; a desire gigantically disproportionate to the few swift moments to which it referred; a wondering that was more like the wondering of some other spirit within his, than his own.
The hours went on as he walked to and fro, and the clocks struck the numbers he would never hear again. Nine gone for ever, ten gone for ever, eleven gone for ever, twelve coming on to pass away. After a hard contest with that eccentric action of thought which had last perplexed him, he had got the better of it. He walked up and down, softly repeating their names to himself. The worst of the strife was over. He could walk up and down, free from distracting fancies, praying for himself and for them.
Twelve gone for ever.
He had been apprised that the final hour was Three, and he knew he would be summoned some time earlier, inasmuch as the tumbrils jolted heavily and slowly through the streets. Therefore, he resolved to keep Two before his mind, as the hour, and so to strengthen himself in the interval that he might be able, after that time, to strengthen others.
Walking regularly to and fro with his arms folded on his breast, a very different man from the prisoner, who had walked to and fro at La Force, he heard One struck away from him, without surprise. The hour had measured like most other hours. Devoutly thankful to Heaven for his recovered self-possession, he thought, “There is but another now,” and turned to walk again.
Footsteps in the stone passage outside the door. He stopped.
The key was put in the lock, and turned. Before the door was opened, or as it opened, a man said in a low voice, in English: “He has never seen me here; I have kept out of his way. Go you in alone; I wait near. Lose no time!”
The door was quickly opened and closed, and there stood before him face to face, quiet, intent upon him, with the light of a smile on his features, and a cautionary finger on his lip, Sydney Carton.
There was something so bright and remarkable in his look, that, for the first moment, the prisoner misdoubted him to be an apparition of his own imagining. But, he spoke, and it was his voice; he took the prisoner’s hand, and it was his real grasp.
“Of all the people upon earth, you least expected to see me?” he said.
“I could not believe it to be you. I can scarcely believe it now. You are not”—the apprehension came suddenly into his mind—“a prisoner?”
“No. I am accidentally possessed of a power over one of the keepers here, and in virtue of it I stand before you. I come from her—your wife, dear Darnay.”
The prisoner wrung his hand.
“I bring you a request from her.”
“What is it?”
“A most earnest, pressing, and emphatic entreaty, addressed to you in the most pathetic tones of the voice so dear to you, that you well remember.”
The prisoner turned his face partly aside.
“You have no time to ask me why I bring it, or what it means; I have no time to tell you. You must comply with it—take off those boots you wear, and draw on these of mine.”
There was a chair against the wall of the cell, behind the prisoner. Carton, pressing forward, had already, with the speed of lightning, got him down into it, and stood over him, barefoot.
“Draw on these boots of mine. Put your hands to them; put your will to them. Quick!”
“Carton, there is no escaping from this place; it never can be done. You will only die with me. It is madness.”
“It would be madness if I asked you to escape; but do I? When I ask you to pass out at that door, tell me it is madness and remain here. Change that cravat for this of mine, that coat for this of mine. While you do it, let me take this ribbon from your hair, and shake out your hair like this of mine!”
With wonderful quickness, and with a strength both of will and action, that appeared quite supernatural, he forced all these changes upon him. The prisoner was like a young child in his hands.
“Carton! Dear Carton! It is madness. It cannot be accomplished, it never can be done, it has been attempted, and has always failed. I implore you not to add your death to the bitterness of mine.”
“Do I ask you, my dear Darnay, to pass the door? When I ask that, refuse. There are pen and ink and paper on this table. Is your hand steady enough to write?”
“It was when you came in.”
“Steady it again, and write what I shall dictate. Quick, friend, quick!”
Pressing his hand to his bewildered head, Darnay sat down at the table. Carton, with his right hand in his breast, stood close beside him.
“Write exactly as I speak.”
“To whom do I address it?”
“To no one.” Carton still had his hand in his breast.
“Do I date it?”
“No.”
The prisoner looked up, at each question. Carton, standing over him with his hand in his breast, looked down.
“‘If you remember,’” said Carton, dictating, “‘the words that passed between us, long ago, you will readily comprehend this when you see it. You do remember them, I know. It is not in your nature to forget them.’”
He was drawing his hand from his breast; the prisoner chancing to look up in his hurried wonder as he wrote, the hand stopped, closing upon something.
“Have you written ‘forget them’?” Carton asked.
“I have. Is that a weapon in your hand?”
“No; I am not armed.”
“What is it in your hand?”
“You shall know directly. Write on; there are but a few words more.” He dictated again. “‘I am thankful that the time has come, when I can prove them. That I do so is no subject for regret or grief.’” As he said these words with his eyes fixed on the writer, his hand slowly and softly moved down close to the writer’s face.
The pen dropped from Darnay’s fingers on the table, and he looked about him vacantly.
“What vapour is that?” he asked.
“Vapour?”
“Something that crossed me?”
“I am conscious of nothing; there can be nothing here. Take up the pen and finish. Hurry, hurry!”
As if his memory were impaired, or his faculties disordered, the prisoner made an effort to rally his attention. As he looked at Carton with clouded eyes and with an altered manner of breathing, Carton—his hand again in his breast—looked steadily at him.
“Hurry, hurry!”
The prisoner bent over the paper, once more.
“‘If it had been otherwise;’” Carton’s hand was again watchfully and softly stealing down; “‘I never should have used the longer opportunity. If it had been otherwise;’” the hand was at the prisoner’s face; “‘I should but have had so much the more to answer for. If it had been otherwise—’” Carton looked at the pen and saw it was trailing off into unintelligible signs.
Carton’s hand moved back to his breast no more. The prisoner sprang up with a reproachful look, but Carton’s hand was close and firm at his nostrils, and Carton’s left arm caught him round the waist. For a few seconds he faintly struggled with the man who had come to lay down his life for him; but, within a minute or so, he was stretched insensible on the ground.
Quickly, but with hands as true to the purpose as his heart was, Carton dressed himself in the clothes the prisoner had laid aside, combed back his hair, and tied it with the ribbon the prisoner had worn. Then, he softly called, “Enter there! Come in!” and the Spy presented himself.
“You see?” said Carton, looking up, as he kneeled on one knee beside the insensible figure, putting the paper in the breast: “is your hazard very great?”
“Mr. Carton,” the Spy answered, with a timid snap of his fingers, “my hazard is not that, in the thick of business here, if you are true to the whole of your bargain.”
“Don’t fear me. I will be true to the death.”
“You must be, Mr. Carton, if the tale of fifty-two is to be right. Being made right by you in that dress, I shall have no fear.”
“Have no fear! I shall soon be out of the way of harming you, and the rest will soon be far from here, please God! Now, get assistance and take me to the coach.”
“You?” said the Spy nervously.
“Him, man, with whom I have exchanged. You go out at the gate by which you brought me in?”
“Of course.”
“I was weak and faint when you brought me in, and I am fainter now you take me out. The parting interview has overpowered me. Such a thing has happened here, often, and too often. Your life is in your own hands. Quick! Call assistance!”
“You swear not to betray me?” said the trembling Spy, as he paused for a last moment.
“Man, man!” returned Carton, stamping his foot; “have I sworn by no solemn vow already, to go through with this, that you waste the precious moments now? Take him yourself to the courtyard you know of, place him yourself in the carriage, show him yourself to Mr. Lorry, tell him yourself to give him no restorative but air, and to remember my words of last night, and his promise of last night, and drive away!”
The Spy withdrew, and Carton seated himself at the table, resting his forehead on his hands. The Spy returned immediately, with two men.
“How, then?” said one of them, contemplating the fallen figure. “So afflicted to find that his friend has drawn a prize in the lottery of Sainte Guillotine?”
“A good patriot,” said the other, “could hardly have been more afflicted if the Aristocrat had drawn a blank.”
They raised the unconscious figure, placed it on a litter they had brought to the door, and bent to carry it away.
“The time is short, Evrémonde,” said the Spy, in a warning voice.
“I know it well,” answered Carton. “Be careful of my friend, I entreat you, and leave me.”
“Come, then, my children,” said Barsad. “Lift him, and come away!”
The door closed, and Carton was left alone. Straining his powers of listening to the utmost, he listened for any sound that might denote suspicion or alarm. There was none. Keys turned, doors clashed, footsteps passed along distant passages: no cry was raised, or hurry made, that seemed unusual. Breathing more freely in a little while, he sat down at the table, and listened again until the clock struck Two.
Sounds that he was not afraid of, for he divined their meaning, then began to be audible. Several doors were opened in succession, and finally his own. A gaoler, with a list in his hand, looked in, merely saying, “Follow me, Evrémonde!” and he followed into a large dark room, at a distance. It was a dark winter day, and what with the shadows within, and what with the shadows without, he could but dimly discern the others who were brought there to have their arms bound. Some were standing; some seated. Some were lamenting, and in restless motion; but, these were few. The great majority were silent and still, looking fixedly at the ground.
As he stood by the wall in a dim corner, while some of the fifty-two were brought in after him, one man stopped in passing, to embrace him, as having a knowledge of him. It thrilled him with a great dread of discovery; but the man went on. A very few moments after that, a young woman, with a slight girlish form, a sweet spare face in which there was no vestige of colour, and large widely opened patient eyes, rose from the seat where he had observed her sitting, and came to speak to him.
“Citizen Evrémonde,” she said, touching him with her cold hand. “I am a poor little seamstress, who was with you in La Force.”
He murmured for answer: “True. I forget what you were accused of?”
“Plots. Though the just Heaven knows that I am innocent of any. Is it likely? Who would think of plotting with a poor little weak creature like me?”
The forlorn smile with which she said it, so touched him, that tears started from his eyes.
“I am not afraid to die, Citizen Evrémonde, but I have done nothing. I am not unwilling to die, if the Republic which is to do so much good to us poor, will profit by my death; but I do not know how that can be, Citizen Evrémonde. Such a poor weak little creature!”
As the last thing on earth that his heart was to warm and soften to, it warmed and softened to this pitiable girl.
“I heard you were released, Citizen Evrémonde. I hoped it was true?”
“It was. But, I was again taken and condemned.”
“If I may ride with you, Citizen Evrémonde, will you let me hold your hand? I am not afraid, but I am little and weak, and it will give me more courage.”
As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sudden doubt in them, and then astonishment. He pressed the work-worn, hunger-worn young fingers, and touched his lips.
“Are you dying for him?” she whispered.
“And his wife and child. Hush! Yes.”
“O you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?”
“Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last.”
The same shadows that are falling on the prison, are falling, in that same hour of the early afternoon, on the Barrier with the crowd about it, when a coach going out of Paris drives up to be examined.
“Who goes here? Whom have we within? Papers!”
The papers are handed out, and read.
“Alexandre Manette. Physician. French. Which is he?”
This is he; this helpless, inarticulately murmuring, wandering old man pointed out.
“Apparently the Citizen-Doctor is not in his right mind? The Revolution-fever will have been too much for him?”
Greatly too much for him.
“Hah! Many suffer with it. Lucie. His daughter. French. Which is she?”
This is she.
“Apparently it must be. Lucie, the wife of Evrémonde; is it not?”
It is.
“Hah! Evrémonde has an assignation elsewhere. Lucie, her child. English. This is she?”
She and no other.
“Kiss me, child of Evrémonde. Now, thou hast kissed a good Republican; something new in thy family; remember it! Sydney Carton. Advocate. English. Which is he?”
He lies here, in this corner of the carriage. He, too, is pointed out.
“Apparently the English advocate is in a swoon?”
It is hoped he will recover in the fresher air. It is represented that he is not in strong health, and has separated sadly from a friend who is under the displeasure of the Republic.
“Is that all? It is not a great deal, that! Many are under the displeasure of the Republic, and must look out at the little window. Jarvis Lorry. Banker. English. Which is he?”
“I am he. Necessarily, being the last.”
It is Jarvis Lorry who has replied to all the previous questions. It is Jarvis Lorry who has alighted and stands with his hand on the coach door, replying to a group of officials. They leisurely walk round the carriage and leisurely mount the box, to look at what little luggage it carries on the roof; the country-people hanging about, press nearer to the coach doors and greedily stare in; a little child, carried by its mother, has its short arm held out for it, that it may touch the wife of an aristocrat who has gone to the Guillotine.
“Behold your papers, Jarvis Lorry, countersigned.”
“One can depart, citizen?”
“One can depart. Forward, my postilions! A good journey!”
“I salute you, citizens.—And the first danger passed!”
These are again the words of Jarvis Lorry, as he clasps his hands, and looks upward. There is terror in the carriage, there is weeping, there is the heavy breathing of the insensible traveller.
“Are we not going too slowly? Can they not be induced to go faster?” asks Lucie, clinging to the old man.
“It would seem like flight, my darling. I must not urge them too much; it would rouse suspicion.”
“Look back, look back, and see if we are pursued!”
“The road is clear, my dearest. So far, we are not pursued.”
Houses in twos and threes pass by us, solitary farms, ruinous buildings, dye-works, tanneries, and the like, open country, avenues of leafless trees. The hard uneven pavement is under us, the soft deep mud is on either side. Sometimes, we strike into the skirting mud, to avoid the stones that clatter us and shake us; sometimes, we stick in ruts and sloughs there. The agony of our impatience is then so great, that in our wild alarm and hurry we are for getting out and running—hiding—doing anything but stopping.
Out of the open country, in again among ruinous buildings, solitary farms, dye-works, tanneries, and the like, cottages in twos and threes, avenues of leafless trees. Have these men deceived us, and taken us back by another road? Is not this the same place twice over? Thank Heaven, no. A village. Look back, look back, and see if we are pursued! Hush! the posting-house.
Leisurely, our four horses are taken out; leisurely, the coach stands in the little street, bereft of horses, and with no likelihood upon it of ever moving again; leisurely, the new horses come into visible existence, one by one; leisurely, the new postilions follow, sucking and plaiting the lashes of their whips; leisurely, the old postilions count their money, make wrong additions, and arrive at dissatisfied results. All the time, our overfraught hearts are beating at a rate that would far outstrip the fastest gallop of the fastest horses ever foaled.
At length the new postilions are in their saddles, and the old are left behind. We are through the village, up the hill, and down the hill, and on the low watery grounds. Suddenly, the postilions exchange speech with animated gesticulation, and the horses are pulled up, almost on their haunches. We are pursued?
“Ho! Within the carriage there. Speak then!”
“What is it?” asks Mr. Lorry, looking out at window.
“How many did they say?”
“I do not understand you.”
“—At the last post. How many to the Guillotine to-day?”
“Fifty-two.”
“I said so! A brave number! My fellow-citizen here would have it forty-two; ten more heads are worth having. The Guillotine goes handsomely. I love it. Hi forward. Whoop!”
The night comes on dark. He moves more; he is beginning to revive, and to speak intelligibly; he thinks they are still together; he asks him, by his name, what he has in his hand. O pity us, kind Heaven, and help us! Look out, look out, and see if we are pursued.
The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of us; but, so far, we are pursued by nothing else.
CHAPTER XIV. The Knitting Done
In that same juncture of time when the Fifty-Two awaited their fate Madame Defarge held darkly ominous council with The Vengeance and Jacques Three of the Revolutionary Jury. Not in the wine-shop did Madame Defarge confer with these ministers, but in the shed of the wood-sawyer, erst a mender of roads. The sawyer himself did not participate in the conference, but abided at a little distance, like an outer satellite who was not to speak until required, or to offer an opinion until invited.
“But our Defarge,” said Jacques Three, “is undoubtedly a good Republican? Eh?”
“There is no better,” the voluble Vengeance protested in her shrill notes, “in France.”
“Peace, little Vengeance,” said Madame Defarge, laying her hand with a slight frown on her lieutenant’s lips, “hear me speak. My husband, fellow-citizen, is a good Republican and a bold man; he has deserved well of the Republic, and possesses its confidence. But my husband has his weaknesses, and he is so weak as to relent towards this Doctor.”
“It is a great pity,” croaked Jacques Three, dubiously shaking his head, with his cruel fingers at his hungry mouth; “it is not quite like a good citizen; it is a thing to regret.”
“See you,” said madame, “I care nothing for this Doctor, I. He may wear his head or lose it, for any interest I have in him; it is all one to me. But, the Evrémonde people are to be exterminated, and the wife and child must follow the husband and father.”
“She has a fine head for it,” croaked Jacques Three. “I have seen blue eyes and golden hair there, and they looked charming when Samson held them up.” Ogre that he was, he spoke like an epicure.
Madame Defarge cast down her eyes, and reflected a little.
“The child also,” observed Jacques Three, with a meditative enjoyment of his words, “has golden hair and blue eyes. And we seldom have a child there. It is a pretty sight!”
“In a word,” said Madame Defarge, coming out of her short abstraction, “I cannot trust my husband in this matter. Not only do I feel, since last night, that I dare not confide to him the details of my projects; but also I feel that if I delay, there is danger of his giving warning, and then they might escape.”
“That must never be,” croaked Jacques Three; “no one must escape. We have not half enough as it is. We ought to have six score a day.”
“In a word,” Madame Defarge went on, “my husband has not my reason for pursuing this family to annihilation, and I have not his reason for regarding this Doctor with any sensibility. I must act for myself, therefore. Come hither, little citizen.”
The wood-sawyer, who held her in the respect, and himself in the submission, of mortal fear, advanced with his hand to his red cap.
“Touching those signals, little citizen,” said Madame Defarge, sternly, “that she made to the prisoners; you are ready to bear witness to them this very day?”
“Ay, ay, why not!” cried the sawyer. “Every day, in all weathers, from two to four, always signalling, sometimes with the little one, sometimes without. I know what I know. I have seen with my eyes.”
He made all manner of gestures while he spoke, as if in incidental imitation of some few of the great diversity of signals that he had never seen.
“Clearly plots,” said Jacques Three. “Transparently!”
“There is no doubt of the Jury?” inquired Madame Defarge, letting her eyes turn to him with a gloomy smile.
“Rely upon the patriotic Jury, dear citizeness. I answer for my fellow-Jurymen.”
“Now, let me see,” said Madame Defarge, pondering again. “Yet once more! Can I spare this Doctor to my husband? I have no feeling either way. Can I spare him?”
“He would count as one head,” observed Jacques Three, in a low voice. “We really have not heads enough; it would be a pity, I think.”
“He was signalling with her when I saw her,” argued Madame Defarge; “I cannot speak of one without the other; and I must not be silent, and trust the case wholly to him, this little citizen here. For, I am not a bad witness.”
The Vengeance and Jacques Three vied with each other in their fervent protestations that she was the most admirable and marvellous of witnesses. The little citizen, not to be outdone, declared her to be a celestial witness.
“He must take his chance,” said Madame Defarge. “No, I cannot spare him! You are engaged at three o’clock; you are going to see the batch of to-day executed.—You?”
The question was addressed to the wood-sawyer, who hurriedly replied in the affirmative: seizing the occasion to add that he was the most ardent of Republicans, and that he would be in effect the most desolate of Republicans, if anything prevented him from enjoying the pleasure of smoking his afternoon pipe in the contemplation of the droll national barber. He was so very demonstrative herein, that he might have been suspected (perhaps was, by the dark eyes that looked contemptuously at him out of Madame Defarge’s head) of having his small individual fears for his own personal safety, every hour in the day.
“I,” said madame, “am equally engaged at the same place. After it is over—say at eight to-night—come you to me, in Saint Antoine, and we will give information against these people at my Section.”
The wood-sawyer said he would be proud and flattered to attend the citizeness. The citizeness looking at him, he became embarrassed, evaded her glance as a small dog would have done, retreated among his wood, and hid his confusion over the handle of his saw.
Madame Defarge beckoned the Juryman and The Vengeance a little nearer to the door, and there expounded her further views to them thus:
“She will now be at home, awaiting the moment of his death. She will be mourning and grieving. She will be in a state of mind to impeach the justice of the Republic. She will be full of sympathy with its enemies. I will go to her.”
“What an admirable woman; what an adorable woman!” exclaimed Jacques Three, rapturously. “Ah, my cherished!” cried The Vengeance; and embraced her.
“Take you my knitting,” said Madame Defarge, placing it in her lieutenant’s hands, “and have it ready for me in my usual seat. Keep me my usual chair. Go you there, straight, for there will probably be a greater concourse than usual, to-day.”
“I willingly obey the orders of my Chief,” said The Vengeance with alacrity, and kissing her cheek. “You will not be late?”
“I shall be there before the commencement.”
“And before the tumbrils arrive. Be sure you are there, my soul,” said The Vengeance, calling after her, for she had already turned into the street, “before the tumbrils arrive!”
Madame Defarge slightly waved her hand, to imply that she heard, and might be relied upon to arrive in good time, and so went through the mud, and round the corner of the prison wall. The Vengeance and the Juryman, looking after her as she walked away, were highly appreciative of her fine figure, and her superb moral endowments.
There were many women at that time, upon whom the time laid a dreadfully disfiguring hand; but, there was not one among them more to be dreaded than this ruthless woman, now taking her way along the streets. Of a strong and fearless character, of shrewd sense and readiness, of great determination, of that kind of beauty which not only seems to impart to its possessor firmness and animosity, but to strike into others an instinctive recognition of those qualities; the troubled time would have heaved her up, under any circumstances. But, imbued from her childhood with a brooding sense of wrong, and an inveterate hatred of a class, opportunity had developed her into a tigress. She was absolutely without pity. If she had ever had the virtue in her, it had quite gone out of her.
It was nothing to her, that an innocent man was to die for the sins of his forefathers; she saw, not him, but them. It was nothing to her, that his wife was to be made a widow and his daughter an orphan; that was insufficient punishment, because they were her natural enemies and her prey, and as such had no right to live. To appeal to her, was made hopeless by her having no sense of pity, even for herself. If she had been laid low in the streets, in any of the many encounters in which she had been engaged, she would not have pitied herself; nor, if she had been ordered to the axe to-morrow, would she have gone to it with any softer feeling than a fierce desire to change places with the man who sent her there.
Such a heart Madame Defarge carried under her rough robe. Carelessly worn, it was a becoming robe enough, in a certain weird way, and her dark hair looked rich under her coarse red cap. Lying hidden in her bosom, was a loaded pistol. Lying hidden at her waist, was a sharpened dagger. Thus accoutred, and walking with the confident tread of such a character, and with the supple freedom of a woman who had habitually walked in her girlhood, bare-foot and bare-legged, on the brown sea-sand, Madame Defarge took her way along the streets.
Now, when the journey of the travelling coach, at that very moment waiting for the completion of its load, had been planned out last night, the difficulty of taking Miss Pross in it had much engaged Mr. Lorry’s attention. It was not merely desirable to avoid overloading the coach, but it was of the highest importance that the time occupied in examining it and its passengers, should be reduced to the utmost; since their escape might depend on the saving of only a few seconds here and there. Finally, he had proposed, after anxious consideration, that Miss Pross and Jerry, who were at liberty to leave the city, should leave it at three o’clock in the lightest-wheeled conveyance known to that period. Unencumbered with luggage, they would soon overtake the coach, and, passing it and preceding it on the road, would order its horses in advance, and greatly facilitate its progress during the precious hours of the night, when delay was the most to be dreaded.
Seeing in this arrangement the hope of rendering real service in that pressing emergency, Miss Pross hailed it with joy. She and Jerry had beheld the coach start, had known who it was that Solomon brought, had passed some ten minutes in tortures of suspense, and were now concluding their arrangements to follow the coach, even as Madame Defarge, taking her way through the streets, now drew nearer and nearer to the else-deserted lodging in which they held their consultation.
“Now what do you think, Mr. Cruncher,” said Miss Pross, whose agitation was so great that she could hardly speak, or stand, or move, or live: “what do you think of our not starting from this courtyard? Another carriage having already gone from here to-day, it might awaken suspicion.”
“My opinion, miss,” returned Mr. Cruncher, “is as you’re right. Likewise wot I’ll stand by you, right or wrong.”
“I am so distracted with fear and hope for our precious creatures,” said Miss Pross, wildly crying, “that I am incapable of forming any plan. Are you capable of forming any plan, my dear good Mr. Cruncher?”
“Respectin’ a future spear o’ life, miss,” returned Mr. Cruncher, “I hope so. Respectin’ any present use o’ this here blessed old head o’ mine, I think not. Would you do me the favour, miss, to take notice o’ two promises and wows wot it is my wishes fur to record in this here crisis?”
“Oh, for gracious sake!” cried Miss Pross, still wildly crying, “record them at once, and get them out of the way, like an excellent man.”
“First,” said Mr. Cruncher, who was all in a tremble, and who spoke with an ashy and solemn visage, “them poor things well out o’ this, never no more will I do it, never no more!”
“I am quite sure, Mr. Cruncher,” returned Miss Pross, “that you never will do it again, whatever it is, and I beg you not to think it necessary to mention more particularly what it is.”
“No, miss,” returned Jerry, “it shall not be named to you. Second: them poor things well out o’ this, and never no more will I interfere with Mrs. Cruncher’s flopping, never no more!”
“Whatever housekeeping arrangement that may be,” said Miss Pross, striving to dry her eyes and compose herself, “I have no doubt it is best that Mrs. Cruncher should have it entirely under her own superintendence.—O my poor darlings!”
“I go so far as to say, miss, moreover,” proceeded Mr. Cruncher, with a most alarming tendency to hold forth as from a pulpit—“and let my words be took down and took to Mrs. Cruncher through yourself—that wot my opinions respectin’ flopping has undergone a change, and that wot I only hope with all my heart as Mrs. Cruncher may be a flopping at the present time.”
“There, there, there! I hope she is, my dear man,” cried the distracted Miss Pross, “and I hope she finds it answering her expectations.”
“Forbid it,” proceeded Mr. Cruncher, with additional solemnity, additional slowness, and additional tendency to hold forth and hold out, “as anything wot I have ever said or done should be wisited on my earnest wishes for them poor creeturs now! Forbid it as we shouldn’t all flop (if it was anyways conwenient) to get ’em out o’ this here dismal risk! Forbid it, miss! Wot I say, for-bid it!” This was Mr. Cruncher’s conclusion after a protracted but vain endeavour to find a better one.
And still Madame Defarge, pursuing her way along the streets, came nearer and nearer.
“If we ever get back to our native land,” said Miss Pross, “you may rely upon my telling Mrs. Cruncher as much as I may be able to remember and understand of what you have so impressively said; and at all events you may be sure that I shall bear witness to your being thoroughly in earnest at this dreadful time. Now, pray let us think! My esteemed Mr. Cruncher, let us think!”
Still, Madame Defarge, pursuing her way along the streets, came nearer and nearer.
“If you were to go before,” said Miss Pross, “and stop the vehicle and horses from coming here, and were to wait somewhere for me; wouldn’t that be best?”
Mr. Cruncher thought it might be best.
“Where could you wait for me?” asked Miss Pross.
Mr. Cruncher was so bewildered that he could think of no locality but Temple Bar. Alas! Temple Bar was hundreds of miles away, and Madame Defarge was drawing very near indeed.
“By the cathedral door,” said Miss Pross. “Would it be much out of the way, to take me in, near the great cathedral door between the two towers?”
“No, miss,” answered Mr. Cruncher.
“Then, like the best of men,” said Miss Pross, “go to the posting-house straight, and make that change.”
“I am doubtful,” said Mr. Cruncher, hesitating and shaking his head, “about leaving of you, you see. We don’t know what may happen.”
“Heaven knows we don’t,” returned Miss Pross, “but have no fear for me. Take me in at the cathedral, at Three o’Clock, or as near it as you can, and I am sure it will be better than our going from here. I feel certain of it. There! Bless you, Mr. Cruncher! Think-not of me, but of the lives that may depend on both of us!”
This exordium, and Miss Pross’s two hands in quite agonised entreaty clasping his, decided Mr. Cruncher. With an encouraging nod or two, he immediately went out to alter the arrangements, and left her by herself to follow as she had proposed.
The having originated a precaution which was already in course of execution, was a great relief to Miss Pross. The necessity of composing her appearance so that it should attract no special notice in the streets, was another relief. She looked at her watch, and it was twenty minutes past two. She had no time to lose, but must get ready at once.
Afraid, in her extreme perturbation, of the loneliness of the deserted rooms, and of half-imagined faces peeping from behind every open door in them, Miss Pross got a basin of cold water and began laving her eyes, which were swollen and red. Haunted by her feverish apprehensions, she could not bear to have her sight obscured for a minute at a time by the dripping water, but constantly paused and looked round to see that there was no one watching her. In one of those pauses she recoiled and cried out, for she saw a figure standing in the room.
The basin fell to the ground broken, and the water flowed to the feet of Madame Defarge. By strange stern ways, and through much staining blood, those feet had come to meet that water.
Madame Defarge looked coldly at her, and said, “The wife of Evrémonde; where is she?”
It flashed upon Miss Pross’s mind that the doors were all standing open, and would suggest the flight. Her first act was to shut them. There were four in the room, and she shut them all. She then placed herself before the door of the chamber which Lucie had occupied.
Madame Defarge’s dark eyes followed her through this rapid movement, and rested on her when it was finished. Miss Pross had nothing beautiful about her; years had not tamed the wildness, or softened the grimness, of her appearance; but, she too was a determined woman in her different way, and she measured Madame Defarge with her eyes, every inch.
“You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer,” said Miss Pross, in her breathing. “Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishwoman.”
Madame Defarge looked at her scornfully, but still with something of Miss Pross’s own perception that they two were at bay. She saw a tight, hard, wiry woman before her, as Mr. Lorry had seen in the same figure a woman with a strong hand, in the years gone by. She knew full well that Miss Pross was the family’s devoted friend; Miss Pross knew full well that Madame Defarge was the family’s malevolent enemy.
“On my way yonder,” said Madame Defarge, with a slight movement of her hand towards the fatal spot, “where they reserve my chair and my knitting for me, I am come to make my compliments to her in passing. I wish to see her.”
“I know that your intentions are evil,” said Miss Pross, “and you may depend upon it, I’ll hold my own against them.”
Each spoke in her own language; neither understood the other’s words; both were very watchful, and intent to deduce from look and manner, what the unintelligible words meant.
“It will do her no good to keep herself concealed from me at this moment,” said Madame Defarge. “Good patriots will know what that means. Let me see her. Go tell her that I wish to see her. Do you hear?”
“If those eyes of yours were bed-winches,” returned Miss Pross, “and I was an English four-poster, they shouldn’t loose a splinter of me. No, you wicked foreign woman; I am your match.”
Madame Defarge was not likely to follow these idiomatic remarks in detail; but, she so far understood them as to perceive that she was set at naught.
“Woman imbecile and pig-like!” said Madame Defarge, frowning. “I take no answer from you. I demand to see her. Either tell her that I demand to see her, or stand out of the way of the door and let me go to her!” This, with an angry explanatory wave of her right arm.
“I little thought,” said Miss Pross, “that I should ever want to understand your nonsensical language; but I would give all I have, except the clothes I wear, to know whether you suspect the truth, or any part of it.”
Neither of them for a single moment released the other’s eyes. Madame Defarge had not moved from the spot where she stood when Miss Pross first became aware of her; but, she now advanced one step.
“I am a Briton,” said Miss Pross, “I am desperate. I don’t care an English Twopence for myself. I know that the longer I keep you here, the greater hope there is for my Ladybird. I’ll not leave a handful of that dark hair upon your head, if you lay a finger on me!”
Thus Miss Pross, with a shake of her head and a flash of her eyes between every rapid sentence, and every rapid sentence a whole breath. Thus Miss Pross, who had never struck a blow in her life.
But, her courage was of that emotional nature that it brought the irrepressible tears into her eyes. This was a courage that Madame Defarge so little comprehended as to mistake for weakness. “Ha, ha!” she laughed, “you poor wretch! What are you worth! I address myself to that Doctor.” Then she raised her voice and called out, “Citizen Doctor! Wife of Evrémonde! Child of Evrémonde! Any person but this miserable fool, answer the Citizeness Defarge!”
Perhaps the following silence, perhaps some latent disclosure in the expression of Miss Pross’s face, perhaps a sudden misgiving apart from either suggestion, whispered to Madame Defarge that they were gone. Three of the doors she opened swiftly, and looked in.
“Those rooms are all in disorder, there has been hurried packing, there are odds and ends upon the ground. There is no one in that room behind you! Let me look.”
“Never!” said Miss Pross, who understood the request as perfectly as Madame Defarge understood the answer.
“If they are not in that room, they are gone, and can be pursued and brought back,” said Madame Defarge to herself.
“As long as you don’t know whether they are in that room or not, you are uncertain what to do,” said Miss Pross to herself; “and you shall not know that, if I can prevent your knowing it; and know that, or not know that, you shall not leave here while I can hold you.”
“I have been in the streets from the first, nothing has stopped me, I will tear you to pieces, but I will have you from that door,” said Madame Defarge.
“We are alone at the top of a high house in a solitary courtyard, we are not likely to be heard, and I pray for bodily strength to keep you here, while every minute you are here is worth a hundred thousand guineas to my darling,” said Miss Pross.
Madame Defarge made at the door. Miss Pross, on the instinct of the moment, seized her round the waist in both her arms, and held her tight. It was in vain for Madame Defarge to struggle and to strike; Miss Pross, with the vigorous tenacity of love, always so much stronger than hate, clasped her tight, and even lifted her from the floor in the struggle that they had. The two hands of Madame Defarge buffeted and tore her face; but, Miss Pross, with her head down, held her round the waist, and clung to her with more than the hold of a drowning woman.
Soon, Madame Defarge’s hands ceased to strike, and felt at her encircled waist. “It is under my arm,” said Miss Pross, in smothered tones, “you shall not draw it. I am stronger than you, I bless Heaven for it. I hold you till one or other of us faints or dies!”
Madame Defarge’s hands were at her bosom. Miss Pross looked up, saw what it was, struck at it, struck out a flash and a crash, and stood alone—blinded with smoke.
All this was in a second. As the smoke cleared, leaving an awful stillness, it passed out on the air, like the soul of the furious woman whose body lay lifeless on the ground.
In the first fright and horror of her situation, Miss Pross passed the body as far from it as she could, and ran down the stairs to call for fruitless help. Happily, she bethought herself of the consequences of what she did, in time to check herself and go back. It was dreadful to go in at the door again; but, she did go in, and even went near it, to get the bonnet and other things that she must wear. These she put on, out on the staircase, first shutting and locking the door and taking away the key. She then sat down on the stairs a few moments to breathe and to cry, and then got up and hurried away.
By good fortune she had a veil on her bonnet, or she could hardly have gone along the streets without being stopped. By good fortune, too, she was naturally so peculiar in appearance as not to show disfigurement like any other woman. She needed both advantages, for the marks of gripping fingers were deep in her face, and her hair was torn, and her dress (hastily composed with unsteady hands) was clutched and dragged a hundred ways.
In crossing the bridge, she dropped the door key in the river. Arriving at the cathedral some few minutes before her escort, and waiting there, she thought, what if the key were already taken in a net, what if it were identified, what if the door were opened and the remains discovered, what if she were stopped at the gate, sent to prison, and charged with murder! In the midst of these fluttering thoughts, the escort appeared, took her in, and took her away.
“Is there any noise in the streets?” she asked him.
“The usual noises,” Mr. Cruncher replied; and looked surprised by the question and by her aspect.
“I don’t hear you,” said Miss Pross. “What do you say?”
It was in vain for Mr. Cruncher to repeat what he said; Miss Pross could not hear him. “So I’ll nod my head,” thought Mr. Cruncher, amazed, “at all events she’ll see that.” And she did.
“Is there any noise in the streets now?” asked Miss Pross again, presently.
Again Mr. Cruncher nodded his head.
“I don’t hear it.”
“Gone deaf in an hour?” said Mr. Cruncher, ruminating, with his mind much disturbed; “wot’s come to her?”
“I feel,” said Miss Pross, “as if there had been a flash and a crash, and that crash was the last thing I should ever hear in this life.”
“Blest if she ain’t in a queer condition!” said Mr. Cruncher, more and more disturbed. “Wot can she have been a takin’, to keep her courage up? Hark! There’s the roll of them dreadful carts! You can hear that, miss?”
“I can hear,” said Miss Pross, seeing that he spoke to her, “nothing. O, my good man, there was first a great crash, and then a great stillness, and that stillness seems to be fixed and unchangeable, never to be broken any more as long as my life lasts.”
“If she don’t hear the roll of those dreadful carts, now very nigh their journey’s end,” said Mr. Cruncher, glancing over his shoulder, “it’s my opinion that indeed she never will hear anything else in this world.”
And indeed she never did.
CHAPTER XV. The Footsteps Die Out For Ever
Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day’s wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and insatiate Monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, are fused in the one realisation, Guillotine. And yet there is not in France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.
Six tumbrils roll along the streets. Change these back again to what they were, thou powerful enchanter, Time, and they shall be seen to be the carriages of absolute monarchs, the equipages of feudal nobles, the toilettes of flaring Jezebels, the churches that are not my father’s house but dens of thieves, the huts of millions of starving peasants! No; the great magician who majestically works out the appointed order of the Creator, never reverses his transformations. “If thou be changed into this shape by the will of God,” say the seers to the enchanted, in the wise Arabian stories, “then remain so! But, if thou wear this form through mere passing conjuration, then resume thy former aspect!” Changeless and hopeless, the tumbrils roll along.
As the sombre wheels of the six carts go round, they seem to plough up a long crooked furrow among the populace in the streets. Ridges of faces are thrown to this side and to that, and the ploughs go steadily onward. So used are the regular inhabitants of the houses to the spectacle, that in many windows there are no people, and in some the occupation of the hands is not so much as suspended, while the eyes survey the faces in the tumbrils. Here and there, the inmate has visitors to see the sight; then he points his finger, with something of the complacency of a curator or authorised exponent, to this cart and to this, and seems to tell who sat here yesterday, and who there the day before.
Of the riders in the tumbrils, some observe these things, and all things on their last roadside, with an impassive stare; others, with a lingering interest in the ways of life and men. Some, seated with drooping heads, are sunk in silent despair; again, there are some so heedful of their looks that they cast upon the multitude such glances as they have seen in theatres, and in pictures. Several close their eyes, and think, or try to get their straying thoughts together. Only one, and he a miserable creature, of a crazed aspect, is so shattered and made drunk by horror, that he sings, and tries to dance. Not one of the whole number appeals by look or gesture, to the pity of the people.
There is a guard of sundry horsemen riding abreast of the tumbrils, and faces are often turned up to some of them, and they are asked some question. It would seem to be always the same question, for, it is always followed by a press of people towards the third cart. The horsemen abreast of that cart, frequently point out one man in it with their swords. The leading curiosity is, to know which is he; he stands at the back of the tumbril with his head bent down, to converse with a mere girl who sits on the side of the cart, and holds his hand. He has no curiosity or care for the scene about him, and always speaks to the girl. Here and there in the long street of St. Honore, cries are raised against him. If they move him at all, it is only to a quiet smile, as he shakes his hair a little more loosely about his face. He cannot easily touch his face, his arms being bound.
On the steps of a church, awaiting the coming-up of the tumbrils, stands the Spy and prison-sheep. He looks into the first of them: not there. He looks into the second: not there. He already asks himself, “Has he sacrificed me?” when his face clears, as he looks into the third.
“Which is Evrémonde?” says a man behind him.
“That. At the back there.”
“With his hand in the girl’s?”
“Yes.”
The man cries, “Down, Evrémonde! To the Guillotine all aristocrats! Down, Evrémonde!”
“Hush, hush!” the Spy entreats him, timidly.
“And why not, citizen?”
“He is going to pay the forfeit: it will be paid in five minutes more. Let him be at peace.”
But the man continuing to exclaim, “Down, Evrémonde!” the face of Evrémonde is for a moment turned towards him. Evrémonde then sees the Spy, and looks attentively at him, and goes his way.
The clocks are on the stroke of three, and the furrow ploughed among the populace is turning round, to come on into the place of execution, and end. The ridges thrown to this side and to that, now crumble in and close behind the last plough as it passes on, for all are following to the Guillotine. In front of it, seated in chairs, as in a garden of public diversion, are a number of women, busily knitting. On one of the fore-most chairs, stands The Vengeance, looking about for her friend.
“Thérèse!” she cries, in her shrill tones. “Who has seen her? Thérèse Defarge!”
“She never missed before,” says a knitting-woman of the sisterhood.
“No; nor will she miss now,” cries The Vengeance, petulantly. “Thérèse.”
“Louder,” the woman recommends.
Ay! Louder, Vengeance, much louder, and still she will scarcely hear thee. Louder yet, Vengeance, with a little oath or so added, and yet it will hardly bring her. Send other women up and down to seek her, lingering somewhere; and yet, although the messengers have done dread deeds, it is questionable whether of their own wills they will go far enough to find her!
“Bad Fortune!” cries The Vengeance, stamping her foot in the chair, “and here are the tumbrils! And Evrémonde will be despatched in a wink, and she not here! See her knitting in my hand, and her empty chair ready for her. I cry with vexation and disappointment!”
As The Vengeance descends from her elevation to do it, the tumbrils begin to discharge their loads. The ministers of Sainte Guillotine are robed and ready. Crash!—A head is held up, and the knitting-women who scarcely lifted their eyes to look at it a moment ago when it could think and speak, count One.
The second tumbril empties and moves on; the third comes up. Crash!—And the knitting-women, never faltering or pausing in their Work, count Two.
The supposed Evrémonde descends, and the seamstress is lifted out next after him. He has not relinquished her patient hand in getting out, but still holds it as he promised. He gently places her with her back to the crashing engine that constantly whirrs up and falls, and she looks into his face and thanks him.
“But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so composed, for I am naturally a poor little thing, faint of heart; nor should I have been able to raise my thoughts to Him who was put to death, that we might have hope and comfort here to-day. I think you were sent to me by Heaven.”
“Or you to me,” says Sydney Carton. “Keep your eyes upon me, dear child, and mind no other object.”
“I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall mind nothing when I let it go, if they are rapid.”
“They will be rapid. Fear not!”
The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home together, and to rest in her bosom.
“Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you one last question? I am very ignorant, and it troubles me—just a little.”
“Tell me what it is.”
“I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself, whom I love very dearly. She is five years younger than I, and she lives in a farmer’s house in the south country. Poverty parted us, and she knows nothing of my fate—for I cannot write—and if I could, how should I tell her! It is better as it is.”
“Yes, yes: better as it is.”
“What I have been thinking as we came along, and what I am still thinking now, as I look into your kind strong face which gives me so much support, is this:—If the Republic really does good to the poor, and they come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer less, she may live a long time: she may even live to be old.”
“What then, my gentle sister?”
“Do you think:” the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so much endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and tremble: “that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land where I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?”
“It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and no trouble there.”
“You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant. Am I to kiss you now? Is the moment come?”
“Yes.”
She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each other. The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse than a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before him—is gone; the knitting-women count Twenty-Two.
“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.”
The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty-Three.
They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the peacefullest man’s face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic.
One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe—a woman—had asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed to write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given any utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these:
“I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.
“I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years’ time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward.
“I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other’s soul, than I was in the souls of both.
“I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place—then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day’s disfigurement—and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
CHAPTER I. The Period
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.
It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.
France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister of the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill, making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of France and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be sawn into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to Paris, there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be his tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer, though they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and traitorous.
In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night; families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers’ warehouses for security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he stopped in his character of “the Captain,” gallantly shot him through the head and rode away; the mail was waylaid by seven robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, “in consequence of the failure of his ammunition:” after which the mail was robbed in peace; that magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners in London gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball; thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble lords at Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles’s, to search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals; now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen, and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; to-day, taking the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched pilferer who had robbed a farmer’s boy of sixpence.
All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked unheeded, those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small creatures—the creatures of this chronicle among the rest—along the roads that lay before them.
CAPITOLO I. L’epoca
Erano tempi migliori, erano tempi peggiori, era l’età della saggezza, era l’età della follia, era l’epoca della fede, era l’epoca dell’incredulità, era la stagione della Luce, era la stagione delle Tenebre, era la primavera della speranza, era il inverno della disperazione, avevamo tutto davanti a noi, non avevamo nulla davanti a noi, tutti ci dirigevamo dritti verso il Cielo, tutti ci dirigevamo dritti nella direzione opposta: in breve, il periodo era così simile al periodo attuale che alcuni dei suoi più rumorosi autorevoli insistevano affinché fosse accolto, per il meglio o per il peggio, solo nel grado superlativo del confronto.
C’era un re con una mascella prominente e una regina dal volto semplice, sul trono d’Inghilterra; c’era un re con una mascella prominente e una regina di bell’aspetto, sul trono di Francia. In entrambi i paesi era più chiaro del cristallo ai nobili custodi delle riserve statali di pani e pesci che le cose in generale erano stabilite per sempre.
Era l’anno del Signore mille settecento settantacinque. Rivelazioni spirituali furono concesse all’Inghilterra in quel periodo privilegiato, come avviene anche oggi. La signora Southcott aveva recentemente raggiunto il suo venticinquesimo beato compleanno, e un soldato profetico dei Life Guards l’aveva annunciata come una comparsa sublime, proclamando che erano stati fatti preparativi per inghiottire Londra e Westminster. Anche il fantasma di Cock-lane era stato messo a tacere solo una dozzina di anni prima, dopo aver battuto i suoi messaggi, come gli spiriti di quest’ultimo anno (soprannaturalmente carenti di originalità) hanno battuto i loro. Semplici messaggi nell’ ordine terreno degli eventi erano giunti recentemente alla Corona e al popolo inglese, da un congresso di sudditi britannici in America: che, strano a dirsi, si sono rivelati più importanti per la razza umana di qualsiasi comunicazione ricevuta finora attraverso uno dei polli della covata di Cock-lane.
La Francia, meno favorita in generale per quanto riguarda le questioni spirituali della sua sorella dello scudo e del tridente, rotolava con estrema fluidità giù per la collina, stampando moneta cartacea e spendendola. Sotto la guida dei suoi pastori cristiani, si intratteneva inoltre con imprese umanitarie come condannare un giovane ad avere le mani tagliate, la lingua strappata con le pinze e il corpo bruciato vivo perché non si era inginocchiato sotto la pioggia per rendere omaggio a una sporca processione di monaci che gli passava davanti, a una distanza di cinquanta o sessanta metri. È molto probabile che, radicati nei boschi della Francia e della Norvegia, ci fossero alberi in crescita quando quel sofferente fu messo a morte, già segnati dal Taglialegna, il Fato, per essere abbattuti e segati in tavole, per fare un certo telaio mobile con dentro un sacco e un coltello, terribile nella storia. È molto probabile che nelle rozze rimesse di alcuni agricoltori delle pesanti terre vicino a Parigi, proprio quel giorno fossero riparati dalle intemperie carri rustici, imbrattati da fango campestre, annusati dai maiali e occupati dal pollame, che il Contadino, la morte, aveva già messo da parte per farne i suoi tumbrili della Rivoluzione. Ma quel Taglialegna e quel Contadino, sebbene lavorino incessantemente, lavorano in silenzio, e nessuno li sentì mentre si muovevano con passo soffocato: tanto più perché nutrire il sospetto che fossero svegli sarebbe stato ateo e traditore.
In Inghilterra non c’era quasi abbastanza ordine e sicurezza da giustificare un grande orgoglio nazionale. Audaci scippi compiuti da uomini armati, e rapine in piena notte, avvenivano nella capitale stessa; si ammoniva pubblicamente le famiglie a non uscire dalla città senza aver prima trasferito i loro mobili nei magazzini dei tappezzeri per metterli al sicuro; il bandito notturno era un commerciante della City di giorno, e, essendo riconosciuto e sfidato dal suo collega che aveva fermato nella sua veste di “il Capitano”, lo uccise con un colpo alla testa e se ne andò a cavallo; la posta fu assalita da sette banditi, e il guardiano ne uccise tre, per poi farsi ammazzare lui stesso dagli altri quattro, “a causa del malfunzionamento della sua munizione”: dopo di che la posta venne derubata in pace; quel magnifico potente, il Lord Mayor di London, fu costretto a fermarsi e consegnare tutto ciò che aveva su Turnham Green da un bandito, che spogliò la creatura illustre sotto gli occhi del suo intero seguito; i prigionieri nelle carceri di London combattevano battaglie con i secondini, e la maestà della legge sparava tra loro con archibugi caricati con palle e proiettili; ai ricevimenti alla Corte, i ladri tagliavano via croci di diamanti dal collo dei nobili lord; i moschettieri andarono a St. Giles’s per cercare merci di contrabbando, e la folla sparò sui moschettieri, e i moschettieri spararono sulla folla, e nessuno pensava che questi eventi fossero molto fuori dal comune. In mezzo a tutto questo, il boia, sempre occupato e peggio che inutile, era costantemente richiesto; ora appendeva lunghe file di criminali di ogni tipo; ora impiccava un scassinatore di casseforti di sabato che era stato catturato martedì; ora marchiava a fuoco la mano di una dozzina di persone alla Newgate, e ora bruciava opuscoli davanti alla porta della Westminster Hall; oggi toglieva la vita a un assassino atroce, e domani a uno sventurato ladrocino che aveva derubato il figlio di un contadino di sei pence.
Tutte queste cose e mille altre simili accaddero nel caro vecchio anno millesettecentosettantacinque o poco dopo. Circondati da esse, mentre il Legnaiolo e il Contadino lavoravano inosservati, quei due dalle mascelle larghe e gli altri due dai volti semplici e belli camminarono con sufficiente agitazione e portarono i loro diritti divini con mano alta. Così l’anno millesettecentosettantacinque condusse le loro Grandezze, e miriadi di piccole creature - quelle di questa cronaca tra le altre - lungo le strade che avevano davanti a sé.
CHAPTER II. The Mail
It was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in November, before the first of the persons with whom this history has business. The Dover road lay, as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered up Shooter’s Hill. He walked up hill in the mire by the side of the mail, as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the least relish for walking exercise, under the circumstances, but because the hill, and the harness, and the mud, and the mail, were all so heavy, that the horses had three times already come to a stop, besides once drawing the coach across the road, with the mutinous intent of taking it back to Blackheath. Reins and whip and coachman and guard, however, in combination, had read that article of war which forbade a purpose otherwise strongly in favour of the argument, that some brute animals are endued with Reason; and the team had capitulated and returned to their duty.
With drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed their way through the thick mud, floundering and stumbling between whiles, as if they were falling to pieces at the larger joints. As often as the driver rested them and brought them to a stand, with a wary “Wo-ho! so-ho-then!” the near leader violently shook his head and everything upon it—like an unusually emphatic horse, denying that the coach could be got up the hill. Whenever the leader made this rattle, the passenger started, as a nervous passenger might, and was disturbed in mind.
There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed in its forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest and finding none. A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way through the air in ripples that visibly followed and overspread one another, as the waves of an unwholesome sea might do. It was dense enough to shut out everything from the light of the coach-lamps but these its own workings, and a few yards of road; and the reek of the labouring horses steamed into it, as if they had made it all.
Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill by the side of the mail. All three were wrapped to the cheekbones and over the ears, and wore jack-boots. Not one of the three could have said, from anything he saw, what either of the other two was like; and each was hidden under almost as many wrappers from the eyes of the mind, as from the eyes of the body, of his two companions. In those days, travellers were very shy of being confidential on a short notice, for anybody on the road might be a robber or in league with robbers. As to the latter, when every posting-house and ale-house could produce somebody in “the Captain’s” pay, ranging from the landlord to the lowest stable non-descript, it was the likeliest thing upon the cards. So the guard of the Dover mail thought to himself, that Friday night in November, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lumbering up Shooter’s Hill, as he stood on his own particular perch behind the mail, beating his feet, and keeping an eye and a hand on the arm-chest before him, where a loaded blunderbuss lay at the top of six or eight loaded horse-pistols, deposited on a substratum of cutlass.
The Dover mail was in its usual genial position that the guard suspected the passengers, the passengers suspected one another and the guard, they all suspected everybody else, and the coachman was sure of nothing but the horses; as to which cattle he could with a clear conscience have taken his oath on the two Testaments that they were not fit for the journey.
“Wo-ho!” said the coachman. “So, then! One more pull and you’re at the top and be damned to you, for I have had trouble enough to get you to it!—Joe!”
“Halloa!” the guard replied.
“What o’clock do you make it, Joe?”
“Ten minutes, good, past eleven.”
“My blood!” ejaculated the vexed coachman, “and not atop of Shooter’s yet! Tst! Yah! Get on with you!”
The emphatic horse, cut short by the whip in a most decided negative, made a decided scramble for it, and the three other horses followed suit. Once more, the Dover mail struggled on, with the jack-boots of its passengers squashing along by its side. They had stopped when the coach stopped, and they kept close company with it. If any one of the three had had the hardihood to propose to another to walk on a little ahead into the mist and darkness, he would have put himself in a fair way of getting shot instantly as a highwayman.
The last burst carried the mail to the summit of the hill. The horses stopped to breathe again, and the guard got down to skid the wheel for the descent, and open the coach-door to let the passengers in.
“Tst! Joe!” cried the coachman in a warning voice, looking down from his box.
“What do you say, Tom?”
They both listened.
“I say a horse at a canter coming up, Joe.”
“I say a horse at a gallop, Tom,” returned the guard, leaving his hold of the door, and mounting nimbly to his place. “Gentlemen! In the king’s name, all of you!”
With this hurried adjuration, he cocked his blunderbuss, and stood on the offensive.
The passenger booked by this history, was on the coach-step, getting in; the two other passengers were close behind him, and about to follow. He remained on the step, half in the coach and half out of; they remained in the road below him. They all looked from the coachman to the guard, and from the guard to the coachman, and listened. The coachman looked back and the guard looked back, and even the emphatic leader pricked up his ears and looked back, without contradicting.
The stillness consequent on the cessation of the rumbling and labouring of the coach, added to the stillness of the night, made it very quiet indeed. The panting of the horses communicated a tremulous motion to the coach, as if it were in a state of agitation. The hearts of the passengers beat loud enough perhaps to be heard; but at any rate, the quiet pause was audibly expressive of people out of breath, and holding the breath, and having the pulses quickened by expectation.
The sound of a horse at a gallop came fast and furiously up the hill.
“So-ho!” the guard sang out, as loud as he could roar. “Yo there! Stand! I shall fire!”
The pace was suddenly checked, and, with much splashing and floundering, a man’s voice called from the mist, “Is that the Dover mail?”
“Never you mind what it is!” the guard retorted. “What are you?”
“Is that the Dover mail?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I want a passenger, if it is.”
“What passenger?”
“Mr. Jarvis Lorry.”
Our booked passenger showed in a moment that it was his name. The guard, the coachman, and the two other passengers eyed him distrustfully.
“Keep where you are,” the guard called to the voice in the mist, “because, if I should make a mistake, it could never be set right in your lifetime. Gentleman of the name of Lorry answer straight.”
“What is the matter?” asked the passenger, then, with mildly quavering speech. “Who wants me? Is it Jerry?”
(“I don’t like Jerry’s voice, if it is Jerry,” growled the guard to himself. “He’s hoarser than suits me, is Jerry.”)
“Yes, Mr. Lorry.”
“What is the matter?”
“A despatch sent after you from over yonder. T. and Co.”
“I know this messenger, guard,” said Mr. Lorry, getting down into the road—assisted from behind more swiftly than politely by the other two passengers, who immediately scrambled into the coach, shut the door, and pulled up the window. “He may come close; there’s nothing wrong.”
“I hope there ain’t, but I can’t make so ‘Nation sure of that,” said the guard, in gruff soliloquy. “Hallo you!”
“Well! And hallo you!” said Jerry, more hoarsely than before.
“Come on at a footpace! d’ye mind me? And if you’ve got holsters to that saddle o’ yourn, don’t let me see your hand go nigh ’em. For I’m a devil at a quick mistake, and when I make one it takes the form of Lead. So now let’s look at you.”
The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through the eddying mist, and came to the side of the mail, where the passenger stood. The rider stooped, and, casting up his eyes at the guard, handed the passenger a small folded paper. The rider’s horse was blown, and both horse and rider were covered with mud, from the hoofs of the horse to the hat of the man.
“Guard!” said the passenger, in a tone of quiet business confidence.
The watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock of his raised blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye on the horseman, answered curtly, “Sir.”
“There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tellson’s Bank. You must know Tellson’s Bank in London. I am going to Paris on business. A crown to drink. I may read this?”
“If so be as you’re quick, sir.”
He opened it in the light of the coach-lamp on that side, and read—first to himself and then aloud: “‘Wait at Dover for Mam’selle.’ It’s not long, you see, guard. Jerry, say that my answer was, RECALLED TO LIFE.”
Jerry started in his saddle. “That’s a Blazing strange answer, too,” said he, at his hoarsest.
“Take that message back, and they will know that I received this, as well as if I wrote. Make the best of your way. Good night.”
With those words the passenger opened the coach-door and got in; not at all assisted by his fellow-passengers, who had expeditiously secreted their watches and purses in their boots, and were now making a general pretence of being asleep. With no more definite purpose than to escape the hazard of originating any other kind of action.
The coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths of mist closing round it as it began the descent. The guard soon replaced his blunderbuss in his arm-chest, and, having looked to the rest of its contents, and having looked to the supplementary pistols that he wore in his belt, looked to a smaller chest beneath his seat, in which there were a few smith’s tools, a couple of torches, and a tinder-box. For he was furnished with that completeness that if the coach-lamps had been blown and stormed out, which did occasionally happen, he had only to shut himself up inside, keep the flint and steel sparks well off the straw, and get a light with tolerable safety and ease (if he were lucky) in five minutes.
“Tom!” softly over the coach roof.
“Hallo, Joe.”
“Did you hear the message?”
“I did, Joe.”
“What did you make of it, Tom?”
“Nothing at all, Joe.”
“That’s a coincidence, too,” the guard mused, “for I made the same of it myself.”
Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted meanwhile, not only to ease his spent horse, but to wipe the mud from his face, and shake the wet out of his hat-brim, which might be capable of holding about half a gallon. After standing with the bridle over his heavily-splashed arm, until the wheels of the mail were no longer within hearing and the night was quite still again, he turned to walk down the hill.
“After that there gallop from Temple Bar, old lady, I won’t trust your fore-legs till I get you on the level,” said this hoarse messenger, glancing at his mare. “‘Recalled to life.’ That’s a Blazing strange message. Much of that wouldn’t do for you, Jerry! I say, Jerry! You’d be in a Blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion, Jerry!”
CAPITOLO II. La Diligenza
Era la strada di Dover che si stendeva, una sera di venerdì verso la fine di novembre, davanti alla prima delle persone con cui questa storia ha a che fare. La strada per Dover si trovava, per lui, oltre il postale di Dover, mentre si arrampicava faticosamente su Shooter’s Hill. Salì in collina nel pantano lungo il fianco del postale, come fecero gli altri passeggeri; non perché avessero la minima voglia di fare esercizio camminando, date le circostanze, ma perché la collina, e l’arnese, e il fango, e il postale erano tutti così pesanti che i cavalli si erano già fermati tre volte, oltre a una volta in cui avevano trascinato il calesse attraverso la strada, con l’intenzione ribelle di riportarlo a Blackheath. Le redini, la frusta, il cocchiere e il guardiano, tuttavia, in combinazione tra loro, avevano letto quell’articolo del regolamento che vietava uno scopo altrimenti fortemente a favore dell’argomento, secondo cui alcuni animali brutti sono dotati di Ragione; e la squadra aveva capitolato ed era tornata al suo dovere.
Con la testa china e la coda tremante, si fecero strada attraverso il fango denso, barcollando e inciampando di tanto in tanto, come se stessero cadendo a pezzi alle articolazioni più grandi. Ogni volta che il conducente li faceva riposare e li fermava con un prudente “Wo-ho! so-ho-then!”, il cavallo di testa scuoteva violentemente la testa e tutto ciò che vi era sopra, come un cavallo insolitamente enfatico, negando che la carrozza potesse essere portata su per la collina. Ogni volta che il cavallo di testa faceva questo rumore, il passeggero sobbalzava, come potrebbe fare un passeggero nervoso, e si sentiva turbato.
C’era una nebbia fumante in tutte le valli e aveva vagato nella sua solitudine su per la collina, come uno spirito maligno che cerca riposo senza trovarlo mai. Una nebbia umida e gelida, si faceva strada lentamente nell’aria a onde che seguivano visibilmente l’una l’altra e le coprivano, come potrebbero fare le onde di un mare malsano. Era così densa da oscurare tutto alla luce delle lanterne della diligenza tranne i suoi movimenti e pochi metri di strada; e il vapore dei cavalli che faticavano si fondeva con essa, come se fossero stati loro a crearla tutta.
Due altri passeggeri, oltre al primo, stavano faticosamente salendo la collina lungo il fianco del postale. Tutti e tre erano avvolti fino alle guance e sopra le orecchie, e indossavano stivaloni. Nessuno dei tre avrebbe potuto dire, da ciò che vedeva, a che cosa assomigliassero gli altri due; e ciascuno era nascosto agli occhi della mente quasi quanto agli occhi del corpo dei suoi compagni di viaggio. In quei giorni i viaggiatori erano molto restii a confidarsi in breve tempo, perché chiunque sulla strada poteva essere un brigante o in combutta con i briganti. Per quanto riguarda questi ultimi, quando ogni stazione di posta e birreria poteva produrre qualcuno al soldo “del Capitano”, dal locandiere fino all’ultimo sconosciuto della scuderia, era la cosa più probabile che potesse accadere. Così pensava il guardiano del postale per Dover quella sera di venerdì novembre del millenovecentosettantacinque, mentre arrancava su Shooter’s Hill, in piedi sulla sua particolare piattaforma posteriore al postale, battendo i piedi e tenendo d’occhio e una mano sull’armadietto davanti a lui, dove un fucile caricato giaceva sopra sei o otto pistole da cavallo caricate, deposte su uno strato di spada.
La corriera per Dover era nel suo solito stato di geniale sospetto: il guardiano sospettava i passeggeri, i passeggeri si sospettavano a vicenda e sospettavano anche il guardiano; tutti insomma sospettavano tutti gli altri, mentre il cocchiere non era sicuro di nulla tranne che dei cavalli. Per quanto riguardava questi ultimi, poteva con la massima coscienza giurare sui due Testamenti che non erano adatti per il viaggio.
«Uàh!» disse il cocchiere. «Ecco fatto! Un altro sforzo e sei in cima, e che tu possa crepare, perché ne ho passate abbastanza per portarti fin qui!— Joe!»
«Eh?», rispose il guardiano.
“Che ora è secondo te, Joe?”
“Dieci minuti buoni dopo le undici.”
“Sangue mio!” esclamò il cocchiere irritato, “e non siamo ancora in cima a Shooter’s Hill! Tst! Yah! Avanti con voi!”
Il cavallo enfatico, interrotto dalla frustata con un netto rifiuto, si mise a correre disperatamente e gli altri tre cavalli lo imitarono. Ancora una volta la diligenza per Dover proseguì faticosamente mentre gli stivali rinforzati dei passeggeri schiacciavano il terreno al suo fianco. Si erano fermati quando si era fermata la carrozza e le rimanevano vicini. Se uno qualsiasi dei tre avesse avuto l’audacia di proporre a un altro di camminare un po’ più avanti nella nebbia e nell’oscurità, si sarebbe messo in una posizione tale da essere immediatamente fucilato come bandito.
L’ultimo scatto portò la posta alla cima della collina. I cavalli si fermarono per riprendere fiato e il guardiano scese a bloccare la ruota per la discesa, aprendo lo sportello del calesse per far salire i passeggeri.
«Ssst! Joe!» gridò il cocchiere con voce ammonitrice, guardando giù dalla sua postazione.
“Cosa ne pensi, Tom?”
Entrambi ascoltarono.
“Dico che arriva un cavallo al trotto, Joe”.
«Io dico un cavallo al galoppo, Tom», rispose il guardiano, lasciando la presa sulla porta e arrampicandosi agilmente al suo posto. «Signori! In nome del re, tutti voi!»
Con questa affrettata esortazione, armò il suo archibugio e si mise in posizione di attacco.
Il passeggero prenotato da questa storia era sul predellino del calesse e stava per salire; gli altri due passeggeri erano subito dietro di lui, pronti a seguirlo. Egli rimase sul predellino, a metà dentro il calesse e a metà fuori; loro rimasero sulla strada sotto di lui. Tutti guardarono dal cocchiere alla guardia, e dalla guardia al cocchiere, e ascoltarono. Il cocchiere si voltò e la guardia si voltò, e persino il categorico capo tesse le orecchie e si voltò, senza contraddire.
La quiete conseguente al cessare del rombo e dello sforzo della diligenza, aggiunta alla quiete della notte, la rendeva davvero molto silenziosa. Il respiro affannoso dei cavalli comunicava un movimento tremulo alla diligenza, come se fosse in uno stato di agitazione. I cuori dei passeggeri battevano forse abbastanza forte da essere uditi; ma comunque, la pausa tranquilla era espressivamente udibile di persone senza fiato e che trattenevano il respiro, con i polsi accelerati dall’attesa.
Il rumore di un cavallo al galoppo salì velocemente e furiosamente la collina.
«So-ho!» cantò il guardiano a squarciagola. «Ehi là! Fermati, sparo!»
L’andatura fu improvvisamente frenata e, tra molto schizzamento d’acqua e sballottamento, una voce maschile chiamò dalla nebbia: «È la corriera per Douvres?»
“Non ti riguarda cosa sia!” replicò il guardiano. “Cosa sei tu?”
“È questa la corriera per Dover?”
“Perché vuoi saperlo?”
“Voglio un passeggero, se possibile.”
“Quale passeggero?”
«Signor Jarvis Lorry.»
Il nostro passeggero prenotato dimostrò subito che quello era il suo nome. Il capotreno, il cocchiere e gli altri due passeggeri lo guardarono con diffidenza.
«Resti dove è», gridò il guardiano alla voce nella nebbia, «perché se dovessi sbagliare non si potrebbe mai rimediare in vita sua. Gentiluomo di nome Lorry, risponda subito».
«Che succede?», chiese il passeggero con voce lievemente tremante. «Chi mi cerca? È Jerry?»
(«Non mi piace la voce di Jerry, se è lui», borbottò il guardiano tra sé e sé. «Jerry ha una voce più rauca del dovuto per i miei gusti».)
“Sì, signor Lorry.”
“Che succede?”
Un dispaccio inviato dietro di te da laggiù. T. e C.
«Conosco questo messaggero, guardia», disse il signor Lorry scendendo sulla strada - assistito da dietro più velocemente che cortesemente dagli altri due passeggeri, i quali immediatamente si arrampicarono nella carrozza, chiusero la porta e alzarono lo sportello. «Può avvicinarsi; non c’è nulla di sospetto.»
“Spero che non ci sia, ma non posso esserne così sicuro”, disse il guardiano, in un brusco monologo. “Ehi tu!”
«Bene! E ciao a te!» disse Jerry con voce più rauca di prima.
«Avanti al passo! mi hai capito? E se hai delle fondine attaccate alla tua sella, non farmi vedere che ci metti la mano vicino. Perché sono un diavolo nel fare errori rapidi e quando ne faccio uno assume la forma del Piombo. Quindi adesso diamoci un’occhiata.»
Le figure di un cavallo e del cavaliere apparvero lentamente attraverso la nebbia vorticosa, e si avvicinarono al lato della diligenza, dove stava il passeggero. Il cavaliere si chinò, lanciando uno sguardo alla guardia, e porse al passeggero un piccolo foglio ripiegato. Il cavallo del cavaliere era affannoso, e sia il cavallo che il cavaliere erano ricoperti di fango, dagli zoccoli del cavallo al cappello dell’uomo.
«Guardia!» disse il passeggero con tono tranquillo e fiducioso di chi parla di affari.
La sentinella vigile, con la mano destra sul calcio del fucile a canna grossa sollevato e quella sinistra sulla canna, lo sguardo fisso sul cavaliere, rispose seccamente: «Signore».
«Non c’è nulla da temere. Appartengo alla Banca di Tellson. Dovete conoscere la Banca di Tellson a Londra. Sto andando a Parigi per affari. Una corona da bere. Posso leggere questo?»
“Se è così e sei svelto, signore.”
La aprì alla luce della lanterna del calesse da quella parte e lesse - prima per sé e poi ad alta voce: «“Aspetti a Dover la signorina”. Non è lungo, come vede, guardia. Jerry, dica che la mia risposta è stata: RICHIAMATO ALLA VITA».
Jerry sobbalzò sulla sella. «Questa è una risposta dannatamente strana anche lei», disse con la sua voce più rauca.
«Porta indietro quel messaggio e sapranno che ho ricevuto questo, tanto bene quanto se l’avessi scritto io stesso. Procedi nel modo migliore. Buona notte.»
Detto ciò il viaggiatore aprì la portiera della diligenza e salì; senza alcun aiuto da parte dei compagni di viaggio, che avevano prontamente nascosto orologi e borse negli stivali e ora fingevano tutti di dormire. Senza altro scopo preciso se non quello di evitare il rischio di dare inizio a qualsiasi altra azione.
La diligenza riprese faticosamente il cammino, mentre più fitte spire di nebbia si addensavano intorno ad essa all’inizio della discesa. Ben presto la guardia rimise il suo archibugio nel baule delle armi e, dopo aver controllato gli altri contenuti e le pistole supplementari che portava alla cintura, ispezionò una cassettina più piccola sotto al suo sedile, in cui si trovavano alcuni attrezzi da fabbro, un paio di torce ed un acciarino. Era infatti fornito di tutto l’occorrente per il caso che le lanterne della diligenza venissero spente dal vento e dalla tempesta, cosa che talvolta capitava: in quel caso gli sarebbe bastato rinchiudersi all’interno, tenere le scintille dell’acciaio e del ferro ben lontane dalla paglia, ed accendere una luce con relativa sicurezza e facilità (se aveva fortuna) in cinque minuti.
«Tom!» dolcemente sopra il tetto della carrozza.
“Ciao, Joe.”
Avete sentito il messaggio?
L’ho fatto, Joe.
“Cosa ne hai pensato, Tom?”
“Niente di niente, Joe.”
“Anche questo è un caso,” rifletté il guardiano, “perché io stesso ho fatto la stessa cosa.”
Jerry, rimasto solo nella nebbia e nell’oscurità, scese intanto di sella non solo per dare sollievo al suo esausto cavallo, ma anche per pulire il fango dal viso e scrollare l’acqua dal bordo del cappello, che poteva contenere circa mezzo gallone. Dopo essere rimasto in piedi con la briglia sul braccio fortemente imbrattato, finché le ruote della diligenza non furono più udibili e la notte fu di nuovo completamente silenziosa, si voltò per scendere lungo il pendio.
«Dopo quella galoppata da Temple Bar, vecchia mia, non mi fido più delle tue zampe anteriori finché non ti riporto su terreno piano», disse il messaggero rauco, lanciando un’occhiata alla sua giumenta. «“Richiamato in vita”. Che messaggio strabiliante! Molto di questo non farebbe per te, Jerry! Ti dico, Jerry! Saresti in una situazione strabiliantemente brutta se il richiamo in vita dovesse diventare alla moda, Jerry!»
CHAPTER III. The Night Shadows
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life’s end. In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?
As to this, his natural and not to be alienated inheritance, the messenger on horseback had exactly the same possessions as the King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London. So with the three passengers shut up in the narrow compass of one lumbering old mail coach; they were mysteries to one another, as complete as if each had been in his own coach and six, or his own coach and sixty, with the breadth of a county between him and the next.
The messenger rode back at an easy trot, stopping pretty often at ale-houses by the way to drink, but evincing a tendency to keep his own counsel, and to keep his hat cocked over his eyes. He had eyes that assorted very well with that decoration, being of a surface black, with no depth in the colour or form, and much too near together—as if they were afraid of being found out in something, singly, if they kept too far apart. They had a sinister expression, under an old cocked-hat like a three-cornered spittoon, and over a great muffler for the chin and throat, which descended nearly to the wearer’s knees. When he stopped for drink, he moved this muffler with his left hand, only while he poured his liquor in with his right; as soon as that was done, he muffled again.
“No, Jerry, no!” said the messenger, harping on one theme as he rode. “It wouldn’t do for you, Jerry. Jerry, you honest tradesman, it wouldn’t suit your line of business! Recalled—! Bust me if I don’t think he’d been a drinking!”
His message perplexed his mind to that degree that he was fain, several times, to take off his hat to scratch his head. Except on the crown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing jaggedly all over it, and growing down hill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It was so like Smith’s work, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world to go over.
While he trotted back with the message he was to deliver to the night watchman in his box at the door of Tellson’s Bank, by Temple Bar, who was to deliver it to greater authorities within, the shadows of the night took such shapes to him as arose out of the message, and took such shapes to the mare as arose out of her private topics of uneasiness. They seemed to be numerous, for she shied at every shadow on the road.
What time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted, rattled, and bumped upon its tedious way, with its three fellow-inscrutables inside. To whom, likewise, the shadows of the night revealed themselves, in the forms their dozing eyes and wandering thoughts suggested.
Tellson’s Bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the bank passenger—with an arm drawn through the leathern strap, which did what lay in it to keep him from pounding against the next passenger, and driving him into his corner, whenever the coach got a special jolt—nodded in his place, with half-shut eyes, the little coach-windows, and the coach-lamp dimly gleaming through them, and the bulky bundle of opposite passenger, became the bank, and did a great stroke of business. The rattle of the harness was the chink of money, and more drafts were honoured in five minutes than even Tellson’s, with all its foreign and home connection, ever paid in thrice the time. Then the strong-rooms underground, at Tellson’s, with such of their valuable stores and secrets as were known to the passenger (and it was not a little that he knew about them), opened before him, and he went in among them with the great keys and the feebly-burning candle, and found them safe, and strong, and sound, and still, just as he had last seen them.
But, though the bank was almost always with him, and though the coach (in a confused way, like the presence of pain under an opiate) was always with him, there was another current of impression that never ceased to run, all through the night. He was on his way to dig some one out of a grave.
Now, which of the multitude of faces that showed themselves before him was the true face of the buried person, the shadows of the night did not indicate; but they were all the faces of a man of five-and-forty by years, and they differed principally in the passions they expressed, and in the ghastliness of their worn and wasted state. Pride, contempt, defiance, stubbornness, submission, lamentation, succeeded one another; so did varieties of sunken cheek, cadaverous colour, emaciated hands and figures. But the face was in the main one face, and every head was prematurely white. A hundred times the dozing passenger inquired of this spectre:
“Buried how long?”
The answer was always the same: “Almost eighteen years.”
“You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?”
“Long ago.”
“You know that you are recalled to life?”
“They tell me so.”
“I hope you care to live?”
“I can’t say.”
“Shall I show her to you? Will you come and see her?”
The answers to this question were various and contradictory. Sometimes the broken reply was, “Wait! It would kill me if I saw her too soon.” Sometimes, it was given in a tender rain of tears, and then it was, “Take me to her.” Sometimes it was staring and bewildered, and then it was, “I don’t know her. I don’t understand.”
After such imaginary discourse, the passenger in his fancy would dig, and dig, dig—now with a spade, now with a great key, now with his hands—to dig this wretched creature out. Got out at last, with earth hanging about his face and hair, he would suddenly fan away to dust. The passenger would then start to himself, and lower the window, to get the reality of mist and rain on his cheek.
Yet even when his eyes were opened on the mist and rain, on the moving patch of light from the lamps, and the hedge at the roadside retreating by jerks, the night shadows outside the coach would fall into the train of the night shadows within. The real Banking-house by Temple Bar, the real business of the past day, the real strong rooms, the real express sent after him, and the real message returned, would all be there. Out of the midst of them, the ghostly face would rise, and he would accost it again.
“Buried how long?”
“Almost eighteen years.”
“I hope you care to live?”
“I can’t say.”
Dig—dig—dig—until an impatient movement from one of the two passengers would admonish him to pull up the window, draw his arm securely through the leathern strap, and speculate upon the two slumbering forms, until his mind lost its hold of them, and they again slid away into the bank and the grave.
“Buried how long?”
“Almost eighteen years.”
“You had abandoned all hope of being dug out?”
“Long ago.”
The words were still in his hearing as just spoken—distinctly in his hearing as ever spoken words had been in his life—when the weary passenger started to the consciousness of daylight, and found that the shadows of the night were gone.
He lowered the window, and looked out at the rising sun. There was a ridge of ploughed land, with a plough upon it where it had been left last night when the horses were unyoked; beyond, a quiet coppice-wood, in which many leaves of burning red and golden yellow still remained upon the trees. Though the earth was cold and wet, the sky was clear, and the sun rose bright, placid, and beautiful.
“Eighteen years!” said the passenger, looking at the sun. “Gracious Creator of day! To be buried alive for eighteen years!”
CAPITOLO III. Le ombre della notte
Un fatto meraviglioso su cui riflettere: ogni creatura umana è fatta per essere un profondo segreto e mistero per tutti gli altri. Una considerazione solenne quando entro in una grande città di notte, che ogni casa, ammassata nell’oscurità, custodisce il suo segreto; che ogni stanza in ciascuna di esse racchiude il proprio mistero; che ogni cuore che batte nei centinaia di migliaia di petti là fuori è, in alcune delle sue fantasie, un segreto per il cuore più vicino! Qualcosa dell’orrore stesso della morte si ricollega a questo. Non posso più sfogliare le pagine di questo caro libro che amavo e sperare invano in futuro di leggerlo tutto. Non posso più scrutare gli abissi di quest’acqua insondabile, dove, come luci fugaci che vi si riflettono, ho intravisto tesori sepolti e altre cose sommerse. Era scritto che il libro si chiudesse con un meccanismo, per sempre e per sempre, quando ne avevo letto solo una pagina. Era scritto che l’acqua fosse imprigionata in un eterno gelido, mentre la luce danzava sulla sua superficie e io stavo ignaro sulla riva. Il mio amico è morto, il mio vicino è morto, il mio amore, il tesoro della mia anima, è morto; è l’ineluttabile consolidamento e perpetuazione del segreto che era sempre in quell’individualità, e che porterò con me fino alla fine della vita. In uno qualsiasi dei cimiteri di questa città attraverso cui passo, c’è un dormiente più incomprensibile dei suoi abitanti attivi nella loro intima personalità per me, o di quanto io lo sia per loro?
Per quanto riguarda questo suo patrimonio naturale e non alienabile, il messaggero a cavallo aveva esattamente gli stessi beni del Re, del primo ministro o del più ricco mercante di Londra. Così i tre passeggeri chiusi nello spazio ristretto di un vecchio e pesante carrozzone postale erano misteri gli uni per gli altri, tanto completi come se ciascuno fosse stato nel suo carrozzino a sei cavalli o addirittura a sessanta, con l’ampiezza di una contea tra lui e il prossimo.
Il messaggero tornò indietro al trotto, fermandosi spesso per strada nelle osterie a bere, ma dimostrando una tendenza a tenere per sé i suoi pensieri e ad abbassare il cappello sugli occhi. Aveva degli occhi che si abbinavano molto bene con quell’abbigliamento, di un nero superficiale, senza profondità nel colore o nella forma, e troppo vicini tra loro — come se avessero paura di essere scoperti in qualcosa, singolarmente, se si allontanassero troppo. Avevano un’espressione sinistra sotto un vecchio cappello a tricorno simile a una sputacchiera triangolare e sopra un grande foulard per il mento e la gola che scendeva quasi fino alle ginocchia del portatore. Quando si fermava a bere, muoveva questo foulard con la mano sinistra solo mentre versava da bere con la destra; non appena finito, si ricopriva di nuovo.
«No, Jerry, no!» disse il messaggero ripetendo sempre lo stesso tema mentre cavalcava. «Non farebbe per te, Jerry. Tu onesto commerciante, non sarebbe adatto al tuo mestiere! Richiamato—! Mi faccio scoppiare se non credo che abbia bevuto!»
Il suo messaggio lo confuse al punto che più volte fu costretto a togliersi il cappello per grattarsi la testa. A parte sulla sommità, che era calva e irregolare, aveva capelli neri e rigidi, che spuntavano in modo disordinato su tutta la superficie e scendevano a valle quasi fino al suo largo naso tozzo. Era così simile al lavoro di Smith, somigliava tanto alla cima di un muro con punte acuminate che il miglior giocatore di salto della rana lo avrebbe potuto rifiutare, considerandolo l’uomo più pericoloso del mondo da superare.
Mentre tornava al trotto con il messaggio da consegnare all’uomo della notte che stava nella sua guardiola alla porta della Banca Tellson, presso Temple Bar, e che lo avrebbe poi recapitato alle autorità più importanti all’interno, le ombre della notte gli si presentavano in forme ispirate dal messaggio stesso, mentre assumevano per la giumenta quelle forme dettate dai suoi motivi privati di inquietudine. Dovevano essere numerose, perché lei sobbalzava a ogni ombra sulla strada.
A quale ora, la diligenza postale si trascinava, sobbalzava, scricchiolava e sussultava lungo il suo noioso percorso, con i suoi tre compagni incomprensibili all’interno. Anche a loro le ombre della notte si rivelavano nelle forme che i loro occhi assopiti e i pensieri vaganti suggerivano.
La banca Tellson subì una corsa agli sportelli nella postale. Mentre il passeggero della banca - con un braccio infilato nella cinghia di cuoio che faceva del suo meglio per impedirgli di sbattere contro il passeggero accanto, e di spingerlo nel suo angolo, ogni volta che la diligenza riceveva uno scossone particolare - annuiva sul suo posto con gli occhi mezzo chiusi, i piccoli finestrini della carrozza, e la lanterna della diligenza che brillava fiocamente attraverso di essi, e il grosso pacco del passeggero di fronte, divennero la banca, e fecero un grande affare. Il tintinnio delle redini era lo sferragliare dei soldi, e in cinque minuti furono onorati più assegni di quanti ne avesse pagati anche la Tellson, con tutte le sue connessioni straniere e nazionali, in tre volte il tempo. Poi le stanze forti sotterranee della Tellson, con i loro preziosi depositi e i loro segreti noti al passeggero (e non erano pochi quelli che sapeva a riguardo), si aprirono davanti a lui, ed egli vi entrò tra di essi con le grandi chiavi e la candela che ardeva debolmente, e li trovò sicuri, forti, solidi e immobili, proprio come li aveva visti l’ultima volta.
Ma sebbene la banca fosse quasi sempre con lui e benché il calesse (in modo confuso, come la presenza del dolore sotto l’effetto di un oppio) fosse sempre con lui, c’era un’altra corrente d’impressioni che non cessava mai di scorrere per tutta la notte. Era in viaggio per scavare qualcuno fuori da una tomba.
Ora, quale delle molte facce che gli apparivano davanti fosse la vera faccia della persona sepolta, le ombre della notte non lo indicavano; ma erano tutte le facce di un uomo di quarantacinque anni, e differivano principalmente nelle passioni che esprimevano e nella spettrale apparenza logorata e consumata. Orgoglio, disprezzo, sfida, ostinazione, sottomissione, lamentazione si susseguivano; così come varietà di guance incavate, colorito cadaverico, mani ed espressioni emaciate. Ma la faccia era in gran parte una sola faccia, e ogni testa era prematuramente bianca. Cento volte il passeggero assopito chiedeva a questo fantasma:
“Sepolto da quanto?”
La risposta era sempre la stessa: “Quasi diciotto anni.”
«Avevate abbandonato ogni speranza di essere scavati fuori?»
“Tempo fa.”
“Sai che sei stato richiamato alla vita?”
“Me lo dicono.”
“Spero che ti interessi vivere?”
“Non posso dire.”
“Posso mostrarla a voi? Volete venire a vederla?”
Le risposte a questa domanda erano varie e contraddittorie. A volte la risposta frammentata era: “Aspetta! Mi ucciderebbe se la vedessi troppo presto.” A volte, veniva data in un tenero diluvio di lacrime, ed allora era: “Portami da lei.” A volte era fissante e disorientata, ed allora era: “Non la conosco. Non capisco.”
Dopo un tale discorso immaginario, il passeggero nella sua fantasia scaverebbe, e scaverebbe, scaverebbe — ora con una vanga, ora con una grande chiave, ora con le mani — per tirare fuori questa povera creatura. Una volta estratto, con la terra appesa al viso e ai capelli, improvvisamente si disperderebbe in polvere. Il passeggero allora sobbalzerebbe, e abbasserebbe il finestrino, per sentire sulla guancia la realtà della nebbia e della pioggia.
Eppure anche quando i suoi occhi si aprirono sulla nebbia e la pioggia, sulla macchia di luce in movimento delle lampade e sul ciglio della strada che si ritirava a scatti, le ombre della notte fuori dalla carrozza si sarebbero intrecciate con quelle della notte all’interno. La vera banca presso Temple Bar, i veri affari del giorno precedente, le vere stanze forti, il vero messaggio inviato per seguirlo e la vera risposta ricevuta sarebbero stati tutti lì. Da mezzo a questi, il volto spettrale si sarebbe alzato di nuovo e lui lo avrebbe affrontato ancora una volta.
“Sepolto da quanto?”
“Quasi diciotto anni.”
“Spero che ti interessi vivere?”
“Non posso dire.”
Scavare — scavare — scavare — finché un gesto impaziente di uno dei due passeggeri gli avrebbe ricordato di tirar su il finestrino, passarsi con sicurezza il braccio nella cinghia di pelle, e osservare i due corpi addormentati finché la sua mente non li perdeva di vista e loro scivolavano nuovamente nel terrapieno e nella fossa.
“Sepolto da quanto?”
“Quasi diciotto anni.”
«Avevate abbandonato ogni speranza di essere scavati fuori?»
“Tempo fa.”
Le parole erano ancora nelle sue orecchie come appena pronunciate - distintamente nelle sue orecchie come mai prima d’allora nella sua vita - quando il viaggiatore stanco si svegliò alla consapevolezza della luce del giorno e scoprì che le ombre della notte erano svanite.
Abbassò la finestra e guardò fuori verso il sole nascente. C’era un crinale di terra arata, con l’aratro sopra dove era stato lasciato la scorsa notte quando i cavalli erano stati sganciati; oltre, una tranquilla boscaglia in cui molte foglie di un rosso ardente e giallo dorato rimanevano ancora sugli alberi. Sebbene la terra fosse fredda e umida, il cielo era sereno e il sole si levò luminoso, placido e bellissimo.
«Diciotto anni!» disse il passeggero guardando il sole. «Grazioso Creatore del giorno! Essere seppelliti vivi per diciotto anni!»
CHAPTER IV. The Preparation
When the mail got successfully to Dover, in the course of the forenoon, the head drawer at the Royal George Hotel opened the coach-door as his custom was. He did it with some flourish of ceremony, for a mail journey from London in winter was an achievement to congratulate an adventurous traveller upon.
By that time, there was only one adventurous traveller left be congratulated: for the two others had been set down at their respective roadside destinations. The mildewy inside of the coach, with its damp and dirty straw, its disagreeable smell, and its obscurity, was rather like a larger dog-kennel. Mr. Lorry, the passenger, shaking himself out of it in chains of straw, a tangle of shaggy wrapper, flapping hat, and muddy legs, was rather like a larger sort of dog.
“There will be a packet to Calais, tomorrow, drawer?”
“Yes, sir, if the weather holds and the wind sets tolerable fair. The tide will serve pretty nicely at about two in the afternoon, sir. Bed, sir?”
“I shall not go to bed till night; but I want a bedroom, and a barber.”
“And then breakfast, sir? Yes, sir. That way, sir, if you please. Show Concord! Gentleman’s valise and hot water to Concord. Pull off gentleman’s boots in Concord. (You will find a fine sea-coal fire, sir.) Fetch barber to Concord. Stir about there, now, for Concord!”
The Concord bed-chamber being always assigned to a passenger by the mail, and passengers by the mail being always heavily wrapped up from head to foot, the room had the odd interest for the establishment of the Royal George, that although but one kind of man was seen to go into it, all kinds and varieties of men came out of it. Consequently, another drawer, and two porters, and several maids and the landlady, were all loitering by accident at various points of the road between the Concord and the coffee-room, when a gentleman of sixty, formally dressed in a brown suit of clothes, pretty well worn, but very well kept, with large square cuffs and large flaps to the pockets, passed along on his way to his breakfast.
The coffee-room had no other occupant, that forenoon, than the gentleman in brown. His breakfast-table was drawn before the fire, and as he sat, with its light shining on him, waiting for the meal, he sat so still, that he might have been sitting for his portrait.
Very orderly and methodical he looked, with a hand on each knee, and a loud watch ticking a sonorous sermon under his flapped waist-coat, as though it pitted its gravity and longevity against the levity and evanescence of the brisk fire. He had a good leg, and was a little vain of it, for his brown stockings fitted sleek and close, and were of a fine texture; his shoes and buckles, too, though plain, were trim. He wore an odd little sleek crisp flaxen wig, setting very close to his head: which wig, it is to be presumed, was made of hair, but which looked far more as though it were spun from filaments of silk or glass. His linen, though not of a fineness in accordance with his stockings, was as white as the tops of the waves that broke upon the neighbouring beach, or the specks of sail that glinted in the sunlight far at sea. A face habitually suppressed and quieted, was still lighted up under the quaint wig by a pair of moist bright eyes that it must have cost their owner, in years gone by, some pains to drill to the composed and reserved expression of Tellson’s Bank. He had a healthy colour in his cheeks, and his face, though lined, bore few traces of anxiety. But, perhaps the confidential bachelor clerks in Tellson’s Bank were principally occupied with the cares of other people; and perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.
Completing his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his portrait, Mr. Lorry dropped off to sleep. The arrival of his breakfast roused him, and he said to the drawer, as he moved his chair to it:
“I wish accommodation prepared for a young lady who may come here at any time to-day. She may ask for Mr. Jarvis Lorry, or she may only ask for a gentleman from Tellson’s Bank. Please to let me know.”
“Yes, sir. Tellson’s Bank in London, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, sir. We have oftentimes the honour to entertain your gentlemen in their travelling backwards and forwards betwixt London and Paris, sir. A vast deal of travelling, sir, in Tellson and Company’s House.”
“Yes. We are quite a French House, as well as an English one.”
“Yes, sir. Not much in the habit of such travelling yourself, I think, sir?”
“Not of late years. It is fifteen years since we—since I—came last from France.”
“Indeed, sir? That was before my time here, sir. Before our people’s time here, sir. The George was in other hands at that time, sir.”
“I believe so.”
“But I would hold a pretty wager, sir, that a House like Tellson and Company was flourishing, a matter of fifty, not to speak of fifteen years ago?”
“You might treble that, and say a hundred and fifty, yet not be far from the truth.”
“Indeed, sir!”
Rounding his mouth and both his eyes, as he stepped backward from the table, the waiter shifted his napkin from his right arm to his left, dropped into a comfortable attitude, and stood surveying the guest while he ate and drank, as from an observatory or watchtower. According to the immemorial usage of waiters in all ages.
When Mr. Lorry had finished his breakfast, he went out for a stroll on the beach. The little narrow, crooked town of Dover hid itself away from the beach, and ran its head into the chalk cliffs, like a marine ostrich. The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumbling wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction. It thundered at the town, and thundered at the cliffs, and brought the coast down, madly. The air among the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavour that one might have supposed sick fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick people went down to be dipped in the sea. A little fishing was done in the port, and a quantity of strolling about by night, and looking seaward: particularly at those times when the tide made, and was near flood. Small tradesmen, who did no business whatever, sometimes unaccountably realised large fortunes, and it was remarkable that nobody in the neighbourhood could endure a lamplighter.
CAPITOLO IV. I Preparativi
Quando la posta giunse felicemente a Dover nel corso della mattinata, il capo cameriere dell’Hotel Royal George aprì come era solito la porta del calesse. Lo fece con un certo sfoggio di cerimonie, perché un viaggio in diligenza da Londra in inverno era una prodezza per cui congratularsi con un viaggiatore avventuroso.
A quell’ora, rimaneva solo un viaggiatore avventuroso da congratulare: perché gli altri due erano stati lasciati alle rispettive destinazioni lungo la strada. L’interno muffoso del calesse, con la sua paglia umida e sporca, il suo odore sgradevole e la sua oscurità, era piuttosto simile a una cuccia per cani più grande. Il signor Lorry, il passeggero, che si scrollava fuori da essa in catene di paglia, un groviglio di coperte pelose, cappello svolazzante e gambe infangate, era piuttosto simile a una specie di cane più grande.
“Domani ci sarà un pacchetto per Calais, cassettiera?”
“Sì, signore, se il tempo regge e il vento è abbastanza favorevole. La marea sarà molto adatta verso le due del pomeriggio, signore. Letto, signore?”
«Non andrò a letto fino alla notte; ma voglio una camera da letto e un barbiere.»
“E poi la colazione, signore? Sì, signore. Di là, signore, se vuole. Mostrare Concord! Valigia del gentiluomo e acqua calda a Concord. Togliere gli stivali al gentiluomo in Concord. (Troverà un bel fuoco di carbone fossile, signore.) Portare il barbiere a Concord. Attività frenetica ora per Concord!”
La camera da letto del Concord veniva sempre assegnata a un passeggero della posta, e i passeggeri della posta erano sempre avvolti in pesanti indumenti dalla testa ai piedi; la stanza aveva quindi il singolare interesse per l’hotel Royal George di ospitare solo un tipo di uomo che vi entrava, mentre ne uscivano tutti i tipi e le varietà di uomini. Di conseguenza, un altro cameriere, due facchini, diverse cameriere e la padrona di casa si trovavano per caso in vari punti della strada tra il Concord e la sala da pranzo quando un signore di sessant’anni, elegantemente vestito con un abito marrone piuttosto usato ma molto curato, con grandi polsini quadrati e ampie tasche, passò lungo il percorso verso la sua colazione.
La sala da caffè non aveva altri occupanti quella mattina presto se non il gentiluomo in marrone. Il suo tavolo per la colazione era stato spostato davanti al fuoco, e mentre sedeva, con la luce che gli brillava addosso, aspettando il pasto, rimaneva così immobile da sembrare una statua.
Aveva un’aria molto ordinata e metodica, con una mano su ogni ginocchio, e un orologio rumoroso che scandiva un sonoro sermone sotto il panciotto aperto, quasi a sfidare la sua gravità e longevità contro la leggerezza e l’effimero del vivace fuoco. Aveva una buona gamba ed era un po’ vanitoso di questo, perché i suoi calzini marroni erano lisci e aderenti, e di ottima qualità; anche le sue scarpe e fibbie, sebbene semplici, erano ben curate. Portava una piccola parrucca bionda lucida e arricciata che gli stava molto stretta alla testa: questa parrucca, si presumeva, fosse fatta di capelli, ma sembrava più che fosse filata da filamenti di seta o vetro. La sua biancheria, sebbene non di una finezza in linea con i suoi calzini, era bianca come le cime delle onde che si infrangevano sulla spiaggia vicina, o le macchie di vela che brillavano al sole lontano in mare. Un volto abituale soppresso e tranquillo, era ancora illuminato sotto la strana parrucca da un paio di occhi umidi e luminosi che dovevano aver costato al loro proprietario, negli anni passati, qualche fatica per addestrarli all’espressione composta e riservata della Banca Tellson. Aveva un colorito sano sulle guance, e il suo volto, sebbene segnato, portava poche tracce di ansia. Ma forse i celibi impiegati fiduciari della Banca Tellson erano principalmente occupati con le preoccupazioni degli altri; e forse le preoccupazioni di seconda mano, come i vestiti usati, si indossano e si tolgono facilmente.
Per completare la sua somiglianza con un uomo che stava posando per il suo ritratto, il signor Lorry si addormentò. Il suo risveglio fu annunciato dall’arrivo della colazione e, mentre spostava la sedia verso di essa, disse al cameriere:
“Vorrei che si preparasse un alloggio per una giovane signora che potrebbe arrivare qui in qualsiasi momento oggi. Potrebbe chiedere del signor Jarvis Lorry, oppure potrebbe solo chiedere di un gentiluomo della Banca Tellson. La prego di farmelo sapere.”
“Sì, signore. La Banca Tellson a Londra, signore?”
“Sì, davvero.”
“Sì, signore. Abbiamo spesso l’onore di ospitare i suoi gentiluomini nei loro viaggi avanti e indietro tra Londra e Parigi, signore. Un gran numero di viaggi, signore, nella casa della Tellson and Company.”
“Sì. Siamo una casa molto francese, oltre che inglese”.
“Sì, signore. Non è abituato a viaggiare così spesso lei stesso, vero?”
“Non negli ultimi anni. Sono quindici anni da quando noi, io, sono tornato l’ultima volta dalla Francia.”
«Davvero, signore? Quello era prima della mia epoca qui, signore. Prima dell’epoca del nostro popolo qui, signore. Il George era in altre mani a quel tempo, signore».
“Credo di sì.”
«Ma io scommetterei una bella cifra, signore, che un’azienda come la Tellson e Compagnia era fiorente, diciamo cinquant’anni fa, senza parlare di quindici anni fa?»
“Potreste triplicare quel numero e dire centocinquanta, senza allontanarvi molto dalla verità.”
“Proprio così, signore!”
Arrotondando bocca e occhi mentre si ritraeva dal tavolo, il cameriere passò il tovagliolo dal braccio destro a quello sinistro, assunse una posa comoda e rimase lì a osservare il cliente che mangiava e beveva come da un osservatorio o una torre di guardia. Secondo l’usanza immemorabile dei camerieri in tutte le epoche.
Quando il signor Lorry ebbe finito la colazione, uscì per una passeggiata sulla spiaggia. La piccola città stretta e tortuosa di Dover si nascondeva dalla spiaggia, e affondava la sua testa nelle scogliere di gesso, come un’ostrica marina. La spiaggia era un deserto di cumuli di mare e pietre che rotolavano selvaggiamente, e il mare faceva ciò che voleva, e ciò che voleva era la distruzione. Tuonava contro la città, e tuonava contro le scogliere, e abbatté la costa, in modo folle. L’aria tra le case aveva un sapore così forte di pesce che si sarebbe potuto supporre che i pesci malati salissero per essere immersi in essa, come le persone malate scendevano per essere immerse nel mare. Un po’ di pesca veniva fatta nel porto, e una quantità di vagabondaggio durante la notte, e guardando verso il mare: particolarmente a quei tempi quando la marea saliva, ed era vicina alla piena. Piccoli commercianti, che non facevano affari, realizzavano talvolta fortune incomprensibilmente grandi, ed era notevole che nessuno nei dintorni potesse sopportare un accenditore di lampioni.
As the day declined into the afternoon, and the air, which had been at intervals clear enough to allow the French coast to be seen, became again charged with mist and vapour, Mr. Lorry’s thoughts seemed to cloud too. When it was dark, and he sat before the coffee-room fire, awaiting his dinner as he had awaited his breakfast, his mind was busily digging, digging, digging, in the live red coals.
A bottle of good claret after dinner does a digger in the red coals no harm, otherwise than as it has a tendency to throw him out of work. Mr. Lorry had been idle a long time, and had just poured out his last glassful of wine with as complete an appearance of satisfaction as is ever to be found in an elderly gentleman of a fresh complexion who has got to the end of a bottle, when a rattling of wheels came up the narrow street, and rumbled into the inn-yard.
He set down his glass untouched. “This is Mam’selle!” said he.
In a very few minutes the waiter came in to announce that Miss Manette had arrived from London, and would be happy to see the gentleman from Tellson’s.
“So soon?”
Miss Manette had taken some refreshment on the road, and required none then, and was extremely anxious to see the gentleman from Tellson’s immediately, if it suited his pleasure and convenience.
The gentleman from Tellson’s had nothing left for it but to empty his glass with an air of stolid desperation, settle his odd little flaxen wig at the ears, and follow the waiter to Miss Manette’s apartment. It was a large, dark room, furnished in a funereal manner with black horsehair, and loaded with heavy dark tables. These had been oiled and oiled, until the two tall candles on the table in the middle of the room were gloomily reflected on every leaf; as if they were buried, in deep graves of black mahogany, and no light to speak of could be expected from them until they were dug out.
The obscurity was so difficult to penetrate that Mr. Lorry, picking his way over the well-worn Turkey carpet, supposed Miss Manette to be, for the moment, in some adjacent room, until, having got past the two tall candles, he saw standing to receive him by the table between them and the fire, a young lady of not more than seventeen, in a riding-cloak, and still holding her straw travelling-hat by its ribbon in her hand. As his eyes rested on a short, slight, pretty figure, a quantity of golden hair, a pair of blue eyes that met his own with an inquiring look, and a forehead with a singular capacity (remembering how young and smooth it was), of rifting and knitting itself into an expression that was not quite one of perplexity, or wonder, or alarm, or merely of a bright fixed attention, though it included all the four expressions—as his eyes rested on these things, a sudden vivid likeness passed before him, of a child whom he had held in his arms on the passage across that very Channel, one cold time, when the hail drifted heavily and the sea ran high. The likeness passed away, like a breath along the surface of the gaunt pier-glass behind her, on the frame of which, a hospital procession of negro cupids, several headless and all cripples, were offering black baskets of Dead Sea fruit to black divinities of the feminine gender—and he made his formal bow to Miss Manette.
“Pray take a seat, sir.” In a very clear and pleasant young voice; a little foreign in its accent, but a very little indeed.
“I kiss your hand, miss,” said Mr. Lorry, with the manners of an earlier date, as he made his formal bow again, and took his seat.
“I received a letter from the Bank, sir, yesterday, informing me that some intelligence—or discovery—”
“The word is not material, miss; either word will do.”
“—respecting the small property of my poor father, whom I never saw—so long dead—”
Mr. Lorry moved in his chair, and cast a troubled look towards the hospital procession of negro cupids. As if they had any help for anybody in their absurd baskets!
“—rendered it necessary that I should go to Paris, there to communicate with a gentleman of the Bank, so good as to be despatched to Paris for the purpose.”
“Myself.”
“As I was prepared to hear, sir.”
She curtseyed to him (young ladies made curtseys in those days), with a pretty desire to convey to him that she felt how much older and wiser he was than she. He made her another bow.
“I replied to the Bank, sir, that as it was considered necessary, by those who know, and who are so kind as to advise me, that I should go to France, and that as I am an orphan and have no friend who could go with me, I should esteem it highly if I might be permitted to place myself, during the journey, under that worthy gentleman’s protection. The gentleman had left London, but I think a messenger was sent after him to beg the favour of his waiting for me here.”
“I was happy,” said Mr. Lorry, “to be entrusted with the charge. I shall be more happy to execute it.”
“Sir, I thank you indeed. I thank you very gratefully. It was told me by the Bank that the gentleman would explain to me the details of the business, and that I must prepare myself to find them of a surprising nature. I have done my best to prepare myself, and I naturally have a strong and eager interest to know what they are.”
“Naturally,” said Mr. Lorry. “Yes—I—”
After a pause, he added, again settling the crisp flaxen wig at the ears, “It is very difficult to begin.”
He did not begin, but, in his indecision, met her glance. The young forehead lifted itself into that singular expression—but it was pretty and characteristic, besides being singular—and she raised her hand, as if with an involuntary action she caught at, or stayed some passing shadow.
“Are you quite a stranger to me, sir?”
“Am I not?” Mr. Lorry opened his hands, and extended them outwards with an argumentative smile.
Between the eyebrows and just over the little feminine nose, the line of which was as delicate and fine as it was possible to be, the expression deepened itself as she took her seat thoughtfully in the chair by which she had hitherto remained standing. He watched her as she mused, and the moment she raised her eyes again, went on:
“In your adopted country, I presume, I cannot do better than address you as a young English lady, Miss Manette?”
“If you please, sir.”
“Miss Manette, I am a man of business. I have a business charge to acquit myself of. In your reception of it, don’t heed me any more than if I was a speaking machine—truly, I am not much else. I will, with your leave, relate to you, miss, the story of one of our customers.”
“Story!”
He seemed wilfully to mistake the word she had repeated, when he added, in a hurry, “Yes, customers; in the banking business we usually call our connection our customers. He was a French gentleman; a scientific gentleman; a man of great acquirements—a Doctor.”
“Not of Beauvais?”
“Why, yes, of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father, the gentleman was of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father, the gentleman was of repute in Paris. I had the honour of knowing him there. Our relations were business relations, but confidential. I was at that time in our French House, and had been—oh! twenty years.”
“At that time—I may ask, at what time, sir?”
“I speak, miss, of twenty years ago. He married—an English lady—and I was one of the trustees. His affairs, like the affairs of many other French gentlemen and French families, were entirely in Tellson’s hands. In a similar way I am, or I have been, trustee of one kind or other for scores of our customers. These are mere business relations, miss; there is no friendship in them, no particular interest, nothing like sentiment. I have passed from one to another, in the course of my business life, just as I pass from one of our customers to another in the course of my business day; in short, I have no feelings; I am a mere machine. To go on—”
“But this is my father’s story, sir; and I begin to think”—the curiously roughened forehead was very intent upon him—“that when I was left an orphan through my mother’s surviving my father only two years, it was you who brought me to England. I am almost sure it was you.”
Mr. Lorry took the hesitating little hand that confidingly advanced to take his, and he put it with some ceremony to his lips. He then conducted the young lady straightway to her chair again, and, holding the chair-back with his left hand, and using his right by turns to rub his chin, pull his wig at the ears, or point what he said, stood looking down into her face while she sat looking up into his.
“Miss Manette, it was I. And you will see how truly I spoke of myself just now, in saying I had no feelings, and that all the relations I hold with my fellow-creatures are mere business relations, when you reflect that I have never seen you since. No; you have been the ward of Tellson’s House since, and I have been busy with the other business of Tellson’s House since. Feelings! I have no time for them, no chance of them. I pass my whole life, miss, in turning an immense pecuniary Mangle.”
After this odd description of his daily routine of employment, Mr. Lorry flattened his flaxen wig upon his head with both hands (which was most unnecessary, for nothing could be flatter than its shining surface was before), and resumed his former attitude.
“So far, miss (as you have remarked), this is the story of your regretted father. Now comes the difference. If your father had not died when he did—Don’t be frightened! How you start!”
She did, indeed, start. And she caught his wrist with both her hands.
“Pray,” said Mr. Lorry, in a soothing tone, bringing his left hand from the back of the chair to lay it on the supplicatory fingers that clasped him in so violent a tremble: “pray control your agitation—a matter of business. As I was saying—”
Her look so discomposed him that he stopped, wandered, and began anew:
“As I was saying; if Monsieur Manette had not died; if he had suddenly and silently disappeared; if he had been spirited away; if it had not been difficult to guess to what dreadful place, though no art could trace him; if he had an enemy in some compatriot who could exercise a privilege that I in my own time have known the boldest people afraid to speak of in a whisper, across the water there; for instance, the privilege of filling up blank forms for the consignment of any one to the oblivion of a prison for any length of time; if his wife had implored the king, the queen, the court, the clergy, for any tidings of him, and all quite in vain;—then the history of your father would have been the history of this unfortunate gentleman, the Doctor of Beauvais.”
“I entreat you to tell me more, sir.”
“I will. I am going to. You can bear it?”
“I can bear anything but the uncertainty you leave me in at this moment.”
“You speak collectedly, and you—are collected. That’s good!” (Though his manner was less satisfied than his words.) “A matter of business. Regard it as a matter of business—business that must be done. Now if this doctor’s wife, though a lady of great courage and spirit, had suffered so intensely from this cause before her little child was born—”
“The little child was a daughter, sir.”
“A daughter. A-a-matter of business—don’t be distressed. Miss, if the poor lady had suffered so intensely before her little child was born, that she came to the determination of sparing the poor child the inheritance of any part of the agony she had known the pains of, by rearing her in the belief that her father was dead—No, don’t kneel! In Heaven’s name why should you kneel to me!”
“For the truth. O dear, good, compassionate sir, for the truth!”
“A—a matter of business. You confuse me, and how can I transact business if I am confused? Let us be clear-headed. If you could kindly mention now, for instance, what nine times ninepence are, or how many shillings in twenty guineas, it would be so encouraging. I should be so much more at my ease about your state of mind.”
«Nel vostro paese d’adozione, presumo che non possa fare di meglio che rivolgermi a voi come a una giovane signorina inglese, Miss Manette?»
“Se non le dispiace, signore.”
«Miss Manette, sono un uomo d’affari. Ho un incarico professionale da svolgere. Nella vostra accoglienza di esso, non mi considerate più di quanto fareste se fossi una macchina parlante - in verità, non sono molto altro. Con il vostro permesso, vi racconterò, miss, la storia di uno dei nostri clienti».
“Storia!”
Sembrò volutamente fraintendere la parola che lei aveva ripetuto quando aggiunse, in fretta: «Sì, clienti; nel settore bancario di solito chiamiamo i nostri rapporti i nostri clienti. Era un gentiluomo francese; un gentiluomo dedito alla scienza; un uomo di grandi conoscenze, un Dottore».
“Non di Beauvais?”
«Perché sì, di Beauvais. Come Monsieur Manette, suo padre, il gentiluomo era di Beauvais. Come Monsieur Manette, suo padre, il gentiluomo godeva di buona reputazione a Parigi. Ebbi l’onore di conoscerlo là. I nostri rapporti erano rapporti commerciali, ma confidenziali. In quel periodo ero nella nostra filiale francese e vi lavoravo da, oh! vent’anni».
«In quel periodo — posso chiedere, in quale periodo, signore?»
«Parlo, signorina, di vent’anni fa. Si sposò - una signora inglese - e io fui uno dei fiduciari. Le sue faccende, come quelle di molti altri gentiluomini francesi e famiglie francesi, erano interamente nelle mani della Tellson. In modo simile sono stato o sono fiduciario di un tipo o dell’altro per decine dei nostri clienti. Si tratta solo di rapporti commerciali, signorina; non c’è amicizia in essi, nessun interesse particolare, nulla che assomigli a sentimento. Sono passato dall’uno all’altro nel corso della mia vita lavorativa, proprio come passo da un nostro cliente all’altro nel corso della mia giornata lavorativa; insomma, non ho sentimenti; sono solo una macchina. Per continuare -»
«Ma questa è la storia di mio padre, signore; e comincio a pensare» — la fronte stranamente rugosa era molto concentrata su di lui — «che quando rimasi orfano perché mia madre sopravvisse a mio padre solo due anni, fu lei che mi portò in Inghilterra. Sono quasi sicuro che fosse lei.»
Il signor Lorry prese la piccola mano esitante che si avvicinava fiduciosa per prendere la sua e con un certo cerimoniale se la portò alle labbra. Poi condusse subito la giovane signora di nuovo alla sua sedia, e tenendo lo schienale della sedia con la sinistra, mentre usava a turno la destra per strofinarsi il mento, tirare le orecchie della parrucca o puntare ciò che diceva, rimase lì a guardare in basso nel suo viso mentre lei sedeva e lo guardava in su.
«Miss Manette, sono stato io. E vedrà quanto ho detto sinceramente di me stesso poco fa, quando dicevo che non avevo sentimenti e che tutti i rapporti che intrattengo con gli altri esseri umani sono semplicemente rapporti commerciali, quando rifletterà sul fatto che da allora non l’ho più vista. No; è stata la pupilla della casa di Tellson da allora, e io mi sono occupato degli altri affari della casa di Tellson da allora. Sentimenti! Non ho tempo per loro, non ne ho l’opportunità. Passo tutta la mia vita, signorina, a far girare un enorme torchio finanziario».
Dopo questa strana descrizione della sua routine quotidiana di lavoro, il signor Lorry si appiattì la parrucca bionda sulla testa con entrambe le mani (cosa del tutto inutile, poiché nulla poteva essere più piatto della sua superficie lucida prima), e riprese la sua posizione precedente.
«Fin qui, signorina (come lei ha osservato) questa è la storia di suo padre defunto. Ora viene il diverso. Se suo padre non fosse morto quando morì. Non abbia paura! Come si spaventa!»
E infatti sobbalzò. E gli afferrò il polso con entrambe le mani.
«La prego», disse il signor Lorry, con un tono rassicurante, portando la mano sinistra dallo schienale della sedia per posarla sulle dita supplichevoli che lo stringevano in un tremito così violento: «cerchi di controllare la sua agitazione, una questione di affari. Come stavo dicendo, »
Il suo sguardo lo turbò così tanto che si fermò, esitò e ricominciò da capo:
“Come stavo dicendo: se Monsieur Manette non fosse morto; se fosse scomparso all’improvviso e in silenzio; se lo avessero fatto sparire; se non fosse stato difficile indovinare quale terribile luogo, anche se nessun’arte poteva rintracciarlo; se avesse un nemico in qualche compatriota che potesse esercitare un privilegio di cui io nel mio tempo ho visto le persone più coraggiose aver paura di parlare sussurrando, dall’altra parte del mare; per esempio, il privilegio di compilare moduli vuoti per la consegna di chiunque all’oblio di una prigione per qualsiasi periodo di tempo; se sua moglie avesse supplicato il re, la regina, la corte, il clero, per qualche notizia su di lui, e tutto invano; — allora la storia di vostro padre sarebbe stata la storia di questo sfortunato gentiluomo, il Dottore di Beauvais.”
“La prego di dirmi di più, signore.”
“Lo farò. Sto per farlo. Puoi sopportarlo?”
Posso sopportare qualsiasi cosa tranne l’incertezza che mi lasci in questo momento.
“Parlate con calma e siete, calma. Questo è un bene!” (Anche se il suo comportamento era meno soddisfatto delle sue parole.) “Una questione di affari. Consideratela come una questione di affari, affari che devono essere conclusi. Ora, se questa moglie del dottore, pur essendo una signora dal grande coraggio e spirito, avesse sofferto così intensamente per questo motivo prima che il suo piccolo bambino nascesse—”
«La piccola bambina era una figlia, signore».
«Una figlia. Una, questione di affari — non si angosciasse. Signorina, se la povera signora avesse sofferto così intensamente prima che il suo piccolo bambino nascesse, da prendere la decisione di risparmiare al povero bambino l’eredità di una parte dell’agonia che aveva conosciuto nei suoi dolori, allevandolo nella convinzione che suo padre fosse morto — No, non si inginocchi! Per amor del cielo, perché dovrebbe inginocchiarsi davanti a me!»
«Per la verità. Oh caro, buon, compassionevole signore, per la verità!»
«U—un affare di lavoro. Mi confondete e come posso sbrigare gli affari se sono confuso? Cerchiamo di essere lucidi. Se poteste gentilmente dirmi ora, per esempio, quanto fanno nove volte nove pence o quanti scellini ci sono in venti ghinee, sarebbe davvero incoraggiante. Mi sentirei molto più tranquillo riguardo al vostro stato mentale».
Without directly answering to this appeal, she sat so still when he had very gently raised her, and the hands that had not ceased to clasp his wrists were so much more steady than they had been, that she communicated some reassurance to Mr. Jarvis Lorry.
“That’s right, that’s right. Courage! Business! You have business before you; useful business. Miss Manette, your mother took this course with you. And when she died—I believe broken-hearted—having never slackened her unavailing search for your father, she left you, at two years old, to grow to be blooming, beautiful, and happy, without the dark cloud upon you of living in uncertainty whether your father soon wore his heart out in prison, or wasted there through many lingering years.”
As he said the words he looked down, with an admiring pity, on the flowing golden hair; as if he pictured to himself that it might have been already tinged with grey.
“You know that your parents had no great possession, and that what they had was secured to your mother and to you. There has been no new discovery, of money, or of any other property; but—”
He felt his wrist held closer, and he stopped. The expression in the forehead, which had so particularly attracted his notice, and which was now immovable, had deepened into one of pain and horror.
“But he has been—been found. He is alive. Greatly changed, it is too probable; almost a wreck, it is possible; though we will hope the best. Still, alive. Your father has been taken to the house of an old servant in Paris, and we are going there: I, to identify him if I can: you, to restore him to life, love, duty, rest, comfort.”
A shiver ran through her frame, and from it through his. She said, in a low, distinct, awe-stricken voice, as if she were saying it in a dream,
“I am going to see his Ghost! It will be his Ghost—not him!”
Mr. Lorry quietly chafed the hands that held his arm. “There, there, there! See now, see now! The best and the worst are known to you, now. You are well on your way to the poor wronged gentleman, and, with a fair sea voyage, and a fair land journey, you will be soon at his dear side.”
She repeated in the same tone, sunk to a whisper, “I have been free, I have been happy, yet his Ghost has never haunted me!”
“Only one thing more,” said Mr. Lorry, laying stress upon it as a wholesome means of enforcing her attention: “he has been found under another name; his own, long forgotten or long concealed. It would be worse than useless now to inquire which; worse than useless to seek to know whether he has been for years overlooked, or always designedly held prisoner. It would be worse than useless now to make any inquiries, because it would be dangerous. Better not to mention the subject, anywhere or in any way, and to remove him—for a while at all events—out of France. Even I, safe as an Englishman, and even Tellson’s, important as they are to French credit, avoid all naming of the matter. I carry about me, not a scrap of writing openly referring to it. This is a secret service altogether. My credentials, entries, and memoranda, are all comprehended in the one line, ‘Recalled to Life;’ which may mean anything. But what is the matter! She doesn’t notice a word! Miss Manette!”
Perfectly still and silent, and not even fallen back in her chair, she sat under his hand, utterly insensible; with her eyes open and fixed upon him, and with that last expression looking as if it were carved or branded into her forehead. So close was her hold upon his arm, that he feared to detach himself lest he should hurt her; therefore he called out loudly for assistance without moving.
A wild-looking woman, whom even in his agitation, Mr. Lorry observed to be all of a red colour, and to have red hair, and to be dressed in some extraordinary tight-fitting fashion, and to have on her head a most wonderful bonnet like a Grenadier wooden measure, and good measure too, or a great Stilton cheese, came running into the room in advance of the inn servants, and soon settled the question of his detachment from the poor young lady, by laying a brawny hand upon his chest, and sending him flying back against the nearest wall.
(“I really think this must be a man!” was Mr. Lorry’s breathless reflection, simultaneously with his coming against the wall.)
“Why, look at you all!” bawled this figure, addressing the inn servants. “Why don’t you go and fetch things, instead of standing there staring at me? I am not so much to look at, am I? Why don’t you go and fetch things? I’ll let you know, if you don’t bring smelling-salts, cold water, and vinegar, quick, I will.”
There was an immediate dispersal for these restoratives, and she softly laid the patient on a sofa, and tended her with great skill and gentleness: calling her “my precious!” and “my bird!” and spreading her golden hair aside over her shoulders with great pride and care.
“And you in brown!” she said, indignantly turning to Mr. Lorry; “couldn’t you tell her what you had to tell her, without frightening her to death? Look at her, with her pretty pale face and her cold hands. Do you call that being a Banker?”
Mr. Lorry was so exceedingly disconcerted by a question so hard to answer, that he could only look on, at a distance, with much feebler sympathy and humility, while the strong woman, having banished the inn servants under the mysterious penalty of “letting them know” something not mentioned if they stayed there, staring, recovered her charge by a regular series of gradations, and coaxed her to lay her drooping head upon her shoulder.
“I hope she will do well now,” said Mr. Lorry.
“No thanks to you in brown, if she does. My darling pretty!”
“I hope,” said Mr. Lorry, after another pause of feeble sympathy and humility, “that you accompany Miss Manette to France?”
“A likely thing, too!” replied the strong woman. “If it was ever intended that I should go across salt water, do you suppose Providence would have cast my lot in an island?”
This being another question hard to answer, Mr. Jarvis Lorry withdrew to consider it.
Senza rispondere direttamente a questo appello, rimase così immobile quando lui l’aveva sollevata con grande delicatezza e le mani che non avevano smesso di stringere i suoi polsi erano molto più ferme di prima, da trasmettere un po’ di tranquillità al signor Jarvis Lorry.
“Esatto, esatto. Coraggio! Affari! Avete degli affari da sbrigare; affari utili. Miss Manette, vostra madre ha seguito questo percorso con voi. E quando morì - credo di crepacuore - senza mai aver abbandonato la sua infruttuosa ricerca di vostro padre, vi lasciò, all’età di due anni, per crescere rigogliosa, bella e felice, senza che su di voi gravasse il cupo pensiero di vivere nell’incertezza se vostro padre si fosse presto consumato il cuore in prigione, o vi avesse trascorso molti anni di lenta agonia.”
Mentre pronunciava queste parole guardò in basso con ammirata pietà i capelli dorati e fluenti, come se si immaginasse che fossero già striati di grigio.
«Sapete che i vostri genitori non avevano grandi possedimenti e che ciò che avevano era assicurato a vostra madre e a voi. Non c’è stata alcuna nuova scoperta di denaro o di altre proprietà; ma, »
Sentì che il polso gli veniva stretto più forte e si fermò. L’espressione sulla fronte, che aveva attirato in modo particolare la sua attenzione e che ora era immobile, si era accentuata fino a trasformarsi in un’espressione di dolore e orrore.
«Ma è stato, è stato trovato. È vivo. Molto cambiato, è troppo probabile; quasi un relitto, è possibile; anche se speriamo per il meglio. Tuttavia, è vivo. Vostro padre è stato portato nella casa di un vecchio servitore a Parigi, e ci stiamo recando lì: io, per identificarlo se posso; voi, per riportarlo alla vita, all’amore, al dovere, al riposo, al conforto.»
Un brivido le attraversò il corpo e da lì passò al suo. Disse, con voce bassa, distinta, piena di timore reverenziale, come se lo stesse dicendo in un sogno,
«Vado a vedere il suo fantasma! Sarà il suo fantasma — non lui!»
Il signor Lorry strofinava tranquillamente le mani che gli stringevano il braccio. “Ecco, ecco, ecco! Ora sapete tutto, il meglio e il peggio. Siete bene sulla strada verso quel povero gentiluomo oltraggiato, e con un buon viaggio in mare e una buona traversata terrestre, presto sarete al suo caro fianco.”
Ripeté con lo stesso tono, abbassandolo fino a un sussurro: «Sono stata libera, sono stata felice, eppure il suo fantasma non mi ha mai perseguitata!»
«Solo un’altra cosa», disse il signor Lorry, insistendo su questo punto come mezzo salutare per richiamare la sua attenzione: «è stato trovato sotto un altro nome; il suo vero nome era stato dimenticato o nascosto da tempo. Ora sarebbe peggio che inutile cercare di scoprire quale fosse; peggio che inutile cercare di sapere se è stato trascurato per anni, oppure sempre prigioniero di proposito. Ora sarebbe peggio che inutile fare qualsiasi domanda, perché sarebbe pericoloso. Meglio non menzionare l’argomento, ovunque e in qualsiasi modo, e portarlo via dalla Francia, almeno per un po’. Anche io, al sicuro come inglese, e anche la Tellson’s, importante com’è per il credito francese, evitiamo di nominare l’affare. Non ho con me neanche un pezzetto di carta che vi faccia apertamente riferimento. Questa è una missione segreta in tutto e per tutto. I miei documenti d’identità, i registri e gli appunti sono tutti compresi nella riga «Richiamato alla vita»; che può voler dire qualsiasi cosa. Ma che succede! Non ascolta neanche una parola! Miss Manette!»
Era perfettamente immobile e silenziosa, senza nemmeno essersi lasciata cadere all’indietro sulla sedia, sedeva sotto la sua mano, completamente insensibile; con gli occhi aperti e fissi su di lui, e con quell’ultima espressione che sembrava scolpita o marchiata sulla fronte. La sua presa sul suo braccio era così stretta che temeva di staccarsi per paura di farle male; quindi chiamò ad alta voce aiuto senza muoversi.
Una donna dall’aspetto selvaggio, che anche nella sua agitazione il signor Lorry notò essere tutta di colore rosso, con capelli rossi e vestita in un modo straordinariamente aderente, e sulla testa portava un cappello davvero meraviglioso simile a una misura di legno da granatiere, e buona misura anche, o a un grande formaggio Stilton, entrò correndo nella stanza prima dei servitori della locanda, e ben presto risolse la questione del suo distacco dalla povera giovane signora, posandogli una mano robusta sul petto e mandandolo a sbattere contro il muro più vicino.
(«Penso proprio che debba essere un uomo!» fu il pensiero senza fiato di Mr. Lorry, mentre si scontrava con la parete.)
«Ehi, guardatevi tutti!» gridò questa figura, rivolgendosi ai servitori della locanda. «Perché non andate a prendere le cose, invece di stare lì a fissarmi? Non sono poi così interessante da guardare, vero? Perché non andate a prendere le cose? Ve lo dico io: se non portate sali odorosi, acqua fredda e aceto in fretta, lo faccio io.»
Ci fu una immediata dispersione per questi rimedi e lei adagiò dolcemente la paziente su un divano, prendendosene cura con grande abilità e delicatezza: chiamandola “la mia preziosa!” e “il mio uccellino!” e spargendo i suoi capelli dorati sulle sue spalle con grande orgoglio e attenzione.
«E tu in marrone!» disse indignata rivolgendosi al signor Lorry; «non potevi dirle quello che avevi da dirle senza spaventarla a morte? Guardala, con il suo bel viso pallido e le sue mani fredde. Chiami questo essere un banchiere?»
Il signor Lorry fu così estremamente sconcertato da una domanda tanto difficile da rispondere che poté solo osservare da lontano con molta meno simpatia e umiltà, mentre la donna forte, avendo allontanato i servitori dell’osteria sotto la misteriosa minaccia di “far loro sapere” qualcosa non menzionata se fossero rimasti lì a fissare, riprese il suo compito con una serie regolare di gradazioni e la persuase ad appoggiare la sua testa che si abbassava sulla sua spalla.
“Spero che adesso se la caverà bene”, disse il signor Lorry.
“Niente grazie a te in marrone, se lo fa. Mia dolce bellezza!”
“Spero”, disse il signor Lorry dopo un’altra pausa di debole compassione e umiltà, “che accompagnerete la signorina Manette in Francia?”.
“Una cosa probabile, anche!” rispose la donna forte. “Se fosse mai stato previsto che io dovessi attraversare l’acqua salata, credete forse che la Provvidenza avrebbe gettato il mio destino in un’isola?”
Essendo questa un’altra domanda difficile da rispondere, il signor Jarvis Lorry si ritirò per rifletterci su.
CHAPTER V. The Wine-shop
A large cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street. The accident had happened in getting it out of a cart; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the stones just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell.
All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might have thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them, had dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded, each by its own jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women’s heads, which were squeezed dry into infants’ mouths; others made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others devoted themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish. There was no drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along with it, that there might have been a scavenger in the street, if anybody acquainted with it could have believed in such a miraculous presence.
A shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices—voices of men, women, and children—resounded in the street while this wine game lasted. There was little roughness in the sport, and much playfulness. There was a special companionship in it, an observable inclination on the part of every one to join some other one, which led, especially among the luckier or lighter-hearted, to frolicsome embraces, drinking of healths, shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and dancing, a dozen together. When the wine was gone, and the places where it had been most abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern by fingers, these demonstrations ceased, as suddenly as they had broken out. The man who had left his saw sticking in the firewood he was cutting, set it in motion again; the women who had left on a door-step the little pot of hot ashes, at which she had been trying to soften the pain in her own starved fingers and toes, or in those of her child, returned to it; men with bare arms, matted locks, and cadaverous faces, who had emerged into the winter light from cellars, moved away, to descend again; and a gloom gathered on the scene that appeared more natural to it than sunshine.
The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left red marks on the billets; and the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby, was stained with the stain of the old rag she wound about her head again. Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees—BLOOD.
The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there.
And now that the cloud settled on Saint Antoine, which a momentary gleam had driven from his sacred countenance, the darkness of it was heavy—cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance, and want, were the lords in waiting on the saintly presence—nobles of great power all of them; but, most especially the last. Samples of a people that had undergone a terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill, and certainly not in the fabulous mill which ground old people young, shivered at every corner, passed in and out at every doorway, looked from every window, fluttered in every vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The mill which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people old; the children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sigh, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and started up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker’s shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomics in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil.
Its abiding place was in all things fitted to it. A narrow winding street, full of offence and stench, with other narrow winding streets diverging, all peopled by rags and nightcaps, and all smelling of rags and nightcaps, and all visible things with a brooding look upon them that looked ill. In the hunted air of the people there was yet some wild-beast thought of the possibility of turning at bay. Depressed and slinking though they were, eyes of fire were not wanting among them; nor compressed lips, white with what they suppressed; nor foreheads knitted into the likeness of the gallows-rope they mused about enduring, or inflicting. The trade signs (and they were almost as many as the shops) were, all, grim illustrations of Want. The butcher and the porkman painted up, only the leanest scrags of meat; the baker, the coarsest of meagre loaves. The people rudely pictured as drinking in the wine-shops, croaked over their scanty measures of thin wine and beer, and were gloweringly confidential together. Nothing was represented in a flourishing condition, save tools and weapons; but, the cutler’s knives and axes were sharp and bright, the smith’s hammers were heavy, and the gunmaker’s stock was murderous. The crippling stones of the pavement, with their many little reservoirs of mud and water, had no footways, but broke off abruptly at the doors. The kennel, to make amends, ran down the middle of the street—when it ran at all: which was only after heavy rains, and then it ran, by many eccentric fits, into the houses. Across the streets, at wide intervals, one clumsy lamp was slung by a rope and pulley; at night, when the lamplighter had let these down, and lighted, and hoisted them again, a feeble grove of dim wicks swung in a sickly manner overhead, as if they were at sea. Indeed they were at sea, and the ship and crew were in peril of tempest.
CAPITOLO V. La bottega di vino
Un grande barile di vino era caduto e si era rotto in strada. L’incidente era avvenuto mentre lo si scaricava da un carro; il barile era rotolato fuori con una corsa, i cerchi erano scoppiati ed esso giaceva sulle pietre proprio fuori dalla porta del negozio di vini, sfasciato come un guscio di noce.
Tutta la gente nelle vicinanze aveva interrotto i propri affari o le proprie oziosità per correre sul posto e bere il vino. Le pietre irregolari della strada, che sporgevano da ogni parte e sembravano progettate appositamente per zoppicare tutte le creature viventi che si avvicinavano ad esse, avevano trattenuto il vino in piccole pozze; queste erano circondate ciascuna dal proprio gruppo o folla di persone che si spingevano l’una contro l’altra, secondo la loro dimensione. Alcuni uomini si inginocchiavano, facevano una coppa con le due mani unite e bevevano a sorsi, oppure cercavano di aiutare le donne, che si piegavano sulle loro spalle, a bere prima che il vino fosse tutto scappato tra le dita. Altri uomini e donne immergevano nelle pozzanghere piccole tazze di ceramica rotte o addirittura fazzoletti delle donne, che venivano strizzati per farne cadere l’acqua nella bocca dei bambini; altri facevano piccoli argini di fango per fermare il vino mentre scorreva; altri, diretti da spettatori sui balconi alti, si lanciavano qua e là per tagliare fuori i piccoli ruscelli di vino che partivano in nuove direzioni; altri si dedicavano ai pezzi imbevuti d’acqua e macchiati del colore dell’uva della botte, leccando ed addirittura masticando con avido gusto i frammenti più umidi di vino. Non c’erano canali di scolo per portare via il vino, e non solo tutto venne assorbito, ma insieme ad esso si prese così tanto fango che ci sarebbe voluto un netturbino in strada, se qualcuno che la conoscesse avrebbe potuto credere a una presenza così miracolosa.
Un suono stridulo di risate e voci divertite — voci di uomini, donne, e bambini — riecheggiò per la strada mentre durava questo gioco del vino. Non c’era molta durezza nello sport, ma molto scherzo. C’era una particolare cameratismo in esso, un’inclinazione osservabile da parte di tutti a unirsi ad altri, che portò, specialmente tra i più fortunati o allegri di cuore, ad abbracci frivoli, brindisi, strette di mano e persino a prendersi per mano e ballare, una dozzina insieme. Quando il vino fu esaurito, e i luoghi dove era stato più abbondante furono raschiati in un disegno a graticcio dalle dita, queste dimostrazioni cessarono, tanto improvvisamente quanto erano scoppiate. L’uomo che aveva lasciato il suo segno conficcato nel legna da ardere che stava tagliando lo rimise in moto; le donne che avevano lasciato su uno scalino la piccola pentola di ceneri calde, con cui stavano cercando di ammorbidire il dolore nelle proprie dita e piedi denutriti, o in quelli del proprio bambino, vi tornarono; uomini a braccia nude, con ciocche arruffate e volti cadaverici, che erano emersi alla luce dell’inverno da cantine, si allontanarono per ridiscendere; e un’oscurità si addensò sulla scena che sembrava più naturale di essa rispetto al sole.
Il vino era rosso e aveva macchiato il terreno della stretta strada nel sobborgo di Saint Antoine, a Parigi, dove si era versato. Aveva macchiato anche molte mani, molti volti, molti piedi nudi e molte scarpe di legno. Le mani dell’uomo che segava il legno lasciarono impronte rosse sui tronchetti; e la fronte della donna che allattava il suo bambino era macchiata dal vecchio straccio con cui si era avvolto nuovamente la testa. Quelli che erano stati avidi delle assi del barile avevano acquisito una tinta tigrata intorno alla bocca; e un buffone alto così imbrattato, con la testa più fuori di un lungo sudicio sacchetto a forma di berretta da notte che dentro, scarabocchiò su un muro con il dito intinto nel fango dei vinaccioli: SANGUE.
Doveva venire il tempo in cui anche quel vino sarebbe stato versato sulle pietre della strada e la sua macchia sarebbe stata rossa su molti di loro.
E ora che la nuvola si era posata su Saint Antoine, allontanata per un attimo dal suo sacro volto da un raggio di luce, il buio era denso: freddo, sporcizia, malattia, ignoranza e miseria erano i nobili in attesa presso la presenza santa; tutti loro nobili di grande potere, ma soprattutto quest’ultimo. Esemplari di un popolo che aveva subito una terribile macinazione e rimacinazione nel mulino, e certamente non nel favoloso mulino che macina i vecchi giovani, tremavano ad ogni angolo, passavano dentro e fuori da ogni porta, guardavano da ogni finestra, svolazzavano in ogni brandello di abito che il vento agitava. Il mulino che li aveva ridotti così era il mulino che macina i giovani vecchi; i bambini avevano volti antichi e voci gravi; e su di loro, e sui volti degli adulti, inciso in ogni solco dell’età e che rispuntava fresco, c’era il sospiro della Fame. Era ovunque. La Fame era spinta fuori dalle case alte, nei poveri vestiti appesi a pali e corde; la Fame era rattoppata con paglia, stracci, legno e carta; la Fame si ripeteva in ogni frammento del piccolo quantitativo di legna da ardere che l’uomo segava; la Fame fissava dall’alto dai camini senza fumo, e balzava fuori dalla strada lurida che tra i suoi rifiuti non aveva alcun avanzi di cibo. La Fame era l’iscrizione sugli scaffali del fornaio, scritta in ogni piccolo pane della sua scarsa scorta di pessimo pane; alla salumeria, in ogni preparazione a base di cane morto che veniva offerta in vendita. La Fame faceva tintinnare le sue ossa secche tra i castagni arrostiti nel cilindro rotante; la Fame era ridotta in atomi in ogni scodellina da un quarto di penny di aghi di patate croccanti, fritti con alcune gocce d’olio riluttanti.
Il suo luogo di residenza era adatto a tutto ciò che lo circondava. Una strada stretta e tortuosa, piena di offese e puzzolente, con altre strade strette e tortuose che si diramavano da essa, tutte popolate da stracci e berretti da notte, e tutte emanavano un odore di stracci e berretti da notte. Tutte le cose visibili avevano uno sguardo cupo su di loro che non prometteva nulla di buono. Nonostante l’aria di caccia del popolo, c’era ancora qualche pensiero selvaggio sulla possibilità di ribellarsi. Depressi e furtivi com’erano, tra loro non mancavano occhi di fuoco; né labbra serrate, bianche per ciò che soffocavano; né fronti aggrottate simili alla corda del patibolo su cui meditavano di sopportare o infliggere. I segni commerciali (e ce n’erano quasi quanti i negozi) erano tutti cupi esempi di Miseria. Il macellaio e il venditore di carni suine dipingevano solo gli scarti più magri della carne; il panettiere, le pagnotta più grossolane e magre. Le persone raffigurate in modo rudimentale mentre bevevano nei viniggi, gracchiavano sulle loro misure scarse di vino e birra sottili, ed erano confidenziali con occhiate torve. Nulla era rappresentato in condizioni fiorenti, tranne gli attrezzi e le armi; ma i coltelli e gli asce dell’artigiano erano affilati e lucenti, i martelli del fabbro erano pesanti, e l’inventario del fabbricante di armi era mortale. Le pietre zoppicanti del marciapiede, con le loro numerose piccole riserve di fango e acqua, non avevano marciapiedi, ma si interrompevano bruscamente alle porte. Il canale di scolo, per compensare, scorreva nel mezzo della strada—quando scorreva: il che era solo dopo forti piogge, e allora scorreva, con molti capricci eccentrici, nelle case. Attraverso le strade, a intervalli ampi, una lanterna goffa era sospesa da una corda e un argano; di notte, quando l’accenditore di lanterne le aveva abbassate, accese e rialzate di nuovo, un debole boschetto di stoppini fiocchi oscillava in modo malaticcio sopra le teste, come se fossero in mare. Infatti erano in mare, e la nave e l’equipaggio erano in pericolo di tempesta.
For, the time was to come, when the gaunt scarecrows of that region should have watched the lamplighter, in their idleness and hunger, so long, as to conceive the idea of improving on his method, and hauling up men by those ropes and pulleys, to flare upon the darkness of their condition. But, the time was not come yet; and every wind that blew over France shook the rags of the scarecrows in vain, for the birds, fine of song and feather, took no warning.
The wine-shop was a corner shop, better than most others in its appearance and degree, and the master of the wine-shop had stood outside it, in a yellow waistcoat and green breeches, looking on at the struggle for the lost wine. “It’s not my affair,” said he, with a final shrug of the shoulders. “The people from the market did it. Let them bring another.”
There, his eyes happening to catch the tall joker writing up his joke, he called to him across the way:
“Say, then, my Gaspard, what do you do there?”
The fellow pointed to his joke with immense significance, as is often the way with his tribe. It missed its mark, and completely failed, as is often the way with his tribe too.
“What now? Are you a subject for the mad hospital?” said the wine-shop keeper, crossing the road, and obliterating the jest with a handful of mud, picked up for the purpose, and smeared over it. “Why do you write in the public streets? Is there—tell me thou—is there no other place to write such words in?”
In his expostulation he dropped his cleaner hand (perhaps accidentally, perhaps not) upon the joker’s heart. The joker rapped it with his own, took a nimble spring upward, and came down in a fantastic dancing attitude, with one of his stained shoes jerked off his foot into his hand, and held out. A joker of an extremely, not to say wolfishly practical character, he looked, under those circumstances.
“Put it on, put it on,” said the other. “Call wine, wine; and finish there.” With that advice, he wiped his soiled hand upon the joker’s dress, such as it was—quite deliberately, as having dirtied the hand on his account; and then recrossed the road and entered the wine-shop.
This wine-shop keeper was a bull-necked, martial-looking man of thirty, and he should have been of a hot temperament, for, although it was a bitter day, he wore no coat, but carried one slung over his shoulder. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, too, and his brown arms were bare to the elbows. Neither did he wear anything more on his head than his own crisply-curling short dark hair. He was a dark man altogether, with good eyes and a good bold breadth between them. Good-humoured looking on the whole, but implacable-looking, too; evidently a man of a strong resolution and a set purpose; a man not desirable to be met, rushing down a narrow pass with a gulf on either side, for nothing would turn the man.
Madame Defarge, his wife, sat in the shop behind the counter as he came in. Madame Defarge was a stout woman of about his own age, with a watchful eye that seldom seemed to look at anything, a large hand heavily ringed, a steady face, strong features, and great composure of manner. There was a character about Madame Defarge, from which one might have predicated that she did not often make mistakes against herself in any of the reckonings over which she presided. Madame Defarge being sensitive to cold, was wrapped in fur, and had a quantity of bright shawl twined about her head, though not to the concealment of her large earrings. Her knitting was before her, but she had laid it down to pick her teeth with a toothpick. Thus engaged, with her right elbow supported by her left hand, Madame Defarge said nothing when her lord came in, but coughed just one grain of cough. This, in combination with the lifting of her darkly defined eyebrows over her toothpick by the breadth of a line, suggested to her husband that he would do well to look round the shop among the customers, for any new customer who had dropped in while he stepped over the way.
The wine-shop keeper accordingly rolled his eyes about, until they rested upon an elderly gentleman and a young lady, who were seated in a corner. Other company were there: two playing cards, two playing dominoes, three standing by the counter lengthening out a short supply of wine. As he passed behind the counter, he took notice that the elderly gentleman said in a look to the young lady, “This is our man.”
“What the devil do you do in that galley there?” said Monsieur Defarge to himself; “I don’t know you.”
But, he feigned not to notice the two strangers, and fell into discourse with the triumvirate of customers who were drinking at the counter.
“How goes it, Jacques?” said one of these three to Monsieur Defarge. “Is all the spilt wine swallowed?”
“Every drop, Jacques,” answered Monsieur Defarge.
When this interchange of Christian name was effected, Madame Defarge, picking her teeth with her toothpick, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line.
“It is not often,” said the second of the three, addressing Monsieur Defarge, “that many of these miserable beasts know the taste of wine, or of anything but black bread and death. Is it not so, Jacques?”
“It is so, Jacques,” Monsieur Defarge returned.
At this second interchange of the Christian name, Madame Defarge, still using her toothpick with profound composure, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line.
The last of the three now said his say, as he put down his empty drinking vessel and smacked his lips.
“Ah! So much the worse! A bitter taste it is that such poor cattle always have in their mouths, and hard lives they live, Jacques. Am I right, Jacques?”
“You are right, Jacques,” was the response of Monsieur Defarge.
This third interchange of the Christian name was completed at the moment when Madame Defarge put her toothpick by, kept her eyebrows up, and slightly rustled in her seat.
Perché sarebbe venuto il tempo in cui gli scheletrici spaventapasseri di quella regione avrebbero osservato l’accenditore di lanterne, nella loro oziosità e fame, così a lungo da concepire l’idea di migliorare il suo metodo e tirar su gli uomini con quelle corde e pulegge per illuminare le tenebre della loro condizione. Ma il tempo non era ancora venuto; e ogni vento che soffiava sulla Francia scuoteva invano i stracci degli spaventapasseri, perché gli uccelli, belli di canto e piumaggio, non prendevano alcun avvertimento.
La bottega del vino era un negozio all’angolo, migliore della maggior parte degli altri per aspetto e qualità, e il padrone della bottega di vini stava fuori in una giacca gialla e brache verdi, guardando la lotta per il vino perso. «Non è affar mio», disse con un’ultima alzata di spalle. «Sono stati i mercanti del mercato a farlo. Che ne portino dell’altro».
Là, i suoi occhi si posarono per caso sullo scrittore di battute alto che stava scrivendo la sua barzelletta, e lo chiamò dall’altra parte della strada:
“Dunque, mio Gaspard, cosa fate lì?”
Il tizio indicò la sua battuta con un’immensa enfasi, come spesso accade con i suoi simili. La battuta non fece presa e fallì completamente, come spesso accade anche con i suoi simili.
“Che c’è adesso? Sei un paziente per l’ospedale dei matti?” disse il venditore di vino, attraversando la strada e cancellando lo scherzo con una manciata di fango raccolto appositamente e spalmato sopra. “Perché scrivi nelle strade pubbliche? Non c’è—dimmi tu—non c’è nessun altro posto dove scrivere parole del genere?”
Nella sua protesta posò la mano più pulita (forse per caso, forse no) sul cuore del buffone. Il buffone lo colpì con il suo, fece un agile salto verso l’alto e atterrò in una fantastica posizione da danza, con una delle sue scarpe macchiate strappata dal piede nella sua mano, che teneva protesa. Sembrava un buffone di carattere estremamente pratico, per non dire lupesco, in quelle circostanze.
«Mettetelo, mettetelo», disse l’altro. «Chiamate il vino vino e lasciate perdere». Detto ciò, si pulì la mano sporca sull’abito del buffone, comunque fosse - con deliberata intenzione, come se avesse sporcato la mano per colpa sua; quindi attraversò di nuovo la strada ed entrò nel negozio di vino.
Questo venditore di vino era un uomo di trent’anni dal collo robusto e dall’aspetto marziale, e doveva avere un temperamento focoso, perché, sebbene fosse una giornata gelida, non indossava nessun cappotto ma ne portava uno buttato sulla spalla. Anche le maniche della sua camicia erano arrotolate e i suoi braccia muscolosi erano nudi fino ai gomiti. Non aveva altro sul capo se non la sua chioma scura, corta, riccioluta. Era un uomo dall’aspetto scuro in generale, con occhi belli e una bella larghezza tra di essi. Di aspetto buonumore nel complesso, ma anche implacabile; evidentemente un uomo dalla forte risolutezza e dal proposito fermo; un uomo che non si desidera incontrare mentre scende a precipizio per uno stretto passaggio con un abisso da entrambi i lati, perché nulla sarebbe riuscito a fermarlo.
Madame Defarge, sua moglie, sedeva nel negozio dietro il banco quando lui entrò. Madame Defarge era una donna robusta della stessa età circa del marito, con uno sguardo vigile che raramente sembrava posarsi su qualcosa, una mano grande e pesantemente anellata, un volto imperturbabile, tratti forti e grande compostezza nei modi. Madame Defarge aveva un carattere tale da far pensare che non commettesse spesso errori a suo svantaggio in nessuno dei calcoli di cui si occupava. Essendo Madame Defarge sensibile al freddo, era avvolta nelle pellicce e aveva intorno alla testa un ampio scialle colorato, anche se non tanto da nascondere i suoi grandi orecchini. Aveva davanti a sé il lavoro a maglia, ma lo aveva posato per pulirsi i denti con uno stuzzicadenti. Così impegnata, con il gomito destro sorretto dalla mano sinistra, Madame Defarge non disse nulla quando entrò suo marito, ma tossì appena un colpetto di tosse. Questo, unitamente all’innalzamento delle sue sopracciglia scure sopra lo stuzzicadenti della larghezza di una linea, suggerì al marito che avrebbe fatto bene a dare un’occhiata in giro per il negozio tra i clienti, nel caso fosse entrato qualcuno nuovo mentre lui era andato dall’altra parte della strada.
Il proprietario del vinaio di conseguenza fece rotolare i suoi occhi intorno finché si posarono su un signore anziano e una giovane donna seduti in un angolo. C’erano altri clienti: due giocavano a carte, due giocavano a domino, tre erano appoggiati al bancone cercando di far durare più a lungo possibile la loro piccola quantità di vino. Mentre passava dietro il bancone, notò che il signore anziano disse con uno sguardo alla giovane donna: «Questo è l’uomo giusto».
«Che diavolo ci fate voi in quella galea?» disse a se stesso monsieur Defarge «non vi conosco».
Ma finse di non accorgersi dei due forestieri e si mise a conversare con il triumvirato di clienti che bevevano al bancone.
«Come va, Jacques?» disse uno di questi tre a Monsieur Defarge. «Tutto il vino versato è stato bevuto?»
«Ogni goccia, Jacques», rispose Monsieur Defarge.
Quando questo scambio di nomi cristiani fu compiuto, la signora Defarge, pulendosi i denti con lo stuzzicadenti, tossì un altro granello di tosse e alzò le sopracciglia della larghezza di un’altra linea.
«Non capita spesso», disse il secondo dei tre, rivolgendosi a Monsieur Defarge, «che molti di questi miserabili animali conoscano il gusto del vino o di qualcosa che non sia pane nero e morte. Non è così, Jacques?»
«È così, Jacques», rispose monsieur Defarge.
A questo secondo scambio del nome cristiano, la signora Defarge, continuando a usare il suo stuzzicadenti con profonda calma, tossì un altro granello di tosse e alzò le sopracciglia della larghezza di un’altra linea.
L’ultimo dei tre ora disse la sua, mentre posava il suo bicchiere vuoto e si leccò le labbra.
«Ah! Tanto peggio! È un sapore amaro quello che tali poveri bestiami hanno sempre in bocca e dura è la loro vita, Jacques. Non è vero, Jacques?»
«Avete ragione, Jacques», fu la risposta del signor Defarge.
Questo terzo scambio del nome cristiano fu completato nel momento in cui la signora Defarge ripose il suo stuzzicadenti, mantenne le sopracciglia alzate e si mosse leggermente sulla sedia.
“Hold then! True!” muttered her husband. “Gentlemen—my wife!”
The three customers pulled off their hats to Madame Defarge, with three flourishes. She acknowledged their homage by bending her head, and giving them a quick look. Then she glanced in a casual manner round the wine-shop, took up her knitting with great apparent calmness and repose of spirit, and became absorbed in it.
“Gentlemen,” said her husband, who had kept his bright eye observantly upon her, “good day. The chamber, furnished bachelor-fashion, that you wished to see, and were inquiring for when I stepped out, is on the fifth floor. The doorway of the staircase gives on the little courtyard close to the left here,” pointing with his hand, “near to the window of my establishment. But, now that I remember, one of you has already been there, and can show the way. Gentlemen, adieu!”
They paid for their wine, and left the place. The eyes of Monsieur Defarge were studying his wife at her knitting when the elderly gentleman advanced from his corner, and begged the favour of a word.
“Willingly, sir,” said Monsieur Defarge, and quietly stepped with him to the door.
Their conference was very short, but very decided. Almost at the first word, Monsieur Defarge started and became deeply attentive. It had not lasted a minute, when he nodded and went out. The gentleman then beckoned to the young lady, and they, too, went out. Madame Defarge knitted with nimble fingers and steady eyebrows, and saw nothing.
Mr. Jarvis Lorry and Miss Manette, emerging from the wine-shop thus, joined Monsieur Defarge in the doorway to which he had directed his own company just before. It opened from a stinking little black courtyard, and was the general public entrance to a great pile of houses, inhabited by a great number of people. In the gloomy tile-paved entry to the gloomy tile-paved staircase, Monsieur Defarge bent down on one knee to the child of his old master, and put her hand to his lips. It was a gentle action, but not at all gently done; a very remarkable transformation had come over him in a few seconds. He had no good-humour in his face, nor any openness of aspect left, but had become a secret, angry, dangerous man.
“It is very high; it is a little difficult. Better to begin slowly.” Thus, Monsieur Defarge, in a stern voice, to Mr. Lorry, as they began ascending the stairs.
“Is he alone?” the latter whispered.
“Alone! God help him, who should be with him!” said the other, in the same low voice.
“Is he always alone, then?”
“Yes.”
“Of his own desire?”
“Of his own necessity. As he was, when I first saw him after they found me and demanded to know if I would take him, and, at my peril be discreet—as he was then, so he is now.”
“He is greatly changed?”
“Changed!”
The keeper of the wine-shop stopped to strike the wall with his hand, and mutter a tremendous curse. No direct answer could have been half so forcible. Mr. Lorry’s spirits grew heavier and heavier, as he and his two companions ascended higher and higher.
Such a staircase, with its accessories, in the older and more crowded parts of Paris, would be bad enough now; but, at that time, it was vile indeed to unaccustomed and unhardened senses. Every little habitation within the great foul nest of one high building—that is to say, the room or rooms within every door that opened on the general staircase—left its own heap of refuse on its own landing, besides flinging other refuse from its own windows. The uncontrollable and hopeless mass of decomposition so engendered, would have polluted the air, even if poverty and deprivation had not loaded it with their intangible impurities; the two bad sources combined made it almost insupportable. Through such an atmosphere, by a steep dark shaft of dirt and poison, the way lay. Yielding to his own disturbance of mind, and to his young companion’s agitation, which became greater every instant, Mr. Jarvis Lorry twice stopped to rest. Each of these stoppages was made at a doleful grating, by which any languishing good airs that were left uncorrupted, seemed to escape, and all spoilt and sickly vapours seemed to crawl in. Through the rusted bars, tastes, rather than glimpses, were caught of the jumbled neighbourhood; and nothing within range, nearer or lower than the summits of the two great towers of Notre-Dame, had any promise on it of healthy life or wholesome aspirations.
At last, the top of the staircase was gained, and they stopped for the third time. There was yet an upper staircase, of a steeper inclination and of contracted dimensions, to be ascended, before the garret story was reached. The keeper of the wine-shop, always going a little in advance, and always going on the side which Mr. Lorry took, as though he dreaded to be asked any question by the young lady, turned himself about here, and, carefully feeling in the pockets of the coat he carried over his shoulder, took out a key.
“The door is locked then, my friend?” said Mr. Lorry, surprised.
“Ay. Yes,” was the grim reply of Monsieur Defarge.
“You think it necessary to keep the unfortunate gentleman so retired?”
“I think it necessary to turn the key.” Monsieur Defarge whispered it closer in his ear, and frowned heavily.
“Why?”
“Why! Because he has lived so long, locked up, that he would be frightened—rave—tear himself to pieces—die—come to I know not what harm—if his door was left open.”
“Is it possible!” exclaimed Mr. Lorry.
“Is it possible!” repeated Defarge, bitterly. “Yes. And a beautiful world we live in, when it is possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done—done, see you!—under that sky there, every day. Long live the Devil. Let us go on.”
This dialogue had been held in so very low a whisper, that not a word of it had reached the young lady’s ears. But, by this time she trembled under such strong emotion, and her face expressed such deep anxiety, and, above all, such dread and terror, that Mr. Lorry felt it incumbent on him to speak a word or two of reassurance.
“Fermatevi allora! È vero!” mormorò suo marito. “Signori, mia moglie!”
I tre clienti si tolsero i cappelli davanti alla signora Defarge, con tre inchini. Lei rispose al loro omaggio chinando la testa e lanciandogli un’occhiata veloce. Poi diede uno sguardo distratto in giro per il vino, prese i ferri da maglia con grande apparente calma e serenità d’animo, e si immerse nel lavoro.
«Signori», disse il marito, che aveva tenuto il suo sguardo brillante e attento su di lei, «buona giornata. La camera, arredata in stile da scapolo, che desideravate vedere e cercavate quando sono uscito, si trova al quinto piano. L’ingresso della scala dà sul piccolo cortile qui vicino a sinistra», indicando con la mano, «vicino alla finestra del mio negozio. Ma ora che ci penso, uno di voi è già stato lì e può mostrare la strada. Signori, arrivederci!»
Pagato il vino, uscirono dal locale. Gli occhi di monsieur Defarge stavano studiando la moglie mentre faceva maglia quando l’anziano signore si fece avanti dal suo angolo e chiese il favore di una parola.
«Volentieri, signore», disse monsieur Defarge e tranquillamente si avviò con lui verso la porta.
La loro conferenza fu molto breve ma molto decisa. Quasi alla prima parola, Monsieur Defarge trasalì e divenne profondamente attento. Non era durata un minuto, quando annuì ed uscì. Il gentiluomo fece quindi cenno alla giovane signora, e anche loro uscirono. Madame Defarge lavorava a maglia con dita agili e sopracciglia ferme, e non vide nulla.
Il signor Jarvis Lorry e la signorina Manette, uscendo così dal vino- ttoio, si unirono al signor Defarge sulla porta alla quale aveva appena diretto il suo gruppo. La porta si apriva su un piccolo cortile buio e puzzolente, e costituiva l’ingresso pubblico generale a un grande edificio di case, abitato da molte persone. Nell’oscura entrata lastricata in mattoni che conduceva alla scala oscura e lastricata in mattoni, il signor Defarge si inginocchiò su un ginocchio davanti al bambino del suo vecchio padrone, e le mise la mano sulle labbra. Era un gesto gentile, ma non affatto fatto con delicatezza; in pochi secondi era avvenuta una trasformazione molto notevole in lui. Non aveva più alcuna benevolenza nel volto, né alcuna apertura di aspetto, ma si era trasformato in un uomo segreto, arrabbiato e pericoloso.
«È molto alto; è un po’ difficile. È meglio cominciare lentamente». Così disse Monsieur Defarge con voce severa al signor Lorry mentre si mettevano a salire le scale.
«È solo?» sussurrò quest’ultimo.
«Solo! Dio lo aiuti, chi dovrebbe essere con lui!» disse l’altro, con la stessa voce bassa.
«Allora è sempre solo?»
“Sì, davvero.”
«Di sua volontà?»
«Per sua stessa necessità. Era così quando lo vidi per la prima volta dopo che mi avevano trovato e chiedevano di sapere se l’avrei preso con me, e a mio rischio sarei stata discreta: era così allora ed è così ora».
“È molto cambiato?”
“Cambiato!”
Il custode del negozio di vini si fermò per colpire il muro con la mano e borbottare una tremenda imprecazione. Nessuna risposta diretta sarebbe stata nemmeno a metà così efficace. Lo spirito di Mr Lorry divenne sempre più pesante, mentre lui e i suoi due compagni salivano sempre più in alto.
Una scala del genere, con i suoi accessori, nelle parti più vecchie e affollate di Parigi, sarebbe stata abbastanza brutta anche adesso; ma in quel periodo era davvero ripugnante per sensi non abituati e non induriti. Ogni piccola abitazione all’interno del grande sporco nido di un edificio alto - vale a dire, la stanza o le stanze dietro ogni porta che si apriva sulla scala comune - lasciava il proprio mucchio di rifiuti sul pianerottolo, oltre a gettare altri rifiuti dalle proprie finestre. La massa incontrollabile e disperata di decomposizione così generata avrebbe inquinato l’aria anche se la povertà e il privamento non l’avessero caricata delle loro impurità intangibili; le due cattive fonti combinate la rendevano quasi insopportabile. Attraverso un’atmosfera del genere, per una ripida oscura galleria di sporco e veleno, il cammino si snodava. Cedendo al proprio turbamento mentale e all’agitazione del suo giovane compagno, che aumentava ad ogni istante, il signor Jarvis Lorry si fermò due volte a riposare. Ognuna di queste soste avvenne presso una grata lugubre, attraverso la quale qualsiasi aria buona rimasta incorrotta sembrava sfuggire, e tutti i vapori guasti e malsani sembravano strisciare dentro. Tra le sbarre arrugginite si coglievano più gusti che scorci del quartiere confuso; e nulla nell’ambito visivo, né vicino né in basso rispetto alle cime delle due grandi torri di Notre-Dame, aveva alcuna promessa di vita sana o aspirazioni salutari.
Finalmente raggiunsero la cima della scala e si fermarono per la terza volta. C’era ancora una scala superiore, di inclinazione più ripida e di dimensioni ridotte, da salire prima di arrivare al sottotetto. Il custode del vino, che camminava sempre un po’ in avanti e sempre sul lato scelto dal signor Lorry, come se temesse di essere interrogato dalla giovane donna, si voltò qui e, tastando con cura le tasche del cappotto che portava sulla spalla, tirò fuori una chiave.
«La porta è chiusa a chiave allora, mio caro amico?» disse il signor Lorry, sorpreso.
«Sì. Sì», fu la tetra risposta di monsieur Defarge.
“Ritiene necessario tenere il povero signore così appartato?”
«Penso che sia necessario girare la chiave», gli sussurrò Monsieur Defarge all’orecchio con aria cupa e aggrottando le sopracciglia.
“Perché?”
«Perché? Perché è rimasto rinchiuso così a lungo che se la porta fosse lasciata aperta, si spaventerebbe, impazzirebbe, si strapperebbe in pezzi, morirebbe, subirebbe chissà quale danno.»
«È possibile!» esclamò il signor Lorry.
«È possibile!» ripeté Defarge amaramente. «Sì. E che mondo meraviglioso è questo in cui viviamo, quando è possibile, e quando molte altre cose simili sono possibili, e non solo possibili, ma fatte - fatte, capite? - sotto quel cielo lassù, ogni giorno. Lunga vita al diavolo. Andiamo avanti».
Questo dialogo era stato tenuto in un sussurro così basso che neppure una parola era giunta alle orecchie della giovane signora. Ma, per questo tempo, lei tremava per un’emozione così forte e il suo volto esprimeva una profonda ansia, e soprattutto tanta paura e terrore, che Mr. Lorry sentì l’obbligo di dire qualche parola di rassicurazione.
“Courage, dear miss! Courage! Business! The worst will be over in a moment; it is but passing the room-door, and the worst is over. Then, all the good you bring to him, all the relief, all the happiness you bring to him, begin. Let our good friend here, assist you on that side. That’s well, friend Defarge. Come, now. Business, business!”
They went up slowly and softly. The staircase was short, and they were soon at the top. There, as it had an abrupt turn in it, they came all at once in sight of three men, whose heads were bent down close together at the side of a door, and who were intently looking into the room to which the door belonged, through some chinks or holes in the wall. On hearing footsteps close at hand, these three turned, and rose, and showed themselves to be the three of one name who had been drinking in the wine-shop.
“I forgot them in the surprise of your visit,” explained Monsieur Defarge. “Leave us, good boys; we have business here.”
The three glided by, and went silently down.
There appearing to be no other door on that floor, and the keeper of the wine-shop going straight to this one when they were left alone, Mr. Lorry asked him in a whisper, with a little anger:
“Do you make a show of Monsieur Manette?”
“I show him, in the way you have seen, to a chosen few.”
“Is that well?”
“I think it is well.”
“Who are the few? How do you choose them?”
“I choose them as real men, of my name—Jacques is my name—to whom the sight is likely to do good. Enough; you are English; that is another thing. Stay there, if you please, a little moment.”
With an admonitory gesture to keep them back, he stooped, and looked in through the crevice in the wall. Soon raising his head again, he struck twice or thrice upon the door—evidently with no other object than to make a noise there. With the same intention, he drew the key across it, three or four times, before he put it clumsily into the lock, and turned it as heavily as he could.
The door slowly opened inward under his hand, and he looked into the room and said something. A faint voice answered something. Little more than a single syllable could have been spoken on either side.
He looked back over his shoulder, and beckoned them to enter. Mr. Lorry got his arm securely round the daughter’s waist, and held her; for he felt that she was sinking.
“A-a-a-business, business!” he urged, with a moisture that was not of business shining on his cheek. “Come in, come in!”
“I am afraid of it,” she answered, shuddering.
“Of it? What?”
“I mean of him. Of my father.”
Rendered in a manner desperate, by her state and by the beckoning of their conductor, he drew over his neck the arm that shook upon his shoulder, lifted her a little, and hurried her into the room. He sat her down just within the door, and held her, clinging to him.
Defarge drew out the key, closed the door, locked it on the inside, took out the key again, and held it in his hand. All this he did, methodically, and with as loud and harsh an accompaniment of noise as he could make. Finally, he walked across the room with a measured tread to where the window was. He stopped there, and faced round.
The garret, built to be a depository for firewood and the like, was dim and dark: for, the window of dormer shape, was in truth a door in the roof, with a little crane over it for the hoisting up of stores from the street: unglazed, and closing up the middle in two pieces, like any other door of French construction. To exclude the cold, one half of this door was fast closed, and the other was opened but a very little way. Such a scanty portion of light was admitted through these means, that it was difficult, on first coming in, to see anything; and long habit alone could have slowly formed in any one, the ability to do any work requiring nicety in such obscurity. Yet, work of that kind was being done in the garret; for, with his back towards the door, and his face towards the window where the keeper of the wine-shop stood looking at him, a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes.
«Coraggio, mia cara signorina! Coraggio! Affari! Il peggio sarà finito in un attimo; basta attraversare la porta della stanza e il peggio è passato. Poi, tutto il bene che gli portate, tutto il sollievo, tutta la felicità che gli portate, cominciano. Lasciate che il nostro buon amico qui vi assista da quella parte. Bene, amico Defarge. Su, adesso. Affari, affari!»
Salirono lentamente e silenziosamente. La scala era corta, e presto furono in cima. Lì, poiché faceva una brusca curva, si trovarono all’improvviso di fronte a tre uomini, le cui teste erano inclinate vicine l’una all’altra accanto a una porta, intenti a scrutare la stanza alla quale apparteneva la porta attraverso delle fessure o dei fori nel muro. Udendo dei passi vicini, i tre si voltarono e si alzarono, rivelando di essere gli uomini con lo stesso nome che avevano bevuto nella taverna.
«Li ho dimenticati nella sorpresa della tua visita», spiegò Monsieur Defarge. «Andatevene, bravi ragazzi; qui abbiamo da fare».
I tre scivolarono oltre e si allontanarono silenziosamente.
Non essendoci apparentemente altre porte su quel piano e il proprietario del negozio di vini dirigendosi direttamente verso quella quando rimasero soli, il signor Lorry gli chiese sottovoce, con un po’ d’ira:
“Mostrate in pubblico il signor Manette?”
“Lo mostro a pochi eletti, come hai visto.”
“È bene?”
«Io penso che sia bene.»
“Chi sono i pochi? Come li scegli?”
«Li scelgo come veri uomini del mio nome - Jacques è il mio nome - ai quali la vista potrebbe giovare. Basta; voi siete inglese; questa è un’altra cosa. Restate lì, se volete, per un breve momento».
Con un gesto ammonitore per tenerli indietro, si chinò e guardò dentro attraverso la fessura nel muro. Alzando presto di nuovo la testa, batté due o tre volte sulla porta - evidentemente senza altro scopo che fare rumore lì. Con la stessa intenzione, passò la chiave sopra di essa, tre o quattro volte, prima di metterla maldestramente nella serratura e girarla il più pesantemente possibile.
La porta si aprì lentamente verso l’interno sotto la sua mano e lui guardò nella stanza e disse qualcosa. Una voce flebile rispose qualcosa. Non poteva essere stata pronunciata più di una sillaba da entrambe le parti.
Si guardò indietro sopra la spalla e fece loro cenno di entrare. Il signor Lorry mise il braccio saldamente in vita alla figlia e la tenne stretta perché sentiva che stava per svenire.
«A-a-affari, affari!» insistette, con una umidità che non era quella degli affari che gli brillava sulla guancia. «Entri, entri!»
«Ne ho paura», rispose lei, rabbrividendo.
“Di esso? Cosa?”
“Mi riferisco a lui. A mio padre.”
Resosi disperato per il suo stato e per i gesti del loro accompagnatore, passò sopra la sua spalla l’altro braccio che tremava sulla sua spalla, la sollevò un po’, e la spinse in fretta nella stanza. La fece sedere proprio dentro alla porta, e la tenne stretta a sé.
Defarge estrasse la chiave, chiuse la porta, la serrò dall’interno, rimise in tasca la chiave e la tenne in mano. Fece tutto questo con metodo, accompagnando i gesti con il più forte e aspro rumore possibile. Infine attraversò la stanza a passo misurato fino alla finestra. Si fermò lì e si voltò.
Il sottotetto, costruito per essere un deposito di legna da ardere e simili, era buio e oscuro: infatti la finestra a lucernario era in verità una porta sul tetto, con una piccola gru sopra per issare le merci dalla strada; senza vetri, si chiudeva al centro in due pezzi come qualsiasi altra porta di costruzione francese. Per escludere il freddo, metà di questa porta era ben chiusa e l’altra era aperta solo un pochino. Una porzione così scarsa di luce veniva ammessa con questi mezzi che era difficile, appena entrati, vedere qualcosa; e solo una lunga abitudine avrebbe potuto lentamente formare in chiunque la capacità di fare qualsiasi lavoro che richiedesse precisione in tale oscurità. Eppure, quel tipo di lavoro veniva fatto nel sottotetto; infatti, con le spalle rivolte verso la porta e il viso verso la finestra dove il custode del vino stava guardandolo, un uomo dai capelli bianchi sedeva su uno sgabello basso, chino in avanti e molto impegnato a fare scarpe.
CHAPTER VI. The Shoemaker
“Good day!” said Monsieur Defarge, looking down at the white head that bent low over the shoemaking.
It was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice responded to the salutation, as if it were at a distance:
“Good day!”
“You are still hard at work, I see?”
After a long silence, the head was lifted for another moment, and the voice replied, “Yes—I am working.” This time, a pair of haggard eyes had looked at the questioner, before the face had dropped again.
The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the faintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it was the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the life and resonance of the human voice, that it affected the senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was like a voice underground. So expressive it was, of a hopeless and lost creature, that a famished traveller, wearied out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would have remembered home and friends in such a tone before lying down to die.
Some minutes of silent work had passed: and the haggard eyes had looked up again: not with any interest or curiosity, but with a dull mechanical perception, beforehand, that the spot where the only visitor they were aware of had stood, was not yet empty.
“I want,” said Defarge, who had not removed his gaze from the shoemaker, “to let in a little more light here. You can bear a little more?”
The shoemaker stopped his work; looked with a vacant air of listening, at the floor on one side of him; then similarly, at the floor on 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 a stress upon the second word.)
The opened half-door was opened a little further, and secured at that angle for the time. A broad ray of light fell into the garret, and showed the workman with an unfinished shoe upon his lap, pausing in his labour. His few common tools and various scraps of leather were at his feet and on his bench. He had a white beard, raggedly cut, but not very long, a hollow face, and exceedingly bright eyes. The hollowness and thinness of his face would have caused them to look large, under his yet dark eyebrows and his confused white hair, though they had been really otherwise; but, they were naturally large, and looked unnaturally so. His yellow rags of shirt lay open at the throat, and showed his body to be withered and worn. He, and his old canvas frock, and his loose stockings, and all his poor tatters of clothes, had, in a long seclusion from direct light and air, faded down to such a dull uniformity of parchment-yellow, that it would have been hard to say which was which.
He had put up a hand between his eyes and the light, and the very bones of it seemed transparent. So he sat, with a steadfastly vacant gaze, pausing in his work. He never looked at the figure before him, without first looking down on this side of himself, then on that, as if he had lost the habit of associating place with sound; he never spoke, without first wandering in this manner, and forgetting to speak.
“Are you going to finish that pair of shoes to-day?” asked Defarge, motioning to Mr. Lorry to come forward.
“What did you say?”
“Do you mean to finish that pair of shoes to-day?”
“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 it again.
Mr. Lorry came silently forward, leaving the daughter by the door. When he had stood, for a minute or two, by the side of Defarge, the shoemaker looked up. He showed no surprise at seeing another figure, but the unsteady fingers of one of his hands strayed to his lips as he looked at it (his lips and his nails were of the same pale lead-colour), and then the hand dropped to his work, and he once more bent over the shoe. The look and the action 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 a hand 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 working at. Take it, monsieur.”
Mr. Lorry took it in his hand.
“Tell monsieur what kind of shoe it is, and the maker’s name.”
There was a longer pause than usual, before the shoemaker replied:
“I forget what it was you asked me. What did you say?”
“I said, couldn’t you describe the kind of shoe, for monsieur’s information?”
“It is a lady’s shoe. It is a young lady’s walking-shoe. It is in the present mode. I never saw the mode. I have had a pattern in my hand.” He glanced at the shoe with some little passing touch of pride.
“And the maker’s name?” said Defarge.
Now that he had no work to hold, he laid the knuckles of the right hand in the hollow of the left, and then the knuckles of the left hand in the hollow of the right, and then passed a hand across his bearded chin, and so on in regular changes, without a moment’s intermission. The task of recalling him from the vagrancy into which he always sank when he had spoken, was like recalling some very weak person from a swoon, or endeavouring, in the hope 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 to work again, until the silence was again broken.
“You are not a shoemaker by trade?” said Mr. Lorry, looking steadfastly at him.
CAPITOLO VI. Il calzolaio
«Buon giorno!», disse Monsieur Defarge guardando giù verso la testa bianca che si chinava sulla scarpa da rifare.
Fu alzata per un momento e una voce molto flebile rispose alla salutazione, come se fosse lontana:
“Buona giornata!”
“Vedo che continui a lavorare sodo.”
Dopo un lungo silenzio, la testa si alzò per un altro momento e la voce rispose: “Sì, sto lavorando.” Questa volta, un paio di occhi smunti avevano guardato l’interrogatore, prima che il volto cadesse nuovamente.
La debolezza della voce era pietosa e terribile. Non era la debolezza di una debolezza fisica, sebbene il confinamento e le dure condizioni non avessero dubbio la loro parte in essa. La sua deplorevole peculiarità era che si trattava della debolezza della solitudine e del disuso. Era come l’ultimo flebile eco di un suono prodotto molto, molto tempo fa. Aveva perso così completamente la vita e il timbro della voce umana da colpire i sensi come un colore un tempo bellissimo sbiadito in una povera macchia pallida. Era così spenta e soffocata che sembrava una voce sotterranea. Era così espressiva di una creatura senza speranza e perduta, che un viaggiatore affamato, sfinito da vagabondaggi solitari in un deserto, avrebbe ricordato casa e amici con un tono simile prima di sdraiarsi per morire.
Erano passati alcuni minuti di silenzioso lavoro e gli occhi smunti si erano nuovamente alzati: non con alcun interesse o curiosità, ma con una ottusa percezione meccanica che il posto dove l’unico visitatore di cui avevano consapevolezza era rimasto in piedi, non fosse ancora vuoto.
«Voglio», disse Defarge senza distogliere lo sguardo dal calzolaio, «far entrare un po’ più di luce qui dentro. Ne sopporta ancora un po’?»
Il calzolaio interruppe il suo lavoro; guardò con aria vacua e attenta al pavimento da un lato di lui; poi allo stesso modo al pavimento dall’altro lato; infine in su verso chi parlava.
“Cosa hai detto?”
“Reggi ancora un po’ di luce?”
«Devo sopportarlo, se lo lasciate entrare». (Mettendo la più pallida ombra di un’insistenza sulla seconda parola.)
La mezza porta aperta si aprì un po’ di più e venne fissata in quella posizione per il tempo. Un ampio raggio di luce entrò nella soffitta, illuminando l’artigiano con una scarpa incompiuta sulle ginocchia, fermo nel suo lavoro. I suoi pochi semplici attrezzi e vari pezzi di pelle erano ai suoi piedi e sulla sua panca. Aveva una barba bianca, tagliata in modo irregolare ma non molto lunga, un volto scavato ed occhi straordinariamente luminosi. La magrezza e la pallidezza del suo viso avrebbero fatto sembrare grandi i suoi occhi anche sotto le sopracciglia ancora scure e i capelli bianchi arruffati, anche se in realtà non lo fossero stati; ma erano naturalmente grandi e apparivano anormalmente così. La sua camicia giallastra era aperta sul collo, rivelando il suo corpo emaciato e logoro. Lui, la sua vecchia giacca di tela cerata, i suoi calzini larghi e tutti i suoi poveri stracci erano, a causa di una lunga reclusione lontana dalla luce diretta e dall’aria, sbiaditi fino a raggiungere una monotona uniformità di un giallo pergamena così spento che sarebbe stato difficile dire quale fosse cosa.
Aveva alzato una mano tra gli occhi e la luce, e le ossa stesse sembravano trasparenti. Così sedeva, con uno sguardo ostinatamente vacuo, interrompendosi nel suo lavoro. Non guardava mai la figura davanti a sé senza prima abbassare lo sguardo da un lato di sé, poi dall’altro, come se avesse perso l’abitudine di associare il luogo al suono; non parlava mai senza prima vagare in questo modo e dimenticare di parlare.
«Intendete finire quella coppia di scarpe oggi?» chiese Defarge, facendo cenno a Mr. Lorry di avvicinarsi.
“Cosa hai detto?”
“Intendi finire quella coppia di scarpe oggi?”
“Non posso dire che intendo farlo. Immagino di sì. Non lo so.”
Ma la domanda gli ricordò il suo lavoro e si chinò di nuovo su di esso.
Il signor Lorry si avvicinò silenziosamente, lasciando la figlia vicino alla porta. Dopo essere rimasto per un minuto o due accanto a Defarge, il calzolaio alzò lo sguardo. Non mostrò alcuna sorpresa nel vedere una figura diversa, ma le dita instabili di una delle sue mani si portarono alle labbra mentre la guardava (le sue labbra e le unghie erano dello stesso pallido colore piombo), poi la mano ricadde sul lavoro e lui si chinò nuovamente sulla scarpa. Lo sguardo e il gesto avevano occupato solo un istante.
«Avete un visitatore, vedete», disse monsieur Defarge.
“Cosa hai detto?”
“Arriva un visitatore.”
Il calzolaio alzò lo sguardo come prima, ma senza togliere una mano dal suo lavoro.
«Come!» disse Defarge. «Ecco un signore che sa riconoscere una scarpa ben fatta quando la vede. Mostrategli quella su cui state lavorando. Prendetela, signore».
Il signor Lorry lo prese in mano.
“Di’ al signore che tipo di scarpa è e il nome del produttore.”
Ci fu una pausa più lunga del solito prima che il calzolaio rispondesse:
“Ho dimenticato cosa mi hai chiesto. Cosa hai detto?”
“Non potrebbe descrivere il tipo di scarpa per informazione del signore?”
«È un paio di scarpe da donna. È una scarpa da passeggio per giovani donne. È all’ultima moda. Non ho mai visto la moda. Ho avuto in mano un modello». Lanciò uno sguardo alla scarpa con un tocco passeggero di orgoglio.
«E il nome del fabbricante?» disse Defarge.
Ora che non aveva più nulla da tenere tra le mani, appoggiò i nocchi della mano destra nella cavità di quella sinistra e poi quelli della mano sinistra in quella destra, quindi passò una mano sul mento barbuto e così via con regolari alternanze senza un attimo di interruzione. Il compito di richiamarlo dalla vaghezza in cui sempre sprofondava dopo aver parlato era come riportare alla coscienza una persona molto debole da uno svenimento, o cercare, nella speranza che rivelasse qualcosa, di trattenere lo spirito di un uomo sul punto di morire.
Mi hai chiesto il mio nome?
“Certamente lo feci.”
“Uno zero cinque, Torre Nord”.
“Questo è tutto?”
“Uno zero cinque, Torre Nord”.
Con un suono stanco che non era né un sospiro né un gemito, si chinò di nuovo al lavoro finché il silenzio fu nuovamente interrotto.
«Non è un calzolaio di mestiere?» disse il signor Lorry guardandolo con fermezza.
His haggard eyes turned to Defarge as if he would have transferred the question to him: but as no help came from that quarter, they turned back on the questioner when they had sought the ground.
“I am not a shoemaker by trade? No, I was not a shoemaker by trade. I-I learnt it here. I taught myself. I asked leave to—”
He lapsed away, even for minutes, ringing those measured changes on his hands the whole time. His eyes came slowly back, at last, to the face from which they had wandered; when they rested on it, he started, and resumed, in the manner of a sleeper that moment awake, reverting to a subject of last night.
“I asked leave to teach myself, and I got it with much difficulty after a long while, and I have made shoes ever since.”
As he held out his hand for the shoe that had been taken from him, 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 at the questioner.
“Monsieur Manette”; Mr. Lorry laid his hand upon Defarge’s arm; “do you remember nothing of this man? Look at him. Look at me. Is there no old banker, no old business, no old servant, no old time, 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 actively intent intelligence in the middle of the forehead, gradually forced themselves through the black mist that had fallen on him. They were overclouded again, they were fainter, they were gone; but they had been there. And so exactly was the expression repeated on the fair young face of her who had crept along the wall to a point where she could see him, and where she now stood looking at him, with hands which at first had been only raised in frightened compassion, if not even to keep him off and shut out the sight of him, but which were now extending towards him, trembling with eagerness to lay the spectral face upon her warm young breast, and love it back to life and hope—so exactly was the expression repeated (though in stronger characters) on her fair young face, that it looked as though it had passed like a moving light, 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 sought the ground and looked about him in the old way. Finally, with a deep long sigh, he took the shoe up, and resumed his work.
“Have you recognised him, monsieur?” asked Defarge in a whisper.
“Yes; for a moment. At first I thought it quite hopeless, but I have unquestionably seen, for a single moment, the face that I once knew so well. Hush! Let us draw further back. Hush!”
She had moved from the wall of the garret, very near to the bench on which he sat. There was something awful in his unconsciousness of the figure that could have put out its hand and touched him as he stooped over his labour.
Not a word was spoken, not a sound was made. She stood, like a spirit, beside him, and he bent over his work.
It happened, at length, that he had occasion to change the instrument in his hand, for his shoemaker’s knife. It lay on that side of him which was not the side on which she stood. He had taken it up, and was stooping to work again, when his eyes caught the skirt of her dress. He raised them, and saw her face. The two spectators started forward, but she stayed them with a motion of her hand. She had no fear of his striking at her with the knife, though they had.
He stared at her with a fearful look, and after a while his lips began to form some words, though no sound proceeded from them. By degrees, in the pauses of his quick and laboured breathing, he was heard to say:
“What is this?”
With the tears streaming down her face, she put her two hands to her lips, and kissed them to him; then clasped them on her breast, 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 the bench beside him. He recoiled, but she laid her hand upon his arm. A strange thrill struck him when she did so, and visibly passed over his frame; he laid the knife down softly, as he sat staring at her.
Her golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had been hurriedly pushed aside, and fell down over her neck. Advancing his hand by little and little, he took it up and looked at it. In the midst 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 his shoulder. After looking doubtfully at it, two or three times, as if to be sure that it was really there, he laid down his work, put his hand to his neck, and took off a blackened string with a scrap of folded rag attached to it. He opened this, carefully, on his knee, and it contained a very little quantity of hair: not more than one or two long golden hairs, which he had, in some old day, wound off upon his finger.
He took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it. “It is the same. How can it be! When was it! How was it!”
As the concentrated expression returned to his forehead, he seemed to become conscious that it was in hers too. He turned her full to the light, and looked at her.
“She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was summoned out—she had a fear of my going, though I had none—and when I was brought to the North Tower they found these upon my sleeve. ‘You will leave me them? They can never help 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 could utter it. But when he did find spoken words for it, they came to him coherently, though slowly.
“How was this?—Was it you?”
I suoi occhi smunti si rivolsero a Defarge come se avesse voluto trasferire la domanda a lui; ma poiché non giunse alcun aiuto da quella parte, tornarono sul suo interlocutore dopo aver cercato il terreno.
«Non sono un calzolaio di mestiere? No, non ero un calzolaio di mestiere. Io-io l’ho imparato qui. Me lo sono insegnato da solo. Ho chiesto il permesso di, »
Si assopiva, anche per minuti, suonando quelle variazioni misurate sulle sue mani tutto il tempo. I suoi occhi tornarono lentamente, alla fine, al volto da cui si erano allontanati; quando vi si posarono sopra, trasalì e riprese, come un dormiente appena sveglio, tornando a un argomento della scorsa notte.
«Chiesi il permesso di imparare da solo e lo ottenni con molta difficoltà dopo molto tempo, e ho fatto scarpe da allora.»
Mentre tendeva la mano per prendere il calzare che gli era stato tolto, il signor Lorry disse, continuando a fissarlo con sguardo intenso:
“Monsieur Manette, non vi ricordate di me?”
La scarpa cadde a terra e lui rimase seduto fissando lo sconosciuto con aria interrogativa.
«Monsieur Manette»; Mr. Lorry posò la mano sul braccio di Defarge; «non ricordate nulla di quest’uomo? Guardatelo. Guardatemi. Non vi torna alla mente qualche vecchio banchiere, qualche vecchia faccenda d’affari, qualche vecchio servitore, qualche tempo passato, Monsieur Manette?»
Mentre il prigioniero di tanti anni sedeva fissando alternativamente Mr. Lorry e Defarge, alcune tracce da tempo cancellate di un’intelligenza attivamente intenta nel mezzo della fronte, gradualmente si fecero strada attraverso la nebbia nera che era calata su di lui. Si offuscarono di nuovo, erano più deboli, scomparvero; ma c’erano state. E così esattamente l’espressione si ripeteva sul bel viso giovane di colei che si era inerpicata lungo il muro fino a un punto da cui poteva vederlo, e dove ora stava guardandolo, con le mani che all’inizio erano state solo sollevate in spaventata compassione, se non addirittura per tenerlo lontano e impedire la vista di lui, ma che ora si protendevano verso di lui, tremanti dall’impazienza di posare il volto spettrale sul suo giovane seno caldo, e amorearlo di nuovo alla vita e speranza—così esattamente l’espressione si ripeteva (sebbene con caratteri più forti) sul suo bel viso giovane, che sembrava come se fosse passata come una luce in movimento, da lui a lei.
Al suo posto era calata su di lui l’oscurità. Li guardava sempre meno attentamente e i suoi occhi, assorti nella cupa contemplazione, cercavano il terreno e si guardavano intorno nel solito modo. Infine, con un lungo sospiro profondo, prese la scarpa e riprese a lavorare.
«L’avete riconosciuto, signore?» chiese Defarge sottovoce.
“Sì; per un momento. All’inizio pensavo che fosse del tutto senza speranza, ma ho visto indubbiamente, per un solo istante, il volto che una volta conoscevo così bene. Ssst! Torniamo indietro. Sssh!”
Si era spostata dal muro del sottotetto molto vicino alla panca su cui lui sedeva. C’era qualcosa di terribile nella sua inconsapevolezza della figura che avrebbe potuto tendere la mano e toccarlo mentre si chinava sul suo lavoro.
Non fu pronunciata una parola, non si udì un suono. Ella stava in piedi accanto a lui come uno spirito e lui era curvo sul suo lavoro.
Alla fine gli capitò di dover cambiare l’oggetto che aveva in mano con il suo coltello da calzolaio. Questo si trovava dalla parte opposta a quella dove lei stava in piedi. Lui lo aveva preso e si era chinato per riprendere il lavoro, quando i suoi occhi catturarono l’orlo del suo abito. Alzò gli occhi e vide il suo viso. I due spettatori fecero un passo avanti, ma lei li fermò con un gesto della mano. Non aveva paura che lui la colpisse con il coltello, anche se loro sì.
La fissò con uno sguardo spaventato e dopo un po’ le sue labbra cominciarono a formare delle parole, sebbene nessun suono ne uscisse. A poco a poco, nelle pause del suo respiro affannoso e faticoso, si sentì dire:
“Che cos’è questo?”
Con le lacrime che le scorrevano lungo il viso, si portò entrambe le mani alle labbra e gli mandò un bacio; poi se le strinse sul petto, come se vi posasse la sua testa distrutta.
“Non sei la figlia del carceriere?”
Sospirò “No.”
“Chi sei?”
Non fidandosi ancora del tono della sua voce, si sedette sulla panca accanto a lui. Lui indietreggiò, ma lei gli posò la mano sul braccio. Un fremito strano lo colpì quando fece così e visibilmente attraversò il suo corpo; depose dolcemente il coltello mentre rimaneva lì seduto fissandola.
I suoi capelli dorati, che portava in lunghi riccioli, erano stati spinti di fretta da parte e le cadevano sul collo. Avanzando la mano poco per volta, li prese e li guardò. Nel bel mezzo dell’azione si perse nei pensieri e, con un altro profondo sospiro, tornò al suo lavoro di calzolaio.
Ma non per molto tempo. Lasciando il suo braccio, lei posò la mano sulla sua spalla. Dopo averla guardata con dubbio due o tre volte, come se volesse assicurarsi che fosse davvero lì, lui mise da parte il lavoro, si portò una mano al collo e tolse un cordino annerito con un pezzetto di straccio ripiegato attaccato. Lo aprì con cura sulle ginocchia: conteneva una quantità molto piccola di capelli: non più di uno o due lunghi capelli dorati, che lui, in qualche vecchio giorno, si era avvolto intorno al dito.
Le prese di nuovo i capelli tra le mani e li guardò attentamente. «Sono gli stessi. Come è possibile! Quando è stato! Com’è successo!»
Mentre l’espressione concentrata gli tornava sulla fronte, sembrò rendersi conto che era anche nella sua. La girò verso la luce e la guardò.
“Quella notte aveva appoggiato la testa sulla mia spalla, quando fui chiamato fuori — lei aveva una paura che io partissi, benché io non ne avessi alcuna — e quando mi portarono alla Torre del Nord trovarono queste cose sul mio polsino. ‘Me le lascerai? Non potranno mai aiutarmi a fuggire nel corpo, anche se forse nello spirito.’ Queste furono le parole che dissi. Me ne ricordo molto bene.”
Formò più volte questo discorso con le labbra prima di poterlo pronunciare. Ma quando finalmente trovò le parole per esprimerlo, gli vennero in modo coerente, sebbene lentamente.
“Come è successo? — Sei stato tu?”
Once more, the two spectators started, as he turned upon her with a frightful suddenness. But she sat perfectly still in his grasp, and only said, in a low voice, “I entreat you, good gentlemen, do not 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 to his white hair, which they tore in a frenzy. It died out, as everything but his shoemaking did die out of him, and he refolded his little packet and tried to secure it in his breast; but he still looked at her, and gloomily shook his head.
“No, no, no; you are too young, too blooming. It can’t be. See what the prisoner is. These are not the hands she knew, this is not the face she knew, this is not a voice she ever heard. No, no. She was—and He was—before the slow years of the North Tower—ages ago. What is your name, my gentle angel?”
Hailing his softened tone and manner, his daughter fell upon her knees before him, with her appealing hands upon his breast.
“O, sir, at another time you shall know my name, and who my mother 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 tell you here. All that I may tell you, here and now, is, that I pray to you to touch me and to bless me. Kiss me, kiss me! O my dear, my dear!”
His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and lighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining on him.
“If you hear in my voice—I don’t know that it is so, but I hope it is—if you hear in my voice any resemblance to a voice that once was 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 lay on your breast when you were young and free, weep for it, weep for it! If, when I hint to you of a Home that is before us, where I will 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 your poor heart pined away, weep for it, weep for it!”
She held him closer round the neck, and rocked him on her breast like a child.
“If, when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is over, and that I have come here to take you from it, and that we go to England to be at peace and at rest, I cause you to think of your useful 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, you learn that I have to kneel to my honoured father, and implore his pardon for having never for his sake striven all day and lain awake and wept all night, because the love of my poor mother hid his torture from me, weep for it, weep for it! Weep for her, then, and for me! Good gentlemen, thank God! I feel his sacred tears upon my face, and his sobs strike against my heart. O, see! Thank God for us, thank God!”
He had sunk in her arms, and his face dropped on her breast: a sight so touching, yet so terrible in the tremendous wrong and suffering which had gone before it, that the two beholders covered their faces.
When the quiet of the garret had been long undisturbed, and his heaving breast and shaken form had long yielded to the calm that must follow all storms—emblem to humanity, of the rest and silence into which the storm called Life must hush at last—they came 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 lie upon her arm; and her hair drooping over him curtained him from the light.
“If, without disturbing him,” she said, raising her hand to Mr. Lorry as he stooped over them, after repeated blowings of his nose, “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, so dreadful 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 of France. Say, shall I hire a carriage and post-horses?”
“That’s business,” said Mr. Lorry, resuming on the shortest notice his methodical manners; “and if business is to be done, I had better do it.”
“Then be so kind,” urged Miss Manette, “as to leave us here. You see how composed he has become, and you cannot be afraid to leave him with me now. Why should you be? If you will lock the door to secure us from interruption, I do not doubt that you will find him, when you come back, as quiet as you leave him. In any case, I will take care of him until you return, and then we will remove him straight.”
Both Mr. Lorry and Defarge were rather disinclined to this course, and in favour of one of them remaining. But, as there were not only carriage and horses to be seen to, but travelling papers; and as time pressed, for the day was drawing to an end, it came at last to their hastily dividing the business that was necessary to be done, and hurrying away to do it.
Then, as the darkness closed in, the daughter laid her head down on the hard ground close at the father’s side, and watched him. The darkness deepened and deepened, and they both lay quiet, until a light gleamed through the chinks in the wall.
Mr. Lorry and Monsieur Defarge had made all ready for the journey, and had brought with them, besides travelling cloaks and wrappers, bread and meat, wine, and hot coffee. Monsieur Defarge put this provender, and the lamp he carried, on the shoemaker’s bench (there was nothing else in the garret but a pallet bed), and he and Mr. Lorry roused the captive, and assisted him to his feet.
No human intelligence could have read the mysteries of his mind, in the scared blank wonder of his face. Whether he knew what had happened, whether he recollected what they had said to him, whether he knew that he was free, were questions which no sagacity could have solved. They tried speaking to him; but, he was so confused, and so very slow to answer, that they took fright at his bewilderment, and agreed for the time to tamper with him no more. He had a wild, lost manner of occasionally clasping his head in his hands, that had not been seen in him before; yet, he had some pleasure in the mere sound of his daughter’s voice, and invariably turned to it when she spoke.
Ancora una volta i due spettatori trasalirono quando lui si voltò verso di lei con un’improvvisità terribile. Ma lei rimase perfettamente immobile nella sua presa e disse solo a bassa voce: «Vi prego, buoni signori, non vi avvicinate a noi, non parlate, non vi muovete!»
“Silenzio!” esclamò. “Di chi era quella voce?”
Le sue mani la lasciarono mentre lanciava quel grido e si portarono ai suoi capelli bianchi che strappò nella sua frenesia. Quel gesto svanì come tutto ciò che non fosse il suo lavoro di calzolaio, e ripiegò il suo pacchettino cercando di nasconderlo nel petto; ma continuava a guardarla scuotendo tristemente la testa.
«No, no, no; sei troppo giovane, troppo fiorita. Non può essere. Guarda com’è il prigioniero. Queste non sono le mani che lei conosceva, questo non è il volto che lei conosceva, questa non è una voce che lei ha mai sentito. No, no. Lei era— e Lui era— prima degli anni lenti della Torre Nord — secoli fa. Qual è il tuo nome, mio dolce angelo?»
Salutando il suo tono e atteggiamento addolciti, la figlia gli cadde in ginocchio davanti, con le sue mani supplichevoli sul petto di lui.
«O, signore, in un altro momento saprete il mio nome e chi era mia madre, e chi era mio padre, e come non ho mai conosciuto la loro dura, dura storia. Ma io non posso dirvelo in questo momento, e non posso dirvelo qui. Tutto ciò che posso dirvi, qui e ora, è che vi prego di toccarmi e di benedirmi. Baciatemi, baciatemi! O mio caro, mio caro!»
La sua fredda testa bianca si mescolava ai suoi capelli radiosi che la riscaldavano e illuminavano come se fosse la luce della Libertà a brillare su di lui.
«Se sentite nella mia voce — non so se sia così, ma lo spero — se sentite nella mia voce una qualsiasi somiglianza con una voce che un tempo era dolce musica alle vostre orecchie, piangete per essa, piangete per essa! Se toccando i miei capelli, avvertite qualcosa che vi ricorda una testa amata che riposava sul vostro seno quando eravate giovane e libera, piangete per essa, piangete per essa! Se, quando accenno a una Casa davanti a noi, dove sarò fedele a voi con tutto il mio dovere e con tutto il mio servizio leale, vi riporto alla memoria di una Casa da tempo desolata, mentre il vostro povero cuore languiva, piangete per essa, piangete per essa!»
Lo strinse più forte al collo e lo dondolò sul suo seno come un bambino.
“Se, quando ti dico, mia cara, che la tua agonia è finita e che sono venuto qui per portarti via da essa, e che andiamo in Inghilterra a vivere in pace e tranquillità, ti faccio pensare alla tua vita utile sprecata, e alla nostra Francia nativa così malvagia con te, piangi per questo, piangi per questo! E se, quando ti parlerò del mio nome, e di mio padre che è vivo, e di mia madre che è morta, scoprirai che devo inginocchiarmi davanti a mio padre onorato, e implorare il suo perdono per non aver mai lottato per lui tutto il giorno e vegliato e pianto tutta notte, perché l’amore di mia madre mi ha nascosto la sua tortura, piangi per questo, piangi per questo! Poi piangi per lei, e per me! Buoni signori, ringraziate Dio! Sento le sue sacre lacrime sul mio viso, e i suoi singhiozzi che battono contro il mio cuore. O, guardate! Ringraziate Dio per noi, ringraziate Dio!”
Egli era sprofondato tra le sue braccia e il suo volto si era posato sul suo seno: uno spettacolo così commovente, eppure così terribile per l’ingiustizia enorme e la sofferenza che lo avevano preceduto, che i due testimoni si coprirono il volto.
Quando il silenzio della soffitta non era più stato turbato da molto tempo e il suo petto ansante e la sua figura scossa si erano finalmente calmati, come accade dopo ogni tempesta - simbolo per l’umanità del riposo e silenzio in cui alla fine deve placarsi la tempesta chiamata Vita - vennero avanti per sollevare il padre e la figlia dal pavimento. Lui era gradualmente crollato a terra, giacendo lì in una letargia, esausto. Lei si era accoccolata con lui, affinché la sua testa potesse riposare sul suo braccio; e i suoi capelli che gli cadevano addosso lo schermavano dalla luce.
“Se, senza disturbarlo,” disse lei, alzando la mano verso il signor Lorry mentre si chinava su di loro dopo aver ripetutamente soffiato il naso, “tutto potesse essere organizzato per partire da Parigi immediatamente, in modo che, direttamente dalla porta, lui possa essere portato via—”
«Ma pensateci bene. È in grado di fare il viaggio?» chiese il signor Lorry.
«Più adatto a questo, credo, che a rimanere in questa città, così terribile per lui.»
«È vero», disse Defarge che era inginocchiato per guardare e ascoltare. «E non solo: il signor Manette è, per tutti i motivi possibili, meglio fuori dalla Francia. Dite, devo noleggiare una carrozza e dei cavalli da posta?»
«Questa è una faccenda di lavoro», disse il signor Lorry riprendendo in un batter d’occhio i suoi modi meticolosi; «e se c’è da sbrigare del lavoro, tanto vale che lo sbrighi io».
«Allora fateci la gentilezza» insistette Miss Manette «di lasciarci qui. Vedete quanto si è calmato e non potete avere paura di lasciarlo con me ora. Perché mai? Se vorrete chiudere a chiave la porta per proteggerci da interruzioni, non dubito che quando tornerete lo troverete tranquillo come l’avete lasciato. In ogni caso, mi prenderò cura di lui fino al vostro ritorno e poi ce ne andremo subito».
Sia il signor Lorry che Defarge erano piuttosto contrari a questa soluzione e propendevano per la permanenza di uno dei due. Ma poiché c’erano non solo carrozza e cavalli da sistemare, ma anche documenti di viaggio; e poiché il tempo stringeva, perché la giornata volgeva al termine, alla fine si divisero in fretta i compiti che era necessario svolgere e se ne andarono di corsa a farli.
Poi, mentre calava l’oscurità, la figlia si sdraiò per terra accanto al padre e lo guardò. L’oscurità divenne sempre più fitta, e tutti due rimasero immobili finché una luce non filtrò dalle crepe del muro.
Il signor Lorry e il signor Defarge avevano preparato tutto per la viaggio, e avevano portato con sé, oltre a mantelli e coperte da viaggio, pane e carne, vino e caffè caldo. Il signor Defarge mise questi viveri, e la lampada che portava, sulla panca del calzolaio (non c’era altro nella soffitta se non un letto di paglia), e lui e il signor Lorry svegliarono il prigioniero e lo aiutarono a mettersi in piedi.
Nessuna intelligenza umana avrebbe potuto decifrare i misteri della sua mente, nello spaventato vuoto stupore del suo volto. Che sapesse cosa era successo, che ricordasse ciò che gli avevano detto, che fosse consapevole di essere libero erano domande a cui nessuna perspicacia avrebbe potuto dare risposta. Provarono a parlargli; ma lui era così confuso e rispondeva con tale lentezza che si spaventarono del suo smarrimento e decisero per il momento di non insistere più con lui. Aveva un selvaggio, sperduto modo di stringersi occasionalmente la testa tra le mani che prima non gli era mai stato visto; tuttavia provava una certa gioia nel semplice suono della voce della figlia e invariabilmente si voltava verso di lei quando parlava.
In the submissive way of one long accustomed to obey under coercion, he ate and drank what they gave him to eat and drink, and put on the cloak and other wrappings, that they gave him to wear. He readily responded to his daughter’s drawing her arm through his, and took—and kept—her hand in both his own.
They began to descend; Monsieur Defarge going first with the lamp, Mr. Lorry closing the little procession. They had not traversed many steps of the long main staircase when he stopped, and stared at the roof and round at the walls.
“You remember the place, my father? You remember coming up here?”
“What did you say?”
But, before she could repeat the question, he murmured an answer as if she had repeated it.
“Remember? No, I don’t remember. It was so very long ago.”
That he had no recollection whatever of his having been brought from his prison to that house, was apparent to them. They heard him mutter, “One Hundred and Five, North Tower;” and when he looked about him, it evidently was for the strong fortress-walls which had long encompassed him. On their reaching the courtyard he instinctively altered his tread, as being in expectation of a drawbridge; and when there was no drawbridge, and he saw the carriage waiting in the open street, he dropped his daughter’s hand and clasped his head again.
No crowd was about the door; no people were discernible at any of the many windows; not even a chance passerby was in the street. An unnatural silence and desertion reigned there. Only one soul was to be seen, and that was Madame Defarge—who leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing.
The prisoner had got into a coach, and his daughter had followed him, when Mr. Lorry’s feet were arrested on the step by his asking, miserably, for his shoemaking tools and the unfinished shoes. Madame Defarge immediately called to her husband that she would get them, and went, knitting, out of the lamplight, through the courtyard. She quickly brought them down and handed them in;—and immediately afterwards leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing.
Defarge got upon the box, and gave the word “To the Barrier!” The postilion cracked his whip, and they clattered away under the feeble over-swinging lamps.
Under the over-swinging lamps—swinging ever brighter in the better streets, and ever dimmer in the worse—and by lighted shops, gay crowds, illuminated coffee-houses, and theatre-doors, to one of the city gates. Soldiers with lanterns, at the guard-house there. “Your papers, travellers!” “See here then, Monsieur the Officer,” said Defarge, getting down, and taking him gravely apart, “these are the papers of monsieur inside, with the white head. They were consigned to me, with him, at the—” He dropped his voice, there was a flutter among the military lanterns, and one of them being handed into the coach by an arm in uniform, the eyes connected with the arm looked, not an every day or an every night look, at monsieur with the white head. “It is well. Forward!” from the uniform. “Adieu!” from Defarge. And so, under a short grove of feebler and feebler over-swinging lamps, out under the great grove of stars.
Beneath that arch of unmoved and eternal lights; some, so remote from this little earth that the learned tell us it is doubtful whether their rays have even yet discovered it, as a point in space where anything is suffered or done: the shadows of the night were broad and black. All through the cold and restless interval, until dawn, they once more whispered in the ears of Mr. Jarvis Lorry—sitting opposite the buried man who had been dug out, and wondering what subtle powers were for ever lost to him, and what were capable of restoration—the old inquiry:
“I hope you care to be recalled to life?”
And the old answer:
“I can’t say.”
The end of the first book.
Con la sottomissione di chi è abituato da tempo a obbedire sotto costrizione, mangiò e bevve ciò che gli davano da mangiare e bere, e indossò il mantello e altri indumenti che gli davano per vestirsi. Rispose prontamente al gesto della figlia di passargli il braccio intorno a quello suo, e prese — e non lasciò più — la sua mano tra le sue due mani.
Cominciarono a scendere: Monsieur Defarge per primo con la lampada, Mr. Lorry chiudeva il piccolo corteo. Non avevano fatto molti gradini della lunga scala principale quando si fermò e fissò il soffitto e intorno le pareti.
“Ti ricordi il posto, papà? Ti ricordi di essere venuto qui?”
“Cosa hai detto?”
Ma prima che lei potesse ripetere la domanda, lui mormorò una risposta come se lei l’avesse già ripetuta.
“Ricordi? No, non ricordo. È stato tanto tempo fa.”
Era evidente che non aveva alcun ricordo di essere stato portato dalla sua prigione a quella casa. Lo sentirono borbottare: “Centocinque, Torre Nord”; e quando si guardò intorno, era chiaro che cercava le solide mura della fortezza che lo avevano a lungo circondato. Quando arrivarono nel cortile, istintivamente cambiò il suo passo, come se si aspettasse un ponte levatoio; e quando non c’era nessun ponte levatoio e vide la carrozza in attesa nella strada aperta, lasciò andare la mano di sua figlia e si prese nuovamente la testa tra le mani.
Nessuna folla si trovava intorno alla porta; nessuno era visibile in una qualsiasi delle molte finestre; non c’era nemmeno un passante occasionale per strada. Un silenzio e un deserto innaturali regnavano lì. Si vedeva solo un’anima, ed era Madame Defarge - che si appoggiava al palo della porta, lavorando a maglia, senza vedere nulla.
Il prigioniero era salito su una carrozza e sua figlia lo aveva seguito, quando i piedi del signor Lorry furono fermati sul predellino dalla sua richiesta miseranda degli attrezzi da calzolaio e delle scarpe non finite. La signora Defarge chiamò subito suo marito dicendogli che li avrebbe presi lei, e uscì, facendo maglia, dal cerchio di luce della lanterna, attraverso il cortile. Li portò giù in fretta e glieli consegnò;—e subito dopo si appoggiò al montante della porta, facendo maglia, senza vedere nulla.
Defarge salì sul predellino e diede l’ordine: «Alla Barriera!». Il postiglione schioccò la frusta e si allontanarono al galoppo sotto le deboli lampade oscillanti.
Sotto le lampade che oscillavano in alto - sempre più luminose nelle strade migliori e sempre più fioche in quelle peggiori - e davanti ai negozi illuminati, alle folle allegre, ai caffè illuminati e alle porte dei teatri, fino a una delle porte della città. Soldati con lanterne alla guardia-casa lì. “I vostri documenti, viaggiatori!” “Ecco qui allora, signor Ufficiale,” disse Defarge scendendo e conducendolo seriamente da parte, “questi sono i documenti del signore dentro, con la testa bianca. Mi sono stati affidati insieme a lui al—” Abbassò la voce, ci fu un movimento tra le lanterne militari e una di esse, passata nella carrozza da un braccio in uniforme, gli occhi collegati al braccio guardarono, non con uno sguardo quotidiano o notturno, il signore dalla testa bianca. “È bene. Avanti!” dall’uniforme. “Addio!” da Defarge. E così, sotto un breve bosco di lampade che oscillavano in alto sempre più deboli, fuori sotto il grande bosco delle stelle.
Sotto quell’arco di luci immobili ed eterne; alcune così lontane da questa piccola terra che i dotti ci dicono che è dubitabile se i loro raggi abbiano ancora scoperto essa, come un punto nello spazio dove qualcosa sia tollerato o fatto: le ombre della notte erano ampie e nere. Durante tutto l’intervallo freddo e inquieto fino all’alba, sussurrarono ancora una volta nelle orecchie del signor Jarvis Lorry - seduto di fronte all’uomo sepolto che era stato dissotterrato, chiedendosi quali poteri sottili gli fossero per sempre perduti e quali fossero capaci di essere restaurati - la vecchia domanda:
“Spero che le interessi essere richiamato alla vita? “
E la vecchia risposta:
“Non posso dire.”
La fine del primo libro.
Book the Second—the Golden Thread CHAPTER I. Five Years Later
Tellson’s Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more convenient places of business. Tellson’s (they said) wanted no elbow-room, Tellson’s wanted no light, Tellson’s wanted no embellishment. Noakes and Co.’s might, or Snooks Brothers’ might; but Tellson’s, thank Heaven—!
Any one of these partners would have disinherited his son on the question of rebuilding Tellson’s. In this respect the House was much on a par with the Country; which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting improvements in laws and customs that had long been highly objectionable, but were only the more respectable.
Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson’s was the triumphant perfection of inconvenience. After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson’s down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop, with two little counters, where the oldest of men made your cheque shake as if the wind rustled it, while they examined the signature by the dingiest of windows, which were always under a shower-bath of mud from Fleet-street, and which were made the dingier by their own iron bars proper, and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar. If your business necessitated your seeing “the House,” you were put into a species of Condemned Hold at the back, where you meditated on a misspent life, until the House came with its hands in its pockets, and you could hardly blink at it in the dismal twilight. Your money came out of, or went into, wormy old wooden drawers, particles of which flew up your nose and down your throat when they were opened and shut. Your bank-notes had a musty odour, as if they were fast decomposing into rags again. Your plate was stowed away among the neighbouring cesspools, and evil communications corrupted its good polish in a day or two. Your deeds got into extemporised strong-rooms made of kitchens and sculleries, and fretted all the fat out of their parchments into the banking-house air. Your lighter boxes of family papers went up-stairs into a Barmecide room, that always had a great dining-table in it and never had a dinner, and where, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty, the first letters written to you by your old love, or by your little children, were but newly released from the horror of being ogled through the windows, by the heads exposed on Temple Bar with an insensate brutality and ferocity worthy of Abyssinia or Ashantee.
But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in vogue with all trades and professions, and not least of all with Tellson’s. Death is Nature’s remedy for all things, and why not Legislation’s? Accordingly, the forger was put to Death; the utterer of a bad note was put to Death; the unlawful opener of a letter was put to Death; the purloiner of forty shillings and sixpence was put to Death; the holder of a horse at Tellson’s door, who made off with it, was put to Death; the coiner of a bad shilling was put to Death; the sounders of three-fourths of the notes in the whole gamut of Crime, were put to Death. Not that it did the least good in the way of prevention—it might almost have been worth remarking that the fact was exactly the reverse—but, it cleared off (as to this world) the trouble of each particular case, and left nothing else connected with it to be looked after. Thus, Tellson’s, in its day, like greater places of business, its contemporaries, had taken so many lives, that, if the heads laid low before it had been ranged on Temple Bar instead of being privately disposed of, they would probably have excluded what little light the ground floor had, in a rather significant manner.
Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and hutches at Tellson’s, the oldest of men carried on the business gravely. When they took a young man into Tellson’s London house, they hid him somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the general weight of the establishment.
Outside Tellson’s—never by any means in it, unless called in—was an odd-job-man, an occasional porter and messenger, who served as the live sign of the house. He was never absent during business hours, unless upon an errand, and then he was represented by his son: a grisly urchin of twelve, who was his express image. People understood that Tellson’s, in a stately way, tolerated the odd-job-man. The house had always tolerated some person in that capacity, and time and tide had drifted this person to the post. His surname was Cruncher, and on the youthful occasion of his renouncing by proxy the works of darkness, in the easterly parish church of Hounsditch, he had received the added appellation of Jerry.
The scene was Mr. Cruncher’s private lodging in Hanging-sword-alley, Whitefriars: the time, half-past seven of the clock on a windy March morning, Anno Domini seventeen hundred and eighty. (Mr. Cruncher himself always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a lady who had bestowed her name upon it.)
Capitolo II - Il Filo d’Oro CAPITOLO I. Cinque Anni Dopo
La filiale della Banca Tellson presso Temple Bar era un luogo antiquato, anche nell’anno mille settecento ottanta. Era molto piccola, molto buia, molto brutta e molto scomoda. Era inoltre un posto antiquato per il fatto che i soci della Banca erano orgogliosi della sua piccolezza, orgogliosi della sua oscurità, orgogliosi della sua bruttezza, orgogliosi della sua scomodità. Erano addirittura vanti del suo primato in questi particolari e si ispiravano alla ferma convinzione che se fosse stata meno riprovevole, sarebbe stata anche meno rispettabile. Non era una credenza passiva, ma un’arma attiva che sfoggiavano contro le sedi più comode. La Banca Tellson (dicevano) non aveva bisogno di spazio, la Banca Tellson non aveva bisogno di luce, la Banca Tellson non aveva bisogno di abbellimenti. Forse Noakes e Compagnia ne avevano bisogno, o forse i Fratelli Snooks; ma la Banca Tellson, grazie al cielo,!
Ognuno di questi soci avrebbe disinherited il proprio figlio sulla questione della ricostruzione di Tellson’s. A questo proposito la casa era molto simile al Paese; che spesso disinherited i suoi figli per aver suggerito miglioramenti alle leggi e ai costumi che da tempo erano altamente discutibili, ma solo tanto più rispettabili.
Così era accaduto che la Tellson’s fosse il trionfante apice dell’incomodità. Dopo aver spalancato una porta di idiota ostinazione con un debole crepitio in gola, si cadeva nella Tellson’s scendendo due gradini, e si tornava in sé in un misero negozietto, con due piccoli banconi, dove gli uomini più anziani facevano tremare il vostro assegno come se lo facesse frusciare la brezza, mentre esaminavano la firma alla luce delle finestre più squallide, che erano sempre sotto una pioggia battente di fango da Fleet-street e che erano rese ancora più squallide dalle loro sbarre di ferro e dall’ombra pesante della Temple Bar. Se i vostri affari richiedevano che vedeste “la Banca”, venivate messi in una specie di cella dei condannati sul retro, dove meditavate su una vita sprecata finché la Banca non arrivava con le mani in tasca e voi potevate a malapena guardarla nella luce crepuscolare. I vostri soldi uscivano da o entravano in vecchi cassetti di legno infestati dai vermi, dalle cui particelle vi si riempiva il naso e la gola quando venivano aperti e chiusi. Le banconote avevano un odore muffoso, come se stessero rapidamente decomponendosi in stracci. I vostri piatti d’argento erano riposti tra le fogne vicine, e il contatto con elementi nocivi ne rovinava la buona lucidatura in un giorno o due. Le vostre carte venivano messe in camere forti improvvisate fatte di cucine e dispensi, e perdevano tutta l’umidità dai loro documenti nell’aria della banca. Le vostre scatole più leggere con i documenti familiari venivano portate al piano superiore in una stanza Barmecide che aveva sempre un grande tavolo da pranzo e mai un pranzo, dove, anche nel millenovecentoottantesimo anno dopo Cristo, le prime lettere scritte a voi dal vostro vecchio amore, o dai vostri piccoli figli, erano appena state liberate dall’orrore di essere scrutate dalle finestre, dalle teste esposte sulla Temple Bar con una brutalità e ferocia insensata degne dell’Abissinia o dell’Ashantee.
Ma infatti, in quel periodo, la condanna a morte era una pratica molto alla moda in tutti i mestieri e le professioni, e non ultimi quelli di Tellson. La morte è il rimedio della Natura per tutto, e perché no anche quello della Legge? Di conseguenza, il falsario era condannato a morte; chi emetteva una cattiva nota era messo a morte; l’apritore illegale di lettere era messo a morte; il ladro di quaranta scellini e sei pence era messo a morte; chi teneva un cavallo davanti alla porta di Tellson, che poi lo rubava, era messo a morte; il falsario di una cattiva moneta da scellino era messo a morte; i suonatori di tre quarti delle note in tutta la gamma del Crimine erano messi a morte. Non che ciò facesse il minimo bene come prevenzione - si sarebbe quasi potuto notare che il fatto era esattamente l’opposto - ma, eliminava (per quanto riguarda questo mondo) la seccatura di ogni caso particolare e non lasciava altro da fare in proposito. Così, Tellson, nel suo tempo, come i maggiori centri d’affari, suoi contemporanei, aveva tolto così tante vite che, se le teste abbattute davanti ad essa fossero state esposte a Temple Bar invece di essere smaltite privatamente, probabilmente avrebbero impedito alla luce di entrare al piano terra in modo piuttosto significativo.
Rinchiusi in ogni sorta di bui armadi e casse alla Tellson’s, gli uomini più anziani svolgevano gravemente gli affari. Quando assumevano un giovane nella filiale londinese della Tellson, lo nascondevano da qualche parte finché non fosse diventato vecchio. Lo tenevano in un luogo oscuro, come un formaggio, fino a quando non avesse acquisito il sapore autentico della Tellson e una patina bluastra. Solo allora gli era permesso di apparire, intento con aria solenne a sfogliare volumi ingombranti, mentre i suoi calzoni corti e le ghette contribuivano al peso complessivo dell’istituto.
Fuori dalla sede di Tellson - mai all’interno, a meno che non fosse chiamato - c’era un uomo per ogni lavoro, un facchino e messaggero occasionale, che fungeva da insegna vivente della casa. Non era mai assente durante l’orario di lavoro, a meno che non fosse in missione, e allora veniva sostituito dal figlio: un ragazzino spaventoso di dodici anni, che gli somigliava in modo impressionante. La gente capiva che Tellson tollerava il tuttofare con una certa dignità. La casa aveva sempre tollerato qualcuno in quella veste, e il tempo e la marea avevano portato questa persona al suo posto. Il suo cognome era Cruncher, e nell’occasione giovanile del suo rifiuto per procura delle opere di tenebra, nella chiesa parrocchiale orientale di Hounsditch, aveva ricevuto l’appellativo aggiuntivo di Jerry.
La scena si svolgeva nell’alloggio privato del signor Cruncher in Hanging-sword-alley, Whitefriars: l’ora, le sette e mezza di clicca una mattinata ventosa di marzo dell’anno del Signore mille settecento ottanta. (Il signor Cruncher stesso parlava sempre dell’anno del Signore come Anna Dominoes: apparentemente sotto l’impressione che l’era cristiana risalisse all’invenzione di un gioco popolare, da una donna che aveva dato il suo nome.)
Mr. Cruncher’s apartments were not in a savoury neighbourhood, and were but two in number, even if a closet with a single pane of glass in it might be counted as one. But they were very decently kept. Early as it was, on the windy March morning, the room in which he lay abed was already scrubbed throughout; and between the cups and saucers arranged for breakfast, and the lumbering deal table, a very clean white cloth was spread.
Mr. Cruncher reposed under a patchwork counterpane, like a Harlequin at home. At first, he slept heavily, but, by degrees, began to roll and surge in bed, until he rose above the surface, with his spiky hair looking as if it must tear the sheets to ribbons. At which juncture, he exclaimed, in a voice of dire exasperation:
“Bust me, if she ain’t at it agin!”
A woman of orderly and industrious appearance rose from her knees in a corner, with sufficient haste and trepidation to show that she was the person referred to.
“What!” said Mr. Cruncher, looking out of bed for a boot. “You’re at it agin, are you?”
After hailing the morn with this second salutation, he threw a boot at the woman as a third. It was a very muddy boot, and may introduce the odd circumstance connected with Mr. Cruncher’s domestic economy, that, whereas he often came home after banking hours with clean boots, he often got up next morning to find the same boots covered with clay.
“What,” said Mr. Cruncher, varying his apostrophe after missing his mark—“what are you up to, Aggerawayter?”
“I was only saying my prayers.”
“Saying your prayers! You’re a nice woman! What do you mean by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?”
“I was not praying against you; I was praying for you.”
“You weren’t. And if you were, I won’t be took the liberty with. Here! your mother’s a nice woman, young Jerry, going a praying agin your father’s prosperity. You’ve got a dutiful mother, you have, my son. You’ve got a religious mother, you have, my boy: going and flopping herself down, and praying that the bread-and-butter may be snatched out of the mouth of her only child.”
Master Cruncher (who was in his shirt) took this very ill, and, turning to his mother, strongly deprecated any praying away of his personal board.
“And what do you suppose, you conceited female,” said Mr. Cruncher, with unconscious inconsistency, “that the worth of your prayers may be? Name the price that you put your prayers at!”
“They only come from the heart, Jerry. They are worth no more than that.”
“Worth no more than that,” repeated Mr. Cruncher. “They ain’t worth much, then. Whether or no, I won’t be prayed agin, I tell you. I can’t afford it. I’m not a going to be made unlucky by your sneaking. If you must go flopping yourself down, flop in favour of your husband and child, and not in opposition to ’em. If I had had any but a unnat’ral wife, and this poor boy had had any but a unnat’ral mother, I might have made some money last week instead of being counter-prayed and countermined and religiously circumwented into the worst of luck. B-u-u-ust me!” said Mr. Cruncher, who all this time had been putting on his clothes, “if I ain’t, what with piety and one blowed thing and another, been choused this last week into as bad luck as ever a poor devil of a honest tradesman met with! Young Jerry, dress yourself, my boy, and while I clean my boots keep a eye upon your mother now and then, and if you see any signs of more flopping, give me a call. For, I tell you,” here he addressed his wife once more, “I won’t be gone agin, in this manner. I am as rickety as a hackney-coach, I’m as sleepy as laudanum, my lines is strained to that degree that I shouldn’t know, if it wasn’t for the pain in ’em, which was me and which somebody else, yet I’m none the better for it in pocket; and it’s my suspicion that you’ve been at it from morning to night to prevent me from being the better for it in pocket, and I won’t put up with it, Aggerawayter, and what do you say now!”
Growling, in addition, such phrases as “Ah! yes! You’re religious, too. You wouldn’t put yourself in opposition to the interests of your husband and child, would you? Not you!” and throwing off other sarcastic sparks from the whirling grindstone of his indignation, Mr. Cruncher betook himself to his boot-cleaning and his general preparation for business. In the meantime, his son, whose head was garnished with tenderer spikes, and whose young eyes stood close by one another, as his father’s did, kept the required watch upon his mother. He greatly disturbed that poor woman at intervals, by darting out of his sleeping closet, where he made his toilet, with a suppressed cry of “You are going to flop, mother. —Halloa, father!” and, after raising this fictitious alarm, darting in again with an undutiful grin.
Mr. Cruncher’s temper was not at all improved when he came to his breakfast. He resented Mrs. Cruncher’s saying grace with particular animosity.
“Now, Aggerawayter! What are you up to? At it again?”
His wife explained that she had merely “asked a blessing.”
“Don’t do it!” said Mr. Crunches looking about, as if he rather expected to see the loaf disappear under the efficacy of his wife’s petitions. “I ain’t a going to be blest out of house and home. I won’t have my wittles blest off my table. Keep still!”
Exceedingly red-eyed and grim, as if he had been up all night at a party which had taken anything but a convivial turn, Jerry Cruncher worried his breakfast rather than ate it, growling over it like any four-footed inmate of a menagerie. Towards nine o’clock he smoothed his ruffled aspect, and, presenting as respectable and business-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 favourite description of himself as “a honest tradesman.” His stock consisted of a wooden stool, made out of a broken-backed chair cut down, which stool, young Jerry, walking at his father’s side, carried every morning to beneath the banking-house window that was nearest Temple Bar: where, with the addition of the first handful of straw that could be gleaned from any passing vehicle to keep the cold and wet from the odd-job-man’s feet, it formed the encampment for the day. On this post of his, Mr. Cruncher was as well known to Fleet-street and the Temple, as the Bar itself,—and was almost as in-looking.
Encamped at a quarter before nine, in good time to touch his three-cornered hat to the oldest of men as they passed in to Tellson’s, Jerry took up his station on this windy March morning, with young Jerry standing by him, when not engaged in making forays through the Bar, to inflict bodily and mental injuries of an acute description on passing boys who were small enough for his amiable purpose. Father and son, extremely like each other, looking silently on at the morning traffic in Fleet-street, with their two heads as near to one another as the two eyes of each were, bore a considerable resemblance to a pair of monkeys. The resemblance was not lessened by the accidental circumstance, that the mature Jerry bit and spat out straw, while the twinkling eyes of the youthful Jerry were as restlessly watchful of him as of everything else in Fleet-street.
The head of one of the regular indoor messengers attached to Tellson’s establishment was put through 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 seated himself on the stool, entered on his reversionary interest in the straw his father had been chewing, and cogitated.
“Al-ways rusty! His fingers is al-ways rusty!” muttered young Jerry. “Where does my father get all that iron rust from? He don’t get no iron rust here!”
Gli appartamenti del signor Cruncher non si trovavano in un quartiere salubre e neppure erano numerosi, anche se una dispensa con un solo vetro poteva essere considerata come tale. Ma erano molto ben tenuti. Era presto, quella mattinata di marzo ventosa, ma la stanza dove lui era a letto era già stata pulita da cima a fondo; e tra le tazze e i piattini disposti per la colazione, sul tavolo massiccio di pino, era stato steso un tovagliolo bianco molto pulito.
Il signor Cruncher riposava sotto una trapunta patchwork, come un Arlecchino a casa. All’inizio dormiva pesantemente, ma gradualmente cominciò a rotolare e agitarsi nel letto fino a quando non si alzò sopra la superficie, con i suoi capelli arruffati che sembravano voler strappare le lenzuola in brandelli. A quel punto esclamò, con voce piena di terribile esasperazione:
“Giuro che ci sta di nuovo!”
Una donna dall’aspetto ordinato e laborioso si alzò in piedi da una posizione inginocchiata in un angolo con la sufficente fretta e agitazione da far capire che era la persona a cui ci si riferiva.
“Che cosa!” disse il signor Cruncher, cercando di trovare una scarpa fuori dal letto. “Ci sei di nuovo, vero?”
Dopo aver salutato il mattino con questo secondo benvenuto, lanciò alla donna uno stivale come terzo saluto. Era uno stivale molto fangoso e può introdurre la strana circostanza legata all’economia domestica del signor Cruncher: infatti, sebbene spesso tornasse a casa dopo l’orario bancario con gli stivali puliti, spesso si svegliava la mattina successiva trovando gli stessi stivali ricoperti di argilla.
«Che cosa», disse il signor Cruncher variando la sua invettiva dopo aver mancato il bersaglio, «state facendo, Aggerawayter?»
“Stavo solo recitando le mie preghiere.”
«Recitare le preghiere! Sei una bella donna! Cosa intendi con il farti cadere addosso e pregare contro di me?»
Non pregavo contro di te, ma per te.
“Non lo eri. E anche se lo fossi stato, non mi sarei preso questa libertà. Ecco! tua madre è una brava donna, giovane Jerry, che prega contro la prosperità di tuo padre. Hai una madre devota, hai, figliolo mio. Hai una madre religiosa, hai, ragazzo mio: che si mette in ginocchio e prega che il pane e burro possano essere strappati dalla bocca del suo unico figlio.”
Il signorino Cruncher (che era in camicia) prese questo molto male e, rivolgendosi a sua madre, deplorò vivamente qualsiasi preghiera che allontanasse il suo vitto personale.
«E cosa credete, voi donna presuntuosa», disse il signor Cruncher con inconscia contraddizione «che valgano le vostre preghiere? Dite il prezzo che date alle vostre preghiere!»
“Vengono solo dal cuore, Jerry. Non valgono più di questo.”
«Non valgono più di così», ripeté il signor Cruncher. «Allora non valgono molto. Che sia o no, io non voglio essere pregato ancora, ve lo dico. Non me lo posso permettere. Non intendo lasciare che la vostra ipocrisia mi porti sfortuna. Se proprio dovete mettervi a prostrare, fatevelo per vostro marito e figlio, non contro di loro. Se avessi una moglie normale, e questo povero ragazzo avesse una madre normale, potrei aver guadagnato qualche soldo la scorsa settimana invece di essere contrapregato e controminato e religiosamente aggirato nella peggiore delle sfortune. M-m-maledizione!», disse il signor Cruncher, che tutto quel tempo si era dedicato a vestirsi, «se non è vero che, tra pietà e una dannata cosa e un’altra, sono stato fregato in questa ultima settimana fino ad avere la sfortuna peggiore che un povero diavolo di onesto commerciante abbia mai avuto! Giovane Jerry, vestiti, ragazzo mio, e mentre io mi pulisco gli stivali tieni d’occhio tua madre ogni tanto, e se vedi qualche segno di ulteriori prostrazioni, dammi un richiamo. Perché vi dico», qui si rivolse nuovamente a sua moglie, «che non ci riprovo più in questo modo. Sono scricchiolante come una carrozza pubblica, sono assonnato come il laudano, le mie membra sono tese al punto che se non fosse per il dolore che provo non saprei dire se sono io o qualcun altro, eppure questo non mi ha portato alcun guadagno; e sospetto che tu ci abbia messo da mattina a sera per impedirmi di guadagnare, e non me ne starò più lì, Aggerawayter, e cosa ne pensate ora!»
Ringhiando, inoltre, frasi come «Ah! sì! Anche tu sei religiosa. Non ti metteresti in opposizione agli interessi di tuo marito e del figlio, vero? Tu no!» e lanciando altre scintille sarcastiche dalla macina vorticosa della sua indignazione, il signor Cruncher si dedicò alla pulizia delle scarpe e ai preparativi generali per l’attività commerciale. Nel frattempo, suo figlio, la cui testa era ornata di spine più tenere e i cui giovani occhi erano vicini tra loro come quelli del padre, teneva d’occhio sua madre. Turbava notevolmente quella povera donna a intervalli, uscendo dal suo camerino dove si vestiva con un grido soffocato: «Stai per cadere, mamma. —Ehi, papà!» e, dopo aver sollevato questo allarme fittizio, rientrava di nuovo con una smorfia dispettosa.
L’umore del signor Cruncher non era affatto migliorato quando arrivò a fare colazione. Risentiva con particolare animosità della preghiera di ringraziamento della signora Cruncher.
“Aggerawayter, cosa stai combinando? Ancora all’opera?”
Sua moglie spiegò che aveva semplicemente “chiesto una benedizione”.
«Non farlo!» disse il signor Crunches guardandosi intorno, come se si aspettasse quasi di vedere la pagnotta scomparire grazie all’efficacia delle preghiere di sua moglie. «Non permetterò che mi scaccino da casa e famiglia. Non voglio che benedicano il mio cibo sul tavolo. Sta’ zitto!»
Era straordinariamente rosso in viso e cupo, come se fosse rimasto sveglio tutta la notte a una festa che aveva preso un corso tutt’altro che conviviale; Jerry Cruncher si preoccupava del suo colazione più che mangiarla, ringhiandovi sopra come qualsiasi abitante quadrupede di uno zoo. Verso le nove e poco si lisciò il suo aspetto arruffato e, presentando un’esteriorità rispettabile e professionale quanto poteva sovrapporre al suo naturale io, uscì per la sua occupazione quotidiana.
A malapena si poteva chiamare un mestiere, nonostante la sua descrizione preferita di sé come “un onesto commerciante”. Il suo magazzino consisteva in uno sgabello di legno, ricavato da una sedia con lo schienale rotto, che questo sgabello, il giovane Jerry, camminando al fianco di suo padre, portava ogni mattina sotto la banca-casa finestra più vicina a Temple Bar: dove, con l’aggiunta del primo mucchietto di paglia che si poteva raccogliere da qualsiasi veicolo in transito per tenere il freddo e l’umidità lontani dai piedi dell’uomo delle faccende, formava l’accampamento per la giornata. In questo suo posto, il signor Cruncher era noto a Fleet Street e al Temple quanto lo stesso Bar,—e aveva quasi lo stesso aspetto.
Accampato un quarto d’ora prima delle nove, in buon tempo per toccare il suo cappello a tre punte agli uomini più anziani mentre passavano da Tellson’s, Jerry prese posto in questa ventosa mattina di marzo, con il giovane Jerry al suo fianco, quando non era impegnato a fare incursioni attraverso il bar per infliggere danni fisici e mentali acuti ai ragazzi che passavano abbastanza piccoli da adempiere al suo amabile scopo. Padre e figlio, estremamente simili tra loro, osservavano in silenzio il traffico mattutino di Fleet Street con le loro due teste vicine come i due occhi di ciascuno, somigliando notevolmente a una coppia di scimmie. La somiglianza non era diminuita dal circostanza accidentale che il maturo Jerry masticava e sputava paglia, mentre gli occhi scintillanti del giovane Jerry erano inquieti e vigili verso di lui come per tutto il resto a Fleet Street.
La testa di uno dei soliti messaggeri interni dell’ufficio della ditta Tellson fu infilata nella porta e il messaggio fu comunicato:
“Si cerca portiere!”
“Viva, padre! Ecco un lavoro anticipato per iniziare!”
Avendo così augurato a Dio suo padre buona fortuna, il giovane Jerry si sedette sullo sgabello, prese possesso del suo interesse reversibile nella paglia che suo padre aveva masticato e meditò.
«Sempre arrugginito! Le dita di mio padre sono sempre arrugginite!» mormorò il giovane Jerry. «Da dove prende tutta quella ruggine di ferro? Qui non c’è nessuna ruggine di ferro!»
CHAPTER II. A Sight
“You know the Old Bailey well, no doubt?” said one of the oldest of clerks to Jerry the messenger.
“Ye-es, sir,” returned Jerry, in something of a dogged 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 the establishment in question, “than I, as a honest tradesman, wish to know the Bailey.”
“Very well. Find the door where the witnesses go in, and show the 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 that conference.
“I am going to tell you. The door-keeper will pass the note to Mr. Lorry, and do you make any gesture that will attract Mr. Lorry’s attention, and show him where you stand. Then what you have to do, is, to remain there until he wants you.”
“Is that all, sir?”
“That’s all. He wishes to have a messenger at hand. This is to tell him you are there.”
As the ancient clerk deliberately folded and superscribed the note, Mr. Cruncher, after surveying him in silence until he came to the 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 his surprised spectacles upon him. “It is the law.”
“It’s hard in the law to spile a man, I think. It’s hard enough to kill him, but it’s wery hard to spile him, sir.”
“Not at all,” retained the ancient clerk. “Speak well of the law. Take care of your chest and voice, my good friend, and leave the law to take care of itself. I give you that advice.”
“It’s the damp, sir, what settles on my chest and voice,” said Jerry. “I leave you to judge what a damp way of earning a living mine is.”
“Well, well,” said the old clerk; “we all have our various ways of gaining a livelihood. Some of us have damp ways, and some of us have dry ways. Here is the letter. Go along.”
Jerry took the letter, and, remarking to himself with less internal deference than he made an outward show of, “You are a lean old one, too,” made his bow, informed his son, in passing, of his destination, and went his way.
They hanged at Tyburn, in those days, so the street outside Newgate had not obtained one infamous notoriety that has since attached to it. But, the gaol was a vile place, in which most kinds of debauchery and villainy were practised, and where dire diseases were bred, that came into court with the prisoners, and sometimes rushed straight from the dock at my Lord Chief Justice himself, and pulled him off the bench. It had more than once happened, that the Judge in the black cap pronounced his own doom as certainly as the prisoner’s, and even died before him. For the rest, the Old Bailey was famous as a kind of deadly inn-yard, from which pale travellers set out continually, in carts and coaches, on a violent passage into the other world: traversing some two miles and a half of public street and road, and shaming few good citizens, if any. So powerful is use, and so desirable to be good use in the beginning. It was famous, too, for the pillory, a wise old institution, that inflicted a punishment of which no one could foresee the extent; also, for the whipping-post, another dear old institution, very humanising and softening to behold in action; also, for extensive transactions in blood-money, another fragment of ancestral wisdom, systematically leading to the most frightful mercenary crimes that could be committed under Heaven. Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choice illustration of the precept, that “Whatever is is right;” an aphorism that would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesome consequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong.
Making his way through the tainted crowd, dispersed up and down this hideous scene of action, with the skill of a man accustomed to make his way quietly, the messenger found out the door 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 paid to see the play in Bedlam—only the former entertainment was much the dearer. Therefore, all the Old Bailey doors were well guarded—except, indeed, the social doors by which the criminals got there, and those were always left wide open.
After some delay and demur, the door grudgingly turned on its hinges a very little way, and allowed Mr. Jerry Cruncher to squeeze himself into court.
“What’s on?” he asked, in a whisper, of the man he found himself 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 a hurdle to be half hanged, and then he’ll be taken down and sliced before his own face, and then his inside will be taken out and burnt 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 of proviso.
“Oh! they’ll find him guilty,” said the other. “Don’t you be afraid 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 his hand. Mr. Lorry sat at a table, among the gentlemen in wigs: not far from a wigged gentleman, the prisoner’s counsel, who had a great bundle of papers before him: and nearly opposite another wigged gentleman with his hands in his pockets, whose whole attention, when Mr. Cruncher looked at him then or afterwards, seemed to be concentrated on the ceiling of the court. After some gruff coughing and rubbing of his chin and signing with his hand, Jerry attracted the notice of Mr. Lorry, who had stood up to look for him, and who quietly nodded and sat down again.
CAPITOLO II. Una Scena
“Conoscete bene l’Old Bailey, vero, senza dubbio?” disse uno dei più vecchi impiegati a Jerry il messaggero.
“Sì, signore,” rispose Jerry con un tono ostinato. “Conosco il Bailey.”
“Esattamente. E conosci il signor Lorry.”
«Conosco molto meglio il signor Lorry di quanto conosca la Old Bailey», disse Jerry, non diversamente da un testimone riluttante nell’istituzione in questione, «molto meglio di quanto io, come onesto commerciante, desideri conoscere la Old Bailey».
«Molto bene. Trova la porta da cui entrano i testimoni e mostra al portiere questo biglietto per il signor Lorry. Allora ti farà entrare».
«Nel tribunale, signore?»
«Nella corte.»
Gli occhi del signor Cruncher sembrarono avvicinarsi un po’ l’uno all’altro e scambiarsi la domanda: «Che ne pensate di questo?»
«Devo aspettare nella corte, signore?» chiese, come risultato di quella conferenza.
«Ve lo dico io. Il portiere consegnerà il biglietto al signor Lorry e voi fate un gesto per attirare l’attenzione del signor Lorry e fargli capire dove vi trovate. Poi quello che dovete fare è rimanere lì finché non avrà bisogno di voi».
“Questo è tutto, signore?”
“Questo è tutto. Vuole avere un messaggero a disposizione. Questo per dirgli che sei lì.”
Mentre l’antico impiegato piegava e indirizzava la nota con cura, il signor Cruncher, dopo averlo osservato in silenzio fino a quando non arrivò alla fase della carta assorbente, fece notare:
“Suppongo che stamattina proveranno con le contraffazioni?”
“Tradimento!”
“Questo è un quarto,” disse Jerry. “Barbarico!”
«È la legge», osservò l’antico impiegato, rivolgendo verso di lui gli occhiali sorpresi. «È la legge».
«È difficile nel diritto rovinare un uomo, credo. È abbastanza difficile ucciderlo, ma è molto difficile rovinarlo, signore».
«Niente affatto», insistette l’antico impiegato. «Parlate bene della legge. Prendetevi cura del vostro torace e della vostra voce, mio buon amico, e lasciate che la legge si prenda cura di sé stessa. Vi do questo consiglio».
«È l’umidità, signore, che si deposita sul mio petto e sulla mia voce», disse Jerry. «Vi lascio giudicare quanto sia umido il modo in cui guadagno da vivere».
«Bene, bene», disse l’anziano impiegato; «tutti abbiamo i nostri diversi modi di guadagnarci da vivere. Alcuni di noi hanno metodi umidi, e alcuni di noi hanno metodi asciutti. Ecco la lettera. Andate pure».
Jerry prese la lettera e, commentando tra sé con meno deferenza interiore di quanta ne dimostrasse esteriormente: «Sei anche tu un vecchio magro», fece il suo inchino, informò al passaggio suo figlio della sua destinazione e se ne andò.
In quei tempi si impiccava a Tyburn, per cui la strada fuori Newgate non aveva ancora acquisito quella tristissima fama che le venne in seguito attribuita. Ma il carcere era un luogo infame dove si praticavano i più svariati efferati vizi e crimini, e dove si generavano terribili malattie che entravano in tribunale insieme ai prigionieri e talvolta piombavano direttamente dal banco degli imputati sul mio Lord Chief Justice, travolgendolo. Era già capitato più di una volta che il giudice con il cappuccio nero pronunciasse la propria condanna tanto quanto quella del prigioniero, e addirittura morisse prima di lui. Inoltre, l’Old Bailey era famoso come un sorta di letale cortile d’albergo da cui pallidi viaggiatori partivano continuamente in carri e carrozze per un violento passaggio nell’altro mondo: attraversando circa due miglia e mezza di strade pubbliche e stradine, senza vergognarsi davanti a pochi buoni cittadini, se mai. Tanto è potente l’abitudine, e tanto desiderabile che sia un’abitudine positiva fin dall’inizio. Era famoso anche per il patibolo, una saggia istituzione antica che infliggeva una punizione di cui nessuno poteva prevedere l’estensione; inoltre, per la gogna, un’altra cara vecchia istituzione, davvero umanizzante e addolcente da vedere all’opera; infine, per le ampie transazioni in sangue-denaro, un altro frammento di saggezza antica che portava sistematicamente ai più spaventosi crimini mercenari che si potessero commettere sotto il cielo. Nel complesso, l’Old Bailey in quella data era una scelta illustrazione del precetto secondo cui “Tutto ciò che è esiste ed è giusto”; un detto che sarebbe tanto definitivo quanto pigro se non implicasse la fastidiosa conseguenza per cui nulla di quanto sia mai esistito fosse sbagliato.
Fendendosi un varco tra la folla corrotta, dispersa su e giù per questo orribile scenario d’azione, con l’abilità di chi è abituato a farsi strada in silenzio, il messaggero trovò la porta che cercava e consegnò la lettera attraverso una botola. Perché, allora le persone pagavano per assistere allo spettacolo all’Old Bailey, proprio come pagavano per vedere lo spettacolo a Bedlam: solo che il primo intrattenimento era molto più costoso. Perciò tutte le porte dell’Old Bailey erano ben sorvegliate - tranne, appunto, le porte sociali attraverso cui i criminali vi giungevano, e quelle rimanevano sempre spalancate.
Dopo un po’ di ritardo e esitazione, la porta si aprì controvoglia solo un poco sui cardini, permettendo al signor Jerry Cruncher di infilarsi in tribunale.
«Che cosa succede?» chiese sottovoce all’uomo che gli stava accanto.
“Niente ancora.”
“Cosa succederà?”
“Il caso di tradimento.”
“Quello che si è sistemato, eh?”
«Ah!» rispose l’uomo con gusto; «sarà trascinato su una barella per essere impiccato a metà, poi verrà fatto scendere e sventrato davanti ai suoi occhi, quindi gli verranno estratti gli organi interni e bruciati mentre lui guarda, infine la testa gli sarà tagliata e il corpo sarà smembrato in quattro quarti. Questo è il verdetto».
«Se viene dichiarato colpevole, volete dire?» aggiunse Jerry a mo’ di precisazione.
“Oh! Lo troveranno colpevole,” disse l’altro. “Non temere questo.”
L’attenzione del signor Cruncher fu qui distolta dal custode della porta, che vide farsi strada verso il signor Lorry con la nota in mano. Il signor Lorry sedeva a un tavolo tra i gentiluomini in parrucca: non lontano da un gentiluomo in parrucca, l’avvocato del prigioniero, che aveva davanti una grande pila di documenti; e quasi di fronte a un altro gentiluomo in parrucca con le mani nelle tasche, la cui attenzione intera, quando il signor Cruncher lo guardava allora o dopo, sembrava concentrarsi sul soffitto della corte. Dopo aver tossito bruscamente e strofinato il mento e fatto un cenno con la mano, Jerry attirò l’attenzione del signor Lorry, che si era alzato per cercarlo e che annuì tranquillamente e si sedette di nuovo.
“What’s he got to do with the case?” asked the man he had spoken with.
“Blest if I know,” said Jerry.
“What have you got to do with it, then, if a person may inquire?”
“Blest if I know that either,” said Jerry.
The entrance of the Judge, and a consequent great stir and settling down in the court, stopped the dialogue. Presently, the dock became the central point of interest. Two gaolers, who had been standing there, went out, and the prisoner was brought in, and put to the bar.
Everybody present, except the one wigged gentleman who looked at the ceiling, stared at him. All the human breath in the place, rolled at him, like a sea, or a wind, or a fire. Eager faces strained round pillars and corners, to get a sight of him; spectators in back rows stood up, not to miss a hair of him; people on the floor of the court, laid their hands on the shoulders of the people before them, to help themselves, at anybody’s cost, to a view of him—stood a-tiptoe, got upon ledges, stood upon next to nothing, to see every inch of him. Conspicuous among these latter, like an animated bit of the spiked wall of Newgate, Jerry stood: aiming at the prisoner the beery breath of a whet he had taken as he came along, and discharging it to mingle with the waves of other beer, and gin, and tea, and coffee, and what not, that flowed at him, and already broke upon the great windows behind him in an impure mist and rain.
The object of all this staring and blaring, was a young man of about five-and-twenty, well-grown and well-looking, with a sunburnt cheek and a dark eye. His condition was that of a young gentleman. He was plainly dressed in black, or very dark grey, and his hair, which was long and dark, was gathered in a ribbon at the back of his neck; more to be out of his way than for ornament. As an emotion of the mind will express itself through any covering of the body, so the paleness which his situation engendered came through the brown upon his cheek, showing the soul to be stronger 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 and breathed at, was not a sort that elevated humanity. Had he stood in peril of a less horrible sentence—had there been a chance of any one of its savage details being spared—by just so much would he have lost in his fascination. The form that was to be doomed to be so shamefully mangled, was the sight; the immortal creature that was to be so butchered and torn asunder, yielded the sensation. Whatever gloss the various spectators put upon the interest, 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 Not Guilty to an indictment denouncing him (with infinite jingle and jangle) for that he was a false traitor to our serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, prince, our Lord the King, by reason of his having, on divers occasions, and by divers means and ways, assisted Lewis, the French King, in his wars against our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth; that was to say, by coming and going, between the dominions of our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, and those of the said French Lewis, and wickedly, falsely, traitorously, and otherwise evil-adverbiously, revealing to the said French Lewis what forces our said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, had in preparation to send to Canada and North America. This much, Jerry, with his head becoming more and more spiky as the law terms bristled it, made out with huge satisfaction, and so arrived circuitously at the understanding that the aforesaid, and over and over again aforesaid, Charles Darnay, stood there before him upon his trial; that the jury were swearing in; and that Mr. Attorney-General was making ready to speak.
The accused, who was (and who knew he was) being mentally hanged, beheaded, and quartered, by everybody there, neither flinched from the situation, nor assumed any theatrical air in it. He was quiet and attentive; watched the opening proceedings with a grave interest; and stood with his hands resting on the slab of wood before him, so composedly, that they had not displaced a leaf of the herbs with which it was strewn. The court was all bestrewn with herbs and sprinkled with vinegar, as a precaution against gaol air and gaol fever.
Over the prisoner’s head there was a mirror, to throw the light down upon him. Crowds of the wicked and the wretched had been reflected in it, and had passed from its surface and this earth’s together. Haunted in a most ghastly manner that abominable place would have been, if the glass could ever have rendered back its reflections, as the ocean is one day to give up its dead. Some passing thought of the infamy and disgrace for which it had been reserved, may have struck the prisoner’s mind. Be that as it may, a change in his position making him conscious of a bar of light across his face, he looked up; and when he saw the glass his face flushed, and his right hand pushed the herbs away.
It happened, that the action turned his face to that side of the court which was on his left. About on a level with his eyes, there sat, in that corner of the Judge’s bench, two persons upon whom his look immediately rested; so immediately, and so much to the changing of his aspect, that all the eyes that were turned upon him, turned to them.
The spectators saw in the two figures, a young lady of little more than twenty, and a gentleman who was evidently her father; a man of a very remarkable appearance in respect of the absolute whiteness of his hair, and a certain indescribable intensity of face: not of an active kind, but pondering and self-communing. When this expression was upon him, he looked as if he were old; but when it was stirred and broken up—as it was now, in a moment, on his speaking to his daughter—he became a handsome man, not past the prime of life.
His daughter had one of her hands drawn through his arm, as she sat by him, and the other pressed upon it. She had drawn close to him, in her dread of the scene, and in her pity for the prisoner. Her forehead had been strikingly expressive of an engrossing terror and compassion that saw nothing but the peril of the accused. This had been so very noticeable, so very powerfully and naturally shown, that starers who had had no pity for him were touched by her; and the whisper went about, “Who are they?”
Jerry, the messenger, who had made his own observations, in his own manner, and who had been sucking the rust off his fingers in his absorption, stretched his neck to hear who they were. The crowd about him had pressed and passed the inquiry on to the nearest attendant, and from him it had been more slowly pressed and passed back; at last it got to Jerry:
“Witnesses.”
“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 the man whose life was in his hand, as Mr. Attorney-General rose to spin the rope, grind the axe, and hammer the nails into the scaffold.
«Che c’entra lui con il caso?» chiese l’uomo a cui aveva parlato.
«Beato me se lo so», disse Jerry.
“Cosa c’entri tu allora, se uno può chiedere?”
«Beato me se lo so», disse Jerry.
L’ingresso del giudice e il conseguente grande trambusto e accomodamento nel tribunale interruppero la conversazione. Ben presto, l’imputato divenne il punto centrale dell’interesse. Due secondini che vi si trovavano uscirono e il prigioniero fu portato dentro e messo alla sbarra.
Tutti i presenti, tranne il signore in parrucca che guardava il soffitto, lo fissavano. Tutta l’aria umana del luogo si riversò su di lui come un mare o un vento o un fuoco. Volti ansiosi si affacciavano da pilastri e angoli per vederlo; gli spettatori nelle file posteriori si alzavano in piedi, per non perdere neanche un capello di lui; la gente sul pavimento del tribunale metteva le mani sulle spalle di chi li precedeva, pur di riuscire a vederlo, a costo di qualunque cosa — si alzavano in punta di piedi, salivano su cornici, si arrampicavano su qualsiasi cosa per vedere ogni suo centimetro. Tra questi ultimi spiccava Jerry, come un pezzo animato del muro spinoso di Newgate: puntando sul prigioniero il respiro alcolico di una sorsata che aveva preso lungo la strada e scaricandolo per mescolarlo alle onde di altre birre, gin, tè, caffè e chissà cos’altro che gli fluivano addosso e già si infrangevano sulle grandi finestre dietro di lui in una nebbia e pioggia impure.
Oggetto di tutto questo fissare e strepitare era un giovane di circa venticinque anni, ben sviluppato e attraente, con una guancia abbronzata e occhi scuri. La sua condizione sociale era quella di un giovane gentiluomo. Era vestito semplicemente di nero o grigio molto scuro, e i suoi capelli, che erano lunghi e scuri, erano raccolti con un nastrino nella parte posteriore del collo; più per toglierli di mezzo che come ornamento. Come un’emozione della mente si esprime attraverso qualsiasi involucro del corpo, così la pallore generata dalla sua situazione trapelava dal colorito scuro della guancia, dimostrando che lo spirito era più forte del sole. Altrimenti si mostrava completamente padrone di sé, fece un inchino al giudice, e rimase in silenzio.
Il tipo di interesse con cui quell’uomo veniva fissato e osservato, non era un tipo che elevasse l’umanità. Se fosse stato in pericolo di una sentenza meno orribile - se ci fosse stata la possibilità che uno dei suoi dettagli selvaggi venisse risparmiato - proprio per questo avrebbe perso parte del suo fascino. La forma destinata a essere così vergognosamente sfigurata, era lo spettacolo; la creatura immortale che doveva essere così macellata e straziata, suscitava il senso di orrore. Qualunque interpretazione gli spettatori dessero all’interesse, secondo le loro diverse abilità e capacità di auto-inganno, l’interesse era, alla base, mostruoso.
Silenzio nel tribunale! Ieri, Charles Darnay aveva dichiarato di non essere colpevole delle accuse che lo denunciavano (con infiniti rintocchi e scampanii) per aver tradito il nostro sereno, illustre, eccellente sovrano, nostro Signore Re, in quanto avrebbe aiutato Luigi, il francese Re, nelle sue guerre contro il nostro suddetto sereno, illustre, eccellente e così via; vale a dire, spostandosi tra i domini del nostro suddetto sereno, illustre, eccellente e così via e quelli del suddetto Luigi francese, rivelando malvagiamente, falsamente, traditoramente e in altri modi nefasti al suddetto Luigi francese quali forze il nostro suddetto sereno, illustre, eccellente e così via aveva preparato per inviarle in America del Nord e Canada. Tutto questo Jerry, con la testa sempre più spinosa man mano che i termini giuridici la pungevano, spiegò con enorme soddisfazione, arrivando alla fine a capire che il suddetto, e più volte suddetto, Charles Darnay, era lì davanti a lui in giudizio; che la giuria stava prestando giuramento e che il Procuratore Generale si preparava a parlare.
L’imputato, che era (e sapeva di essere) mentalmente impiccato, decapitato e squartato da tutti i presenti, non si tirò indietro dalla situazione né assunse un atteggiamento teatrale. Era tranquillo e attento; osservava le prime fasi del processo con un interesse serio; e stava in piedi con le mani appoggiate sul tavolo di legno davanti a sé, così composto che non avevano spostato una foglia delle erbe con cui era cosparso. La corte era tutta disseminata di erbe e spruzzata di aceto, come precauzione contro l’aria della prigione e la febbre carceraria.
Sopra la testa del prigioniero c’era uno specchio, per riflettere la luce su di lui. Moltitudini di malvagi e miserabili erano state riflesse in esso, ed erano passate dalla sua superficie e da questa terra insieme. Quel luogo abominevole sarebbe stato infestato in maniera spaventosa se lo specchio avesse mai potuto restituire i suoi riflessi, come un giorno l’oceano renderà i suoi morti. Un pensiero fugace dell’infamia e del disonore per cui era stato riservato potrebbe aver colpito la mente del prigioniero. Comunque sia, un cambiamento nella sua posizione che gli fece sentire una striscia di luce sul viso lo indusse a guardare in su; e quando vide lo specchio il suo volto si arrossò e la sua mano destra spinse via le erbe aromatiche.
E accadde che l’azione rivolse il suo volto verso quel lato del tribunale che si trovava alla sua sinistra. All’altezza dei suoi occhi, sedevano in quell’angolo della cattedra del giudice due persone su cui il suo sguardo si posò immediatamente; così all’improvviso e con un tale cambiamento nel suo aspetto che tutti gli occhi puntati su di lui si rivolsero verso di loro.
Gli spettatori videro nelle due figure una giovane signora di poco più di vent’anni e un gentiluomo che era evidentemente suo padre; un uomo dall’aspetto molto particolare per quanto riguarda l’assoluta bianchezza dei capelli e una certa intensità indescrivibile del volto: non di tipo attivo, ma riflessiva e introspettiva. Quando questa espressione era su di lui, sembrava vecchio; ma quando veniva stimolata e interrotta - come accadde ora, in un istante, nel momento in cui parlò a sua figlia - divenne un uomo attraente, non ancora passato alla maturità della vita.
La figlia aveva passato una mano sotto il braccio di lui mentre sedeva accanto a lui e con l’altra gli premeva sopra. Si era avvicinata a lui per la paura della scena e per la compassione verso il prigioniero. La sua fronte esprimeva in modo sorprendente un terrore travolgente e una compassione che vedevano solo il pericolo dell’accusato. Questo era stato così evidente, mostrato con tanta forza e naturalezza, che anche gli spettatori più insensibili si erano commossi; e si era diffuso un sussurro: “Chi sono?”
Jerry, il messaggero, che aveva fatto le proprie osservazioni a modo suo, e che si era succhiato la ruggine dalle dita mentre ascoltava con attenzione, allungò il collo per sentire chi fossero. La folla intorno a lui aveva spinto e trasmesso la domanda all’addetto più vicino, e da lui era stata ripetuta e rimandata indietro più lentamente; alla fine arrivò a Jerry:
“Testimoni.”
“Per quale parte?”
“Contro.”
“Da che parte?”
“Il prigioniero.”
Il giudice, i cui occhi si erano mossi nella direzione generale, li richiamò, si appoggiò allo schienale della sua sedia e guardò con fermezza l’uomo la cui vita era nelle sue mani, mentre il signor Procuratore Generale si alzava per intrecciare la corda, affilare l’ascia e conficcare i chiodi nell’impalcatura.
CHAPTER III. A Disappointment
Mr. Attorney-General had to inform the jury, that the prisoner before them, though young in years, was old in the treasonable practices which claimed the forfeit of his life. That this correspondence with the public enemy was not a correspondence of to-day, or of yesterday, or even of last year, or of the year before. That, it was certain the prisoner had, for longer than that, been in the habit of passing and repassing between France and England, on secret business of which he could give no honest account. That, if it were in the nature of traitorous ways to thrive (which happily it never was), the real wickedness and guilt of his business might have remained undiscovered. That Providence, however, had put it into the heart of a person who was beyond fear and beyond reproach, to ferret out the nature of the prisoner’s schemes, and, struck with horror, to disclose them to his Majesty’s Chief Secretary of State and most honourable Privy Council. That, this patriot would be produced before them. That, his position and attitude were, on the whole, sublime. That, he had been the prisoner’s friend, but, at once in an auspicious and an evil hour detecting his infamy, had resolved to immolate the traitor he could no longer cherish in his bosom, on the sacred altar of his country. That, if statues were decreed in Britain, as in ancient Greece and Rome, to public benefactors, this shining citizen would assuredly have had one. That, as they were not so decreed, he probably would not have one. That, Virtue, as had been observed by the poets (in many passages which he well knew the jury would have, word for word, at the tips of their tongues; whereat the jury’s countenances displayed a guilty consciousness that they knew nothing about the passages), was in a manner contagious; more especially the bright virtue known as patriotism, or love of country. That, the lofty example of this immaculate and unimpeachable witness for the Crown, to refer to whom however unworthily was an honour, had communicated itself to the prisoner’s servant, and had engendered in him a holy determination to examine his master’s table-drawers and pockets, and secrete his papers. That, he (Mr. Attorney-General) was prepared to hear some disparagement attempted of this admirable servant; but that, in a general way, he preferred him to his (Mr. Attorney-General’s) brothers and sisters, and honoured him more than his (Mr. Attorney-General’s) father and mother. That, he called with confidence on the jury to come and do likewise. That, the evidence of these two witnesses, coupled with the documents of their discovering that would be produced, would show the prisoner to have been furnished with lists of his Majesty’s forces, and of their disposition and preparation, both by sea and land, and would leave no doubt that he had habitually conveyed such information to a hostile power. That, these lists could not be proved to be in the prisoner’s handwriting; but that it was all the same; that, indeed, it was rather the better for the prosecution, as showing the prisoner to be artful in his precautions. That, the proof would go back five years, and would show the prisoner already engaged in these pernicious missions, within a few weeks before the date of the very first action fought between the British troops and the Americans. That, for these reasons, the jury, being a loyal jury (as he knew they were), and being a responsible jury (as they knew they were), must positively find the prisoner Guilty, and make an end of him, whether they liked it or not. That, they never could lay their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could tolerate the idea of their wives laying their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could endure the notion of their children laying their heads upon their pillows; in short, that there never more could be, for them or theirs, any laying of heads upon pillows at all, unless the prisoner’s head was taken off. That head Mr. Attorney-General concluded by demanding of them, in the name of everything he could think of with a round turn in it, and on the faith of his solemn asseveration that he already considered the prisoner as good as dead and gone.
When the Attorney-General ceased, a buzz arose in the court as if a cloud of great blue-flies were swarming about the prisoner, in anticipation of what he was soon to become. When toned down again, the unimpeachable patriot appeared in the witness-box.
Mr. Solicitor-General then, following his leader’s lead, examined the patriot: John Barsad, gentleman, by name. The story of his pure soul was exactly what Mr. Attorney-General had described it to be—perhaps, if it had a fault, a little too exactly. Having released his noble bosom of its burden, he would have modestly withdrawn himself, but that the wigged gentleman with the papers before him, sitting not far from Mr. Lorry, begged to ask him a few questions. The wigged gentleman sitting opposite, still looking at the ceiling of the court.
Had he ever been a spy himself? No, he scorned the base insinuation. What did he live upon? His property. Where was his property? He didn’t precisely remember where it was. What was it? No business of anybody’s. Had he inherited it? Yes, he had. From whom? Distant relation. Very distant? Rather. Ever been in prison? Certainly not. Never in a debtors’ prison? Didn’t see what that had to do with it. Never in a debtors’ prison?—Come, once again. Never? Yes. How many times? Two or three times. Not five or six? Perhaps. Of what profession? Gentleman. Ever been kicked? Might have been. Frequently? No. Ever kicked downstairs? Decidedly not; once received a kick on the top of a staircase, and fell downstairs of his own accord. Kicked on that occasion for cheating at dice? Something to that effect was said by the intoxicated liar who committed the assault, but it was not true. Swear it was not true? Positively. Ever live by cheating at play? Never. Ever live by play? Not more than other gentlemen do. Ever borrow money of the prisoner? Yes. Ever pay him? No. Was not this intimacy with the prisoner, in reality a very slight one, forced upon the prisoner in coaches, inns, and packets? No. Sure he saw the prisoner with these lists? Certain. Knew no more about the lists? No. Had not procured them himself, for instance? No. Expect to get anything by this evidence? No. Not in regular government pay and employment, to lay traps? Oh dear no. Or to do anything? Oh dear no. Swear that? Over and over again. No motives but motives of sheer patriotism? None whatever.
CAPITOLO III. Una delusione
Il signor Procuratore Generale dovette informare la giuria che il prigioniero davanti a loro, sebbene giovane di anni, era vecchio nelle pratiche traditrici che reclamavano la sua vita come pegno. Che questa corrispondenza con il nemico pubblico non fosse una corrispondenza di oggi, o di ieri, o anche dello scorso anno, o dell’anno prima ancora. Che era certo che il prigioniero avesse, per più tempo di così, l’abitudine di passare e ripassare tra la Francia e l’Inghilterra, su affari segreti dei quali non poteva dare alcuna onesta spiegazione. Che, se fosse nella natura delle vie traditrici prosperare (il che per fortuna non è mai stato), la vera malvagità e colpa del suo affare potrebbero essere rimaste scoperte. Che tuttavia la Provvidenza aveva messo nel cuore di una persona al di là della paura e al di là del rimprovero, di scovare la natura degli schemi del prigioniero, e, colpita dall’orrore, di rivelarli al Segretario di Stato Capo Sua Maestà e al suo onorevole Consiglio Privato. Che questo patriota sarebbe stato prodotto davanti a loro. Che la sua posizione e il suo atteggiamento erano, nel complesso, sublimi. Che era stato l’amico del prigioniero, ma, in un’ora allo stesso tempo propizia e funesta scoprendo la sua infamia, aveva risolto di immolare il traditore che non poteva più accogliere nel suo seno, sull’altare sacro della sua patria. Che, se le statue fossero state decretate in Inghilterra, come nell’antica Grecia e a Roma, ai benefattori pubblici, questo cittadino splendente ne avrebbe sicuramente avuta una. Che, poiché non erano così decretate, probabilmente non ne avrebbe avuta una. Che la Virtù, come era stato osservato dai poeti (in molti passaggi che lui bene sapeva che la giuria avrebbe avuto, parola per parola, sulla punta delle loro lingue; al che i volti della giuria mostrarono una colpevole consapevolezza di non sapere nulla dei passaggi), era in un certo modo contagiosa; più specialmente la luminosa virtù conosciuta come patriottismo, o amore per il paese. Che l’esempio elevato di questo testimone immacolato e irreprensibile per la Corona, a cui fare riferimento anche in modo indegno era un onore, si fosse comunicato al servo del prigioniero, e avesse generato in lui una santa determinazione di esaminare i cassetti della scrivania e le tasche del suo padrone, e nascondere i suoi documenti. Che lui (il signor Procuratore Generale) era pronto a sentire qualche tentativo di denigrazione di questo ammirevole servo; ma che, in generale, lo preferiva ai suoi fratelli e sorelle, e lo onorava più del suo padre e della sua madre. Che lui (il signor Procuratore Generale) chiamava con fiducia la giuria a venire e fare altrettanto. Che le prove di questi due testimoni, unite ai documenti della loro scoperta che sarebbero stati prodotti, avrebbero dimostrato che il prigioniero era stato fornito di elenchi delle forze di Sua Maestà, e della loro disposizione e preparazione, sia per mare che per terra, e non avrebbe lasciato alcun dubbio che abitualmente trasmettesse tali informazioni a una potenza ostile. Che questi elenchi non potevano essere provati essere di mano del prigioniero; ma che era tutto lo stesso; anzi, era piuttosto meglio per l’accusa, dimostrando il prigioniero abile nelle sue precauzioni. Che la prova risalirebbe a cinque anni fa, e mostrerebbe il prigioniero già impegnato in queste missioni perniciose, entro poche settimane dalla data della prima azione combattuta tra le truppe britanniche e gli americani. Che, per questi motivi, la giuria, essendo una giuria leale (come lui sapeva che fossero), e essendo una giuria responsabile (come loro sapevano di essere), doveva assolutamente dichiarare il prigioniero colpevole, e metter fine a lui, che gli piacesse o no. Che non avrebbero mai potuto posare la testa sui loro cuscini; che non avrebbero mai potuto tollerare l’idea delle loro mogli che posavano la testa sui loro cuscini; che non avrebbero mai potuto sopportare il pensiero dei loro bambini che posavano la testa sui loro cuscini; in breve, che per loro o i loro non ci sarebbe più stato alcun posare di teste su cuscini affatto, a meno che la testa del prigioniero fosse stata tagliata. Quella testa il signor Procuratore Generale concluse chiedendo loro, nel nome di tutto ciò che poteva pensare con una svolta decisa in esso, e sulla fede della sua solenne asserzione che lui già considerava il prigioniero quasi morto e sparito.
Quando il procuratore generale ebbe finito di parlare, si levò un brusio nella corte come se una nuvola di grosse mosche blu ronzasse intorno al prigioniero, anticipando ciò che sarebbe presto diventato. Quando il brusio si attenuò, l’impeccabile patriota apparve nel banco dei testimoni.
Il procuratore generale, quindi, seguendo l’esempio del suo capo, interrogò il patriota: John Barsad, gentiluomo di nome. La storia della sua pura anima era esattamente quella che il procuratore generale aveva descritto - forse, se c’era un difetto, era un po’ troppo precisa. Avendo liberato il suo nobile petto dal suo fardello, si sarebbe modestamente ritirato, ma l’uomo in parrucca con i documenti davanti a sé, seduto non lontano da Mr. Lorry, chiese di potergli fare alcune domande. L’uomo in parrucca seduto di fronte, ancora intento a guardare il soffitto della corte.
Egli era mai stato uno spia lui stesso? No, disprezzava l’insinuazione vile. Di che cosa viveva? Dei suoi beni. Dove erano i suoi beni? Non ricordava esattamente dove fossero. Di che si trattava? Non affari di nessuno. Li aveva ereditati? Sì, li aveva ereditati. Da chi? Un parente lontano. Molto lontano? Piuttosto. Era mai stato in prigione? Certo che no. Mai in una prigione per debitori? Non vedeva cosa c’entrasse. Mai in una prigione per debitori?—Su, ancora una volta. Mai? Sì. Quante volte? Due o tre. Non cinque o sei? Forse. Di che professione era? Un gentiluomo. Era mai stato calciato? Poteva essere. Spesso? No. Era mai stato scagliato giù dalle scale? Decisamente no; una volta aveva ricevuto un calcio in cima a una scala, ed era caduto giù per conto suo. Calciato in quell’occasione perché sorpreso a barare coi dadi? Qualcosa del genere fu detto dal bugiardo ubriaco che commise l’aggressione, ma non era vero. Giura che non è vero? Assolutamente. Era mai vissuto di truffe al gioco? Mai. Era mai vissuto giocando d’azzardo? Non più di quanto facciano altri gentiluomini. Aveva mai preso in prestito denaro dal prigioniero? Sì. L’aveva mai restituito? No. Questa intimità col prigioniero, che in realtà era molto scarsa, non gli fu forzata nel senso di viaggi in carrozza, alberghi e pacchetti postali? No. Era sicuro di aver visto il prigioniero con questi elenchi? Certo. Non sapeva altro sugli elenchi? No. Non li aveva procurati lui stesso, per esempio? No. Si aspettava di guadagnare qualcosa da questa testimonianza? No. Non era pagato e impiegato regolarmente dal governo per tendere trappole? Oh no davvero. O fare qualsiasi altra cosa? Oh no davvero. Giura che non è così? Ripetutamente. Non aveva altri moventi se non il puro patriottismo? Assolutamente nessun altro.
The virtuous servant, Roger Cly, swore his way through the case at a great rate. He had taken service with the prisoner, in good faith and simplicity, four years ago. He had asked the prisoner, aboard the Calais packet, if he wanted a handy fellow, and the prisoner had engaged him. He had not asked the prisoner to take the handy fellow as an act of charity—never thought of such a thing. He began to have suspicions of the prisoner, and to keep an eye upon him, soon afterwards. In arranging his clothes, while travelling, he had seen similar lists to these in the prisoner’s pockets, over and over again. He had taken these lists from the drawer of the prisoner’s desk. He had not put them there first. He had seen the prisoner show these identical lists to French gentlemen at Calais, and similar lists to French gentlemen, both at Calais and Boulogne. He loved his country, and couldn’t bear it, and had given information. He had never been suspected of stealing a silver tea-pot; he had been maligned respecting a mustard-pot, but it turned out to be only a plated one. He had known the last witness seven or eight years; that was merely a coincidence. He didn’t call it a particularly curious coincidence; most coincidences were curious. Neither did he call it a curious coincidence that true patriotism was his only motive too. He was a true Briton, and hoped there were many like him.
The blue-flies buzzed again, and Mr. Attorney-General called Mr. Jarvis Lorry.
“Mr. Jarvis Lorry, are you a clerk in Tellson’s bank?”
“I am.”
“On a certain Friday night in November one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, did business occasion you to travel between London and Dover by the mail?”
“It did.”
“Were there any other passengers in the mail?”
“Two.”
“Did they alight on the road in the course of the night?”
“They did.”
“Mr. Lorry, look upon the prisoner. Was he one of those two passengers?”
“I cannot undertake to say that he was.”
“Does he resemble either of these two passengers?”
“Both were so wrapped up, and the night was so dark, and we were all so reserved, that I cannot undertake to say even that.”
“Mr. Lorry, look again upon the prisoner. Supposing him wrapped up as those two passengers were, is there anything in his bulk and stature to render it unlikely that he was one of them?”
“No.”
“You will not swear, Mr. Lorry, that he was not one of them?”
“No.”
“So at least you say he may have been one of them?”
“Yes. Except that I remember them both to have been—like myself—timorous of highwaymen, and the prisoner has not a timorous air.”
“Did you ever see a counterfeit of timidity, Mr. Lorry?”
“I certainly have seen that.”
“Mr. Lorry, look once more upon the prisoner. Have you seen him, to your certain knowledge, before?”
“I have.”
“When?”
“I was returning from France a few days afterwards, and, at Calais, the prisoner came on board the packet-ship in which I returned, and made the voyage with me.”
“At what hour did he come on board?”
“At a little after midnight.”
“In the dead of the night. Was he the only passenger who came on board at that untimely hour?”
“He happened to be the only one.”
“Never mind about ‘happening,’ Mr. Lorry. He was the only passenger who came on board in the dead of the night?”
“He was.”
“Were you travelling alone, Mr. Lorry, or with any companion?”
“With two companions. A gentleman and lady. They are here.”
“They are here. Had you any conversation with the prisoner?”
“Hardly any. The weather was stormy, and the passage long and rough, and I lay on a sofa, almost from shore to shore.”
“Miss Manette!”
The young lady, to whom all eyes had been turned before, and were now turned again, stood up where she had sat. Her father rose with her, and kept her hand drawn through his arm.
“Miss Manette, look upon the prisoner.”
To be confronted with such pity, and such earnest youth and beauty, was far more trying to the accused than to be confronted with all the crowd. Standing, as it were, apart with her on the edge of his grave, not all the staring curiosity that looked on, could, for the moment, nerve him to remain quite still. His hurried right hand parcelled out the herbs before him into imaginary beds of flowers in a garden; and his efforts to control and steady his breathing shook the lips from which the colour rushed to his heart. The buzz of the great flies was loud again.
“Miss Manette, have you seen the prisoner before?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where?”
“On board of the packet-ship just now referred to, sir, and on the same occasion.”
“You are the young lady just now referred to?”
“O! most unhappily, I am!”
The plaintive tone of her compassion merged into the less musical voice of the Judge, as he said something fiercely: “Answer the questions put to you, and make no remark upon them.”
“Miss Manette, had you any conversation with the prisoner on that passage across the Channel?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Recall it.”
In the midst of a profound stillness, she faintly began: “When the gentleman came on board—”
“Do you mean the prisoner?” inquired the Judge, knitting his brows.
“Yes, my Lord.”
“Then say the prisoner.”
“When the prisoner came on board, he noticed that my father,” turning her eyes lovingly to him as he stood beside her, “was much fatigued and in a very weak state of health. My father was so reduced that I was afraid to take him out of the air, and I had made a bed for him on the deck near the cabin steps, and I sat on the deck at his side to take care of him. There were no other passengers that night, but we four. The prisoner was so good as to beg permission to advise me how I could shelter my father from the wind and weather, better than I had done. I had not known how to do it well, not understanding how the wind would set when we were out of the harbour. He did it for me. He expressed great gentleness and kindness for my father’s state, and I am sure he felt it. That was the manner of our beginning to speak together.”
Il virtuoso servitore, Roger Cly, giurò di continuo durante il processo, a un ritmo sostenuto. Si era messo al servizio del prigioniero in buona fede e semplicità quattro anni prima. Aveva chiesto al prigioniero, a bordo della nave per Calais, se voleva un uomo capace e il prigioniero lo aveva assunto. Non aveva chiesto al prigioniero di prendere l’uomo capace come atto di carità: non gli era mai venuto in mente. Aveva cominciato a sospettare del prigioniero e a tenerlo d’occhio poco dopo. Mentre sistemava i suoi vestiti, durante il viaggio, aveva visto più volte elenchi simili a questi nelle tasche del prigioniero. Aveva preso quegli elenchi dal cassetto della scrivania del prigioniero. Non li aveva messi lì prima. Aveva visto il prigioniero mostrare questi stessi elenchi ad alcuni signori francesi a Calais, e elenchi simili ad altri signori francesi sia a Calais che a Boulogne. Amava la sua patria e non poteva sopportarlo, così aveva dato l’allarme. Non era mai stato sospettato di aver rubato una teiera d’argento; era stato calunniato riguardo ad un vasetto per senape, ma si è scoperto che era solo argentato. Conosceva l’ultimo testimone da sette o otto anni; era solo una coincidenza. Non la chiamava una coincidenza particolarmente curiosa: la maggior parte delle coincidenze erano curiose. E nemmeno riteneva una coincidenza curiosa che il vero patriottismo fosse il suo unico motivo. Era un vero britannico e sperava ce ne fossero molti come lui.
Le mosche blu ronzarono di nuovo e il signor Procuratore generale chiamò il signor Jarvis Lorry.
«Signor Jarvis Lorry, è un impiegato della banca Tellson?»
“I am.”
«In una certa serata di venerdì del novembre del mille settecento settantacinque, fu per affari che vi recaste tra Londra e Dover con la posta?»
“Lo ha fatto.”
“C’erano altri passeggeri nella diligenza?”
“Due.”
«Sono scesi sulla strada nel corso della notte?»
“L’hanno fatto.”
“Signor Lorry, guardi il prigioniero. Era uno di quei due passeggeri?”
“Non posso dire che lo fosse.”
“Assomiglia a uno di questi due passeggeri?”
«Entrambi erano così avvolti e la notte era così buia, e tutti noi eravamo così riservati che non posso nemmeno affermare questo.»
«Signor Lorry, guardi di nuovo il prigioniero. Se lo immagina avvolto come quei due passeggeri: c’è qualcosa nel suo volume e nella sua statura che renderebbe improbabile che fosse uno di loro?»
“No.”
“Non giurerà, signor Lorry, che non era uno di loro?”
“No.”
“Quindi almeno dici che potrebbe essere stato uno di loro?”
«Sì. Salvo che ricordo che entrambi erano — come me stesso — timorosi dei briganti e il prigioniero non ha un’aria timorosa».
“Hai mai visto un falso di timidezza, signor Lorry?”
L’ho visto di sicuro.
«Signor Lorry, guardi ancora una volta il prigioniero. Lo ha visto, con certezza assoluta, prima d’ora?»
“L’ho fatto.”
“Quando?”
«Stavo tornando dalla Francia qualche giorno dopo e, a Calais, il prigioniero salì a bordo del vaporetto su cui facevo ritorno e fece il viaggio con me.»
“A che ora è salito a bordo?”
“Poco dopo la mezzanotte.”
“Nel cuore della notte. Era l’unico passeggero che era salito a bordo in quell’ora così tarda?”
“Era l’unico che ci fosse.”
«Non importa se “è successo”, signor Lorry. Era l’unico passeggero che è salito a bordo nel cuore della notte?»
“Era.”
«Viaggiava da solo, signor Lorry, o con qualche compagno?»
“Con due compagni: un gentiluomo e una signora. Sono qui.”
“Sono qui. Hai parlato con il prigioniero?”
«Quasi nessuno. Il tempo era tempestoso e il viaggio lungo e agitato, e io giacevo su un divano, quasi da una sponda all’altra».
“Signorina Manette!”
La giovane signora, verso cui tutti gli occhi si erano rivolti prima e ora di nuovo, si alzò dal posto in cui era seduta. Suo padre si alzò con lei e le tenne la mano passata sotto il suo braccio.
“Signorina Manette, guardi il prigioniero.”
Essere confrontato con tanta pietà e una giovinezza così seria e bellezza era molto più difficile per l’accusato che affrontare tutta la folla. In piedi, come se fosse a parte con lei sul bordo della sua tomba, non tutta la curiosità fisso che li osservava poteva, in quel momento, dargli il coraggio di rimanere del tutto immobile. La sua mano destra affrettata divideva le erbe davanti a lui in letti immaginari di fiori in un giardino; e i suoi sforzi per controllare e stabilizzare il respiro scuotevano le labbra da cui il colore si precipitava verso il cuore. Il ronzio delle grandi mosche era di nuovo forte.
“Signorina Manette, ha già visto la prigioniera?”
“Sì, signore.”
“Dove?”
«A bordo del bastimento di linea appena menzionato, signore, e in quell’occasione.»
“Lei è la giovane signora appena menzionata?”
“Ahimè, purtroppo lo sono!”
Il tono lamentoso della sua compassione si fuse nella voce meno melodiosa del giudice mentre diceva qualcosa con ferocia: «Risponda alle domande che le vengono poste e non faccia commenti».
«Signorina Manette, avete parlato con l’imputato durante quel viaggio attraverso la Manica?»
“Sì, signore.”
“Ricordalo.”
Nel mezzo di un profondo silenzio, lei cominciò debolmente: «Quando il signore salì a bordo, »
«Intendete il prigioniero?» chiese il giudice aggrottando le sopracciglia.
“Sì, mio Signore.”
“Dite allora il prigioniero.”
«Quando il prigioniero salì a bordo, notò che mio padre», volgendo gli occhi con amore verso di lui mentre stava in piedi accanto a lei, «era molto affaticato e in uno stato di salute precario. Mio padre era così indebolito che avevo paura di portarlo fuori dall’aria, e avevo preparato un letto per lui sul ponte vicino ai gradini della cabina, e sedevo sul ponte al suo fianco per prendermi cura di lui. Non c’erano altri passeggeri quella notte, ma eravamo in quattro. Il prigioniero fu così gentile da chiedere il permesso di consigliarmi su come avrei potuto proteggere mio padre dal vento e dalle intemperie, meglio di quanto non avessi fatto. Non avevo saputo farlo bene, non capendo come si sarebbe comportato il vento una volta usciti dal porto. Lui lo fece per me. Esprimeva grande gentilezza e bontà per le condizioni di mio padre, e sono sicura che lo sentisse davvero. Fu così che iniziammo a parlare insieme».
“Let me interrupt you for a moment. Had he come on board alone?”
“No.”
“How many were with him?”
“Two French gentlemen.”
“Had they conferred together?”
“They had conferred together until the last moment, when it was necessary for the French gentlemen to be landed in their boat.”
“Had any papers been handed about among them, similar to these lists?”
“Some papers had been handed about among them, but I don’t know what papers.”
“Like these in shape and size?”
“Possibly, but indeed I don’t know, although they stood whispering very near to me: because they stood at the top of the cabin steps to have the light of the lamp that was hanging there; it was a dull lamp, and they spoke very low, and I did not hear what they said, and saw only that they looked at papers.”
“Now, to the prisoner’s conversation, Miss Manette.”
“The prisoner was as open in his confidence with me—which arose out of my helpless situation—as he was kind, and good, and useful to my father. I hope,” bursting into tears, “I may not repay him by doing him harm to-day.”
Buzzing from the blue-flies.
“Miss Manette, if the prisoner does not perfectly understand that you give the evidence which it is your duty to give—which you must give—and which you cannot escape from giving—with great unwillingness, he is the only person present in that condition. Please to go on.”
“He told me that he was travelling on business of a delicate and difficult nature, which might get people into trouble, and that he was therefore travelling under an assumed name. He said that this business had, within a few days, taken him to France, and might, at intervals, take him backwards and forwards between France and England for a long time to come.”
“Did he say anything about America, Miss Manette? Be particular.”
“He tried to explain to me how that quarrel had arisen, and he said that, so far as he could judge, it was a wrong and foolish one on England’s part. He added, in a jesting way, that perhaps George Washington might gain almost as great a name in history as George the Third. But there was no harm in his way of saying this: it was said laughingly, and to beguile the time.”
Any strongly marked expression of face on the part of a chief actor in a scene of great interest to whom many eyes are directed, will be unconsciously imitated by the spectators. Her forehead was painfully anxious and intent as she gave this evidence, and, in the pauses when she stopped for the Judge to write it down, watched its effect upon the counsel for and against. Among the lookers-on there was the same expression in all quarters of the court; insomuch, that a great majority of the foreheads there, might have been mirrors reflecting the witness, when the Judge looked up from his notes to glare at that tremendous heresy about George Washington.
Mr. Attorney-General now signified to my Lord, that he deemed it necessary, as a matter of precaution and form, to call the young lady’s father, Doctor Manette. Who was called accordingly.
“Doctor Manette, look upon the prisoner. Have you ever seen him before?”
“Once. When he called at my lodgings in London. Some three years, or three years and a half ago.”
“Can you identify him as your fellow-passenger on board the packet, or speak to his conversation with your daughter?”
“Sir, I can do neither.”
“Is there any particular and special reason for your being unable to do either?”
He answered, in a low voice, “There is.”
“Has it been your misfortune to undergo a long imprisonment, without trial, or even accusation, in your native country, Doctor Manette?”
He answered, in a tone that went to every heart, “A long imprisonment.”
“Were you newly released on the occasion in question?”
“They tell me so.”
“Have you no remembrance of the occasion?”
“None. My mind is a blank, from some time—I cannot even say what time—when I employed myself, in my captivity, in making shoes, to the time when I found myself living in London with my dear daughter here. She had become familiar to me, when a gracious God restored my faculties; but, I am quite unable even to say how she had become familiar. I have no remembrance of the process.”
Mr. Attorney-General sat down, and the father and daughter sat down together.
A singular circumstance then arose in the case. The object in hand being to show that the prisoner went down, with some fellow-plotter untracked, in the Dover mail on that Friday night in November five years ago, and got out of the mail in the night, as a blind, at a place where he did not remain, but from which he travelled back some dozen miles or more, to a garrison and dockyard, and there collected information; a witness was called to identify him as having been at the precise time required, in the coffee-room of an hotel in that garrison-and-dockyard town, waiting for another person. The prisoner’s counsel was cross-examining this witness with no result, except that he had never seen the prisoner on any other occasion, when the wigged gentleman who had all this time been looking at the ceiling of the court, wrote a word or two on a little piece of paper, screwed it up, and tossed it to him. Opening this piece of paper in the next pause, the counsel looked with great attention and curiosity at the prisoner.
“You say again you are quite sure that it was the prisoner?”
The witness was quite sure.
“Did you ever see anybody very like the prisoner?”
Not so like (the witness said) as that he could be mistaken.
“Look well upon that gentleman, my learned friend there,” pointing to him who had tossed the paper over, “and then look well upon the prisoner. How say you? Are they very like each other?”
Allowing for my learned friend’s appearance being careless and slovenly if not debauched, they were sufficiently like each other to surprise, not only the witness, but everybody present, when they were thus brought into comparison. My Lord being prayed to bid my learned friend lay aside his wig, and giving no very gracious consent, the likeness became much more remarkable. My Lord inquired of Mr. Stryver (the prisoner’s counsel), whether they were next to try Mr. Carton (name of my learned friend) for treason? But, Mr. Stryver replied to my Lord, no; but he would ask the witness to tell him whether what happened once, might happen twice; whether he would have been so confident if he had seen this illustration of his rashness sooner, whether he would be so confident, having seen it; and more. The upshot of which, was, to smash this witness like a crockery vessel, and shiver his part of the case to useless lumber.
«Permettetemi di interrompervi per un momento. Era salito a bordo da solo?»
“No.”
“Quanti erano con lui?”
“Due signori francesi.”
“Si erano consultati?”
«Avevano consultato insieme fino all’ultimo momento, quando fu necessario che i signori francesi salissero sulla loro barca.»
“Erano stati distribuiti tra loro dei documenti simili a questi elenchi?”
“Erano stati distribuiti alcuni documenti tra loro, ma non so quali.”
“Di forma e dimensione simili?”
«Forse, ma in verità non lo so, anche se stavano sussurrando molto vicino a me: perché si trovavano in cima ai gradini della cabina per avere la luce della lampada che era appesa lì; era una lampada fioca e parlavano molto piano, quindi non ho sentito cosa dicevano e ho visto solo che guardavano dei fogli.»
“Ora, alla conversazione del prigioniero, signorina Manette.”
“Il prigioniero fu altrettanto aperto nel confidarsi con me — cosa che derivava dalla mia situazione di impotenza — quanto era gentile, buono e utile per mio padre. Spero,” scoppiando in singhiozzi, “di non ripagare la sua bontà facendogli del male oggi.”
Ronzio delle mosche blu.
«Signorina Manette, se il prigioniero non comprende perfettamente che voi fornite la testimonianza che è vostro dovere dare — che dovete dare — e dalla quale non potete sottrarvi — con grande riluttanza, egli è l’unica persona presente in tale condizione. Per favore, continuate».
“Mi disse che viaggiava per affari di natura delicata e difficile natura, che potevano mettere in difficoltà le persone, e che quindi viaggiava sotto falso nome. Disse che questi affari lo avevano portato in Francia pochi giorni prima, e che forse, a intervalli, l’avrebbero fatto andare avanti e indietro tra la Francia e l’Inghilterra per un lungo periodo di tempo.”
«Ha detto qualcosa riguardo all’America, Miss Manette? Sii precisa».
“Cercò di spiegarmi come fosse nata quella disputa e disse che, per quanto potesse giudicare, era una cosa sbagliata e stupida da parte dell’Inghilterra. Aggiunse, in tono scherzoso, che forse George Washington avrebbe guadagnato un nome quasi altrettanto grande nella storia di Giorgio III. Ma non c’era alcuna malizia nel suo modo di dire questo: lo disse ridendo e per ingannare il tempo.”
Qualsiasi espressione facciale fortemente marcata da parte di un attore principale in una scena di grande interesse su cui sono puntati molti occhi, verrà inconsciamente imitata dagli spettatori. La sua fronte era dolorosamente ansiosa e concentrata mentre dava questa testimonianza, e, nelle pause quando si fermava per permettere al giudice di annotarla, osservava l’effetto che aveva sull’avvocato della difesa e su quello dell’accusa. Tra gli spettatori c’era la stessa espressione in tutte le parti del tribunale; a tal punto che una grande maggioranza delle fronti presenti avrebbe potuto essere costituita da specchi riflettenti il testimone, quando il giudice alzò lo sguardo dai suoi appunti per fulminare con un’occhiata quell’incredibile eresia su George Washington.
Il Signor Procuratore Generale fece ora presente al mio Signore che riteneva necessario, per precauzione e formalità, chiamare il padre della giovane signora, il dottor Manette. Che fu quindi chiamato.
«Dottor Manette, guardi l’imputato. L’ha mai visto prima?»
«Una volta. Quando venne a trovarmi nella mia abitazione a Londra. Circa tre anni fa, o forse tre anni e mezzo».
«Potete identificarlo come il vostro compagno di viaggio sulla nave postale o testimoniare la sua conversazione con vostra figlia?»
“Signore, non posso fare né l’uno né l’altro.”
“Esiste un motivo particolare e specifico per cui non riesce a fare né l’uno né l’altro?”
Rispose con voce bassa: “C’è.”
«È stato il suo infortunio subire un lungo carcere, senza processo o anche accusa, nel suo paese natale, dottor Manette?»
Rispose, con un tono che andò dritto al cuore di tutti: “Una lunga reclusione”.
“Sei stato rilasciato di recente in occasione dell’evento in questione?”
“Me lo dicono.”
“Non ricordi l’occasione?”
«Nessuno. La mia mente è vuota da un certo periodo — non riesco nemmeno a dire quale periodo — in cui mi dedicavo, durante la mia prigionia, alla fabbricazione di scarpe, fino al momento in cui mi sono ritrovato a vivere a Londra con mia cara figlia qui. Lei era diventata familiare per me quando un Dio misericordioso mi ha restituito le mie facoltà; ma non riesco assolutamente nemmeno a dire come sia diventata familiare. Non ho alcun ricordo del processo».
Il signor Procuratore Generale si sedette e il padre e la figlia si sedettero insieme.
A questo punto emerse una circostanza singolare nel caso. L’obiettivo era dimostrare che il prigioniero scese con un complice non ancora identificato sul postale di Dover in quella notte di venerdì del novembre cinque anni fa, e uscì dal postale nella notte, come una copertura, in un luogo dove non rimase ma da cui viaggiò indietro per una dozzina di miglia o più fino a una guarnigione e cantiere navale, e lì raccolse informazioni; fu chiamato un testimone per identificarlo come presente all’ora precisa richiesta nella sala da caffè di un albergo in quella città della guarnigione-e-cantiere-navale, in attesa di un’altra persona. L’avvocato del prigioniero stava interrogando questo testimone senza risultati, tranne che non aveva mai visto il prigioniero in nessun’altra occasione, quando l’uomo con la parrucca che tutto quel tempo era stato a guardare il soffitto della corte, scrisse una parola o due su un pezzetto di carta, lo arrotolò e glielo lanciò. Aprì questo pezzo di carta nella pausa successiva, l’avvocato guardò con grande attenzione e curiosità il prigioniero.
“Ripete di nuovo che è assolutamente sicuro che fosse il prigioniero?”
Il testimone era assolutamente sicuro.
“Hai mai visto qualcuno molto simile al prigioniero?”
Non così simile (disse il testimone) da poter essere scambiato per tale.
«Osservate bene quel signore, il mio stimato collega laggiù», indicando colui che aveva lanciato il foglio oltre, «e poi osservate bene l’imputato. Cosa ne pensate? Si assomigliano molto?»
Tenuto conto che l’aspetto del mio colto amico era trascurato e disordinato, se non dissoluto, erano sufficientemente simili tra loro da sorprendere, non solo il testimone, ma tutti i presenti, quando furono così messi a confronto. Sua Signoria fu pregata di ordinare al mio colto amico di togliersi la parrucca e, con un consenso non molto grato, la somiglianza divenne ancora più notevole. Sua Signoria chiese a Mr. Stryver (l’avvocato del prigioniero) se sarebbero stati prossimamente processati per tradimento Mr. Carton (nome del mio colto amico). Ma, Mr. Stryver rispose a Sua Signoria che no; ma avrebbe chiesto al testimone di dirgli se ciò che era accaduto una volta poteva accadere di nuovo; se sarebbe stato così sicuro se avesse visto prima questa dimostrazione della sua temerarietà, se lo sarebbe stato, avendola vista; e altro ancora. Il risultato fu quello di distruggere questo testimone come un vaso di creta, e ridurre la sua parte del caso in rottami inutili.
Mr. Cruncher had by this time taken quite a lunch of rust off his fingers in his following of the evidence. He had now to attend while Mr. Stryver fitted the prisoner’s case on the jury, like a compact suit of clothes; showing them how the patriot, Barsad, was a hired spy and traitor, an unblushing trafficker in blood, and one of the greatest scoundrels upon earth since accursed Judas—which he certainly did look rather like. How the virtuous servant, Cly, was his friend and partner, and was worthy to be; how the watchful eyes of those forgers and false swearers had rested on the prisoner as a victim, because some family affairs in France, he being of French extraction, did require his making those passages across the Channel—though what those affairs were, a consideration for others who were near and dear to him, forbade him, even for his life, to disclose. How the evidence that had been warped and wrested from the young lady, whose anguish in giving it they had witnessed, came to nothing, involving the mere little innocent gallantries and politenesses likely to pass between any young gentleman and young lady so thrown together;—with the exception of that reference to George Washington, which was altogether too extravagant and impossible to be regarded in any other light than as a monstrous joke. How it would be a weakness in the government to break down in this attempt to practise for popularity on the lowest national antipathies and fears, and therefore Mr. Attorney-General had made the most of it; how, nevertheless, it rested upon nothing, save that vile and infamous character of evidence too often disfiguring such cases, and of which the State Trials of this country were full. But, there my Lord interposed (with as grave a face as if it had not been true), saying that he could not sit upon that Bench and suffer those allusions.
Mr. Stryver then called his few witnesses, and Mr. Cruncher had next to attend while Mr. Attorney-General turned the whole suit of clothes Mr. Stryver had fitted on the jury, inside out; showing how Barsad and Cly were even a hundred times better than he had thought them, and the prisoner a hundred times worse. Lastly, came my Lord himself, turning the suit of clothes, now inside out, now outside in, but on the whole decidedly trimming and shaping them into grave-clothes for the prisoner.
And now, the jury turned to consider, and the great flies swarmed again.
Mr. Carton, who had so long sat looking at the ceiling of the court, changed neither his place nor his attitude, even in this excitement. While his learned friend, Mr. Stryver, massing his papers before him, whispered with those who sat near, and from time to time glanced anxiously at the jury; while all the spectators moved more or less, and grouped themselves anew; while even my Lord himself arose from his seat, and slowly paced up and down his platform, not unattended by a suspicion in the minds of the audience that his state was feverish; this one man sat leaning back, with his torn gown half off him, his untidy wig put on just as it had happened to light on his head after its removal, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes on the ceiling as they had been all day. Something especially reckless in his demeanour, not only gave him a disreputable look, but so diminished the strong resemblance he undoubtedly bore to the prisoner (which his momentary earnestness, when they were compared together, had strengthened), that many of the lookers-on, taking note of him now, said to one another they would hardly have thought the two were so alike. Mr. Cruncher made the observation to his next neighbour, and added, “I’d hold half a guinea that he don’t get no law-work to do. Don’t look like the sort of one to get any, do he?”
Yet, this Mr. Carton took in more of the details of the scene than he appeared to take in; for now, when Miss Manette’s head dropped upon her father’s breast, he was the first to see it, and to say audibly: “Officer! look to that young lady. Help the gentleman to take her out. Don’t you see she will fall!”
There was much commiseration for her as she was removed, and much sympathy with her father. It had evidently been a great distress to him, to have the days of his imprisonment recalled. He had shown strong internal agitation when he was questioned, and that pondering or brooding look which made him old, had been upon him, like a heavy cloud, ever since. As he passed out, the jury, who had turned back and paused a moment, spoke, through their foreman.
They were not agreed, and wished to retire. My Lord (perhaps with George Washington on his mind) showed some surprise that they were not agreed, but signified his pleasure that they should retire under watch and ward, and retired himself. The trial had lasted all day, and the lamps in the court were now being lighted. It began to be rumoured that the jury would be out a long while. The spectators dropped off to get refreshment, and the prisoner withdrew to the back of the dock, and sat down.
Mr. Lorry, who had gone out when the young lady and her father went out, now reappeared, and beckoned to Jerry: who, in the slackened interest, could easily get near him.
“Jerry, if you wish to take something to eat, you can. But, keep in the way. You will be sure to hear when the jury come in. Don’t be a moment behind them, for I want you to take the verdict back to the bank. You are the quickest messenger I know, and will get to Temple Bar long before I can.”
Jerry had just enough forehead to knuckle, and he knuckled it in acknowledgment of this communication and a shilling. Mr. Carton came up at the moment, and touched Mr. Lorry on the arm.
“How is the young lady?”
“She is greatly distressed; but her father is comforting her, and she feels the better for being out of court.”
“I’ll tell the prisoner so. It won’t do for a respectable bank gentleman like you, to be seen speaking to him publicly, you know.”
Mr. Lorry reddened as if he were conscious of having debated the point in his mind, and Mr. Carton made his way to the outside of the bar. The way out of court lay in that direction, and Jerry followed him, all eyes, ears, and spikes.
“Mr. Darnay!”
The prisoner came forward directly.
“You will naturally be anxious to hear of the witness, Miss Manette. She will do very well. You have seen the worst of her agitation.”
“I am deeply sorry to have been the cause of it. Could you tell her so for me, with my fervent acknowledgments?”
“Yes, I could. I will, if you ask it.”
Mr. Carton’s manner was so careless as to be almost insolent. He stood, half turned from the prisoner, lounging with his elbow against the bar.
“I do ask it. Accept my cordial thanks.”
“What,” said Carton, still only half turned towards him, “do you expect, Mr. Darnay?”
“The worst.”
“It’s the wisest thing to expect, and the likeliest. But I think their withdrawing is in your favour.”
Loitering on the way out of court not being allowed, Jerry heard no more: but left them—so like each other in feature, so unlike each other in manner—standing side by side, both reflected in the glass above them.
An hour and a half limped heavily away in the thief-and-rascal crowded passages below, even though assisted off with mutton pies and ale. The hoarse messenger, uncomfortably seated on a form after taking that refection, had dropped into a doze, when a loud murmur and a rapid tide of people setting up the stairs that led to the court, carried him along with them.
“Jerry! Jerry!” Mr. Lorry was already calling at the door when he got there.
“Here, sir! It’s a fight to get back again. Here I am, sir!”
Mr. Lorry handed him a paper through the throng. “Quick! Have you got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Hastily written on the paper was the word “ACQUITTED.”
“If you had sent the message, ‘Recalled to Life,’ again,” muttered Jerry, as he turned, “I should have known what you meant, this time.”
He had no opportunity of saying, or so much as thinking, anything else, until he was clear of the Old Bailey; for, the crowd came pouring out with a vehemence that nearly took him off his legs, and a loud buzz swept into the street as if the baffled blue-flies were dispersing in search of other carrion.
Mr. Cruncher aveva ormai rimosso una buona quantità di ruggine dalle dita, mentre seguiva le testimonianze. Ora doveva assistere mentre il signor Stryver adattava la difesa dell’imputato alla giuria, come un completo vestito ben confezionato; mostrando loro come il patriota, Barsad, fosse uno spia e traditore mercenario, un trafficante senza vergogna di sangue, e uno dei più grandi farabutti sulla terra da quando l’empio Giuda—che lui certo assomigliava piuttosto. Come il virtuoso servitore, Cly, fosse suo amico e compagno, e degno di esserlo; come gli occhi vigili di quei falsari e spergiuri si fossero posati sull’imputato come su una vittima, perché alcuni affari familiari in Francia, lui essendo di estrazione francese, richiedevano i suoi viaggi attraverso la Manica—sebbene quali fossero quegli affari, un riguardo per altri che gli erano cari e vicini, lo vietasse, anche a costo della vita, di rivelare. Come le testimonianze che erano state distorte e strappate alla giovane donna, la cui angoscia nel fornirle era stata loro testimone, non portassero a nulla, coinvolgendo solo quelle piccole innocenti galanterie e cortesie probabili tra un giovane gentiluomo e una giovane signora così gettati insieme;—con l’eccezione di quel riferimento a George Washington, che era del tutto troppo stravagante e impossibile da considerare in qualsiasi altra luce se non come uno scherzo mostruoso. Come sarebbe stata una debolezza del governo crollare in questo tentativo di praticare per popolarità sulle più basse antipatie e paure nazionali, e quindi il signor Procuratore Generale ne aveva fatto il massimo; come nondimeno non si reggesse su nulla, salvo quel vile e infame carattere delle testimonianze che troppo spesso disfigurano tali casi, e di cui i Processi di Stato di questo paese erano pieni. Ma a questo punto mio Signore intervenne (con un volto grave come se non fosse stato vero), dicendo che non poteva sedere su quel banco e tollerare quelle allusioni.
Il signor Stryver chiamò quindi i suoi pochi testimoni e il signor Cruncher dovette attendere mentre il procuratore generale capovolgeva completamente l’intero abito che il signor Stryver aveva fatto indossare alla giuria, dimostrando come Barsad e Cly fossero addirittura cento volte migliori di quanto lui li avesse pensati e il prigioniero cento volte peggiore. Infine arrivò il Lord stesso, che capovolgeva l’abito ora all’interno, ora all’esterno, ma nel complesso lo ritagliava e lo modellava decisamente in un abito da morte per il prigioniero.
E ora la giuria si ritirò per deliberare e le grandi mosche tornarono a ronzare in folla.
Il signor Carton, che da tanto tempo sedeva guardando il soffitto del tribunale, non cambiò né posto né atteggiamento neppure in mezzo a questo trambusto. Mentre il suo colto amico, il signor Stryver, accumulava le sue carte davanti a sé, bisbigliava con quelli che gli stavano vicini e di tanto in tanto lanciava sguardi ansiosi alla giuria; mentre tutti i presenti si muovevano più o meno, e si disponevano nuovamente a gruppi; mentre persino il Lord Giudice stesso si alzò dal suo posto, e lentamente camminò su e giù per la sua piattaforma, non senza che tra gli spettatori sorgesse un sospetto che il suo stato fosse febbrile; quell’uomo solo sedeva appoggiato all’indietro, con la sua veste strappata a metà di dosso, la parrucca disordinata messa come era capitato che gli cadesse sulla testa dopo essere stata tolta, le mani nelle tasche e lo sguardo al soffitto come era stato tutto il giorno. Qualcosa di particolarmente spregiudicato nel suo comportamento, non solo gli dava un aspetto disonorevole, ma diminuiva così tanto la forte somiglianza che senza dubbio aveva col prigioniero (che il suo momentaneo impegno, quando furono messi a confronto insieme, aveva rafforzato), che molti degli spettatori, prendendo nota di lui ora, si dissero l’un l’altro che non avrebbero mai pensato che i due fossero così simili. Il signor Cruncher fece questa osservazione al suo vicino e aggiunse: “Scommetterei mezza ghinea che lui non ha da fare nessuna pratica legale. Non sembra il tipo di persona a cui ne arriva qualcuna, no?”
Eppure questo signor Carton aveva osservato più dettagli della scena di quanti ne avesse dato a vedere; perché ora, quando la testa della signorina Manette cadde sul petto del padre, fu il primo a vederlo e a dire ad alta voce: «Ufficiale! Guardate quella giovane. Aiutate il gentiluomo a portarla fuori. Non vedete che sta per svenire?»
Ci fu molta compassione per lei quando la portarono via e molta simpatia per suo padre. Era stato evidentemente un grande dolore per lui dover ricordare i giorni della sua reclusione. Aveva mostrato una forte agitazione interiore quando fu interrogato, e quell’espressione pensosa o meditabonda che lo faceva sembrare vecchio era su di lui come una nuvola pesante da allora. Mentre usciva, la giuria, che si era voltata indietro e aveva fatto una pausa per un momento, parlò attraverso il loro capo.
Non erano d’accordo e desideravano ritirarsi. Il mio signore (forse con George Washington in mente) mostrò una certa sorpresa che non fossero d’accordo, ma fece sapere di gradire che si ritirassero sotto sorveglianza, e lui stesso si ritirò. Il processo era durato tutto il giorno, e ora le lampade nella corte venivano accese. Cominciava a circolare la voce che la giuria sarebbe rimasta in camera di consiglio per un bel po’. Gli spettatori si allontanarono per rinfrescarsi, e il prigioniero si ritirò nella parte posteriore del banco degli imputati e si sedette.
Il signor Lorry, che era uscito quando la giovane donna e suo padre erano usciti, riapparve ora e fece cenno a Jerry di avvicinarsi; il quale, approfittando del calo d’interesse generale, poté facilmente raggiungerlo.
«Jerry, se vuoi prendere qualcosa da mangiare, fallo pure. Ma resta nei paraggi. Sarai sicuramente a sentire quando la giuria entrerà. Non restare un attimo indietro rispetto a loro, perché voglio che tu porti il verdetto alla banca. Sei il messaggero più veloce che conosco e arriverai a Temple Bar molto prima di me».
A Jerry bastava quel poco di fronte per farsi il segno della croce e lo fece per ringraziare del messaggio e dello scellino. In quell’istante si avvicinò il signor Carton, che toccò il braccio al signor Lorry.
“Come sta la giovane signora?”
“È molto turbata; ma suo padre la sta consolando e si sente meglio per essere fuori dalla corte.”
«Lo dirò al prigioniero. Non si addice a un rispettabile gentiluomo della banca come voi farsi vedere parlargli in pubblico, sapete.»
Il signor Lorry arrossì come se fosse consapevole di aver dibattuto il punto nella sua mente e il signor Carton si fece strada verso l’esterno del banco. La via d’uscita dal tribunale era in quella direzione, e Jerry lo seguì con tutti gli occhi, le orecchie e i chiodi.
“Signor Darnay!”
Il prigioniero si fece avanti subito.
“Naturalmente vorrete sapere come sta il testimone, Miss Manette. Starà molto bene. Avete visto la parte peggiore della sua agitazione”.
«Mi dispiace profondamente di essere stato la causa di tutto ciò. Potrebbe dirglielo per conto mio, con i miei più vivi ringraziamenti?»
“Sì, potrei. Lo farò, se me lo chiedi.”
Il comportamento del signor Carton era così trasandato da essere quasi insolente. Stava in piedi, mezzo voltato verso il prigioniero, appoggiato con il gomito al banco.
“Lo chiedo. Accetti i miei sinceri ringraziamenti.”
“Che cosa aspetti,” disse Carton, ancora solo mezzo voltato verso di lui, “signor Darnay?”
“Il peggio.”
«È la cosa più saggia da aspettarsi e anche quella più probabile. Ma credo che il loro ritiro sia a suo favore».
Poiché non era consentito sostare uscendo dal tribunale, Jerry non sentì altro: ma li lasciò lì - così simili tra loro nei tratti del viso, così diversi nel comportamento - in piedi fianco a fianco, entrambi riflessi nello specchio sopra di loro.
Un’ora e mezza trascorse lentamente nei corridoi affollati di ladri e furfanti al piano inferiore, anche se accompagnate da torte di montone e birra. Il messaggero rauco, seduto in modo scomodo su una panca dopo aver consumato quel pasto, era caduto in un sonnellino quando un forte mormorio e una rapida corrente di persone che salivano le scale che portavano alla corte lo trascinarono con loro.
«Jerry! Jerry!» Il signor Lorry stava già chiamando alla porta quando arrivò lì.
“Ecco, signore! È una lotta per tornare indietro. Ecco qui, signore!”
Il signor Lorry gli porse un foglio attraverso la folla: “Svelto! Ce l’hai?”
“Sì, signore.”
Sul foglio era scritto in fretta la parola “ASSOLTO”.
«Se aveste inviato di nuovo il messaggio “Richiamato alla Vita”», borbottò Jerry mentre si voltava, «avrei capito cosa intendevate, questa volta.»
Non ebbe modo di dire o anche solo pensare altro, finché non fu lontano dall’Old Bailey; perché la folla uscì con tale violenza da quasi farlo cadere, e un forte ronzio si diffuse per la strada come se le mosche blu deluse si disperdessero in cerca di altra carcassa.
CHAPTER IV. Congratulatory
From the dimly-lighted passages of the court, the last sediment of the human stew that had been boiling there all day, was straining off, when Doctor Manette, Lucie Manette, his daughter, Mr. Lorry, the solicitor for the defence, and its counsel, Mr. Stryver, stood gathered round Mr. Charles Darnay—just released—congratulating him on his escape from death.
It would have been difficult by a far brighter light, to recognise in Doctor Manette, intellectual of face and upright of bearing, the shoemaker of the garret in Paris. Yet, no one could have looked at him twice, without looking again: even though the opportunity of observation had not extended to the mournful cadence of his low grave voice, and to the abstraction that overclouded him fitfully, without any apparent reason. While one external cause, and that a reference to his long lingering agony, would always—as on the trial—evoke this condition from the depths of his soul, it was also in its nature to arise of itself, and to draw a gloom over him, as incomprehensible to those unacquainted with his story as if they had seen the shadow of the actual Bastille thrown upon him by a summer sun, when the substance was three hundred miles away.
Only his daughter had the power of charming this black brooding from his mind. She was the golden thread that united him to a Past beyond his misery, and to a Present beyond his misery: and the sound of her voice, the light of her face, the touch of her hand, had a strong beneficial influence with him almost always. Not absolutely always, for she could recall some occasions on which her power had failed; but they were few and slight, and she believed them over.
Mr. Darnay had kissed her hand fervently and gratefully, and had turned to Mr. Stryver, whom he warmly thanked. Mr. Stryver, a man of little more than thirty, but looking twenty years older than he was, stout, loud, red, bluff, and free from any drawback of delicacy, had a pushing way of shouldering himself (morally and physically) into companies and conversations, that argued well for his shouldering his way up in life.
He still had his wig and gown on, and he said, squaring himself at his late client to that degree that he squeezed the innocent Mr. Lorry clean out of the group: “I am glad to have brought you off with honour, Mr. Darnay. It was an infamous prosecution, grossly infamous; but not the less likely to succeed on that account.”
“You have laid me under an obligation to you for life—in two senses,” said his late client, taking his hand.
“I have done my best for you, Mr. Darnay; and my best is as good as another man’s, I believe.”
It clearly being incumbent on some one to say, “Much better,” Mr. Lorry said it; perhaps not quite disinterestedly, but with the interested object of squeezing himself back again.
“You think so?” said Mr. Stryver. “Well! you have been present all day, and you ought to know. You are a man of business, too.”
“And as such,” quoth Mr. Lorry, whom the counsel learned in the law had now shouldered back into the group, just as he had previously shouldered him out of it—“as such I will appeal to Doctor Manette, to break up this conference and order us all to our homes. Miss Lucie looks ill, Mr. Darnay has had a terrible day, we are worn out.”
“Speak for yourself, Mr. Lorry,” said Stryver; “I have a night’s work to do yet. Speak for yourself.”
“I speak for myself,” answered Mr. Lorry, “and for Mr. Darnay, and for Miss Lucie, and—Miss Lucie, do you not think I may speak for us all?” He asked her the question pointedly, and with a glance at her father.
His face had become frozen, as it were, in a very curious look at Darnay: an intent look, deepening into a frown of dislike and distrust, not even unmixed with fear. With this strange expression on him his thoughts had wandered away.
“My father,” said Lucie, softly laying her hand on his.
He slowly shook the shadow off, and turned to her.
“Shall we go home, my father?”
With a long breath, he answered “Yes.”
The friends of the acquitted prisoner had dispersed, under the impression—which he himself had originated—that he would not be released that night. The lights were nearly all extinguished in the passages, the iron gates were being closed with a jar and a rattle, and the dismal place was deserted until to-morrow morning’s interest of gallows, pillory, whipping-post, and branding-iron, should repeople it. Walking between her father and Mr. Darnay, Lucie Manette passed into the open air. A hackney-coach was called, and the father and daughter departed in it.
Mr. Stryver had left them in the passages, to shoulder his way back to the robing-room. Another person, who had not joined the group, or interchanged a word with any one of them, but who had been leaning against the wall where its shadow was darkest, had silently strolled out after the rest, and had looked on until the coach drove away. He now stepped up to where Mr. Lorry and Mr. Darnay stood upon the pavement.
“So, Mr. Lorry! Men of business may speak to Mr. Darnay now?”
Nobody had made any acknowledgment of Mr. Carton’s part in the day’s proceedings; nobody had known of it. He was unrobed, and was none the better for it in appearance.
“If you knew what a conflict goes on in the business mind, when the business mind is divided between good-natured impulse and business appearances, you would be amused, Mr. Darnay.”
Mr. Lorry reddened, and said, warmly, “You have mentioned that before, sir. We men of business, who serve a House, are not our own masters. We have to think of the House more than ourselves.”
“I know, I know,” rejoined Mr. Carton, carelessly. “Don’t be nettled, Mr. Lorry. You are as good as another, I have no doubt: better, I dare say.”
CAPITOLO IV. Complimenti
Dai passaggi debolmente illuminati del tribunale, il residuo finale della zuppa umana che era stata in ebollizione lì tutto il giorno, stava defluendo quando dottor Manette, Lucie Manette, sua figlia, Mr. Lorry, l’avvocato difensore e il suo consulente, Mr. Stryver, si radunarono intorno a Mr. Charles Darnay - appena rilasciato - congratulandosi con lui per la sua fuga dalla morte.
Sarebbe stato difficile anche con una luce ben più intensa riconoscere nel dottor Manette, dal volto intellettuale e dall’andatura eretta, il calzolaio del sottotetto a Parigi. Eppure nessuno avrebbe potuto guardarlo una volta senza guardarne di nuovo: anche se l’opportunità dell’osservazione non si fosse estesa alla cadenza malinconica della sua bassa voce grave e all’astrazione che lo offuscava a intermittenza, senza alcuna ragione apparente. Sebbene una causa esterna, e precisamente un riferimento alla sua lunga agonia prolungata, evocasse sempre - come nel processo - questa condizione dalle profondità della sua anima, era anche nella sua natura sorgere da sé e gettare su di lui una tristezza tanto incomprensibile a chi non conosceva la sua storia quanto se avessero visto l’ombra della vera Bastiglia proiettata su di lui da un sole estivo, quando la sostanza era distante trecento miglia.
Solo sua figlia aveva il potere di allontanare questa cupa malinconia dalla sua mente. Era il filo d’oro che lo univa a un Passato al di là della sua miseria e a un Presente al di là della sua miseria: e il suono della sua voce, la luce del suo volto, il tocco della sua mano avevano quasi sempre una forte influenza benefica su di lui. Non assolutamente sempre, perché poteva ricordare alcune occasioni in cui il suo potere era fallito; ma erano poche e lievi, e lei credeva che fossero finite.
Il signor Darnay le aveva baciato la mano con fervore e gratitudine ed era volto verso il signor Stryver, che ringraziò calorosamente. Il signor Stryver, un uomo poco più che trentenne ma dall’aspetto di venti anni più vecchio, robusto, rumoroso, rosso in viso, rude e privo di qualsiasi delicatezza, aveva un modo spavaldo di insinuarsi (moralmente e fisicamente) tra le persone e nelle conversazioni che faceva presagire bene per la sua ascesa nella vita.
Aveva ancora addosso parrucca e toga e disse, piantandosi in piedi davanti al suo ex cliente a tal punto da spingere il innocuo signor Lorry fuori dal gruppo: “Sono felice di averla tirata fuori con onore, signor Darnay. Era un’accusa infame, grossolanamente infame; ma non per questo meno probabile che avesse successo.”
«Mi avete obbligato verso di voi per tutta la vita — in due sensi», disse il suo ex cliente stringendogli la mano.
«Ho fatto del mio meglio per lei, signor Darnay; e il mio meglio è buono quanto quello di un altro uomo, credo».
Dato che era evidente che qualcuno doveva dire: «Molto meglio», fu il signor Lorry a dirlo; forse non del tutto in modo disinteressato, ma con l’obiettivo interessato di riuscire a farsi strada per tornare indietro.
“Lei pensa così?” disse il signor Stryver. Bene! Lei è stato presente tutto il giorno e dovrebbe saperlo. È anche un uomo d’affari”.
«E in quanto tale», disse il signor Lorry, che l’avvocato esperto di legge aveva ora spinto indietro nel gruppo, proprio come prima lo aveva spinto fuori da esso, «in quanto tale mi rivolgerò al dottor Manette per interrompere questa riunione e ordinare a tutti noi di tornare alle nostre case. La signorina Lucie sembra malata, il signor Darnay ha avuto una giornata terribile, siamo esausti».
«Parli per sé, signor Lorry», disse Stryver; «ho ancora una notte di lavoro da fare. Parli per sé».
«Parlo per me stesso», rispose il signor Lorry, «e per il signor Darnay e per la signorina Lucie, e. Signorina Lucie, non crede che io possa parlare per tutti noi?» Le rivolse questa domanda in modo incisivo, con uno sguardo al padre.
Il suo volto si era come congelato in un’espressione molto curiosa verso Darnay: uno sguardo intenso, che si trasformava in una smorfia di antipatia e sfiducia, non priva addirittura di paura. Con quell’espressione strana sul viso i suoi pensieri erano andati vagando lontano.
«Mio padre», disse Lucie posandogli dolcemente la mano sulla sua,
Si liberò lentamente dell’ombra e si voltò verso di lei.
«Andremo a casa, mio padre?»
Con un lungo respiro, rispose “Sì”.
Gli amici del prigioniero assolto si erano dispersi, convinti - e lui stesso aveva dato origine a questa convinzione - che non sarebbe stato rilasciato quella sera. Le luci nei corridoi erano quasi tutte spente, i cancelli di ferro venivano chiusi con un tonfo e un rumore metallico, e il lugubre luogo rimase deserto fino all’interesse del mattino seguente per la forca, il patibolo, il palo della vergogna e il ferro rovente che lo avrebbero ripopolato. Camminando tra suo padre e il signor Darnay, Lucie Manette uscì all’aperto. Fu chiamata una carrozza pubblica e padre e figlia partirono su di essa.
Il signor Stryver li aveva lasciati nei corridoi per farsi strada a spallate fino alla sala degli abiti. Un’altra persona, che non si era unita al gruppo né aveva scambiato una parola con nessuno di loro, ma che era rimasta appoggiata contro il muro dove la sua ombra era più fitta, era uscita silenziosamente dopo gli altri e li aveva osservati finché la carrozza non si allontanò. Ora si avvicinò al punto in cui il signor Lorry e il signor Darnay stavano sulla strada.
“Dunque, signor Lorry! Ora gli uomini d’affari possono parlare con il signor Darnay?”
Nessuno aveva riconosciuto il ruolo di Carton nelle vicende della giornata; nessuno ne era venuto a conoscenza. Si era tolto la toga e non sembrava affatto migliorato per questo.
«Se sapessi quale conflitto si svolge nella mente dell’uomo d’affari, quando la mente è divisa tra l’impulso buono e le apparenze del commercio, ne sarebbe divertito, signor Darnay.»
Il signor Lorry arrossì e disse con calore: “Ne ha già parlato prima, signore. Noi uomini d’affari, che serviamo una casa, non siamo padroni di noi stessi. Dobbiamo pensare alla casa più che a noi”.
«Lo so, lo so», ribatté con nonchalance il signor Carton. «Non si offenda, signor Lorry. Lei è bravo quanto chiunque altro, ne sono senza dubbio: anzi, direi che è migliore».
“And indeed, sir,” pursued Mr. Lorry, not minding him, “I really don’t know what you have to do with the matter. If you’ll excuse me, as very much your elder, for saying so, I really don’t know that it is your business.”
“Business! Bless you, I have no business,” said Mr. Carton.
“It is a pity you have not, sir.”
“I think so, too.”
“If you had,” pursued Mr. Lorry, “perhaps you would attend to it.”
“Lord love you, no!—I shouldn’t,” said Mr. Carton.
“Well, sir!” cried Mr. Lorry, thoroughly heated by his indifference, “business is a very good thing, and a very respectable thing. And, sir, if business imposes its restraints and its silences and impediments, Mr. Darnay as a young gentleman of generosity knows how to make allowance for that circumstance. Mr. Darnay, good night, God bless you, sir! I hope you have been this day preserved for a prosperous and happy life.—Chair there!”
Perhaps a little angry with himself, as well as with the barrister, Mr. Lorry bustled into the chair, and was carried off to Tellson’s. Carton, who smelt of port wine, and did not appear to be quite sober, laughed then, and turned to Darnay:
“This is a strange chance that throws you and me together. This must be a strange night to you, standing alone here with your counterpart on these street stones?”
“I hardly seem yet,” returned Charles Darnay, “to belong to this world again.”
“I don’t wonder at it; it’s not so long since you were pretty far advanced on your way to another. You speak faintly.”
“I begin to think I am faint.”
“Then why the devil don’t you dine? I dined, myself, while those numskulls were deliberating which world you should belong to—this, or some other. Let me show you the nearest tavern to dine well at.”
Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down Ludgate-hill to Fleet-street, and so, up a covered way, into a tavern. Here, they were shown into a little room, where Charles Darnay was soon recruiting his strength with a good plain dinner and good wine: while Carton sat opposite to him at the same table, with his separate bottle of port before him, and his fully half-insolent manner upon him.
“Do you feel, yet, that you belong to this terrestrial scheme again, Mr. Darnay?”
“I am frightfully confused regarding time and place; but I am so far mended as to feel that.”
“It must be an immense satisfaction!”
He said it bitterly, and filled up his glass again: which was a large one.
“As to me, the greatest desire I have, is to forget that I belong to it. It has no good in it for me—except wine like this—nor I for it. So we are not much alike in that particular. Indeed, I begin to think we are not much alike in any particular, you and I.”
Confused by the emotion of the day, and feeling his being there with this Double of coarse deportment, to be like a dream, Charles Darnay was at a loss how to answer; finally, answered not at all.
“Now your dinner is done,” Carton presently said, “why don’t you call a health, Mr. Darnay; why don’t you give your toast?”
“What health? What toast?”
“Why, it’s on the tip of your tongue. It ought to be, it must be, I’ll swear it’s there.”
“Miss Manette, then!”
“Miss Manette, then!”
Looking his companion full in the face while he drank the toast, Carton flung his glass over his shoulder against the wall, where it shivered to pieces; then, rang the bell, and ordered in another.
“That’s a fair young lady to hand to a coach in the dark, Mr. Darnay!” he said, filling his new goblet.
A slight frown and a laconic “Yes,” were the answer.
“That’s a fair young lady to be pitied by and wept for by! How does it feel? Is it worth being tried for one’s life, to be the object of such sympathy and compassion, Mr. Darnay?”
Again Darnay answered not a word.
“She was mightily pleased to have your message, when I gave it her. Not that she showed she was pleased, but I suppose she was.”
The allusion served as a timely reminder to Darnay that this disagreeable companion had, of his own free will, assisted him in the strait of the day. He turned the dialogue to that point, and thanked him for it.
“I neither want any thanks, nor merit any,” was the careless rejoinder. “It was nothing to do, in the first place; and I don’t know why I did it, in the second. Mr. Darnay, let me ask you a question.”
“Willingly, and a small return for your good offices.”
“Do you think I particularly like you?”
“Really, Mr. Carton,” returned the other, oddly disconcerted, “I have not asked myself the question.”
“But ask yourself the question now.”
“You have acted as if you do; but I don’t think you do.”
“I don’t think I do,” said Carton. “I begin to have a very good opinion of your understanding.”
“Nevertheless,” pursued Darnay, rising to ring the bell, “there is nothing in that, I hope, to prevent my calling the reckoning, and our parting without ill-blood on either side.”
Carton rejoining, “Nothing in life!” Darnay rang. “Do you call the whole reckoning?” said Carton. On his answering in the affirmative, “Then bring me another pint of this same wine, drawer, and come and wake me at ten.”
The bill being paid, Charles Darnay rose and wished him good night. Without returning the wish, Carton rose too, with something of a threat of defiance in his manner, and said, “A last word, Mr. Darnay: you think I am drunk?”
“I think you have been drinking, Mr. Carton.”
“Think? You know I have been drinking.”
“Since I must say so, I know it.”
“Then you shall likewise know why. I am a disappointed drudge, sir. I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth cares for me.”
“Much to be regretted. You might have used your talents better.”
“May be so, Mr. Darnay; may be not. Don’t let your sober face elate you, however; you don’t know what it may come to. Good night!”
When he was left alone, this strange being took up a candle, went to a glass that hung against the wall, and surveyed himself minutely in it.
“Do you particularly like the man?” he muttered, at his own image; “why should you particularly like a man who resembles you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that. Ah, confound you! What a change you have made in yourself! A good reason for taking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away from, and what you might have been! Change places with him, and would you have been looked at by those blue eyes as he was, and commiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, and have it out in plain words! You hate the fellow.”
He resorted to his pint of wine for consolation, drank it all in a few minutes, and fell asleep on his arms, with his hair straggling over the table, and a long winding-sheet in the candle dripping down upon him.
«E in effetti, signore», continuò il signor Lorry senza badargli, «non capisco davvero che cosa c’entri lei. Se mi permette di dirlo, come persona molto più anziana di lei, non vedo proprio che sia affar suo».
«Affari! Benedetto voi, io non ho affari», disse il signor Carton.
“Peccato che non l’abbia fatto, signore.”
Anch’io lo penso.
“Se lo avesse fatto,” continuò il signor Lorry, “forse ci presterebbe attenzione.”
«Dio vi benedica, no! Non dovrei», disse il signor Carton.
“Bene, signore!”, esclamò il signor Lorry, completamente infervorato dalla sua indifferenza, “gli affari sono una cosa molto buona e molto rispettabile. E, signore, se gli affari impongono le loro restrizioni e i loro silenzi e impedimenti, il signor Darnay come giovane gentiluomo di generosità sa fare ammenda per quella circostanza. Signor Darnay, buona notte, Dio la benedica, signore! Spero che lei sia stato preservato oggi per una vita prospera e felice. —Portate la sedia lì!”
Forse un po’ arrabbiato con se stesso, oltre che con l’avvocato, il signor Lorry si affrettò a sedersi e fu portato via verso la sede della Tellson. Carton, che puzzava di vino di Porto e non sembrava del tutto sobrio, rise allora e si rivolse a Darnay:
“Questa è una strana coincidenza che ci riunisce te e me. Deve essere una notte strana per te, rimanere qui solo con il tuo sosia su queste pietre della strada?”
«Non mi sembra ancora di appartenere» rispose Charles Darnay «a questo mondo.»
“Non mi meraviglio; non è passato molto tempo da quando eri piuttosto avanti sulla strada verso un’altra. Parli con voce debole.”
Inizio a pensare di essere svenuto.
«Allora perché diavolo non cenate? Io ho cenato mentre quegli imbecilli stavano discutendo a quale mondo dovessero appartenere voi: questo o qualche altro. Permettetemi di mostrarvi la taverna più vicina dove potrete cenare bene.»
Passandogli il braccio sotto al suo, lo condusse giù per Ludgate-hill fino a Fleet-street e poi, su per un passaggio coperto, in una taverna. Qui furono fatti accomodare in una piccola stanza dove Charles Darnay si rimise presto in forze con un buon pasto semplice e del buon vino: mentre Carton sedeva di fronte a lui allo stesso tavolo, con la sua bottiglia separata di porto davanti e il suo atteggiamento pienamente quasi insolente.
“Si sente di nuovo parte di questo mondo terrestre, signor Darnay?”
“Sono terribilmente confuso riguardo a tempo e luogo, ma sono abbastanza guarito da sentirmi così.”
“Deve essere un immenso sollievo!”
Lo disse con amarezza e riempì di nuovo il suo bicchiere: che era grande.
«Per quanto mi riguarda, il più grande desiderio che ho è quello di dimenticare di farne parte. Non ha nulla di buono per me - tranne vino come questo - né io per essa. Quindi non ci somigliamo molto in quel particolare. Infatti, comincio a pensare che non ci somigliamo molto in nessun particolare, tu e io.»
Confuso dall’emozione del giorno e sentendo che la sua presenza lì con questo Doppio di comportamento grossolano fosse come un sogno, Charles Darnay non sapeva cosa rispondere; alla fine, non rispose affatto.
«Ora che avete finito di cenare», disse poco dopo Carton, «perché non proponete un brindisi, signor Darnay? Perché non fate il vostro discorso?»
“Che salute? Che brindisi?”
“È sulla punta della tua lingua. Dovrebbe esserci, deve esserci, giuro che c’è.”
“La signorina Manette, dunque!”
“La signorina Manette, dunque!”
Mentre beveva il brindisi, Carton guardò dritto negli occhi il suo compagno, poi scagliò il bicchiere sopra la spalla contro la parete, dove si frantumò; quindi suonò il campanello e ne ordinò un altro.
«È una bella giovane signora da aiutare a salire su un calesse al buio, signor Darnay!» disse, riempiendo il suo nuovo calice.
La risposta fu una leggera smorfia e un laconico «Sì».
«Questa è una giovane signora degna di compassione e lacrime! Come ci si sente? Vale la pena rischiare la vita per essere oggetto di tanta simpatia e pietà, signor Darnay?»
Darnay ancora non rispose una parola.
«Fu molto contenta di ricevere il tuo messaggio quando glielo diedi. Non che abbia dato a vedere di esserlo, ma credo lo fosse».
L’allusione servì come un utile promemoria a Darnay che questo sgradevole compagno aveva, di sua spontanea volontà, assistito lui nella situazione difficile del giorno. Egli volse il dialogo su quel punto e lo ringraziò per ciò.
«Non voglio né ringraziamenti né merito», fu la risposta noncurante. «Innanzitutto non c’era niente da fare; e poi non so nemmeno perché l’ho fatto. Signor Darnay, permettetemi di farvi una domanda.»
“Volentieri, e un piccolo ritorno per i tuoi buoni uffici.”
“Pensi che io ti apprezzi particolarmente?”
«Davvero, signor Carton», rispose l’altro, stranamente turbato, «non mi sono posto la domanda».
“Ma poni la domanda ora.”
“Hai agito come se lo facessi, ma non credo che tu lo faccia.”
«Io non credo di farlo», disse Carton. «Comincio ad avere un’ottima opinione del tuo discernimento».
«Tuttavia», proseguì Darnay alzandosi per suonare il campanello, «non c’è nulla in tutto questo che mi impedisca di chiedere il conto e di salutarci senza rancore da nessuna delle due parti, lo spero.»
Rientrò Carton: «Nulla nella vita!» Darnay suonò il campanello. «Vuole saldare tutto?», chiese Carton. Avendo lui risposto di sì: «Allora portami un’altra pinta dello stesso vino, cameriere, e vieni a svegliarmi alle dieci».
Pagato il conto, Charles Darnay si alzò e gli augurò buona notte. Senza ricambiare l’augurio, Carton si alzò anche lui con un atteggiamento quasi minaccioso di sfida e disse: «Una parola ancora, signor Darnay: pensa che io sia ubriaco?»
“Penso che lei abbia bevuto, signor Carton.”
“Pensare? Sai che ho bevuto.”
“Devo dirlo, lo so.”
«Allora saprete anche il perché. Sono un povero disgraziato deluso, signore. Non mi importa nulla di nessuno al mondo e nessuno al mondo si cura di me».
“Un grande rammarico. Avresti potuto usare meglio i tuoi talenti.”
«Può darsi, signor Darnay; può anche non essere così. Non lasci però che il suo volto sobrio la renda euforica; non sa mai a cosa potrebbe portare. Buona notte!»
Quando rimase solo, questa strana creatura prese una candela, si avvicinò a uno specchio appeso al muro e si osservò minuziosamente nello specchio.
«Ti piace particolarmente quell’uomo?» borbottò alla sua immagine; «perché dovresti piacerti particolarmente di un uomo che ti assomiglia? Non c’è niente in te da amare, lo sai. Ah, dannazione! Che cambiamento hai fatto in te stesso! Una buona ragione per prendere a cuore un uomo è che ti mostra ciò da cui sei decaduto e ciò che avresti potuto essere! Scambia il posto con lui, e saresti stato guardato da quegli occhi blu come lo era lui, e compatito da quel volto agitato come lo era lui? Vieni qui e dì la verità a parole chiare! Odi quel tizio.»
Si rivolse al suo boccale di vino per consolarsi, lo bevve tutto in pochi minuti e si addormentò con le braccia sul tavolo, i capelli che gli cadevano disordinatamente sulla fronte e una lunga striscia di cera che colava dalla candela su di lui come un sudario.
CHAPTER V. The Jackal
Those were drinking days, and most men drank hard. So very great is the improvement Time has brought about in such habits, that a moderate statement of the quantity of wine and punch which one man would swallow in the course of a night, without any detriment to his reputation as a perfect gentleman, would seem, in these days, a ridiculous exaggeration. The learned profession of the law was certainly not behind any other learned profession in its Bacchanalian propensities; neither was Mr. Stryver, already fast shouldering his way to a large and lucrative practice, behind his compeers in this particular, any more than in the drier parts of the legal race.
A favourite at the Old Bailey, and eke at the Sessions, Mr. Stryver had begun cautiously to hew away the lower staves of the ladder on which he mounted. Sessions and Old Bailey had now to summon their favourite, specially, to their longing arms; and shouldering itself towards the visage of the Lord Chief Justice in the Court of King’s Bench, the florid countenance of Mr. Stryver might be daily seen, bursting out of the bed of wigs, like a great sunflower pushing its way at the sun from among a rank garden-full of flaring companions.
It had once been noted at the Bar, that while Mr. Stryver was a glib man, and an unscrupulous, and a ready, and a bold, he had not that faculty of extracting the essence from a heap of statements, which is among the most striking and necessary of the advocate’s accomplishments. But, a remarkable improvement came upon him as to this. The more business he got, the greater his power seemed to grow of getting at its pith and marrow; and however late at night he sat carousing with Sydney Carton, he always had his points at his fingers’ ends in the morning.
Sydney Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men, was Stryver’s great ally. What the two drank together, between Hilary Term and Michaelmas, might have floated a king’s ship. Stryver never had a case in hand, anywhere, but Carton was there, with his hands in his pockets, staring at the ceiling of the court; they went the same Circuit, and even there they prolonged their usual orgies late into the night, and Carton was rumoured to be seen at broad day, going home stealthily and unsteadily to his lodgings, like a dissipated cat. At last, it began to get about, among such as were interested in the matter, that although Sydney Carton would never be a lion, he was an amazingly good jackal, and that he rendered suit and service to Stryver in that humble capacity.
“Ten o’clock, sir,” said the man at the tavern, whom he had charged to wake him—“ten o’clock, sir.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Ten o’clock, sir.”
“What do you mean? Ten o’clock at night?”
“Yes, sir. Your honour told me to call you.”
“Oh! I remember. Very well, very well.”
After a few dull efforts to get to sleep again, which the man dexterously combated by stirring the fire continuously for five minutes, he got up, tossed his hat on, and walked out. He turned into the Temple, and, having revived himself by twice pacing the pavements of King’s Bench-walk and Paper-buildings, turned into the Stryver chambers.
The Stryver clerk, who never assisted at these conferences, had gone home, and the Stryver principal opened the door. He had his slippers on, and a loose bed-gown, and his throat was bare for his greater ease. He had that rather wild, strained, seared marking about the eyes, which may be observed in all free livers of his class, from the portrait of Jeffries downward, and which can be traced, under various disguises of Art, through the portraits of every Drinking Age.
“You are a little late, Memory,” said Stryver.
“About the usual time; it may be a quarter of an hour later.”
They went into a dingy room lined with books and littered with papers, where there was a blazing fire. A kettle steamed upon the hob, and in the midst of the wreck of papers a table shone, with plenty of wine upon it, and brandy, and rum, and sugar, and lemons.
“You have had your bottle, I perceive, Sydney.”
“Two to-night, I think. I have been dining with the day’s client; or seeing him dine—it’s all one!”
“That was a rare point, Sydney, that you brought to bear upon the identification. How did you come by it? When did it strike you?”
“I thought he was rather a handsome fellow, and I thought I should have been much the same sort of fellow, if I had had any luck.”
Mr. Stryver laughed till he shook his precocious paunch.
“You and your luck, Sydney! Get to work, get to work.”
Sullenly enough, the jackal loosened his dress, went into an adjoining room, and came back with a large jug of cold water, a basin, and a towel or two. Steeping the towels in the water, and partially wringing them out, he folded them on his head in a manner hideous to behold, sat down at the table, and said, “Now I am ready!”
“Not much boiling down to be done to-night, Memory,” said Mr. Stryver, gaily, as he looked among his papers.
“How much?”
“Only two sets of them.”
“Give me the worst first.”
“There they are, Sydney. Fire away!”
The lion then composed himself on his back on a sofa on one side of the drinking-table, while the jackal sat at his own paper-bestrewn table proper, on the other side of it, with the bottles and glasses ready to his hand. Both resorted to the drinking-table without stint, but each in a different way; the lion for the most part reclining with his hands in his waistband, looking at the fire, or occasionally flirting with some lighter document; the jackal, with knitted brows and intent face, so deep in his task, that his eyes did not even follow the hand he stretched out for his glass—which often groped about, for a minute or more, before it found the glass for his lips. Two or three times, the matter in hand became so knotty, that the jackal found it imperative on him to get up, and steep his towels anew. From these pilgrimages to the jug and basin, he returned with such eccentricities of damp headgear as no words can describe; which were made the more ludicrous by his anxious gravity.
CAPITOLO V. Lo Sciacallo
Erano tempi di bevute e la maggior parte degli uomini beveva molto. Tanto grande è il miglioramento che il tempo ha portato a tali abitudini, che una moderata descrizione della quantità di vino e punch che un uomo avrebbe potuto ingurgitare nel corso di una notte, senza alcun danno alla sua reputazione come perfetto gentiluomo, sembrerebbe oggi una ridicola esagerazione. La professione legale non era certamente inferiore ad altre professioni colte nelle sue propensioni bacchiche; né lo era il signor Stryver, che già si stava rapidamente facendo strada verso un’ampia e redditizia pratica, rispetto ai suoi colleghi in questo particolare, così come non lo era nelle parti più aride della corsa legale.
Preferito al Old Bailey e anche alle Sessions, il signor Stryver aveva iniziato con cautela ad abbattere i pioli più bassi della scala su cui saliva. Le Sessions e l’Old Bailey dovevano ora convocare il loro preferito appositamente nelle loro braccia desiderose; e spingendosi verso la faccia del Lord Cancelliere nella Corte della Regina’s Bench, il viso florido del signor Stryver poteva essere visto ogni giorno emergere dal letto di parrucche, come un grande girasole che si fa strada verso il sole tra un fitto giardino pieno di compagni appariscenti.
Una volta era stato notato al Bar che mentre il signor Stryver era un uomo loquace e senza scrupoli, pronto e audace, non aveva quella capacità di estrarre l’essenza da una pila di dichiarazioni, che è tra le più sorprendenti e necessarie delle doti dell’avvocato. Ma in lui si manifestò un notevole miglioramento riguardo a questo aspetto. Più lavoro otteneva, maggiore sembrava crescere il suo potere di arrivare al midollo; e per quanto tardi sedesse a festeggiare con Sydney Carton di notte, aveva sempre i suoi punti a portata di mano la mattina.
Sydney Carton, l’uomo più ozioso e senza prospettive, era il grande alleato di Stryver. Quello che i due bevevano insieme tra la sessione di gennaio e quella di ottobre avrebbe potuto far galleggiare una nave del re. Stryver non aveva mai un caso in corso, da nessuna parte, ma Carton c’era sempre, con le mani nelle tasche, a fissare il soffitto della corte; facevano lo stesso circuito e anche lì prolungavano fino a notte fonda i loro soliti eccessi, e si diceva che Carton fosse stato visto in pieno giorno tornare furtivamente e barcollando nella sua stanza, come un gatto scapestrato. Alla fine cominciò a circolare tra coloro che erano interessati alla questione l’idea che sebbene Sydney Carton non sarebbe mai diventato un leone, era un incredibilmente bravo giaguaro, e che prestava servizio a Stryver in quella umile veste.
«Le dieci, signore», disse l’uomo della locanda, a cui aveva chiesto di svegliarlo — «le dieci, signore».
“Qual è il problema?”
«Le dieci in punto, signore».
“Cosa intendete dire? Le dieci di sera?”
«Sì, signore. Il vostro onore mi ha detto di chiamarvi».
“Ah! Ricordo. Benissimo, benissimo.”
Dopo alcuni deboli tentativi di riaddormentarsi, che l’uomo combatté abilmente continuando a ravvivare il fuoco per cinque minuti, si alzò, si mise il cappello e uscì. S’incamminò verso il Temple e, dopo essersi rianimato camminando due volte sui marciapiedi di King’s Bench-walk e Paper-buildings, entrò negli studi di Stryver.
Il commesso di Stryver, che non partecipava mai a queste riunioni, era tornato a casa, e il principale di Stryver aprì la porta. Aveva le pantofole ai piedi e una vestaglia larga, e la gola nuda per maggiore comodità. Attorno agli occhi aveva quella specie di segno selvaggio, teso, bruciato che si può osservare in tutti i libertini della sua classe, dal ritratto di Jeffries in poi, e che si può rintracciare sotto varie maschere dell’Arte nei ritratti di ogni Età del Bere.
“Sei un po’ in ritardo, Memoria”, disse Stryver.
«Verso l’ora solita; potrebbe essere un quarto d’ora più tardi.»
Entrarono in una stanza squallida tappezzata di libri e ingombra di carte, dove ardeva un fuoco. Sul focolare bolliva un bollitore, e tra il caos delle carte un tavolo splendeva, con abbondanza di vino sopra, e brandy, e rum, e zucchero, e limoni.
“Hai già bevuto la tua bottiglia, vedo, Sydney.”
«Due stanotte, credo. Ho cenato con il cliente del giorno; o l’ho visto cenare: è la stessa cosa!»
«Questo è stato un punto raro, Sydney, quello che hai portato in aiuto dell’identificazione. Come l’hai scoperto? Quando ti ha colpito?»
«Pensavo che fosse un tipo piuttosto bello e pensavo di essere stato più o meno lo stesso tipo di ragazzo se avessi avuto fortuna.»
Il signor Stryver rise fino a scuotere il suo precoce pancione.
“Tu e la tua fortuna, Sydney! Mettiti al lavoro, mettiti al lavoro.”
Con aria malcontenta, lo sciacallo si sbottonò gli abiti, entrò in una stanza attigua e tornò con un grande brocca di acqua fredda, un catino e uno o due asciugamani. Imbevuti gli asciugamani nell’acqua, li strizzò parzialmente e se li avvolse intorno alla testa in modo orribile a vedersi, si sedette al tavolo e disse: «Ora sono pronto!»
«Non c’è molto da fare stasera, stasera, Memoria», disse allegro il signor Stryver mentre frugava tra i suoi documenti.
“Quanto?”
“Solo due paia di loro.”
“Dammi il peggio per primo.”
«Eccoli lì, Sydney. Sparate!»
Il leone si sistemò quindi supino su un divano da una parte del tavolo delle libagioni, mentre il ghepardo sedeva al suo tavolo, ingombro di carte, dall’altra parte dello stesso, con le bottiglie e i bicchieri pronti a portata di mano. Entrambi si servivano abbondantemente dal tavolo delle libagioni, ma in modi diversi: il leone per lo più era disteso con le mani sui fianchi, fissando il fuoco, o di tanto in tanto flirtando con qualche documento più leggero; il ghepardo invece, aggrottando la fronte e concentrato, era così assorto nel suo compito che i suoi occhi non seguivano nemmeno la mano che allungava per prendere il bicchiere, che spesso brancolava in cerca del calice da portare alle labbra per un minuto o più. Due o tre volte, la questione divenne così intricata che al ghepardo parve necessario alzarsi e bagnare di nuovo i suoi asciugamani. Da questi pellegrinaggi all’acquaio, tornava con capi d’abbigliamento umidi in forme eccentriche indescrivibili; resi ancor più ridicoli dalla sua ansiosa serietà.
At length the jackal had got together a compact repast for the lion, and proceeded to offer it to him. The lion took it with care and caution, made his selections from it, and his remarks upon it, and the jackal assisted both. When the repast was fully discussed, the lion put his hands in his waistband again, and lay down to meditate. The jackal then invigorated himself with a bumper for his throttle, and a fresh application to his head, and applied himself to the collection of a second meal; this was administered to the lion in the same manner, and was not disposed of until the clocks struck three in the morning.
“And now we have done, Sydney, fill a bumper of punch,” said Mr. Stryver.
The jackal removed the towels from his head, which had been steaming again, shook himself, yawned, shivered, and complied.
“You were very sound, Sydney, in the matter of those crown witnesses to-day. Every question told.”
“I always am sound; am I not?”
“I don’t gainsay it. What has roughened your temper? Put some punch to it and smooth it again.”
With a deprecatory grunt, the jackal again complied.
“The old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School,” said Stryver, nodding his head over him as he reviewed him in the present and the past, “the old seesaw Sydney. Up one minute and down the next; now in spirits and now in despondency!”
“Ah!” returned the other, sighing: “yes! The same Sydney, with the same luck. Even then, I did exercises for other boys, and seldom did my own.”
“And why not?”
“God knows. It was my way, I suppose.”
He sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out before him, looking at the fire.
“Carton,” said his friend, squaring himself at him with a bullying air, as if the fire-grate had been the furnace in which sustained endeavour was forged, and the one delicate thing to be done for the old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School was to shoulder him into it, “your way is, and always was, a lame way. You summon no energy and purpose. Look at me.”
“Oh, botheration!” returned Sydney, with a lighter and more good-humoured laugh, “don’t you be moral!”
“How have I done what I have done?” said Stryver; “how do I do what I do?”
“Partly through paying me to help you, I suppose. But it’s not worth your while to apostrophise me, or the air, about it; what you want to do, you do. You were always in the front rank, and I was always behind.”
“I had to get into the front rank; I was not born there, was I?”
“I was not present at the ceremony; but my opinion is you were,” said Carton. At this, he laughed again, and they both laughed.
“Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury, and ever since Shrewsbury,” pursued Carton, “you have fallen into your rank, and I have fallen into mine. Even when we were fellow-students in the Student-Quarter of Paris, picking up French, and French law, and other French crumbs that we didn’t get much good of, you were always somewhere, and I was always nowhere.”
“And whose fault was that?”
“Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours. You were always driving and riving and shouldering and passing, to that restless degree that I had no chance for my life but in rust and repose. It’s a gloomy thing, however, to talk about one’s own past, with the day breaking. Turn me in some other direction before I go.”
“Well then! Pledge me to the pretty witness,” said Stryver, holding up his glass. “Are you turned in a pleasant direction?”
Apparently not, for he became gloomy again.
“Pretty witness,” he muttered, looking down into his glass. “I have had enough of witnesses to-day and to-night; who’s your pretty witness?”
“The picturesque doctor’s daughter, Miss Manette.”
“She pretty?”
“Is she not?”
“No.”
“Why, man alive, she was the admiration of the whole Court!”
“Rot the admiration of the whole Court! Who made the Old Bailey a judge of beauty? She was a golden-haired doll!”
“Do you know, Sydney,” said Mr. Stryver, looking at him with sharp eyes, and slowly drawing a hand across his florid face: “do you know, I rather thought, at the time, that you sympathised with the golden-haired doll, and were quick to see what happened to the golden-haired doll?”
“Quick to see what happened! If a girl, doll or no doll, swoons within a yard or two of a man’s nose, he can see it without a perspective-glass. I pledge you, but I deny the beauty. And now I’ll have no more drink; I’ll get to bed.”
When his host followed him out on the staircase with a candle, to light him down the stairs, the day was coldly looking in through its grimy windows. When he got out of the house, the air was cold and sad, the dull sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole scene like a lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning round and round before the morning blast, as if the desert-sand had risen far away, and the first spray of it in its advance had begun to overwhelm the city.
Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears.
Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.
Alla fine lo sciacallo aveva preparato un pasto sostanzioso per il leone, e procedette a offrirglielo. Il leone lo prese con cura e cautela, fece le sue selezioni e i suoi commenti su di esso, mentre lo sciacallo lo assisteva in entrambe le cose. Quando il pasto fu completamente consumato, il leone si mise nuovamente le mani sui fianchi e si sdraiò per meditare. Lo sciacallo si rinforzò allora con un sorso di liquore per la gola e una nuova applicazione sulla testa, e si dedicò alla raccolta di un secondo pasto; questo fu somministrato al leone nello stesso modo, e non fu consumato fino a quando gli orologi suonarono le tre del mattino.
«E ora che abbiamo finito, Sydney, riempi un boccale di punch», disse il signor Stryver.
La iena si tolse gli asciugamani dalla testa che aveva ricominciato a sudare, si scosse, sbadigliò, rabbrividì e acconsentì.
«Oggi sei stato molto convincente, Sydney, riguardo a quei testimoni della corona. Ogni domanda ha avuto il suo effetto».
“Sono sempre in forma, no?”
«Non lo nego. Cosa ti ha reso così acido? Metti un po’ di succo in quella faccenda e rasserenati».
Con un grugnito di disapprovazione, il giaguaro acconsentì nuovamente.
“L’antico Sydney Carton della vecchia scuola di Shrewsbury”, disse Stryver, annuendo mentre lo esaminava nel presente e nel passato, “il vecchio Sydney che va su e giù. Su un minuto e giù quello dopo; ora in allegria e ora nella disperazione!”
«Ah!» rispose l’altro sospirando «sì! Lo stesso Sydney, con la stessa fortuna. Anche allora facevo i compiti per altri ragazzi e raramente quelli miei».
“E perché no?”
Dio lo sa. Era il mio modo, immagino.
Era seduto con le mani nelle tasche e le gambe distese davanti a sé, guardando il fuoco.
«Carton», disse il suo amico, piantandosi davanti a lui con aria prepotente, come se la grata del caminetto fosse stata la fornace in cui si forgia l’impegno costante e come se l’unica cosa delicata da fare per il vecchio Sydney Carton della vecchia scuola di Shrewsbury fosse spingerlo dentro, «la tua strada è e sempre è stata una strada zoppicante. Non riesci a trovare né energia né proposito. Guardami».
«Oh, piantala!» rispose Sydney con una risata più leggera e amichevole «non fare tu il morale!»
“Come ho fatto ciò che ho fatto?” disse Stryver; “come faccio ciò che faccio?”
«In parte perché mi pagate per aiutarvi, immagino. Ma non vale la pena che voi vi rivolgiate a me o all’aria aperta riguardo a questo; ciò che volete fare, lo fate. Siete sempre stato in prima linea e io sono sempre rimasto indietro».
“Dovevo raggiungere la prima fila; non ci sono nato, vero?”
«Non ero presente alla cerimonia; ma credo che tu ci fossi», disse Carton. A questo punto rise di nuovo e risero entrambi.
«Prima di Shrewsbury e a Shrewsbury e da allora in poi», continuò Carton, «tu sei scivolato nel tuo rango e io sono scivolato nel mio. Anche quando eravamo compagni di studi nel quartiere degli studenti di Parigi, imparando il francese, la legge francese e altri frammenti francesi che non ci portarono a molto, tu eri sempre da qualche parte e io ero sempre in nessun luogo.»
“E di chi era la colpa?”
«Per la mia anima, non sono sicuro che non fosse tua. Tu eri sempre lì a spingere e affrettarti e gomitarla e superare, fino a quel punto irrequieto che io non avevo speranza di vita se non nella ruggine e nel riposo. È comunque una cosa triste parlare del proprio passato con il giorno che sorge. Distogli i miei pensieri in qualche altra direzione prima che me ne vada.»
«Bene, allora! Brindiamo alla bella testimone», disse Stryver alzando il bicchiere. «Sei rivolto nella direzione giusta?»
Evidentemente no, perché tornò di nuovo cupo.
«Bella testimone», borbottò guardando nel suo bicchiere. «Ne ho avute abbastanza di testimoni oggi e stanotte; chi è la tua bella testimone?»
“La pittoresca figlia del dottore, Miss Manette.”
“Lei è carina?”
“Non lo è?”
“No.”
«Ma insomma, uomo di mondo, era l’ammirazione dell’intera Corte!»
«Che importa l’ammirazione di tutta la Corte! Chi ha fatto dell’Old Bailey un giudice della bellezza? Era una bambola dai capelli d’oro!»
«Sai una cosa, Sydney», disse il signor Stryver guardandolo con occhi penetranti e passandosi lentamente una mano sul suo florido viso: «sai una cosa, pensavo proprio che all’epoca tu simpatizzassi per la bambola dai capelli d’oro e fossi pronto a vedere quel che sarebbe successo alla bambola dai capelli d’oro?»
«Pronto a vedere cosa succede! Se una ragazza, bambola o non bambola, sviene a un metro dal naso di un uomo, lui può vederlo senza un cannocchiale. Vi do la mia parola, ma nego la bellezza. E ora non voglio più bere; andrò a letto».
Quando il suo ospite lo seguì fuori sulla scala con una candela per illuminargli la discesa, il giorno stava già guardando freddo attraverso le sue sporche finestre. Quando uscì dalla casa, l’aria era fredda e triste, il cielo opaco e nuvoloso, la fiume scura e fosca, tutta la scena come un deserto senza vita. E ghirlande di polvere ruotavano vorticosamente davanti alla folata mattutina, come se la sabbia del deserto fosse salita lontana e il primo spruzzo della sua avanzata avesse iniziato a sommergere la città.
Forze sprecate dentro di lui e un deserto tutto intorno, quest’uomo si fermò sul suo cammino attraverso una terrazza silenziosa e vide per un momento, disteso nel deserto davanti a sé, un miraggio di onorevole ambizione, auto-negazione e perseveranza. Nella splendida città di questa visione c’erano gallerie aeree da cui gli amori e le grazie lo guardavano, giardini in cui i frutti della vita pendevano maturando, acque di Speranza che scintillavano ai suoi occhi. Un momento, ed era sparito. Salendo fino a una camera alta in un pozzo di case, si gettò vestito sul letto trascurato e il suo cuscino fu bagnato dalle sprecate lacrime.
Tristemente, tristemente, il sole si levò; si levò su uno spettacolo non più triste di quello dell’uomo dalle buone capacità e dai sentimenti nobili, incapace di esercitarli in modo diretto, incapace di aiutarsi da sé e di trovare la propria felicità, consapevole del male che lo consumava e rassegnato a lasciare che lo divorasse.
CHAPTER VI. Hundreds of People
The quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a quiet street-corner not far from Soho-square. On the afternoon of a certain fine Sunday when the waves of four months had rolled over the trial for treason, and carried it, as to the public interest and memory, far out to sea, Mr. Jarvis Lorry walked along the sunny streets from Clerkenwell where he lived, on his way to dine with the Doctor. After several relapses into business-absorption, Mr. Lorry had become the Doctor’s friend, and the quiet street-corner was the sunny part of his life.
On this certain fine Sunday, Mr. Lorry walked towards Soho, early in the afternoon, for three reasons of habit. Firstly, because, on fine Sundays, he often walked out, before dinner, with the Doctor and Lucie; secondly, because, on unfavourable Sundays, he was accustomed to be with them as the family friend, talking, reading, looking out of window, and generally getting through the day; thirdly, because he happened to have his own little shrewd doubts to solve, and knew how the ways of the Doctor’s household pointed to that time as a likely time for solving them.
A quainter corner than the corner where the Doctor lived, was not to be found in London. There was no way through it, and the front windows of the Doctor’s lodgings commanded a pleasant little vista of street that had a congenial air of retirement on it. There were few buildings then, north of the Oxford-road, and forest-trees flourished, and wild flowers grew, and the hawthorn blossomed, in the now vanished fields. As a consequence, country airs circulated in Soho with vigorous freedom, instead of languishing into the parish like stray paupers without a settlement; and there was many a good south wall, not far off, on which the peaches ripened in their season.
The summer light struck into the corner brilliantly in the earlier part of the day; but, when the streets grew hot, the corner was in shadow, though not in shadow so remote but that you could see beyond it into a glare of brightness. It was a cool spot, staid but cheerful, a wonderful place for echoes, and a very harbour from the raging streets.
There ought to have been a tranquil bark in such an anchorage, and there was. The Doctor occupied two floors of a large stiff house, where several callings purported to be pursued by day, but whereof little was audible any day, and which was shunned by all of them at night. In a building at the back, attainable by a courtyard where a plane-tree rustled its green leaves, church-organs claimed to be made, and silver to be chased, and likewise gold to be beaten by some mysterious giant who had a golden arm starting out of the wall of the front hall—as if he had beaten himself precious, and menaced a similar conversion of all visitors. Very little of these trades, or of a lonely lodger rumoured to live up-stairs, or of a dim coach-trimming maker asserted to have a counting-house below, was ever heard or seen. Occasionally, a stray workman putting his coat on, traversed the hall, or a stranger peered about there, or a distant clink was heard across the courtyard, or a thump from the golden giant. These, however, were only the exceptions required to prove the rule that the sparrows in the plane-tree behind the house, and the echoes in the corner before it, had their own way from Sunday morning unto Saturday night.
Doctor Manette received such patients here as his old reputation, and its revival in the floating whispers of his story, brought him. His scientific knowledge, and his vigilance and skill in conducting ingenious experiments, brought him otherwise into moderate request, and he earned as much as he wanted.
These things were within Mr. Jarvis Lorry’s knowledge, thoughts, and notice, when he rang the door-bell of the tranquil house in the corner, on the fine Sunday afternoon.
“Doctor Manette at home?”
Expected home.
“Miss Lucie at home?”
Expected home.
“Miss Pross at home?”
Possibly at home, but of a certainty impossible for handmaid to anticipate intentions of Miss Pross, as to admission or denial of the fact.
“As I am at home myself,” said Mr. Lorry, “I’ll go upstairs.”
Although the Doctor’s daughter had known nothing of the country of her birth, she appeared to have innately derived from it that ability to make much of little means, which is one of its most useful and most agreeable characteristics. Simple as the furniture was, it was set off by so many little adornments, of no value but for their taste and fancy, that its effect was delightful. The disposition of everything in the rooms, from the largest object to the least; the arrangement of colours, the elegant variety and contrast obtained by thrift in trifles, by delicate hands, clear eyes, and good sense; were at once so pleasant in themselves, and so expressive of their originator, that, as Mr. Lorry stood looking about him, the very chairs and tables seemed to ask him, with something of that peculiar expression which he knew so well by this time, whether he approved?
There were three rooms on a floor, and, the doors by which they communicated being put open that the air might pass freely through them all, Mr. Lorry, smilingly observant of that fanciful resemblance which he detected all around him, walked from one to another. The first was the best room, and in it were Lucie’s birds, and flowers, and books, and desk, and work-table, and box of water-colours; the second was the Doctor’s consulting-room, used also as the dining-room; the third, changingly speckled by the rustle of the plane-tree in the yard, was the Doctor’s bedroom, and there, in a corner, stood the disused shoemaker’s bench and tray of tools, much as it had stood on the fifth floor of the dismal house by the wine-shop, in the suburb of Saint Antoine in Paris.
CAPITOLO VI. Centinaia di persone
Gli appartamenti tranquilli del dottor Manette si trovavano in un angolo di strada tranquillo non lontano da Soho-square. Nel pomeriggio di una certa bella domenica, quando le onde dei quattro mesi erano passate sul processo per tradimento e lo avevano portato, quanto all’interesse pubblico e alla memoria, lontano in mare aperto, il signor Jarvis Lorry camminava lungo le strade soleggiate da Clerkenwell dove viveva, diretto a pranzare dal dottore. Dopo diversi ricadimenti nell’assorbimento negli affari, il signor Lorry era diventato l’amico del dottore e l’angolo di strada tranquillo rappresentava la parte soleggiata della sua vita.
In questa certa bella domenica, il signor Lorry si diresse verso Soho nel primo pomeriggio per tre ragioni d’abitudine: in primo luogo perché, nelle belle domeniche, spesso usciva a passeggio prima di cena con il Dottore e Lucie; in secondo luogo perché, nelle domeniche poco favorevoli, era solito stare con loro come amico della famiglia, chiacchierando, leggendo, guardando fuori dalla finestra e passando la giornata in generale; in terzo luogo perché gli capitò di avere i suoi piccoli dubbi astuti da risolvere e sapeva come le abitudini della famiglia del Dottore indicassero quel momento come un momento probabile per risolverli.
Un angolo più pittoresco di quello dove viveva il Dottore non si trovava a Londra. Non c’era modo di attraversarlo e le finestre anteriori dell’alloggio del Dottore dominavano una piacevole piccola vista su una strada che aveva un’aria congeniale di ritiro. Allora, a nord della Oxford-road, c’erano pochi edifici e gli alberi della foresta fiorivano, crescevano i fiori selvatici e il biancospino sbocciava nei campi ormai scomparsi. Di conseguenza, le arie di campagna circolavano a Soho con vigorosa libertà, invece di languire nella parrocchia come poveri vagabondi senza un insediamento; e c’erano molte buone mura a sud, non lontane, su cui le pesche maturavano in stagione.
La luce dell’estate colpiva brillantemente l’angolo nella prima parte della giornata; ma quando le strade si riscaldavano, l’angolo era in ombra, sebbene non in un’ombra così remota da impedire di vedere oltre, in uno splendore di luminosità. Era un luogo fresco, sobrio ma allegro, un posto meraviglioso per gli echi e un vero rifugio dalle strade tumultuose.
Avrebbe dovuto esserci un tranquillo abbaiare in una simile rada, e c’era. Il Dottore occupava due piani di una grande e rigida casa, dove diverse professioni pretendevano di essere esercitate durante il giorno, ma delle quali poco si sentiva ogni giorno, e che veniva evitata da tutti loro alla notte. In un edificio sul retro, raggiungibile attraverso un cortile dove un platano frusciava le sue verdi foglie, si affermava che venissero costruiti organi da chiesa e lavorato l’argento, e allo stesso modo battuto l’oro da parte di qualche misterioso gigante che aveva un braccio d’oro sporgente dal muro dell’atrio—come se si fosse reso prezioso lui stesso, e minacciasse una simile conversione di tutti i visitatori. Si sentiva o si vedeva ben poco di questi mestieri, o di un solitario inquilino che si diceva vivesse al piano superiore, o di un oscuro imbottitore di carrozze che si affermava avesse una contabilità sottostante. Di tanto in tanto, un operaio smarrito che indossava il suo cappotto attraversava l’atrio, oppure uno straniero curiosava lì intorno, o si udiva un tintinnio distante oltre il cortile, o un tonfo dal gigante dorato. Tuttavia, questi erano solo le eccezioni necessarie a dimostrare la regola che i passeri nel platano dietro la casa, e gli echi nell’angolo davanti ad essa, avevano la loro strada da percorrere dalla domenica mattina fino alla sabato sera.
Dottor Manette riceveva qui i pazienti che la sua vecchia reputazione e il suo rinnovato interesse nei sussurri volanti della sua storia gli portavano. La sua conoscenza scientifica, e la sua vigilanza e abilità nel condurre esperimenti ingegnosi, lo resero altrimenti moderatamente richiesto, e guadagnava quanto voleva.
Queste cose erano nella conoscenza, nei pensieri e nell’attenzione del signor Jarvis Lorry quando suonò il campanello della tranquilla casa all’angolo, nel bel pomeriggio di domenica.
«Il dottor Manette è in casa?»
Attesa casa.
«La signorina Lucie è a casa?»
Attesa casa.
«La signorina Pross è in casa?»
Forse in casa, ma certamente impossibile per la cameriera anticipare le intenzioni di Miss Pross riguardo all’ammissione o alla negazione del fatto.
«Poiché sono a casa anch’io», disse il signor Lorry, «salirò di sopra».
Sebbene la figlia del dottore non avesse mai conosciuto il paese della sua nascita, sembrava averne tratto in modo innato quella capacità di fare molto con pochi mezzi, che è una delle sue caratteristiche più utili e piacevoli. Semplici come erano i mobili, venivano valorizzati da tanti piccoli ornamenti, privi di valore se non per il gusto e la fantasia, tanto che l’effetto era delizioso. La disposizione di tutto nelle stanze, dal più grande oggetto al più piccolo; l’arrangiamento dei colori, l’elegante varietà e contrasto ottenuti con parsimonia nei dettagli, da mani delicate, occhi limpidi e buon senso; erano allo stesso tempo così piacevoli in sé e così espressivi del loro creatore, che mentre il signor Lorry si guardava intorno, anche le sedie e i tavoli sembravano chiedergli, con qualcosa di quell’espressione particolare che lui conosceva così bene a questa ora, se approvasse?
C’erano tre stanze per piano e, le porte che le mettevano in comunicazione essendo aperte perché l’aria potesse circolare liberamente tra tutte, il signor Lorry, sorridendo osservando quella somiglianza fantasiosa che notava dappertutto intorno a sé, passò da una all’altra. La prima era la stanza migliore e in essa c’erano gli uccelli di Lucie, i suoi fiori, libri, scrivania, tavolo da lavoro e un set di colori a acquerello; la seconda era lo studio del dottore, usato anche come sala da pranzo; la terza, macchiata in modo mutevole dal fruscio dell’ippocastano nel cortile, era la camera da letto del dottore e lì, in un angolo, c’erano il banco da calzolaio disusato e il vassoio degli attrezzi, quasi nello stesso stato in cui si trovavano al quinto piano della tetra casa vicino alla vendita di vini, nella periferia di Saint Antoine a Parigi.
“I wonder,” said Mr. Lorry, pausing in his looking about, “that he keeps that reminder of his sufferings about him!”
“And why wonder at that?” was the abrupt inquiry that made him start.
It proceeded from Miss Pross, the wild red woman, strong of hand, whose acquaintance he had first made at the Royal George Hotel at Dover, and had since improved.
“I should have thought—” Mr. Lorry began.
“Pooh! You’d have thought!” said Miss Pross; and Mr. Lorry left off.
“How do you do?” inquired that lady then—sharply, and yet as if to express that she bore him no malice.
“I am pretty well, I thank you,” answered Mr. Lorry, with meekness; “how are you?”
“Nothing to boast of,” said Miss Pross.
“Indeed?”
“Ah! indeed!” said Miss Pross. “I am very much put out about my Ladybird.”
“Indeed?”
“For gracious sake say something else besides ‘indeed,’ or you’ll fidget me to death,” said Miss Pross: whose character (dissociated from stature) was shortness.
“Really, then?” said Mr. Lorry, as an amendment.
“Really, is bad enough,” returned Miss Pross, “but better. Yes, I am very much put out.”
“May I ask the cause?”
“I don’t want dozens of people who are not at all worthy of Ladybird, to come here looking after her,” said Miss Pross.
“Do dozens come for that purpose?”
“Hundreds,” said Miss Pross.
It was characteristic of this lady (as of some other people before her time and since) that whenever her original proposition was questioned, she exaggerated it.
“Dear me!” said Mr. Lorry, as the safest remark he could think of.
“I have lived with the darling—or the darling has lived with me, and paid me for it; which she certainly should never have done, you may take your affidavit, if I could have afforded to keep either myself or her for nothing—since she was ten years old. And it’s really very hard,” said Miss Pross.
Not seeing with precision what was very hard, Mr. Lorry shook his head; using that important part of himself as a sort of fairy cloak that would fit anything.
“All sorts of people who are not in the least degree worthy of the pet, are always turning up,” said Miss Pross. “When you began it—”
“I began it, Miss Pross?”
“Didn’t you? Who brought her father to life?”
“Oh! If that was beginning it—” said Mr. Lorry.
“It wasn’t ending it, I suppose? I say, when you began it, it was hard enough; not that I have any fault to find with Doctor Manette, except that he is not worthy of such a daughter, which is no imputation on him, for it was not to be expected that anybody should be, under any circumstances. But it really is doubly and trebly hard to have crowds and multitudes of people turning up after him (I could have forgiven him), to take Ladybird’s affections away from me.”
Mr. Lorry knew Miss Pross to be very jealous, but he also knew her by this time to be, beneath the service of her eccentricity, one of those unselfish creatures—found only among women—who will, for pure love and admiration, bind themselves willing slaves, to youth when they have lost it, to beauty that they never had, to accomplishments that they were never fortunate enough to gain, to bright hopes that never shone upon their own sombre lives. He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart; so rendered and so free from any mercenary taint, he had such an exalted respect for it, that in the retributive arrangements made by his own mind—we all make such arrangements, more or less—he stationed Miss Pross much nearer to the lower Angels than many ladies immeasurably better got up both by Nature and Art, who had balances at Tellson’s.
“There never was, nor will be, but one man worthy of Ladybird,” said Miss Pross; “and that was my brother Solomon, if he hadn’t made a mistake in life.”
Here again: Mr. Lorry’s inquiries into Miss Pross’s personal history had established the fact that her brother Solomon was a heartless scoundrel who had stripped her of everything she possessed, as a stake to speculate with, and had abandoned her in her poverty for evermore, with no touch of compunction. Miss Pross’s fidelity of belief in Solomon (deducting a mere trifle for this slight mistake) was quite a serious matter with Mr. Lorry, and had its weight in his good opinion of her.
“As we happen to be alone for the moment, and are both people of business,” he said, when they had got back to the drawing-room and had sat down there in friendly relations, “let me ask you—does the Doctor, in talking with Lucie, never refer to the shoemaking time, yet?”
“Never.”
“And yet keeps that bench and those tools beside him?”
“Ah!” returned Miss Pross, shaking her head. “But I don’t say he don’t refer to it within himself.”
“Do you believe that he thinks of it much?”
“I do,” said Miss Pross.
“Do you imagine—” Mr. Lorry had begun, when Miss Pross took him up short with:
“Never imagine anything. Have no imagination at all.”
“I stand corrected; do you suppose—you go so far as to suppose, sometimes?”
“Now and then,” said Miss Pross.
“Do you suppose,” Mr. Lorry went on, with a laughing twinkle in his bright eye, as it looked kindly at her, “that Doctor Manette has any theory of his own, preserved through all those years, relative to the cause of his being so oppressed; perhaps, even to the name of his oppressor?”
“I don’t suppose anything about it but what Ladybird tells me.”
“And that is—?”
“That she thinks he has.”
“Now don’t be angry at my asking all these questions; because I am a mere dull man of business, and you are a woman of business.”
“Dull?” Miss Pross inquired, with placidity.
Rather wishing his modest adjective away, Mr. Lorry replied, “No, no, no. Surely not. To return to business:—Is it not remarkable that Doctor Manette, unquestionably innocent of any crime as we are all well assured he is, should never touch upon that question? I will not say with me, though he had business relations with me many years ago, and we are now intimate; I will say with the fair daughter to whom he is so devotedly attached, and who is so devotedly attached to him? Believe me, Miss Pross, I don’t approach the topic with you, out of curiosity, but out of zealous interest.”
“Mi chiedo,” disse il signor Lorry, interrompendo la sua ispezione, “che motivo abbia di tenere con sé quel promemoria delle sue sofferenze!”
“E perché meravigliarsi di questo?” fu l’improvvisa domanda che lo fece sobbalzare.
Proveniva da Miss Pross, la selvaggia donna dai capelli rossi e dalle mani forti, che aveva conosciuto per la prima volta all’Hotel Royal George di Dover e con cui poi era diventato più familiare.
«Avrei pensato —» cominciò il signor Lorry.
«Bah! Avreste pensato!» disse Miss Pross e il signor Lorry smise di parlare.
«Come state?» chiese allora quella signora - con tono brusco eppure come se volesse esprimere che non gli serbava alcun rancore.
“Sto abbastanza bene, grazie”, rispose il signor Lorry con umiltà, “e lei come sta?”.
«Niente di cui vantarsi», disse Miss Pross.
“Ah sì, davvero?”
«Ah! davvero!» disse Miss Pross. «Sono molto turbata per la mia Ladybird.»
“Ah sì, davvero?”
«Per amor del cielo, dica qualcosa di diverso da “sì”, o mi farà morire di noia», disse la signorina Pross, il cui carattere (a parte la statura) era piuttosto sbrigativo.
«Davvero?» disse il signor Lorry, come correzione.
«Davvero, è abbastanza brutto», rispose Miss Pross, «ma va meglio. Sì, sono molto contrariata».
Posso chiedere la ragione?
“Non voglio che una dozzina di persone che non sono affatto degne di Ladybird vengano qui a prendersi cura di lei”, disse la signorina Pross.
“Vengono davvero decine di persone per questo motivo?”
«Centinaia», disse la signorina Pross.
Era caratteristico di questa signora (come di altre persone prima del suo tempo e dopo) che ogni volta che la sua proposta originale veniva messa in discussione, lei la esagerava.
«Cielo!» disse il signor Lorry, come la cosa più prudente che gli venne in mente di dire.
«Ho vissuto con la cara bambina — o meglio, è stata lei a vivere con me e a pagarmi per questo; cosa che non avrebbe mai dovuto fare, ve lo giuro, se fossi riuscita a mantenermi da sola o a mantenerla senza nulla in cambio — fin da quando aveva dieci anni. E davvero è molto duro», disse Miss Pross.
Non vedendo con precisione cosa fosse molto difficile, il signor Lorry scosse la testa, usando quella parte importante di sé come una specie di mantello fatato che si adattasse a tutto.
«Tutte le sorta di persone che non meritano affatto il vostro affetto, compaiono sempre», disse Miss Pross. «Quando avete iniziato, »
«Io ho iniziato io, signorina Pross?»
Non l’hai fatto tu? Chi ha riportato in vita suo padre?
«Oh! Se quello era l’inizio, » disse il signor Lorry.
«Non era che finisse lì, immagino? Dico, quando hai iniziato, è stato già abbastanza difficile; non che io abbia nulla da ridire su dottor Manette, se non che non è degno di una figlia del genere, il che però non gli fa alcun torto, perché era prevedibile che nessuno lo fosse, in nessuna circostanza. Ma è davvero doppiamente e triplamente difficile dover sopportare che folle e moltitudini di persone si mettano a seguirlo (gli avrei potuto perdonare), portando via l’affetto della mia Ladybird».
Il signor Lorry sapeva che la signorina Pross era molto gelosa, ma conosceva ormai da tempo sufficiente anche il suo carattere eccentrico e sapeva che era una di quelle creature altruiste - esclusiva prerogativa del gentil sesso - le quali per puro amore e ammirazione si fanno volentieri schiave della giovinezza, quando l’hanno perduta, della bellezza che non hanno mai avuto, delle doti che non sono state abbastanza fortunate da possedere, di luminose speranze che non hanno mai rischiarato le loro tetre esistenze. Conosceva abbastanza il mondo per sapere che in esso non c’è nulla di meglio del servizio fedele reso dal cuore; così disinteressato e libero da ogni traccia mercenaria, nutriva un rispetto tanto elevato per tale sentimento che nei piani retributivi elaborati dalla sua mente - tutti noi ne abbiamo, più o meno - collocava la signorina Pross molto più vicino agli angeli minori di molte dame infinitamente meglio attrezzate sia dalla Natura che dall’Arte e che avevano conti aperti presso la Tellson.
«Non è mai esistito e non esisterà che un solo uomo degno di Ladybird», disse Miss Pross; «e quello era mio fratello Salomone, se non avesse fatto uno sbaglio nella vita.»
Ecco di nuovo: le indagini del signor Lorry sulla signorina Pross avevano stabilito il fatto che suo fratello Salomone era un farabutto senza cuore che l’aveva spogliata di tutto ciò che possedeva, come una posta da speculare, e l’aveva abbandonata nella sua povertà per sempre, senza alcun rimorso. La fedeltà della signorina Pross nel credere in Salomone (deducendo un semplice nonnulla per questo piccolo errore) era una questione piuttosto seria per il signor Lorry e aveva il suo peso nella sua buona opinione di lei.
«Poiché ci troviamo per il momento soli e siamo entrambi persone di affari», disse quando furono tornati nel salotto e vi si erano seduti in buoni rapporti, «permettetemi di chiedervi: il dottore, parlando con Lucie, non fa mai riferimento al periodo della fabbricazione delle scarpe, ancora?»
“Mai.”
“Eppure mantiene quella panca e quegli attrezzi accanto a sé?”
“Ah!” rispose Miss Pross scuotendo la testa. “Ma non dico che non ci pensi dentro di sé.”
“Pensi che ci pensi spesso?”
«Lo faccio», disse Miss Pross.
«Immaginate forse —» aveva cominciato il signor Lorry quando la signorina Pross lo interruppe bruscamente con:
«Non immaginare mai nulla. Non avere alcuna immaginazione.»
“Mi correggo; pensi, arrivi a pensare, talvolta?”
«Di tanto in tanto», disse Miss Pross.
«Supponete», continuò il signor Lorry con un luccichio di riso negli occhi lucenti mentre la guardava benevolo, «che il dottor Manette abbia qualche teoria tutta sua, conservata attraverso tutti quegli anni, relativa alla causa della sua oppressione; forse addirittura al nome del suo oppressore?»
“Non suppongo nulla al riguardo se non quello che mi dice Ladybird.”
“E questo è,?”
“Pensa che lui l’abbia fatto.”
«Ora non arrabbiatevi per tutte queste domande che vi faccio; perché io sono un semplice uomo d’affari poco perspicace e voi siete una donna d’affari.»
«Noioso?» chiese Miss Pross, con calma.
Mr. Lorry avrebbe voluto ritirare il suo modesto aggettivo e rispose: «No, no, no. Certo che no. Tornando agli affari:—Non è strano che il dottor Manette, indubbiamente innocente di qualsiasi crimine come siamo tutti ben certi che sia, non tocchi mai quel discorso? Non dirò con me, sebbene avesse rapporti d’affari con me molti anni fa e ora siamo intimi; ma lo dico con la gentile figlia alla quale è così devotamente legato e che è così devotamente legata a lui. Credetemi, Miss Pross, non affronto l’argomento con voi per curiosità, ma per sincero interesse».
“Well! To the best of my understanding, and bad’s the best, you’ll tell me,” said Miss Pross, softened by the tone of the apology, “he is afraid of the whole subject.”
“Afraid?”
“It’s plain enough, I should think, why he may be. It’s a dreadful remembrance. Besides that, his loss of himself grew out of it. Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again. That alone wouldn’t make the subject pleasant, I should think.”
It was a profounder remark than Mr. Lorry had looked for. “True,” said he, “and fearful to reflect upon. Yet, a doubt lurks in my mind, Miss Pross, whether it is good for Doctor Manette to have that suppression always shut up within him. Indeed, it is this doubt and the uneasiness it sometimes causes me that has led me to our present confidence.”
“Can’t be helped,” said Miss Pross, shaking her head. “Touch that string, and he instantly changes for the worse. Better leave it alone. In short, must leave it alone, like or no like. Sometimes, he gets up in the dead of the night, and will be heard, by us overhead there, walking up and down, walking up and down, in his room. Ladybird has learnt to know then that his mind is walking up and down, walking up and down, in his old prison. She hurries to him, and they go on together, walking up and down, walking up and down, until he is composed. But he never says a word of the true reason of his restlessness, to her, and she finds it best not to hint at it to him. In silence they go walking up and down together, walking up and down together, till her love and company have brought him to himself.”
Notwithstanding Miss Pross’s denial of her own imagination, there was a perception of the pain of being monotonously haunted by one sad idea, in her repetition of the phrase, walking up and down, which testified to her possessing such a thing.
The corner has been mentioned as a wonderful corner for echoes; it had begun to echo so resoundingly to the tread of coming feet, that it seemed as though the very mention of that weary pacing to and fro had set it going.
“Here they are!” said Miss Pross, rising to break up the conference; “and now we shall have hundreds of people pretty soon!”
It was such a curious corner in its acoustical properties, such a peculiar Ear of a place, that as Mr. Lorry stood at the open window, looking for the father and daughter whose steps he heard, he fancied they would never approach. Not only would the echoes die away, as though the steps had gone; but, echoes of other steps that never came would be heard in their stead, and would die away for good when they seemed close at hand. However, father and daughter did at last appear, and Miss Pross was ready at the street door to receive them.
Miss Pross was a pleasant sight, albeit wild, and red, and grim, taking off her darling’s bonnet when she came up-stairs, and touching it up with the ends of her handkerchief, and blowing the dust off it, and folding her mantle ready for laying by, and smoothing her rich hair with as much pride as she could possibly have taken in her own hair if she had been the vainest and handsomest of women. Her darling was a pleasant sight too, embracing her and thanking her, and protesting against her taking so much trouble for her—which last she only dared to do playfully, or Miss Pross, sorely hurt, would have retired to her own chamber and cried. The Doctor was a pleasant sight too, looking on at them, and telling Miss Pross how she spoilt Lucie, in accents and with eyes that had as much spoiling in them as Miss Pross had, and would have had more if it were possible. Mr. Lorry was a pleasant sight too, beaming at all this in his little wig, and thanking his bachelor stars for having lighted him in his declining years to a Home. But, no Hundreds of people came to see the sights, and Mr. Lorry looked in vain for the fulfilment of Miss Pross’s prediction.
Dinner-time, and still no Hundreds of people. In the arrangements of the little household, Miss Pross took charge of the lower regions, and always acquitted herself marvellously. Her dinners, of a very modest quality, were so well cooked and so well served, and so neat in their contrivances, half English and half French, that nothing could be better. Miss Pross’s friendship being of the thoroughly practical kind, she had ravaged Soho and the adjacent provinces, in search of impoverished French, who, tempted by shillings and half-crowns, would impart culinary mysteries to her. From these decayed sons and daughters of Gaul, she had acquired such wonderful arts, that the woman and girl who formed the staff of domestics regarded her as quite a Sorceress, or Cinderella’s Godmother: who would send out for a fowl, a rabbit, a vegetable or two from the garden, and change them into anything she pleased.
On Sundays, Miss Pross dined at the Doctor’s table, but on other days persisted in taking her meals at unknown periods, either in the lower regions, or in her own room on the second floor—a blue chamber, to which no one but her Ladybird ever gained admittance. On this occasion, Miss Pross, responding to Ladybird’s pleasant face and pleasant efforts to please her, unbent exceedingly; so the dinner was very pleasant, too.
It was an oppressive day, and, after dinner, Lucie proposed that the wine should be carried out under the plane-tree, and they should sit there in the air. As everything turned upon her, and revolved about her, they went out under the plane-tree, and she carried the wine down for the special benefit of Mr. Lorry. She had installed herself, some time before, as Mr. Lorry’s cup-bearer; and while they sat under the plane-tree, talking, she kept his glass replenished. Mysterious backs and ends of houses peeped at them as they talked, and the plane-tree whispered to them in its own way above their heads.
«Bene! Per quel che ne so io, e peggio non c’è, me lo direte voi», disse Miss Pross, ammorbidita dal tono delle scuse, «che lui ha paura di tutto l’argomento.»
“Spaventato?”
«Mi sembra abbastanza chiaro perché potrebbe esserlo. È un ricordo terribile. Inoltre, la sua perdita di sé ne è derivata. Non sapendo come si sia perso o come si sia ritrovato, non potrà mai sentirsi sicuro di non perdersi ancora una volta. Questo da solo non renderebbe l’argomento piacevole, credo».
Era un’osservazione più profonda di quanto il signor Lorry si aspettasse. “È vero,” disse, “e terribile da rifletterci. Eppure, una dubbio mi assilla, Miss Pross: se sia bene per il Dottor Manette avere quella soppressione sempre rinchiusa dentro di sé. In effetti, è questo dubbio e l’inquietudine che a volte mi causa che mi hanno portato alla nostra attuale confidenza.”
«Non si può fare nulla», disse Miss Pross, scuotendo la testa. «Se tocchi quella corda, lui cambia subito in peggio. Meglio lasciar perdere. Insomma, bisogna lasciar perdere, che ci piaccia o no. A volte si alza nel cuore della notte, e noi lo sentiamo camminare avanti e indietro, avanti e indietro, nella sua stanza. Ladybird ha imparato a capire allora che la sua mente sta camminando avanti e indietro, avanti e indietro, nella sua vecchia prigione. Lei corre da lui, e vanno avanti insieme, camminando su e giù, su e giù, finché non si è calmato. Ma lui non dice mai una parola della vera ragione del suo inquietudine a lei, e lei trova meglio non accennarci con lui. Nel silenzio vanno camminando avanti e indietro insieme, avanti e indietro insieme, finché il suo amore e la sua compagnia lo hanno riportato a sé».
Nonostante il diniego della signorina Pross riguardo alla propria immaginazione, si percepiva la sofferenza di essere monotamente ossessionati da un’unica triste idea, nella ripetizione della frase mentre camminava avanti e indietro, il che testimoniava che possedeva una cosa del genere.
Si è già parlato di questo angolo come un luogo meraviglioso per gli echi; aveva iniziato a risuonare così fragorosamente al passo dei piedi che si avvicinavano, che sembrava quasi che il solo accenno a quel faticoso andirivieni lo avesse messo in moto.
«Eccoli qui!» disse Miss Pross, alzandosi per sciogliere la riunione; «e ora avremo a breve centinaia di persone!»
Era un angolo così curioso per le sue proprietà acustiche, un posto con un orecchio così peculiare, che mentre il signor Lorry stava alla finestra aperta, aspettando di vedere il padre e la figlia i cui passi sentiva avvicinarsi, immaginò che non sarebbero mai arrivati. Non solo gli echi svanivano come se i passi si fossero allontanati; ma al loro posto si udivano echi di altri passi che non giungevano mai, e questi a loro volta svanivano definitivamente quando sembravano vicinissimi. Tuttavia alla fine padre e figlia apparvero, e Miss Pross era pronta sulla porta d’ingresso per accoglierli.
Miss Pross era una vista piacevole, sebbene selvaggia, rossa e severa, quando toglieva il cappello alla sua adorata figlia salendo le scale, lo sistemava con gli angoli del suo fazzoletto, soffiava via la polvere e ripiegava il mantello pronto per essere messo da parte, lisciando i suoi ricci capelli con altrettanto orgoglio quanto ne avrebbe potuto provare per i propri se fosse stata la donna più vanitosa e bella del mondo. Anche la sua adorata figlia era una vista piacevole, abbracciandola e ringraziandola, protestando contro il fatto che si desse così tanto da fare per lei — cosa che osava fare solo scherzando, altrimenti Miss Pross, profondamente offesa, sarebbe andata nella sua stanza a piangere. Anche il dottore era una vista piacevole, guardandoli e dicendo a Miss Pross quanto viziasse Lucie, con accenti e occhi che avevano in sé altrettanto viziare di quanta ne avesse Miss Pross, e forse ancora più se fosse stato possibile. Anche Mr. Lorry era una vista piacevole, irradiando gioia per tutto questo nella sua piccola parrucca, ringraziando le sue stelle da scapolo di averlo guidato negli anni del suo declino verso un casa. Ma non Centinaia di persone venivano a vedere lo spettacolo e Mr. Lorry cercava invano il compimento della profezia di Miss Pross.
È l’ora di cena e ancora non si vedono Centinaia di persone. Nelle disposizioni della piccola famiglia, la signorina Pross si occupava delle regioni inferiori ed era sempre straordinaria nel suo compito. Le sue cene, di qualità molto modesta, erano così ben cucinate e servite con tanta cura, e i suoi piatti, metà inglesi e metà francesi, erano così raffinati che non si poteva desiderare di meglio. L’amicizia della signorina Pross, essendo del tutto pratica, l’aveva spinta a saccheggiare Soho e le province limitrofe in cerca di francesi impoveriti che, tentati da scellini e mezzecorone, avrebbero potuto insegnarle i misteri della cucina. Da questi figli e figlie decaduti della Gallia aveva acquisito arti così meravigliose che la donna e la ragazza che componevano il personale domestico la consideravano una vera e propria Strega, o la Fata Madrina di Cenerentola: lei andava a prendere un pollo, un coniglio, uno o due ortaggi dal giardino e li trasformava in qualsiasi cosa le piacesse.
La domenica signorina Pross pranzava a casa del dottore, ma negli altri giorni insisteva nel prendere i suoi pasti in momenti imprecisati, o al piano terra o nella sua stanza al secondo piano: una camera blu alla quale nessuno tranne il suo Ladybird aveva mai accesso. In questa occasione signorina Pross, rispondendo ai modi amabili del suo Ladybird e ai suoi sforzi piacevoli per compiacerla, si distese notevolmente; così anche la cena fu molto piacevole.
Era una giornata opprimente e dopo pranzo Lucie propose di portare il vino sotto il platano e di sedersi lì all’aperto. Poiché tutto dipendeva da lei e ruotava attorno a lei, uscirono sotto il platano e lei portò giù il vino per il beneficio speciale del signor Lorry. Si era installata come coppiere del signor Lorry qualche tempo prima; e mentre sedevano sotto il platano a parlare, manteneva il suo bicchiere sempre pieno. Mentre parlavano, misteriosi retrostanti e fondi di case li spiavano e il platano sussurrava loro in modo tutto suo sopra le loro teste.
Still, the Hundreds of people did not present themselves. Mr. Darnay presented himself while they were sitting under the plane-tree, but he was only One.
Doctor Manette received him kindly, and so did Lucie. But, Miss Pross suddenly became afflicted with a twitching in the head and body, and retired into the house. She was not unfrequently the victim of this disorder, and she called it, in familiar conversation, “a fit of the jerks.”
The Doctor was in his best condition, and looked specially young. The resemblance between him and Lucie was very strong at such times, and as they sat side by side, she leaning on his shoulder, and he resting his arm on the back of her chair, it was very agreeable to trace the likeness.
He had been talking all day, on many subjects, and with unusual vivacity. “Pray, Doctor Manette,” said Mr. Darnay, as they sat under the plane-tree—and he said it in the natural pursuit of the topic in hand, which happened to be the old buildings of London—“have you seen much of the Tower?”
“Lucie and I have been there; but only casually. We have seen enough of it, to know that it teems with interest; little more.”
“I have been there, as you remember,” said Darnay, with a smile, though reddening a little angrily, “in another character, and not in a character that gives facilities for seeing much of it. They told me a curious thing when I was there.”
“What was that?” Lucie asked.
“In making some alterations, the workmen came upon an old dungeon, which had been, for many years, built up and forgotten. Every stone of its inner wall was covered by inscriptions which had been carved by prisoners—dates, names, complaints, and prayers. Upon a corner stone in an angle of the wall, one prisoner, who seemed to have gone to execution, had cut as his last work, three letters. They were done with some very poor instrument, and hurriedly, with an unsteady hand. At first, they were read as D. I. C.; but, on being more carefully examined, the last letter was found to be G. There was no record or legend of any prisoner with those initials, and many fruitless guesses were made what the name could have been. At length, it was suggested that the letters were not initials, but the complete word, DIG. The floor was examined very carefully under the inscription, and, in the earth beneath a stone, or tile, or some fragment of paving, were found the ashes of a paper, mingled with the ashes of a small leathern case or bag. What the unknown prisoner had written will never be read, but he had written something, and hidden it away to keep it from the gaoler.”
“My father,” exclaimed Lucie, “you are ill!”
He had suddenly started up, with his hand to his head. His manner and his look quite terrified them all.
“No, my dear, not ill. There are large drops of rain falling, and they made me start. We had better go in.”
He recovered himself almost instantly. Rain was really falling in large drops, and he showed the back of his hand with rain-drops on it. But, he said not a single word in reference to the discovery that had been told of, and, as they went into the house, the business eye of Mr. Lorry either detected, or fancied it detected, on his face, as it turned towards Charles Darnay, the same singular look that had been upon it when it turned towards him in the passages of the Court House.
He recovered himself so quickly, however, that Mr. Lorry had doubts of his business eye. The arm of the golden giant in the hall was not more steady than he was, when he stopped under it to remark to them that he was not yet proof against slight surprises (if he ever would be), and that the rain had startled him.
Tea-time, and Miss Pross making tea, with another fit of the jerks upon her, and yet no Hundreds of people. Mr. Carton had lounged in, but he made only Two.
The night was so very sultry, that although they sat with doors and windows open, they were overpowered by heat. When the tea-table was done with, they all moved to one of the windows, and looked out into the heavy twilight. Lucie sat by her father; Darnay sat beside her; Carton leaned against a window. The curtains were long and white, and some of the thunder-gusts that whirled into the corner, caught them up to the ceiling, and waved them like spectral wings.
“The rain-drops are still falling, large, heavy, and few,” said Doctor Manette. “It comes slowly.”
“It comes surely,” said Carton.
They spoke low, as people watching and waiting mostly do; as people in a dark room, watching and waiting for Lightning, always do.
There was a great hurry in the streets of people speeding away to get shelter before the storm broke; the wonderful corner for echoes resounded with the echoes of footsteps coming and going, yet not a footstep was there.
“A multitude of people, and yet a solitude!” said Darnay, when they had listened for a while.
“Is it not impressive, Mr. Darnay?” asked Lucie. “Sometimes, I have sat here of an evening, until I have fancied—but even the shade of a foolish fancy makes me shudder to-night, when all is so black and solemn—”
“Let us shudder too. We may know what it is.”
“It will seem nothing to you. Such whims are only impressive as we originate them, I think; they are not to be communicated. I have sometimes sat alone here of an evening, listening, until I have made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by-and-bye into our lives.”
“There is a great crowd coming one day into our lives, if that be so,” Sydney Carton struck in, in his moody way.
The footsteps were incessant, and the hurry of them became more and more rapid. The corner echoed and re-echoed with the tread of feet; some, as it seemed, under the windows; some, as it seemed, in the room; some coming, some going, some breaking off, some stopping altogether; all in the distant streets, and not one within sight.
“Are all these footsteps destined to come to all of us, Miss Manette, or are we to divide them among us?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Darnay; I told you it was a foolish fancy, but you asked for it. When I have yielded myself to it, I have been alone, and then I have imagined them the footsteps of the people who are to come into my life, and my father’s.”
“I take them into mine!” said Carton. “I ask no questions and make no stipulations. There is a great crowd bearing down upon us, Miss Manette, and I see them—by the Lightning.” He added the last words, after there had been a vivid flash which had shown him lounging in the window.
“And I hear them!” he added again, after a peal of thunder. “Here they come, fast, fierce, and furious!”
It was the rush and roar of rain that he typified, and it stopped him, for no voice could be heard in it. A memorable storm of thunder and lightning broke with that sweep of water, and there was not a moment’s interval in crash, and fire, and rain, until after the moon rose at midnight.
The great bell of Saint Paul’s was striking one in the cleared air, when Mr. Lorry, escorted by Jerry, high-booted and bearing a lantern, set forth on his return-passage to Clerkenwell. There were solitary patches of road on the way between Soho and Clerkenwell, and Mr. Lorry, mindful of foot-pads, always retained Jerry for this service: though it was usually performed a good two hours earlier.
“What a night it has been! Almost a night, Jerry,” said Mr. Lorry, “to bring the dead out of their graves.”
“I never see the night myself, master—nor yet I don’t expect to—what would do that,” answered Jerry.
“Good night, Mr. Carton,” said the man of business. “Good night, Mr. Darnay. Shall we ever see such a night again, together!”
Perhaps. Perhaps, see the great crowd of people with its rush and roar, bearing down upon them, too.
Eppure le centinaia di persone non si presentarono. Si presentò il signor Darnay mentre sedevano sotto il platano, ma era solo una persona.
Il dottor Manette lo accolse gentilmente e così fece Lucie. Ma la signorina Pross improvvisamente fu colpita da un tremito alla testa e al corpo, e si ritirò in casa. Non era raro che fosse vittima di questo disturbo, e lo chiamava, nelle conversazioni familiari, “un attacco di scosse”.
Il dottore era in ottima forma e aveva un’aria particolarmente giovane. In tali occasioni la somiglianza tra lui e Lucie era molto marcata, e mentre sedevano fianco a fianco, lei appoggiandosi alla sua spalla e lui con il braccio sullo schienale della sedia di lei, era davvero piacevole osservare tale somiglianza.
Aveva parlato tutto il giorno, su molti argomenti e con insolita vivacità. “La prego, dottor Manette,” disse Darnay mentre sedevano sotto l’albero di platano - e lo disse nel naturale proseguimento dell’argomento in discussione, che era appunto quello degli antichi edifici di Londra - “ha visitato molto la Torre?”
«Lucie ed io ci siamo stati; ma solo di passaggio. Abbiamo visto abbastanza per sapere che è pieno d’interesse; poco più».
«Io ci sono stato, come ricorderete», disse Darnay con un sorriso, pur arrossendo leggermente di rabbia, «in un altro ruolo e non in uno che offra la possibilità di vederne molto. Mi raccontarono una cosa curiosa quando ero lì».
«Che cos’era?» chiese Lucie.
“Nel fare alcune modifiche, gli operai scoprirono un vecchio sotterraneo che era stato murato e dimenticato per molti anni. Ogni pietra della sua parete interna era ricoperta da iscrizioni intagliate dai prigionieri: date, nomi, lamentele e preghiere. Su una pietra angolare in un angolo del muro, un prigioniero che sembrava essere stato giustiziato aveva inciso come suo ultimo lavoro tre lettere. Erano state fatte con uno strumento molto rudimentale e in fretta, con mano tremante. All’inizio si leggevano D.I.C.; ma, esaminandole più attentamente, l’ultima lettera risultò essere una G. Non c’erano registri o leggende di alcun prigioniero con quelle iniziali, e si fecero molte ipotesi infruttuose su quale potesse essere stato il nome. Alla fine, qualcuno suggerì che le lettere non fossero iniziali, ma la parola completa, SCAVA. Il pavimento fu esaminato molto attentamente sotto l’iscrizione, e, nella terra sotto una pietra o un mattone o qualche frammento di pavimentazione, furono trovate le ceneri di un foglio di carta mescolate con quelle di una piccola custodia o borsa in pelle. Quello che il prigioniero sconosciuto aveva scritto non sarà mai letto, ma aveva scritto qualcosa e lo aveva nascosto per tenerlo lontano dal carceriere.”
“Mio padre,” esclamò Lucie, “sei malato!”
Egli si era improvvisamente alzato in piedi, portandosi la mano alla testa. Il suo comportamento e il suo sguardo li terrorizzarono tutti quanti.
«No, mia cara, non sono malato. Stanno cadendo grosse gocce di pioggia e mi hanno fatto sobbalzare. È meglio che entriamo».
Si riprese quasi subito. La pioggia cadeva davvero a grosse gocce, e mostrò il dorso della mano con le gocce di pioggia sopra. Ma non disse una sola parola riguardo alla scoperta che gli era stata riferita, e mentre entravano nella casa, l’occhio attento del signor Lorry notò o credette di notare sul suo volto, quando si voltò verso Charles Darnay, lo stesso sguardo singolare che aveva avuto quando si era girato verso di lui nei corridoi della corte d’assise.
Si riprese però così rapidamente che il signor Lorry dubitò della sua capacità di giudizio commerciale. Il braccio del gigante dorato nell’atrio non era più saldo di lui, quando si fermò sotto di esso per osservare loro che non era ancora immune a piccoli spaventi (se mai lo sarebbe stato) e che la pioggia l’aveva colto impreparato.
È l’ora del tè e la signorina Pross sta preparando il tè con un altro attacco di scatti, eppure non ci sono Centinaia di persone. Il signor Carton è entrato in modo svogliato, ma sono solo Due.
La notte era così afosa che, nonostante sedessero con porte e finestre aperte, erano sopraffatti dal caldo. Quando ebbero finito di usare il tavolo da tè, tutti si spostarono a una delle finestre e guardarono fuori nel crepuscolo opprimente. Lucie sedeva accanto al padre; Darnay era seduto vicino a lei; Carton era appoggiato contro una finestra. Le tende erano lunghe e bianche, e alcune delle raffiche di vento che si insinuavano nell’angolo le sollevavano fino al soffitto, facendole sventolare come ali spettrali.
«Le gocce di pioggia continuano a cadere, grandi, pesanti e poche», disse il dottor Manette. «Arriva lentamente».
«Arriverà sicuramente», disse Carton.
Parlavano sottovoce, come fanno di solito le persone che osservano e attendono; come fanno sempre le persone in una stanza buia, che osservano e aspettano il fulmine.
C’era grande fretta nelle strade di persone che correvano via per mettersi al riparo prima che la tempesta scoppiasse; l’incredibile angolo dove gli echi risuonavano era pieno degli echi dei passi avanti e indietro, ma non c’era un solo passo.
“Una moltitudine di persone eppure una solitudine!”, disse Darnay dopo aver ascoltato per un po’.
“Non è impressionante, signor Darnay?” chiese Lucie. “A volte, sono rimasta seduta qui la sera fino a quando ho immaginato—ma anche l’ombra di un pensiero sciocco mi fa rabbrividire questa notte, quando tutto è così buio e solenne—”
“Anche noi tremiamo. Potremmo sapere cosa è.”
«Non vi sembrerà nulla di straordinario. Penso che tali capricci siano impressionanti solo quando li concepiamo noi; non si possono comunicare agli altri. A volte sono rimasto solo qui la sera, ad ascoltare, finché ho creduto che gli echi fossero quelli di tutti i passi che prima o poi entreranno nelle nostre vite».
«Un giorno una grande folla entrerà nelle nostre vite, se è così», Sydney Carton intervenne con il suo umore cupo.
I passi erano incessanti e la loro fretta divenne sempre più rapida. L’angolo risuonava e riecheggiava del rumore dei piedi; alcuni, a quanto sembrava, sotto le finestre; altri, a quanto pareva, nella stanza; alcuni che arrivavano, altri che partivano, alcuni che si interrompevano, altri che si fermavano del tutto; tutti nelle strade lontane e non uno in vista.
«Tutti questi passi sono destinati a venire da tutti noi, signorina Manette, o dovremo dividerceli?»
«Non lo so, signor Darnay; vi ho detto che era una sciocca fantasia, ma voi me l’avete chiesta. Quando mi sono abbandonata a essa, ero sola, e allora ho immaginato che fossero i passi delle persone che sarebbero entrate nella mia vita e in quella di mio padre».
“Li prendo io!” disse Carton. “Io non faccio domande e non pongo condizioni. C’è una grande folla che si avvicina, Miss Manette, e li vedo—per la luce del cielo.” Aggiunse queste ultime parole dopo che un lampo vivido gli aveva mostrato se stesso che si appoggiava alla finestra.
«E li sento!» aggiunse di nuovo dopo un tuono. «Eccoli che arrivano, veloci, feroci e furiosi!»
Era il fragore e l’impeto della pioggia che egli rappresentava, e lo fermò, perché in esso non si poteva udire alcuna voce. Una memorabile tempesta di tuoni e fulmini scoppiò con quell’onda d’acqua, e non ci fu un momento di tregua tra il boato, le fiamme e la pioggia fino a quando dopo la mezzanotte non sorse la luna.
La grande campana di San Paolo stava battendo l’una nell’aria limpida, quando il signor Lorry, scortato da Jerry, con gli alti stivali e una lanterna in mano, si mise in viaggio per tornare a Clerkenwell. C’erano tratti solitari di strada tra Soho e Clerkenwell, e il signor Lorry, preoccupato per i taglieggiatori, teneva sempre Jerry con sé per questo servizio: anche se di solito veniva svolto due ore prima.
“Che notte è stata questa! Quasi una notte, Jerry”, disse il signor Lorry, “da far uscire i morti dalle loro tombe”.
“Non vedo mai la notte, padrone — né mi aspetto di farlo — che cosa potrebbe farmi questo”, rispose Jerry.
«Buona notte, signor Carton», disse l’uomo d’affari. «Buona notte, signor Darnay. Rivedremo mai insieme una notte come questa!»
Forse. Forse, vedono anche loro la grande folla di persone con il suo afflusso e il suo fragore che li travolge.
CHAPTER VII. Monseigneur in Town
Monseigneur, one of the great lords in power at the Court, held his fortnightly reception in his grand hotel in Paris. Monseigneur was in his inner room, his sanctuary of sanctuaries, the Holiest of Holiests to the crowd of worshippers in the suite of rooms without. Monseigneur was about to take his chocolate. Monseigneur could swallow a great many things with ease, and was by some few sullen minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France; but, his morning’s chocolate could not so much as get into the throat of Monseigneur, without the aid of four strong men besides the Cook.
Yes. It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous decoration, and the Chief of them unable to exist with fewer than two gold watches in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the happy chocolate to Monseigneur’s lips. One lacquey carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presence; a second, milled and frothed the chocolate with the little instrument he bore for that function; a third, presented the favoured napkin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches), poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have died of two.
Monseigneur had been out at a little supper last night, where the Comedy and the Grand Opera were charmingly represented. Monseigneur was out at a little supper most nights, with fascinating company. So polite and so impressible was Monseigneur, that the Comedy and the Grand Opera had far more influence with him in the tiresome articles of state affairs and state secrets, than the needs of all France. A happy circumstance for France, as the like always is for all countries similarly favoured!—always was for England (by way of example), in the regretted days of the merry Stuart who sold it.
Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public business, which was, to let everything go on in its own way; of particular public business, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea that it must all go his way—tend to his own power and pocket. Of his pleasures, general and particular, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea, that the world was made for them. The text of his order (altered from the original by only a pronoun, which is not much) ran: “The earth and the fulness thereof are mine, saith Monseigneur.”
Yet, Monseigneur had slowly found that vulgar embarrassments crept into his affairs, both private and public; and he had, as to both classes of affairs, allied himself perforce with a Farmer-General. As to finances public, because Monseigneur could not make anything at all of them, and must consequently let them out to somebody who could; as to finances private, because Farmer-Generals were rich, and Monseigneur, after generations of great luxury and expense, was growing poor. Hence Monseigneur had taken his sister from a convent, while there was yet time to ward off the impending veil, the cheapest garment she could wear, and had bestowed her as a prize upon a very rich Farmer-General, poor in family. Which Farmer-General, carrying an appropriate cane with a golden apple on the top of it, was now among the company in the outer rooms, much prostrated before by mankind—always excepting superior mankind of the blood of Monseigneur, who, his own wife included, looked down upon him with the loftiest contempt.
A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty horses stood in his stables, twenty-four male domestics sat in his halls, six body-women waited on his wife. As one who pretended to do nothing but plunder and forage where he could, the Farmer-General—howsoever his matrimonial relations conduced to social morality—was at least the greatest reality among the personages who attended at the hotel of Monseigneur that day.
For, the rooms, though a beautiful scene to look at, and adorned with every device of decoration that the taste and skill of the time could achieve, were, in truth, not a sound business; considered with any reference to the scarecrows in the rags and nightcaps elsewhere (and not so far off, either, but that the watching towers of Notre Dame, almost equidistant from the two extremes, could see them both), they would have been an exceedingly uncomfortable business—if that could have been anybody’s business, at the house of Monseigneur. Military officers destitute of military knowledge; naval officers with no idea of a ship; civil officers without a notion of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics, of the worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives; all totally unfit for their several callings, all lying horribly in pretending to belong to them, but all nearly or remotely of the order of Monseigneur, and therefore foisted on all public employments from which anything was to be got; these were to be told off by the score and the score. People not immediately connected with Monseigneur or the State, yet equally unconnected with anything that was real, or with lives passed in travelling by any straight road to any true earthly end, were no less abundant. Doctors who made great fortunes out of dainty remedies for imaginary disorders that never existed, smiled upon their courtly patients in the ante-chambers of Monseigneur. Projectors who had discovered every kind of remedy for the little evils with which the State was touched, except the remedy of setting to work in earnest to root out a single sin, poured their distracting babble into any ears they could lay hold of, at the reception of Monseigneur. Unbelieving Philosophers who were remodelling the world with words, and making card-towers of Babel to scale the skies with, talked with Unbelieving Chemists who had an eye on the transmutation of metals, at this wonderful gathering accumulated by Monseigneur. Exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding, which was at that remarkable time—and has been since—to be known by its fruits of indifference to every natural subject of human interest, were in the most exemplary state of exhaustion, at the hotel of Monseigneur. Such homes had these various notabilities left behind them in the fine world of Paris, that the spies among the assembled devotees of Monseigneur—forming a goodly half of the polite company—would have found it hard to discover among the angels of that sphere one solitary wife, who, in her manners and appearance, owned to being a Mother. Indeed, except for the mere act of bringing a troublesome creature into this world—which does not go far towards the realisation of the name of mother—there was no such thing known to the fashion. Peasant women kept the unfashionable babies close, and brought them up, and charming grandmammas of sixty dressed and supped as at twenty.
CAPITOLO VII. Monseigneur in città
Monseigneur, uno dei grandi signori al potere alla Corte, teneva la sua ricezione quindicinale nel suo grande hotel a Parigi. Monseigneur era nella sua stanza interna, il suo santuario di santuari, il Santo dei Santi per la folla di adoratori nella serie di stanze esterne. Monseigneur stava per prendere il suo cioccolato. Monseigneur poteva ingoiare molte cose con facilità e alcuni pochi spiriti malcontenti pensavano che stesse inghiottendo la Francia piuttosto rapidamente; ma, il suo cioccolato mattutino non poteva nemmeno arrivare alla gola di Monseigneur senza l’aiuto di quattro uomini forti oltre al cuoco.
Sì. Ci vollero quattro uomini, tutti e quattro in fiamme di splendida decorazione, e il capo dei quali non poteva esistere con meno di due orologi d’oro in tasca, emulando la nobile e casta moda stabilita da Monseigneur, per condurre il felice cioccolato alle labbra di Monseigneur. Un lacchè portò la cioccolata nella sacra presenza; un secondo, macinò e frullò il cioccolato con lo strumento che portava per quella funzione; un terzo presentò l’eletto tovagliolo; un quarto (quello dei due orologi d’oro), versò la cioccolata. Era impossibile per Monseigneur fare a meno di uno di questi assistenti del cioccolato e mantenere il suo alto posto sotto i cieli ammirati. Profonda sarebbe stata la macchia sullo stemma se il suo cioccolato fosse stato servito in modo ignobile da soli tre uomini; sarebbe morto per due.
Monseigneur era uscito la sera prima a una piccola cena dove Commedia e il Grand Opéra erano rappresentati con grande fascino. Monseigneur andava quasi tutte le sere a una piccola cena in compagnia affascinante. Era così cortese e impressionabile che Commedia e l’Opéra avevano su di lui un’influenza ben maggiore, negli articoli noiosi degli affari di stato e dei segreti di stato, delle necessità dell’intera Francia. Una fortunata circostanza per la Francia, come sempre lo è per tutti i paesi che godono di simili favori! - Lo fu sempre per l’Inghilterra (per fare un esempio), nei rimpianti giorni del gioviale Stuart che la vendette.
Monseigneur aveva un’idea veramente nobile del lavoro pubblico in generale, che era lasciare che tutto procedesse per il suo verso; riguardo al lavoro pubblico particolare, Monseigneur aveva l’altra idea veramente nobile, che tutto doveva andare per la sua strada - tendere al suo potere e al suo tornaconto. Per quanto concerne i suoi piaceri, generali e particolari, Monseigneur aveva un’idea veramente nobile: il mondo era stato creato per loro. Il testo del suo ordine (modificato dall’originale solo in un pronome, che non è molto) recitava: “La terra e tutto ciò che contiene sono miei, dice Monseigneur.”
Eppure il signor Marchese aveva scoperto lentamente che delle volgari difficoltà si insinuavano nei suoi affari, sia privati che pubblici; e per entrambe le categorie di affari era stato costretto ad allearsi con un Ferma generale. Per quanto riguardava le finanze pubbliche, perché il signor Marchese non riusciva a cavarsela in alcun modo e doveva quindi affidarle a qualcuno che ne fosse capace; per quanto riguardava le finanze private, perché i Ferma generali erano ricchi e il signor Marchese, dopo generazioni di grande lusso e spese, stava diventando povero. Di conseguenza il signor Marchese aveva tolto sua sorella da un convento, mentre c’era ancora tempo per evitare la velatura imminente, il capo di abbigliamento più economico che avrebbe potuto indossare, e l’aveva data come premio a un Ferma generale molto ricco ma povero di famiglia. Questo Ferma generale, portando un bastone appropriato con una mela d’oro sulla cima, si trovava ora tra la compagnia nelle stanze esterne, profondamente riverito dalla gente comune - sempre esclusi i superiori della nobiltà del signor Marchese, che, sua moglie inclusa, lo guardavano dall’alto in basso con il più altezzoso disprezzo.
Un uomo sontuoso era il Fermaié-général. Trenta cavalli erano nelle sue scuderie, ventiquattro domestici maschi sedevano nei suoi saloni, sei donne di corpo servivano sua moglie. Come uno che fingeva di non fare altro che saccheggiare e razziare dove poteva, il Fermaié-général — per quanto le sue relazioni matrimoniali contribuissero alla moralità sociale — era almeno la più grande realtà tra i personaggi presenti all’hotel di Monseigneur quel giorno.
Perché, sebbene le stanze fossero una bella scena da guardare e adornate con ogni artificio di decorazione che il gusto e l’abilità del tempo potessero realizzare, erano, in verità, un affare poco solido; considerate con qualsiasi riferimento agli spaventapasseri nei stracci e nelle cuffie notturne altrove (e non così lontani, del resto, che le torri di guardia di Notre Dame, quasi equidistanti dai due estremi, potessero vederli entrambi), sarebbero state un affare estremamente scomodo—se ci fosse stato qualcuno a cui importasse, nella casa del Monseigneur. Ufficiali militari privi di conoscenze militari; ufficiali navali senza idea di una nave; funzionari civili senza nozione degli affari; ecclesiastici sfacciati, del peggiore mondo mondano, con occhi sensuali, lingue sciolte e vite ancora più sciolte; tutti totalmente inadatti alle loro rispettive professioni, tutti orribilmente bugiardi nel fingere di appartenervi, ma tutti, direttamente o indirettamente, dell’ordine del Monseigneur, e quindi infilati in tutti gli impieghi pubblici da cui si poteva ricavare qualcosa; questi erano da contarsi a dozzine e dozzine. Persone non immediatamente collegate con il Monseigneur o lo Stato, eppure altrettanto sconnesse da qualsiasi cosa reale, o da vite trascorse viaggiando per una strada retta verso un vero fine terreno, erano altrettanto abbondanti. Medici che facevano grandi fortune con rimedi raffinati per disturbi immaginari che non esistevano mai, sorridevano ai loro pazienti cortigiani nelle anticamere del Monseigneur. Progettisti che avevano scoperto ogni tipo di rimedio per i piccoli mali da cui lo Stato era afflitto, tranne il rimedio di mettersi seriamente al lavoro per estirpare un solo peccato, riversavano la loro chiacchiera distraente in qualsiasi orecchio potessero raggiungere, alla ricezione del Monseigneur. Filosofi increduli che stavano rimodellando il mondo con le parole e costruendo torri di carte di Babele per scalare i cieli, parlavano con Chimici Increduli che avevano un occhio sulla trasmutazione dei metalli, in questo straordinario raduno accumulato dal Monseigneur. Eleganti gentiluomini della più fine educazione, che a quel notevole tempo—e da allora—si riconosceva dai suoi frutti di indifferenza verso ogni naturale oggetto di interesse umano, erano nello stato più esemplare di esaustione, all’hotel del Monseigneur. Tali case avevano lasciato dietro di sé queste varie notabilità nel bel mondo di Parigi, che gli spie tra i devoti convenuti del Monseigneur—che formavano la metà rispettabile della compagnia cortese—avrebbero trovato difficile scoprire tra gli angeli di quella sfera una sola moglie, che, nei suoi modi e nell’aspetto, si riconoscesse come Madre. Infatti, tranne per il mero atto di portare al mondo una creatura fastidiosa—che non va lontano verso la realizzazione del nome di madre—non c’era nulla di simile noto alla moda. Le donne contadine tenevano i bambini poco alla moda vicino a sé e li crescevano, e affascinanti nonne di sessanta anni si vestivano e cenavano come se avessero vent’anni.
The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance upon Monseigneur. In the outermost room were half a dozen exceptional people who had had, for a few years, some vague misgiving in them that things in general were going rather wrong. As a promising way of setting them right, half of the half-dozen had become members of a fantastic sect of Convulsionists, and were even then considering within themselves whether they should foam, rage, roar, and turn cataleptic on the spot—thereby setting up a highly intelligible finger-post to the Future, for Monseigneur’s guidance. Besides these Dervishes, were other three who had rushed into another sect, which mended matters with a jargon about “the Centre of Truth:” holding that Man had got out of the Centre of Truth—which did not need much demonstration—but had not got out of the Circumference, and that he was to be kept from flying out of the Circumference, and was even to be shoved back into the Centre, by fasting and seeing of spirits. Among these, accordingly, much discoursing with spirits went on—and it did a world of good which never became manifest.
But, the comfort was, that all the company at the grand hotel of Monseigneur were perfectly dressed. If the Day of Judgment had only been ascertained to be a dress day, everybody there would have been eternally correct. Such frizzling and powdering and sticking up of hair, such delicate complexions artificially preserved and mended, such gallant swords to look at, and such delicate honour to the sense of smell, would surely keep anything going, for ever and ever. The exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding wore little pendent trinkets that chinked as they languidly moved; these golden fetters rang like precious little bells; and what with that ringing, and with the rustle of silk and brocade and fine linen, there was a flutter in the air that fanned Saint Antoine and his devouring hunger far away.
Dress was the one unfailing talisman and charm used for keeping all things in their places. Everybody was dressed for a Fancy Ball that was never to leave off. From the Palace of the Tuileries, through Monseigneur and the whole Court, through the Chambers, the Tribunals of Justice, and all society (except the scarecrows), the Fancy Ball descended to the Common Executioner: who, in pursuance of the charm, was required to officiate “frizzled, powdered, in a gold-laced coat, pumps, and white silk stockings.” At the gallows and the wheel—the axe was a rarity—Monsieur Paris, as it was the episcopal mode among his brother Professors of the provinces, Monsieur Orleans, and the rest, to call him, presided in this dainty dress. And who among the company at Monseigneur’s reception in that seventeen hundred and eightieth year of our Lord, could possibly doubt, that a system rooted in a frizzled hangman, powdered, gold-laced, pumped, and white-silk stockinged, would see the very stars out!
Monseigneur having eased his four men of their burdens and taken his chocolate, caused the doors of the Holiest of Holiests to be thrown open, and issued forth. Then, what submission, what cringing and fawning, what servility, what abject humiliation! As to bowing down in body and spirit, nothing in that way was left for Heaven—which may have been one among other reasons why the worshippers of Monseigneur never troubled it.
Bestowing a word of promise here and a smile there, a whisper on one happy slave and a wave of the hand on another, Monseigneur affably passed through his rooms to the remote region of the Circumference of Truth. There, Monseigneur turned, and came back again, and so in due course of time got himself shut up in his sanctuary by the chocolate sprites, and was seen no more.
The show being over, the flutter in the air became quite a little storm, and the precious little bells went ringing downstairs. There was soon but one person left of all the crowd, and he, with his hat under his arm and his snuff-box in his hand, slowly passed among the mirrors on his way out.
“I devote you,” said this person, stopping at the last door on his way, and turning in the direction of the sanctuary, “to the Devil!”
With that, he shook the snuff from his fingers as if he had shaken the dust from his feet, and quietly walked downstairs.
He was a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed, haughty in manner, and with a face like a fine mask. A face of a transparent paleness; every feature in it clearly defined; one set expression on it. The nose, beautifully formed otherwise, was very slightly pinched at the top of each nostril. In those two compressions, or dints, the only little change that the face ever showed, resided. They persisted in changing colour sometimes, and they would be occasionally dilated and contracted by something like a faint pulsation; then, they gave a look of treachery, and cruelty, to the whole countenance. Examined with attention, its capacity of helping such a look was to be found in the line of the mouth, and the lines of the orbits of the eyes, being much too horizontal and thin; still, in the effect of the face made, it was a handsome face, and a remarkable one.
Its owner went downstairs into the courtyard, got into his carriage, and drove away. Not many people had talked with him at the reception; he had stood in a little space apart, and Monseigneur might have been warmer in his manner. It appeared, under the circumstances, rather agreeable to him to see the common people dispersed before his horses, and often barely escaping from being run down. His man drove as if he were charging an enemy, and the furious recklessness of the man brought no check into the face, or to the lips, of the master. The complaint had sometimes made itself audible, even in that deaf city and dumb age, that, in the narrow streets without footways, the fierce patrician custom of hard driving endangered and maimed the mere vulgar in a barbarous manner. But, few cared enough for that to think of it a second time, and, in this matter, as in all others, the common wretches were left to get out of their difficulties as they could.
La lebbra dell’irrealtà sfigurava ogni creatura umana che si trovava in compagnia di Monseigneur. Nella stanza più esterna c’erano una mezza dozzina di persone eccezionali che per alcuni anni avevano avuto qualche vago timore che le cose in generale stessero andando piuttosto male. Come modo promettente per rimetterle a posto, metà della mezza dozzina era diventata membro di una fantastica setta di Convulsionisti e si stavano persino chiedendo se avrebbero dovuto schiumare, infuriarsi, ruggire e cadere in catalessi sul posto: un modo intelligibile per indicare la strada al Futuro, come guida per Monseigneur. Oltre a questi Dervisci, ce n’erano altri tre che si erano gettati in un’altra setta, che sistemava le cose con un gergo su “il Centro della Verità”: sostenendo che l’Uomo era uscito dal Centro della Verità - cosa che non aveva bisogno di molte dimostrazioni - ma non era uscito dalla Circonferenza, e che doveva essere trattenuto dall’uscire dalla Circonferenza, e addirittura spinto indietro nel Centro, digiunando e vedendo gli spiriti. Tra questi, quindi, si svolgevano molte conversazioni con gli spiriti - e facevano un mondo di bene che non divenne mai manifesto.
Ma il conforto era che tutti gli ospiti del grande albergo di Monseigneur erano perfettamente vestiti. Se si fosse saputo con certezza che il Giorno del Giudizio sarebbe stato un giorno d’abito, tutti lì sarebbero stati eternamente corretti. Un tale frizzante e incipriamento e acconciatura dei capelli, tali carnagioni delicate artificialmente conservate e riparate, tali spade gallanti da guardare, e un tale delicato onore per il senso dell’olfatto, avrebbero sicuramente mantenuto tutto in vita, per sempre e sempre. I signori squisiti di allevamento più raffinato portavano piccoli ciondoli pendenti che tintinnavano mentre si muovevano languidamente; questi ceppi d’oro suonavano come preziose piccole campane; e con quel suono, e con il fruscio di seta e broccato e lino fine, c’era un fremito nell’aria che ventilava San Antonio e la sua fame divorante lontano.
L’abbigliamento era l’unica e infallibile talismano e incantesimo usato per mantenere ogni cosa al suo posto. Tutti erano vestiti per un Ballo in Maschera che non sarebbe mai finito. Dal Palazzo delle Tuileries, attraverso Monseigneur e tutta la Corte, attraverso le Camere, i Tribunali di Giustizia e tutta la società (tranne gli spaventapasseri), il Ballo in Maschera scendeva fino all’Impiccatore Pubblico: che, in conformità con l’incantesimo, era tenuto a officiare “arricciato, incipriato, con un abito bordato d’oro, scarpe di vernice e calze di seta bianca”. Alla forca e alla ruota - la scure era una rarità - Monsieur Parigi, come era l’usanza episcopale tra i suoi fratelli Professori delle province, Monsieur Orléans e gli altri, che lo chiamavano così, presiedeva in questo abito raffinato. E chi tra la compagnia alla ricezione di Monseigneur in quell’anno mille settecento ottantesimo del Signore avrebbe potuto dubitare che un sistema radicato in un boia arricciato, incipriato, con bordi d’oro, scarpe di vernice e calze di seta bianca, sarebbe durato fino a quando non si fossero spenti gli stessi astri!
Monseigneur, dopo aver liberato i suoi quattro uomini dai loro carichi e preso il suo cioccolato, fece aprire le porte del Santissimo dei Santissimi ed uscì. Allora, quale sottomissione, quale servilismo e adulazione, quale umiltà, quale umiliazione abietta! Per quanto riguarda l’inchinarsi in corpo e spirito, non era rimasto nulla da fare per il Cielo - il che potrebbe essere stato uno dei motivi per cui gli adoratori di Monseigneur non lo disturbavano mai.
Concedendo una parola di promessa qua e un sorriso là, un sussurro a uno schiavo felice e un cenno della mano a un altro, Monseigneur passò affabilmente attraverso le sue stanze fino alla remota regione della Circonferenza della Verità. Lì, Monseigneur si voltò, tornò indietro e così, nel dovuto corso del tempo, si fece rinchiudere nel suo santuario dagli spiritelli del cioccolato e non fu più visto.
Terminato lo spettacolo, il fruscio nell’aria divenne una vera e propria piccola tempesta, e le preziose piccole campane suonarono al piano di sotto. Ben presto non rimase che una persona della folla intera, e lui, con il cappello sotto il braccio e la tabacchiera in mano, passò lentamente tra gli specchi mentre usciva.
«Ti consacro», disse questa persona fermandosi all’ultima porta lungo il suo cammino e voltandosi verso la direzione del santuario «al diavolo!»
Con ciò, si scosse il tabacco da fiuto dalle dita come se avesse scosso la polvere dai piedi e scese tranquillamente le scale.
Era un uomo di circa sessant’anni, elegantemente vestito, altero nei modi, e con una faccia come una bella maschera. Una faccia di pallidezza trasparente; ogni lineamento in essa chiaramente definito; un’espressione fissa su di essa. Il naso, bene formato altrimenti, era molto leggermente pizzicato alla sommità di ogni narice. In quelle due compressioni, o fossette, risiedeva l’unica piccola cambiamento che il volto mostrava mai. Persistevano nel cambiare colore a volte, e venivano occasionalmente dilatate e contratte da qualcosa di simile a una debole pulsazione; allora, davano un’aria di tradimento e crudeltà, all’intero volto. Esaminato con attenzione, la sua capacità di contribuire a tale aspetto si trovava nella linea della bocca e nelle linee delle orbite degli occhi, che erano troppo orizzontali e sottili; tuttavia, nell’effetto complessivo del volto, era un bel viso, e notevole.
Il proprietario scese nel cortile, salì sulla sua carrozza e partì. Non molte persone avevano parlato con lui al ricevimento; era rimasto in un piccolo spazio a parte, e Monseigneur avrebbe potuto essere più cordiale nei suoi modi. Sotto quelle circostanze, sembrava piuttosto gradisse vedere la gente comune disperdersi davanti ai suoi cavalli, e spesso sfiorare il pericolo di essere travolta. Il suo cocchiere guidava come se stesse caricando un nemico, e l’audacia furiosa dell’uomo non provocò alcun rimprovero sul volto o sulle labbra del padrone. La protesta era a volte riuscita ad farsi udire, anche in quella città sorda ed epoca muta, che nelle strade strette senza marciapiedi, la feroce abitudine patrizia di guidare aggressivamente mettesse in pericolo e mutilasse il semplice volgo in maniera barbara. Ma pochi se ne preoccupavano abbastanza da pensarci una seconda volta, e, in questa questione come in tutte le altre, i comuni miserabili erano lasciati a cavarsela come potevano.
With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment of consideration not easy to be understood in these days, the carriage dashed through streets and swept round corners, with women screaming before it, and men clutching each other and clutching children out of its way. At last, swooping at a street corner by a fountain, one of its wheels came to a sickening little jolt, and there was a loud cry from a number of voices, and the horses reared and plunged.
But for the latter inconvenience, the carriage probably would not have stopped; carriages were often known to drive on, and leave their wounded behind, and why not? But the frightened valet had got down in a hurry, and there were twenty hands at the horses’ bridles.
“What has gone wrong?” said Monsieur, calmly looking out.
A tall man in a nightcap had caught up a bundle from among the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it like a wild animal.
“Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis!” said a ragged and submissive man, “it is a child.”
“Why does he make that abominable noise? Is it his child?”
“Excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis—it is a pity—yes.”
The fountain was a little removed; for the street opened, where it was, into a space some ten or twelve yards square. As the tall man suddenly got up from the ground, and came running at the carriage, Monsieur the Marquis clapped his hand for an instant on his sword-hilt.
“Killed!” shrieked the man, in wild desperation, extending both arms at their length above his head, and staring at him. “Dead!”
The people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the Marquis. There was nothing revealed by the many eyes that looked at him but watchfulness and eagerness; there was no visible menacing or anger. Neither did the people say anything; after the first cry, they had been silent, and they remained so. The voice of the submissive man who had spoken, was flat and tame in its extreme submission. Monsieur the Marquis ran his eyes over them all, as if they had been mere rats come out of their holes.
He took out his purse.
“It is extraordinary to me,” said he, “that you people cannot take care of yourselves and your children. One or the other of you is for ever in the way. How do I know what injury you have done my horses. See! Give him that.”
He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the heads craned forward that all the eyes might look down at it as it fell. The tall man called out again with a most unearthly cry, “Dead!”
He was arrested by the quick arrival of another man, for whom the rest made way. On seeing him, the miserable creature fell upon his shoulder, sobbing and crying, and pointing to the fountain, where some women were stooping over the motionless bundle, and moving gently about it. They were as silent, however, as the men.
“I know all, I know all,” said the last comer. “Be a brave man, my Gaspard! It is better for the poor little plaything to die so, than to live. It has died in a moment without pain. Could it have lived an hour as happily?”
“You are a philosopher, you there,” said the Marquis, smiling. “How do they call you?”
“They call me Defarge.”
“Of what trade?”
“Monsieur the Marquis, vendor of wine.”
“Pick up that, philosopher and vendor of wine,” said the Marquis, throwing him another gold coin, “and spend it as you will. The horses there; are they right?”
Without deigning to look at the assemblage a second time, Monsieur the Marquis leaned back in his seat, and was just being driven away with the air of a gentleman who had accidentally broke some common thing, and had paid for it, and could afford to pay for it; when his ease was suddenly disturbed by a coin flying into his carriage, and ringing on its floor.
“Hold!” said Monsieur the Marquis. “Hold the horses! Who threw that?”
He looked to the spot where Defarge the vendor of wine had stood, a moment before; but the wretched father was grovelling on his face on the pavement in that spot, and the figure that stood beside him was the figure of a dark stout woman, knitting.
“You dogs!” said the Marquis, but smoothly, and with an unchanged front, except as to the spots on his nose: “I would ride over any of you very willingly, and exterminate you from the earth. If I knew which rascal threw at the carriage, and if that brigand were sufficiently near it, he should be crushed under the wheels.”
So cowed was their condition, and so long and hard their experience of what such a man could do to them, within the law and beyond it, that not a voice, or a hand, or even an eye was raised. Among the men, not one. But the woman who stood knitting looked up steadily, and looked the Marquis in the face. It was not for his dignity to notice it; his contemptuous eyes passed over her, and over all the other rats; and he leaned back in his seat again, and gave the word “Go on!”
He was driven on, and other carriages came whirling by in quick succession; the Minister, the State-Projector, the Farmer-General, the Doctor, the Lawyer, the Ecclesiastic, the Grand Opera, the Comedy, the whole Fancy Ball in a bright continuous flow, came whirling by. The rats had crept out of their holes to look on, and they remained looking on for hours; soldiers and police often passing between them and the spectacle, and making a barrier behind which they slunk, and through which they peeped. The father had long ago taken up his bundle and bidden himself away with it, when the women who had tended the bundle while it lay on the base of the fountain, sat there watching the running of the water and the rolling of the Fancy Ball—when the one woman who had stood conspicuous, knitting, still knitted on with the steadfastness of Fate. The water of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day ran into evening, so much life in the city ran into death according to rule, time and tide waited for no man, the rats were sleeping close together in their dark holes again, the Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all things ran their course.
Con un fragore e uno sferragliare selvaggi e una mancanza di riguardo per gli altri davvero incomprensibile ai giorni nostri, la carrozza sfrecciava tra le strade e girava gli angoli con donne che urlavano davanti a lei e uomini che si aggrappavano l’un l’altro e spingevano via i bambini per farla passare. Infine, virando ad un angolo di strada vicino ad una fontana, una delle sue ruote ebbe uno sgradevole piccolo sobbalzo, e si levò un forte grido da molte voci, e i cavalli si impennarono e si agitarono.
Ma per l’ultimo inconveniente, la carrozza probabilmente non si sarebbe fermata; spesso le carrozze continuavano il loro cammino e lasciavano i feriti indietro, e perché no? Ma il domestico spaventato era sceso in fretta, e c’erano venti mani sulle briglie dei cavalli.
«Che cosa è andato storto?» disse Monsieur guardando fuori con calma.
Un uomo alto con un berretto da notte aveva raccolto un fagotto tra gli zoccoli dei cavalli e lo aveva deposto sul basamento della fontana; ora era accovacciato nel fango e nell’acqua, piangendo sopra di esso come una bestia selvaggia.
«Perdonate, signor marchese!» disse un uomo stracciato e sottomesso «è un bambino.»
«Perché fa quel rumore orribile? È il suo bambino?»
“Mi scusi, signor Marchese — è un peccato — sì.”
La fontana era un po’ distante; infatti la strada si apriva in quel punto su uno spazio di circa dieci o dodici metri quadrati. Quando l’uomo alto si alzò improvvisamente da terra e corse verso la carrozza, Monsieur il Marchese posò per un istante la mano sull’elsa della sua spada.
«Ucciso!» gridò l’uomo, disperato, allungando le braccia sopra la testa e fissandolo con gli occhi sbarrati. «Morto!»
La gente si strinse intorno e guardò Monsieur il Marchese. Gli occhi di tutti non rivelavano altro che attenzione ed entusiasmo; non c’era alcuna minaccia o collera visibile. La gente non disse nulla; dopo il primo grido, erano rimasti in silenzio e così restarono. La voce dell’uomo sottomesso che aveva parlato era piatta e mansueta nella sua estrema obbedienza. Monsieur il Marchese li guardò tutti con gli occhi, come se fossero stati solo topi usciti dai loro buchi.
Estrasse il portafoglio.
«È straordinario per me», disse lui, «che voi non possiate prendervi cura di voi stessi e dei vostri bambini. Uno o l’altro di voi è sempre d’intralcio. Come faccio a sapere che danno avete fatto ai miei cavalli. Guardate! Dategli questo.»
Lanciò una moneta d’oro perché il valletto la raccogliesse e tutte le teste si protesero in avanti affinché tutti gli occhi potessero guardarla mentre cadeva. L’uomo alto gridò di nuovo con un urlo davvero sovrumano: «Morto!»
Fu fermato dall’arrivo rapido di un altro uomo, per il quale gli altri si fecero da parte. Vedendolo, la povera creatura cadde sulla sua spalla singhiozzando e piangendo, indicando la fontana dove alcune donne erano chinate sul fagotto immobile, muovendosi dolcemente intorno ad esso. Erano però silenziose come gli uomini.
«So tutto, so tutto», disse l’ultimo arrivato. «Sii un uomo coraggioso, mio Gaspard! È meglio che il povero piccolo giocattolo muoia così, piuttosto che vivere. È morto in un attimo senza dolore. Avrebbe potuto vivere un’ora altrettanto felicemente?»
“Sei un filosofo, tu lì,” disse il Marchese sorridendo. “Come ti chiamano?”
Mi chiamano Defarge.
“Di quale mestiere?”
“Il signor Marchese, venditore di vino.”
«Raccogliete questo, filosofo e venditore di vino», disse il Marchese, gettandogli un’altra moneta d’oro, «e spendetela come vi pare. E quei cavalli; sono a posto?»
Senza degnarsi di guardare l’assembramento una seconda volta, Monsieur il Marchese si appoggiò allo schienale del suo sedile e stava per essere condotto via con l’aria di un gentiluomo che avesse accidentalmente rotto qualcosa di comune, ne avesse pagato il danno e potesse permettersi di pagarne uno maggiore; quando la sua tranquillità fu improvvisamente turbata da una moneta che volò nella sua carrozza e tintinnò sul pavimento.
“Fermatevi!” disse Monsieur il Marchese. “Fermate i cavalli! Chi ha lanciato quello?”
Egli guardò il punto dove si era trovato un momento prima Defarge, il venditore di vino; ma lì giaceva ora quel povero padre che strisciava sul selciato con la faccia in giù e accanto a lui stava una donna robusta e scura, intenta a lavorare a maglia.
“Canaglie!” disse il marchese, ma con calma e mantenendo un’espressione impassibile, a parte le macchie sul naso: “Mi piacerebbe molto passare sopra a uno di voi e sterminarvi dalla terra. Se sapessi quale mascalzone ha lanciato qualcosa contro la carrozza, e se quel brigante fosse abbastanza vicino, sarebbe schiacciato sotto le ruote.”
La loro condizione era così intimorita e la loro esperienza di ciò che un uomo del genere poteva fare loro, entro e oltre la legge, era stata così lunga e dura, che non si levò una voce né una mano, né anche uno sguardo. Tra gli uomini, nessuno. Ma la donna che stava lì a lavorare a maglia alzò lo sguardo con fermezza e fissò il Marchese negli occhi. Non era degno della sua dignità notarlo; i suoi occhi sprezzanti passarono oltre lei e tutti gli altri ratti, si appoggiò di nuovo allo schienale del suo seggio e diede l’ordine: «Avanti!»
Fu costretto ad avanzare e altri carri arrivarono vorticando in rapida successione; il Ministro, l’Uomo di Stato, il Fiscale Generale, il Dottore, l’Avvocato, l’Ecclesiastico, la Commedia, l’Opera Grandiosa, tutto il Ballo in Maschera in un flusso continuo e luminoso, arrivarono vorticando. I ratti erano usciti dai loro buchi per guardare e rimasero a guardare per ore; soldati e polizia passavano spesso tra loro e lo spettacolo, creando una barriera dietro la quale si nascondevano e attraverso cui spiavano. Il padre aveva preso il suo fagotto molto tempo prima ed era andato via con esso, quando le donne che si erano prese cura del fagotto mentre giaceva sulla base della fontana, sedevano lì a guardare la corsa dell’acqua e il rotolamento del Ballo in Maschera; quando quella donna che era stata così evidente, intenta a lavorare a maglia, continuava a farlo con la costanza della sorte. L’acqua della fontana scorreva, il rapido fiume scorreva, il giorno scivolava nella sera, così tanta vita nella città scivolava nella morte secondo le regole; tempo e mare non aspettavano nessuno, i ratti dormivano di nuovo accalcati nelle loro buie tane, il Ballo in Maschera era illuminato per la cena, tutte le cose seguivano il loro corso.
CHAPTER VIII. Monseigneur in the Country
A beautiful landscape, with the corn bright in it, but not abundant. Patches of poor rye where corn should have been, patches of poor peas and beans, patches of most coarse vegetable substitutes for wheat. On inanimate nature, as on the men and women who cultivated it, a prevalent tendency towards an appearance of vegetating unwillingly—a dejected disposition to give up, and wither away.
Monsieur the Marquis in his travelling carriage (which might have been lighter), conducted by four post-horses and two postilions, fagged up a steep hill. A blush on the countenance of Monsieur the Marquis was no impeachment of his high breeding; it was not from within; it was occasioned by an external circumstance beyond his control—the setting sun.
The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling carriage when it gained the hill-top, that its occupant was steeped in crimson. “It will die out,” said Monsieur the Marquis, glancing at his hands, “directly.”
In effect, the sun was so low that it dipped at the moment. When the heavy drag had been adjusted to the wheel, and the carriage slid down hill, with a cinderous smell, in a cloud of dust, the red glow departed quickly; the sun and the Marquis going down together, there was no glow left when the drag was taken off.
But, there remained a broken country, bold and open, a little village at the bottom of the hill, a broad sweep and rise beyond it, a church-tower, a windmill, a forest for the chase, and a crag with a fortress on it used as a prison. Round upon all these darkening objects as the night drew on, the Marquis looked, with the air of one who was coming near home.
The village had its one poor street, with its poor brewery, poor tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relays of post-horses, poor fountain, all usual poor appointments. It had its poor people too. All its people were poor, and many of them were sitting at their doors, shredding spare onions and the like for supper, while many were at the fountain, washing leaves, and grasses, and any such small yieldings of the earth that could be eaten. Expressive signs of what made them poor, were not wanting; the tax for the state, the tax for the church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to be paid here and to be paid there, according to solemn inscription in the little village, until the wonder was, that there was any village left unswallowed.
Few children were to be seen, and no dogs. As to the men and women, their choice on earth was stated in the prospect—Life on the lowest terms that could sustain it, down in the little village under the mill; or captivity and Death in the dominant prison on the crag.
Heralded by a courier in advance, and by the cracking of his postilions’ whips, which twined snake-like about their heads in the evening air, as if he came attended by the Furies, Monsieur the Marquis drew up in his travelling carriage at the posting-house gate. It was hard by the fountain, and the peasants suspended their operations to look at him. He looked at them, and saw in them, without knowing it, the slow sure filing down of misery-worn face and figure, that was to make the meagreness of Frenchmen an English superstition which should survive the truth through the best part of a hundred years.
Monsieur the Marquis cast his eyes over the submissive faces that drooped before him, as the like of himself had drooped before Monseigneur of the Court—only the difference was, that these faces drooped merely to suffer and not to propitiate—when a grizzled mender of the roads joined the group.
“Bring me hither that fellow!” said the Marquis to the courier.
The fellow was brought, cap in hand, and the other fellows closed round to look and listen, in the manner of the people at the Paris fountain.
“I passed you on the road?”
“Monseigneur, it is true. I had the honour of being passed on the road.”
“Coming up the hill, and at the top of the hill, both?”
“Monseigneur, it is true.”
“What did you look at, so fixedly?”
“Monseigneur, I looked at the man.”
He stooped a little, and with his tattered blue cap pointed under the carriage. All his fellows stooped to look under the carriage.
“What man, pig? And why look there?”
“Pardon, Monseigneur; he swung by the chain of the shoe—the drag.”
“Who?” demanded the traveller.
“Monseigneur, the man.”
“May the Devil carry away these idiots! How do you call the man? You know all the men of this part of the country. Who was he?”
“Your clemency, Monseigneur! He was not of this part of the country. Of all the days of my life, I never saw him.”
“Swinging by the chain? To be suffocated?”
“With your gracious permission, that was the wonder of it, Monseigneur. His head hanging over—like this!”
He turned himself sideways to the carriage, and leaned back, with his face thrown up to the sky, and his head hanging down; then recovered himself, fumbled with his cap, and made a bow.
“What was he like?”
“Monseigneur, he was whiter than the miller. All covered with dust, white as a spectre, tall as a spectre!”
The picture produced an immense sensation in the little crowd; but all eyes, without comparing notes with other eyes, looked at Monsieur the Marquis. Perhaps, to observe whether he had any spectre on his conscience.
“Truly, you did well,” said the Marquis, felicitously sensible that such vermin were not to ruffle him, “to see a thief accompanying my carriage, and not open that great mouth of yours. Bah! Put him aside, Monsieur Gabelle!”
Monsieur Gabelle was the Postmaster, and some other taxing functionary united; he had come out with great obsequiousness to assist at this examination, and had held the examined by the drapery of his arm in an official manner.
“Bah! Go aside!” said Monsieur Gabelle.
“Lay hands on this stranger if he seeks to lodge in your village to-night, and be sure that his business is honest, Gabelle.”
“Monseigneur, I am flattered to devote myself to your orders.”
“Did he run away, fellow?—where is that Accursed?”
The accursed was already under the carriage with some half-dozen particular friends, pointing out the chain with his blue cap. Some half-dozen other particular friends promptly hauled him out, and presented him breathless to Monsieur the Marquis.
“Did the man run away, Dolt, when we stopped for the drag?”
“Monseigneur, he precipitated himself over the hill-side, head first, as a person plunges into the river.”
“See to it, Gabelle. Go on!”
The half-dozen who were peering at the chain were still among the wheels, like sheep; the wheels turned so suddenly that they were lucky to save their skins and bones; they had very little else to save, or they might not have been so fortunate.
The burst with which the carriage started out of the village and up the rise beyond, was soon checked by the steepness of the hill. Gradually, it subsided to a foot pace, swinging and lumbering upward among the many sweet scents of a summer night. The postilions, with a thousand gossamer gnats circling about them in lieu of the Furies, quietly mended the points to the lashes of their whips; the valet walked by the horses; the courier was audible, trotting on ahead into the dull distance.
At the steepest point of the hill there was a little burial-ground, with a Cross and a new large figure of Our Saviour on it; it was a poor figure in wood, done by some inexperienced rustic carver, but he had studied the figure from the life—his own life, maybe—for it was dreadfully spare and thin.
To this distressful emblem of a great distress that had long been growing worse, and was not at its worst, a woman was kneeling. She turned her head as the carriage came up to her, rose quickly, and presented herself at the carriage-door.
“It is you, Monseigneur! Monseigneur, a petition.”
With an exclamation of impatience, but with his unchangeable face, Monseigneur looked out.
“How, then! What is it? Always petitions!”
“Monseigneur. For the love of the great God! My husband, the forester.”
“What of your husband, the forester? Always the same with you people. He cannot pay something?”
“He has paid all, Monseigneur. He is dead.”
“Well! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you?”
“Alas, no, Monseigneur! But he lies yonder, under a little heap of poor grass.”
“Well?”
“Monseigneur, there are so many little heaps of poor grass?”
“Again, well?”
She looked an old woman, but was young. Her manner was one of passionate grief; by turns she clasped her veinous and knotted hands together with wild energy, and laid one of them on the carriage-door—tenderly, caressingly, as if it had been a human breast, and could be expected to feel the appealing touch.
“Monseigneur, hear me! Monseigneur, hear my petition! My husband died of want; so many die of want; so many more will die of want.”
“Again, well? Can I feed them?”
“Monseigneur, the good God knows; but I don’t ask it. My petition is, that a morsel of stone or wood, with my husband’s name, may be placed over him to show where he lies. Otherwise, the place will be quickly forgotten, it will never be found when I am dead of the same malady, I shall be laid under some other heap of poor grass. Monseigneur, they are so many, they increase so fast, there is so much want. Monseigneur! Monseigneur!”
The valet had put her away from the door, the carriage had broken into a brisk trot, the postilions had quickened the pace, she was left far behind, and Monseigneur, again escorted by the Furies, was rapidly diminishing the league or two of distance that remained between him and his chateau.
The sweet scents of the summer night rose all around him, and rose, as the rain falls, impartially, on the dusty, ragged, and toil-worn group at the fountain not far away; to whom the mender of roads, with the aid of the blue cap without which he was nothing, still enlarged upon his man like a spectre, as long as they could bear it. By degrees, as they could bear no more, they dropped off one by one, and lights twinkled in little casements; which lights, as the casements darkened, and more stars came out, seemed to have shot up into the sky instead of having been extinguished.
The shadow of a large high-roofed house, and of many over-hanging trees, was upon Monsieur the Marquis by that time; and the shadow was exchanged for the light of a flambeau, as his carriage stopped, and the great door of his chateau was opened to him.
“Monsieur Charles, whom I expect; is he arrived from England?”
“Monseigneur, not yet.”
CAPITOLO VIII. Monseigneur in campagna
Un bellissimo paesaggio con il grano che vi risplendeva, ma non abbondante. Perciò ci si trovava di fronte a macchie di segale scadente dove avrebbe dovuto esserci del grano, macchie di piselli e fagioli scadenti, macchie delle più rozze verdure sostitutive del frumento. Sulla natura inanimata, così come sugli uomini e sulle donne che la coltivavano, prevaleva la tendenza ad assumere un aspetto di vegetazione involontaria — una disposizione abbattuta a rinunciare e appassire.
Il signor Marchese nel suo carrozza da viaggio (che avrebbe potuto essere più leggera), condotta da quattro cavalli postali e due postiglioni, faticava su per una ripida collina. Un rossore sul volto del signor Marchese non era un segno di bassa estrazione; non proveniva dall’interno; era causato da una circostanza esterna al di fuori del suo controllo: il tramonto del sole.
Il tramonto illuminò così brillantemente la carrozza da viaggio quando raggiunse la cima della collina che il suo occupante fu avvolto nel colore cremisi. “Si spegnerà”, disse Monsieur il Marchese, guardando le sue mani, “immediatamente”.
In effetti, il sole era così basso che stava tramontando proprio in quel momento. Quando la pesante catena di frenatura fu fissata alla ruota e la carrozza scivolò giù per la collina, con un odore di cenere, avvolta in una nuvola di polvere, il riverbero rosso svanì rapidamente; mentre il sole e il marchese tramontavano insieme, non rimase alcun bagliore quando la catena fu tolta.
Ma rimaneva un paese distrutto, audace e aperto, un piccolo villaggio in fondo alla collina, una vasta distesa che si innalzava oltre di essa, un campanile, un mulino a vento, una foresta per la caccia e uno sperone roccioso con sopra una fortezza usata come prigione. Il Marchese guardò tutti questi oggetti oscurarsi man mano che la notte calava, con l’aria di chi si sta avvicinando a casa.
Il villaggio aveva la sua una sola povera strada, con la sua povera birreria, povero conciatore di pelli, povera taverna, povero cortile della scuderia per i cavalli da posta, povera fontana, tutti gli abituali arredi poveri. Aveva anche le sue persone povere. Tutte le persone erano povere e molte sedevano alle loro porte, affettando cipolle avanzate e cose simili per la cena, mentre molti erano alla fontana a lavare foglie, erbe e qualsiasi altro piccolo prodotto della terra che si potesse mangiare. Non mancavano i segni eloquenti di ciò che le rendeva povere; l’imposta per lo stato, l’imposta per la chiesa, l’imposta per il signore feudale, imposta locale e imposta generale, dovevano essere pagate qui e pagate là, secondo solenni iscrizioni nel piccolo villaggio, fino a che non si poteva fare a meno di chiedersi con meraviglia come mai ci fosse ancora un villaggio rimasto integro.
I bambini erano pochi e non si vedevano cani. Per quanto riguarda gli uomini e le donne, la loro scelta sulla terra era indicata nel prospetto: vivere alle condizioni più basse che potessero sostenerla, giù nel piccolo villaggio sotto il mulino; oppure subire cattività e Morte nella dominante prigione sullo sperone roccioso.
Preannunciato da un corriere e dallo schioccare delle fruste dei suoi postiglioni, che si avvolgevano come serpenti attorno alle loro teste nell’aria della sera, come se fosse accompagnato dalle Furie, Monsieur il Marchese si fermò nella sua carrozza da viaggio all’ingresso della stazione di posta. Era vicino alla fontana e i contadini interruppero le loro operazioni per guardarlo. Lui li guardò e vide in loro, senza saperlo, la lenta ma sicura erosione del volto e della figura consumati dalla miseria, che avrebbe reso la magrezza dei francesi una superstizione inglese destinata a sopravvivere alla verità per gran parte di un secolo.
Il signor Marchese gettò uno sguardo sui volti sottomessi che si chinavano davanti a lui, come i suoi simili si erano inchinati davanti al Monseigneur della Corte: la sola differenza era che quei volti si chinavano solo per soffrire e non per propiziarsi - quando un vecchio riparatore di strade si unì al gruppo.
«Portatemi qui quel tizio!» disse il Marchese al corriere.
Fu portato il ragazzo con il cappello in mano e gli altri ragazzi si strinsero intorno per guardare e ascoltare, come fanno le persone alla fontana di Parigi.
«Vi ho incontrato sulla strada?»
«Monsignore, è vero. Ho avuto l’onore di essere superato sulla strada.»
«Salendo la collina e in cima alla collina, tutti e due?»
“Monseigneur, è vero.”
“Cosa guardavi così fissamente?”
“Monseigneur, ho guardato quell’uomo.”
Si chinò un poco e con il suo cappello blu stracciato indicò sotto la carrozza. Tutti i suoi compagni si piegarono per guardare sotto la carrozza.
“Che uomo, maiale? E perché guardare lì?”
“Scusatemi, Monseigneur; si è aggrappato alla catena della scarpa — il traino.”
«Chi?» chiese il viaggiatore.
“Monseigneur, l’uomo.”
«Che il diavolo porti via questi idioti! Come si chiama l’uomo? Conosci tutti gli uomini di questa zona. Chi era lui?»
«La vostra clemenza, Monseigneur! Non era di questa zona del paese. In tutti i giorni della mia vita non l’ho mai visto».
“Penzolare dalla catena? Per essere soffocati?”
«Con il vostro gentile permesso, questo era lo stupore, Monseigneur. La sua testa che penzolava così!»
Si voltò di lato verso la carrozza e si appoggiò all’indietro, con il viso rivolto al cielo e la testa che pendeva; poi si riprese, frugò nel cappello e fece un inchino.
“Com’era?”
«Monseigneur, era più bianco del mugnaio. Ricoperto di polvere, bianco come uno spettro, alto come uno spettro!»
Il quadro produsse un immenso effetto nella piccola folla; ma tutti gli occhi, senza confrontarsi con altri occhi, si posarono su Monsieur il Marchese. Forse per osservare se avesse qualche spettro sulla sua coscienza.
«In verità avete fatto bene,» disse il Marchese, felicemente consapevole che tali vermi non lo potevano turbare, «a vedere un ladro accompagnare la mia carrozza e a non aprire quella grande bocca vostra. Bah! Mettetelo da parte, Monsieur Gabelle!»
Il signor Gabelle era il postino e qualche altro funzionario fiscale; si era presentato con grande ossequiosità per assistere a questo esame e aveva tenuto l’esaminato per la stoffa del braccio in modo ufficiale.
«Bah! Allontanatevi!» disse il signor Gabelle.
«Mettete le mani su questo forestiero se cerca di alloggiare nel vostro villaggio questa sera e assicuratevi che i suoi affari siano onesti, Gabelle.»
“Monseigneur, sono onorato di dedicarmi ai suoi ordini.”
“È scappato, amico? — Dov’è quell’Accursato?”
L’infelice era già sotto la carrozza con una mezza dozzina di amici intimi, indicando la catena col suo berretto blu. Una mezza dozzina d’altri amici intimi lo tirarono fuori senza indugio e glielo presentarono senza fiato al signor Marchese.
“L’uomo è scappato, stupido, quando ci siamo fermati per il carro?”
«Monseigneur, si è gettato giù per il fianco della collina, a testa in avanti, come una persona che si tuffi nel fiume».
“Vedi di farlo, Gabelle. Avanti!”
I sei che stavano scrutando la catena erano ancora tra le ruote, come pecore; le ruote girarono così all’improvviso che furono fortunati a salvare pelle e ossa; avevano ben poco altro da salvare, altrimenti non sarebbero stati così fortunati.
L’impeto con cui la carrozza partì dal villaggio e salì il pendio oltre fu presto frenato dalla ripidità della collina. Gradualmente, si ridusse a un passo d’uomo, oscillando e arrancando verso l’alto tra i tanti dolci profumi di una serata estiva. I postiglioni, con mille zanzare gossamer che gli ronzavano intorno al posto delle Furie, aggiustarono tranquillamente le punte alle fruste; il valletto camminava accanto ai cavalli; si sentiva il corriere trotterellare avanti nella distanza opaca.
Nel punto più ripido della collina c’era un piccolo camposanto, con una croce e una nuova grande figura del Nostro Salvatore sopra; era una povera figura in legno, realizzata da qualche intagliatore rurale senza esperienza, ma aveva studiato la figura dalla vita — forse dalla sua stessa vita — perché era terribilmente magra e snella.
Davanti a questo emblema doloroso di una grande disgrazia che da tempo era in peggio e non aveva ancora raggiunto il suo culmine, stava inginocchiata una donna. Al sopraggiungere della carrozza la donna girò la testa, si alzò rapidamente e si presentò alla portiera del veicolo.
“È lei, Monseigneur! Monseigneur, una petizione!”
Con un’esclamazione di impazienza ma con il suo volto immutabile, Monseigneur guardò fuori.
“Come, allora! Cosa c’è? Sempre petizioni!”
«Monseigneur, per l’amore del grande Dio! Mio marito, il guardiacaccia».
“E suo marito, il guardiacaccia? Con voi gente è sempre la stessa storia. Non può pagare qualcosa?”
“Ha pagato tutto, Monseigneur. È morto.”
«Ebbene! È tranquillo. Posso restituirlo a voi?»
«Ahimè, no, Monseigneur! Ma giace laggiù, sotto un piccolo mucchio di misera erba.»
«Bene?»
“Monseigneur, ci sono così tanti mucchietti di erba povera?”
«Allora, bene?»
Aveva l’aspetto di una vecchia donna, ma era giovane. Il suo comportamento denotava un dolore appassionato; a turno stringeva le sue venose e nodose mani insieme con selvaggia energia, e ne posava una sulla portiera del calesse - teneramente, carezzevolmente, come se fosse stato un seno umano, e si potesse aspettare che sentisse il tocco supplichevole.
«Monseigneur, ascoltatemi! Monseigneur, ascoltate la mia supplica! Mio marito è morto di fame; tanti muoiono di fame; molti altri moriranno di fame.»
«Allora, bene? Posso dar loro da mangiare?»
«Monseigneur, il buon Dio lo sa; ma io non lo chiedo. La mia petizione è che un pezzetto di pietra o legno con il nome di mio marito venga posto sopra di lui per mostrare dove giace. Altrimenti, il luogo sarà presto dimenticato e mai più trovato quando sarò morta della stessa malattia; verrò sepolta sotto un altro mucchio di povera erba. Monseigneur, sono così tanti, aumentano così in fretta, c’è tanto bisogno. Monseigneur! Monseigneur!»
Il valletto l’aveva allontanata dalla porta, la carrozza aveva preso un trotto vivace, i postiglioni avevano accelerato il passo, lei era stata lasciata indietro e Monseigneur, nuovamente scortato dalle Furie, stava rapidamente riducendo le una o due leghe di distanza che lo separavano dal suo castello.
I dolci profumi della sera estiva lo avvolgevano e si diffondevano tutt’intorno a lui, come la pioggia cade imparzialmente sulla polverosa, stracciata e stremata folla radunatasi presso la fontana non lontana; alla quale il riparatore di strade, con l’aiuto del berretto blu senza il quale non era nulla, continuava a raccontare della sua visione spettrale finché riuscivano ad ascoltarlo. A poco a poco, quando non ne poterono più, se ne andarono uno dopo l’altro e le luci tremolarono nelle piccole finestre; queste luci, man mano che le finestre si oscuravano e nuove stelle apparivano nel cielo, sembravano essere salite fino alle stelle invece di essersi spente.
La ombra di una grande casa dal tetto alto e di molti alberi che si protendevano in avanti, si proiettava su Monsieur il Marchese a quell’ora; e l’ombra fu sostituita dalla luce di un torchio, quando la sua carrozza si fermò, e la grande porta del suo castello gli venne aperta.
“Monsieur Charles, che aspetto; è arrivato dall’Inghilterra?”
“Monseigneur, non ancora.”
CHAPTER IX. The Gorgon’s Head
It was a heavy mass of building, that chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, with a large stone courtyard before it, and two stone sweeps of staircase meeting in a stone terrace before the principal door. A stony business altogether, with heavy stone balustrades, and stone urns, and stone flowers, and stone faces of men, and stone heads of lions, in all directions. As if the Gorgon’s head had surveyed it, when it was finished, two centuries ago.
Up the broad flight of shallow steps, Monsieur the Marquis, flambeau preceded, went from his carriage, sufficiently disturbing the darkness to elicit loud remonstrance from an owl in the roof of the great pile of stable building away among the trees. All else was so quiet, that the flambeau carried up the steps, and the other flambeau held at the great door, burnt as if they were in a close room of state, instead of being in the open night-air. Other sound than the owl’s voice there was none, save the falling of a fountain into its stone basin; for, it was one of those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and then heave a long low sigh, and hold their breath again.
The great door clanged behind him, and Monsieur the Marquis crossed a hall grim with certain old boar-spears, swords, and knives of the chase; grimmer with certain heavy riding-rods and riding-whips, of which many a peasant, gone to his benefactor Death, had felt the weight when his lord was angry.
Avoiding the larger rooms, which were dark and made fast for the night, Monsieur the Marquis, with his flambeau-bearer going on before, went up the staircase to a door in a corridor. This thrown open, admitted him to his own private apartment of three rooms: his bed-chamber and two others. High vaulted rooms with cool uncarpeted floors, great dogs upon the hearths for the burning of wood in winter time, and all luxuries befitting the state of a marquis in a luxurious age and country. The fashion of the last Louis but one, of the line that was never to break—the fourteenth Louis—was conspicuous in their rich furniture; but, it was diversified by many objects that were illustrations of old pages in the history of France.
A supper-table was laid for two, in the third of the rooms; a round room, in one of the chateau’s four extinguisher-topped towers. A small lofty room, with its window wide open, and the wooden jalousie-blinds closed, so that the dark night only showed in slight horizontal lines of black, alternating with their broad lines of stone colour.
“My nephew,” said the Marquis, glancing at the supper preparation; “they said he was not arrived.”
Nor was he; but, he had been expected with Monseigneur.
“Ah! It is not probable he will arrive to-night; nevertheless, leave the table as it is. I shall be ready in a quarter of an hour.”
In a quarter of an hour Monseigneur was ready, and sat down alone to his sumptuous and choice supper. His chair was opposite to the window, and he had taken his soup, and was raising his glass of Bordeaux to his lips, when he put it down.
“What is that?” he calmly asked, looking with attention at the horizontal lines of black and stone colour.
“Monseigneur? That?”
“Outside the blinds. Open the blinds.”
It was done.
“Well?”
“Monseigneur, it is nothing. The trees and the night are all that are here.”
The servant who spoke, had thrown the blinds wide, had looked out into the vacant darkness, and stood with that blank behind him, looking round for instructions.
“Good,” said the imperturbable master. “Close them again.”
That was done too, and the Marquis went on with his supper. He was half way through it, when he again stopped with his glass in his hand, hearing the sound of wheels. It came on briskly, and came up to the front of the chateau.
“Ask who is arrived.”
It was the nephew of Monseigneur. He had been some few leagues behind Monseigneur, early in the afternoon. He had diminished the distance rapidly, but not so rapidly as to come up with Monseigneur on the road. He had heard of Monseigneur, at the posting-houses, as being before him.
He was to be told (said Monseigneur) that supper awaited him then and there, and that he was prayed to come to it. In a little while he came. He had been known in England as Charles Darnay.
Monseigneur received him in a courtly manner, but they did not shake hands.
“You left Paris yesterday, sir?” he said to Monseigneur, as he took his seat at table.
“Yesterday. And you?”
“I come direct.”
“From London?”
“Yes.”
“You have been a long time coming,” said the Marquis, with a smile.
“On the contrary; I come direct.”
“Pardon me! I mean, not a long time on the journey; a long time intending the journey.”
“I have been detained by”—the nephew stopped a moment in his answer—“various business.”
“Without doubt,” said the polished uncle.
So long as a servant was present, no other words passed between them. When coffee had been served and they were alone together, the nephew, looking at the uncle and meeting the eyes of the face that was like a fine mask, opened a conversation.
“I have come back, sir, as you anticipate, pursuing the object that took me away. It carried me into great and unexpected peril; but it is a sacred object, and if it had carried me to death I hope it would have sustained me.”
“Not to death,” said the uncle; “it is not necessary to say, to death.”
“I doubt, sir,” returned the nephew, “whether, if it had carried me to the utmost brink of death, you would have cared to stop me there.”
The deepened marks in the nose, and the lengthening of the fine straight lines in the cruel face, looked ominous as to that; the uncle made a graceful gesture of protest, which was so clearly a slight form of good breeding that it was not reassuring.
CAPITOLO IX. La testa della Medusa
Era un massiccio complesso edilizio, quel castello del signor marchese, con un grande cortile di pietra davanti e due rampe di scale in pietra che si incontravano su una terrazza in pietra davanti alla porta principale. Un’impresa lapidea per intero, con pesanti ringhiere in pietra, vasi in pietra, fiori in pietra e volti umani in pietra, teste di leoni in pietra dappertutto. Come se la testa della Gorgone l’avesse scrutato quando fu completato due secoli fa.
Su per l’ampia scalinata di gradini bassi, Monsieur il Marchese, preceduto da una fiaccola, si allontanò dalla sua carrozza, disturbando abbastanza le tenebre da provocare un forte protesto da parte di un gufo sul tetto dell’enorme complesso di edifici per scuderie tra gli alberi. Tutto il resto era così tranquillo che la fiaccola portata su per i gradini e l’altra fiaccola tenuta alla grande porta bruciavano come se fossero in una stanza chiusa di stato, invece che all’aperto nella notte. Non c’era altro rumore oltre a quello della voce del gufo e al cadere di una fontana nella sua vasca di pietra; perché era una di quelle notti buie in cui si trattiene il respiro per un’ora intera, poi si emette un lungo sospiro basso e ci si rimette a trattenere il fiato.
La grande porta sbatté alle sue spalle e Monsieur il Marchese attraversò un salone tetro per via di certi vecchi archibugi da caccia al cinghiale, spade e coltelli; ancora più tetro a causa di alcuni pesanti frustini e fruste da equitazione, il cui peso molti contadini, ormai passati nelle mani del loro benefattore morte, avevano sentito quando il loro signore era in collera.
Evitando le stanze più grandi, che erano buie e chiuse per la notte, monsieur il marchese, con il suo portatore di torcia che lo precedeva, salì le scale fino a una porta in un corridoio. Aperta questa, gli concesse l’accesso ai suoi appartamenti privati composti da tre stanze: la sua camera da letto e altre due. Stanze ad alte volte con pavimenti freschi non tappetati, grandi cane sul focolare per bruciare legna in inverno tempo, e tutti i lussi adatti allo stato di un marchese in un’epoca e in un paese lussuosi. Lo stile dell’ultimo Luigi, ma uno della linea che non doveva mai spezzarsi—il quattordicesimo Luigi—era evidente nei loro ricchi mobili; ma era diversificato da molti oggetti che erano illustrazioni di vecchie pagine nella storia della Francia.
Nella terza delle stanze era apparecchiata una tavola per due; si trattava di un salotto circolare, situato in uno dei quattro torrioni del castello, ciascuno sormontato da una specie di copricandela. Una piccola stanza con soffitto alto, la cui finestra era spalancata e le persiane di legno erano chiuse, in modo che la buia notte si vedesse solo attraverso sottili linee orizzontali nere, alternate alle loro ampie strisce di colore pietra.
«Mio nipote», disse il marchese, lanciando un’occhiata ai preparativi per la cena, «dicevano che non fosse ancora arrivato».
E non lo era; ma si aspettava che arrivasse con Monsignore.
«Ah! Non è probabile che arrivi questa sera; tuttavia, lascia la tavola così com’è. Sarò pronto tra un quarto d’ora».
In un quarto d’ora Monseigneur era pronto e si sedette solo per la sua sontuosa e raffinata cena. La sua sedia era di fronte alla finestra, aveva mangiato il suo brodo, stava portando alle labbra il bicchiere di Bordeaux quando lo rimise giù.
«Che cos’è?» chiese tranquillamente, guardando con attenzione le linee orizzontali di colore nero e pietra.
“Monseigneur? Quello?”
Fuori dalle tende. Aprite le tende.
Era fatto.
«Bene?»
«Monseigneur, non è nulla. Gli alberi e la notte sono tutto ciò che c’è qui».
Il domestico che aveva parlato aveva spalancato le persiane, guardando fuori nel vuoto buio e rimase con quel vuoto alle sue spalle, cercando istruzioni intorno a sé.
“Benissimo”, disse il maestro impassibile, “richiudeteli”.
Anche questo fu fatto e il Marchese continuò la sua cena. Era a metà strada quando si fermò di nuovo con il bicchiere in mano, sentendo il rumore delle ruote. Si avvicinava velocemente e giunse fino al fronte del castello.
“Chiedi chi è arrivato.”
Era il nipote di Monsignore. Era rimasto alcune leghe indietro rispetto a Monsignore, all’inizio del pomeriggio. Aveva ridotto la distanza rapidamente, ma non così in fretta da raggiungere Monsignore sulla strada. Aveva saputo di Monsignore alle stazioni dei cavalli, che lo precedevano.
Gli si doveva dire (disse Monsignore) che la cena lo attendeva lì e allora, e che gli veniva chiesto di raggiungerla. Dopo un po’ arrivò. In Inghilterra era conosciuto come Charles Darnay.
Il Monseigneur lo accolse con cortesia, ma non si strinsero la mano.
“È partito da Parigi ieri, signore?”, disse a Monseigneur mentre prendeva posto a tavola.
“Ieri. E tu?”
“Vengo direttamente.”
«Da Londra?»
“Sì, davvero.”
«Avete messo un bel po’ di tempo ad arrivare», disse il Marchese con un sorriso.
“Al contrario; vengo direttamente.”
«Mi scusi! Volevo dire, non un lungo periodo nel viaggio; un lungo periodo pensando al viaggio.»
“Sono stato trattenuto da” — il nipote fece una pausa nella sua risposta — “diversi impegni.”
«Senza dubbio,» disse lo zio raffinato.
Finché era presente un domestico, non si scambiarono altre parole. Quando il caffè fu servito e furono soli insieme, il nipote, guardando lo zio e incontrando gli occhi del volto che sembrava una maschera raffinata, iniziò una conversazione.
«Sono tornato, signore, come lei prevedeva, perseguitando lo scopo che mi ha portato via. Mi ha condotto in un grande e imprevisto pericolo; ma è uno scopo sacro, e se mi avesse condotto alla morte io spero che mi avrebbe sostenuto».
«Non alla morte», disse lo zio; «non è necessario dire, alla morte.»
“Dubito, signore”, rispose il nipote, “che se mi avesse portato al limite estremo della morte, lei si sarebbe preoccupato di fermarmi lì”.
Le tracce più profonde sul naso e l’allungamento delle linee fini e diritte del volto crudele sembravano di cattivo auspicio in proposito; lo zio fece un grazioso gesto di protesta, che era così chiaramente una leggera forma di buona educazione da non essere rassicurante.
“Indeed, sir,” pursued the nephew, “for anything I know, you may have expressly worked to give a more suspicious appearance to the suspicious circumstances that surrounded me.”
“No, no, no,” said the uncle, pleasantly.
“But, however that may be,” resumed the nephew, glancing at him with deep distrust, “I know that your diplomacy would stop me by any means, and would know no scruple as to means.”
“My friend, I told you so,” said the uncle, with a fine pulsation in the two marks. “Do me the favour to recall that I told you so, long ago.”
“I recall it.”
“Thank you,” said the Marquis—very sweetly indeed.
His tone lingered in the air, almost like the tone of a musical instrument.
“In effect, sir,” pursued the nephew, “I believe it to be at once your bad fortune, and my good fortune, that has kept me out of a prison in France here.”
“I do not quite understand,” returned the uncle, sipping his coffee. “Dare I ask you to explain?”
“I believe that if you were not in disgrace with the Court, and had not been overshadowed by that cloud for years past, a letter de cachet would have sent me to some fortress indefinitely.”
“It is possible,” said the uncle, with great calmness. “For the honour of the family, I could even resolve to incommode you to that extent. Pray excuse me!”
“I perceive that, happily for me, the Reception of the day before yesterday was, as usual, a cold one,” observed the nephew.
“I would not say happily, my friend,” returned the uncle, with refined politeness; “I would not be sure of that. A good opportunity for consideration, surrounded by the advantages of solitude, might influence your destiny to far greater advantage than you influence it for yourself. But it is useless to discuss the question. I am, as you say, at a disadvantage. These little instruments of correction, these gentle aids to the power and honour of families, these slight favours that might so incommode you, are only to be obtained now by interest and importunity. They are sought by so many, and they are granted (comparatively) to so few! It used not to be so, but France in all such things is changed for the worse. Our not remote ancestors held the right of life and death over the surrounding vulgar. From this room, many such dogs have been taken out to be hanged; in the next room (my bedroom), one fellow, to our knowledge, was poniarded on the spot for professing some insolent delicacy respecting his daughter—his daughter? We have lost many privileges; a new philosophy has become the mode; and the assertion of our station, in these days, might (I do not go so far as to say would, but might) cause us real inconvenience. All very bad, very bad!”
The Marquis took a gentle little pinch of snuff, and shook his head; as elegantly despondent as he could becomingly be of a country still containing himself, that great means of regeneration.
“We have so asserted our station, both in the old time and in the modern time also,” said the nephew, gloomily, “that I believe our name to be more detested than any name in France.”
“Let us hope so,” said the uncle. “Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.”
“There is not,” pursued the nephew, in his former tone, “a face I can look at, in all this country round about us, which looks at me with any deference on it but the dark deference of fear and slavery.”
“A compliment,” said the Marquis, “to the grandeur of the family, merited by the manner in which the family has sustained its grandeur. Hah!” And he took another gentle little pinch of snuff, and lightly crossed his legs.
But, when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table, covered his eyes thoughtfully and dejectedly with his hand, the fine mask looked at him sideways with a stronger concentration of keenness, closeness, and dislike, than was comportable with its wearer’s assumption of indifference.
“Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend,” observed the Marquis, “will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof,” looking up to it, “shuts out the sky.”
That might not be so long as the Marquis supposed. If a picture of the chateau as it was to be a very few years hence, and of fifty like it as they too were to be a very few years hence, could have been shown to him that night, he might have been at a loss to claim his own from the ghastly, fire-charred, plunder-wrecked rains. As for the roof he vaunted, he might have found that shutting out the sky in a new way—to wit, for ever, from the eyes of the bodies into which its lead was fired, out of the barrels of a hundred thousand muskets.
“Meanwhile,” said the Marquis, “I will preserve the honour and repose of the family, if you will not. But you must be fatigued. Shall we terminate our conference for the night?”
“A moment more.”
“An hour, if you please.”
“Sir,” said the nephew, “we have done wrong, and are reaping the fruits of wrong.”
“We have done wrong?” repeated the Marquis, with an inquiring smile, and delicately pointing, first to his nephew, then to himself.
“Our family; our honourable family, whose honour is of so much account to both of us, in such different ways. Even in my father’s time, we did a world of wrong, injuring every human creature who came between us and our pleasure, whatever it was. Why need I speak of my father’s time, when it is equally yours? Can I separate my father’s twin-brother, joint inheritor, and next successor, from himself?”
“Death has done that!” said the Marquis.
“And has left me,” answered the nephew, “bound to a system that is frightful to me, responsible for it, but powerless in it; seeking to execute the last request of my dear mother’s lips, and obey the last look of my dear mother’s eyes, which implored me to have mercy and to redress; and tortured by seeking assistance and power in vain.”
«In effetti, signore», continuò il nipote, «per quello che ne so io, potrebbe anche darsi che lei abbia fatto di proposito in modo da dare un aspetto più sospetto alle circostanze già sospette che mi circondavano.»
«No, no, no», disse lo zio in tono amichevole.
«Ma, comunque sia», riprese il nipote, guardandolo con profonda diffidenza, «so che la sua diplomazia mi fermerebbe a tutti i costi e non avrebbe alcun scrupolo sui mezzi.»
«Amico mio, ve l’avevo detto», disse lo zio con un forte battito nelle due cicatrici. «Fatemi il favore di ricordare che ve l’avevo detto tanto tempo fa».
Me lo ricordo.
«Grazie», disse il Marchese — davvero dolcemente.
Il suo tono rimase sospeso nell’aria, quasi come il suono di uno strumento musicale.
«In effetti, signore», continuò il nipote, «credo che sia al tempo stesso la sua sfortuna e la mia fortuna se mi sono tenuto lontano da una prigione qui in Francia.»
«Non ho capito bene», rispose lo zio, assaggiando il caffè, «Posso chiederle di spiegarmi?»
«Credo che se non foste caduto in disgrazia presso la Corte e non foste stato oscurato da quella nube negli anni passati, una lettera de cachet mi avrebbe mandata in qualche fortezza per un tempo indefinito.»
«È possibile», disse lo zio con grande calma. «Per l’onore della famiglia potrei anche decidere di disturbarti fino a quel punto. Ti prego, scusami!»
«Mi accorgo che, fortunatamente per me, il ricevimento di dopodomani fa’, come al solito, un fiasco», osservò il nipote.
“Non direi felicemente, mio caro amico”, rispose lo zio con raffinata cortesia; “non ne sarei sicuro. Una buona opportunità di riflessione, circondato dai vantaggi della solitudine, potrebbe influenzare il tuo destino in modo molto più favorevole di quanto tu possa fare da solo. Ma è inutile discutere la questione. Sono, come dici tu, svantaggiato. Questi piccoli strumenti di correzione, questi gentili ausili al potere e all’onore delle famiglie, queste lievi concessioni che potrebbero esserti così scomode, ora si ottengono solo con l’influenza e la insistenza. Sono cercati da tanti, e vengono concessi (in confronto) a pochi! Non è sempre stato così, ma la Francia in tutte queste cose è peggiorata. I nostri non lontani antenati detenevano il diritto di vita e morte sul volgo circostante. Da questa stanza, molti di questi cani sono stati portati fuori per essere impiccati; nella stanza accanto (la mia camera da letto), un tizio, a nostra conoscenza, è stato pugnalato sul posto per aver professato una certa insolente delicatezza riguardo sua figlia—sua figlia? Abbiamo perso molti privilegi; una nuova filosofia è diventata di moda; e l’affermazione del nostro rango, in questi giorni, potrebbe (non dico che lo farebbe, ma potrebbe) causarci veri inconvenienti. Tutto molto male, molto male!”
Il Marchese prese un delicato pizzico di tabacco da fiuto e scosse la testa, con un’elegante disperazione quanto più decorosa possibile per un paese che ancora lo conteneva, lui, grande mezzo di rigenerazione.
«Abbiamo affermato così bene la nostra posizione sia nel vecchio tempo che anche nel moderno tempo,» disse il nipote, cupamente, «che credo che il nostro nome sia più odiato di qualsiasi altro in Francia.»
«Speriamolo», disse lo zio. «Il disprezzo per i potenti è l’omaggio involontario dei deboli.»
«Non c’è», continuò il nipote con lo stesso tono di prima, «un volto che io possa guardare in tutto questo paese intorno a noi, che mi guardi con deferenza se non la cupa deferenza della paura e della schiavitù.»
«Un complimento», disse il Marchese, «alla grandezza della famiglia, meritato dal modo in cui la famiglia ha mantenuto la sua grandezza. Ah!» E si prese un’altra gentile presa di tabacco da fiuto, incrociando leggermente le gambe.
Ma quando il nipote, appoggiando un gomito sul tavolo e coprendosi gli occhi con la mano in atteggiamento pensieroso e abbattuto, la maschera raffinata lo guardò di sottecchi con una concentrazione più intensa di acutezza, freddezza e antipatia che non fosse compatibile con l’assunzione di indifferenza del suo portatore.
«La repressione è l’unica filosofia duratura. La cupa deferenza della paura e la schiavitù, amico mio», osservò il Marchese, «terranno i cani obbedienti alla frusta finché questo tetto» alzando lo sguardo verso di esso «ci separa dal cielo.»
Forse non sarebbe stato così lungo come il Marchese aveva supposto. Se gli fosse stata mostrata quella notte un’immagine del castello com’era destinato ad essere tra pochissimi anni, e di cinquanta castelli simili com’erano anch’essi destinati a diventare tra pochi anni, forse gli sarebbe stato difficile riconoscere il proprio tra le rovine spettrali, incendiate, saccheggiate. Quanto al tetto di cui si vantava, avrebbe potuto scoprire che esso oscurava il cielo in un nuovo modo: per l’appunto, per sempre, agli occhi dei corpi nei quali il suo piombo era stato sparato dalle canne di centomila moschetti.
«Nel frattempo», disse il Marchese, «preserverò l’onore e la tranquillità della famiglia, se voi non lo farete. Ma dovete essere stanco. Terminiamo la nostra conversazione per questa sera?»
Ancora un attimo.
“Un’ora, per favore.”
“Signore,” disse il nipote, “abbiamo sbagliato e stiamo raccogliendo i frutti del nostro errore.”
«Abbiamo fatto qualcosa di male?» ripeté il Marchese con un sorriso interrogativo e indicando con delicatezza prima suo nipote poi se stesso.
“La nostra famiglia; la nostra onorevole famiglia, il cui onore è così importante per entrambi, anche se in modi diversi. Anche ai tempi di mio padre abbiamo fatto un mondo di male, ferendo ogni creatura umana che si metteva tra noi e i nostri piaceri, qualunque essi fossero. Perché dovrei parlare dei tempi di mio padre, quando sono ugualmente anche tuoi? Posso forse separare il fratello gemello di mio padre, coerede e successore immediato, da lui stesso?”
«La morte ha fatto questo!» disse il marchese.
«E mi ha lasciato», rispose il nipote, «legato a un sistema che è per me spaventoso, ne sono responsabile ma non ho potere su di esso; cerco di esaudire l’ultimo desiderio delle labbra della mia cara madre e obbedire all’ultimo sguardo dei suoi occhi cari, che mi imploravano di avere pietà e di porvi rimedio; e sono torturato dal cercare invano aiuto e potere.»
“Seeking them from me, my nephew,” said the Marquis, touching him on the breast with his forefinger—they were now standing by the hearth—“you will for ever seek them in vain, be assured.”
Every fine straight line in the clear whiteness of his face, was cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he stood looking quietly at his nephew, with his snuff-box in his hand. Once again he touched him on the breast, as though his finger were the fine point of a small sword, with which, in delicate finesse, he ran him through the body, and said,
“My friend, I will die, perpetuating the system under which I have lived.”
When he had said it, he took a culminating pinch of snuff, and put his box in his pocket.
“Better to be a rational creature,” he added then, after ringing a small bell on the table, “and accept your natural destiny. But you are lost, Monsieur Charles, I see.”
“This property and France are lost to me,” said the nephew, sadly; “I renounce them.”
“Are they both yours to renounce? France may be, but is the property? It is scarcely worth mentioning; but, is it yet?”
“I had no intention, in the words I used, to claim it yet. If it passed to me from you, to-morrow—”
“Which I have the vanity to hope is not probable.”
“—or twenty years hence—”
“You do me too much honour,” said the Marquis; “still, I prefer that supposition.”
“—I would abandon it, and live otherwise and elsewhere. It is little to relinquish. What is it but a wilderness of misery and ruin!”
“Hah!” said the Marquis, glancing round the luxurious room.
“To the eye it is fair enough, here; but seen in its integrity, under the sky, and by the daylight, it is a crumbling tower of waste, mismanagement, extortion, debt, mortgage, oppression, hunger, nakedness, and suffering.”
“Hah!” said the Marquis again, in a well-satisfied manner.
“If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put into some hands better qualified to free it slowly (if such a thing is possible) from the weight that drags it down, so that the miserable people who cannot leave it and who have been long wrung to the last point of endurance, may, in another generation, suffer less; but it is not for me. There is a curse on it, and on all this land.”
“And you?” said the uncle. “Forgive my curiosity; do you, under your new philosophy, graciously intend to live?”
“I must do, to live, what others of my countrymen, even with nobility at their backs, may have to do some day—work.”
“In England, for example?”
“Yes. The family honour, sir, is safe from me in this country. The family name can suffer from me in no other, for I bear it in no other.”
The ringing of the bell had caused the adjoining bed-chamber to be lighted. It now shone brightly, through the door of communication. The Marquis looked that way, and listened for the retreating step of his valet.
“England is very attractive to you, seeing how indifferently you have prospered there,” he observed then, turning his calm face to his nephew with a smile.
“I have already said, that for my prospering there, I am sensible I may be indebted to you, sir. For the rest, it is my Refuge.”
“They say, those boastful English, that it is the Refuge of many. You know a compatriot who has found a Refuge there? A Doctor?”
“Yes.”
“With a daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Yes,” said the Marquis. “You are fatigued. Good night!”
As he bent his head in his most courtly manner, there was a secrecy in his smiling face, and he conveyed an air of mystery to those words, which struck the eyes and ears of his nephew forcibly. At the same time, the thin straight lines of the setting of the eyes, and the thin straight lips, and the markings in the nose, curved with a sarcasm that looked handsomely diabolic.
“Yes,” repeated the Marquis. “A Doctor with a daughter. Yes. So commences the new philosophy! You are fatigued. Good night!”
It would have been of as much avail to interrogate any stone face outside the chateau as to interrogate that face of his. The nephew looked at him, in vain, in passing on to the door.
“Good night!” said the uncle. “I look to the pleasure of seeing you again in the morning. Good repose! Light Monsieur my nephew to his chamber there!—And burn Monsieur my nephew in his bed, if you will,” he added to himself, before he rang his little bell again, and summoned his valet to his own bedroom.
The valet come and gone, Monsieur the Marquis walked to and fro in his loose chamber-robe, to prepare himself gently for sleep, that hot still night. Rustling about the room, his softly-slippered feet making no noise on the floor, he moved like a refined tiger:—looked like some enchanted marquis of the impenitently wicked sort, in story, whose periodical change into tiger form was either just going off, or just coming on.
He moved from end to end of his voluptuous bedroom, looking again at the scraps of the day’s journey that came unbidden into his mind; the slow toil up the hill at sunset, the setting sun, the descent, the mill, the prison on the crag, the little village in the hollow, the peasants at the fountain, and the mender of roads with his blue cap pointing out the chain under the carriage. That fountain suggested the Paris fountain, the little bundle lying on the step, the women bending over it, and the tall man with his arms up, crying, “Dead!”
“I am cool now,” said Monsieur the Marquis, “and may go to bed.”
So, leaving only one light burning on the large hearth, he let his thin gauze curtains fall around him, and heard the night break its silence with a long sigh as he composed himself to sleep.
The stone faces on the outer walls stared blindly at the black night for three heavy hours; for three heavy hours, the horses in the stables rattled at their racks, the dogs barked, and the owl made a noise with very little resemblance in it to the noise conventionally assigned to the owl by men-poets. But it is the obstinate custom of such creatures hardly ever to say what is set down for them.
«Cercandole da me, nipote mio», disse il Marchese toccandolo sul petto con l’indice - ora erano fermi accanto al focolare - «le cercherai invano per sempre, stanne certo.»
Ogni linea sottile e diritta nella chiara bianchezza del suo volto era crudelmente, astutamente e strettamente compressa mentre lui stava lì a guardare tranquillamente il nipote con la scatola del tabacco da fiuto in mano. Ancora una volta lo toccò sul petto come se il suo dito fosse la punta sottile di un piccolo spada con cui, in delicata finezza, lo trapassava nel corpo, e disse:
“Il mio amico, morirò perpetuando il sistema in cui ho vissuto.”
Dopo averlo detto, si concesse un’ultima presa di tabacco da fiuto e ripose la scatolina in tasca.
«È meglio essere una creatura razionale», aggiunse poi, dopo aver suonato un piccolo campanello sul tavolo, «e accettare il proprio destino naturale. Ma voi siete perduto, Monsieur Charles, lo vedo».
“Questa proprietà e la Francia mi sono perdute,” disse il nipote con tristezza; “le rinuncio.”
«Sono entrambi tuoi da rinunciare? La Francia può esserlo, ma i beni? Non vale quasi la pena di menzionarlo; ma lo sono ancora?»
«Non avevo intenzione, con le parole che ho usato, di rivendicarla ancora. Se mi passasse da voi domani, »
«La quale ho la vanità di sperare non sia probabile.»
“o tra vent’anni”
“Mi fate troppo onore”, disse il Marchese; “tuttavia, preferisco questa supposizione”.
«Abbandonerei tutto e vivrei diversamente ed altrove. È poco ciò che si rinuncia. Non è forse un deserto di miseria e rovina!»
«Ah!» disse il Marchese, guardandosi intorno nella lussuosa stanza.
«All’apparenza è abbastanza decoroso, qui; ma visto nella sua interezza, sotto il cielo e alla luce del giorno, è una torre in rovina di sprechi, cattiva gestione, estorsioni, debiti, ipoteche, oppressione, fame, nudità, e sofferenza.»
«Ah!» disse il Marchese di nuovo, con aria ben soddisfatta.
«Se mai dovesse diventare mio, la metterò nelle mani di qualcuno più capace di liberarla lentamente (se una cosa del genere è possibile) dal peso che la trascina giù, in modo che le povere persone che non possono lasciarla e che sono state a lungo tormentate fino all’ultimo punto di resistenza, possano, nella generazione successiva, soffrire meno; ma non è per me. C’è una maledizione su di essa e su tutta questa terra».
“E tu?”, disse lo zio. “Scusa la mia curiosità: con la tua nuova filosofia hai l’intenzione di vivere, per favore?”
«Devo fare per vivere ciò che altri miei compatrioti, anche con la nobiltà alle spalle, un giorno potrebbero essere costretti a fare: lavorare.»
“In Inghilterra, per esempio?”
“Sì. L’onore della famiglia è al sicuro da me in questo paese. Il nome di famiglia non può soffrire per colpa mia in nessun altro luogo, perché io lo porto solo qui”.
Il suono della campanella aveva fatto accendere la luce nella camera da letto attigua. Ora brillava luminosa attraverso la porta di comunicazione. Il Marchese guardò in quella direzione e ascoltò il passo che si allontanava del suo valletto.
«L’Inghilterra vi attrae molto, visto come prosperiate qui senza alcuno sforzo», osservò poi, rivolgendo il suo volto calmo al nipote con un sorriso.
«Ho già detto che sono consapevole di dovervi la mia fortuna in quel luogo, signore. Per il resto, è il mio Rifugio».
“Dicono quegli inglesi vanagloriosi che è il Rifugio di molti. Conosci un connazionale che ha trovato rifugio lì? Un dottore?”
“Sì, davvero.”
“Con una figlia?”
“Sì, davvero.”
“Sì”, disse il Marchese. “Sei stanco. Buona notte!”
Mentre chinava il capo nel suo modo più cortese, c’era un segreto sul suo volto sorridente e dava alle parole un’aria di mistero che colpiva fortemente gli occhi e le orecchie del nipote. Nello stesso tempo, le sottili linee diritte intorno agli occhi, le labbra strette e diritte e i tratti del naso si curvavano con un sarcasmo che appariva diabolicamente affascinante.
“Sì”, ripeté il Marchese, “un dottore con una figlia. Sì. Così comincia la nuova filosofia! Sei stanco. Buona notte!”
Sarebbe stato altrettanto utile interrogare una qualsiasi faccia di pietra fuori dal castello quanto interrogare quella sua faccia. Il nipote lo guardò invano mentre si dirigeva verso la porta.
“Buona notte!” disse lo zio. “Aspetto con piacere di rivedervi domattina. Dormite bene! Accompagnate Monsieur mio nipote nella sua camera là!—E bruciate pure Monsieur mio nipote nel suo letto, se volete,” aggiunse tra sé e sé prima di suonare nuovamente il suo piccolo campanello e chiamare il suo valletto per la propria camera da letto.
Il valletto venne e se ne andò, Monsieur il Marchese camminava avanti e indietro nella sua ampia vestaglia da camera per prepararsi dolcemente al sonno, in quella calda e immobile notte. Frusciando per la stanza, i suoi piedi con morbidi pantofole non facevano alcun rumore sul pavimento, si muoveva come un tigre raffinato: — sembrava qualche marchese incantato della specie impenitentemente malvagia, in una storia, la cui trasformazione periodica in forma di tigre stava per iniziare o era appena terminata.
Si mosse da un’estremità all’altra della sua lussuosa camera da letto, guardando di nuovo i frammenti del viaggio di quel giorno che gli venivano in mente senza che li cercasse; la lenta fatica per salire il colle al tramonto, il sole che calava, la discesa, il mulino, la prigione sulla rupe, il piccolo villaggio nella valle, i contadini alla fontana e l’uomo che riparava le strade con il suo berretto blu che indicava la catena sotto la carrozza. Quella fontana gli fece pensare alla fontana di Parigi, al piccolo fagotto abbandonato sul gradino, alle donne che si chinavano su di esso e all’uomo alto con le braccia alzate che gridava: “È morto!”.
“Sono fresco ora,” disse Monsieur il Marchese, “e posso andare a letto.”
Così, lasciando accesa solo una luce sul grande focolare, fece cadere intorno a sé le sue sottili tende di garza e udì la notte rompere il suo silenzio con un lungo sospiro mentre si disponeva al sonno.
I volti di pietra sulle mura esterne fissavano ciecamente la nera notte per tre pesanti ore; per tre pesanti ore, i cavalli nelle stalle sbatacchiavano le mangiatoie, i cani abbaiavano e il gufo faceva un rumore che aveva ben poca somiglianza con quello convenzionalmente attribuitogli dai poeti. Ma è la testarda abitudine di queste creature quella di non dire quasi mai ciò che gli viene assegnato.
For three heavy hours, the stone faces of the chateau, lion and human, stared blindly at the night. Dead darkness lay on all the landscape, dead darkness added its own hush to the hushing dust on all the roads. The burial-place had got to the pass that its little heaps of poor grass were undistinguishable from one another; the figure on the Cross might have come down, for anything that could be seen of it. In the village, taxers and taxed were fast asleep. Dreaming, perhaps, of banquets, as the starved usually do, and of ease and rest, as the driven slave and the yoked ox may, its lean inhabitants slept soundly, and were fed and freed.
The fountain in the village flowed unseen and unheard, and the fountain at the chateau dropped unseen and unheard—both melting away, like the minutes that were falling from the spring of Time—through three dark hours. Then, the grey water of both began to be ghostly in the light, and the eyes of the stone faces of the chateau were opened.
Lighter and lighter, until at last the sun touched the tops of the still trees, and poured its radiance over the hill. In the glow, the water of the chateau fountain seemed to turn to blood, and the stone faces crimsoned. The carol of the birds was loud and high, and, on the weather-beaten sill of the great window of the bed-chamber of Monsieur the Marquis, one little bird sang its sweetest song with all its might. At this, the nearest stone face seemed to stare amazed, and, with open mouth and dropped under-jaw, looked awe-stricken.
Now, the sun was full up, and movement began in the village. Casement windows opened, crazy doors were unbarred, and people came forth shivering—chilled, as yet, by the new sweet air. Then began the rarely lightened toil of the day among the village population. Some, to the fountain; some, to the fields; men and women here, to dig and delve; men and women there, to see to the poor live stock, and lead the bony cows out, to such pasture as could be found by the roadside. In the church and at the Cross, a kneeling figure or two; attendant on the latter prayers, the led cow, trying for a breakfast among the weeds at its foot.
The chateau awoke later, as became its quality, but awoke gradually and surely. First, the lonely boar-spears and knives of the chase had been reddened as of old; then, had gleamed trenchant in the morning sunshine; now, doors and windows were thrown open, horses in their stables looked round over their shoulders at the light and freshness pouring in at doorways, leaves sparkled and rustled at iron-grated windows, dogs pulled hard at their chains, and reared impatient to be loosed.
All these trivial incidents belonged to the routine of life, and the return of morning. Surely, not so the ringing of the great bell of the chateau, nor the running up and down the stairs; nor the hurried figures on the terrace; nor the booting and tramping here and there and everywhere, nor the quick saddling of horses and riding away?
What winds conveyed this hurry to the grizzled mender of roads, already at work on the hill-top beyond the village, with his day’s dinner (not much to carry) lying in a bundle that it was worth no crow’s while to peck at, on a heap of stones? Had the birds, carrying some grains of it to a distance, dropped one over him as they sow chance seeds? Whether or no, the mender of roads ran, on the sultry morning, as if for his life, down the hill, knee-high in dust, and never stopped till he got to the fountain.
All the people of the village were at the fountain, standing about in their depressed manner, and whispering low, but showing no other emotions than grim curiosity and surprise. The led cows, hastily brought in and tethered to anything that would hold them, were looking stupidly on, or lying down chewing the cud of nothing particularly repaying their trouble, which they had picked up in their interrupted saunter. Some of the people of the chateau, and some of those of the posting-house, and all the taxing authorities, were armed more or less, and were crowded on the other side of the little street in a purposeless way, that was highly fraught with nothing. Already, the mender of roads had penetrated into the midst of a group of fifty particular friends, and was smiting himself in the breast with his blue cap. What did all this portend, and what portended the swift hoisting-up of Monsieur Gabelle behind a servant on horseback, and the conveying away of the said Gabelle (double-laden though the horse was), at a gallop, like a new version of the German ballad of Leonora?
It portended that there was one stone face too many, up at the chateau.
The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night, and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone face for which it had waited through about two hundred years.
It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis. It was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified. Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which was scrawled:
“Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques.”
Per tre pesanti ore, i volti di pietra del castello, leoni e umani, fissarono ciecamente la notte. Un’oscurità morta ricopriva tutto il paesaggio, un’oscurità morta aggiungeva il suo silenzio al silenzio della polvere su tutte le strade. Il camposanto era arrivato a un punto tale che i suoi piccoli mucchietti di misera erba erano indistinguibili l’uno dall’altro; la figura sulla Croce avrebbe potuto scendere, per quanto se ne poteva vedere. Nel villaggio, i tassatori e i tassati dormivano profondamente. Forse sognavano banchetti, come di solito fanno gli affamati, e agiatezza e riposo, come possono fare lo schiavo costretto e l’osservante bue; i suoi magri abitanti dormivano tranquillamente, nutriti e liberi.
La fontana del villaggio scorreva invisibile e silenziosa, e la fontana dello château gocciolava invisibile e silenziosa: entrambe si dissolvevano come i minuti che cadevano dalla sorgente della Tempo - per tre ore buie. Poi, le acque grigie di entrambe cominciarono a diventare spettrali nella luce, e gli occhi dei volti di pietra dello château si aprirono.
Sempre più luminoso, finché infine il sole sfiorò le cime degli alberi immobili e riversò la sua luce sulla collina. Nell’incandescenza, l’acqua della fontana del castello sembrava trasformarsi in sangue, e i volti di pietra divennero cremisi. Il canto degli uccelli era forte e squillante, e sulla vecchia finestra della grande finestra della camera da letto del signor Marchese un piccolo uccello cantava la sua più dolce canzone con tutte le sue forze. A questo punto il volto di pietra più vicino sembrò fissare stupito, e, a bocca aperta e mandibola cadente, apparve atterrito.
Ora il sole era alto nel cielo e nella borgata cominciava l’attività. Si aprivano le finestre a ghigliottina, si sbarravano porte malandate e la gente usciva tremante - ancora intirizzita dall’aria fresca del mattino. Poi iniziava il duro lavoro quotidiano della popolazione del villaggio. Alcuni andavano alla fontana; altri nei campi; uomini e donne qui, a scavare e zappare; uomini e donne là, ad accudire al povero bestiame e condurre fuori le mucche magre, verso i pascoli che si trovavano lungo la strada. Nella chiesa e alla croce, una o due figure inginocchiate; mentre venivano recitate preghiere presso quest’ultima, la mucca condotta al pascolo cercava di fare colazione tra le erbacce ai suoi piedi.
Il castello si svegliò più tardi, come era giusto per la sua importanza, ma gradualmente e con sicurezza. Prima, le solitarie armi da caccia ai cinghiali e i coltelli erano stati insanguinati come un tempo; poi, avevano brillato affilati nella luce del mattino; ora, porte e finestre venivano spalancate, cavalli nelle loro stalle si guardavano alle spalle alla luce e alla freschezza che entrava dalle porte, foglie scintillavano e frusciavano alle finestre con grate di ferro, cani tiravano forte le loro catene, e si drizzavano impazienti per essere sciolti.
Tutti questi fatti banali appartenevano alla routine della vita e al ritorno del mattino. Ma non certo il suono della grande campana dello château, né la corsa su e giù per le scale; né le figure affannate sulla terrazza; né gli stivali che battono qua e là dappertutto, né i cavalli sellati in fretta e portati via al galoppo?
Quali venti avevano portato questa fretta al vecchio riparatore di strade, già all’opera sulla cima della collina oltre il villaggio, con la sua cena giornaliera (non molto da trasportare) che giaceva in un fagotto che non valeva neanche a una cornacchia l’affaticarsi di beccarla, su un mucchio di pietre? Avevano forse i uccelli, portando via qualche granello, lasciato cadere uno sopra di lui mentre seminavano semi casuali? Che fosse così o no, il riparatore di strade correva, nella mattinata afosa, come se gli andasse della vita, giù per la collina, con il polvere fino al ginocchio, e non si fermò finché non arrivò alla fontana.
Tutta la gente del villaggio era alla fontana, in piedi, con aria abbattuta e bisbigliando sottovoce, ma senza mostrare altre emozioni se non una curiosità tetra e sorpresa. Le mucche condotte al pascolo, portate di corsa e legate a qualsiasi cosa che le tenesse ferme, guardavano stupidamente, o si erano sdraiate masticando il bolo alimentare senza nulla di particolarmente gratificante per la loro fatica, raccolto durante la loro passeggiata interrotta. Alcuni degli abitanti del castello e alcuni di quelli della locanda delle diligenze e tutte le autorità fiscali erano più o meno armati, e si erano ammassati dall’altra parte della stradina in modo privo di scopo, che era altamente carico di nulla. Già il riparatore di strade aveva penetrato in mezzo a un gruppo di cinquanta amici particolari, e si batteva sul petto con la sua berretta blu. Cosa preannunciava tutto questo, e cosa preannunciava l’impetuoso sollevamento del signor Gabelle dietro un servo a cavallo, e il trasporto via dell’accennato Gabelle (doppiamente-caricato sebbene il cavallo fosse), al galoppo, come una nuova versione della ballata tedesca di Leonora?
Preannunciava che al castello c’era un volto di pietra in più.
La Gorgone aveva ispezionato nuovamente l’edificio nella notte e vi aveva aggiunto la faccia di pietra mancante, quella che aspettava da circa duecento anni.
Era adagiato sul cuscino del Signor Marchese. Era come una maschera raffinata, improvvisamente spaventata, arrabbiata e pietrificata. Un coltello era stato conficcato dentro il cuore della figura di pietra a cui era attaccato. Intorno all’impugnatura c’era un fiocco di carta, su cui era scarabocchiato:
“Portalo velocemente nella sua tomba. Questo da Jacques.”
CHAPTER X. Two Promises
More months, to the number of twelve, had come and gone, and Mr. Charles Darnay was established in England as a higher teacher of the French language who was conversant with French literature. In this age, he would have been a Professor; in that age, he was a Tutor. He read with young men who could find any leisure and interest for the study of a living tongue spoken all over the world, and he cultivated a taste for its stores of knowledge and fancy. He could write of them, besides, in sound English, and render them into sound English. Such masters were not at that time easily found; Princes that had been, and Kings that were to be, were not yet of the Teacher class, and no ruined nobility had dropped out of Tellson’s ledgers, to turn cooks and carpenters. As a tutor, whose attainments made the student’s way unusually pleasant and profitable, and as an elegant translator who brought something to his work besides mere dictionary knowledge, young Mr. Darnay soon became known and encouraged. He was well acquainted, more-over, with the circumstances of his country, and those were of ever-growing interest. So, with great perseverance and untiring industry, he prospered.
In London, he had expected neither to walk on pavements of gold, nor to lie on beds of roses; if he had had any such exalted expectation, he would not have prospered. He had expected labour, and he found it, and did it and made the best of it. In this, his prosperity consisted.
A certain portion of his time was passed at Cambridge, where he read with undergraduates as a sort of tolerated smuggler who drove a contraband trade in European languages, instead of conveying Greek and Latin through the Custom-house. The rest of his time he passed in London.
Now, from the days when it was always summer in Eden, to these days when it is mostly winter in fallen latitudes, the world of a man has invariably gone one way—Charles Darnay’s way—the way of the love of a woman.
He had loved Lucie Manette from the hour of his danger. He had never heard a sound so sweet and dear as the sound of her compassionate voice; he had never seen a face so tenderly beautiful, as hers when it was confronted with his own on the edge of the grave that had been dug for him. But, he had not yet spoken to her on the subject; the assassination at the deserted chateau far away beyond the heaving water and the long, long, dusty roads—the solid stone chateau which had itself become the mere mist of a dream—had been done a year, and he had never yet, by so much as a single spoken word, disclosed to her the state of his heart.
That he had his reasons for this, he knew full well. It was again a summer day when, lately arrived in London from his college occupation, he turned into the quiet corner in Soho, bent on seeking an opportunity of opening his mind to Doctor Manette. It was the close of the summer day, and he knew Lucie to be out with Miss Pross.
He found the Doctor reading in his arm-chair at a window. The energy which had at once supported him under his old sufferings and aggravated their sharpness, had been gradually restored to him. He was now a very energetic man indeed, with great firmness of purpose, strength of resolution, and vigour of action. In his recovered energy he was sometimes a little fitful and sudden, as he had at first been in the exercise of his other recovered faculties; but, this had never been frequently observable, and had grown more and more rare.
He studied much, slept little, sustained a great deal of fatigue with ease, and was equably cheerful. To him, now entered Charles Darnay, at sight of whom he laid aside his book and held out his hand.
“Charles Darnay! I rejoice to see you. We have been counting on your return these three or four days past. Mr. Stryver and Sydney Carton were both here yesterday, and both made you out to be more than due.”
“I am obliged to them for their interest in the matter,” he answered, a little coldly as to them, though very warmly as to the Doctor. “Miss Manette—”
“Is well,” said the Doctor, as he stopped short, “and your return will delight us all. She has gone out on some household matters, but will soon be home.”
“Doctor Manette, I knew she was from home. I took the opportunity of her being from home, to beg to speak to you.”
There was a blank silence.
“Yes?” said the Doctor, with evident constraint. “Bring your chair here, and speak on.”
He complied as to the chair, but appeared to find the speaking on less easy.
“I have had the happiness, Doctor Manette, of being so intimate here,” so he at length began, “for some year and a half, that I hope the topic on which I am about to touch may not—”
He was stayed by the Doctor’s putting out his hand to stop him. When he had kept it so a little while, he said, drawing it back:
“Is Lucie the topic?”
“She is.”
“It is hard for me to speak of her at any time. It is very hard for me to hear her spoken of in that tone of yours, Charles Darnay.”
“It is a tone of fervent admiration, true homage, and deep love, Doctor Manette!” he said deferentially.
There was another blank silence before her father rejoined:
“I believe it. I do you justice; I believe it.”
His constraint was so manifest, and it was so manifest, too, that it originated in an unwillingness to approach the subject, that Charles Darnay hesitated.
“Shall I go on, sir?”
Another blank.
“Yes, go on.”
“You anticipate what I would say, though you cannot know how earnestly I say it, how earnestly I feel it, without knowing my secret heart, and the hopes and fears and anxieties with which it has long been laden. Dear Doctor Manette, I love your daughter fondly, dearly, disinterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the world, I love her. You have loved yourself; let your old love speak for me!”
CAPITOLO X. Due promesse
Erano passati altri mesi, dodici in tutto, e il signor Charles Darnay si era stabilito in Inghilterra come insegnante di alto livello della lingua francese, esperto anche nella letteratura francese. Oggi sarebbe stato un professore; allora era un precettore. Leggeva con i giovani che potevano trovare tempo e interesse per lo studio di una lingua viva parlata in tutto il mondo, e coltivava un gusto per le sue riserve di conoscenza e fantasia. Poteva scrivere su di esse in buon inglese, oltre a tradurle in buon inglese. All’epoca non era facile trovare maestri del genere; i principi che erano stati e i re che sarebbero diventati non appartenevano ancora alla classe degli insegnanti, e nessuna nobiltà rovinata era stata cancellata dai registri di Tellson per diventare cuoca o falegname. Come precettore le cui competenze rendevano il cammino dello studente insolitamente piacevole e proficuo, e come elegante traduttore che portava qualcosa in più del semplice sapere dizionario al suo lavoro, il giovane signor Darnay divenne presto noto e incoraggiato. Era bene informato, per giunta, sulle circostanze della sua patria, che suscitavano un interesse sempre crescente. Così, con grande perseveranza e instancabile industriosità, prosperò.
A Londra, non si aspettava né di camminare su marciapiedi d’oro, né di dormire su letti di rose; se avesse nutrito qualche aspettativa così elevata, non sarebbe riuscito a prosperare. Si era aspettato fatica, e l’aveva trovata, e l’aveva svolta al meglio delle sue possibilità. In questo consisteva la sua prosperità.
Una certa porzione del suo tempo la trascorreva a Cambridge, dove si dedicava alla lettura con gli studenti universitari come una sorta di contrabbandiere tollerato che faceva commercio illecito di lingue europee, anziché trasportare greco e latino attraverso l’dogana. Il resto del suo tempo lo trascorreva a Londra.
Ora, dai tempi in cui era sempre estate nel Giardino dell’Eden, fino ai giorni nostri, quando è per lo più inverno nelle latitudini decadute, il mondo di un uomo ha sempre seguito una direzione: la direzione di Charles Darnay, la strada dell’amore di una donna.
Egli aveva amato Lucie Manette fin dall’ora del suo pericolo. Non aveva mai udito un suono così dolce e caro come il suono della sua voce compassionevole; non aveva mai visto un volto così teneramente bello, come quello di lei quando si trovava di fronte al suo sul bordo della fossa che era stata scavata per lui. Ma non le aveva ancora parlato dell’argomento; l’assassinio nel castello deserto molto lontano oltre il tumultuoso mare e le lunghe, lunghe strade polverose - il solido castello di pietra che era diventato solo la nebbia di un sogno - era stato compiuto un anno prima, e lui non aveva ancora mai, nemmeno con una sola parola pronunciata, rivelato a lei lo stato del suo cuore.
Era ben consapevole di avere le sue ragioni per questo. Era ancora una giornata d’estate quando, appena arrivato a Londra dalla sua occupazione universitaria, si diresse verso l’angolo tranquillo di Soho, deciso a cercare un’occasione per aprire il suo cuore al dottor Manette. Era la fine della giornata d’estate e sapeva che Lucie era uscita con Miss Pross.
Lo trovò mentre il dottore stava leggendo nella sua poltrona accanto a una finestra. L’energia che lo aveva sostenuto fin dall’inizio nelle sue vecchie sofferenze e ne aveva acuito la violenza, gli era stata gradualmente restituita. Ora era davvero un uomo molto energico, con grande fermezza di proposito, forza di volontà e vigore d’azione. Nella sua energia riacquistata a volte era un po’ capriccioso e improvviso, come lo era stato all’inizio nell’esercizio delle sue altre facoltà ritrovate; ma questo non si era mai notato spesso ed era diventato sempre più raro.
Studiava molto, dormiva poco, sopportava con facilità molte fatiche ed era invariabilmente di buon umore. A lui entrò ora Charles Darnay, alla vista del quale mise da parte il libro e gli tese la mano.
«Charles Darnay! Mi fa piacere rivederla. Aspettavamo il suo ritorno da tre o quattro giorni. Ieri sono venuti qui sia Mr Stryver che Sydney Carton, e tutti e due hanno detto che lei era più che atteso».
«Sono loro obbligato per l’interesse che hanno dimostrato nella faccenda», rispose, un po’ freddamente nei loro confronti, sebbene con grande calore verso il dottore. «Signorina Manette—»
«È bene», disse il Dottore fermandosi di colpo, «e il tuo ritorno ci riempirà tutti di gioia. È uscita per alcune faccende domestiche, ma tornerà presto a casa.»
«Dottor Manette, sapevo che era di casa. Ho approfittato del fatto che fosse di casa per chiedere di parlarle.»
Ci fu un vuoto silenzio.
“Sì?” disse il dottore con evidente riluttanza. “Porti qui la sua sedia e continui.”
Obbedì per quanto riguardava la sedia, ma sembrò trovare più difficile parlare.
«Ho avuto la felicità, dottor Manette, di essere così intimo qui», così alla fine cominciò, «da un anno e mezzo circa, che spero l’argomento di cui sto per parlare non possa, »
Fu fermato dal Dottore che alzò la mano per trattenerlo. Quando l’ebbe tenuta così un po’, disse ritraendola:
“Lucie è l’argomento?”
“Lo è, davvero.”
«È difficile per me parlare di lei a qualsiasi momento. È molto difficile per me sentirla nominare con quel tono che hai tu, Charles Darnay.»
“È un tono di ammirazione fervente, vero omaggio e profondo amore, dottor Manette!”, disse con deferenza.
Ci fu un altro imbarazzante silenzio prima che suo padre riprendesse a parlare:
“Lo credo. Ti rendo giustizia; lo credo.”
La sua reticenza era così evidente e altrettanto evidente era che essa derivava da una riluttanza ad affrontare l’argomento, che Charles Darnay esitò.
“Devo continuare, signore?”
Un’altra lacuna.
“Sì, continua.”
«Anticipate ciò che vorrei dire, anche se non potete sapere quanto seriamente lo dico, quanto sinceramente lo sento, senza conoscere il mio cuore segreto e le speranze, i timori e le ansie con cui è stato a lungo gravato. Caro dottor Manette, io amo vostra figlia teneramente, profondamente, disinteressatamente, devotamente. Se mai ci fu amore nel mondo, io la amo. Anche voi avete amato; lasciate che il vostro vecchio amore parli per me!»
The Doctor sat with his face turned away, and his eyes bent on the ground. At the last words, he stretched out his hand again, hurriedly, and cried:
“Not that, sir! Let that be! I adjure you, do not recall that!”
His cry was so like a cry of actual pain, that it rang in Charles Darnay’s ears long after he had ceased. He motioned with the hand he had extended, and it seemed to be an appeal to Darnay to pause. The latter so received it, and remained silent.
“I ask your pardon,” said the Doctor, in a subdued tone, after some moments. “I do not doubt your loving Lucie; you may be satisfied of it.”
He turned towards him in his chair, but did not look at him, or raise his eyes. His chin dropped upon his hand, and his white hair overshadowed his face:
“Have you spoken to Lucie?”
“No.”
“Nor written?”
“Never.”
“It would be ungenerous to affect not to know that your self-denial is to be referred to your consideration for her father. Her father thanks you.”
He offered his hand; but his eyes did not go with it.
“I know,” said Darnay, respectfully, “how can I fail to know, Doctor Manette, I who have seen you together from day to day, that between you and Miss Manette there is an affection so unusual, so touching, so belonging to the circumstances in which it has been nurtured, that it can have few parallels, even in the tenderness between a father and child. I know, Doctor Manette—how can I fail to know—that, mingled with the affection and duty of a daughter who has become a woman, there is, in her heart, towards you, all the love and reliance of infancy itself. I know that, as in her childhood she had no parent, so she is now devoted to you with all the constancy and fervour of her present years and character, united to the trustfulness and attachment of the early days in which you were lost to her. I know perfectly well that if you had been restored to her from the world beyond this life, you could hardly be invested, in her sight, with a more sacred character than that in which you are always with her. I know that when she is clinging to you, the hands of baby, girl, and woman, all in one, are round your neck. I know that in loving you she sees and loves her mother at her own age, sees and loves you at my age, loves her mother broken-hearted, loves you through your dreadful trial and in your blessed restoration. I have known this, night and day, since I have known you in your home.”
Her father sat silent, with his face bent down. His breathing was a little quickened; but he repressed all other signs of agitation.
“Dear Doctor Manette, always knowing this, always seeing her and you with this hallowed light about you, I have forborne, and forborne, as long as it was in the nature of man to do it. I have felt, and do even now feel, that to bring my love—even mine—between you, is to touch your history with something not quite so good as itself. But I love her. Heaven is my witness that I love her!”
“I believe it,” answered her father, mournfully. “I have thought so before now. I believe it.”
“But, do not believe,” said Darnay, upon whose ear the mournful voice struck with a reproachful sound, “that if my fortune were so cast as that, being one day so happy as to make her my wife, I must at any time put any separation between her and you, I could or would breathe a word of what I now say. Besides that I should know it to be hopeless, I should know it to be a baseness. If I had any such possibility, even at a remote distance of years, harboured in my thoughts, and hidden in my heart—if it ever had been there—if it ever could be there—I could not now touch this honoured hand.”
He laid his own upon it as he spoke.
“No, dear Doctor Manette. Like you, a voluntary exile from France; like you, driven from it by its distractions, oppressions, and miseries; like you, striving to live away from it by my own exertions, and trusting in a happier future; I look only to sharing your fortunes, sharing your life and home, and being faithful to you to the death. Not to divide with Lucie her privilege as your child, companion, and friend; but to come in aid of it, and bind her closer to you, if such a thing can be.”
His touch still lingered on her father’s hand. Answering the touch for a moment, but not coldly, her father rested his hands upon the arms of his chair, and looked up for the first time since the beginning of the conference. A struggle was evidently in his face; a struggle with that occasional look which had a tendency in it to dark doubt and dread.
“You speak so feelingly and so manfully, Charles Darnay, that I thank you with all my heart, and will open all my heart—or nearly so. Have you any reason to believe that Lucie loves you?”
“None. As yet, none.”
“Is it the immediate object of this confidence, that you may at once ascertain that, with my knowledge?”
“Not even so. I might not have the hopefulness to do it for weeks; I might (mistaken or not mistaken) have that hopefulness to-morrow.”
“Do you seek any guidance from me?”
“I ask none, sir. But I have thought it possible that you might have it in your power, if you should deem it right, to give me some.”
“Do you seek any promise from me?”
“I do seek that.”
“What is it?”
“I well understand that, without you, I could have no hope. I well understand that, even if Miss Manette held me at this moment in her innocent heart—do not think I have the presumption to assume so much—I could retain no place in it against her love for her father.”
“If that be so, do you see what, on the other hand, is involved in it?”
“I understand equally well, that a word from her father in any suitor’s favour, would outweigh herself and all the world. For which reason, Doctor Manette,” said Darnay, modestly but firmly, “I would not ask that word, to save my life.”
Il dottore sedeva con il volto rivolto altrove e gli occhi fissi a terra. All’ultima frase, allungò di nuovo la mano in fretta ed esclamò:
“Non quello, signore! Lasci stare! La prego, non ricordiamolo!”
Il suo grido era così simile a un grido di vero dolore, che risuonò nelle orecchie di Charles Darnay molto tempo dopo che si era spento. Fece cenno con la mano tesa, e sembrava essere un invito a Darnay di fermarsi. Quest’ultimo lo interpretò così, e rimase in silenzio.
“Vi chiedo scusa”, disse il dottore con tono sommesso dopo qualche istante, “non metto in dubbio che amiate Lucie; potete esserne certo”.
Si voltò verso di lui sulla sedia, ma non lo guardò né alzò gli occhi. Il mento gli cadde sul palmo della mano e i capelli bianchi ombreggiavano il suo volto:
“Hai parlato con Lucie?”
“No.”
“Né scritto?”
“Mai.”
«Sarebbe poco generoso fingere di non sapere che il vostro sacrificio è dovuto alla considerazione per suo padre. Suo padre vi ringrazia».
Offrì la mano, ma i suoi occhi non lo accompagnarono.
“Lo so,” disse Darnay con rispetto, “come potrei non saperlo, dottor Manette, io che vi ho visto insieme giorno dopo giorno, che tra voi e la signorina Manette c’è un affetto così straordinario, così commovente, così legato alle circostanze in cui è stato coltivato, da avere pochi paralleli, anche nella tenerezza tra un padre e un figlio. So, dottor Manette—come potrei non saperlo—che, mescolata all’affetto e al dovere di una figlia che è diventata donna, c’è, nel suo cuore, verso di voi, tutto l’amore e la fiducia dell’infanzia stessa. So che, come nella sua infanzia non aveva genitori, così ora è devota a voi con tutta la costanza e il fervore dei suoi anni presenti e del suo carattere, uniti alla fiducia e all’attaccamento dei primi giorni in cui eravate perduto per lei. So perfettamente bene che se foste stato restituito a lei dal mondo oltre questa vita, non potreste essere investito, ai suoi occhi, di un carattere più sacro di quello in cui siete sempre con lei. So che quando si aggrappa a voi, le mani del bambino, della ragazza e della donna, tutte in una, sono intorno al vostro collo. So che amandovi vede e ama sua madre alla sua età, vede e vi ama alla mia età, ama sua madre con il cuore spezzato, vi ama attraverso il vostro terribile processo e nella vostra benedetta restituzione. Ho saputo questo, notte e giorno, da quando vi ho conosciuto nella vostra casa.”
Suo padre sedeva in silenzio con il volto chino. Il respiro era un po’ affannoso, ma egli soffocava ogni altro segno di agitazione.
«Caro dottor Manette, sapendo sempre questo, vedendovi sempre voi e lei con questa luce sacra intorno a voi, mi sono trattenuto, mi sono trattenuto finché era nella natura dell’uomo farlo. Ho sentito, e anche ora sento, che portare il mio amore — anche il mio — tra voi è toccare la vostra storia con qualcosa non del tutto degno di essa. Ma io la amo. Il cielo mi sia testimone che io la amo!»
«Ci credo», rispose il padre con tristezza. «L’ho pensato già prima d’ora. Ci credo».
«Ma non crediate», disse Darnay, al cui orecchio la voce malinconica giungeva con un suono di rimprovero, «che se la mia sorte fosse tale da farmi un giorno così felice da poterla prendere in moglie, io possa o voglia mai separarla da voi. Se anche avessi una simile possibilità, anche a distanza di molti anni, custodita nei miei pensieri e nascosta nel mio cuore — se ci fosse mai stata — se potesse esserci mai — non potrei ora stringere questa mano onorata».
Mentre parlava, posò il proprio sopra di essa.
“No, caro dottor Manette. Come lei, un volontario esule dalla Francia; come lei, scacciato da essa dalle sue distrazioni, oppressioni e miserie; come lei, che cerca di vivere lontano da essa con i propri sforzi e confida in un futuro più felice; io penso solo a condividere le sue fortune, la sua vita e il suo focolare, ed essere fedele a lei fino alla morte. Non per dividere con Lucie il privilegio di essere sua figlia, compagna e amica; ma per venire in aiuto di questo legame, e avvicinarla ancora più a lei, se possibile.”
Il suo contatto ancora persisteva sulla mano di suo padre. Rispondendo al contatto per un momento, ma non freddamente, il padre appoggiò le mani sulle braccia della sua sedia e alzò lo sguardo per la prima volta dall’inizio della conferenza. Una lotta era evidentemente nel suo volto; una lotta con quell’occhiata occasionale che aveva in sé una tendenza verso il buio dubbio e il timore.
«Parlate con tanta sensibilità e virilità, Charles Darnay, che vi ringrazio di tutto cuore e mi aprirò completamente - o quasi. Avete qualche motivo per credere che Lucie vi ami?»
“Nessuno. Per ora, nessuno.”
«È l’obiettivo immediato di questa confidenza quello di accertarsi subito che ciò avviene con la mia conoscenza?»
«Nemmeno così. Potrei non avere la speranza di farlo per settimane; potrei (sbagliandomi o no) avere quella speranza domani».
“Desidera forse un consiglio da parte mia?”
«Non ne chiedo a nessuno, signore; ma ho pensato che forse lei potrebbe avere la possibilità di darmene qualcuna, se lo ritenesse giusto.»
“Mi chiedi una promessa?”
“Lo cerco.”
“Che cosa è?”
“Comprendo benissimo che, senza di voi, non potrei avere alcuna speranza. Comprendo benissimo che, anche se in questo momento la signorina Manette mi avesse nel suo cuore innocente - non pensate che io abbia l’ardire di supporre una cosa del genere - non potrei conservare alcun posto in esso contro il suo amore per suo padre.”
“Se è così, vedi cosa, d’altra parte, ne consegue?”
“Capisco altrettanto bene che una parola del padre in favore di un qualsiasi pretendente avrebbe più peso di lei e di tutto il mondo. Per questo motivo, dottor Manette,” disse Darnay modestamente ma con fermezza, “non chiederei quella parola nemmeno per salvare la mia vita.”
“I am sure of it. Charles Darnay, mysteries arise out of close love, as well as out of wide division; in the former case, they are subtle and delicate, and difficult to penetrate. My daughter Lucie is, in this one respect, such a mystery to me; I can make no guess at the state of her heart.”
“May I ask, sir, if you think she is—” As he hesitated, her father supplied the rest.
“Is sought by any other suitor?”
“It is what I meant to say.”
Her father considered a little before he answered:
“You have seen Mr. Carton here, yourself. Mr. Stryver is here too, occasionally. If it be at all, it can only be by one of these.”
“Or both,” said Darnay.
“I had not thought of both; I should not think either, likely. You want a promise from me. Tell me what it is.”
“It is, that if Miss Manette should bring to you at any time, on her own part, such a confidence as I have ventured to lay before you, you will bear testimony to what I have said, and to your belief in it. I hope you may be able to think so well of me, as to urge no influence against me. I say nothing more of my stake in this; this is what I ask. The condition on which I ask it, and which you have an undoubted right to require, I will observe immediately.”
“I give the promise,” said the Doctor, “without any condition. I believe your object to be, purely and truthfully, as you have stated it. I believe your intention is to perpetuate, and not to weaken, the ties between me and my other and far dearer self. If she should ever tell me that you are essential to her perfect happiness, I will give her to you. If there were—Charles Darnay, if there were—”
The young man had taken his hand gratefully; their hands were joined as the Doctor spoke:
“—any fancies, any reasons, any apprehensions, anything whatsoever, new or old, against the man she really loved—the direct responsibility thereof not lying on his head—they should all be obliterated for her sake. She is everything to me; more to me than suffering, more to me than wrong, more to me—Well! This is idle talk.”
So strange was the way in which he faded into silence, and so strange his fixed look when he had ceased to speak, that Darnay felt his own hand turn cold in the hand that slowly released and dropped it.
“You said something to me,” said Doctor Manette, breaking into a smile. “What was it you said to me?”
He was at a loss how to answer, until he remembered having spoken of a condition. Relieved as his mind reverted to that, he answered:
“Your confidence in me ought to be returned with full confidence on my part. My present name, though but slightly changed from my mother’s, is not, as you will remember, my own. I wish to tell you what that is, and why I am in England.”
“Stop!” said the Doctor of Beauvais.
“I wish it, that I may the better deserve your confidence, and have no secret from you.”
“Stop!”
For an instant, the Doctor even had his two hands at his ears; for another instant, even had his two hands laid on Darnay’s lips.
“Tell me when I ask you, not now. If your suit should prosper, if Lucie should love you, you shall tell me on your marriage morning. Do you promise?”
“Willingly.
“Give me your hand. She will be home directly, and it is better she should not see us together to-night. Go! God bless you!”
It was dark when Charles Darnay left him, and it was an hour later and darker when Lucie came home; she hurried into the room alone—for Miss Pross had gone straight up-stairs—and was surprised to find his reading-chair empty.
“My father!” she called to him. “Father dear!”
Nothing was said in answer, but she heard a low hammering sound in his bedroom. Passing lightly across the intermediate room, she looked in at his door and came running back frightened, crying to herself, with her blood all chilled, “What shall I do! What shall I do!”
Her uncertainty lasted but a moment; she hurried back, and tapped at his door, and softly called to him. The noise ceased at the sound of her voice, and he presently came out to her, and they walked up and down together for a long time.
She came down from her bed, to look at him in his sleep that night. He slept heavily, and his tray of shoemaking tools, and his old unfinished work, were all as usual.
«Ne sono sicuro. Charles Darnay, i misteri nascono da un profondo amore come pure dalla grande divisione; nel primo caso, sono sottili e delicati, difficili da penetrare. Mia figlia Lucie è, sotto questo aspetto, per me un mistero; non riesco a indovinare lo stato del suo cuore».
«Posso chiedere, signore, se pensa che lei sia, » Mentre esitava, il padre di lei completò la frase.
“È corteggiata da altri pretendenti?”
“È quello che intendevo dire.”
Il padre rifletté un attimo prima di rispondere:
«Avete visto qui il signor Carton voi stesso. Il signor Stryver è qui anche lui di tanto in tanto. Se mai fosse così, può essere solo uno di questi due».
«O entrambi», disse Darnay.
«Non avevo pensato a entrambe le cose; probabilmente non avrei pensato neppure a una delle due. Volete un’impegno da parte mia. Ditemi di che si tratta».
«È che se la signorina Manette dovesse portare a voi in qualche momento, per conto suo, una tale confidenza come quella che mi sono permesso di esporre davanti a voi, voi dovreste testimoniare ciò che ho detto e la vostra fede in esso. Io spero che voi possiate pensare così bene di me da non opporre alcuna influenza contro di me. Non dico altro del mio interesse in questo; è ciò che chiedo. La condizione alla quale lo chiedo, e che voi avete il diritto indiscutibile di richiedere, la osserverò immediatamente».
«Faccio questa promessa», disse il dottore, «senza alcuna condizione. Credo che il tuo scopo sia, puramente e sinceramente, quello che hai dichiarato. Credo che la tua intenzione sia di perpetuare, e non indebolire, i legami tra me e l’altro mio io, molto più caro. Se lei mi dovesse dire un giorno che tu sei essenziale alla sua felicità perfetta, te la darò. Se ci fosse—Charles Darnay, se ci fosse—»
Il giovane gli strinse la mano con gratitudine, le loro mani si unirono mentre il dottore parlava:
«—qualsiasi fantasia, qualsiasi ragione, qualsiasi apprensione, qualunque cosa fosse, nuova o vecchia, contro l’uomo che amava davvero—la diretta responsabilità di ciò non ricadeva su di lui—tutto sarebbe stato cancellato per il suo bene. Lei è tutto per me; più della sofferenza, più del torto, più di tutto per me—[L02|Bene]]! Questa è una chiacchiera oziosa».
Così strano era il modo in cui egli svaniva nel silenzio, e così strano il suo sguardo fisso quando aveva smesso di parlare, che Darnay sentì la propria mano diventare fredda nella mano che lentamente la lasciava andare.
«Mi hai detto qualcosa», disse il dottor Manette, scoppiando in un sorriso, «Cosa mi hai detto?»
Era perplesso su come rispondere finché non si ricordò di aver parlato di una condizione. Sollevato nel tornare con la mente a quel punto, rispose:
«La fiducia che avete riposta in me dovrebbe essere ricambiata con piena fiducia da parte mia. Il mio nome attuale, sebbene leggermente modificato rispetto a quello di mia madre, non è, come vi ricorderete, il mio vero nome. Desidero dirvi qual è e perché mi trovo in Inghilterra».
«Fermatevi!» disse il dottore di Beauvais.
“Lo desidero per meritare meglio la tua fiducia e non avere segreti con te.”
“Fermati!”
Per un istante il dottore si portò addirittura le due mani alle orecchie; per un altro istante addirittura le aveva posate sulle labbra di Darnay.
«Dimmelo quando te lo chiederò, non ora. Se la tua richiesta avrà successo, se Lucie ti dovesse amare, me lo dirai il mattino delle tue nozze. Me lo prometti?»
«Volentieri.
«Dammi la tua mano. Sarà a casa tra poco e sarebbe meglio che non ci vedesse insieme stasera. Vai! Dio ti benedica!»
Era buio quando Charles Darnay lo lasciò, e un’ora dopo era ancora più scuro quando Lucie tornò a casa; si affrettò ad entrare nella stanza da sola — perché Miss Pross era salita subito di sopra — e fu sorpresa nel trovare la sua poltrona da lettura vuota.
“Mio padre!” lo chiamò. “Caro papà!”
Non fu detto nulla in risposta, ma sentì un debole rumore di martellate nella sua camera da letto. Passando silenziosamente attraverso la stanza intermedia, guardò dalla porta e tornò indietro correndo spaventata, ripetendosi con tutto il sangue ghiacciato: “Cosa farò! Cosa farò!”
La sua incertezza durò solo un attimo; tornò indietro di corsa e bussò alla porta, chiamandolo dolcemente. Il rumore cessò al suono della sua voce, e lui uscì poco dopo per andarle incontro, e camminarono insieme avanti e indietro per un lungo periodo.
Scese dal suo letto per guardarlo mentre era nel sonno quella notte. Dormiva profondamente e il suo vassoio con gli attrezzi da calzolaio e i vecchi lavori incompiuti erano tutti al loro posto, come sempre.
CHAPTER XI. A Companion Picture
“Sydney,” said Mr. Stryver, on that self-same night, or morning, to his jackal; “mix another bowl of punch; I have something to say to you.”
Sydney had been working double tides that night, and the night before, and the night before that, and a good many nights in succession, making a grand clearance among Mr. Stryver’s papers before the setting in of the long vacation. The clearance was effected at last; the Stryver arrears were handsomely fetched up; everything was got rid of until November should come with its fogs atmospheric, and fogs legal, and bring grist to the mill again.
Sydney was none the livelier and none the soberer for so much application. It had taken a deal of extra wet-towelling to pull him through the night; a correspondingly extra quantity of wine had preceded the towelling; and he was in a very damaged condition, as he now pulled his turban off and threw it into the basin in which he had steeped it at intervals for the last six hours.
“Are you mixing that other bowl of punch?” said Stryver the portly, with his hands in his waistband, glancing round from the sofa where he lay on his back.
“I am.”
“Now, look here! I am going to tell you something that will rather surprise you, and that perhaps will make you think me not quite as shrewd as you usually do think me. I intend to marry.”
“Do you?”
“Yes. And not for money. What do you say now?”
“I don’t feel disposed to say much. Who is she?”
“Guess.”
“Do I know her?”
“Guess.”
“I am not going to guess, at five o’clock in the morning, with my brains frying and sputtering in my head. If you want me to guess, you must ask me to dinner.”
“Well then, I’ll tell you,” said Stryver, coming slowly into a sitting posture. “Sydney, I rather despair of making myself intelligible to you, because you are such an insensible dog.”
“And you,” returned Sydney, busy concocting the punch, “are such a sensitive and poetical spirit—”
“Come!” rejoined Stryver, laughing boastfully, “though I don’t prefer any claim to being the soul of Romance (for I hope I know better), still I am a tenderer sort of fellow than you.”
“You are a luckier, if you mean that.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean I am a man of more—more—”
“Say gallantry, while you are about it,” suggested Carton.
“Well! I’ll say gallantry. My meaning is that I am a man,” said Stryver, inflating himself at his friend as he made the punch, “who cares more to be agreeable, who takes more pains to be agreeable, who knows better how to be agreeable, in a woman’s society, than you do.”
“Go on,” said Sydney Carton.
“No; but before I go on,” said Stryver, shaking his head in his bullying way, “I’ll have this out with you. You’ve been at Doctor Manette’s house as much as I have, or more than I have. Why, I have been ashamed of your moroseness there! Your manners have been of that silent and sullen and hangdog kind, that, upon my life and soul, I have been ashamed of you, Sydney!”
“It should be very beneficial to a man in your practice at the bar, to be ashamed of anything,” returned Sydney; “you ought to be much obliged to me.”
“You shall not get off in that way,” rejoined Stryver, shouldering the rejoinder at him; “no, Sydney, it’s my duty to tell you—and I tell you to your face to do you good—that you are a devilish ill-conditioned fellow in that sort of society. You are a disagreeable fellow.”
Sydney drank a bumper of the punch he had made, and laughed.
“Look at me!” said Stryver, squaring himself; “I have less need to make myself agreeable than you have, being more independent in circumstances. Why do I do it?”
“I never saw you do it yet,” muttered Carton.
“I do it because it’s politic; I do it on principle. And look at me! I get on.”
“You don’t get on with your account of your matrimonial intentions,” answered Carton, with a careless air; “I wish you would keep to that. As to me—will you never understand that I am incorrigible?”
He asked the question with some appearance of scorn.
“You have no business to be incorrigible,” was his friend’s answer, delivered in no very soothing tone.
“I have no business to be, at all, that I know of,” said Sydney Carton. “Who is the lady?”
“Now, don’t let my announcement of the name make you uncomfortable, Sydney,” said Mr. Stryver, preparing him with ostentatious friendliness for the disclosure he was about to make, “because I know you don’t mean half you say; and if you meant it all, it would be of no importance. I make this little preface, because you once mentioned the young lady to me in slighting terms.”
“I did?”
“Certainly; and in these chambers.”
Sydney Carton looked at his punch and looked at his complacent friend; drank his punch and looked at his complacent friend.
“You made mention of the young lady as a golden-haired doll. The young lady is Miss Manette. If you had been a fellow of any sensitiveness or delicacy of feeling in that kind of way, Sydney, I might have been a little resentful of your employing such a designation; but you are not. You want that sense altogether; therefore I am no more annoyed when I think of the expression, than I should be annoyed by a man’s opinion of a picture of mine, who had no eye for pictures: or of a piece of music of mine, who had no ear for music.”
Sydney Carton drank the punch at a great rate; drank it by bumpers, looking at his friend.
“Now you know all about it, Syd,” said Mr. Stryver. “I don’t care about fortune: she is a charming creature, and I have made up my mind to please myself: on the whole, I think I can afford to please myself. She will have in me a man already pretty well off, and a rapidly rising man, and a man of some distinction: it is a piece of good fortune for her, but she is worthy of good fortune. Are you astonished?”
Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, “Why should I be astonished?”
“You approve?”
Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, “Why should I not approve?”
“Well!” said his friend Stryver, “you take it more easily than I fancied you would, and are less mercenary on my behalf than I thought you would be; though, to be sure, you know well enough by this time that your ancient chum is a man of a pretty strong will. Yes, Sydney, I have had enough of this style of life, with no other as a change from it; I feel that it is a pleasant thing for a man to have a home when he feels inclined to go to it (when he doesn’t, he can stay away), and I feel that Miss Manette will tell well in any station, and will always do me credit. So I have made up my mind. And now, Sydney, old boy, I want to say a word to you about your prospects. You are in a bad way, you know; you really are in a bad way. You don’t know the value of money, you live hard, you’ll knock up one of these days, and be ill and poor; you really ought to think about a nurse.”
The prosperous patronage with which he said it, made him look twice as big as he was, and four times as offensive.
“Now, let me recommend you,” pursued Stryver, “to look it in the face. I have looked it in the face, in my different way; look it in the face, you, in your different way. Marry. Provide somebody to take care of you. Never mind your having no enjoyment of women’s society, nor understanding of it, nor tact for it. Find out somebody. Find out some respectable woman with a little property—somebody in the landlady way, or lodging-letting way—and marry her, against a rainy day. That’s the kind of thing for you. Now think of it, Sydney.”
“I’ll think of it,” said Sydney.
CAPITOLO XI. Un quadro complementare
«Sydney», disse il signor Stryver, in quella stessa notte o mattina, al suo sciacallo, «prepara un’altra coppa di punch; ho qualcosa da dirti.»
Sydney aveva lavorato a doppio ritmo quella notte, e la notte prima, e la notte ancora prima, e molte altre notti di seguito, facendo una grande pulizia tra i documenti del signor Stryver prima dell’inizio della lunga vacanza. La pulizia fu infine effettuata; gli arretrati di Stryver furono ampiamente recuperati; tutto fu eliminato fino a quando novembre non sarebbe arrivato con le sue nebbie atmosferiche e legali, portando nuovamente grano da macinare.
Sydney non era affatto più vivace né più sobrio per tanta applicazione. Ci erano voluti molti strappi di asciugamani bagnati per tirarlo fuori dalla notte; una quantità corrispondentemente extra di vino aveva preceduto gli strappi; e lui era in condizioni molto precarie, mentre ora si toglieva il turbante e lo gettava nel bacino in cui l’aveva immerso a intervalli per le ultime sei ore.
«Stai preparando quell’altra ciotola di punch?» disse il corpulento Stryver, con le mani sui fianchi, guardandosi intorno dal divano dove era sdraiato supino.
“I am.”
«Ora, sentite qua! Sto per dirvi una cosa che vi sorprenderà parecchio e che forse vi farà pensare che non sono tanto furbo come di solito mi considerate. Ho intenzione di sposarmi».
“Lo fai?”
“Sì. E non per denaro. Cosa ne pensate ora?”
“Non ho voglia di dire molto. Chi è lei?”
“Indovina.”
“La conosco?”
“Indovina.”
“Non intendo indovinare alle cinque di mattina, con il cervello che frigge e crepita nella mia testa. Se volete che io indovini, dovete invitarmi a cena.”
«Bene, allora ti dirò», disse Stryver, assumendo lentamente una posizione seduta. «Sydney, temo di non riuscire a farmi capire da te, perché sei un cane così insensibile».
«E tu», replicò Sydney, intento a preparare il punch, «sei uno spirito così sensibile e poetico, »
«Come!» ribatté Stryver, ridendo in modo arrogante, «anche se non avanzo pretese di essere l’anima del romanticismo (perché spero di sapermi comportare meglio), sono comunque un tipo più tenero di te.»
“Sei più fortunato, se è quello che intendi.”
“Non intendo questo. Intendo dire che sono un uomo di più — più —”
«Dica galanteria, mentre ci è», suggerì Carton.
“Bene! Dirò galanteria. Il mio pensiero è che io sia un uomo”, disse Stryver, gonfiandosi davanti al suo amico mentre preparava il punch, “che si preoccupa di più di essere piacevole, che fa di più per essere piacevole, che sa meglio come essere piacevole in compagnia femminile, più di quanto faccia tu.”
«Continua», disse Sydney Carton.
“No; ma prima di continuare,” disse Stryver, scuotendo la testa nel suo modo prepotente, “devo chiarire questo con te. Sei stato a casa del dottor Manette tanto quanto me, o addirittura più di me. Ebbene, mi sono vergognato della tua malinconia! I tuoi modi erano così silenziosi e cupi e servili che, sulla mia vita e anima, mi sei sembrato un uomo da buttare via, Sydney!”
«Dovrebbe essere molto vantaggioso per un uomo della sua pratica al foro sentirsi vergogna di qualcosa», replicò Sydney; «lei dovrebbe essermi molto grato».
«Non vi lascerò andar via così» ribatté Stryver, rivolgendogli contro l’obiezione «no, Sydney, è mio dovere dirvi - e ve lo dico apertamente per il vostro bene - che siete un diavolo di tipo mal disposto in quel genere di società. Siete un tizio antipatico».
Sydney bevve un bicchiere colmo del punch che aveva preparato e rise.
«Guardami!» disse Stryver, drizzandosi «ho meno bisogno di rendermi piacevole di te, essendo più indipendente per condizione. Perché lo faccio?»
«Non ti ho mai visto farlo», mormorò Carton.
“Lo faccio perché è politico, lo faccio per principio. E guarda dove sono arrivato!”
«Non continuate il racconto delle vostre intenzioni matrimoniali», rispose Carton con aria noncurante; «vorrei che vi attenessero a quello. Quanto a me, non capirete mai che sono irrecuperabile?»
Egli pose la domanda con un certo aspetto di disprezzo.
«Non hai il diritto di essere irrecuperabile», fu la risposta del suo amico, pronunciata con un tono tutt’altro che rassicurante.
«Non ho alcun motivo di essere qui, per quanto ne so io», disse Sydney Carton. «Chi è la signora?»
«Ora, non lasciare che il mio annuncio del nome ti metta a disagio, Sydney», disse Stryver preparandolo con un’ostentata amichevolezza per la rivelazione che stava per fare, «perché so che non intendi metà di quello che dici; e se lo intendessi tutto, non avrebbe importanza. Faccio questa breve premessa perché una volta mi hai accennato alla giovane signorina in termini poco lusinghieri».
“L’ho fatto?”
“Certo; e in queste stanze.”
Sydney Carton guardò il suo punch e guardò il suo amico compiaciuto; bevve il suo punch e guardò di nuovo il suo amico compiaciuto.
«Avete fatto cenno alla giovane signorina come fosse una bambola dai capelli d’oro. La giovane signorina è Miss Manette. Se foste stato un tipo di qualche sensibilità o delicatezza in quel genere, Sydney, forse mi sarei un po’ risentito del fatto che usaste tale definizione; ma voi non lo siete. Voi mancate completamente di quel senso; quindi non sono più infastidito quando penso a quell’espressione, di quanto lo sarei dall’opinione di un uomo su uno dei miei quadri, se egli non avesse occhio per i dipinti: o su una delle mie composizioni musicali, se non avesse orecchio per la musica.»
Sydney Carton beveva il punch a una velocità incredibile, bevendolo a bicchieri pieni fino all’orlo e guardando il suo amico.
«Ora sai tutto, Syd», disse il signor Stryver. «Non mi interessa la fortuna: è una creatura affascinante e ho deciso di fare piacere a me stesso; in generale, credo di potermelo permettere. Lei avrà in me un uomo già abbastanza benestante, un uomo in rapida ascesa, un uomo di qualche distinzione: è una fortuna per lei, ma lei è degna di buona sorte. Sei sorpreso?»
Carton, continuando a bere il punch, replicò: “Perché dovrei essere stupito?”
“Approvi?”
Carton, continuando a bere il punch, replicò: “Perché non dovrei approvare?”
«Bene!» disse il suo amico Stryver «la prendi più facilmente di quanto avessi immaginato e sei meno mercenario per conto mio di quanto pensassi che saresti stato; anche se, a dire il vero, sai bene abbastanza in questo periodo che il tuo vecchio amico è un uomo con una volontà piuttosto forte. Sì, Sydney, ne ho avuto abbastanza di questo stile di vita, senza altro come variazione; sento che è una cosa piacevole per un uomo avere una casa quando si sente incline ad andarci (quando non lo è, può rimanere lontano), e sento che la signorina Manette si comporterà bene in qualsiasi situazione e mi farà sempre onore. Quindi ho preso una decisione. E ora, Sydney, vecchio mio, voglio dire una parola a te riguardo alle tue prospettive. Sei in un brutto momento, lo sai; sei davvero in un brutto momento. Non conosci il valore del denaro, vivi duramente, un giorno o l’altro ti sfiancherai e starai male e sarai povero; dovresti davvero pensare a una badante.»
Il prosperoso tono di protezione con cui lo disse gli fece sembrare due volte più grande di quanto fosse e quattro volte più odioso.
«Ora lasciate che vi consigli», continuò Stryver, «di guardarla in faccia. Io l’ho guardata in faccia alla mia maniera; guardatela in faccia voi, alla vostra. Sposatevi. Provvedete a qualcuno che si prenda cura di voi. Non importa se non avete piacere della compagnia delle donne, né comprensione per essa, né tatto al riguardo. Trovate qualcuno. Scovate una donna rispettabile con un po’ di proprietà - qualcuna nel genere padrona di casa, o che affitta camere - e sposatela, contro ogni evenienza. È la cosa giusta per voi. Pensateci ora, Sydney».
«Ci penserò», disse Sydney.
CHAPTER XII. The Fellow of Delicacy
Mr. Stryver having made up his mind to that magnanimous bestowal of good fortune on the Doctor’s daughter, resolved to make her happiness known to her before he left town for the Long Vacation. After some mental debating of the point, he came to the conclusion that it would be as well to get all the preliminaries done with, and they could then arrange at their leisure whether he should give her his hand a week or two before Michaelmas Term, or in the little Christmas vacation between it and Hilary.
As to the strength of his case, he had not a doubt about it, but clearly saw his way to the verdict. Argued with the jury on substantial worldly grounds—the only grounds ever worth taking into account—it was a plain case, and had not a weak spot in it. He called himself for the plaintiff, there was no getting over his evidence, the counsel for the defendant threw up his brief, and the jury did not even turn to consider. After trying it, Stryver, C. J., was satisfied that no plainer case could be.
Accordingly, Mr. Stryver inaugurated the Long Vacation with a formal proposal to take Miss Manette to Vauxhall Gardens; that failing, to Ranelagh; that unaccountably failing too, it behoved him to present himself in Soho, and there declare his noble mind.
Towards Soho, therefore, Mr. Stryver shouldered his way from the Temple, while the bloom of the Long Vacation’s infancy was still upon it. Anybody who had seen him projecting himself into Soho while he was yet on Saint Dunstan’s side of Temple Bar, bursting in his full-blown way along the pavement, to the jostlement of all weaker people, might have seen how safe and strong he was.
His way taking him past Tellson’s, and he both banking at Tellson’s and knowing Mr. Lorry as the intimate friend of the Manettes, it entered Mr. Stryver’s mind to enter the bank, and reveal to Mr. Lorry the brightness of the Soho horizon. So, he pushed open the door with the weak rattle in its throat, stumbled down the two steps, got past the two ancient cashiers, and shouldered himself into the musty back closet where Mr. Lorry sat at great books ruled for figures, with perpendicular iron bars to his window as if that were ruled for figures too, and everything under the clouds were a sum.
“Halloa!” said Mr. Stryver. “How do you do? I hope you are well!”
It was Stryver’s grand peculiarity that he always seemed too big for any place, or space. He was so much too big for Tellson’s, that old clerks in distant corners looked up with looks of remonstrance, as though he squeezed them against the wall. The House itself, magnificently reading the paper quite in the far-off perspective, lowered displeased, as if the Stryver head had been butted into its responsible waistcoat.
The discreet Mr. Lorry said, in a sample tone of the voice he would recommend under the circumstances, “How do you do, Mr. Stryver? How do you do, sir?” and shook hands. There was a peculiarity in his manner of shaking hands, always to be seen in any clerk at Tellson’s who shook hands with a customer when the House pervaded the air. He shook in a self-abnegating way, as one who shook for Tellson and Co.
“Can I do anything for you, Mr. Stryver?” asked Mr. Lorry, in his business character.
“Why, no, thank you; this is a private visit to yourself, Mr. Lorry; I have come for a private word.”
“Oh indeed!” said Mr. Lorry, bending down his ear, while his eye strayed to the House afar off.
“I am going,” said Mr. Stryver, leaning his arms confidentially on the desk: whereupon, although it was a large double one, there appeared to be not half desk enough for him: “I am going to make an offer of myself in marriage to your agreeable little friend, Miss Manette, Mr. Lorry.”
“Oh dear me!” cried Mr. Lorry, rubbing his chin, and looking at his visitor dubiously.
“Oh dear me, sir?” repeated Stryver, drawing back. “Oh dear you, sir? What may your meaning be, Mr. Lorry?”
“My meaning,” answered the man of business, “is, of course, friendly and appreciative, and that it does you the greatest credit, and—in short, my meaning is everything you could desire. But—really, you know, Mr. Stryver—” Mr. Lorry paused, and shook his head at him in the oddest manner, as if he were compelled against his will to add, internally, “you know there really is so much too much of you!”
“Well!” said Stryver, slapping the desk with his contentious hand, opening his eyes wider, and taking a long breath, “if I understand you, Mr. Lorry, I’ll be hanged!”
Mr. Lorry adjusted his little wig at both ears as a means towards that end, and bit the feather of a pen.
“D—n it all, sir!” said Stryver, staring at him, “am I not eligible?”
“Oh dear yes! Yes. Oh yes, you’re eligible!” said Mr. Lorry. “If you say eligible, you are eligible.”
“Am I not prosperous?” asked Stryver.
“Oh! if you come to prosperous, you are prosperous,” said Mr. Lorry.
“And advancing?”
“If you come to advancing you know,” said Mr. Lorry, delighted to be able to make another admission, “nobody can doubt that.”
“Then what on earth is your meaning, Mr. Lorry?” demanded Stryver, perceptibly crestfallen.
“Well! I—Were you going there now?” asked Mr. Lorry.
“Straight!” said Stryver, with a plump of his fist on the desk.
“Then I think I wouldn’t, if I was you.”
“Why?” said Stryver. “Now, I’ll put you in a corner,” forensically shaking a forefinger at him. “You are a man of business and bound to have a reason. State your reason. Why wouldn’t you go?”
“Because,” said Mr. Lorry, “I wouldn’t go on such an object without having some cause to believe that I should succeed.”
“D—n me!” cried Stryver, “but this beats everything.”
Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and glanced at the angry Stryver.
“Here’s a man of business—a man of years—a man of experience—in a Bank,” said Stryver; “and having summed up three leading reasons for complete success, he says there’s no reason at all! Says it with his head on!” Mr. Stryver remarked upon the peculiarity as if it would have been infinitely less remarkable if he had said it with his head off.
CAPITOLO XII. Il gentiluomo di raffinatezza
Il signor Stryver, avendo deciso di fare quel magnanimo dono di buona fortuna alla figlia del dottore, risolse di farle conoscere la sua felicità prima di lasciare la città per le lunghe vacanze estive. Dopo averci pensato su un po’, giunse alla conclusione che sarebbe stato meglio sbrigare tutte le formalità preliminari e poi avrebbero potuto decidere con calma se lui le avrebbe dato la mano una o due settimane prima del trimestre di Michaelmas, oppure durante la breve vacanza natalizia tra quello e l’Hilary.
Per quanto riguardava la solidità del suo caso, non aveva alcun dubbio al riguardo, ma vedeva chiaramente la strada che portava alla sentenza. Discutendo con la giuria su basi sostanziali e mondane - le uniche degne di essere prese in considerazione - il caso era chiarissimo e non aveva punti deboli. Si presentò come querelante, nessuno poteva mettere in dubbio le sue prove, l’avvocato della difesa rinunciò al suo incarico e la giuria nemmeno si prese la briga di discutere. Dopo averlo esaminato, Stryver, C. J., fu soddisfatto che non potesse esserci un caso più chiaro.
Di conseguenza, il signor Stryver inaugurò la lunga vacanza con una proposta formale di portare la signorina Manette ai giardini di Vauxhall; se questa fosse fallita, a Ranelagh; e se anche quest’ultima, incomprensibilmente, non avesse funzionato, gli sarebbe toccato presentarsi a Soho per dichiararvi il suo nobile proposito.
Così Mr. Stryver si fece strada verso Soho dal Temple, mentre il fiore dell’infanzia della lunga vacanza era ancora in pieno rigoglio. Chiunque l’avesse visto proiettarsi a Soho mentre era ancora sul lato di Saint Dunstan’s di Temple Bar, irrompendo nel suo modo sbocciato lungo il marciapiede, spintonando tutte le persone più deboli, avrebbe potuto vedere quanto fosse sicuro e forte.
Poiché il suo cammino lo portava davanti alla Tellson e lui aveva un conto in banca presso la Tellson e conosceva il signor Lorry come amico intimo dei Manette, al signor Stryver venne l’idea di entrare nella banca e rivelare al signor Lorry la luminosità dell’orizzonte di Soho. Così aprì la porta che emetteva un debole scricchiolio, inciampò sui due gradini, superò i due vecchi cassieri e si fece strada fino alla polverosa stanzetta sul retro dove il signor Lorry sedeva davanti a grandi libri contabili con righe per le cifre, con sbarre di ferro verticali alla finestra come se anche quella fosse stata regolata per i numeri e tutto ciò che c’era sotto le nuvole fosse una somma.
«Ciao!» disse il signor Stryver. «Come state? Spero che siate benissimo!»
La grande peculiarità di Stryver era che sembrava sempre troppo grosso per qualsiasi luogo o spazio. Era così tanto troppo grosso per la Banca Tellson, che vecchi impiegati negli angoli più remoti alzavano lo sguardo con espressioni di protesta, come se lui li schiacciasse contro il muro. La stessa Banca, magnificamente intenta a leggere il giornale in una prospettiva lontana, si mostrava contrariata, come se la testa di Stryver avesse dato un colpo al suo rispettabile panciotto.
Il discreto signor Lorry disse con un tono di voce campione da lui raccomandato per le circostanze: «Come state, signor Stryver? Come state, signore?», e strinse la mano. C’era una particolarità nel suo modo di stringere la mano, sempre visibile in qualsiasi impiegato della Tellson che stringeva la mano a un cliente quando l’azienda pervadeva l’aria. Stringeva in modo disinteressato, come uno che stringe per conto di Tellson e Compagni.
«Posso fare qualcosa per lei, signor Stryver?» chiese il signor Lorry nel suo ruolo di uomo d’affari.
«No davvero, grazie; questa è una visita privata rivolta esclusivamente a lei, signor Lorry; sono venuto per parlarle in confidenza».
“Ah sì?” disse il signor Lorry, chinandosi verso l’orecchio mentre lo sguardo gli si posava sulla casa in lontananza.
«Sto per andare», disse il signor Stryver appoggiando le braccia in modo confidenziale sulla scrivania: e allora, sebbene fosse una grande scrivania doppia, sembrò che non ci fosse nemmeno mezza scrivania sufficiente per lui: «Sto per fare un’offerta di me stesso in matrimonio alla tua simpatica piccola amica, la signorina Manette, signor Lorry.»
«Oh, mio Dio!» esclamò il signor Lorry strofinandosi il mento e guardando con aria dubbiosa la sua visitatrice.
«Oh, caro me, signore?» ripeté Stryver, ritraendosi. «Oh, caro lei, signore? Qual è il suo significato, signor Lorry?»
«Il mio intento», rispose l’uomo d’affari, «è naturalmente amichevole e di stima, e che vi fa il massimo onore, e—in breve, il mio intento è tutto ciò che potreste desiderare. Ma—davvero, sapete, signor Stryver—» Il signor Lorry fece una pausa e scosse la testa verso di lui nel modo più strano, come se fosse costretto suo malgrado ad aggiungere, interiormente: «sapete che in realtà ce n’è davvero troppo di voi!»
«Bene!» disse Stryver, battendo sulla scrivania con la sua mano contenziosa, spalancando gli occhi e prendendo un lungo respiro, «se ti ho capito bene, signor Lorry, mi impiccherò!»
Il signor Lorry aggiustò la sua piccola parrucca su entrambe le orecchie come mezzo per raggiungere tale scopo e masticò la penna d’oca.
“Accidenti!”, disse Stryver fissandolo, “non sono forse idoneo?”
«Oh sì certo! Sì. Oh sì, sei idonea!» disse il signor Lorry. «Se dici idonea, allora lo sei».
«Non sono forse prospero?» chiese Stryver.
«Oh! se arrivate a essere prospero, siete prospero», disse il signor Lorry.
“E avanzando?”
«Se si tratta di fare progressi», disse il signor Lorry, felice di poter fare un’altra ammissione, «nessuno può dubitare che sia così.»
«Allora che diavolo vuole dire, signor Lorry?» chiese Stryver, evidentemente deluso.
«Bene! Io. Stava andando lì adesso?» chiese il signor Lorry.
«Dritto!» disse Stryver con un colpo deciso del pugno sulla scrivania.
“Penso che non lo farei, se fossi in te.”
«Perché?» disse Stryver. «Ora ti metterò all’angolo,» agitando un dito contro di lui in tono forense. «Sei un uomo d’affari e devi avere una ragione. Dì la tua ragione. Perché non vorresti andare?»
«Perché», disse il signor Lorry, «non mi metterei a fare una cosa del genere senza avere qualche motivo di credere che potrei riuscire.»
“Maledizione!” esclamò Stryver, “questo supera tutto.”
Il signor Lorry diede un’occhiata alla lontana Casa e poi all’arrabbiato Stryver.
«Ecco un uomo d’affari — un uomo maturo — un uomo di esperienza — in una Banca», disse Stryver; «e avendo elencato tre ragioni principali per il completo successo, dice che non c’è alcun motivo! Lo dice con la testa sulle spalle!» Il signor Stryver commentò sulla peculiarità come se sarebbe stato infinitamente meno notevole se l’avesse detto senza testa.
“When I speak of success, I speak of success with the young lady; and when I speak of causes and reasons to make success probable, I speak of causes and reasons that will tell as such with the young lady. The young lady, my good sir,” said Mr. Lorry, mildly tapping the Stryver arm, “the young lady. The young lady goes before all.”
“Then you mean to tell me, Mr. Lorry,” said Stryver, squaring his elbows, “that it is your deliberate opinion that the young lady at present in question is a mincing Fool?”
“Not exactly so. I mean to tell you, Mr. Stryver,” said Mr. Lorry, reddening, “that I will hear no disrespectful word of that young lady from any lips; and that if I knew any man—which I hope I do not—whose taste was so coarse, and whose temper was so overbearing, that he could not restrain himself from speaking disrespectfully of that young lady at this desk, not even Tellson’s should prevent my giving him a piece of my mind.”
The necessity of being angry in a suppressed tone had put Mr. Stryver’s blood-vessels into a dangerous state when it was his turn to be angry; Mr. Lorry’s veins, methodical as their courses could usually be, were in no better state now it was his turn.
“That is what I mean to tell you, sir,” said Mr. Lorry. “Pray let there be no mistake about it.”
Mr. Stryver sucked the end of a ruler for a little while, and then stood hitting a tune out of his teeth with it, which probably gave him the toothache. He broke the awkward silence by saying:
“This is something new to me, Mr. Lorry. You deliberately advise me not to go up to Soho and offer myself—_my_self, Stryver of the King’s Bench bar?”
“Do you ask me for my advice, Mr. Stryver?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Very good. Then I give it, and you have repeated it correctly.”
“And all I can say of it is,” laughed Stryver with a vexed laugh, “that this—ha, ha!—beats everything past, present, and to come.”
“Now understand me,” pursued Mr. Lorry. “As a man of business, I am not justified in saying anything about this matter, for, as a man of business, I know nothing of it. But, as an old fellow, who has carried Miss Manette in his arms, who is the trusted friend of Miss Manette and of her father too, and who has a great affection for them both, I have spoken. The confidence is not of my seeking, recollect. Now, you think I may not be right?”
“Not I!” said Stryver, whistling. “I can’t undertake to find third parties in common sense; I can only find it for myself. I suppose sense in certain quarters; you suppose mincing bread-and-butter nonsense. It’s new to me, but you are right, I dare say.”
“What I suppose, Mr. Stryver, I claim to characterise for myself—And understand me, sir,” said Mr. Lorry, quickly flushing again, “I will not—not even at Tellson’s—have it characterised for me by any gentleman breathing.”
“There! I beg your pardon!” said Stryver.
“Granted. Thank you. Well, Mr. Stryver, I was about to say:—it might be painful to you to find yourself mistaken, it might be painful to Doctor Manette to have the task of being explicit with you, it might be very painful to Miss Manette to have the task of being explicit with you. You know the terms upon which I have the honour and happiness to stand with the family. If you please, committing you in no way, representing you in no way, I will undertake to correct my advice by the exercise of a little new observation and judgment expressly brought to bear upon it. If you should then be dissatisfied with it, you can but test its soundness for yourself; if, on the other hand, you should be satisfied with it, and it should be what it now is, it may spare all sides what is best spared. What do you say?”
“How long would you keep me in town?”
“Oh! It is only a question of a few hours. I could go to Soho in the evening, and come to your chambers afterwards.”
“Then I say yes,” said Stryver: “I won’t go up there now, I am not so hot upon it as that comes to; I say yes, and I shall expect you to look in to-night. Good morning.”
Then Mr. Stryver turned and burst out of the Bank, causing such a concussion of air on his passage through, that to stand up against it bowing behind the two counters, required the utmost remaining strength of the two ancient clerks. Those venerable and feeble persons were always seen by the public in the act of bowing, and were popularly believed, when they had bowed a customer out, still to keep on bowing in the empty office until they bowed another customer in.
The barrister was keen enough to divine that the banker would not have gone so far in his expression of opinion on any less solid ground than moral certainty. Unprepared as he was for the large pill he had to swallow, he got it down. “And now,” said Mr. Stryver, shaking his forensic forefinger at the Temple in general, when it was down, “my way out of this, is, to put you all in the wrong.”
It was a bit of the art of an Old Bailey tactician, in which he found great relief. “You shall not put me in the wrong, young lady,” said Mr. Stryver; “I’ll do that for you.”
Accordingly, when Mr. Lorry called that night as late as ten o’clock, Mr. Stryver, among a quantity of books and papers littered out for the purpose, seemed to have nothing less on his mind than the subject of the morning. He even showed surprise when he saw Mr. Lorry, and was altogether in an absent and preoccupied state.
“Well!” said that good-natured emissary, after a full half-hour of bootless attempts to bring him round to the question. “I have been to Soho.”
“To Soho?” repeated Mr. Stryver, coldly. “Oh, to be sure! What am I thinking of!”
“And I have no doubt,” said Mr. Lorry, “that I was right in the conversation we had. My opinion is confirmed, and I reiterate my advice.”
“I assure you,” returned Mr. Stryver, in the friendliest way, “that I am sorry for it on your account, and sorry for it on the poor father’s account. I know this must always be a sore subject with the family; let us say no more about it.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Mr. Lorry.
“I dare say not,” rejoined Stryver, nodding his head in a smoothing and final way; “no matter, no matter.”
“But it does matter,” Mr. Lorry urged.
“No it doesn’t; I assure you it doesn’t. Having supposed that there was sense where there is no sense, and a laudable ambition where there is not a laudable ambition, I am well out of my mistake, and no harm is done. Young women have committed similar follies often before, and have repented them in poverty and obscurity often before. In an unselfish aspect, I am sorry that the thing is dropped, because it would have been a bad thing for me in a worldly point of view; in a selfish aspect, I am glad that the thing has dropped, because it would have been a bad thing for me in a worldly point of view—it is hardly necessary to say I could have gained nothing by it. There is no harm at all done. I have not proposed to the young lady, and, between ourselves, I am by no means certain, on reflection, that I ever should have committed myself to that extent. Mr. Lorry, you cannot control the mincing vanities and giddinesses of empty-headed girls; you must not expect to do it, or you will always be disappointed. Now, pray say no more about it. I tell you, I regret it on account of others, but I am satisfied on my own account. And I am really very much obliged to you for allowing me to sound you, and for giving me your advice; you know the young lady better than I do; you were right, it never would have done.”
Mr. Lorry was so taken aback, that he looked quite stupidly at Mr. Stryver shouldering him towards the door, with an appearance of showering generosity, forbearance, and goodwill, on his erring head. “Make the best of it, my dear sir,” said Stryver; “say no more about it; thank you again for allowing me to sound you; good night!”
Mr. Lorry was out in the night, before he knew where he was. Mr. Stryver was lying back on his sofa, winking at his ceiling.
«Quando parlo di successo, parlo di successo con la giovane signora; e quando parlo di cause e ragioni che rendono il successo probabile, parlo di cause e ragioni che avranno peso come tali presso la giovane signora. La giovane signora, mio caro amico», disse Mr. Lorry, toccando delicatamente il braccio di Stryver, «la giovane signora. La giovane signora va prima di tutto».
«Allora lei intende dirmi, signor Lorry», disse Stryver, piantando i gomiti sul tavolo, «che è sua opinione deliberata che la giovane signorina in questione sia una minchioncella sciocca?»
«Non esattamente così. Intendo dirle, signor Stryver», disse il signor Lorry, arrossendo, «che non tollererò nessuna parola irrispettosa nei confronti di quella giovane donna da nessuna bocca; e che se conoscessi un uomo — cosa che spero di no — il cui gusto fosse così volgare, e il carattere così prepotente, da non riuscire a trattenersi dal parlare in modo irrispettoso di quella giovane donna qui alla scrivania, nemmeno la banca Tellson potrebbe impedirmi di dirgliene quattro.»
La necessità di essere arrabbiato con un tono represso aveva messo i vessilli sanguigni del signor Stryver in uno stato pericoloso quando era il suo turno di arrabbiarsi; le vene del signor Lorry, metodiche come solitamente potevano essere, non erano certo in condizioni migliori ora che toccava a lui.
«Questo è ciò che intendo dirle, signore», disse il signor Lorry. «La prego di non fraintendermi».
Il signor Stryver succhiò per un po’ la punta di una riga e poi si mise in piedi battendo con essa un ritmo sui denti, il che probabilmente gli procurò mal di denti. Ruppe l’imbarazzante silenzio dicendo:
“Questa è una novità per me, signor Lorry. Mi consiglia intenzionalmente di non recarmi a Soho e offrire i miei servigi, miei, dello stesso Stryver del Tribunale della Corte del Re?”
Mi chiedete il mio consiglio, signor Stryver?
“Sì, lo faccio.”
“Benissimo. Allora lo do io e tu l’hai ripetuto correttamente.”
«E tutto quello che posso dire al riguardo», rise Stryver con una risata irritata, «è che questo, ah, ah!, supera di gran lunga ogni cosa passata, presente e futura.»
«Ora mi capisca bene», continuò il signor Lorry. «Come uomo d’affari non sono autorizzato a dire nulla su questa faccenda, perché come uomo d’affari non ne so niente. Ma come vecchio amico che ha tenuto fra le braccia la signorina Manette, che è l’amico fidato della signorina Manette e anche di suo padre, e che li ama molto entrambi, ho parlato. Non sono io a cercare questa confidenza, ricordi. Ora lei pensa che forse non abbia ragione?»
«Non io!» disse Stryver fischiettando. «Non posso impegnarmi a trovare il buon senso per terzi; lo trovo solo per me stesso. Io suppongo che ci sia del buon senso in certi ambienti; tu supponi delle sciocchezze da mincione sul pane e burro. È una novità per me, ma hai ragione, presumo.»
«Quello che presumo, signor Stryver, è di avere il diritto a caratterizzare da solo la mia persona. E mi faccia il favore di capirmi bene, signore», disse il signor Lorry, arrossendo nuovamente in fretta, «non voglio - neppure alla Tellson & Co. - che un gentiluomo qualsiasi se ne vada a caratterizzarmela lui per conto suo».
«Ecco fatto! Le chiedo scusa» disse Stryver.
«Concesso. Grazie. Bene, signor Stryver, stavo per dire: potrebbe essere doloroso per lei rendersi conto di essersi sbagliato, potrebbe essere doloroso per il dottor Manette doverle parlare con franchezza, potrebbe essere molto doloroso per la signorina Manette doverle parlare con franchezza. Lei sa in quali termini ho l’onore e la felicità di trovarmi rispetto alla famiglia. Se lo desidera, senza impegnarla in alcun modo né rappresentarla in alcuna forma, mi impegno a correggere il mio consiglio attraverso l’esercizio di una nuova osservazione e giudizio espressamente applicati al caso. Se poi ne fosse insoddisfatto, potrà solo metterne alla prova la validità; se invece ne fosse soddisfatto, e se questo dovesse essere ciò che è ora, potrebbe risparmiare a tutte le parti ciò che è meglio non dire. Che cosa ne dice?»
“Per quanto tempo mi terresti in città?”
«Oh! È solo una questione di poche ore. Potrei recarmi a Soho la sera e venire poi nei tuoi uffici».
«Allora dico sì», disse Stryver: «Non ci salgo adesso, non sono così fervente al riguardo; dico sì e mi aspetto che tu passi a trovarmi stasera. Buongiorno.»
Poi il signor Stryver si voltò e uscì dalla banca con tale violenza che per resistere alla corrente d’aria provocata dal suo passaggio, i due vecchi impiegati dovettero fare appello a tutte le loro forze rimaste mentre si inchinavano dietro ai due sportelli. Quei venerabili e deboli personaggi erano sempre visti dal pubblico nell’atto di inchinarsi, e si credeva popolarmente che dopo aver salutato un cliente con un inchino continuassero a inchinarsi nell’ufficio vuoto fino a quando non ne facevano entrare un altro.
L’avvocato fu abbastanza perspicace da intuire che il banchiere non si sarebbe spinto così lontano nella sua espressione di opinione se non avesse avuto una certezza morale. Nonostante non fosse preparato per la grossa pillola che doveva ingoiare, riuscì a mandarla giù. “E ora,” disse il signor Stryver, agitando l’indice forense verso il Temple in generale, una volta ingoiata, “il mio modo di uscirne è mettervi tutti nel torto.”
Era un po’ dell’arte di un tattico esperto del tribunale della Old Bailey, che gli procurava grande sollievo. «Non mi metterete nei torti, giovane signora», disse Stryver; «ci penso io a farlo».
Di conseguenza, quando il signor Lorry si presentò quella sera tardi come le dieci e poco, il signor Stryver, tra una quantità di libri e documenti sparsi intorno a lui per l’occasione, sembrava non avere altro in mente che il discorso della mattina. Anzi mostrò persino sorpresa quando vide il signor Lorry e si trovava in uno stato d’animo completamente distratto e preoccupato.
«Bene!» disse quell’ambasciatore di buon cuore dopo un’intera mezz’ora di tentativi infruttuosi per portarlo alla domanda. «Sono stato a Soho.»
“A Soho?” ripeté il signor Stryver, freddamente. “Ah, certo! A cosa sto pensando!”
«E non ho alcun dubbio», disse il signor Lorry, «che avessi ragione nella conversazione che abbiamo avuto. La mia opinione è confermata e ribadisco il mio consiglio».
«Le assicuro», rispose il signor Stryver nel modo più amichevole, «che mi dispiace per lei e mi dispiace per quel povero padre. So che questo deve essere sempre un argomento doloroso per la famiglia; non ne parliamo più».
«Non la capisco», disse il signor Lorry.
«Probabilmente no», ribatté Stryver, annuendo con un cenno rassicurante e conclusivo del capo; «non importa, non importa.»
«Ma è importante», insistette il signor Lorry.
“No, non lo è; ve lo assicuro. Avendo supposto che ci fosse un senso dove non c’è alcun senso e una ambizione lodevole dove non ce n’è una lodevole, sono ben fuori del mio errore e nessun danno è stato fatto. Le giovani donne hanno commesso spesso simili follie prima d’ora, e se ne sono pentite in povertà e oscurità spesso prima d’ora. Da un punto di vista disinteressato, mi dispiace che la cosa sia stata abbandonata, perché sarebbe stata una brutta cosa per me da un punto di vista mondano; da un punto di vista egoistico, sono contento che la cosa sia stata lasciata cadere, perché sarebbe stata una brutta cosa per me da un punto di vista mondano - non è quasi necessario dire che non avrei potuto guadagnare nulla da essa. Nessun danno è stato fatto. Non ho chiesto alla giovane signora di sposarmi e, tra noi, non sono affatto certo, riflettendoci, che mi sarei mai impegnato fino a quel punto. Signor Lorry, non potete controllare le vanità minacciate e le frivolezze delle ragazze vuote; non dovete aspettarvi di farlo, altrimenti sarete sempre deluso. Ora, vi prego, non ne parlate più. Ve lo dico io, me ne rammarico per gli altri, ma sono soddisfatto per quanto mi riguarda. E vi sono davvero molto obbligato per avermi permesso di sondarvi e per avermi dato il vostro consiglio; conoscete la giovane signora meglio di me; avete ragione, non sarebbe mai andata bene.”
Il signor Lorry rimase così sconcertato che guardò piuttosto stupidamente il signor Stryver, che lo spingeva verso la porta con un’aria di generosità, tolleranza e buona volontà riversate sulla sua testa errante. “Faccia del suo meglio, mio caro signore,” disse Stryver; “non ne parliamo più; grazie ancora per avermi permesso di sondarla; buona notte!”
Il signor Lorry si trovò fuori nella notte prima ancora di rendersi conto di dove fosse. Il signor Stryver era sdraiato sul suo divano e ammiccava al soffitto.
CHAPTER XIII. The Fellow of No Delicacy
If Sydney Carton ever shone anywhere, he certainly never shone in the house of Doctor Manette. He had been there often, during a whole year, and had always been the same moody and morose lounger there. When he cared to talk, he talked well; but, the cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him.
And yet he did care something for the streets that environed that house, and for the senseless stones that made their pavements. Many a night he vaguely and unhappily wandered there, when wine had brought no transitory gladness to him; many a dreary daybreak revealed his solitary figure lingering there, and still lingering there when the first beams of the sun brought into strong relief, removed beauties of architecture in spires of churches and lofty buildings, as perhaps the quiet time brought some sense of better things, else forgotten and unattainable, into his mind. Of late, the neglected bed in the Temple Court had known him more scantily than ever; and often when he had thrown himself upon it no longer than a few minutes, he had got up again, and haunted that neighbourhood.
On a day in August, when Mr. Stryver (after notifying to his jackal that “he had thought better of that marrying matter”) had carried his delicacy into Devonshire, and when the sight and scent of flowers in the City streets had some waifs of goodness in them for the worst, of health for the sickliest, and of youth for the oldest, Sydney’s feet still trod those stones. From being irresolute and purposeless, his feet became animated by an intention, and, in the working out of that intention, they took him to the Doctor’s door.
He was shown up-stairs, and found Lucie at her work, alone. She had never been quite at her ease with him, and received him with some little embarrassment as he seated himself near her table. But, looking up at his face in the interchange of the first few common-places, she observed a change in it.
“I fear you are not well, Mr. Carton!”
“No. But the life I lead, Miss Manette, is not conducive to health. What is to be expected of, or by, such profligates?”
“Is it not—forgive me; I have begun the question on my lips—a pity to live no better life?”
“God knows it is a shame!”
“Then why not change it?”
Looking gently at him again, she was surprised and saddened to see that there were tears in his eyes. There were tears in his voice too, as he answered:
“It is too late for that. I shall never be better than I am. I shall sink lower, and be worse.”
He leaned an elbow on her table, and covered his eyes with his hand. The table trembled in the silence that followed.
She had never seen him softened, and was much distressed. He knew her to be so, without looking at her, and said:
“Pray forgive me, Miss Manette. I break down before the knowledge of what I want to say to you. Will you hear me?”
“If it will do you any good, Mr. Carton, if it would make you happier, it would make me very glad!”
“God bless you for your sweet compassion!”
He unshaded his face after a little while, and spoke steadily.
“Don’t be afraid to hear me. Don’t shrink from anything I say. I am like one who died young. All my life might have been.”
“No, Mr. Carton. I am sure that the best part of it might still be; I am sure that you might be much, much worthier of yourself.”
“Say of you, Miss Manette, and although I know better—although in the mystery of my own wretched heart I know better—I shall never forget it!”
She was pale and trembling. He came to her relief with a fixed despair of himself which made the interview unlike any other that could have been holden.
“If it had been possible, Miss Manette, that you could have returned the love of the man you see before yourself—flung away, wasted, drunken, poor creature of misuse as you know him to be—he would have been conscious this day and hour, in spite of his happiness, that he would bring you to misery, bring you to sorrow and repentance, blight you, disgrace you, pull you down with him. I know very well that you can have no tenderness for me; I ask for none; I am even thankful that it cannot be.”
“Without it, can I not save you, Mr. Carton? Can I not recall you—forgive me again!—to a better course? Can I in no way repay your confidence? I know this is a confidence,” she modestly said, after a little hesitation, and in earnest tears, “I know you would say this to no one else. Can I turn it to no good account for yourself, Mr. Carton?”
He shook his head.
“To none. No, Miss Manette, to none. If you will hear me through a very little more, all you can ever do for me is done. I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul. In my degradation I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this home made such a home by you, has stirred old shadows that I thought had died out of me. Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.”
“Will nothing of it remain? O Mr. Carton, think again! Try again!”
“No, Miss Manette; all through it, I have known myself to be quite undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire—a fire, however, inseparable in its nature from myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning away.”
“Since it is my misfortune, Mr. Carton, to have made you more unhappy than you were before you knew me—”
“Don’t say that, Miss Manette, for you would have reclaimed me, if anything could. You will not be the cause of my becoming worse.”
“Since the state of your mind that you describe, is, at all events, attributable to some influence of mine—this is what I mean, if I can make it plain—can I use no influence to serve you? Have I no power for good, with you, at all?”
“The utmost good that I am capable of now, Miss Manette, I have come here to realise. Let me carry through the rest of my misdirected life, the remembrance that I opened my heart to you, last of all the world; and that there was something left in me at this time which you could deplore and pity.”
“Which I entreated you to believe, again and again, most fervently, with all my heart, was capable of better things, Mr. Carton!”
“Entreat me to believe it no more, Miss Manette. I have proved myself, and I know better. I distress you; I draw fast to an end. Will you let me believe, when I recall this day, that the last confidence of my life was reposed in your pure and innocent breast, and that it lies there alone, and will be shared by no one?”
“If that will be a consolation to you, yes.”
“Not even by the dearest one ever to be known to you?”
“Mr. Carton,” she answered, after an agitated pause, “the secret is yours, not mine; and I promise to respect it.”
“Thank you. And again, God bless you.”
He put her hand to his lips, and moved towards the door.
“Be under no apprehension, Miss Manette, of my ever resuming this conversation by so much as a passing word. I will never refer to it again. If I were dead, that could not be surer than it is henceforth. In the hour of my death, I shall hold sacred the one good remembrance—and shall thank and bless you for it—that my last avowal of myself was made to you, and that my name, and faults, and miseries were gently carried in your heart. May it otherwise be light and happy!”
He was so unlike what he had ever shown himself to be, and it was so sad to think how much he had thrown away, and how much he every day kept down and perverted, that Lucie Manette wept mournfully for him as he stood looking back at her.
“Be comforted!” he said, “I am not worth such feeling, Miss Manette. An hour or two hence, and the low companions and low habits that I scorn but yield to, will render me less worth such tears as those, than any wretch who creeps along the streets. Be comforted! But, within myself, I shall always be, towards you, what I am now, though outwardly I shall be what you have heretofore seen me. The last supplication but one I make to you, is, that you will believe this of me.”
“I will, Mr. Carton.”
“My last supplication of all, is this; and with it, I will relieve you of a visitor with whom I well know you have nothing in unison, and between whom and you there is an impassable space. It is useless to say it, I know, but it rises out of my soul. For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. If my career were of that better kind that there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. Try to hold me in your mind, at some quiet times, as ardent and sincere in this one thing. The time will come, the time will not be long in coming, when new ties will be formed about you—ties that will bind you yet more tenderly and strongly to the home you so adorn—the dearest ties that will ever grace and gladden you. O Miss Manette, when the little picture of a happy father’s face looks up in yours, when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you!”
He said, “Farewell!” said a last “God bless you!” and left her.
CAPITOLO XIII. Il compagno senza delicatezza
Se mai Sydney Carton brillò da qualche parte, certamente non brillò nella casa del dottor Manette. Era stato lì spesso durante un intero anno e aveva sempre avuto lo stesso comportamento di ozioso malinconico e cupo. Quando gli andava di parlare, parlava bene; ma la nuvola dell’indifferenza che lo sovrastava con una tale oscurità fatale era molto raramente attraversata dalla luce interiore.
Eppure gli importava qualcosa delle strade che circondavano quella casa, e delle pietre insensate che ne formavano i lastricati. Molte notti vagò lì in modo vago e infelice, quando il vino non gli aveva portato nessuna gioia transitoria; molti tristi albori rivelarono la sua figura solitaria che indugiava lì, e continuava a indugiare lì quando i primi raggi del sole mettevano in forte risalto le bellezze architettoniche distanti nelle guglie delle chiese e negli edifici imponenti, mentre forse il tranquillo tempo portava qualche senso di cose migliori, altrimenti dimenticate e inaccessibili, nella sua mente. Di recente, il letto trascurato nel Tribunale del Tempio lo aveva ospitato più raramente che mai; e spesso quando si era gettato su di esso per non più di qualche minuto, si era alzato di nuovo e aveva frequentato quel quartiere.
In un giorno di agosto, quando il signor Stryver (dopo aver comunicato al suo lupo mannaro che “ci aveva ripensato su quella faccenda del matrimonio”) si era portato la sua delicatezza in Devonshire, e quando lo spettacolo e il profumo dei fiori nelle strade della Città contenevano qualche briciola di bontà per i peggiori, un po’ di salute per gli ammalati più gravi e una traccia di giovinezza per i più vecchi, i piedi di Sydney continuavano a calpestare quelle pietre. Dall’essere irresoluti e senza scopo, i suoi piedi divennero animati da un’intenzione, e, nel realizzare quell’intenzione, lo portarono alla porta del Dottore.
Fu condotto di sopra e trovò Lucie al suo lavoro, sola. Non si era mai sentita del tutto a suo agio con lui e lo accolse con un po’ d’imbarazzo mentre si accomodava vicino al suo tavolo. Ma, guardandogli il volto durante la conversazione di circostanza dei primi momenti, notò che era cambiato.
“Temo che non stiate bene, signor Carton!”
«No. Ma la vita che conduco, signorina Manette, non è favorevole alla salute. Che cosa ci si può aspettare da tali dissoluti?»
«Non è forse — perdonatemi; ho iniziato la domanda che avevo sulle labbra — un peccato non vivere una vita migliore?»
“Che vergogna!”
“Allora perché non cambiarla?”
Guardandolo di nuovo con dolcezza, fu sorpresa e rattristata nel vedere che c’erano lacrime nei suoi occhi. C’era una nota di pianto anche nella sua voce quando rispose:
«È troppo tardi per questo. Non sarò mai migliore di quanto sono. Sprofonderò ancora più in basso e diventerò peggio».
Si appoggiò un gomito sul suo tavolo e si coprì gli occhi con la mano. Il tavolo tremava nel silenzio che seguì.
Non l’aveva mai visto ammansito e ne era molto angosciata. Lui sapeva che lo fosse senza guardarla e disse:
«Vi prego di perdonarmi, signorina Manette. Mi abbattrò davanti alla consapevolezza di ciò che voglio dirvi. Volete ascoltarmi?»
«Se le farà bene, signor Carton, se la renderà più felice, mi renderebbe molto contento!»
“Dio ti benedica per la tua dolce compassione!”
Dopo un po’ si tolse l’ombra dal viso e parlò con fermezza.
«Non temete di ascoltarmi. Non ritiratevi da nulla di ciò che dico. Sono come chi morì giovane. Così sarebbe potuta essere tutta la mia vita».
«No, signor Carton. Sono sicura che la parte migliore potrebbe ancora esserci; sono sicura che lei potrebbe essere molto, molto più degno di sé stesso».
«Dite questo di voi, signorina Manette, e anche se ne so più di quanto dite - anche se nel mistero del mio povero cuore ne so più di così - non lo dimenticherò mai!»
Era pallida e tremante. Lui le venne in soccorso con un’aria di cupo dispero verso se stesso che rese l’incontro diverso da qualsiasi altro che avrebbe potuto aver luogo.
«Se fosse stato possibile, Miss Manette, che tu potessi ricambiare l’amore dell’uomo che vedi davanti a te - gettato via, sprecato, ubriaco, povera creatura maltrattata come sai che è - sarebbe stato consapevole in questo giorno e ora, nonostante la sua felicità, che ti avrebbe portato alla miseria, ti avrebbe portato al dolore e al pentimento, ti avrebbe rovinato, disonorato, trascinato giù con lui. So molto bene che tu non puoi avere alcuna tenerezza per me; non ne chiedo; sono persino grato che non possa esserci».
«Senza di essa, non posso salvarla, signor Carton? Non posso richiamarla — mi perdoni ancora! — a una condotta migliore? Non posso in alcun modo ripagare la sua fiducia? So che questo è un segreto», disse modestamente dopo una breve esitazione e con lacrime sincere, «So che non lo direbbe a nessun altro. Non posso metterlo a frutto per lei, signor Carton?»
Scosse la testa.
“A nessuno. No, Miss Manette, a nessuno. Se vorrà ascoltarmi ancora per poco, tutto ciò che potrà mai fare per me sarà fatto. Desidero che sappia di essere stata l’ultimo sogno della mia anima. Nella mia degradazione non sono stato così degradato da non sentire che la vista di lei con suo padre e di questa casa resa tale una casa da lei, ha risvegliato vecchie ombre che credevo fossero svanite in me. Da quando l’ho conosciuta, sono stato tormentato da un rimorso che pensavo non mi avrebbe mai più rimproverato e ho sentito sussurri di voci antiche che mi spingevano verso l’alto, che credevo fossero per sempre silenziose. Ho avuto idee confuse di rinnovare gli sforzi, ricominciare da capo, scrollarmi di dosso pigrizia e sensualità, e combattere la battaglia abbandonata. Un sogno, tutto un sogno, che finisce in nulla e lascia il dormiente dove si è coricato, ma voglio che sappia che lei l’ha ispirato.”
“Non rimarrà nulla di tutto ciò? Oh, signor Carton, ripensi! Riprovi!”
“No, Miss Manette; per tutto il tempo ho saputo di non meritare nulla. Eppure ho avuto la debolezza e ne ho ancora adesso, di desiderare che tu sappia con quale improvvisa maestria mi hai acceso, mucchio di cenere qual sono io, in fuoco—un fuoco, tuttavia, inseparabile nella sua natura da me stesso, che non ravviva nulla, non illumina nulla, non rende alcun servizio, bruciando oziosamente.”
«Poiché è mia sfortuna, signor Carton, di averla resa più infelice di quanto non fosse prima che mi conoscesse, »
«Non dica questo, signorina Manette, perché mi avrebbe riportato sulla retta via, se qualcosa lo poteva fare. Non sarà lei la causa del mio peggioramento».
«Poiché lo stato d’animo che descrivete è, in ogni caso, attribuibile a qualche influenza da parte mia — questo intendo dire, se riesco a renderlo chiaro — non posso usare nessuna influenza per servirvi? Non ho alcun potere di bene nei vostri confronti?»
«Il massimo bene di cui sono capace ora, Miss Manette, sono venuto qui per realizzarlo. Lasciatemi portare avanti il resto della mia vita sbagliata con il ricordo che vi ho aperto il mio cuore, ultima persona al mondo; e che in me a questo tempo c’era qualcosa che potevate deplorare e compatire.»
«Che io vi ho pregato di credere, più e più volte, con tutta la mia anima, fosse capace di cose migliori, signor Carton!»
«Non mi chieda di non crederci più, Miss Manette. Ho fatto la mia prova, e so meglio io. La metto in ansia; sto arrivando alla fine. Mi lascerà credere, quando ricorderò questo giorno, che l’ultima confidenza della mia vita è stata riposta nel suo seno puro e innocente, e che giace là sola, e non sarà condivisa da nessuno?»
“Se questo ti consolerà, sì.”
“Neppure dalla persona più cara che tu abbia mai conosciuto?”
«Signor Carton», rispose dopo una pausa turbata, «il segreto è suo, non mio; e prometto di rispettarlo.»
“Grazie. E ancora una volta, Dio vi benedica.”
Le portò la mano alle labbra e si diresse verso la porta.
«Non abbia alcuna apprensione, Miss Manette, che io riprenda mai questa conversazione anche solo con una parola di passaggio. Non ci farò più riferimento. Se fossi morto, non potrebbe essere più certo di quanto lo sia da ora in poi. Nell’ora della mia morte, terrò sacro il buon ricordo - e vi ringrazierò e benedirò per questo - che la mia ultima confessione è stata fatta a voi, e che il mio nome, i miei errori e le mie miserie sono stati portati gentilmente nel vostro cuore. Possa essere altrimenti leggero e felice!»
Era così diverso da come si era sempre mostrato e faceva tanto male pensare a quanto aveva sprecato e a quanto ogni giorno soffocava e corrompeva, che Lucie Manette pianse disperatamente per lui mentre stava lì fermo a guardarla.
«Consolatevi!» disse «Non valgo una simile emozione, Miss Manette. Tra un’ora o due, i compagni di bassa estrazione e le abitudini volgari che disprezzo ma a cui cedo, mi renderanno meno degno di lacrime come queste, rispetto a qualsiasi miserabile che striscia per le strade. Consolatevi! Ma dentro di me sarò sempre quello che sono ora nei vostri confronti, anche se esteriormente sarò ciò che avete visto finora. L’ultima supplica che vi faccio è che crediate a questo».
“Lo farò, signor Carton.”
“La mia ultima preghiera è questa; e con essa vi libero da un visitatore che so bene non ha nulla in comune con voi, e tra il quale e voi c’è uno spazio invalicabile. È inutile dirlo, lo so, ma emerge dalla mia anima. Per voi, e per chiunque sia caro a voi, farei qualsiasi cosa. Se la mia carriera fosse di quel genere migliore che offrisse l’opportunità o la capacità di sacrificarsi, abbraccerei qualsiasi sacrificio per voi e per coloro che vi sono cari. Cercate di tenermi presente nella vostra mente, in certi momenti tranquilli, come ardente e sincero in questa una cosa. Verrà il momento, non tarderà ad arrivare, quando si formeranno nuovi legami intorno a voi - legami che vi legheranno ancora più teneramente e fortemente alla casa che adornate così tanto - i legami più cari che mai vi onoreranno e rallegreranno. O signorina Manette, quando il piccolo ritratto del volto di un padre felice si alzerà verso il vostro, quando vedrete la vostra stessa luminosa bellezza risorgere nuovamente ai vostri piedi, pensate ogni tanto che c’è un uomo che darebbe la sua vita per tenere accanto a voi una vita che amate!”
Disse: «Addio!», disse un ultimo «Dio ti benedica!» e la lasciò.
CHAPTER XIV. The Honest Tradesman
To the eyes of Mr. Jeremiah Cruncher, sitting on his stool in Fleet-street with his grisly urchin beside him, a vast number and variety of objects in movement were every day presented. Who could sit upon anything in Fleet-street during the busy hours of the day, and not be dazed and deafened by two immense processions, one ever tending westward with the sun, the other ever tending eastward from the sun, both ever tending to the plains beyond the range of red and purple where the sun goes down!
With his straw in his mouth, Mr. Cruncher sat watching the two streams, like the heathen rustic who has for several centuries been on duty watching one stream—saving that Jerry had no expectation of their ever running dry. Nor would it have been an expectation of a hopeful kind, since a small part of his income was derived from the pilotage of timid women (mostly of a full habit and past the middle term of life) from Tellson’s side of the tides to the opposite shore. Brief as such companionship was in every separate instance, Mr. Cruncher never failed to become so interested in the lady as to express a strong desire to have the honour of drinking her very good health. And it was from the gifts bestowed upon him towards the execution of this benevolent purpose, that he recruited his finances, as just now observed.
Time was, when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place, and mused in the sight of men. Mr. Cruncher, sitting on a stool in a public place, but not being a poet, mused as little as possible, and looked about him.
It fell out that he was thus engaged in a season when crowds were few, and belated women few, and when his affairs in general were so unprosperous as to awaken a strong suspicion in his breast that Mrs. Cruncher must have been “flopping” in some pointed manner, when an unusual concourse pouring down Fleet-street westward, attracted his attention. Looking that way, Mr. Cruncher made out that some kind of funeral was coming along, and that there was popular objection to this funeral, which engendered uproar.
“Young Jerry,” said Mr. Cruncher, turning to his offspring, “it’s a buryin’.”
“Hooroar, father!” cried Young Jerry.
The young gentleman uttered this exultant sound with mysterious significance. The elder gentleman took the cry so ill, that he watched his opportunity, and smote the young gentleman on the ear.
“What d’ye mean? What are you hooroaring at? What do you want to conwey to your own father, you young Rip? This boy is a getting too many for me!” said Mr. Cruncher, surveying him. “Him and his hooroars! Don’t let me hear no more of you, or you shall feel some more of me. D’ye hear?”
“I warn’t doing no harm,” Young Jerry protested, rubbing his cheek.
“Drop it then,” said Mr. Cruncher; “I won’t have none of your no harms. Get a top of that there seat, and look at the crowd.”
His son obeyed, and the crowd approached; they were bawling and hissing round a dingy hearse and dingy mourning coach, in which mourning coach there was only one mourner, dressed in the dingy trappings that were considered essential to the dignity of the position. The position appeared by no means to please him, however, with an increasing rabble surrounding the coach, deriding him, making grimaces at him, and incessantly groaning and calling out: “Yah! Spies! Tst! Yaha! Spies!” with many compliments too numerous and forcible to repeat.
Funerals had at all times a remarkable attraction for Mr. Cruncher; he always pricked up his senses, and became excited, when a funeral passed Tellson’s. Naturally, therefore, a funeral with this uncommon attendance excited him greatly, and he asked of the first man who ran against him:
“What is it, brother? What’s it about?”
“I don’t know,” said the man. “Spies! Yaha! Tst! Spies!”
He asked another man. “Who is it?”
“I don’t know,” returned the man, clapping his hands to his mouth nevertheless, and vociferating in a surprising heat and with the greatest ardour, “Spies! Yaha! Tst, tst! Spi—ies!”
At length, a person better informed on the merits of the case, tumbled against him, and from this person he learned that the funeral was the funeral of one Roger Cly.
“Was he a spy?” asked Mr. Cruncher.
“Old Bailey spy,” returned his informant. “Yaha! Tst! Yah! Old Bailey Spi—i—ies!”
“Why, to be sure!” exclaimed Jerry, recalling the Trial at which he had assisted. “I’ve seen him. Dead, is he?”
“Dead as mutton,” returned the other, “and can’t be too dead. Have ’em out, there! Spies! Pull ’em out, there! Spies!”
The idea was so acceptable in the prevalent absence of any idea, that the crowd caught it up with eagerness, and loudly repeating the suggestion to have ’em out, and to pull ’em out, mobbed the two vehicles so closely that they came to a stop. On the crowd’s opening the coach doors, the one mourner scuffled out by himself and was in their hands for a moment; but he was so alert, and made such good use of his time, that in another moment he was scouring away up a bye-street, after shedding his cloak, hat, long hatband, white pocket-handkerchief, and other symbolical tears.
These, the people tore to pieces and scattered far and wide with great enjoyment, while the tradesmen hurriedly shut up their shops; for a crowd in those times stopped at nothing, and was a monster much dreaded. They had already got the length of opening the hearse to take the coffin out, when some brighter genius proposed instead, its being escorted to its destination amidst general rejoicing. Practical suggestions being much needed, this suggestion, too, was received with acclamation, and the coach was immediately filled with eight inside and a dozen out, while as many people got on the roof of the hearse as could by any exercise of ingenuity stick upon it. Among the first of these volunteers was Jerry Cruncher himself, who modestly concealed his spiky head from the observation of Tellson’s, in the further corner of the mourning coach.
CAPITOLO XIV. L’onesto commerciante
Gli occhi di Jeremiah Cruncher seduto sulla sua sedia in Fleet Street con il suo orribile marmocchio accanto a lui, si trovavano ogni giorno davanti un vasto numero e una grande varietà di oggetti in movimento. Chiunque potesse sedersi su qualsiasi cosa in Fleet Street durante le ore più trafficate della giornata non poteva che sentirsi stordito e assordato da due immense processioni, l’una sempre diretta verso ovest insieme al sole, l’altra sempre diretta a est dal sole, entrambe sempre dirette alle pianure oltre la catena di rosso e viola dove il sole tramonta!
Con lo stelo d’erba in bocca, il signor Cruncher sedeva a guardare i due corsi d’acqua, come il pagano contadino che da diversi secoli è di servizio a sorvegliare un fiume — salvo per il fatto che Jerry non si aspettava che potessero mai prosciugarsi. E nemmeno sarebbe stata una speranza, dato che una piccola parte dei suoi guadagni derivava dalla guida di donne timorose (per lo più di corporatura robusta e oltre la mezza età) dall’altra sponda del fiume fino alla riva opposta. Breve quanto fosse tale compagnia in ogni singolo caso, il signor Cruncher non mancava mai di interessarsi tanto alla dama da esprimere un forte desiderio di avere l’onore di brindare alla sua ottima salute. E fu dai doni che gli venivano fatti per portare a termine questo benevolo proposito, che riuscì ad arricchire le sue finanze, come si è appena detto.
C’era tempo quando un poeta sedeva su uno sgabello in luogo pubblico e meditava alla vista di tutti. Il signor Cruncher, seduto su uno sgabello in luogo pubblico, ma non essendo un poeta, meditò il meno possibile e guardò intorno a sé.
Ebbe la sfortuna di trovarsi così occupato in un periodo in cui le folle erano scarse e le donne in ritardo rare, e quando i suoi affari in generale andavano così male da destare in lui il forte sospetto che la signora Cruncher dovesse essersi “abbandonata” in qualche modo particolare, quando un insolito concorso di persone che scendeva Fleet Street verso ovest attirò la sua attenzione. Guardando in quella direzione, il signor Cruncher capì che stava arrivando una sorta di funerale e che c’era un’opposizione popolare a questo funerale, che generava tumulto.
“Giovane Jerry,” disse il signor Cruncher rivolgendosi al figlio, “è una sepoltura.”
«Hurrah, padre!» gridò il giovane Jerry.
Il giovane gentiluomo emise questo suono esultante con un significato misterioso. Il vecchio gentiluomo prese così male il grido che attese l’occasione e colpì il giovane gentiluomo all’orecchio.
«Che cosa intendi? Di che cosa stai ridendo a crepapelle? Che cosa vuoi dire al tuo stesso padre, giovane scemo? Questo ragazzo sta diventando troppo per me!» disse il signor Cruncher scrutandolo. «Lui e le sue risate fragorose! Non voglio più sentire niente da te, o sentirai qualcosa di più da me. Mi hai capito?»
«Non stavo facendo niente di male», protestò il giovane Jerry strofinandosi la guancia.
«Lascia perdere allora», disse il signor Cruncher; «non voglio nessuno dei tuoi “nessun danno”. Mettiti in cima a quel sedile e guarda la folla.»
Il figlio obbedì e la folla si avvicinò; stavano urlando e fischiando intorno a un carro funebre sudicio e a una carrozza da lutto altrettanto sporca, nella quale c’era solo un luttuoso, vestito con gli abiti scuri che erano considerati essenziali per la dignità della sua posizione. La posizione però non sembrava piacergli affatto, mentre una folla sempre più numerosa circondava la carrozza, deridendolo, facendogli smorfie e lamentandosi incessantemente, gridando: «Yah! Spie! Tst! Yaha! Spie!» accompagnati da molti insulti troppo numerosi e violenti per essere ripetuti.
I funerali avevano in ogni tempo un’attrazione notevole per il signor Cruncher; egli si drizzava sempre le antenne e si eccitava quando passava un funerale davanti a Tellson. Naturalmente, quindi, un funerale con questa insolita affluenza lo eccitò grandemente, e chiese al primo uomo che gli corse contro:
“Cosa c’è, fratello? Di cosa si tratta?”
“Non lo so”, disse l’uomo. “Spie! Yaha! Tst! Spie!”
Chiese ad un altro uomo: “Chi è?”
«Io non lo so», rispose l’uomo, portandosi le mani alla bocca e tuttavia gridando con sorprendente foga e grande fervore: «Spie! Ahah! Ssst, ssst! Spie—e!»
Finalmente una persona più informata sui meriti del caso gli incappò addosso e da questa persona seppe che il funerale era quello di un certo Roger Cly.
«Era un agente segreto?» chiese il signor Cruncher.
“Spia dell’Old Bailey”, rispose la sua fonte. “Yaha! Tst! Yah! Spie dell’Old Bailey!”
«Ma certo!» esclamò Jerry, ricordando il processo a cui aveva assistito. «L’ho visto. È morto?»
«Morto come l’agnello», rispose l’altro, «e non può essere troppo morto. Tirateli fuori, là! Spie! Portateli via, là! Spie!»
L’idea era così accettabile nella prevalente assenza di qualsiasi altra idea, che la folla l’afferrò con entusiasmo e ripeté ad alta voce il suggerimento di farli uscire, e tirarli fuori, circondando i due veicoli così da fermarli. Quando la folla aprì le porte del carro funebre, l’unico addolorato si liberò da solo ed ebbe tra le mani per un momento; ma era così agile e fece così buon uso del suo tempo, che in un altro momento stava già scappando su una stradina laterale, dopo essersi sbarazzato del mantello, del cappello, della lunga fascia per il cappello, del fazzoletto bianco e di altre simboliche lacrime.
La folla strappò a pezzi queste cose e le sparse lontano con grande divertimento, mentre i commercianti chiudevano precipitosamente le loro botteghe; perché una folla in quei tempi non si fermava davanti a nulla ed era un mostro molto temuto. Erano già arrivati fino al punto di aprire il carro funebre per togliere la bara, quando qualche genio più brillante propose invece che venisse scortato alla sua destinazione in mezzo alle generali acclamazioni. Essendo molto necessarie proposte pratiche, anche questa fu accolta con entusiasmo e la carrozza fu immediatamente riempita con otto persone all’interno e una dozzina all’esterno, mentre sul tetto del carro funebre si arrampicarono quante più persone poterono, usando tutta l’astuzia possibile. Tra i primi volontari c’era lo stesso Jerry Cruncher, che modestamente nascondeva la sua testa spinosa dalla vista di Tellson’s, nell’angolo più lontano della carrozza funebre.
The officiating undertakers made some protest against these changes in the ceremonies; but, the river being alarmingly near, and several voices remarking on the efficacy of cold immersion in bringing refractory members of the profession to reason, the protest was faint and brief. The remodelled procession started, with a chimney-sweep driving the hearse—advised by the regular driver, who was perched beside him, under close inspection, for the purpose—and with a pieman, also attended by his cabinet minister, driving the mourning coach. A bear-leader, a popular street character of the time, was impressed as an additional ornament, before the cavalcade had gone far down the Strand; and his bear, who was black and very mangy, gave quite an Undertaking air to that part of the procession in which he walked.
Thus, with beer-drinking, pipe-smoking, song-roaring, and infinite caricaturing of woe, the disorderly procession went its way, recruiting at every step, and all the shops shutting up before it. Its destination was the old church of Saint Pancras, far off in the fields. It got there in course of time; insisted on pouring into the burial-ground; finally, accomplished the interment of the deceased Roger Cly in its own way, and highly to its own satisfaction.
The dead man disposed of, and the crowd being under the necessity of providing some other entertainment for itself, another brighter genius (or perhaps the same) conceived the humour of impeaching casual passers-by, as Old Bailey spies, and wreaking vengeance on them. Chase was given to some scores of inoffensive persons who had never been near the Old Bailey in their lives, in the realisation of this fancy, and they were roughly hustled and maltreated. The transition to the sport of window-breaking, and thence to the plundering of public-houses, was easy and natural. At last, after several hours, when sundry summer-houses had been pulled down, and some area-railings had been torn up, to arm the more belligerent spirits, a rumour got about that the Guards were coming. Before this rumour, the crowd gradually melted away, and perhaps the Guards came, and perhaps they never came, and this was the usual progress of a mob.
Mr. Cruncher did not assist at the closing sports, but had remained behind in the churchyard, to confer and condole with the undertakers. The place had a soothing influence on him. He procured a pipe from a neighbouring public-house, and smoked it, looking in at the railings and maturely considering the spot.
“Jerry,” said Mr. Cruncher, apostrophising himself in his usual way, “you see that there Cly that day, and you see with your own eyes that he was a young ’un and a straight made ’un.”
Having smoked his pipe out, and ruminated a little longer, he turned himself about, that he might appear, before the hour of closing, on his station at Tellson’s. Whether his meditations on mortality had touched his liver, or whether his general health had been previously at all amiss, or whether he desired to show a little attention to an eminent man, is not so much to the purpose, as that he made a short call upon his medical adviser—a distinguished surgeon—on his way back.
Young Jerry relieved his father with dutiful interest, and reported No job in his absence. The bank closed, the ancient clerks came out, the usual watch was set, and Mr. Cruncher and his son went home to tea.
“Now, I tell you where it is!” said Mr. Cruncher to his wife, on entering. “If, as a honest tradesman, my wenturs goes wrong to-night, I shall make sure that you’ve been praying again me, and I shall work you for it just the same as if I seen you do it.”
The dejected Mrs. Cruncher shook her head.
“Why, you’re at it afore my face!” said Mr. Cruncher, with signs of angry apprehension.
“I am saying nothing.”
“Well, then; don’t meditate nothing. You might as well flop as meditate. You may as well go again me one way as another. Drop it altogether.”
“Yes, Jerry.”
“Yes, Jerry,” repeated Mr. Cruncher sitting down to tea. “Ah! It is yes, Jerry. That’s about it. You may say yes, Jerry.”
Mr. Cruncher had no particular meaning in these sulky corroborations, but made use of them, as people not unfrequently do, to express general ironical dissatisfaction.
“You and your yes, Jerry,” said Mr. Cruncher, taking a bite out of his bread-and-butter, and seeming to help it down with a large invisible oyster out of his saucer. “Ah! I think so. I believe you.”
“You are going out to-night?” asked his decent wife, when he took another bite.
“Yes, I am.”
“May I go with you, father?” asked his son, briskly.
“No, you mayn’t. I’m a going—as your mother knows—a fishing. That’s where I’m going to. Going a fishing.”
“Your fishing-rod gets rayther rusty; don’t it, father?”
“Never you mind.”
“Shall you bring any fish home, father?”
“If I don’t, you’ll have short commons, to-morrow,” returned that gentleman, shaking his head; “that’s questions enough for you; I ain’t a going out, till you’ve been long abed.”
He devoted himself during the remainder of the evening to keeping a most vigilant watch on Mrs. Cruncher, and sullenly holding her in conversation that she might be prevented from meditating any petitions to his disadvantage. With this view, he urged his son to hold her in conversation also, and led the unfortunate woman a hard life by dwelling on any causes of complaint he could bring against her, rather than he would leave her for a moment to her own reflections. The devoutest person could have rendered no greater homage to the efficacy of an honest prayer than he did in this distrust of his wife. It was as if a professed unbeliever in ghosts should be frightened by a ghost story.
“And mind you!” said Mr. Cruncher. “No games to-morrow! If I, as a honest tradesman, succeed in providing a jinte of meat or two, none of your not touching of it, and sticking to bread. If I, as a honest tradesman, am able to provide a little beer, none of your declaring on water. When you go to Rome, do as Rome does. Rome will be a ugly customer to you, if you don’t. I’m your Rome, you know.”
Gli imprenditori di pompe funebri che officiavano la cerimonia protestarono contro questi cambiamenti nelle cerimonie; ma, dato che il fiume era preoccupantemente vicino e diverse voci osservavano l’efficacia dell’immersione in acqua fredda nel portare i membri recalcitranti della professione alla ragione, la protesta fu debole e breve. La processione rimodellata partì con un spazzacamino che guidava il carro funebre - consigliato dal conducente regolare, che era appollaiato accanto a lui sotto stretta ispezione allo scopo - e con un venditore di paste, anch’egli accompagnato dal suo ministro degli esteri, che guidava la carrozza da lutto. Un domatore di orsi, una popolare figura di strada dell’epoca, fu arruolato come ornamento aggiuntivo prima che il corteo avesse percorso molto lungo lo Strand; e il suo orso, che era nero e molto spelacchiato, conferiva un’aria davvero funebre a quella parte della processione in cui camminava.
Così, tra birra bevuta, pipe fumate, canzoni urlate e infinite caricature del dolore, la processione disordinata proseguiva il suo cammino, reclutando nuovi membri ad ogni passo, mentre tutti i negozi chiudevano prima che arrivasse. La sua destinazione era l’antica chiesa di San Pancrazio, lontana nei campi. Ci arrivò nel corso del tempo; insistette per riversarsi nel cimitero; infine, compì la sepoltura del defunto Roger Cly a modo suo e con grande soddisfazione.
Eliminato il morto e la folla essendo costretta a procurarsi qualche altro svago, un altro spirito più brillante (o forse lo stesso) ebbe l’idea di accusare i passanti occasionali come spie dell’Old Bailey e di vendicarsene. Per realizzare questa fantasia, si diede la caccia a decine di persone inoffensive che non erano mai state vicino all’Old Bailey in vita loro, e furono malmenate e trattate con violenza. Il passaggio allo sport della rottura delle finestre e da lì al saccheggio dei pub fu facile e naturale. Alla fine, dopo diverse ore, quando diversi gazebo erano stati abbattuti e alcune ringhiere di cortile erano state strappate per armare gli spiriti più bellicosi, corse la voce che i Granatieri stavano arrivando. Di fronte a questa voce, la folla si disperse gradualmente, e forse i Granatieri arrivarono, o forse non arrivarono mai, e questo era il solito andamento di una rivolta.
Il signor Cruncher non assistette agli sport conclusivi, ma era rimasto indietro nel cimitero per consultarsi e condogliersi con i becchini. Il luogo aveva su di lui un’influenza calmante. Si procurò una pipa da un’osteria vicina e la fumò guardando dentro le inferriate e considerando attentamente il posto.
«Jerry», disse il signor Cruncher, rivolgendosi a sé stesso nel suo solito modo, «hai visto quel Cly quel giorno e hai visto con i tuoi occhi che era un giovane e ben fatto.»
Dopo aver finito di fumare la pipa e meditato ancora un po’, si voltò per apparire, prima dell’ora di chiusura, al suo posto alla Tellson’s. Che le sue riflessioni sulla mortalità avessero toccato il suo fegato, o che la sua salute generale fosse stata precedentemente in qualche modo compromessa, o che desiderasse dimostrare un po’ di attenzione verso un uomo illustre, non è così importante quanto il fatto che fece una breve visita al suo consulente medico - un chirurgo distinto - sulla via del ritorno.
Il giovane Jerry sostituì suo padre con diligente interesse e riferì che non c’erano stati lavori in sua assenza. La banca chiuse, i vecchi impiegati uscirono, fu messa la guardia di routine, e il signor Cruncher e suo figlio andarono a casa per prendere il tè.
«Ora vi dico dove è!» disse il signor Cruncher a sua moglie, entrando. «Se, da onesto commerciante, le mie imprese vanno male stasera, mi assicurerò che abbiate pregato contro di me e ve ne farò pagare lo stesso come se vi avessi visto farlo».
La signora Cruncher, abbattuta, scosse la testa.
«Ma voi ci state già dentro davanti ai miei occhi!» disse il signor Cruncher con segni di preoccupazione arrabbiata.
“Non dico nulla.”
«Bene, allora, non meditare nulla. Potresti anche bene cadere piuttosto che meditare. Potresti anche bene venire di nuovo da me in un modo o nell’altro. Lascia perdere del tutto».
“Sì, Jerry.”
«Sì, Jerry», ripeté il signor Cruncher sedendosi a prendere il tè. «Ah! È proprio così, sì, Jerry. Questo è più o meno quanto. Puoi dire sì, Jerry».
Il signor Cruncher non aveva un significato particolare in queste conferme scontrose, ma le usava, come fanno spesso le persone, per esprimere una generale insoddisfazione ironica.
«Voi e il vostro sì, Jerry», disse Mr. Cruncher, addentando il suo pane burro e sembrando di accompagnarne la discesa con una grande ostrica invisibile dal piattino. «Ah! Penso proprio di sì. Vi credo».
“Esci stasera?”, chiese la sua rispettabile moglie quando lui prese un altro boccone.
“Sì, lo sono.”
«Posso venire con te, padre?» chiese suo figlio, vivacemente.
«No, non puoi venire. Sto andando, come sa tua madre, a pescare. È lì che sto andando. Vado a pescare».
“La tua canna da pesca si arrugginisce un po’; vero, papà?”
“Non ti preoccupare.”
«Porterai a casa qualche pesce, papà?»
«Se non lo faccio, domani avrete razioni scarse», rispose quell’uomo, scuotendo la testa; «queste sono troppe domande per voi; non uscirò finché non sarete a letto da un pezzo.»
Si dedicò per il resto della serata a tenere una sorveglianza molto attenta su Mrs. Cruncher, e la trattenne con malumore in conversazione affinché non potesse meditare alcuna petizione contro di lui. Con questo intento, esortò suo figlio a tenerla anch’egli impegnata nella conversazione, e rese la vita difficile alla povera donna insistendo su qualsiasi motivo di lamento avesse mai avuto nei suoi confronti, piuttosto che lasciarla anche solo per un momento ai propri pensieri. La persona più devota non avrebbe potuto rendere omaggio maggiore all’efficacia di una preghiera onesta di quanto fece lui con questo sospetto nei confronti della moglie. Era come se uno scettico dichiarato riguardo ai fantasmi fosse spaventato da una storia di fantasma.
«E bada bene!» disse il signor Cruncher «Niente giochi domani! Se io, come onesto commerciante, riesco a procurarmi un pezzo di carne o due, niente da parte tua di non toccarlo e di accontentarti del pane. Se io, come onesto commerciante, sono in grado di procurare un po’ di birra, niente da parte tua di dichiararti per l’acqua. Quando vai a Roma, fai come fa Roma. Roma sarà una brutta bestia con te, se non lo farai. Io sono la tua Roma, sai.»
Then he began grumbling again:
“With your flying into the face of your own wittles and drink! I don’t know how scarce you mayn’t make the wittles and drink here, by your flopping tricks and your unfeeling conduct. Look at your boy: he is your’n, ain’t he? He’s as thin as a lath. Do you call yourself a mother, and not know that a mother’s first duty is to blow her boy out?”
This touched Young Jerry on a tender place; who adjured his mother to perform her first duty, and, whatever else she did or neglected, above all things to lay especial stress on the discharge of that maternal function so affectingly and delicately indicated by his other parent.
Thus the evening wore away with the Cruncher family, until Young Jerry was ordered to bed, and his mother, laid under similar injunctions, obeyed them. Mr. Cruncher beguiled the earlier watches of the night with solitary pipes, and did not start upon his excursion until nearly one o’clock. Towards that small and ghostly hour, he rose up from his chair, took a key out of his pocket, opened a locked cupboard, and brought forth a sack, a crowbar of convenient size, a rope and chain, and other fishing tackle of that nature. Disposing these articles about him in skilful manner, he bestowed a parting defiance on Mrs. Cruncher, extinguished the light, and went out.
Young Jerry, who had only made a feint of undressing when he went to bed, was not long after his father. Under cover of the darkness he followed out of the room, followed down the stairs, followed down the court, followed out into the streets. He was in no uneasiness concerning his getting into the house again, for it was full of lodgers, and the door stood ajar all night.
Impelled by a laudable ambition to study the art and mystery of his father’s honest calling, Young Jerry, keeping as close to house fronts, walls, and doorways, as his eyes were close to one another, held his honoured parent in view. The honoured parent steering Northward, had not gone far, when he was joined by another disciple of Izaak Walton, and the two trudged on together.
Within half an hour from the first starting, they were beyond the winking lamps, and the more than winking watchmen, and were out upon a lonely road. Another fisherman was picked up here—and that so silently, that if Young Jerry had been superstitious, he might have supposed the second follower of the gentle craft to have, all of a sudden, split himself into two.
The three went on, and Young Jerry went on, until the three stopped under a bank overhanging the road. Upon the top of the bank was a low brick wall, surmounted by an iron railing. In the shadow of bank and wall the three turned out of the road, and up a blind lane, of which the wall—there, risen to some eight or ten feet high—formed one side. Crouching down in a corner, peeping up the lane, the next object that Young Jerry saw, was the form of his honoured parent, pretty well defined against a watery and clouded moon, nimbly scaling an iron gate. He was soon over, and then the second fisherman got over, and then the third. They all dropped softly on the ground within the gate, and lay there a little—listening perhaps. Then, they moved away on their hands and knees.
It was now Young Jerry’s turn to approach the gate: which he did, holding his breath. Crouching down again in a corner there, and looking in, he made out the three fishermen creeping through some rank grass! and all the gravestones in the churchyard—it was a large churchyard that they were in—looking on like ghosts in white, while the church tower itself looked on like the ghost of a monstrous giant. They did not creep far, before they stopped and stood upright. And then they began to fish.
They fished with a spade, at first. Presently the honoured parent appeared to be adjusting some instrument like a great corkscrew. Whatever tools they worked with, they worked hard, until the awful striking of the church clock so terrified Young Jerry, that he made off, with his hair as stiff as his father’s.
But, his long-cherished desire to know more about these matters, not only stopped him in his running away, but lured him back again. They were still fishing perseveringly, when he peeped in at the gate for the second time; but, now they seemed to have got a bite. There was a screwing and complaining sound down below, and their bent figures were strained, as if by a weight. By slow degrees the weight broke away the earth upon it, and came to the surface. Young Jerry very well knew what it would be; but, when he saw it, and saw his honoured parent about to wrench it open, he was so frightened, being new to the sight, that he made off again, and never stopped until he had run a mile or more.
He would not have stopped then, for anything less necessary than breath, it being a spectral sort of race that he ran, and one highly desirable to get to the end of. He had a strong idea that the coffin he had seen was running after him; and, pictured as hopping on behind him, bolt upright, upon its narrow end, always on the point of overtaking him and hopping on at his side—perhaps taking his arm—it was a pursuer to shun. It was an inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend too, for, while it was making the whole night behind him dreadful, he darted out into the roadway to avoid dark alleys, fearful of its coming hopping out of them like a dropsical boy’s kite without tail and wings. It hid in doorways too, rubbing its horrible shoulders against doors, and drawing them up to its ears, as if it were laughing. It got into shadows on the road, and lay cunningly on its back to trip him up. All this time it was incessantly hopping on behind and gaining on him, so that when the boy got to his own door he had reason for being half dead. And even then it would not leave him, but followed him upstairs with a bump on every stair, scrambled into bed with him, and bumped down, dead and heavy, on his breast when he fell asleep.
Poi ricominciò a brontolare:
«Con il tuo buttarti addosso al cibo e alla bevanda! Non so quanto tu possa ridurre il cibo e la bevanda qui, con i tuoi trucchi di volo e il tuo comportamento senza cuore. Guarda tuo figlio: è tuo, no? È magro come un giunco. Ti chiami madre e non sai che il primo dovere di una madre è far ingrassare suo figlio?»
Questo toccò Young Jerry nel vivo; che esortò sua madre a compiere il suo primo dovere e, qualunque altra cosa facesse o trascurasse, soprattutto di porre particolare attenzione all’adempimento di quella funzione materna così affettuosamente ed elegantemente indicata dal suo altro genitore.
Così la serata trascorse per la famiglia Cruncher fino a quando Young Jerry fu mandato a letto e sua madre, ricevute simili istruzioni, le obbedì. Il signor Cruncher ingannò le prime ore della notte con pipate solitarie e non si mise in viaggio per la sua escursione fino quasi all’una di notte. Verso quell’ora piccola e spettrale, egli si alzò dalla sedia, prese una chiave dalla tasca, aprì un armadio chiuso a chiave e ne estrasse un sacco, una leva di dimensioni comode, una corda con catena e altri attrezzi da pesca di quel tipo. Disposti questi oggetti su di sé in modo abile, rivolse un ultimo affronto alla signora Cruncher, spense la luce e uscì.
Il giovane Jerry, che aveva solo simulato di spogliarsi quando era andato a letto, non tardò molto dopo suo padre. Approfittando dell’oscurità seguì fuori dalla stanza, scese le scale, percorse il vicolo, uscì nelle strade. Non si preoccupava di rientrare in casa, perché era piena di inquilini e la porta rimaneva socchiusa tutta la notte.
Spinto da una lodevole ambizione di studiare l’arte e il mistero della professione onesta di suo padre, Young Jerry, tenendosi vicino ai fronti delle case, ai muri e agli androni quanto i suoi occhi erano vicini tra loro, teneva d’occhio il genitore onorato. Il genitore onorato che si dirigeva verso nord non era andato lontano quando fu raggiunto da un altro discepolo di Izaak Walton e i due proseguirono insieme.
Entro mezz’ora dall’inizio del viaggio, erano oltre le lampade che lampeggiavano e i guardiani più che vigili, ed erano usciti su una strada solitaria. Un altro pescatore fu raccolto qui - e così silenziosamente, che se il giovane Jerry fosse stato superstizioso, avrebbe potuto supporre che il secondo seguace della dolce arte si fosse improvvisamente diviso in due.
I tre continuarono e Young Jerry continuò finché i tre si fermarono sotto un terrapieno che sovrastava la strada. In cima al terrapieno c’era un basso muro di mattoni, sormontato da una ringhiera in ferro. Nella penombra del terrapieno e del muro i tre uscirono dalla strada ed entrarono in un vicolo cieco, di cui il muro - che lì si alzava fino a otto o dieci piedi d’altezza - formava uno dei lati. Accovacciato in un angolo e sbirciando su per il vicolo, la prossima cosa che Young Jerry vide fu la figura del suo stimato genitore, abbastanza ben definita contro una luna acquosa e nuvolosa, mentre agilmente arrampicava su un cancello di ferro. Ben presto si trovò dall’altra parte, poi il secondo pescatore lo seguì e infine anche il terzo. Tutti e tre caddero dolcemente a terra all’interno del cancello e rimasero lì per qualche istante - forse in ascolto. Poi si mossero su mani e ginocchia.
Ora era il turno di Young Jerry di avvicinarsi al cancello: cosa che fece, trattenendo il respiro. Accovacciandosi nuovamente in un angolo lì, e guardando dentro, riuscì a distinguere i tre pescatori che si muovevano furtivamente tra una vegetazione rigogliosa! e tutte le lapidi del cimitero — era un grande cimitero quello in cui si trovavano — che sembravano guardare come fantasmi bianchi, mentre la torre della chiesa stessa sembrava guardare come il fantasma di un mostruoso gigante. Non si mossero molto furtivamente prima di fermarsi e rimanere in piedi. E poi iniziarono a pescare.
Pesavano con una vanga, all’inizio. Poco dopo il genitore onorato sembrò mettere a punto un qualche strumento simile a un grande cavatappi. Qualunque fossero gli attrezzi che usavano, lavoravano sodo fino a quando la terribile risonanza della campana della chiesa non terrorizzò talmente il giovane Jerry da fargli prendere le gambe a collo con i capelli rigidi come quelli di suo padre.
Ma il suo desiderio da tempo coltivato di saperne di più su queste faccende non solo lo fermò nella sua fuga, ma lo attirò nuovamente indietro. Erano ancora intenti a pescare con perseveranza quando lui sbirciò per la seconda volta dal cancello; ma ora sembrava che avessero preso qualcosa. Si sentiva un rumore di strappi e lamenti giù in basso, e le loro figure piegate erano tese come se sostenessero un peso. A poco a poco il peso si liberò dalla terra sopra di esso ed emerse. Il giovane Jerry sapeva benissimo cosa sarebbe stato; ma quando lo vide, e vide suo padre onorato sul punto di aprirlo, fu così spaventato, essendo nuovo alla vista, che scappò via di nuovo e non si fermò finché non ebbe corso un miglio o più.
Non si sarebbe fermato allora per nulla di meno necessario del respiro, poiché era una corsa spettrale quella che stava facendo, e molto desiderabile era arrivare alla fine. Aveva l’idea fissa che il feretro che aveva visto lo inseguisse; e, immaginato come saltellante dietro di lui, perfettamente eretto, sulla sua stretta estremità, sempre sul punto di raggiungerlo e saltellargli accanto — forse prendendogli il braccio — era un inseguitore da evitare. Era anche un demone incoerente e onnipresente, perché mentre rendeva terribile l’intera notte dietro di lui, si lanciava sulla strada per evitare vicoli bui, temendo che ne uscisse saltellando come il aquilone senza coda e ali di un ragazzo idropico. Si nascondeva anche negli androni, strofinando le sue orribili spalle contro le porte e tirandole su fino alle orecchie, come se stesse ridendo. Si infilava nelle ombre sulla strada, e si sdraiava astutamente sulla schiena per farlo inciampare. Tutto questo tempo era ininterrottamente saltellante dietro di lui e lo stava raggiungendo, tanto che quando il ragazzo arrivò alla sua porta aveva tutte le ragioni per essere mezzo morto. E anche allora non lo lasciò andare, ma lo seguì al piano superiore con un tonfo su ogni gradino, si arrampicò nel letto con lui e gli cadde addosso, pesante e morto, sul petto quando si addormentò.
From his oppressed slumber, Young Jerry in his closet was awakened after daybreak and before sunrise, by the presence of his father in the family room. Something had gone wrong with him; at least, so Young Jerry inferred, from the circumstance of his holding Mrs. Cruncher by the ears, and knocking the back of her head against the head-board of the bed.
“I told you I would,” said Mr. Cruncher, “and I did.”
“Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!” his wife implored.
“You oppose yourself to the profit of the business,” said Jerry, “and me and my partners suffer. You was to honour and obey; why the devil don’t you?”
“I try to be a good wife, Jerry,” the poor woman protested, with tears.
“Is it being a good wife to oppose your husband’s business? Is it honouring your husband to dishonour his business? Is it obeying your husband to disobey him on the wital subject of his business?”
“You hadn’t taken to the dreadful business then, Jerry.”
“It’s enough for you,” retorted Mr. Cruncher, “to be the wife of a honest tradesman, and not to occupy your female mind with calculations when he took to his trade or when he didn’t. A honouring and obeying wife would let his trade alone altogether. Call yourself a religious woman? If you’re a religious woman, give me a irreligious one! You have no more nat’ral sense of duty than the bed of this here Thames river has of a pile, and similarly it must be knocked into you.”
The altercation was conducted in a low tone of voice, and terminated in the honest tradesman’s kicking off his clay-soiled boots, and lying down at his length on the floor. After taking a timid peep at him lying on his back, with his rusty hands under his head for a pillow, his son lay down too, and fell asleep again.
There was no fish for breakfast, and not much of anything else. Mr. Cruncher was out of spirits, and out of temper, and kept an iron pot-lid by him as a projectile for the correction of Mrs. Cruncher, in case he should observe any symptoms of her saying Grace. He was brushed and washed at the usual hour, and set off with his son to pursue his ostensible calling.
Young Jerry, walking with the stool under his arm at his father’s side along sunny and crowded Fleet-street, was a very different Young Jerry from him of the previous night, running home through darkness and solitude from his grim pursuer. His cunning was fresh with the day, and his qualms were gone with the night—in which particulars it is not improbable that he had compeers in Fleet-street and the City of London, that fine morning.
“Father,” said Young Jerry, as they walked along: taking care to keep at arm’s length and to have the stool well between them: “what’s a Resurrection-Man?”
Mr. Cruncher came to a stop on the pavement before he answered, “How should I know?”
“I thought you knowed everything, father,” said the artless boy.
“Hem! Well,” returned Mr. Cruncher, going on again, and lifting off his hat to give his spikes free play, “he’s a tradesman.”
“What’s his goods, father?” asked the brisk Young Jerry.
“His goods,” said Mr. Cruncher, after turning it over in his mind, “is a branch of Scientific goods.”
“Persons’ bodies, ain’t it, father?” asked the lively boy.
“I believe it is something of that sort,” said Mr. Cruncher.
“Oh, father, I should so like to be a Resurrection-Man when I’m quite growed up!”
Mr. Cruncher was soothed, but shook his head in a dubious and moral way. “It depends upon how you dewelop your talents. Be careful to dewelop your talents, and never to say no more than you can help to nobody, and there’s no telling at the present time what you may not come to be fit for.” As Young Jerry, thus encouraged, went on a few yards in advance, to plant the stool in the shadow of the Bar, Mr. Cruncher added to himself: “Jerry, you honest tradesman, there’s hopes wot that boy will yet be a blessing to you, and a recompense to you for his mother!”
Dal suo sonno oppresso, il giovane Jerry nel suo ripostiglio fu svegliato dopo l’alba e prima dell’aurora dalla presenza di suo padre nella stanza della famiglia. Qualcosa era andato storto; almeno così dedusse il giovane Jerry dal fatto che teneva la signora Cruncher per le orecchie, sbattendo la nuca contro lo schienale del letto.
“Te l’avevo detto,” disse il signor Cruncher, “e l’ho fatto.”
«Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!», lo implorò sua moglie.
“Ti opponi al profitto dell’impresa”, disse Jerry, “e io e i miei soci ne soffriamo. Dovevi onorare ed obbedire; perché diavolo non lo fai?”
“Cerco di essere una buona moglie, Jerry”, protestò la povera donna con le lacrime.
«È essere una buona moglie opporsi agli affari di vostro marito? È onorare vostro marito disonorare i suoi affari? È obbedire a vostro marito disobbedirgli sull’importante questione dei suoi affari?»
“Non ti eri ancora messo in quell’orribile affare, Jerry.”
«È più che sufficiente per te» ribatté il signor Cruncher «essere la moglie di un onesto commerciante e non occupare la tua mente femminile con calcoli su quando si dedica al suo mestiere o quando non lo fa. Una moglie rispettosa e obbediente lascerebbe il suo mestiere in pace del tutto. Ti consideri una donna religiosa? Se sei una donna religiosa, dammi una irreligiosa! Non hai più senso naturale del dovere di quanto abbia questo letto del fiume Tamigi di un palo, e allo stesso modo deve essere inculcato in te.»
La disputa fu condotta con tono di voce basso e si concluse con il onesto commerciante che si sfilò i suoi stivali impolverati di argilla e si sdraiò lungo disteso sul pavimento. Dopo aver dato un timido sguardo a lui sdraiato sulla schiena, con le sue mani arrugginite sotto la testa come cuscino, anche suo figlio si sdraiò e tornò ad addormentarsi.
Non c’era pesce per colazione e nemmeno molto altro. Il signor Cruncher era di pessimo umore e tenne accanto a sé un coperchio di pentola di ferro come proiettile da scagliare contro la signora Cruncher nel caso avesse notato qualche sintomo che indicasse che stava per dire grazie. Si fece il bagno e si mise in ghingheri all’ora solita, poi partì con suo figlio per dedicarsi alla sua professione dichiarata.
Il giovane Jerry, che camminava con lo sgabello sotto il braccio al fianco di suo padre lungo la soleggiata e affollata Fleet Street, era un giovane Jerry molto diverso da quello della notte precedente, che correva verso casa attraverso l’oscurità e la solitudine per sfuggire al suo inquietante inseguitore. La sua astuzia era fresca come il giorno appena sorto, e i suoi rimorsi erano svaniti con la notte: sotto questo aspetto non è improbabile che avesse compagni di sventura a Fleet Street e nella City di Londra, quella bella mattina.
«Padre», disse il giovane Jerry mentre camminavano, facendo attenzione a mantenere una certa distanza e ad avere lo sgabello bene tra loro: «cos’è un uomo della resurrezione?»
Mr. Cruncher si fermò sul marciapiede prima di rispondere: “Come faccio a saperlo?”
«Pensavo che sapessi tutto, padre», disse il ragazzo ingenuo.
«Em! Bene», rispose il signor Cruncher, riprendendo e togliendosi il cappello per dare libero sfogo ai suoi chiodi, «è un commerciante.»
«Che merce ha?» chiese il vivace giovane Jerry.
«I suoi beni», disse il signor Cruncher dopo averci pensato su, «sono un ramo dei beni scientifici».
“I corpi delle persone, vero, padre?”, chiese il ragazzo vivace.
«Credo che sia qualcosa del genere», disse il signor Cruncher.
«Oh, papà, mi piacerebbe tanto essere un uomo della resurrezione quando sarò cresciuto!»
Il signor Cruncher si calmò ma scosse la testa in modo dubbioso e morale. “Dipende da come sviluppi i tuoi talenti. Fai attenzione a sviluppare i tuoi talenti, e non dire mai più di quanto puoi evitare a nessuno, e al presente tempo non si può dire che cosa potresti non diventare adatto a fare.” Mentre il giovane Jerry, così incoraggiato, proseguiva qualche iarda in avanti per piazzare lo sgabello nell’ombra del Bar, il signor Cruncher aggiunse tra sé: “Jerry, tu onesto commerciante, c’è la speranza che quel ragazzo sarà ancora una benedizione per te e un compenso per te da parte di sua madre!”
CHAPTER XV. Knitting
There had been earlier drinking than usual in the wine-shop of Monsieur Defarge. As early as six o’clock in the morning, sallow faces peeping through its barred windows had descried other faces within, bending over measures of wine. Monsieur Defarge sold a very thin wine at the best of times, but it would seem to have been an unusually thin wine that he sold at this time. A sour wine, moreover, or a souring, for its influence on the mood of those who drank it was to make them gloomy. No vivacious Bacchanalian flame leaped out of the pressed grape of Monsieur Defarge: but, a smouldering fire that burnt in the dark, lay hidden in the dregs of it.
This had been the third morning in succession, on which there had been early drinking at the wine-shop of Monsieur Defarge. It had begun on Monday, and here was Wednesday come. There had been more of early brooding than drinking; for, many men had listened and whispered and slunk about there from the time of the opening of the door, who could not have laid a piece of money on the counter to save their souls. These were to the full as interested in the place, however, as if they could have commanded whole barrels of wine; and they glided from seat to seat, and from corner to corner, swallowing talk in lieu of drink, with greedy looks.
Notwithstanding an unusual flow of company, the master of the wine-shop was not visible. He was not missed; for, nobody who crossed the threshold looked for him, nobody asked for him, nobody wondered to see only Madame Defarge in her seat, presiding over the distribution of wine, with a bowl of battered small coins before her, as much defaced and beaten out of their original impress as the small coinage of humanity from whose ragged pockets they had come.
A suspended interest and a prevalent absence of mind, were perhaps observed by the spies who looked in at the wine-shop, as they looked in at every place, high and low, from the king’s palace to the criminal’s gaol. Games at cards languished, players at dominoes musingly built towers with them, drinkers drew figures on the tables with spilt drops of wine, Madame Defarge herself picked out the pattern on her sleeve with her toothpick, and saw and heard something inaudible and invisible a long way off.
Thus, Saint Antoine in this vinous feature of his, until midday. It was high noontide, when two dusty men passed through his streets and under his swinging lamps: of whom, one was Monsieur Defarge: the other a mender of roads in a blue cap. All adust and athirst, the two entered the wine-shop. Their arrival had lighted a kind of fire in the breast of Saint Antoine, fast spreading as they came along, which stirred and flickered in flames of faces at most doors and windows. Yet, no one had followed them, and no man spoke when they entered the wine-shop, though the eyes of every man there were turned upon them.
“Good day, gentlemen!” said Monsieur Defarge.
It may have been a signal for loosening the general tongue. It elicited an answering chorus of “Good day!”
“It is bad weather, gentlemen,” said Defarge, shaking his head.
Upon which, every man looked at his neighbour, and then all cast down their eyes and sat silent. Except one man, who got up and went out.
“My wife,” said Defarge aloud, addressing Madame Defarge: “I have travelled certain leagues with this good mender of roads, called Jacques. I met him—by accident—a day and half’s journey out of Paris. He is a good child, this mender of roads, called Jacques. Give him to drink, my wife!”
A second man got up and went out. Madame Defarge set wine before the mender of roads called Jacques, who doffed his blue cap to the company, and drank. In the breast of his blouse he carried some coarse dark bread; he ate of this between whiles, and sat munching and drinking near Madame Defarge’s counter. A third man got up and went out.
Defarge refreshed himself with a draught of wine—but, he took less than was given to the stranger, as being himself a man to whom it was no rarity—and stood waiting until the countryman had made his breakfast. He looked at no one present, and no one now looked at him; not even Madame Defarge, who had taken up her knitting, and was at work.
“Have you finished your repast, friend?” he asked, in due season.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Come, then! You shall see the apartment that I told you you could occupy. It will suit you to a marvel.”
Out of the wine-shop into the street, out of the street into a courtyard, out of the courtyard up a steep staircase, out of the staircase into a garret—formerly the garret where a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes.
No white-haired man was there now; but, the three men were there who had gone out of the wine-shop singly. And between them and the white-haired man afar off, was the one small link, that they had once looked in at him through the chinks in the wall.
Defarge closed the door carefully, and spoke in a subdued voice:
“Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques Three! This is the witness encountered by appointment, by me, Jacques Four. He will tell you all. Speak, Jacques Five!”
The mender of roads, blue cap in hand, wiped his swarthy forehead with it, and said, “Where shall I commence, monsieur?”
“Commence,” was Monsieur Defarge’s not unreasonable reply, “at the commencement.”
“I saw him then, messieurs,” began the mender of roads, “a year ago this running summer, underneath the carriage of the Marquis, hanging by the chain. Behold the manner of it. I leaving my work on the road, the sun going to bed, the carriage of the Marquis slowly ascending the hill, he hanging by the chain—like this.”
Again the mender of roads went through the whole performance; in which he ought to have been perfect by that time, seeing that it had been the infallible resource and indispensable entertainment of his village during a whole year.
CAPITOLO XV. Lavorare ai ferri
C’era stato un consumo di vino più precoce del solito nel negozio di Monsieur Defarge. Già alle sei del mattino, volti giallastri che sbirciavano dalle finestre sbarrate avevano scorto altri volti all’interno, chini su misure di vino. Monsieur Defarge vendeva un vino molto acquoso anche nei momenti migliori, ma sembrava essere stato un vino particolarmente diluito quello che vendette in quel periodo. Un vino aspro, per giunta, o che si stava facendo aspro, poiché la sua influenza sull’umore di chi lo beveva era quella di renderlo cupo. Nessuna vivace fiamma bacchica balzò fuori dall’uva pigiata da Monsieur Defarge: ma un fuoco che ardeva sommessamente al buio, si nascondeva nei suoi residui.
Questo era il terzo mattino di fila in cui si beveva presto al negozio di vini del signor Defarge. Era cominciato lunedì e già era mercoledì. C’era stato più brodare che bere; infatti molti uomini avevano ascoltato, sussurrato e gironzolato lì fin dal tempo dell’apertura della porta, senza poter mettere un pezzo di moneta sul bancone per salvare le loro anime. Tuttavia questi erano pienamente interessati al posto, come se avessero potuto ordinare interi barili di vino; e si spostavano da un posto all’altro, e da un angolo all’altro, inghiottendo discorsi al posto del bere con sguardi avidi.
Nonostante un insolito afflusso di clienti, il padrone del vino non era visibile. La sua assenza non venne notata; infatti nessuno che varcava la soglia lo cercava, nessuno lo chiedeva, nessuno si meravigliava nel vedere soltanto Madame Defarge al suo posto, presiedendo alla distribuzione del vino, con una ciotola di piccole monete ammaccate davanti a sé, tanto sfigurate e battute fuori dalla loro impronta originale quanto le piccole monete dell’umanità dalle cui tasche strappate erano venute.
Un interesse sospeso e una prevalente distrazione furono forse osservati dagli spie che spiavano il vino-locale, come spiavano ogni luogo, alto o basso, dal palazzo del re alla prigione dei criminali. I giochi di carte languivano, i giocatori di domino costruivano pensierosi torri con le tessere, i bevitori disegnavano figure sui tavoli con gocce di vino versate, la stessa Madame Defarge sceglieva il motivo sul suo polsino con lo stuzzicadenti e vedeva e udiva qualcosa d’inudibile e invisibile lontanissimo.
Così, fino a mezzogiorno, Saint Antoine con questa sua caratteristica vinosa. Era pieno meriggio quando due uomini polverosi attraversarono le sue strade e passarono sotto i suoi lampioni oscillanti: uno era Monsieur Defarge; l’altro un riparatore di strade in berretto blu. Tutti e due arsi e assetati, entrarono nella taverna. Il loro arrivo aveva acceso una specie di fuoco nel petto di Saint Antoine, che si diffondeva rapidamente mentre avanzavano, agitandosi e guizzando in fiamme sui volti alla maggior parte delle porte e finestre. Eppure nessuno li aveva seguiti, e nessuno parlò quando entrarono nella taverna, sebbene gli occhi di tutti fossero puntati su di loro.
«Buon giorno, signori!» disse monsieur Defarge.
Potrebbe essere stato un segnale per sciogliere la lingua generale. Provocò un coro di risposta: «Buon giorno!»
«È brutto tempo, signori», disse Defarge scuotendo la testa.
A questo punto ogni uomo guardò il suo vicino e poi tutti abbassarono gli occhi e rimasero in silenzio. Tranne un uomo che si alzò e uscì.
“Mia moglie”, disse Defarge ad alta voce, rivolgendosi a Madame Defarge: “ho viaggiato per alcune leghe con questo buon riparatore di strade, chiamato Jacques. L’ho incontrato — per caso — un giorno e mezzo di viaggio fuori da Parigi. È un bravo ragazzo, questo riparatore di strade, chiamato Jacques. Dategli da bere, mia moglie!”
Un secondo uomo si alzò e uscì. Madame Defarge mise del vino davanti all’uomo che riparava le strade chiamato Jacques, il quale tolse il suo berretto blu alla compagnia e bevve. Nel petto della sua camicia portava un po’ di pane scuro e grossolano; mangiò questo a intervalli e sedette masticando e bevendo vicino al bancone di Madame Defarge. Un terzo uomo si alzò e uscì.
Defarge si rinfrescò con un sorso di vino — ma ne prese meno di quanto fosse stato dato allo straniero, essendo lui stesso un uomo a cui non era una rarità — e rimase in attesa finché il contadino non ebbe fatto colazione. Non guardò nessuno dei presenti, e ora nessuno lo guardava; nemmeno Madame Defarge, che aveva ripreso il suo lavoro a maglia ed era al lavoro.
«Avete finito il vostro pasto, amico?» chiese al momento opportuno.
“Sì, grazie.”
«Allora, vieni! Ti farò vedere l’appartamento di cui ti ho parlato e che potrai occupare. Ti piacerà moltissimo».
Dal negozio di vini in strada, dalla strada in un cortile, dal cortile su per una ripida scala, dalla scala in una soffitta — anticamente la soffitta dove un uomo dai capelli bianchi sedeva sopra uno sgabello basso, curvo e molto occupato a fare scarpe.
Non c’era più l’uomo dai capelli bianchi; ma i tre uomini che erano usciti dal vino-locale uno alla volta erano ancora là. E tra loro e quell’uomo dai capelli bianchi, lontano, esisteva un solo piccolo legame: una volta lo avevano spiato attraverso le fessure del muro.
Defarge chiuse la porta con cura e parlò a bassa voce:
«Jacques Uno, Jacques Due, Jacques Tre! Questo è il testimone incontrato per appuntamento da me, Jacques Quattro. Vi dirà tutto lui. Parla tu, Jacques Cinque!»
Il riparatore di strade, con il berretto blu in mano, si asciugò la fronte scura e disse: «Dove devo cominciare, signore?»
“Inizia”, fu la risposta non irragionevole di Monsieur Defarge, “dall’inizio.”
«Lo vidi allora, signori», cominciò il riparatore di strade, «un anno fa in questo estate che volge, sotto la carrozza del Marchese, appeso alla catena. Ecco come andarono le cose. Io stavo lasciando il mio lavoro sulla strada, il sole si stava coricando, la carrozza del Marchese saliva lentamente la collina, lui era appeso alla catena—così».
Ancora una volta il riparatore di strade fece l’intera esibizione; in cui avrebbe dovuto essere perfetto per quel tempo, considerato che era stata la risorsa infallibile e l’intrattenimento indispensabile del suo villaggio durante un anno intero.
Jacques One struck in, and asked if he had ever seen the man before?
“Never,” answered the mender of roads, recovering his perpendicular.
Jacques Three demanded how he afterwards recognised him then?
“By his tall figure,” said the mender of roads, softly, and with his finger at his nose. “When Monsieur the Marquis demands that evening, ‘Say, what is he like?’ I make response, ‘Tall as a spectre.’”
“You should have said, short as a dwarf,” returned Jacques Two.
“But what did I know? The deed was not then accomplished, neither did he confide in me. Observe! Under those circumstances even, I do not offer my testimony. Monsieur the Marquis indicates me with his finger, standing near our little fountain, and says, ‘To me! Bring that rascal!’ My faith, messieurs, I offer nothing.”
“He is right there, Jacques,” murmured Defarge, to him who had interrupted. “Go on!”
“Good!” said the mender of roads, with an air of mystery. “The tall man is lost, and he is sought—how many months? Nine, ten, eleven?”
“No matter, the number,” said Defarge. “He is well hidden, but at last he is unluckily found. Go on!”
“I am again at work upon the hill-side, and the sun is again about to go to bed. I am collecting my tools to descend to my cottage down in the village below, where it is already dark, when I raise my eyes, and see coming over the hill six soldiers. In the midst of them is a tall man with his arms bound—tied to his sides—like this!”
With the aid of his indispensable cap, he represented a man with his elbows bound fast at his hips, with cords that were knotted behind him.
“I stand aside, messieurs, by my heap of stones, to see the soldiers and their prisoner pass (for it is a solitary road, that, where any spectacle is well worth looking at), and at first, as they approach, I see no more than that they are six soldiers with a tall man bound, and that they are almost black to my sight—except on the side of the sun going to bed, where they have a red edge, messieurs. Also, I see that their long shadows are on the hollow ridge on the opposite side of the road, and are on the hill above it, and are like the shadows of giants. Also, I see that they are covered with dust, and that the dust moves with them as they come, tramp, tramp! But when they advance quite near to me, I recognise the tall man, and he recognises me. Ah, but he would be well content to precipitate himself over the hill-side once again, as on the evening when he and I first encountered, close to the same spot!”
He described it as if he were there, and it was evident that he saw it vividly; perhaps he had not seen much in his life.
“I do not show the soldiers that I recognise the tall man; he does not show the soldiers that he recognises me; we do it, and we know it, with our eyes. ‘Come on!’ says the chief of that company, pointing to the village, ‘bring him fast to his tomb!’ and they bring him faster. I follow. His arms are swelled because of being bound so tight, his wooden shoes are large and clumsy, and he is lame. Because he is lame, and consequently slow, they drive him with their guns—like this!”
He imitated the action of a man’s being impelled forward by the butt-ends of muskets.
“As they descend the hill like madmen running a race, he falls. They laugh and pick him up again. His face is bleeding and covered with dust, but he cannot touch it; thereupon they laugh again. They bring him into the village; all the village runs to look; they take him past the mill, and up to the prison; all the village sees the prison gate open in the darkness of the night, and swallow him—like this!”
He opened his mouth as wide as he could, and shut it with a sounding snap of his teeth. Observant of his unwillingness to mar the effect by opening it again, Defarge said, “Go on, Jacques.”
“All the village,” pursued the mender of roads, on tiptoe and in a low voice, “withdraws; all the village whispers by the fountain; all the village sleeps; all the village dreams of that unhappy one, within the locks and bars of the prison on the crag, and never to come out of it, except to perish. In the morning, with my tools upon my shoulder, eating my morsel of black bread as I go, I make a circuit by the prison, on my way to my work. There I see him, high up, behind the bars of a lofty iron cage, bloody and dusty as last night, looking through. He has no hand free, to wave to me; I dare not call to him; he regards me like a dead man.”
Defarge and the three glanced darkly at one another. The looks of all of them were dark, repressed, and revengeful, as they listened to the countryman’s story; the manner of all of them, while it was secret, was authoritative too. They had the air of a rough tribunal; Jacques One and Two sitting on the old pallet-bed, each with his chin resting on his hand, and his eyes intent on the road-mender; Jacques Three, equally intent, on one knee behind them, with his agitated hand always gliding over the network of fine nerves about his mouth and nose; Defarge standing between them and the narrator, whom he had stationed in the light of the window, by turns looking from him to them, and from them to him.
“Go on, Jacques,” said Defarge.
“He remains up there in his iron cage some days. The village looks at him by stealth, for it is afraid. But it always looks up, from a distance, at the prison on the crag; and in the evening, when the work of the day is achieved and it assembles to gossip at the fountain, all faces are turned towards the prison. Formerly, they were turned towards the posting-house; now, they are turned towards the prison. They whisper at the fountain, that although condemned to death he will not be executed; they say that petitions have been presented in Paris, showing that he was enraged and made mad by the death of his child; they say that a petition has been presented to the King himself. What do I know? It is possible. Perhaps yes, perhaps no.”
Jacques Uno intervenne e chiese se l’avesse mai visto prima quell’uomo?
«Mai», rispose il riparatore di strade, ritrovando la sua posizione eretta.
Jacques Terzo chiese come poi lo avesse riconosciuto?
«Per la sua alta figura», disse il riparatore di strade, sottovoce e con un dito sul naso. «Quando Monsieur il Marchese chiede quella sera: “Dite, com’è fatto?”, io rispondo: “Alto come uno spettro”».
«Avresti dovuto dire, corto come un nano», rispose Giacomo Due.
“Ma che ne sapevo io? L’azione non era ancora compiuta e lui non si confidò con me. Notate bene! Anche in quelle circostanze, non offro la mia testimonianza. Monsieur il Marchese mi indica con il dito, stando vicino alla nostra piccola fontana, e dice: ‘A me! Portatemi quel farabutto!’ Sul mio onore, messieurs, non offro nulla.”
“È proprio lì, Jacques”, mormorò Defarge a colui che aveva interrotto. “Continua!”
«Bene!» disse il riparatore di strade con aria misteriosa «l’uomo alto è perduto e lo si cerca da, quanti mesi? Nove, dieci, undici?»
“Non importa il numero”, disse Defarge. “È ben nascosto, ma alla fine è stato sfortunatamente trovato. Continua!”
“Sono di nuovo al lavoro sul fianco della collina, e il sole sta per andare a letto. Sto raccogliendo i miei attrezzi per scendere alla mia casetta nel villaggio sottostante, dove è già buio, quando alzo gli occhi e vedo arrivare sulla collina sei soldati. In mezzo a loro c’è un uomo alto con le braccia legate — fissate ai fianchi — così!”
Con l’aiuto del suo indispensabile cappello, rappresentava un uomo con i gomiti legati saldamente ai fianchi da corde annodate dietro la schiena.
“Mi scosto, messieurs, dal mio mucchio di pietre per vedere passare i soldati e il loro prigioniero (perché è una strada solitaria strada, dove qualsiasi spettacolo vale la pena di essere visto), e all’inizio, mentre si avvicinano, non vedo altro che sei soldati con un uomo alto legato, e che sono quasi neri alla mia vista - tranne sul lato del sole che va a coricarsi, dove hanno un bordo rosso, messieurs. Inoltre, vedo che le loro lunghe ombre si trovano sulla cresta vuota sul lato opposto della strada, e sono sulla collina sopra di essa, e sembrano le ombre dei giganti. Anche, vedo che sono coperti di polvere, e che la polvere si muove con loro mentre arrivano, tramp, tramp! Ma quando si avvicinano del tutto a me, riconosco l’uomo alto, e lui riconosce me. Ah, ma sarebbe bene contento di precipitarsi ancora una volta lungo il pendio della collina, come la sera in cui io e lui ci siamo incontrati per la prima volta, vicino allo stesso punto!”
Lo descrisse come se ci fosse stato lui stesso e fu evidente che lo vedeva vividamente; forse non aveva visto molto nella sua vita.
«Non mostro ai soldati di riconoscere l’uomo alto; lui non mostra ai soldati di riconoscer me; lo facciamo e lo sappiamo con gli occhi. “Avanti!” dice il capo di quella compagnia, indicando il villaggio, “portatelo in fretta alla sua tomba!” e lo portano più velocemente. Io seguo. Le sue braccia sono gonfie per essere state legate così strette, le sue scarpe di legno sono grandi e goffe, ed è zoppo. Perché è zoppo, e quindi lento, lo spingono con i fucili - così!»
Imitò il gesto di un uomo spinto in avanti dalle canne dei moschetti.
“Mentre scendono la collina come pazzi che corrono una gara, lui cade. Essi ridono e lo rialzano di nuovo. Il suo viso sanguina ed è ricoperto di polvere, ma non può toccarlo; allora essi ridono ancora. Lo portano nel villaggio; tutto il villaggio corre a guardare; lo conducono oltre la mulino e fino alla prigione; tutto il villaggio vede l’ingresso della prigione aprirsi nell’oscurità della notte, e lo inghiottiscono — così!”
Aprì la bocca il più possibile e la richiuse con un sonoro schiocco dei denti. Notando che non voleva rovinare l’effetto aprendola di nuovo, Defarge disse: «Prosegui, Jacques».
“Tutto il villaggio”, continuò il riparatore di strade in punta di piedi e con voce bassa, “si ritira; tutto il villaggio sussurra presso la fontana; tutto il villaggio dorme; tutto il villaggio sogna a quell’infelice, tra le sbarre della prigione sulla rupe, e che non uscirà mai da essa se non per morire. Al mattino, con i miei attrezzi in spalla, mangiando il mio pezzo di pane nero mentre vado, faccio un giro dalla prigione, sulla strada per il mio lavoro. Lì lo vedo, lassù, dietro le sbarre di una gabbia di ferro alta, insanguinato e polveroso come la scorsa notte, che guarda attraverso. Non ha nessuna mano libera da agitare verso di me; non oso chiamarlo; mi guarda come se fossi un uomo morto.”
Defarge e i tre si guardarono torvamente l’uno con l’altro. Lo sguardo di tutti loro era cupo, represso e vendicativo mentre ascoltavano la storia del contadino; il comportamento di tutti loro, pur essendo segreto, era anche autoritario. Avevano l’aria di un tribunale sommario; Jacques Uno e Due sedevano sul vecchio letto a castello, ciascuno con il mento appoggiato sulla mano e gli occhi fissi sull’stradino-riparatore; Jacques Tre, altrettanto attento, in ginocchio dietro di loro, con la sua mano agitata che scivolava sempre sul reticolo di fini nervi intorno alla bocca e al naso; Defarge stava in piedi tra loro e il narratore, che aveva sistemato nella luce della finestra, guardando a turno da lui a loro e da loro a lui.
«Continua, Jacques», disse Defarge.
“Rimane lassù nella sua gabbia di ferro alcuni giorni. Il villaggio lo guarda di nascosto, perché ha paura. Ma guarda sempre in su, da lontano, verso la prigione sulla rupe; e alla sera, quando il lavoro della giornata è finito e si riuniscono a chiacchierare presso la fontana, tutti i volti sono rivolti verso la prigione. Prima erano rivolti verso l’albergo; ora sono rivolti verso la prigione. Sussurrano alla fontana che, sebbene condannato a morte, non verrà giustiziato; dicono che sono state presentate petizioni a Parigi, dimostrando che era infuriato e reso pazzo dalla morte del suo figlio; dicono che una petizione è stata presentata al Re stesso. Che ne so io? È possibile. Forse sì, forse no.”
“Listen then, Jacques,” Number One of that name sternly interposed. “Know that a petition was presented to the King and Queen. All here, yourself excepted, saw the King take it, in his carriage in the street, sitting beside the Queen. It is Defarge whom you see here, who, at the hazard of his life, darted out before the horses, with the petition in his hand.”
“And once again listen, Jacques!” said the kneeling Number Three: his fingers ever wandering over and over those fine nerves, with a strikingly greedy air, as if he hungered for something—that was neither food nor drink; “the guard, horse and foot, surrounded the petitioner, and struck him blows. You hear?”
“I hear, messieurs.”
“Go on then,” said Defarge.
“Again; on the other hand, they whisper at the fountain,” resumed the countryman, “that he is brought down into our country to be executed on the spot, and that he will very certainly be executed. They even whisper that because he has slain Monseigneur, and because Monseigneur was the father of his tenants—serfs—what you will—he will be executed as a parricide. One old man says at the fountain, that his right hand, armed with the knife, will be burnt off before his face; that, into wounds which will be made in his arms, his breast, and his legs, there will be poured boiling oil, melted lead, hot resin, wax, and sulphur; finally, that he will be torn limb from limb by four strong horses. That old man says, all this was actually done to a prisoner who made an attempt on the life of the late King, Louis Fifteen. But how do I know if he lies? I am not a scholar.”
“Listen once again then, Jacques!” said the man with the restless hand and the craving air. “The name of that prisoner was Damiens, and it was all done in open day, in the open streets of this city of Paris; and nothing was more noticed in the vast concourse that saw it done, than the crowd of ladies of quality and fashion, who were full of eager attention to the last—to the last, Jacques, prolonged until nightfall, when he had lost two legs and an arm, and still breathed! And it was done—why, how old are you?”
“Thirty-five,” said the mender of roads, who looked sixty.
“It was done when you were more than ten years old; you might have seen it.”
“Enough!” said Defarge, with grim impatience. “Long live the Devil! Go on.”
“Well! Some whisper this, some whisper that; they speak of nothing else; even the fountain appears to fall to that tune. At length, on Sunday night when all the village is asleep, come soldiers, winding down from the prison, and their guns ring on the stones of the little street. Workmen dig, workmen hammer, soldiers laugh and sing; in the morning, by the fountain, there is raised a gallows forty feet high, poisoning the water.”
The mender of roads looked through rather than at the low ceiling, and pointed as if he saw the gallows somewhere in the sky.
“All work is stopped, all assemble there, nobody leads the cows out, the cows are there with the rest. At midday, the roll of drums. Soldiers have marched into the prison in the night, and he is in the midst of many soldiers. He is bound as before, and in his mouth there is a gag—tied so, with a tight string, making him look almost as if he laughed.” He suggested it, by creasing his face with his two thumbs, from the corners of his mouth to his ears. “On the top of the gallows is fixed the knife, blade upwards, with its point in the air. He is hanged there forty feet high—and is left hanging, poisoning the water.”
They looked at one another, as he used his blue cap to wipe his face, on which the perspiration had started afresh while he recalled the spectacle.
“It is frightful, messieurs. How can the women and the children draw water! Who can gossip of an evening, under that shadow! Under it, have I said? When I left the village, Monday evening as the sun was going to bed, and looked back from the hill, the shadow struck across the church, across the mill, across the prison—seemed to strike across the earth, messieurs, to where the sky rests upon it!”
The hungry man gnawed one of his fingers as he looked at the other three, and his finger quivered with the craving that was on him.
“That’s all, messieurs. I left at sunset (as I had been warned to do), and I walked on, that night and half next day, until I met (as I was warned I should) this comrade. With him, I came on, now riding and now walking, through the rest of yesterday and through last night. And here you see me!”
After a gloomy silence, the first Jacques said, “Good! You have acted and recounted faithfully. Will you wait for us a little, outside the door?”
“Very willingly,” said the mender of roads. Whom Defarge escorted to the top of the stairs, and, leaving seated there, returned.
The three had risen, and their heads were together when he came back to the garret.
“How say you, Jacques?” demanded Number One. “To be registered?”
“To be registered, as doomed to destruction,” returned Defarge.
“Magnificent!” croaked the man with the craving.
“The chateau, and all the race?” inquired the first.
“The chateau and all the race,” returned Defarge. “Extermination.”
The hungry man repeated, in a rapturous croak, “Magnificent!” and began gnawing another finger.
“Are you sure,” asked Jacques Two, of Defarge, “that no embarrassment can arise from our manner of keeping the register? Without doubt it is safe, for no one beyond ourselves can decipher it; but shall we always be able to decipher it—or, I ought to say, will she?”
“Jacques,” returned Defarge, drawing himself up, “if madame my wife undertook to keep the register in her memory alone, she would not lose a word of it—not a syllable of it. Knitted, in her own stitches and her own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as the sun. Confide in Madame Defarge. It would be easier for the weakest poltroon that lives, to erase himself from existence, than to erase one letter of his name or crimes from the knitted register of Madame Defarge.”
«Ascolta allora, Jacques», interloquì severamente il numero uno di quel nome. «Sappi che una petizione è stata presentata al Re e alla Regina. Tutti qui, tranne te, hanno visto il Re prenderla, nella sua carrozza in strada, seduto accanto alla Regina. È Defarge che vedi qui, colui che, a rischio della vita, si è lanciato davanti ai cavalli con la petizione in mano».
“E ancora una volta ascolta, Jacques!” disse il Numero Tre inginocchiato: le sue dita continuavano a vagare su e giù lungo quei fini nervi, con un’aria stranamente avida, come se avesse fame di qualcosa che non era né cibo né bevanda; “la guardia, cavallo e fanti, circondò il supplicante e lo colpì. Hai sentito?”
“Vi ascolto, signori.”
«Continuate allora», disse Defarge.
«Inoltre; d’altra parte, bisbigliano alla fontana», riprese il contadino, «che lo hanno portato nel nostro paese per essere giustiziato sul posto e che verrà senz’altro giustiziato. Si sussurra addirittura che poiché ha ucciso Monseigneur, e poiché Monseigneur era il padre dei suoi inquilini - servi - quello che volete - sarà giustiziato come parricida. Un vecchio alla fontana dice che la sua mano destra, armata del coltello, gli verrà bruciata davanti agli occhi; che nelle ferite che gli verranno inferte sulle braccia, sul petto e sulle gambe, gli verseranno olio bollente, piombo fuso, resina calda, cera e zolfo; infine, che sarà smembrato da quattro forti cavalli. Quel vecchio dice che tutto questo è stato fatto davvero a un prigioniero che ha attentato alla vita del defunto Re, Luigi Quindicesimo. Ma come faccio a sapere se mente? Non sono uno studioso».
«Ascolta ancora una volta allora, Jacques!» disse l’uomo con la mano irrequieta e l’aria affamata. «Il nome di quel prigioniero era Damiens, e tutto fu fatto alla luce del giorno, nelle strade aperte di questa città di Parigi; e nulla attirò più l’attenzione nella vasta folla che assistette allo spettacolo di quanto fece la moltitudine di dame di rango e di moda, le quali furono piene di ansiosa attenzione fino alla fine—fino alla fine, Jacques, prolungata fino al calar della notte, quando aveva perso due gambe e un braccio, e ancora respirava! E fu fatto—perché, quanti anni hai?»
«Trentacinque», disse il riparatore di strade, che ne dimostrava sessanta.
“È stato fatto quando avevi più di dieci anni, avresti potuto vederlo.”
“Basta!” disse Defarge con cupa impazienza. “Viva il Diavolo! Continua.”
“Bene! Alcuni sussurrano una cosa, altri un’altra; non parlano d’altro; perfino la fontana sembra scorrere a quel ritmo. Alla fine, di domenica notte, quando tutto il villaggio dorme, arrivano i soldati che scendono dalla prigione e le loro armi risuonano sulle pietre della piccola strada. Operai scavano, operai martellano, soldati ridono e cantano; al mattino, accanto alla fontana, è stata eretta una forca alta quaranta piedi che avvelena l’acqua.”
Il riparatore di strade guardava attraverso il basso soffitto più che verso di esso, e indicava come se vedesse la forca da qualche parte nel cielo.
“Tutto il lavoro è fermo, tutti si radunano lì, nessuno porta fuori le mucche, le mucce sono là con gli altri. A mezzogiorno, il rullo dei tamburi. I soldati sono entrati nella prigione durante la notte, e lui è in mezzo a molti soldati. È legato come prima, e ha in bocca un bavaglio—legato così, con una corda stretta, che lo fa sembrare quasi che stia ridendo.” Lo suggerì, facendo delle pieghe sul suo viso con i due pollici, dai lati della bocca fino alle orecchie. “Sulla cima del patibolo è fissato il coltello, lama in su, con la punta rivolta verso l’alto. Lui viene impiccato là a quaranta piedi d’altezza—e lasciato penzolare, avvelenando l’acqua.”
Si guardarono l’un l’altro mentre lui si asciugava il viso con la sua berretta blu, sul quale il sudore era ricomparso mentre ripensava allo spettacolo.
«È spaventoso, messieurs. Come possono le donne e i bambini attingere acqua! Chi può chiacchierare la sera sotto quella ombra! Sotto di essa, ho detto? Quando lasciai il villaggio, lunedì sera mentre il sole andava a letto, e guardai indietro dalla collina, l’ombra si estendeva sulla chiesa, sul mulino, sulla prigione—sembrava estendersi su tutta la terra, messieurs, fino a dove il cielo poggia su di essa!»
L’uomo affamato si rosicchiava uno dei suoi diti mentre guardava gli altri tre e il suo dito tremava per la fame che lo divorava.
«Questo è tutto, signori. Sono partito al tramonto (come mi era stato detto di fare), e ho camminato, quella notte e metà del giorno successivo, finché non ho incontrato (come mi era stato predetto) questo compagno. Con lui, sono arrivato qui, ora a cavallo e ora a piedi, per il resto di ieri e durante l’ultima notte. E qui mi vedete!»
Dopo un cupo silenzio, il primo Jacques disse: «Bene! Avete agito e raccontato con fedeltà. Volete aspettarci fuori dalla porta?»
«Molto volentieri», disse il riparatore di strade. Defarge lo accompagnò in cima alle scale e, lasciandolo seduto lì, tornò indietro.
I tre si erano alzati e avevano unito le teste quando lui tornò nella soffitta.
“Cosa ne pensi, Jacques?” chiese il Numero Uno. “Per essere registrato?”
«Per essere registrati come destinati alla distruzione», rispose Defarge.
«Magnifico!» gracchiò l’uomo con la voglia.
«Il castello e tutta la stirpe?» domandò il primo.
“Il castello e tutta la stirpe”, rispose Defarge. “Estirpazione.”
L’uomo affamato ripeté con un gorgoglio rapito: «Magnifico!» e cominciò a rosicchiare un altro dito.
«Ne siete sicuro», chiese Jacques Due a Defarge, «che non possano derivare imbarazzi dal nostro modo di tenere il registro? Senza dubbio è al sicuro, perché nessuno oltre noi può decifrarlo; ma saremo sempre in grado di decifrarlo — o, dovrei dire, lo sarà lei?»
«Jacques», rispose Defarge, raddrizzandosi, «se madame mia moglie si assumesse l’incarico di conservare il registro nella sua memoria sola, non ne perderebbe una parola — nemmeno una sillaba. Ricamato con i suoi punti e i suoi simboli, le sarà sempre chiaro come il sole. Abbiate fiducia in Madame Defarge. Sarebbe più facile per il più debole codardo che esista cancellarsi dall’esistenza, piuttosto che cancellare una sola lettera del suo nome o dei suoi crimini dal registro ricamato di Madame Defarge.»
There was a murmur of confidence and approval, and then the man who hungered, asked: “Is this rustic to be sent back soon? I hope so. He is very simple; is he not a little dangerous?”
“He knows nothing,” said Defarge; “at least nothing more than would easily elevate himself to a gallows of the same height. I charge myself with him; let him remain with me; I will take care of him, and set him on his road. He wishes to see the fine world—the King, the Queen, and Court; let him see them on Sunday.”
“What?” exclaimed the hungry man, staring. “Is it a good sign, that he wishes to see Royalty and Nobility?”
“Jacques,” said Defarge; “judiciously show a cat milk, if you wish her to thirst for it. Judiciously show a dog his natural prey, if you wish him to bring it down one day.”
Nothing more was said, and the mender of roads, being found already dozing on the topmost stair, was advised to lay himself down on the pallet-bed and take some rest. He needed no persuasion, and was soon asleep.
Worse quarters than Defarge’s wine-shop, could easily have been found in Paris for a provincial slave of that degree. Saving for a mysterious dread of madame by which he was constantly haunted, his life was very new and agreeable. But, madame sat all day at her counter, so expressly unconscious of him, and so particularly determined not to perceive that his being there had any connection with anything below the surface, that he shook in his wooden shoes whenever his eye lighted on her. For, he contended with himself that it was impossible to foresee what that lady might pretend next; and he felt assured that if she should take it into her brightly ornamented head to pretend that she had seen him do a murder and afterwards flay the victim, she would infallibly go through with it until the play was played out.
Therefore, when Sunday came, the mender of roads was not enchanted (though he said he was) to find that madame was to accompany monsieur and himself to Versailles. It was additionally disconcerting to have madame knitting all the way there, in a public conveyance; it was additionally disconcerting yet, to have madame in the crowd in the afternoon, still with her knitting in her hands as the crowd waited to see the carriage of the King and Queen.
“You work hard, madame,” said a man near her.
“Yes,” answered Madame Defarge; “I have a good deal to do.”
“What do you make, madame?”
“Many things.”
“For instance—”
“For instance,” returned Madame Defarge, composedly, “shrouds.”
The man moved a little further away, as soon as he could, and the mender of roads fanned himself with his blue cap: feeling it mightily close and oppressive. If he needed a King and Queen to restore him, he was fortunate in having his remedy at hand; for, soon the large-faced King and the fair-faced Queen came in their golden coach, attended by the shining Bull’s Eye of their Court, a glittering multitude of laughing ladies and fine lords; and in jewels and silks and powder and splendour and elegantly spurning figures and handsomely disdainful faces of both sexes, the mender of roads bathed himself, so much to his temporary intoxication, that he cried Long live the King, Long live the Queen, Long live everybody and everything! as if he had never heard of ubiquitous Jacques in his time. Then, there were gardens, courtyards, terraces, fountains, green banks, more King and Queen, more Bull’s Eye, more lords and ladies, more Long live they all! until he absolutely wept with sentiment. During the whole of this scene, which lasted some three hours, he had plenty of shouting and weeping and sentimental company, and throughout Defarge held him by the collar, as if to restrain him from flying at the objects of his brief devotion and tearing them to pieces.
“Bravo!” said Defarge, clapping him on the back when it was over, like a patron; “you are a good boy!”
The mender of roads was now coming to himself, and was mistrustful of having made a mistake in his late demonstrations; but no.
“You are the fellow we want,” said Defarge, in his ear; “you make these fools believe that it will last for ever. Then, they are the more insolent, and it is the nearer ended.”
“Hey!” cried the mender of roads, reflectively; “that’s true.”
“These fools know nothing. While they despise your breath, and would stop it for ever and ever, in you or in a hundred like you rather than in one of their own horses or dogs, they only know what your breath tells them. Let it deceive them, then, a little longer; it cannot deceive them too much.”
Madame Defarge looked superciliously at the client, and nodded in confirmation.
“As to you,” said she, “you would shout and shed tears for anything, if it made a show and a noise. Say! Would you not?”
“Truly, madame, I think so. For the moment.”
“If you were shown a great heap of dolls, and were set upon them to pluck them to pieces and despoil them for your own advantage, you would pick out the richest and gayest. Say! Would you not?”
“Truly yes, madame.”
“Yes. And if you were shown a flock of birds, unable to fly, and were set upon them to strip them of their feathers for your own advantage, you would set upon the birds of the finest feathers; would you not?”
“It is true, madame.”
“You have seen both dolls and birds to-day,” said Madame Defarge, with a wave of her hand towards the place where they had last been apparent; “now, go home!”
Ci fu un mormorio di fiducia e approvazione, e poi l’uomo che aveva fame chiese: «Questo rustico verrà rimandato presto? Spero di sì. È molto semplice; non è un po’ pericoloso?»
“Non sa nulla”, disse Defarge; “almeno non più di quanto gli sarebbe facile procurarsi una forca della stessa altezza. Mi prendo io la responsabilità di lui; lo tenga con me; mi prenderò cura di lui e lo rimetterò sulla sua strada. Desidera vedere il bel mondo — il Re, la Regina e la Corte; che li veda alla domenica.”
«Che cosa?» esclamò l’uomo affamato, fissandolo. «È un buon segno che desideri vedere la Reale e Nobile Famiglia?»
«Jacques», disse Defarge, «mostra con giudizio il latte al gatto se vuoi che ne abbia sete. Mostra con giudizio al cane la sua preda naturale se vuoi che un giorno gliela faccia abbaiare dietro».
Non si disse altro e al riparatore di strade, che fu trovato già addormentato sul gradino più alto, venne consigliato di sdraiarsi sulla brandina e riposare un po’. Non ebbe bisogno di persuasione e ben presto si addormentò.
Avrebbero potuto facilmente trovarsi alloggi peggiori di quelli della cantina del vino di Defarge a Parigi per uno schiavo provinciale di quel livello. A parte un misterioso timore nei confronti della signora che lo tormentava costantemente, la sua vita era molto nuova e piacevole. Ma la signora stava seduta tutto il giorno al suo banco, così espressamente ignara di lui e così particolarmente determinata a non percepire che la sua presenza lì avesse alcuna connessione con qualcosa sotto la superficie, che tremava nelle sue scarpe di legno ogni volta che i suoi occhi si posavano su di lei. Perché, si diceva tra sé e sé, era impossibile prevedere cosa quella signora potesse fingere dopo; ed era sicuro che se le fosse venuto in mente di fingere di averlo visto commettere un omicidio e poi scuoiare la vittima, avrebbe infallibilmente portato a termine il suo piano fino alla fine.
Perciò quando arrivò la domenica, il riparatore di strade non fu affatto entusiasta (anche se disse di esserlo) nello scoprire che madame li avrebbe accompagnati, lui e monsieur, a Versailles. Fu inoltre sconcertante vedere madame che faceva i maglioni per tutto il viaggio su un mezzo pubblico; fu ancora più sconcertante vederla nella folla nel pomeriggio, sempre con i ferri da calza in mano mentre la gente aspettava di vedere la carrozza del Re e della Regina.
«Lavora sodo, signora», disse un uomo vicino a lei.
“Sì”, rispose madama Defarge; “ho molto da fare”.
“Cosa produce, signora?”
“Molte cose.”
“Per esempio, ”
«Per esempio», rispose la signora Defarge con calma, «i sudari».
L’uomo si allontanò un po’ non appena poté e l’operaio delle strade si ventilava con il suo berretto blu: lo trovava terribilmente caldo e opprimente. Se aveva bisogno di un Re e una Regina per rimettersi, era fortunato a trovare la sua medicina a portata di mano; infatti, ben presto il grande volto del Re e quello bello della Regina apparvero nel loro carro dorato, accompagnati dal luccicante Occhio di Bue della loro Corte, una brillante moltitudine di signore ridanti e nobili ben vestiti; e in gioielli e sete e polvere e splendore ed eleganti figure che disprezzano e volti magnificamente sprezzanti di entrambi i sessi, l’operaio delle strade si bagnò così tanto da intossicarsi temporaneamente, al punto da gridare Lunga vita al Re, lunga vita alla Regina, lunga vita a tutti e tutto! come se non avesse mai sentito parlare di Jacques onnipresente nel suo tempo. Poi, c’erano giardini, cortili, terrazze, fontane, rive verdi, più Re e Regina, più Occhio di Bue, più signori e signore, più lunga vita a tutti! fino a quando non pianse assolutamente per il sentimento. Durante tutta questa scena, che durò circa tre ore, ebbe abbondanza di compagnia che gridava, piangeva e si commuoveva, e durante tutto questo Defarge lo teneva per il colletto, come se volesse trattenerlo dal gettarsi sugli oggetti della sua breve devozione e strapparli a pezzi.
«Bravo!» disse Defarge dandogli una pacca sulla schiena quando ebbe finito, come un padrone; «sei un bravo ragazzo!»
Il riparatore di strade stava ora tornando in sé e diffidava di aver commesso un errore nelle sue recenti dimostrazioni; ma non era così.
«Sei proprio l’uomo che ci vuole», disse Defarge al suo orecchio; «fai credere a questi pazzi che durerà per sempre. Allora sono più insolenti e la fine è più vicina».
“Ehi!” esclamò il riparatore di strade, pensieroso; “è vero.”
“Questi pazzi non sanno nulla. Mentre disprezzano il tuo respiro e vorrebbero fermarlo per sempre in te o in cento come te piuttosto che in uno dei loro cavalli o cani, essi conoscono solo ciò che il tuo respiro dice loro. Lascia allora che li inganni ancora un po’; non può ingannarli troppo.”
Madame Defarge guardò con aria di superiorità il cliente e annuì per confermare.
«Per quanto ti riguarda», disse lei, «grideresti e verseresti lacrime per qualsiasi cosa, se facesse spettacolo e rumore. Dimmi! Non lo faresti?»
“Veramente, signora, lo penso anch’io. Per il momento.”
«Se vi venisse mostrato un grande mucchio di bambole e foste incaricati di smembrarle e spogliarle per vostro vantaggio, scegliereste quelle più ricche e appariscenti. Ditemi! Non lo fareste?»
“Sì davvero, signora.”
“Sì. E se vi venisse mostrato un stormo di uccelli, incapaci di volare, e foste incaricati di spennarli per vostro vantaggio, vi gettereste sugli uccelli dalle piume più belle; non è così?”
“È vero, signora.”
«Avete visto sia le bambole che gli uccelli oggi», disse Madame Defarge, con un gesto della mano verso il luogo dove erano apparsi per l’ultima volta; «ora, andate a casa!»
CHAPTER XVI. Still Knitting
Madame Defarge and monsieur her husband returned amicably to the bosom of Saint Antoine, while a speck in a blue cap toiled through the darkness, and through the dust, and down the weary miles of avenue by the wayside, slowly tending towards that point of the compass where the chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his grave, listened to the whispering trees. Such ample leisure had the stone faces, now, for listening to the trees and to the fountain, that the few village scarecrows who, in their quest for herbs to eat and fragments of dead stick to burn, strayed within sight of the great stone courtyard and terrace staircase, had it borne in upon their starved fancy that the expression of the faces was altered. A rumour just lived in the village—had a faint and bare existence there, as its people had—that when the knife struck home, the faces changed, from faces of pride to faces of anger and pain; also, that when that dangling figure was hauled up forty feet above the fountain, they changed again, and bore a cruel look of being avenged, which they would henceforth bear for ever. In the stone face over the great window of the bed-chamber where the murder was done, two fine dints were pointed out in the sculptured nose, which everybody recognised, and which nobody had seen of old; and on the scarce occasions when two or three ragged peasants emerged from the crowd to take a hurried peep at Monsieur the Marquis petrified, a skinny finger would not have pointed to it for a minute, before they all started away among the moss and leaves, like the more fortunate hares who could find a living there.
Chateau and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well—thousands of acres of land—a whole province of France—all France itself—lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hair-breadth line. So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible creature on it.
The Defarges, husband and wife, came lumbering under the starlight, in their public vehicle, to that gate of Paris whereunto their journey naturally tended. There was the usual stoppage at the barrier guardhouse, and the usual lanterns came glancing forth for the usual examination and inquiry. Monsieur Defarge alighted; knowing one or two of the soldiery there, and one of the police. The latter he was intimate with, and affectionately embraced.
When Saint Antoine had again enfolded the Defarges in his dusky wings, and they, having finally alighted near the Saint’s boundaries, were picking their way on foot through the black mud and offal of his streets, Madame Defarge spoke to her husband:
“Say then, my friend; what did Jacques of the police tell thee?”
“Very little to-night, but all he knows. There is another spy commissioned for our quarter. There may be many more, for all that he can say, but he knows of one.”
“Eh well!” said Madame Defarge, raising her eyebrows with a cool business air. “It is necessary to register him. How do they call that man?”
“He is English.”
“So much the better. His name?”
“Barsad,” said Defarge, making it French by pronunciation. But, he had been so careful to get it accurately, that he then spelt it with perfect correctness.
“Barsad,” repeated madame. “Good. Christian name?”
“John.”
“John Barsad,” repeated madame, after murmuring it once to herself. “Good. His appearance; is it known?”
“Age, about forty years; height, about five feet nine; black hair; complexion dark; generally, rather handsome visage; eyes dark, face thin, long, and sallow; nose aquiline, but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left cheek; expression, therefore, sinister.”
“Eh my faith. It is a portrait!” said madame, laughing. “He shall be registered to-morrow.”
They turned into the wine-shop, which was closed (for it was midnight), and where Madame Defarge immediately took her post at her desk, counted the small moneys that had been taken during her absence, examined the stock, went through the entries in the book, made other entries of her own, checked the serving man in every possible way, and finally dismissed him to bed. Then she turned out the contents of the bowl of money for the second time, and began knotting them up in her handkerchief, in a chain of separate knots, for safe keeping through the night. All this while, Defarge, with his pipe in his mouth, walked up and down, complacently admiring, but never interfering; in which condition, indeed, as to the business and his domestic affairs, he walked up and down through life.
The night was hot, and the shop, close shut and surrounded by so foul a neighbourhood, was ill-smelling. Monsieur Defarge’s olfactory sense was by no means delicate, but the stock of wine smelt much stronger than it ever tasted, and so did the stock of rum and brandy and aniseed. He whiffed the compound of scents away, as he put down his smoked-out pipe.
“You are fatigued,” said madame, raising her glance as she knotted the money. “There are only the usual odours.”
“I am a little tired,” her husband acknowledged.
“You are a little depressed, too,” said madame, whose quick eyes had never been so intent on the accounts, but they had had a ray or two for him. “Oh, the men, the men!”
“But my dear!” began Defarge.
“But my dear!” repeated madame, nodding firmly; “but my dear! You are faint of heart to-night, my dear!”
“Well, then,” said Defarge, as if a thought were wrung out of his breast, “it is a long time.”
CAPITOLO XVI. Continua a Lavorare a Maglia
Madame Defarge e monsieur suo marito fecero ritorno in modo amichevole al seno di Saint Antoine, mentre un puntino con un berretto blu si affaticava nell’oscurità, attraverso la polvere, lungo le interminabili miglia di viale ai bordi della strada, dirigendosi lentamente verso quel punto cardinale dove il castello del signor Marchese, ora nella sua tomba, ascoltava gli alberi che sussurravano. Ora i volti di pietra avevano tanto tempo libero per ascoltare gli alberi e la fontana, che ai pochi spaventapasseri del villaggio che, nella loro ricerca di erbe da mangiare e frammenti di legno morto da bruciare, si avventuravano alla vista dell’ampio cortile di pietra e della scalinata terrazzata, sembrava quasi che l’espressione dei volti fosse cambiata. Una voce correva nel villaggio - aveva una vaga ed esile esistenza là come la gente del posto - che quando il coltello colpiva a segno, i volti cambiavano, da volti di orgoglio a volti di rabbia e dolore; anche che quando quella figura penzolante veniva issata quaranta piedi sopra la fontana, cambiavano ancora una volta, assumendo un’espressione crudele di vendetta che avrebbero portato per sempre. Nel volto di pietra sopra il grande finestrone della camera da letto dove era stato commesso l’omicidio, si indicavano due netti solchi sul naso scolpito, che tutti riconoscevano e nessuno aveva mai visto prima; e nelle rare occasioni in cui due o tre contadini stracciati emergevano dalla folla per dare un’occhiata veloce al signor Marchese pietrificato, un dito magro non lo avrebbe indicato per più di un minuto, prima che tutti scappassero via tra la muschio e le foglie, come le più fortunate lepri che riuscivano a trovare da vivere là.
Castello e capanna, volto di pietra e figura sospesa, la macchia rossa sul pavimento di pietra e l’acqua pura nel pozzo del villaggio — migliaia di acri di terra — un’intera provincia della Francia — tutta la Francia stessa — giacevano sotto il cielo notturno, concentrati in una linea sottile come un capello. Così un intero mondo, con tutte le sue grandezze e piccolezze, si trova in una stella scintillante. E così come la semplice conoscenza umana può dividere un raggio di luce e analizzare il modo della sua composizione, allo stesso modo intelligenze più sublimi possono leggere nel debole splendore di questa nostra terra ogni pensiero e atto, ogni vizio e virtù, di ogni creatura responsabile su di essa.
I Defarges, marito e moglie, arrivarono pesantemente sotto la luce delle stelle, nel loro veicolo pubblico, a quella porta di Parigi verso cui il loro viaggio naturalmente tendeva. Ci fu l’usuale fermata alla barriera della guardia e le solite lanterne vennero fatte brillare per la consueta ispezione e indagine. Monsieur Defarge scese; conosceva uno o due dei soldati di là, e un membro della polizia. Con quest’ultimo era in confidenza e lo abbracciò affettuosamente.
Quando San Antonio ebbe di nuovo avvolto i Defarge nelle sue ali scure, e loro, essendo finalmente atterrati vicino ai confini del Santo, stavano facendosi strada a piedi attraverso il fango nero e le immondizie delle sue strade, Madame Defarge parlò al marito:
“Dimmi allora, amico mio; cosa ti ha detto Giacomo della polizia?”
«Poco stanotte, ma tutto quello che sa. C’è un altro spia assegnato al nostro quartiere. Potrebbero esserci molti altri, per quanto ne sappia lui, ma ne conosce uno».
«Ebbene!» disse la signora Defarge, alzando le sopracciglia con aria fredda e professionale. «È necessario registrarli. Come chiamano quell’uomo?»
“È inglese.”
“Meglio così. Il suo nome?”
«Barsad», disse Defarge pronunciandolo alla francese. Ma aveva fatto tanta attenzione a ripeterlo con precisione che poi lo scrisse perfettamente corretto.
«Barsad», ripeté la signora. «Bene. Nome di battesimo?»
“John.”
«John Barsad», ripeté la signora dopo averlo mormorato una volta tra sé e sé. «Bene. Il suo aspetto: è noto?»
«Età: circa quarant’anni; altezza: cinque piedi e nove pollici; capelli neri; carnagione scura; in generale, piuttosto bello d’aspetto; occhi scuri, viso magro, lungo e giallastro; naso aquilino ma non diritto, con una particolarità di inclinarsi verso la guancia sinistra; espressione quindi, sinistra.»
«Oh, la mia fede! È un ritratto!», disse la signora ridendo. «Domani verrà registrato».
Entrarono nel vino-shop, che era chiuso (perché erano le dodici di notte), e dove Madame Defarge si mise subito al suo posto alla scrivania, contò i piccoli soldi incassati durante la sua assenza, esaminò il magazzino, passò in rassegna i dati nel libro, fece altre annotazioni di sua mano, controllò l’uomo di servizio in ogni modo possibile e infine lo congedò a letto. Poi rovesciò per la seconda volta il contenuto della ciotola con i soldi e cominciò ad annodarli nel suo fazzoletto, in una catena di nodi separati, per tenerli al sicuro durante la notte. Tutto questo mentre Defarge, con la pipa in bocca, camminava su e giù, ammirando compiaciuto ma senza mai interferire; anzi, in questa condizione, riguardo agli affari e alle faccende domestiche, camminò su e giù per tutta la vita.
La notte era calda e il negozio, chiuso ermeticamente e circondato da un quartiere così malsano, emanava cattivi odori. Il senso olfattivo di Monsieur Defarge non era affatto delicato, ma l’odore del vino era molto più forte del suo sapore, e lo stesso valeva per il rum, la brandy e l’anice. Scacciò via il composto di profumi mentre posava la pipa spenta.
«Siete stanco», disse la signora alzando lo sguardo mentre annodava i soldi. «Ci sono solo gli odori soliti».
«Sono un po’ stanco», riconobbe suo marito.
«Anche voi siete un po’ giù di corda», disse la signora, i cui occhi acuti non si erano mai concentrati tanto sui conti, ma avevano lanciato qualche sguardo anche a lui. «Oh, gli uomini, gli uomini!»
«Ma mia cara!» cominciò Defarge.
«Ma caro mio!» ripeté la signora, annuendo con fermezza «ma caro mio! Sei debole di cuore questa sera, caro mio!»
«Bene, allora», disse Defarge come se un pensiero gli fosse stato strappato dal petto, «è davvero un lungo periodo.»
“It is a long time,” repeated his wife; “and when is it not a long time? Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule.”
“It does not take a long time to strike a man with Lightning,” said Defarge.
“How long,” demanded madame, composedly, “does it take to make and store the lightning? Tell me.”
Defarge raised his head thoughtfully, as if there were something in that too.
“It does not take a long time,” said madame, “for an earthquake to swallow a town. Eh well! Tell me how long it takes to prepare the earthquake?”
“A long time, I suppose,” said Defarge.
“But when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to pieces everything before it. In the meantime, it is always preparing, though it is not seen or heard. That is your consolation. Keep it.”
She tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it throttled a foe.
“I tell thee,” said madame, extending her right hand, for emphasis, “that although it is a long time on the road, it is on the road and coming. I tell thee it never retreats, and never stops. I tell thee it is always advancing. Look around and consider the lives of all the world that we know, consider the faces of all the world that we know, consider the rage and discontent to which the Jacquerie addresses itself with more and more of certainty every hour. Can such things last? Bah! I mock you.”
“My brave wife,” returned Defarge, standing before her with his head a little bent, and his hands clasped at his back, like a docile and attentive pupil before his catechist, “I do not question all this. But it has lasted a long time, and it is possible—you know well, my wife, it is possible—that it may not come, during our lives.”
“Eh well! How then?” demanded madame, tying another knot, as if there were another enemy strangled.
“Well!” said Defarge, with a half complaining and half apologetic shrug. “We shall not see the triumph.”
“We shall have helped it,” returned madame, with her extended hand in strong action. “Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul, that we shall see the triumph. But even if not, even if I knew certainly not, show me the neck of an aristocrat and tyrant, and still I would—”
Then madame, with her teeth set, tied a very terrible knot indeed.
“Hold!” cried Defarge, reddening a little as if he felt charged with cowardice; “I too, my dear, will stop at nothing.”
“Yes! But it is your weakness that you sometimes need to see your victim and your opportunity, to sustain you. Sustain yourself without that. When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil; but wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained—not shown—yet always ready.”
Madame enforced the conclusion of this piece of advice by striking her little counter with her chain of money as if she knocked its brains out, and then gathering the heavy handkerchief under her arm in a serene manner, and observing that it was time to go to bed.
Next noontide saw the admirable woman in her usual place in the wine-shop, knitting away assiduously. A rose lay beside her, and if she now and then glanced at the flower, it was with no infraction of her usual preoccupied air. There were a few customers, drinking or not drinking, standing or seated, sprinkled about. The day was very hot, and heaps of flies, who were extending their inquisitive and adventurous perquisitions into all the glutinous little glasses near madame, fell dead at the bottom. Their decease made no impression on the other flies out promenading, who looked at them in the coolest manner (as if they themselves were elephants, or something as far removed), until they met the same fate. Curious to consider how heedless flies are!—perhaps they thought as much at Court that sunny summer day.
A figure entering at the door threw a shadow on Madame Defarge which she felt to be a new one. She laid down her knitting, and began to pin her rose in her head-dress, before she looked at the figure.
It was curious. The moment Madame Defarge took up the rose, the customers ceased talking, and began gradually to drop out of the wine-shop.
“Good day, madame,” said the new-comer.
“Good day, monsieur.”
She said it aloud, but added to herself, as she resumed her knitting: “Hah! Good day, age about forty, height about five feet nine, black hair, generally rather handsome visage, complexion dark, eyes dark, thin, long and sallow face, aquiline nose but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left cheek which imparts a sinister expression! Good day, one and all!”
“Have the goodness to give me a little glass of old cognac, and a mouthful of cool fresh water, madame.”
Madame complied with a polite air.
“Marvellous cognac this, madame!”
It was the first time it had ever been so complimented, and Madame Defarge knew enough of its antecedents to know better. She said, however, that the cognac was flattered, and took up her knitting. The visitor watched her fingers for a few moments, and took the opportunity of observing the place in general.
“You knit with great skill, madame.”
“I am accustomed to it.”
“A pretty pattern too!”
“You think so?” said madame, looking at him with a smile.
“Decidedly. May one ask what it is for?”
“Pastime,” said madame, still looking at him with a smile while her fingers moved nimbly.
“Not for use?”
“That depends. I may find a use for it one day. If I do—Well,” said madame, drawing a breath and nodding her head with a stern kind of coquetry, “I’ll use it!”
It was remarkable; but, the taste of Saint Antoine seemed to be decidedly opposed to a rose on the head-dress of Madame Defarge. Two men had entered separately, and had been about to order drink, when, catching sight of that novelty, they faltered, made a pretence of looking about as if for some friend who was not there, and went away. Nor, of those who had been there when this visitor entered, was there one left. They had all dropped off. The spy had kept his eyes open, but had been able to detect no sign. They had lounged away in a poverty-stricken, purposeless, accidental manner, quite natural and unimpeachable.
«È un lungo periodo», ripeté sua moglie, «e quando non è un lungo periodo?
La vendetta e la punizione richiedono un lungo periodo; questa è la regola.»
«Non ci vuole molto tempo per colpire un uomo con la fulmine», disse Defarge.
“Quanto tempo”, chiese la signora con calma, “ci vuole per creare e immagazzinare il fulmine? Dimmelo”.
Defarge alzò la testa pensieroso, come se anche questo avesse un significato.
«Non occorre molto tempo,» disse la signora, «perché un terremoto possa inghiottire una città. Eh bene! Ditemi quanto tempo ci vuole per preparare il terremoto?»
“Un lungo periodo, immagino”, disse Defarge.
«Ma quando è pronto, si scatena e trita tutto ciò che gli sta davanti. Nel frattempo, continua sempre a prepararsi, anche se non lo si vede né lo si sente. Questa è la vostra consolazione. Tenetela presente».
Lei annodò un nodo con gli occhi che brillavano come se stesse strangolando un nemico.
«Ti dico», disse madame, estendendo la mano destra per enfasi, «che sebbene sia un lungo periodo sulla strada, è sulla strada e sta arrivando. Ti dico che non si ritira mai e non si ferma mai. Ti dico che avanza sempre. Guardati intorno e considera le vite di tutto il mondo che conosciamo, considera i volti di tutto il mondo che conosciamo, considera la rabbia e l’insoddisfazione a cui la Jacquerie si rivolge con sempre maggiore certezza ogni ora. Possono durare queste cose? Bah! Mi prendo gioco di te».
«Mia coraggiosa moglie», rispose Defarge, stando davanti a lei con la testa un po’ china e le mani incrociate dietro la schiena, come uno scolaro docile e attento davanti al suo catechista, «non metto in dubbio tutto questo. Ma è durato molto tempo, ed è possibile - lo sai bene, mia moglie, è possibile - che non accada durante la nostra vita».
«Ebbene dunque! E allora?» chiese la signora, annodando un altro nodo, come se avesse strangolato un altro nemico.
«Ebbene!» disse Defarge con una scrollata di spalle tra lamentosa e scusante. «Non vedremo il trionfo».
«Lo avremo aiutato», rispose madame con la mano tesa in un gesto deciso. «Nulla di ciò che facciamo è fatto invano. Credo, con tutta la mia anima, che vedremo il trionfo. Ma anche se non fosse così, anche se sapessi con certezza che non sarà, mostratemi il collo di un aristocratico e di un tiranno, e ancora lo farei, »
Poi la signora, serrando i denti, fece un nodo davvero terribile.
«Fermati!» gridò Defarge, arrossendo un po’ come se si sentisse accusato di codardia; «Anch’io, mia cara, non mi fermerò davanti a nulla.»
“Sì! Ma la vostra debolezza è che talvolta avete bisogno di vedere la vostra vittima e l’occasione per sentirvi sostenuti. Sostenetevi senza questo. Quando verrà il momento, scatenate una tigre e un diavolo; ma aspettate il momento con la tigre e il diavolo incatenati, nascosti, ma sempre pronti.”
La signora sottolineò la conclusione di questo consiglio battendo il suo piccolo bancone con la catena dei soldi come se volesse spaccargli il cervello, e poi raccogliendo il pesante fazzoletto sotto il braccio in modo sereno, osservando che era ora di andare a letto.
Il mezzogiorno seguente trovò la donna ammirevole al suo solito posto nel negozio di vino, intenta a lavorare a maglia con assiduità. Una rosa giaceva accanto a lei e se talvolta lanciava uno sguardo al fiore, ciò non alterava il suo consueto atteggiamento assorto. C’erano alcuni clienti che bevevano o non bevevano, in piedi o seduti, sparsi qua e là. Faceva molto caldo e mucchi di mosche, che stavano estendendo le loro indagatrici ed avventurose perlustrazioni a tutti i piccoli bicchieri appiccicosi vicino alla signora, cadevano morte sul fondo. La loro morte non impressionava affatto le altre mosche in giro che le guardavano con la massima freddezza (come se esse stesse fossero elefanti o qualcosa di altrettanto distante), finché non subivano lo stesso destino. Curioso pensare a quanto siano incoscienti le mosche! — forse ne pensavano altrettanto alla Corte quel soleggiato giorno d’estate.
Una figura che entrava dalla porta proiettò una ombra su Madame Defarge, che sentì essere nuova. Depose il lavoro a maglia e cominciò ad infilare la sua rosa nel copricapo, prima di guardare la figura.
Era curioso. Nel momento in cui la signora Defarge prese il rosa, i clienti smisero di parlare e cominciarono gradualmente a uscire dalla cantina del vino.
«Buon giorno, signora», disse il nuovo arrivato.
“Buona giornata, signore.”
Lo disse ad alta voce, ma aggiunse tra sé e sé mentre riprendeva il lavoro a maglia: “Eh? Buongiorno, circa quarant’anni, altezza cinque piedi e nove pollici, capelli neri, generalmente piuttosto bello d’aspetto, carnagione scura, occhi scuri, viso lungo, sottile e giallastro, naso aquilino ma non diritto, con una particolare inclinazione verso la guancia sinistra che gli conferisce un’espressione sinistra! Buongiorno a tutti quanti!”
«Avete la bontà di darmi un bicchierino di vecchio cognac e una sorsata d’acqua fresca e fredda, signora.»
La signora acconsentì con aria cortese.
“Che cognac straordinario, signora!”
Era la prima volta che veniva complimentata così e Madame Defarge ne sapeva abbastanza sul suo passato per saperlo meglio. Disse, però, che il cognac era lusingato e riprese a fare i suoi lavori a maglia. La visitatrice osservò le sue dita per qualche istante e approfittò dell’occasione per dare un’occhiata al posto in generale.
“Lei lavora ai ferri con grande abilità, signora”.
“Mi ci sono abituato.”
“Un bel modello anche!”
«Voi pensate così?» disse la signora guardandolo con un sorriso.
“Decisamente. Posso chiedere a cosa serve?”
«Divertimento», disse la signora, continuando a guardarlo con un sorriso mentre le sue dita si muovevano agilmente.
“Non utilizzabile?”
«Dipende. Potrei trovarne un uso un giorno. Se lo faccio, beh», disse la signora, tirando il fiato e annuendo con una sorta di coquetteria severa, «lo userò!»
Era notevole; ma il gusto di Saint Antoine sembrava essere decisamente contrario a una rosa sull’acconciatura della signora Defarge. Due uomini erano entrati separatamente e stavano per ordinare da bere, quando, scorgendo quella novità, esitarono, fecero finta di guardarsi intorno come se cercassero un amico che non c’era, e se ne andarono. E nemmeno tra coloro che si trovavano lì quando era entrato questo visitatore ce n’era più uno rimasto. Erano tutti spariti. Lo spia aveva tenuto gli occhi aperti, ma non era stato in grado di individuare alcun segno. Se ne erano andati in un modo povero, senza scopo e accidentale, del tutto naturale e irreprensibile.
“John,” thought madame, checking off her work as her fingers knitted, and her eyes looked at the stranger. “Stay long enough, and I shall knit ‘BARSAD’ before you go.”
“You have a husband, madame?”
“I have.”
“Children?”
“No children.”
“Business seems bad?”
“Business is very bad; the people are so poor.”
“Ah, the unfortunate, miserable people! So oppressed, too—as you say.”
“As you say,” madame retorted, correcting him, and deftly knitting an extra something into his name that boded him no good.
“Pardon me; certainly it was I who said so, but you naturally think so. Of course.”
“I think?” returned madame, in a high voice. “I and my husband have enough to do to keep this wine-shop open, without thinking. All we think, here, is how to live. That is the subject we think of, and it gives us, from morning to night, enough to think about, without embarrassing our heads concerning others. I think for others? No, no.”
The spy, who was there to pick up any crumbs he could find or make, did not allow his baffled state to express itself in his sinister face; but, stood with an air of gossiping gallantry, leaning his elbow on Madame Defarge’s little counter, and occasionally sipping his cognac.
“A bad business this, madame, of Gaspard’s execution. Ah! the poor Gaspard!” With a sigh of great compassion.
“My faith!” returned madame, coolly and lightly, “if people use knives for such purposes, they have to pay for it. He knew beforehand what the price of his luxury was; he has paid the price.”
“I believe,” said the spy, dropping his soft voice to a tone that invited confidence, and expressing an injured revolutionary susceptibility in every muscle of his wicked face: “I believe there is much compassion and anger in this neighbourhood, touching the poor fellow? Between ourselves.”
“Is there?” asked madame, vacantly.
“Is there not?”
“—Here is my husband!” said Madame Defarge.
As the keeper of the wine-shop entered at the door, the spy saluted him by touching his hat, and saying, with an engaging smile, “Good day, Jacques!” Defarge stopped short, and stared at him.
“Good day, Jacques!” the spy repeated; with not quite so much confidence, or quite so easy a smile under the stare.
“You deceive yourself, monsieur,” returned the keeper of the wine-shop. “You mistake me for another. That is not my name. I am Ernest Defarge.”
“It is all the same,” said the spy, airily, but discomfited too: “good day!”
“Good day!” answered Defarge, drily.
“I was saying to madame, with whom I had the pleasure of chatting when you entered, that they tell me there is—and no wonder!—much sympathy and anger in Saint Antoine, touching the unhappy fate of poor Gaspard.”
“No one has told me so,” said Defarge, shaking his head. “I know nothing of it.”
Having said it, he passed behind the little counter, and stood with his hand on the back of his wife’s chair, looking over that barrier at the person to whom they were both opposed, and whom either of them would have shot with the greatest satisfaction.
The spy, well used to his business, did not change his unconscious attitude, but drained his little glass of cognac, took a sip of fresh water, and asked for another glass of cognac. Madame Defarge poured it out for him, took to her knitting again, and hummed a little song over it.
“You seem to know this quarter well; that is to say, better than I do?” observed Defarge.
“Not at all, but I hope to know it better. I am so profoundly interested in its miserable inhabitants.”
“Hah!” muttered Defarge.
“The pleasure of conversing with you, Monsieur Defarge, recalls to me,” pursued the spy, “that I have the honour of cherishing some interesting associations with your name.”
“Indeed!” said Defarge, with much indifference.
“Yes, indeed. When Doctor Manette was released, you, his old domestic, had the charge of him, I know. He was delivered to you. You see I am informed of the circumstances?”
“Such is the fact, certainly,” said Defarge. He had had it conveyed to him, in an accidental touch of his wife’s elbow as she knitted and warbled, that he would do best to answer, but always with brevity.
“It was to you,” said the spy, “that his daughter came; and it was from your care that his daughter took him, accompanied by a neat brown monsieur; how is he called?—in a little wig—Lorry—of the bank of Tellson and Company—over to England.”
“Such is the fact,” repeated Defarge.
“Very interesting remembrances!” said the spy. “I have known Doctor Manette and his daughter, in England.”
“Yes?” said Defarge.
“You don’t hear much about them now?” said the spy.
“No,” said Defarge.
“In effect,” madame struck in, looking up from her work and her little song, “we never hear about them. We received the news of their safe arrival, and perhaps another letter, or perhaps two; but, since then, they have gradually taken their road in life—we, ours—and we have held no correspondence.”
“Perfectly so, madame,” replied the spy. “She is going to be married.”
“Going?” echoed madame. “She was pretty enough to have been married long ago. You English are cold, it seems to me.”
“Oh! You know I am English.”
“I perceive your tongue is,” returned madame; “and what the tongue is, I suppose the man is.”
He did not take the identification as a compliment; but he made the best of it, and turned it off with a laugh. After sipping his cognac to the end, he added:
“Yes, Miss Manette is going to be married. But not to an Englishman; to one who, like herself, is French by birth. And speaking of Gaspard (ah, poor Gaspard! It was cruel, cruel!), it is a curious thing that she is going to marry the nephew of Monsieur the Marquis, for whom Gaspard was exalted to that height of so many feet; in other words, the present Marquis. But he lives unknown in England, he is no Marquis there; he is Mr. Charles Darnay. D’Aulnais is the name of his mother’s family.”
«John», pensò la signora, controllando il suo lavoro mentre le sue dita lavoravano a maglia e i suoi occhi guardavano lo sconosciuto. «Se rimarrete abbastanza a lungo, vi avrò fatto un maglione con scritto ‘BARSAD’ prima che ve ne andiate».
“Ha un marito, signora?”
“L’ho fatto.”
“Bambini?”
“Nessun bambino.”
“Affari in crisi?”
“Affari molto cattivi; la gente è così povera.”
“Ah, la gente sfortunata e infelice! Oppressa anche - come dici tu.”
“Come lei dice”, ribatté la signora correggendolo e intrecciando abilmente nel suo nome qualcosa di extra che non gli preannunciava nulla di buono.
“Mi scusi; certo sono stato io a dirlo, ma lei naturalmente la pensa così. Certo.”
«Io penso?» rispose madame con voce acuta. «Io e mio marito abbiamo abbastanza da fare a tenere aperto questo negozio di vino senza pensare. Qui non pensiamo ad altro che a come vivere. Questo è l’argomento su cui noi riflettiamo, e ci dà, dal mattino alla notte, abbastanza da pensare, senza preoccuparci di altri. Io penso per gli altri? No, no».
Lo spia, che era lì per raccogliere qualsiasi briciolo potesse trovare o creare, non permise al suo stato di confusione di manifestarsi nel suo volto sinistro; ma rimase in piedi con un’aria di galanteria pettegola, appoggiando il gomito sul piccolo banco della signora Defarge e sorseggiando occasionalmente il suo cognac.
«Una brutta faccenda questa, signora, dell’esecuzione di Gaspard. Ah! Il povero Gaspard!» Con un sospiro pieno di grande compassione.
“La mia fede!” rispose la signora con freddezza e leggerezza “se le persone usano i coltelli per tali scopi, devono pagarne il prezzo. Lui sapeva in anticipo qual era il prezzo del suo lusso; ha pagato il prezzo.”
«Credo», disse lo spia, abbassando la sua voce dolce a un tono che invitava alla confidenza e manifestando una sensibilità rivoluzionaria offesa in ogni muscolo del suo volto malvagio: «che ci sia molta compassione e rabbia in questo quartiere per quel poveretto? Tra noi.»
«C’è?» chiese la signora, distrattamente.
“Non è così?”
«Ecco mio marito!» disse la signora Defarge.
Quando il custode del negozio di vini entrò dalla porta, lo spia gli si rivolse con un cenno del cappello e dicendo, con un sorriso affascinante: «Buon giorno, Jacques!» Defarge si fermò di colpo e lo fissò.
«Buona giornata, Jacques!» ripeté lo spia; ma non con la stessa sicurezza o il sorriso altrettanto disinvolto sotto quello sguardo fisso.
“Vi ingannate, signore”, rispose il proprietario del vino. “Mi scambiate per un altro. Quel nome non è il mio. Io sono Ernesto Defargue.”
“È tutto uguale”, disse lo spia, con nonchalance ma anche turbato: “buona giornata!”
«Buona giornata!» rispose Defarge, seccamente.
“Stavo dicendo alla signora, con la quale ho avuto il piacere di chiacchierare quando è entrato lei, che mi hanno detto che c’è — e non c’è da meravigliarsi! — molta simpatia e rabbia a Saint Antoine riguardo alla triste sorte del povero Gaspard.”
“Nessuno mi ha detto nulla,” disse Defarge scuotendo la testa. “Non ne so niente.”
Detto questo, passò dietro al piccolo banco e rimase con la mano sullo schienale della sedia della moglie, guardando oltre quel riparo alla persona contro cui entrambi si opponevano, e che ciascuno dei due avrebbe ucciso a fucilate con il massimo piacere.
Lo spia, ben avvezzo al suo mestiere, non cambiò la sua inconscia postura, ma svuotò il suo piccolo bicchiere di cognac, prese un sorso d’acqua, e chiese un altro bicchiere di cognac. Madame Defarge lo versò per lui, riprese a fare maglia e intonò una breve canzone.
«Sembra che conosciate bene questo quartiere bene; cioè meglio di me?» osservò Defarge.
«Per nulla, ma spero di conoscerla meglio. Sono così profondamente interessato ai suoi miseri abitanti».
«Ah!» mormorò Defarge.
«Il piacere di conversare con voi, signor Defarge, mi ricorda», proseguì lo spia, «che ho l’onore di coltivare alcune interessanti associazioni con il vostro nome.»
«Davvero!» disse Defarge con molta indifferenza.
“Sì, infatti. Quando il dottor Manette fu rilasciato, lei, suo vecchio domestico, ne ebbe la custodia, lo so. Fu affidato a lei. Vede che sono al corrente dei fatti?”
«È così, certamente», disse Defarge. Gli era stato comunicato, con un tocco casuale del gomito di sua moglie mentre lei faceva la maglia e canticchiava, che avrebbe fatto meglio a rispondere, ma sempre in modo breve.
«Fu da voi», disse lo spia, «che venne sua figlia; e fu sotto la vostra cura che sua figlia se lo portò via, accompagnata da un signore bruno ben vestito; come si chiama?, con una piccola parrucca. Lorry, della banca Tellson e Compagnia, per l’Inghilterra.»
«Tale è il fatto», ripeté Defarge.
«Ricordi molto interessanti!» disse lo spia. «Ho conosciuto il dottor Manette e sua figlia in Inghilterra».
«Sì?» disse Defarge.
«Non si sente più molto parlare di loro?» disse lo spia.
«No», disse Defarge.
«In effetti», intervenne madame alzando lo sguardo dal suo lavoro e dalla sua piccola canzone, «non ne sentiamo mai parlare. Abbiamo ricevuto la notizia del loro arrivo in salvo, e forse un’altra lettera, o forse due; ma da allora hanno gradualmente intrapreso la loro strada nella vita - noi la nostra - e non abbiamo più avuto corrispondenza.»
“Esattamente così, signora,” rispose lo spia. “Sta per sposarsi.”
«Partire?» fece eco la signora. «Era abbastanza carina da essere sposata già da tempo. Voi inglesi siete freddi, mi sembra.»
“Ah! Sai che sono inglese”.
«Mi accorgo che la lingua è pronta», replicò la signora, «e suppongo che l’uomo sia come la sua lingua.»
Non prese l’identificazione come un complimento; ma ne fece il meglio che poté e la liquidò con una risata. Dopo aver finito di sorseggiare il suo cognac, aggiunse:
“Sì, la signorina Manette sta per sposarsi. Ma non con un inglese: con uno che, come lei, è francese di nascita. E parlando di Gaspard (ah, povero Gaspard! È stato crudele, crudele!), è una cosa curiosa che stia per sposare il nipote del signor Marchese per cui Gaspard fu innalzato a quella altezza di tanti piedi; in altre parole, l’attuale Marchese. Ma vive nascosto in Inghilterra, non è un Marchese là; è il signor Charles Darnay. D’Aulnais è il nome della famiglia di sua madre.”
Madame Defarge knitted steadily, but the intelligence had a palpable effect upon her husband. Do what he would, behind the little counter, as to the striking of a light and the lighting of his pipe, he was troubled, and his hand was not trustworthy. The spy would have been no spy if he had failed to see it, or to record it in his mind.
Having made, at least, this one hit, whatever it might prove to be worth, and no customers coming in to help him to any other, Mr. Barsad paid for what he had drunk, and took his leave: taking occasion to say, in a genteel manner, before he departed, that he looked forward to the pleasure of seeing Monsieur and Madame Defarge again. For some minutes after he had emerged into the outer presence of Saint Antoine, the husband and wife remained exactly as he had left them, lest he should come back.
“Can it be true,” said Defarge, in a low voice, looking down at his wife as he stood smoking with his hand on the back of her chair: “what he has said of Ma’amselle Manette?”
“As he has said it,” returned madame, lifting her eyebrows a little, “it is probably false. But it may be true.”
“If it is—” Defarge began, and stopped.
“If it is?” repeated his wife.
“—And if it does come, while we live to see it triumph—I hope, for her sake, Destiny will keep her husband out of France.”
“Her husband’s destiny,” said Madame Defarge, with her usual composure, “will take him where he is to go, and will lead him to the end that is to end him. That is all I know.”
“But it is very strange—now, at least, is it not very strange”—said Defarge, rather pleading with his wife to induce her to admit it, “that, after all our sympathy for Monsieur her father, and herself, her husband’s name should be proscribed under your hand at this moment, by the side of that infernal dog’s who has just left us?”
“Stranger things than that will happen when it does come,” answered madame. “I have them both here, of a certainty; and they are both here for their merits; that is enough.”
She rolled up her knitting when she had said those words, and presently took the rose out of the handkerchief that was wound about her head. Either Saint Antoine had an instinctive sense that the objectionable decoration was gone, or Saint Antoine was on the watch for its disappearance; howbeit, the Saint took courage to lounge in, very shortly afterwards, and the wine-shop recovered its habitual aspect.
In the evening, at which season of all others Saint Antoine turned himself inside out, and sat on door-steps and window-ledges, and came to the corners of vile streets and courts, for a breath of air, Madame Defarge with her work in her hand was accustomed to pass from place to place and from group to group: a Missionary—there were many like her—such as the world will do well never to breed again. All the women knitted. They knitted worthless things; but, the mechanical work was a mechanical substitute for eating and drinking; the hands moved for the jaws and the digestive apparatus: if the bony fingers had been still, the stomachs would have been more famine-pinched.
But, as the fingers went, the eyes went, and the thoughts. And as Madame Defarge moved on from group to group, all three went quicker and fiercer among every little knot of women that she had spoken with, and left behind.
Her husband smoked at his door, looking after her with admiration. “A great woman,” said he, “a strong woman, a grand woman, a frightfully grand woman!”
Darkness closed around, and then came the ringing of church bells and the distant beating of the military drums in the Palace Courtyard, as the women sat knitting, knitting. Darkness encompassed them. Another darkness was closing in as surely, when the church bells, then ringing pleasantly in many an airy steeple over France, should be melted into thundering cannon; when the military drums should be beating to drown a wretched voice, that night all potent as the voice of Power and Plenty, Freedom and Life. So much was closing in about the women who sat knitting, knitting, that they their very selves were closing in around a structure yet unbuilt, where they were to sit knitting, knitting, counting dropping heads.
Madame Defarge continuava a lavorare a maglia con calma, ma l’informazione ebbe un effetto evidente su suo marito. Nonostante i suoi sforzi dietro il piccolo banco per accendere la pipa e far finta di nulla, era turbato e le sue mani non erano sicure. Lo spia non sarebbe stato tale se non avesse notato tutto ciò o non lo avesse registrato nella sua mente.
Avendo fatto almeno questo colpo, qualunque cosa potesse valere, e non avendo clienti che entrassero per aiutarlo in altri affari, il signor Barsad pagò quello che aveva bevuto e se ne andò: approfittando dell’occasione per dire, con eleganza, prima di partire, che attendeva con impazienza il piacere di rivedere Monsieur e Madame Defarge. Per alcuni minuti dopo che era emerso nella presenza esterna di Saint Antoine, il marito e la moglie rimasero esattamente come li aveva lasciati lui, nel caso fosse tornato indietro.
«Può essere vero», disse Defarge con voce bassa, guardando sua moglie mentre stava in piedi fumando con la mano sullo schienale della sua sedia, «quello che ha detto di Mademoiselle Manette?»
«Poiché l’ha detto lui», replicò la signora alzando un po’ le sopracciglia, «è probabilmente falso. Ma potrebbe anche essere vero».
«Se è, » cominciò Defarge e si fermò.
«Se lo è?» ripeté sua moglie.
«E se mai dovesse arrivare, mentre siamo ancora in vita per vederla trionfare, spero, per il suo bene, che la Destino tenga lontano da Francia suo marito.»
«Il destino di mio marito», disse la signora Defarge con il suo solito sangue freddo, «lo porterà dove deve andare e lo condurrà alla fine che gli è destinata. Questo è tutto ciò che so.»
«Ma è davvero strano — non è davvero strano, almeno adesso?» disse Defarge, cercando quasi di convincere sua moglie a riconoscerlo «che dopo tutta la nostra simpatia per Monsieur suo padre e per lei stessa, il nome del marito sia proscritto in questo momento dalla tua mano, accanto a quello del cane infernale che ci ha appena lasciato?»
«Cose più strane di questa accadranno quando arriverà», rispose la signora. «Li ho entrambi qui, è certo; e sono qui per i loro meriti; questo basta».
Avvolse il lavoro a maglia dopo aver pronunciato quelle parole e poco dopo tirò fuori la rosa dal fazzoletto che le avvolgeva la testa. Ora, o Saint Antoine aveva un istinto che gli faceva capire che l’ornamento sgradito era sparito, oppure Saint Antoine stava in guardia per il suo scomparire; comunque sia, poco dopo il Santo prese coraggio e si affacciò all’interno, e la latteria riprese il suo aspetto abituale.
La sera, che era il momento in cui Saint Antoine si svuotava e la gente sedeva sui gradini delle porte e sulle finestre, e veniva agli angoli di strade e cortili squallidi per prendere una boccata d’aria, Madame Defarge con il suo lavoro in mano era solita passare da un posto all’altro e da un gruppo all’altro: una Missionaria - ce n’erano molte come lei - del tipo che al mondo farebbe bene a non generare mai più. Tutte le donne facevano lavori a maglia. Facevano cose inutili; ma il lavoro meccanico era un sostituto meccanico per mangiare e bere; le mani si muovevano al posto delle mascelle e dell’apparato digerente: se le dita ossute fossero state ferme, i ventri sarebbero stati più affamati.
Ma mentre le dita lavoravano, anche gli occhi e i pensieri erano in moto. E mentre Madame Defarge si spostava da un gruppo all’altro, tutti e tre acceleravano e si infervoravano tra ogni piccolo gruppetto di donne con cui aveva parlato e che lasciava alle sue spalle.
Il marito fumava sulla porta di casa e la guardava con ammirazione. «Una donna straordinaria», disse, «una donna forte, una donna magnifica, una donna terribilmente magnifica!»
Il buio si chiuse intorno a loro e poi giunse il suono delle campane della chiesa e lo lontano rullare dei tamburi militari nel cortile del palazzo mentre le donne sedevano a lavorare a maglia, lavoravano a maglia. Il buio le avvolgeva. Un altro buio si stava chiudendo con la stessa certezza quando le campane della chiesa, che allora suonavano piacevolmente in molti campanili sparsi per la Francia, sarebbero state fuse in cannoni ruggenti; quando i tamburi militari avrebbero battuto per soffocare una voce miserabile, quella notte potente quanto la voce del Potere e dell’Abbondanza, della Libertà e della Vita. Tanto si chiudeva intorno alle donne che sedevano a lavorare a maglia, lavoravano a maglia, che esse stesse si stavano chiudendo attorno ad una struttura ancora da costruire, dove sarebbero state a lavorare a maglia, lavorare a maglia, contando le teste che cadevano.
CHAPTER XVII. One Night
Never did the sun go down with a brighter glory on the quiet corner in Soho, than one memorable evening when the Doctor and his daughter sat under the plane-tree together. Never did the moon rise with a milder radiance over great London, than on that night when it found them still seated under the tree, and shone upon their faces through its leaves.
Lucie was to be married to-morrow. She had reserved this last evening for her father, and they sat alone under the plane-tree.
“You are happy, my dear father?”
“Quite, my child.”
They had said little, though they had been there a long time. When it was yet light enough to work and read, she had neither engaged herself in her usual work, nor had she read to him. She had employed herself in both ways, at his side under the tree, many and many a time; but, this time was not quite like any other, and nothing could make it so.
“And I am very happy to-night, dear father. I am deeply happy in the love that Heaven has so blessed—my love for Charles, and Charles’s love for me. But, if my life were not to be still consecrated to you, or if my marriage were so arranged as that it would part us, even by the length of a few of these streets, I should be more unhappy and self-reproachful now than I can tell you. Even as it is—”
Even as it was, she could not command her voice.
In the sad moonlight, she clasped him by the neck, and laid her face upon his breast. In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself is—as the light called human life is—at its coming and its going.
“Dearest dear! Can you tell me, this last time, that you feel quite, quite sure, no new affections of mine, and no new duties of mine, will ever interpose between us? I know it well, but do you know it? In your own heart, do you feel quite certain?”
Her father answered, with a cheerful firmness of conviction he could scarcely have assumed, “Quite sure, my darling! More than that,” he added, as he tenderly kissed her: “my future is far brighter, Lucie, seen through your marriage, than it could have been—nay, than it ever was—without it.”
“If I could hope that, my father!—”
“Believe it, love! Indeed it is so. Consider how natural and how plain it is, my dear, that it should be so. You, devoted and young, cannot fully appreciate the anxiety I have felt that your life should not be wasted—”
She moved her hand towards his lips, but he took it in his, and repeated the word.
“—wasted, my child—should not be wasted, struck aside from the natural order of things—for my sake. Your unselfishness cannot entirely comprehend how much my mind has gone on this; but, only ask yourself, how could my happiness be perfect, while yours was incomplete?”
“If I had never seen Charles, my father, I should have been quite happy with you.”
He smiled at her unconscious admission that she would have been unhappy without Charles, having seen him; and replied:
“My child, you did see him, and it is Charles. If it had not been Charles, it would have been another. Or, if it had been no other, I should have been the cause, and then the dark part of my life would have cast its shadow beyond myself, and would have fallen on you.”
It was the first time, except at the trial, of her ever hearing him refer to the period of his suffering. It gave her a strange and new sensation while his words were in her ears; and she remembered it long afterwards.
“See!” said the Doctor of Beauvais, raising his hand towards the moon. “I have looked at her from my prison-window, when I could not bear her light. I have looked at her when it has been such torture to me to think of her shining upon what I had lost, that I have beaten my head against my prison-walls. I have looked at her, in a state so dull and lethargic, that I have thought of nothing but the number of horizontal lines I could draw across her at the full, and the number of perpendicular lines with which I could intersect them.” He added in his inward and pondering manner, as he looked at the moon, “It was twenty either way, I remember, and the twentieth was difficult to squeeze in.”
The strange thrill with which she heard him go back to that time, deepened as he dwelt upon it; but, there was nothing to shock her in the manner of his reference. He only seemed to contrast his present cheerfulness and felicity with the dire endurance that was over.
“I have looked at her, speculating thousands of times upon the unborn child from whom I had been rent. Whether it was alive. Whether it had been born alive, or the poor mother’s shock had killed it. Whether it was a son who would some day avenge his father. (There was a time in my imprisonment, when my desire for vengeance was unbearable.) Whether it was a son who would never know his father’s story; who might even live to weigh the possibility of his father’s having disappeared of his own will and act. Whether it was a daughter who would grow to be a woman.”
She drew closer to him, and kissed his cheek and his hand.
“I have pictured my daughter, to myself, as perfectly forgetful of me—rather, altogether ignorant of me, and unconscious of me. I have cast up the years of her age, year after year. I have seen her married to a man who knew nothing of my fate. I have altogether perished from the remembrance of the living, and in the next generation my place was a blank.”
“My father! Even to hear that you had such thoughts of a daughter who never existed, strikes to my heart as if I had been that child.”
“You, Lucie? It is out of the Consolation and restoration you have brought to me, that these remembrances arise, and pass between us and the moon on this last night.—What did I say just now?”
“She knew nothing of you. She cared nothing for you.”
“So! But on other moonlight nights, when the sadness and the silence have touched me in a different way—have affected me with something as like a sorrowful sense of peace, as any emotion that had pain for its foundations could—I have imagined her as coming to me in my cell, and leading me out into the freedom beyond the fortress. I have seen her image in the moonlight often, as I now see you; except that I never held her in my arms; it stood between the little grated window and the door. But, you understand that that was not the child I am speaking of?”
“The figure was not; the—the—image; the fancy?”
“No. That was another thing. It stood before my disturbed sense of sight, but it never moved. The phantom that my mind pursued, was another and more real child. Of her outward appearance I know no more than that she was like her mother. The other had that likeness too—as you have—but was not the same. Can you follow me, Lucie? Hardly, I think? I doubt you must have been a solitary prisoner to understand these perplexed distinctions.”
His collected and calm manner could not prevent her blood from running cold, as he thus tried to anatomise his old condition.
“In that more peaceful state, I have imagined her, in the moonlight, coming to me and taking me out to show me that the home of her married life was full of her loving remembrance of her lost father. My picture was in her room, and I was in her prayers. Her life was active, cheerful, useful; but my poor history pervaded it all.”
“I was that child, my father, I was not half so good, but in my love that was I.”
“And she showed me her children,” said the Doctor of Beauvais, “and they had heard of me, and had been taught to pity me. When they passed a prison of the State, they kept far from its frowning walls, and looked up at its bars, and spoke in whispers. She could never deliver me; I imagined that she always brought me back after showing me such things. But then, blessed with the relief of tears, I fell upon my knees, and blessed her.”
“I am that child, I hope, my father. O my dear, my dear, will you bless me as fervently to-morrow?”
“Lucie, I recall these old troubles in the reason that I have to-night for loving you better than words can tell, and thanking God for my great happiness. My thoughts, when they were wildest, never rose near the happiness that I have known with you, and that we have before us.”
He embraced her, solemnly commended her to Heaven, and humbly thanked Heaven for having bestowed her on him. By-and-bye, they went into the house.
There was no one bidden to the marriage but Mr. Lorry; there was even to be no bridesmaid but the gaunt Miss Pross. The marriage was to make no change in their place of residence; they had been able to extend it, by taking to themselves the upper rooms formerly belonging to the apocryphal invisible lodger, and they desired nothing more.
Doctor Manette was very cheerful at the little supper. They were only three at table, and Miss Pross made the third. He regretted that Charles was not there; was more than half disposed to object to the loving little plot that kept him away; and drank to him affectionately.
So, the time came for him to bid Lucie good night, and they separated. But, in the stillness of the third hour of the morning, Lucie came downstairs again, and stole into his room; not free from unshaped fears, beforehand.
All things, however, were in their places; all was quiet; and he lay asleep, his white hair picturesque on the untroubled pillow, and his hands lying quiet on the coverlet. She put her needless candle in the shadow at a distance, crept up to his bed, and put her lips to his; then, leaned over him, and looked at him.
Into his handsome face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn; but, he covered up their tracks with a determination so strong, that he held the mastery of them even in his sleep. A more remarkable face in its quiet, resolute, and guarded struggle with an unseen assailant, was not to be beheld in all the wide dominions of sleep, that night.
She timidly laid her hand on his dear breast, and put up a prayer that she might ever be as true to him as her love aspired to be, and as his sorrows deserved. Then, she withdrew her hand, and kissed his lips once more, and went away. So, the sunrise came, and the shadows of the leaves of the plane-tree moved upon his face, as softly as her lips had moved in praying for him.
CAPITOLO XVII. Una notte
Mai il sole tramontò con una gloria più luminosa sull’angolo tranquillo a Soho, di quella di una memorabile sera in cui il Dottore e sua figlia sedevano insieme sotto l’albero. Mai la luna si levò con un bagliore più mite su grande Londra, che non quella notte in cui li trovò ancora seduti sotto l’albero, e illuminò i loro volti attraverso le sue foglie.
Lucie doveva sposarsi il giorno dopo. Aveva riservato questa ultima serata a suo padre e sedevano soli sotto l’ippocastano.
“Sei felice, mio caro padre?”
«Proprio così, mia figlia.»
Avevano detto poco, sebbene fossero lì da un lungo periodo. Quando c’era ancora abbastanza luce per lavorare e leggere, lei non si era dedicata al suo solito lavoro né gli aveva letto qualcosa. Si era occupata di entrambe le cose, accanto a lui sotto l’albero, molte e molte volte; ma questa volta non era proprio come tutte le altre, e nulla poteva renderla tale.
«E sono molto felice stasera, caro padre. Sono profondamente felice per l’amore che il Cielo ha così benedetto: il mio amore per Charles e l’amore di Charles per me. Ma se la mia vita non dovesse più essere consacrata a voi, o se il mio matrimonio fosse organizzato in modo tale da separarci, anche solo della lunghezza di alcune di queste strade, sarei più infelice e piena di rimproveri verso me stessa ora di quanto possa dirvi. Anche così, »
Anche così non riusciva a controllare la voce.
Nella triste luce della luna, lei lo strinse al collo e appoggiò il viso sul suo petto. Nella luce lunare che è sempre triste, come la stessa luce del sole — come quella chiamata vita umana — nel suo sorgere e nel suo tramontare.
«Mio caro! Puoi dirmi, questa ultima volta, che sei del tutto, del tutto sicuro che nessun nuovo affetto da parte mia e nessun nuovo dovere mio si fraporrà mai tra noi? Io lo so bene, ma tu lo sai? Nel tuo cuore, ne sei davvero certo?»
Il padre rispose con una fermezza allegra e convinta che a malapena avrebbe potuto assumere: “Ne sono certo, mia cara! E non solo”, aggiunse mentre la baciava teneramente: “il mio futuro è molto più luminoso, Lucie, visto attraverso il tuo matrimonio, di quanto sarebbe stato - anzi, di quanto sia mai stato - senza di esso.”
“Se potessi sperare questo, mio padre! —”
«Credeteci, amore! È proprio così. Considerate quanto sia naturale e semplice, mia cara, che le cose stiano in questo modo. Voi, devota e giovane, non potete apprezzare appieno l’ansia che ho provato nel temere che la vostra vita fosse sprecata—»
Lei mosse la mano verso le sue labbra, ma lui la prese nella sua e ripeté la parola.
«—Sprecata, mia figlia—non dovrebbe essere sprecata, allontanata dall’ordine naturale delle cose—per il mio bene. Il tuo altruismo non può comprendere appieno quanto io ci abbia pensato; ma chiediti solo: come potrebbe la mia felicità essere perfetta mentre la tua è incompleta?»
“Se non avessi mai visto Charles, mio padre, sarei stata felice con te.”
Sorrise al suo inconscio ammettere che sarebbe stata infelice senza aver visto Charles e rispose:
“Mio figlio, l’hai visto e si tratta di Charles. Se non fosse stato Charles, sarebbe stato un altro. O se non ci fosse stato nessun altro, ne avrei fatto io la causa, e allora la parte oscura della mia vita avrebbe proiettato la sua ombra oltre me stesso, e sarebbe caduta su di te.”
Fu la prima volta, tranne che al processo, che lo sentiva accennare al periodo delle sue sofferenze. Le diede una strana e nuova sensazione mentre le sue parole erano ancora nelle sue orecchie; e se ne ricordò a lungo dopo.
«Vedete!» disse il dottore di Beauvais, alzando la mano verso la luna. «L’ho guardata dalla mia finestra della prigione quando non potevo sopportare la sua luce. L’ho guardata quando era tale tortura per me pensare che brillasse su ciò che avevo perso, che mi sono battuto il capo contro le pareti della mia prigione. L’ho guardata in uno stato così ottuso e letargico da non pensare ad altro che al numero di linee orizzontali che avrei potuto tracciare attraverso di essa quando era piena, e al numero di linee verticali con cui le avrei intersecate.» Aggiunse nel suo modo introspettivo e ponderoso mentre guardava la luna, «Erano venti in entrambe le direzioni, mi ricordo, e il ventesimo era difficile da inserire.»
Il singolare brivido con cui lo sentì tornare a quel periodo, si intensificò mentre lui vi soffermava; ma, non c’era nulla che la sconvolgesse nel modo in cui ne parlava. Sembrava solo voler contrapporre il suo attuale benessere e felicità con l’atroce sofferenza ormai passata.
“L’ho guardata, chiedendomi migliaia di volte quale fosse il non nato bambino da cui ero stato strappato. Se era vivo. Se era nato vivo o se lo shock della povera madre l’aveva ucciso. Se era un figlio che un giorno avrebbe vendicato suo padre. (C’era un periodo del mio carcere in cui il mio desiderio di vendetta era insopportabile.) Se fosse stato un figlio che non avrebbe mai conosciuto la storia di suo padre; che forse sarebbe vissuto abbastanza a lungo da valutare la possibilità che suo padre fosse scomparso volontariamente. Se fosse stata una figlia destinata a diventare donna.”
Si avvicinò a lui e lo baciò sulla guancia e sulla mano.
«Mi sono immaginato mia figlia che mi dimenticava completamente — anzi, del tutto ignara di me e inconsapevole della mia esistenza. Ho contato gli anni della sua età, anno dopo anno. L’ho vista sposata a un uomo che non sapeva nulla del mio destino. Sono scomparso per sempre dalla memoria dei vivi, e nella generazione successiva il mio posto era vuoto».
“Mio padre! Anche solo sentir dire che hai avuto tali pensieri per una figlia che non è mai esistita mi colpisce il cuore come se fossi stata io quella bambina.”
“Lei, Lucie? È dalla consolazione e dal ristoro che mi ha portato che questi ricordi sorgono e passano tra noi e la luna in questa ultima notte. — Cosa ho detto poco fa?”
“Non sapeva nulla di te. Non le importava nulla di te.”
“Ebbene! Ma in altre notti di luna piena, quando la tristezza e il silenzio mi hanno toccato in modo diverso - mi hanno colpito con qualcosa che assomigliava a un senso di pace malinconica, come qualsiasi emozione che avesse avuto la dolore per le sue basi potrebbe fare - ho immaginato lei venire da me nella mia cella e condurmi fuori verso la libertà oltre la fortezza. Ho visto spesso la sua immagine alla luce della luna, come ora vedo te; tranne che non l’ho mai tenuta tra le mie braccia; essa stava tra il piccolo finestrino a sbarre e la porta. Ma capisci che quella non era la bambina di cui sto parlando?”
“La figura non era, l’immagine? L’illusione?”
“No. Era un’altra cosa. Si ergeva davanti al mio turbato senso della vista, ma non si muoveva mai. Il fantasma che la mia mente inseguiva era un altro e più reale bambino. Della sua apparenza esteriore so solo che assomigliava a sua madre. Anche l’altra aveva quella somiglianza — come te — ma non era la stessa cosa. Mi segui, Lucie? A malapena, credo? Dubito che tu debba essere stata una prigioniera solitaria per comprendere queste distinzioni intricate.”
Il suo contegno raccolto e calmo non riuscì a impedire che il sangue di lei si ghiacciasse, mentre lui cercava in tal modo di analizzare la sua vecchia condizione.
«In quello stato più pacifico, l’ho immaginata alla luce della luna, venire da me e portarmi fuori per mostrarmi che la casa della sua vita coniugale era piena del suo amorevole ricordo del padre perduto. La mia foto era nella sua stanza, e io ero nelle sue preghiere. La sua vita era attiva, allegra, utile; ma la mia povera storia pervadeva tutto.»
«Ero quel bambino, mio padre, non ero la metà di lui per bontà, ma nel suo amore c’ero io.»
«E mi mostrò i suoi bambini», disse il dottor di Beauvais, «e avevano sentito parlare di me e gli era stato insegnato a compatirmi. Quando passavano davanti a una prigione dello Stato, si tenevano lontani dalle sue mura minacciose, guardavano in su verso le sbarre e parlavano sottovoce. Non avrebbe mai potuto liberarmi; immaginavo che mi riportasse sempre indietro dopo avermi mostrato cose del genere. Ma poi, benedetto dal sollievo delle lacrime, caddi in ginocchio e la benedissi».
«Sono quel bambino, spero, mio padre. Oh, caro mio, caro mio, mi benedirai con altrettanto fervore domani?»
«Lucie, ricordo questi vecchi problemi per il motivo che ho questa sera di amarti più di quanto le parole possano dire e ringraziare Dio della mia grande felicità. I miei pensieri, quando erano più selvaggi, non sono mai saliti vicino alla felicità che ho conosciuto con te e che abbiamo davanti a noi».
La strinse tra le braccia, la raccomandò solennemente al Cielo e ringraziò umilmente il Cielo per avergliela donata. Dopo un po’, entrarono nella casa.
Non era stato invitato al matrimonio nessuno tranne il signor Lorry; non ci sarebbe stata neppure una damigella d’onore se non la magra signorina Pross. Il matrimonio non avrebbe comportato alcun cambiamento nel loro luogo di residenza; erano riusciti ad ampliarlo, prendendo in affitto le stanze superiori che un tempo appartenevano all’inquilino invisibile apocrifo, e non desideravano altro.
Il dottor Manette era molto allegro durante il piccolo cenino. Erano solo in tre a tavola, e la terza era la signorina Pross. Si rammaricò che Charles non ci fosse; fu più che propenso a obiettare contro l’affettuoso piccolo complotto che lo teneva lontano; e brindò affettuosamente a lui.
Così giunse per lui il momento di augurare la buona notte a Lucie e si separarono. Ma, nel silenzio della terza ora del mattino, Lucie scese nuovamente al piano terra e si introdusse nella sua stanza; non era però del tutto libera da timori indefiniti.
Tuttavia tutto era al suo posto; tutto era tranquillo e lui dormiva, con i suoi capelli bianchi pittorescamente sparsi sul cuscino immobile, mentre le sue mani riposavano tranquille sulla coperta. Lei mise la sua inutile candela nell’ombra lontana, si avvicinò furtivamente al suo letto e gli posò le labbra sulle sue; poi si chinò su di lui e lo guardò.
Le acque amare della prigionia avevano scavato il suo bel volto; ma lui le copriva con una determinazione così forte che ne manteneva il controllo anche nel suo sonno. Un volto più notevole nella sua lotta tranquilla, risoluta e cauta contro un aggressore invisibile non si sarebbe potuto vedere in tutto l’ampio dominio del sonno, quella notte.
Lei timidamente posò la mano sul suo caro petto e fece una preghiera affinché potesse sempre essere fedele a lui come il suo amore aspirava ad essere, e come le sue sofferenze meritavano. Poi, ritirò la mano, lo baciò ancora una volta sulle labbra e se ne andò. Così arrivò l’alba, e le ombre delle foglie del platano si mossero sul suo viso, dolcemente come le sue labbra si erano mosse pregando per lui.
CHAPTER XVIII. Nine Days
The marriage-day was shining brightly, and they were ready outside the closed door of the Doctor’s room, where he was speaking with Charles Darnay. They were ready to go to church; the beautiful bride, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross—to whom the event, through a gradual process of reconcilement to the inevitable, would have been one of absolute bliss, but for the yet lingering consideration that her brother Solomon should have been the bridegroom.
“And so,” said Mr. Lorry, who could not sufficiently admire the bride, and who had been moving round her to take in every point of her quiet, pretty dress; “and so it was for this, my sweet Lucie, that I brought you across the Channel, such a baby! Lord bless me! How little I thought what I was doing! How lightly I valued the obligation I was conferring on my friend Mr. Charles!”
“You didn’t mean it,” remarked the matter-of-fact Miss Pross, “and therefore how could you know it? Nonsense!”
“Really? Well; but don’t cry,” said the gentle Mr. Lorry.
“I am not crying,” said Miss Pross; “you are.”
“I, my Pross?” (By this time, Mr. Lorry dared to be pleasant with her, on occasion.)
“You were, just now; I saw you do it, and I don’t wonder at it. Such a present of plate as you have made ’em, is enough to bring tears into anybody’s eyes. There’s not a fork or a spoon in the collection,” said Miss Pross, “that I didn’t cry over, last night after the box came, till I couldn’t see it.”
“I am highly gratified,” said Mr. Lorry, “though, upon my honour, I had no intention of rendering those trifling articles of remembrance invisible to any one. Dear me! This is an occasion that makes a man speculate on all he has lost. Dear, dear, dear! To think that there might have been a Mrs. Lorry, any time these fifty years almost!”
“Not at all!” From Miss Pross.
“You think there never might have been a Mrs. Lorry?” asked the gentleman of that name.
“Pooh!” rejoined Miss Pross; “you were a bachelor in your cradle.”
“Well!” observed Mr. Lorry, beamingly adjusting his little wig, “that seems probable, too.”
“And you were cut out for a bachelor,” pursued Miss Pross, “before you were put in your cradle.”
“Then, I think,” said Mr. Lorry, “that I was very unhandsomely dealt with, and that I ought to have had a voice in the selection of my pattern. Enough! Now, my dear Lucie,” drawing his arm soothingly round her waist, “I hear them moving in the next room, and Miss Pross and I, as two formal folks of business, are anxious not to lose the final opportunity of saying something to you that you wish to hear. You leave your good father, my dear, in hands as earnest and as loving as your own; he shall be taken every conceivable care of; during the next fortnight, while you are in Warwickshire and thereabouts, even Tellson’s shall go to the wall (comparatively speaking) before him. And when, at the fortnight’s end, he comes to join you and your beloved husband, on your other fortnight’s trip in Wales, you shall say that we have sent him to you in the best health and in the happiest frame. Now, I hear Somebody’s step coming to the door. Let me kiss my dear girl with an old-fashioned bachelor blessing, before Somebody comes to claim his own.”
For a moment, he held the fair face from him to look at the well-remembered expression on the forehead, and then laid the bright golden hair against his little brown wig, with a genuine tenderness and delicacy which, if such things be old-fashioned, were as old as Adam.
The door of the Doctor’s room opened, and he came out with Charles Darnay. He was so deadly pale—which had not been the case when they went in together—that no vestige of colour was to be seen in his face. But, in the composure of his manner he was unaltered, except that to the shrewd glance of Mr. Lorry it disclosed some shadowy indication that the old air of avoidance and dread had lately passed over him, like a cold wind.
He gave his arm to his daughter, and took her down-stairs to the chariot which Mr. Lorry had hired in honour of the day. The rest followed in another carriage, and soon, in a neighbouring church, where no strange eyes looked on, Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette were happily married.
Besides the glancing tears that shone among the smiles of the little group when it was done, some diamonds, very bright and sparkling, glanced on the bride’s hand, which were newly released from the dark obscurity of one of Mr. Lorry’s pockets. They returned home to breakfast, and all went well, and in due course the golden hair that had mingled with the poor shoemaker’s white locks in the Paris garret, were mingled with them again in the morning sunlight, on the threshold of the door at parting.
It was a hard parting, though it was not for long. But her father cheered her, and said at last, gently disengaging himself from her enfolding arms, “Take her, Charles! She is yours!”
And her agitated hand waved to them from a chaise window, and she was gone.
The corner being out of the way of the idle and curious, and the preparations having been very simple and few, the Doctor, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross, were left quite alone. It was when they turned into the welcome shade of the cool old hall, that Mr. Lorry observed a great change to have come over the Doctor; as if the golden arm uplifted there, had struck him a poisoned blow.
He had naturally repressed much, and some revulsion might have been expected in him when the occasion for repression was gone. But, it was the old scared lost look that troubled Mr. Lorry; and through his absent manner of clasping his head and drearily wandering away into his own room when they got up-stairs, Mr. Lorry was reminded of Defarge the wine-shop keeper, and the starlight ride.
“I think,” he whispered to Miss Pross, after anxious consideration, “I think we had best not speak to him just now, or at all disturb him. I must look in at Tellson’s; so I will go there at once and come back presently. Then, we will take him a ride into the country, and dine there, and all will be well.”
CAPITOLO XVIII. Nove Giorni
Il giorno delle nozze splendeva luminoso e tutti erano pronti fuori dalla porta chiusa della stanza del dottore, dove lui stava parlando con Charles Darnay. Erano pronti per andare in chiesa: la bella sposa, il signor Lorry e Miss Pross — a cui l’evento, attraverso un graduale processo di riconciliazione con l’inevitabile, sarebbe stato motivo di assoluta felicità se non fosse rimasto quel pensiero che suo fratello Salomone avrebbe dovuto essere lo sposo.
«E così», disse il signor Lorry, che non poteva ammirare abbastanza la sposa, e che si era mosso intorno a lei per osservare ogni dettaglio del suo tranquillo, carino vestito; «e così è stato per questo, mia dolce Lucie, che ti ho portata attraverso la Manica, una bambina! Signore benediciami! Quanto poco pensavo a ciò che stavo facendo! Quanto poco apprezzavo l’obbligo che stavo conferendo al mio amico signor Charles!»
“Non lo pensavi sul serio”, osservò la pragmatica signorina Pross, “e quindi come potevi saperlo? Sciocchezze!”
«Davvero? Bene; ma non piangere», disse il gentile signor Lorry.
“Non sto piangendo”, disse Miss Pross, “siete voi”.
“E io, la mia Pross?” (A questo punto, il signor Lorry si sentiva abbastanza a suo agio con lei da permettersi qualche scherzo di tanto in tanto.)
«Lo eravate poco fa; vi ho visto farlo e non mi meraviglio. Un dono di argenteria come quello che gli avete fatto è sufficiente a portare le lacrime agli occhi di chiunque. Non c’è un cucchiaio o una forchetta nella collezione», disse Miss Pross, «che non mi abbia fatto piangere, la scorsa notte dopo che è arrivata la scatola, fino a quando non sono più riuscita a vederla.»
“Sono estremamente soddisfatto”, disse il signor Lorry, “anche se, sulla mia parola d’onore, non avevo alcuna intenzione di rendere invisibili a chiunque quei piccoli oggetti di ricordo. Caro me! Questa è un’occasione che fa riflettere un uomo su tutto ciò che ha perso. Caro, caro, caro! Pensare che ci potrebbe essere stata una signora Lorry in qualsiasi momento negli ultimi cinquant’anni!”
«Niente affatto!» Da Miss Pross.
«Pensate che non ci sia mai stata una signora Lorry?» chiese il gentiluomo di quel nome.
«Bah!» replicò Miss Pross; «eri un celibe nella tua culla.»
«Bene!» osservò il signor Lorry, sistemando con un sorriso la sua piccola parrucca «sembra probabile anche questo.»
“E tu eri destinato a rimanere scapolo,” continuò Miss Pross, “prima ancora di essere messo nella culla.”
«Allora, penso», disse il signor Lorry, «che mi sia stato trattato in modo molto poco gentile e che avrei dovuto avere voce in capitolo nella scelta del mio modello. Basta! Ora, mia cara Lucie», cingendole dolcemente la vita con un braccio, «li sento muoversi nella stanza accanto, e Miss Pross ed io, come due persone d’affari formali, non vogliamo perdere l’ultima occasione di dirti qualcosa che desideri ascoltare. Lasci tuo buon padre, mia cara, in mani altrettanto sincere e amorevoli delle tue; si prenderà ogni cura immaginabile di lui; durante le prossime due settimane, mentre sarai nel Warwickshire e dintorni, persino la Tellson andrà al muro (parlando relativamente) prima che a lui. E quando, alla fine delle due settimane, verrà a raggiungerti insieme al tuo amato marito, durante il vostro viaggio di altre due settimane nel Galles, potrai dire che lo abbiamo mandato da te in ottima salute e con l’umore più felice. Ora sento i passi di Qualcuno che si avvicina alla porta. Lascia che baci la mia cara ragazza con una benedizione da vecchio scapolo, prima che Qualcuno venga a rivendicare il suo diritto».
Per un momento tenne il bel viso lontano da sé per guardare la ben nota espressione sulla fronte e poi appoggiò i capelli biondi dorati contro la sua piccola parrucca marrone, con una genuina tenerezza e delicatezza che, se cose del genere sono vecchio stile, erano antiche come Adamo.
La porta della stanza del dottore si aprì e lui uscì con Charles Darnay. Era così mortalmente pallido - cosa che non era quando erano entrati insieme - che non c’era traccia di colore sul suo volto. Ma, nella compostezza dei suoi modi, non era cambiato, se si eccettua il fatto che all’occhio acuto del signor Lorry rivelava qualche vaga indicazione che l’antico atteggiamento di evitamento e timore lo aveva recentemente attraversato, come un freddo vento.
Le offrì il braccio alla figlia e la condusse al piano di sotto fino al carro che il signor Lorry aveva noleggiato in onore della giornata. Gli altri li seguirono su un’altra vettura, e presto, in una chiesa vicina dove nessuno sguardo estraneo poteva osservarli, Charles Darnay e Lucie Manette si sposarono felicemente.
Oltre alle rapide lacrime che brillavano tra i sorrisi del piccolo gruppo quando tutto fu finito, alcuni diamanti molto luminosi e scintillanti balenarono sulla mano della sposa, appena liberati dall’oscurità di una delle tasche del signor Lorry. Tornarono a casa per la colazione, e tutto andò bene, e a suo tempo i capelli dorati che si erano mescolati ai bianchi ciuffi del povero calzolaio nella soffitta di Parigi, si mischiarono nuovamente con essi alla luce del sole mattutino, sulla soglia della porta al momento dei saluti.
Fu una separazione difficile, anche se non sarebbe durata a lungo. Ma suo padre la confortò e alla fine disse, staccandosi dolcemente dalle sue braccia che lo stringevano: «Prendila, Charles! È tua!»
E la sua mano agitata li salutò da una finestra di un chaise-longue, e se ne era andata.
Il vicolo era fuori dalla portata di oziosi e curiosi, e i preparativi erano stati molto semplici e pochi, così il Dottore, il signor Lorry e Miss Pross rimasero del tutto soli. Fu quando si ritirarono nell’ombra accogliente dell’antico fresco salone che il signor Lorry notò un grande cambiamento nel Dottore; come se il braccio dorato alzato lì avesse inflitto a lui un colpo avvelenato.
Naturalmente aveva represso molto e si sarebbe potuto aspettare che in lui ci fosse un certo disgusto quando non ci fossero più ragioni per la repressione. Ma era lo sguardo spaventato e smarrito di sempre a turbare il signor Lorry; e attraverso il suo modo distratto di stringersi la testa e vagare tristemente verso la sua stanza, quando salirono al piano superiore, il signor Lorry fu ricordato del venditore di vino Defarge e della cavalcata sotto le stelle.
«Penso», sussurrò alla signorina Pross, dopo averci riflettuto con ansia, «penso che sarebbe meglio non parlargli proprio ora o disturbarlo in alcun modo. Devo fare un salto da Tellson; quindi ci andrò subito e tornerò tra poco. Poi lo porteremo a fare una passeggiata in campagna, ceneremo là e tutto andrà bene.»
It was easier for Mr. Lorry to look in at Tellson’s, than to look out of Tellson’s. He was detained two hours. When he came back, he ascended the old staircase alone, having asked no question of the servant; going thus into the Doctor’s rooms, he was stopped by a low sound of knocking.
“Good God!” he said, with a start. “What’s that?”
Miss Pross, with a terrified face, was at his ear. “O me, O me! All is lost!” cried she, wringing her hands. “What is to be told to Ladybird? He doesn’t know me, and is making shoes!”
Mr. Lorry said what he could to calm her, and went himself into the Doctor’s room. The bench was turned towards the light, as it had been when he had seen the shoemaker at his work before, and his head was bent down, and he was very busy.
“Doctor Manette. My dear friend, Doctor Manette!”
The Doctor looked at him for a moment—half inquiringly, half as if he were angry at being spoken to—and bent over his work again.
He had laid aside his coat and waistcoat; his shirt was open at the throat, as it used to be when he did that work; and even the old haggard, faded surface of face had come back to him. He worked hard—impatiently—as if in some sense of having been interrupted.
Mr. Lorry glanced at the work in his hand, and observed that it was a shoe of the old size and shape. He took up another that was lying by him, and asked what it was.
“A young lady’s walking shoe,” he muttered, without looking up. “It ought to have been finished long ago. Let it be.”
“But, Doctor Manette. Look at me!”
He obeyed, in the old mechanically submissive manner, without pausing in his work.
“You know me, my dear friend? Think again. This is not your proper occupation. Think, dear friend!”
Nothing would induce him to speak more. He looked up, for an instant at a time, when he was requested to do so; but, no persuasion would extract a word from him. He worked, and worked, and worked, in silence, and words fell on him as they would have fallen on an echoless wall, or on the air. The only ray of hope that Mr. Lorry could discover, was, that he sometimes furtively looked up without being asked. In that, there seemed a faint expression of curiosity or perplexity—as though he were trying to reconcile some doubts in his mind.
Two things at once impressed themselves on Mr. Lorry, as important above all others; the first, that this must be kept secret from Lucie; the second, that it must be kept secret from all who knew him. In conjunction with Miss Pross, he took immediate steps towards the latter precaution, by giving out that the Doctor was not well, and required a few days of complete rest. In aid of the kind deception to be practised on his daughter, Miss Pross was to write, describing his having been called away professionally, and referring to an imaginary letter of two or three hurried lines in his own hand, represented to have been addressed to her by the same post.
These measures, advisable to be taken in any case, Mr. Lorry took in the hope of his coming to himself. If that should happen soon, he kept another course in reserve; which was, to have a certain opinion that he thought the best, on the Doctor’s case.
In the hope of his recovery, and of resort to this third course being thereby rendered practicable, Mr. Lorry resolved to watch him attentively, with as little appearance as possible of doing so. He therefore made arrangements to absent himself from Tellson’s for the first time in his life, and took his post by the window in the same room.
He was not long in discovering that it was worse than useless to speak to him, since, on being pressed, he became worried. He abandoned that attempt on the first day, and resolved merely to keep himself always before him, as a silent protest against the delusion into which he had fallen, or was falling. He remained, therefore, in his seat near the window, reading and writing, and expressing in as many pleasant and natural ways as he could think of, that it was a free place.
Doctor Manette took what was given him to eat and drink, and worked on, that first day, until it was too dark to see—worked on, half an hour after Mr. Lorry could not have seen, for his life, to read or write. When he put his tools aside as useless, until morning, Mr. Lorry rose and said to him:
“Will you go out?”
He looked down at the floor on either side of him in the old manner, looked up in the old manner, and repeated in the old low voice:
“Out?”
“Yes; for a walk with me. Why not?”
He made no effort to say why not, and said not a word more. But, Mr. Lorry thought he saw, as he leaned forward on his bench in the dusk, with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, that he was in some misty way asking himself, “Why not?” The sagacity of the man of business perceived an advantage here, and determined to hold it.
Miss Pross and he divided the night into two watches, and observed him at intervals from the adjoining room. He paced up and down for a long time before he lay down; but, when he did finally lay himself down, he fell asleep. In the morning, he was up betimes, and went straight to his bench and to work.
On this second day, Mr. Lorry saluted him cheerfully by his name, and spoke to him on topics that had been of late familiar to them. He returned no reply, but it was evident that he heard what was said, and that he thought about it, however confusedly. This encouraged Mr. Lorry to have Miss Pross in with her work, several times during the day; at those times, they quietly spoke of Lucie, and of her father then present, precisely in the usual manner, and as if there were nothing amiss. This was done without any demonstrative accompaniment, not long enough, or often enough to harass him; and it lightened Mr. Lorry’s friendly heart to believe that he looked up oftener, and that he appeared to be stirred by some perception of inconsistencies surrounding him.
When it fell dark again, Mr. Lorry asked him as before:
“Dear Doctor, will you go out?”
As before, he repeated, “Out?”
“Yes; for a walk with me. Why not?”
This time, Mr. Lorry feigned to go out when he could extract no answer from him, and, after remaining absent for an hour, returned. In the meanwhile, the Doctor had removed to the seat in the window, and had sat there looking down at the plane-tree; but, on Mr. Lorry’s return, he slipped away to his bench.
The time went very slowly on, and Mr. Lorry’s hope darkened, and his heart grew heavier again, and grew yet heavier and heavier every day. The third day came and went, the fourth, the fifth. Five days, six days, seven days, eight days, nine days.
With a hope ever darkening, and with a heart always growing heavier and heavier, Mr. Lorry passed through this anxious time. The secret was well kept, and Lucie was unconscious and happy; but he could not fail to observe that the shoemaker, whose hand had been a little out at first, was growing dreadfully skilful, and that he had never been so intent on his work, and that his hands had never been so nimble and expert, as in the dusk of the ninth evening.
Per il signor Lorry era più facile guardare dentro da Tellson che guardarne fuori. Fu trattenuto per due ore. Quando tornò, salì la vecchia scala da solo, senza fare domande al domestico; entrando così negli appartamenti del dottore, fu fermato da un debole rumore di colpi alla porta.
“Buon Dio!” esclamò con un sussulto. “Cos’è quello?”
Miss Pross, con un’espressione terrorizzata, gli era accanto all’orecchio. «Ohimè! Ohimè! Tutto è perduto!» gridò lei, strappandosi i capelli. «Cosa dirò a Ladybird? Non mi riconosce e sta facendo le scarpe!»
Il signor Lorry disse tutto ciò che poteva per calmarla e poi entrò lui stesso nella stanza del dottore. Il banco era rivolto verso la luce, come lo era stato quando aveva visto il calzolaio al lavoro in precedenza, e la sua testa era china ed era molto occupato.
«Dottor Manette. Mio caro amico, dottor Manette!»
Il dottore lo guardò per un momento - metà interrogativo, metà come se fosse arrabbiato perché gli si era rivolta la parola - e tornò a chinarsi sul suo lavoro.
Si era tolto il cappotto e la giacca; la camicia gli stava aperta sul collo, com’era solito quando svolgeva quel lavoro; e persino l’espressione vecchia, sfinita e spenta del volto gli era tornata. Lavorava duramente - con impazienza - come se avesse il senso di essere stato interrotto.
Il signor Lorry diede un’occhiata al lavoro che aveva tra le mani e osservò che si trattava di una scarpa delle vecchie misure e forme. Ne prese in mano un’altra che era lì accanto, e chiese cosa fosse.
«Un paio di scarpe da passeggio per una giovane signora», borbottò senza alzare lo sguardo. «Avrebbero dovuto essere finite già da tempo. Lasciamo perdere».
«Ma, dottor Manette, guardi me!»
Obbedì nel vecchio modo meccanicamente sottomesso senza interrompere il suo lavoro.
«Mi conoscete, mio caro amico? Pensateci di nuovo. Questa non è la vostra vera occupazione. Riflettete, caro amico!»
Nulla lo avrebbe indotto a parlare di più. Alzò gli occhi per un istante alla volta quando gli fu chiesto di farlo; ma nessuna persuasione riuscì a estorcergli una parola. Lavorava, lavorava e lavorava in silenzio, e le parole cadevano su di lui come sarebbero cadute su un muro senza eco o sull’aria. L’unica luce di speranza che il signor Lorry riuscì a scorgere fu che talvolta alzava furtivamente gli occhi senza essere invitato. In ciò sembrava esserci una debole espressione di curiosità o perplessità, come se stesse cercando di conciliare alcuni dubbi nella sua mente.
Due cose colpirono immediatamente il signor Lorry come importanti sopra ogni altra cosa: la prima era che tutto ciò doveva essere tenuto segreto a Lucie; la seconda, che doveva essere tenuto segreto da tutti coloro che lo conoscevano. In collaborazione con Miss Pross, prese immediatamente provvedimenti per quest’ultima precauzione, facendo sapere che il dottore non era bene e aveva bisogno di qualche giorno di completo riposo. Per aiutare la gentile menzogna da praticare nei confronti della figlia, Miss Pross avrebbe scritto descrivendo come lui fosse stato chiamato professionalmente e facendo riferimento a una lettera immaginaria di due o tre righe affrettate della sua mano, rappresentata come indirizzata a lei con lo stesso postale.
Mr. Lorry adottò queste misure, consigliabili comunque, nella speranza che il giovane tornasse in sé. Se ciò fosse accaduto presto, aveva in serbo un altro piano: quello di esprimere una certa opinione che riteneva la migliore riguardo al caso del Dottore.
Nella speranza della sua guarigione e che questo terzo tentativo potesse così rivelarsi praticabile, il signor Lorry decise di osservarlo attentamente, con la minore apparenza possibile di farlo. Pertanto organizzò di assentarsi da Tellson per la prima volta della sua vita e prese posto accanto alla finestra nella stessa stanza.
Non ci mise molto a scoprire che era peggio che inutile parlargli, perché quando veniva incalzato si preoccupava. Abbandonò quel tentativo il primo giorno e decise di limitarsi a rimanere sempre davanti a lui, come un silenzioso protesto contro l’illusione nella quale era caduto o stava per cadere. Rimase quindi nel suo posto vicino alla finestra, leggendo e scrivendo, ed esprimendo in tutti i modi piacevoli e naturali che gli venivano in mente che quel posto era libero.
Il dottor Manette prese ciò che gli veniva dato da mangiare e bere e continuò a lavorare quel primo giorno finché non fu troppo buio per vedere, continuò a lavorare mezz’ora dopo che il signor Lorry non avrebbe potuto leggere o scrivere nemmeno sotto minaccia di morte. Quando mise da parte gli attrezzi come inutili fino al mattino, il signor Lorry si alzò e gli disse:
“Vuoi uscire?”
Guardò il pavimento ai lati di sé nel vecchio modo, guardò su nel vecchio modo e ripeté con la vecchia voce bassa:
“Fuori?”
“Sì, per una passeggiata con me. Perché no?”
Non fece alcuno sforzo per spiegare il perché e non disse più una parola. Ma Mr Lorry pensò di aver capito, mentre era seduto al buio sul suo banco, con i gomiti sulle ginocchia e la testa tra le mani, che si stava chiedendo in qualche modo confuso: «Perché no?». La perspicacia dell’uomo d’affari percepì un vantaggio in questo e decise di sfruttarlo.
La signorina Pross e lui si divisero la notte in due turni di guardia e lo sorvegliarono a intervalli dalla stanza accanto. Camminò avanti e indietro per un lungo periodo prima di coricarsi; ma, quando alla fine si sdraiò, si addormentò. La mattina seguente, si alzò presto e andò dritto al suo banco a lavorare.
In questo secondo giorno, il signor Lorry lo salutò allegramente chiamandolo per nome e gli parlò di argomenti che ultimamente erano stati familiari a loro due. Non rispose nulla, ma era evidente che sentiva ciò che veniva detto e che ci pensava sopra, anche se in modo confuso. Questo incoraggiò il signor Lorry ad avere Miss Pross con sé nel suo lavoro, diverse volte durante la giornata; in quei momenti, parlarono tranquillamente di Lucie e del padre allora presente, precisamente come al solito, e come se non ci fosse nulla di strano. Questo fu fatto senza alcun accompagnamento dimostrativo, non abbastanza a lungo o spesso da infastidirlo; e alleggerì il cuore amichevole del signor Lorry credere che alzasse lo sguardo più spesso e che sembrava essere turbato da qualche percezione delle incongruenze che lo circondavano.
Quando fu di nuovo buio, il signor Lorry gli chiese come prima:
“Caro dottore, vuole uscire?”
Come prima, ripeté: “Fuori?”
“Sì, per una passeggiata con me. Perché no?”
Questa volta, il signor Lorry finto di uscire quando non riuscì a ottenere risposta da lui e, dopo essere rimasto assente per un’ora, tornò indietro. Nel frattempo, il dottore si era trasferito al posto in finestra e vi era rimasto seduto guardando giù verso l’ippocastano; ma, al ritorno del signor Lorry, si allontanò furtivamente per tornare alla sua panca.
Il tempo passava molto lentamente e la speranza di Mr Lorry si offuscò; il suo cuore divenne nuovamente più pesante e ogni giorno diventava ancora più pesante. Venne il terzo giorno, poi il quarto, il quinto. Cinque giorni, sei giorni, sette giorni, otto giorni, nove giorni.
Con una speranza sempre più oscura e con un cuore che diventava sempre più pesante, il signor Lorry passò attraverso questo periodo ansioso. Il segreto fu ben custodito, e Lucie era ignara e felice; ma non poté fare a meno di notare che il calzolaio, la cui mano all’inizio aveva mostrato qualche difficoltà, stava diventando terribilmente abile, e che non era mai stato così concentrato sul suo lavoro, e che le sue mani non erano mai state così agili ed esperte come al crepuscolo della nona sera.
CHAPTER XIX. An Opinion
Worn out by anxious watching, Mr. Lorry fell asleep at his post. On the tenth morning of his suspense, he was startled by the shining of the sun into the room where a heavy slumber had overtaken him when it was dark night.
He rubbed his eyes and roused himself; but he doubted, when he had done so, whether he was not still asleep. For, going to the door of the Doctor’s room and looking in, he perceived that the shoemaker’s bench and tools were put aside again, and that the Doctor himself sat reading at the window. He was in his usual morning dress, and his face (which Mr. Lorry could distinctly see), though still very pale, was calmly studious and attentive.
Even when he had satisfied himself that he was awake, Mr. Lorry felt giddily uncertain for some few moments whether the late shoemaking might not be a disturbed dream of his own; for, did not his eyes show him his friend before him in his accustomed clothing and aspect, and employed as usual; and was there any sign within their range, that the change of which he had so strong an impression had actually happened?
It was but the inquiry of his first confusion and astonishment, the answer being obvious. If the impression were not produced by a real corresponding and sufficient cause, how came he, Jarvis Lorry, there? How came he to have fallen asleep, in his clothes, on the sofa in Doctor Manette’s consulting-room, and to be debating these points outside the Doctor’s bedroom door in the early morning?
Within a few minutes, Miss Pross stood whispering at his side. If he had had any particle of doubt left, her talk would of necessity have resolved it; but he was by that time clear-headed, and had none. He advised that they should let the time go by until the regular breakfast-hour, and should then meet the Doctor as if nothing unusual had occurred. If he appeared to be in his customary state of mind, Mr. Lorry would then cautiously proceed to seek direction and guidance from the opinion he had been, in his anxiety, so anxious to obtain.
Miss Pross, submitting herself to his judgment, the scheme was worked out with care. Having abundance of time for his usual methodical toilette, Mr. Lorry presented himself at the breakfast-hour in his usual white linen, and with his usual neat leg. The Doctor was summoned in the usual way, and came to breakfast.
So far as it was possible to comprehend him without overstepping those delicate and gradual approaches which Mr. Lorry felt to be the only safe advance, he at first supposed that his daughter’s marriage had taken place yesterday. An incidental allusion, purposely thrown out, to the day of the week, and the day of the month, set him thinking and counting, and evidently made him uneasy. In all other respects, however, he was so composedly himself, that Mr. Lorry determined to have the aid he sought. And that aid was his own.
Therefore, when the breakfast was done and cleared away, and he and the Doctor were left together, Mr. Lorry said, feelingly:
“My dear Manette, I am anxious to have your opinion, in confidence, on a very curious case in which I am deeply interested; that is to say, it is very curious to me; perhaps, to your better information it may be less so.”
Glancing at his hands, which were discoloured by his late work, the Doctor looked troubled, and listened attentively. He had already glanced at his hands more than once.
“Doctor Manette,” said Mr. Lorry, touching him affectionately on the arm, “the case is the case of a particularly dear friend of mine. Pray give your mind to it, and advise me well for his sake—and above all, for his daughter’s—his daughter’s, my dear Manette.”
“If I understand,” said the Doctor, in a subdued tone, “some mental shock—?”
“Yes!”
“Be explicit,” said the Doctor. “Spare no detail.”
Mr. Lorry saw that they understood one another, and proceeded.
“My dear Manette, it is the case of an old and a prolonged shock, of great acuteness and severity to the affections, the feelings, the—the—as you express it—the mind. The mind. It is the case of a shock under which the sufferer was borne down, one cannot say for how long, because I believe he cannot calculate the time himself, and there are no other means of getting at it. It is the case of a shock from which the sufferer recovered, by a process that he cannot trace himself—as I once heard him publicly relate in a striking manner. It is the case of a shock from which he has recovered, so completely, as to be a highly intelligent man, capable of close application of mind, and great exertion of body, and of constantly making fresh additions to his stock of knowledge, which was already very large. But, unfortunately, there has been,” he paused and took a deep breath—“a slight relapse.”
The Doctor, in a low voice, asked, “Of how long duration?”
“Nine days and nights.”
“How did it show itself? I infer,” glancing at his hands again, “in the resumption of some old pursuit connected with the shock?”
“That is the fact.”
“Now, did you ever see him,” asked the Doctor, distinctly and collectedly, though in the same low voice, “engaged in that pursuit originally?”
“Once.”
“And when the relapse fell on him, was he in most respects—or in all respects—as he was then?”
“I think in all respects.”
“You spoke of his daughter. Does his daughter know of the relapse?”
“No. It has been kept from her, and I hope will always be kept from her. It is known only to myself, and to one other who may be trusted.”
The Doctor grasped his hand, and murmured, “That was very kind. That was very thoughtful!” Mr. Lorry grasped his hand in return, and neither of the two spoke for a little while.
“Now, my dear Manette,” said Mr. Lorry, at length, in his most considerate and most affectionate way, “I am a mere man of business, and unfit to cope with such intricate and difficult matters. I do not possess the kind of information necessary; I do not possess the kind of intelligence; I want guiding. There is no man in this world on whom I could so rely for right guidance, as on you. Tell me, how does this relapse come about? Is there danger of another? Could a repetition of it be prevented? How should a repetition of it be treated? How does it come about at all? What can I do for my friend? No man ever can have been more desirous in his heart to serve a friend, than I am to serve mine, if I knew how.
CAPITOLO XIX. Un’opinione
Logorato dalla veglia ansiosa, il signor Lorry si addormentò al suo posto. La decima mattina della sua attesa fu svegliato dal sole che illuminava la stanza dove un sonno profondo lo aveva colto quando era notte fonda.
Si strofinò gli occhi e si svegliò; ma dubitava, quando ebbe fatto ciò, di non essere ancora addormentato. Perché, andando alla porta della stanza del dottore e guardando dentro, percepì che il banco da calzolaio e gli attrezzi erano stati rimessi a posto, e che lo stesso dottore era seduto a leggere alla finestra. Era in abiti mattutini come al solito, e il suo volto (che Mr. Lorry poteva vedere distintamente), sebbene ancora molto pallido, aveva un’espressione calma, studiosa e attenta.
Anche quando si fu convinto di essere sveglio, il signor Lorry rimase per alcuni istanti vertiginosamente incerto se la recente attività di calzolaio non fosse stata un sogno confuso; infatti i suoi occhi gli mostravano l’amico davanti a sé con i soliti vestiti e aspetto, intento alle sue occupazioni consuete; c’era forse qualche segno nel suo campo visivo che la trasformazione di cui aveva un’impressione così forte fosse realmente avvenuta?
Era solo la domanda del suo primo smarrimento e stupore, dato che la risposta era ovvia. Se l’impressione non fosse stata prodotta da una causa reale corrispondente e sufficiente, come mai lui, Jarvis Lorry, si trovava lì? Come mai si era addormentato vestito sul divano dello studio del dottor Manette, e stava discutendo questi punti fuori dalla porta della camera da letto del Dottore all’alba?
Entro pochi minuti, Miss Pross gli stava sussurrando accanto. Se avesse avuto ancora un briciolo di dubbio, le sue parole l’avrebbero necessariamente dissipato; ma a quell’ora aveva la mente lucida e non ne aveva più. Consigliò che lasciassero passare il tempo fino all’ora della colazione, e poi incontrassero il Dottore come se nulla di insolito fosse accaduto. Se lui sembrava essere nel suo solito stato d’animo, Mr. Lorry avrebbe quindi cautamente proceduto a cercare indicazioni e consigli dall’opinione che era stato così ansioso di ottenere nella sua preoccupazione.
Miss Pross, sottomettendosi al suo giudizio, elaborò lo schema con cura. Avendo abbondanza di tempo per il solito metodo meticoloso della sua toeletta, il signor Lorry si presentò all’ora della colazione con la solita biancheria candida e le gambe ben curate. Il dottore fu convocato nel solito modo, e venne a fare colazione.
Per quanto fosse possibile comprenderlo senza oltrepassare quegli approcci delicati e graduali che il signor Lorry riteneva l’unico modo sicuro di procedere, inizialmente suppose che il matrimonio della figlia si fosse svolto ieri. Un’allusione casuale, lanciata appositamente, al giorno della settimana e del mese, lo fece riflettere e contare, e chiaramente lo mise in ansia. In tutti gli altri aspetti, tuttavia, era così tranquillamente se stesso che il signor Lorry decise di chiedere l’aiuto che cercava. E quell’aiuto era proprio lui.
Perciò quando la colazione fu finita e sparecchiata, e lui e il dottore rimasero soli, il signor Lorry disse con sentimento:
«Mio caro Manette, desidero avere la tua opinione, in tutta confidenza, su un caso molto curioso che mi interessa profondamente; cioè, è molto curioso per me; forse, con le tue migliori informazioni potrebbe esserlo meno.»
Guardando le sue mani, che erano imbrattate dal suo recente lavoro, il Dottore apparve turbato e ascoltò con attenzione. Aveva già guardato le sue mani più di una volta.
«Dottor Manette,» disse il signor Lorry, toccandolo affettuosamente sul braccio, «il caso riguarda un amico particolarmente caro. La prego di pensarci su e di darmi un consiglio saggio per suo bene - e soprattutto, per quello di sua figlia - di sua figlia, mio caro Manette.»
“Se ho capito bene,” disse il Dottore con tono sommesso, “qualche shock mentale,?”
“Sì, davvero!”
“Parla chiaro”, disse il dottore. “Non tralasciare alcun dettaglio.”
Il signor Lorry vide che si erano capiti e continuò.
«Mio caro Manette, si tratta di un vecchio shock prolungato, di grande acutezza e gravità per gli affetti, i sentimenti, il—il—come lo esprimete voi—la mente. La mente. Si tratta di uno shock sotto il quale la persona colpita è stata sopraffatta, non si può dire per quanto tempo, perché credo che lui stesso non possa calcolare il tempo, e non ci sono altri mezzi per scoprirlo. Si tratta di uno shock da cui la persona colpita si è ripresa, attraverso un processo che lei stessa non può ricostruire—come l’ho sentito raccontare pubblicamente una volta in modo sorprendente. Si tratta di uno shock da cui si è ripreso così completamente, da essere un uomo molto intelligente, capace di applicarsi intensamente alla mente e di grande sforzo del corpo, e di fare costantemente nuove aggiunte al suo patrimonio di conoscenze, che era già molto ampio. Ma, purtroppo, c’è stato», fece una pausa e prese un respiro profondo—«un leggero ricaduta».
Il dottore chiese sottovoce: “Di quale durata?”
“Nove giorni e notti.”
«Come si è manifestato? Deduco», guardando di nuovo le sue mani, «che sia tornata a galla qualche vecchia passione legata allo choc?»
“Questo è un fatto.”
«Ora, l’ha mai visto», chiese il dottore distintamente e con calma, sebbene con la stessa voce bassa, «dedicarsi a quell’attività originariamente?»
“Una volta.”
«E quando la ricaduta lo colpì, era per molti aspetti — o sotto tutti gli aspetti — come era allora?»
Penso sotto ogni aspetto.
“Avete parlato di sua figlia. Sua figlia sa della ricaduta?”
“Niente affatto. Le è stato tenuto nascosto e spero che lo sarà sempre. Lo sanno solo io e un altro a cui si può fidare.”
Il dottore gli strinse la mano e mormorò: «È stato molto gentile. È stato davvero premuroso!» Il signor Lorry gli restituì la stretta di mano e per un po’ nessuno dei due parlò.
«Ora, mio caro Manette», disse alla fine il signor Lorry nel suo modo più premuroso e affettuoso, «sono solo un uomo d’affari, e non sono adatto a gestire questioni così intricate e difficili. Non possiedo le informazioni necessarie; non ho l’intelligenza giusta; ho bisogno di una guida. Non c’è nessuno al mondo su cui potrei contare per un consiglio corretto come su di te. Dimmi, come è avvenuto questo ricaduta? C’è il rischio che se ne verifichi un’altra? Si può prevenirne una ripetizione? Come si dovrebbe trattare una sua eventuale ripetizione? Come mai si verifica del tutto? Che cosa posso fare per il mio amico? Nessuno potrebbe desiderare più di me nel suo cuore di servire un amico, come io voglio servirne uno, se solo sapessi come.
“But I don’t know how to originate, in such a case. If your sagacity, knowledge, and experience, could put me on the right track, I might be able to do so much; unenlightened and undirected, I can do so little. Pray discuss it with me; pray enable me to see it a little more clearly, and teach me how to be a little more useful.”
Doctor Manette sat meditating after these earnest words were spoken, and Mr. Lorry did not press him.
“I think it probable,” said the Doctor, breaking silence with an effort, “that the relapse you have described, my dear friend, was not quite unforeseen by its subject.”
“Was it dreaded by him?” Mr. Lorry ventured to ask.
“Very much.” He said it with an involuntary shudder.
“You have no idea how such an apprehension weighs on the sufferer’s mind, and how difficult—how almost impossible—it is, for him to force himself to utter a word upon the topic that oppresses him.”
“Would he,” asked Mr. Lorry, “be sensibly relieved if he could prevail upon himself to impart that secret brooding to any one, when it is on him?”
“I think so. But it is, as I have told you, next to impossible. I even believe it—in some cases—to be quite impossible.”
“Now,” said Mr. Lorry, gently laying his hand on the Doctor’s arm again, after a short silence on both sides, “to what would you refer this attack?”
“I believe,” returned Doctor Manette, “that there had been a strong and extraordinary revival of the train of thought and remembrance that was the first cause of the malady. Some intense associations of a most distressing nature were vividly recalled, I think. It is probable that there had long been a dread lurking in his mind, that those associations would be recalled—say, under certain circumstances—say, on a particular occasion. He tried to prepare himself in vain; perhaps the effort to prepare himself made him less able to bear it.”
“Would he remember what took place in the relapse?” asked Mr. Lorry, with natural hesitation.
The Doctor looked desolately round the room, shook his head, and answered, in a low voice, “Not at all.”
“Now, as to the future,” hinted Mr. Lorry.
“As to the future,” said the Doctor, recovering firmness, “I should have great hope. As it pleased Heaven in its mercy to restore him so soon, I should have great hope. He, yielding under the pressure of a complicated something, long dreaded and long vaguely foreseen and contended against, and recovering after the cloud had burst and passed, I should hope that the worst was over.”
“Well, well! That’s good comfort. I am thankful!” said Mr. Lorry.
“I am thankful!” repeated the Doctor, bending his head with reverence.
“There are two other points,” said Mr. Lorry, “on which I am anxious to be instructed. I may go on?”
“You cannot do your friend a better service.” The Doctor gave him his hand.
“To the first, then. He is of a studious habit, and unusually energetic; he applies himself with great ardour to the acquisition of professional knowledge, to the conducting of experiments, to many things. Now, does he do too much?”
“I think not. It may be the character of his mind, to be always in singular need of occupation. That may be, in part, natural to it; in part, the result of affliction. The less it was occupied with healthy things, the more it would be in danger of turning in the unhealthy direction. He may have observed himself, and made the discovery.”
“You are sure that he is not under too great a strain?”
“I think I am quite sure of it.”
“My dear Manette, if he were overworked now—”
“My dear Lorry, I doubt if that could easily be. There has been a violent stress in one direction, and it needs a counterweight.”
“Excuse me, as a persistent man of business. Assuming for a moment, that he was overworked; it would show itself in some renewal of this disorder?”
“I do not think so. I do not think,” said Doctor Manette with the firmness of self-conviction, “that anything but the one train of association would renew it. I think that, henceforth, nothing but some extraordinary jarring of that chord could renew it. After what has happened, and after his recovery, I find it difficult to imagine any such violent sounding of that string again. I trust, and I almost believe, that the circumstances likely to renew it are exhausted.”
He spoke with the diffidence of a man who knew how slight a thing would overset the delicate organisation of the mind, and yet with the confidence of a man who had slowly won his assurance out of personal endurance and distress. It was not for his friend to abate that confidence. He professed himself more relieved and encouraged than he really was, and approached his second and last point. He felt it to be the most difficult of all; but, remembering his old Sunday morning conversation with Miss Pross, and remembering what he had seen in the last nine days, he knew that he must face it.
“The occupation resumed under the influence of this passing affliction so happily recovered from,” said Mr. Lorry, clearing his throat, “we will call—Blacksmith’s work, Blacksmith’s work. We will say, to put a case and for the sake of illustration, that he had been used, in his bad time, to work at a little forge. We will say that he was unexpectedly found at his forge again. Is it not a pity that he should keep it by him?”
The Doctor shaded his forehead with his hand, and beat his foot nervously on the ground.
“He has always kept it by him,” said Mr. Lorry, with an anxious look at his friend. “Now, would it not be better that he should let it go?”
Still, the Doctor, with shaded forehead, beat his foot nervously on the ground.
“You do not find it easy to advise me?” said Mr. Lorry. “I quite understand it to be a nice question. And yet I think—” And there he shook his head, and stopped.
“You see,” said Doctor Manette, turning to him after an uneasy pause, “it is very hard to explain, consistently, the innermost workings of this poor man’s mind. He once yearned so frightfully for that occupation, and it was so welcome when it came; no doubt it relieved his pain so much, by substituting the perplexity of the fingers for the perplexity of the brain, and by substituting, as he became more practised, the ingenuity of the hands, for the ingenuity of the mental torture; that he has never been able to bear the thought of putting it quite out of his reach. Even now, when I believe he is more hopeful of himself than he has ever been, and even speaks of himself with a kind of confidence, the idea that he might need that old employment, and not find it, gives him a sudden sense of terror, like that which one may fancy strikes to the heart of a lost child.”
«Ma non so come iniziare, in un caso del genere. Se la vostra perspicacia, conoscenza ed esperienza potessero mettermi sulla strada giusta, forse riuscirei a fare qualcosa; senza lumi né indicazioni, posso fare ben poco. Vi prego di discuterne con me; vi prego di farmelo vedere un po’ più chiaramente, e insegnatemi come essere un po’ più utile.»
Il dottor Manette rimase seduto a riflettere dopo che furono pronunciate quelle parole appassionate e il signor Lorry non lo incalzò.
«Credo che sia probabile», disse il Dottore, rompendo il silenzio con uno sforzo, «che la ricaduta da lei descritta, mio caro amico, non fosse del tutto imprevista dal suo soggetto.»
«Era forse temuto da lui?» si permise di chiedere il signor Lorry.
«Moltissimo». Lo disse con un brivido involontario.
«Non avete idea di quanto un tale timore pesi sulla mente del sofferente e di quanto sia difficile — quasi impossibile — per lui costringersi a pronunciare una sola parola sull’argomento che lo opprime.»
«Sarebbe», chiese il signor Lorry, «sensibilmente sollevato se riuscisse a convincersi di confidare quella segreta preoccupazione a qualcuno, quando lo assale?»
«Penso di sì. Ma è, come vi ho detto, quasi impossibile. Anzi, credo che in alcuni casi sia del tutto impossibile».
«Ora», disse il signor Lorry, posando di nuovo delicatamente la mano sul braccio del dottore, dopo un breve silenzio da entrambe le parti, «a cosa attribuirebbe questo attacco?»
«Credo», rispose dottor Manette, «che ci fosse stato un forte e straordinario rinnovamento della serie di pensieri e ricordi che fu la prima causa della malattia. Alcune intense associazioni di una natura molto angosciante furono, credo, vividamente richiamate alla mente. È probabile che da tempo ci fosse un timore nascosto nella sua mente, che quelle associazioni sarebbero state richiamate - diciamo, in certe circostanze - diciamo, in una particolare occasione. Ha cercato di prepararsi invano; forse lo sforzo di prepararsi l’ha reso meno capace di sopportarla».
«Si ricorderà di ciò che è accaduto durante la ricaduta?» chiese il signor Lorry, con naturale esitazione.
Il dottore guardò disperatamente intorno nella stanza, scosse la testa e rispose con voce bassa: «Per niente».
«Ora, riguardo al futuro», insinuò il signor Lorry.
«Per quanto riguarda il futuro», disse il Dottore riprendendo la sua fermezza, «avrei grandi speranze. Poiché al Cielo è piaciuto nella sua misericordia restituirlo così presto, avrei grandi speranze. Lui, cedendo sotto la pressione di qualcosa di complesso, a lungo temuto e vagamente previsto da tempo e contro cui si è lottato, e recuperando dopo che la nube era scoppiata e passata, avrei speranza che il peggio sia finito.»
«Bene, bene! Questo è un grande conforto. Sono grato!», disse il signor Lorry.
«Sono grato!», ripeté il dottore, chinando la testa con riverenza.
«Ci sono altri due punti», disse il signor Lorry, «su cui desidero avere istruzioni. Posso continuare?»
«Non potete fare un servigio migliore al vostro amico». Il dottore gli porse la mano.
“Per quanto riguarda il primo. È di natura studiosa e insolitamente energico; si applica con grande fervore all’acquisizione della conoscenza professionale, alla conduzione degli esperimenti, a molte cose. Ora, fa troppo?”
«Non credo. Potrebbe essere caratteristica della sua mente quella di avere sempre un bisogno straordinario di occupazione. Questo potrebbe derivare in parte dalla natura stessa della sua mente e in parte dalle sofferenze che ha patito. Meno era impegnata con cose salutari, più correva il rischio di rivolgersi a quelle nocive. Forse se ne è accorto da solo ed ha fatto questa scoperta».
“Sei sicuro che non sia sotto troppa pressione?”
“Ne sono quasi sicuro.”
“Caro Manette, se ora fosse sovraccarico di lavoro, ”
“Mio caro Lorry, io dubito che ciò possa essere facile. C’è stato uno sforzo violento in una direzione e serve un contrappeso”.
«Mi scusi, come uomo d’affari insistente. Supponendo per un momento che fosse sovraccarico di lavoro, si manifesterebbe con una ripresa di questo disturbo?»
“Non credo. Non credo”, disse dottor Manette con la fermezza della propria convinzione, “che altro che un solo filo di associazioni possa rinnovarla. Penso che, d’ora in poi, nulla se non un qualche strappo eccezionale di quella corda potrebbe rinnovarla. Dopo ciò che è accaduto e dopo la sua guarigione, mi sembra difficile immaginare un tale suono violento di quella corda ancora una volta. Confido, e quasi credo, che le circostanze in grado di rinnovarla siano esaurite.”
Parlò con la timidezza di un uomo che sapeva quanto poco fosse necessario per sconvolgere l’organizzazione delicata della mente, eppure con la sicurezza di un uomo che aveva lentamente conquistato la sua fiducia attraverso le personali sofferenze e difficoltà. Non spettava all’amico minare quella sicurezza. Si dichiarò più sollevato e incoraggiato di quanto non fosse in realtà, e affrontò il suo secondo ed ultimo punto. Sentiva che era il più difficile di tutti; ma, ricordando la sua vecchia conversazione del domenica mattina con Miss Pross, e ricordando ciò che aveva visto negli ultimi nove giorni, sapeva che doveva affrontarlo.
«L’occupazione riprese sotto l’influenza di questa afflizione passeggera, da cui si è così felicemente guarito», disse il signor Lorry, schiarendosi la gola, «la chiameremo, lavoro del fabbro, lavoro del fabbro. Diremo, per ipotesi e a scopo illustrativo, che durante i suoi brutti tempi era solito lavorare in una piccola fucina. Diremo che è stato ritrovato inaspettatamente alla sua fucina. Non è un peccato che la tenga con sé?»
Il dottore si coprì la fronte con una mano e batté il piede a terra nervosamente.
«L’ha sempre tenuta con sé», disse il signor Lorry, lanciando un’occhiata preoccupata al suo amico. «Ora, non sarebbe meglio che la lasciasse andare?»
Tuttavia il dottore, con la fronte aggrottata, batteva nervosamente il piede per terra.
«Non trova facile darmi un consiglio?» disse il signor Lorry. «Capisco perfettamente che si tratti di una questione delicata. Eppure penso, » E lì scosse la testa e si fermò.
“Vede,” disse il dottor Manette, rivolgendosi a lui dopo una pausa inquieta, “è molto difficile spiegare, coerentemente, i meccanismi più intimi della mente di questo povero uomo. Una volta desiderava così terribilmente quell’occupazione e quando finalmente l’ebbe fu un grande sollievo; non c’è dubbio che alleviasse la sua sofferenza molto, sostituendo la perplessità delle dita a quella del cervello, e poi, man mano che si esercitava, l’ingegnosità delle mani a quella della tortura mentale; tanto che non ha mai sopportato il pensiero di metterla completamente fuori portata. Anche adesso, quando credo che abbia più fiducia in se stesso di quanto ne abbia mai avuta e parli persino di sé con una certa sicurezza, l’idea che potrebbe aver bisogno di quel vecchio lavoro e non trovarlo lo riempie improvvisamente di terrore, come quello che si può immaginare colga il cuore di un bambino smarrito.”
He looked like his illustration, as he raised his eyes to Mr. Lorry’s face.
“But may not—mind! I ask for information, as a plodding man of business who only deals with such material objects as guineas, shillings, and bank-notes—may not the retention of the thing involve the retention of the idea? If the thing were gone, my dear Manette, might not the fear go with it? In short, is it not a concession to the misgiving, to keep the forge?”
There was another silence.
“You see, too,” said the Doctor, tremulously, “it is such an old companion.”
“I would not keep it,” said Mr. Lorry, shaking his head; for he gained in firmness as he saw the Doctor disquieted. “I would recommend him to sacrifice it. I only want your authority. I am sure it does no good. Come! Give me your authority, like a dear good man. For his daughter’s sake, my dear Manette!”
Very strange to see what a struggle there was within him!
“In her name, then, let it be done; I sanction it. But, I would not take it away while he was present. Let it be removed when he is not there; let him miss his old companion after an absence.”
Mr. Lorry readily engaged for that, and the conference was ended. They passed the day in the country, and the Doctor was quite restored. On the three following days he remained perfectly well, and on the fourteenth day he went away to join Lucie and her husband. The precaution that had been taken to account for his silence, Mr. Lorry had previously explained to him, and he had written to Lucie in accordance with it, and she had no suspicions.
On the night of the day on which he left the house, Mr. Lorry went into his room with a chopper, saw, chisel, and hammer, attended by Miss Pross carrying a light. There, with closed doors, and in a mysterious and guilty manner, Mr. Lorry hacked the shoemaker’s bench to pieces, while Miss Pross held the candle as if she were assisting at a murder—for which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no unsuitable figure. The burning of the body (previously reduced to pieces convenient for the purpose) was commenced without delay in the kitchen fire; and the tools, shoes, and leather, were buried in the garden. So wicked do destruction and secrecy appear to honest minds, that Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross, while engaged in the commission of their deed and in the removal of its traces, almost felt, and almost looked, like accomplices in a horrible crime.
Sembrava proprio il suo ritratto quando alzò gli occhi verso il volto del signor Lorry.
“Ma non potrebbe essere—attenzione! chiedo informazioni come un uomo d’affari meticoloso che ha a che fare solo con oggetti materiali quali ghinee, scellini e banconote—non potrebbe la conservazione della cosa comportare la conservazione dell’idea? Se la cosa fosse sparita, mio caro Manette, non potrebbe scomparire anche il timore? In breve, non è forse una concessione al dubbio mantenere la fucina?”
Ci fu un altro silenzio.
“Vedi anche tu,” disse il Dottore con voce tremante, “è un compagno così vecchio.”
«Non lo terrei», disse il signor Lorry scuotendo la testa; perché guadagnava in fermezza vedendo che il dottore era turbato. «Gli consiglierei di sacrificarlo. Mi serve solo la sua autorità. Sono sicuro che non fa bene. Su, mi dia la sua autorità, per amor del cielo! Per amore della figlia, mio caro Manette!»
Era davvero strano vedere quale lotta si svolgesse dentro di lui!
«Allora sia fatto in nome suo; io lo approvo. Ma non vorrei toglierlo mentre lui è presente. Lo si rimuova quando non c’è; che possa sentire la mancanza del suo vecchio compagno dopo una sua assenza».
Il signor Lorry accettò prontamente di farlo e la conferenza si concluse. Passarono il giorno in campagna e il dottore fu completamente ristabilito. Nei tre giorni successivi rimase perfettamente bene e al quattordicesimo giorno se ne andò per raggiungere Lucie e suo marito. La precauzione che era stata presa per giustificare il suo silenzio, il signor Lorry gliel’aveva precedentemente spiegata, ed egli aveva scritto a Lucie in conformità con essa, e lei non nutriva sospetti.
La sera del giorno in cui lasciò la casa, il signor Lorry entrò nella sua stanza con un’accetta, una sega, un cacciavite e un martello, accompagnato dalla signorina Pross che portava una luce. Lì, a porte chiuse e in modo misterioso e colpevole, il signor Lorry ridusse in pezzi il banco del calzolaio, mentre la signorina Pross teneva la candela come se stesse assistendo a un omicidio - per cui, infatti, nella sua severità, non era una figura inadatta. La combustione del corpo (precedentemente ridotto in pezzi adatti allo scopo) fu avviata senza indugio nel fuoco della cucina; e gli attrezzi, le scarpe e la pelle furono sepolti nel giardino. Così malvagia appare la distruzione e il segreto alle menti oneste, che il signor Lorry e la signorina Pross, mentre si dedicavano alla commissione del loro atto e all’eliminazione delle sue tracce, quasi sentivano e quasi apparivano come complici in un orribile crimine.
CHAPTER XX. A Plea
When the newly-married pair came home, the first person who appeared, to offer his congratulations, was Sydney Carton. They had not been at home many hours, when he presented himself. He was not improved in habits, or in looks, or in manner; but there was a certain rugged air of fidelity about him, which was new to the observation of Charles Darnay.
He watched his opportunity of taking Darnay aside into a window, and of speaking to him when no one overheard.
“Mr. Darnay,” said Carton, “I wish we might be friends.”
“We are already friends, I hope.”
“You are good enough to say so, as a fashion of speech; but, I don’t mean any fashion of speech. Indeed, when I say I wish we might be friends, I scarcely mean quite that, either.”
Charles Darnay—as was natural—asked him, in all good-humour and good-fellowship, what he did mean?
“Upon my life,” said Carton, smiling, “I find that easier to comprehend in my own mind, than to convey to yours. However, let me try. You remember a certain famous occasion when I was more drunk than—than usual?”
“I remember a certain famous occasion when you forced me to confess that you had been drinking.”
“I remember it too. The curse of those occasions is heavy upon me, for I always remember them. I hope it may be taken into account one day, when all days are at an end for me! Don’t be alarmed; I am not going to preach.”
“I am not at all alarmed. Earnestness in you, is anything but alarming to me.”
“Ah!” said Carton, with a careless wave of his hand, as if he waved that away. “On the drunken occasion in question (one of a large number, as you know), I was insufferable about liking you, and not liking you. I wish you would forget it.”
“I forgot it long ago.”
“Fashion of speech again! But, Mr. Darnay, oblivion is not so easy to me, as you represent it to be to you. I have by no means forgotten it, and a light answer does not help me to forget it.”
“If it was a light answer,” returned Darnay, “I beg your forgiveness for it. I had no other object than to turn a slight thing, which, to my surprise, seems to trouble you too much, aside. I declare to you, on the faith of a gentleman, that I have long dismissed it from my mind. Good Heaven, what was there to dismiss! Have I had nothing more important to remember, in the great service you rendered me that day?”
“As to the great service,” said Carton, “I am bound to avow to you, when you speak of it in that way, that it was mere professional claptrap, I don’t know that I cared what became of you, when I rendered it.—Mind! I say when I rendered it; I am speaking of the past.”
“You make light of the obligation,” returned Darnay, “but I will not quarrel with your light answer.”
“Genuine truth, Mr. Darnay, trust me! I have gone aside from my purpose; I was speaking about our being friends. Now, you know me; you know I am incapable of all the higher and better flights of men. If you doubt it, ask Stryver, and he’ll tell you so.”
“I prefer to form my own opinion, without the aid of his.”
“Well! At any rate you know me as a dissolute dog, who has never done any good, and never will.”
“I don’t know that you ‘never will.’”
“But I do, and you must take my word for it. Well! If you could endure to have such a worthless fellow, and a fellow of such indifferent reputation, coming and going at odd times, I should ask that I might be permitted to come and go as a privileged person here; that I might be regarded as an useless (and I would add, if it were not for the resemblance I detected between you and me, an unornamental) piece of furniture, tolerated for its old service, and taken no notice of. I doubt if I should abuse the permission. It is a hundred to one if I should avail myself of it four times in a year. It would satisfy me, I dare say, to know that I had it.”
“Will you try?”
“That is another way of saying that I am placed on the footing I have indicated. I thank you, Darnay. I may use that freedom with your name?”
“I think so, Carton, by this time.”
They shook hands upon it, and Sydney turned away. Within a minute afterwards, he was, to all outward appearance, as unsubstantial as ever.
When he was gone, and in the course of an evening passed with Miss Pross, the Doctor, and Mr. Lorry, Charles Darnay made some mention of this conversation in general terms, and spoke of Sydney Carton as a problem of carelessness and recklessness. He spoke of him, in short, not bitterly or meaning to bear hard upon him, but as anybody might who saw him as he showed himself.
He had no idea that this could dwell in the thoughts of his fair young wife; but, when he afterwards joined her in their own rooms, he found her waiting for him with the old pretty lifting of the forehead strongly marked.
“We are thoughtful to-night!” said Darnay, drawing his arm about her.
“Yes, dearest Charles,” with her hands on his breast, and the inquiring and attentive expression fixed upon him; “we are rather thoughtful to-night, for we have something on our mind to-night.”
“What is it, my Lucie?”
“Will you promise not to press one question on me, if I beg you not to ask it?”
“Will I promise? What will I not promise to my Love?”
What, indeed, with his hand putting aside the golden hair from the cheek, and his other hand against the heart that beat for him!
“I think, Charles, poor Mr. Carton deserves more consideration and respect than you expressed for him to-night.”
“Indeed, my own? Why so?”
“That is what you are not to ask me. But I think—I know—he does.”
“If you know it, it is enough. What would you have me do, my Life?”
“I would ask you, dearest, to be very generous with him always, and very lenient on his faults when he is not by. I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that there are deep wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding.”
“It is a painful reflection to me,” said Charles Darnay, quite astounded, “that I should have done him any wrong. I never thought this of him.”
“My husband, it is so. I fear he is not to be reclaimed; there is scarcely a hope that anything in his character or fortunes is reparable now. But, I am sure that he is capable of good things, gentle things, even magnanimous things.”
She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man, that her husband could have looked at her as she was for hours.
“And, O my dearest Love!” she urged, clinging nearer to him, laying her head upon his breast, and raising her eyes to his, “remember how strong we are in our happiness, and how weak he is in his misery!”
The supplication touched him home. “I will always remember it, dear Heart! I will remember it as long as I live.”
He bent over the golden head, and put the rosy lips to his, and folded her in his arms. If one forlorn wanderer then pacing the dark streets, could have heard her innocent disclosure, and could have seen the drops of pity kissed away by her husband from the soft blue eyes so loving of that husband, he might have cried to the night—and the words would not have parted from his lips for the first time—
“God bless her for her sweet compassion!”
CAPITOLO XX. Una supplica
Quando la coppia appena sposata tornò a casa, la prima persona che apparve per offrire le sue congratulazioni fu Sydney Carton. Non erano ancora passate molte ore da quando si trovavano a casa quando lui si presentò. Non era migliorato né nei suoi costumi, né nell’aspetto, né nel comportamento; ma c’era in lui un certo aspetto rude di fedeltà che era nuovo all’osservazione di Charles Darnay.
Attese l’occasione per portare Darnay da parte, vicino a una finestra, e di parlargli senza che nessuno li sentisse.
“Signor Darnay,” disse Carton, “vorrei che fossimo amici.”
“Siamo già amici, spero.”
«Voi siete gentile a dirlo come modo di dire; ma io non intendo un modo di dire. In verità, quando dico che desidero che possiamo essere amici, non intendo proprio questo».
Charles Darnay — come era naturale — gli chiese, con tutta la buona umore e cordialità, cosa intendesse dire.
«Sulla mia vita», disse Carton sorridendo, «trovo più facile comprendere questa cosa io stesso che spiegarla a voi. Tuttavia, lasciatemi provare. Ricordate una certa famosa occasione in cui ero più ubriaco di—di quanto non fossi solito?»
«Ricordo una certa famosa occasione in cui mi costrinseste a confessare che avevate bevuto».
«Me lo ricordo anch’io. La maledizione di quelle occasioni grava su di me, perché le ricordo sempre. Spero che un giorno possa essere preso in considerazione, quando tutti i giorni saranno finiti per me! Non allarmatevi; non sto per predicare.»
“Non sono affatto allarmato. La serietà da parte tua non è per nulla preoccupante per me.”
«Ah!» disse Carton con un gesto noncurante della mano, come se lo scacciasse via. «Nel corso di quella particolare occasione in cui ero ubriaco (una tra le tante, come sapete), sono stato insopportabile nel dire che mi piacevate e che non mi piacevate. Vorrei che ne dimenticaste l’accaduto».
“L’ho dimenticato da tempo.”
«Ancora una volta il modo di parlare! Ma, signor Darnay, l’oblio non è così facile per me come lei lo rappresenta essere per sé. Non ho dimenticato affatto e una risposta leggera non mi aiuta a dimenticare».
«Se la risposta era leggera», replicò Darnay, «chiederti perdono per questo. Non avevo altro scopo che quello di mettere da parte una piccola cosa che, a mia sorpresa, sembra darti troppo fastidio. Ti dichiaro sulla parola di gentiluomo che l’ho cancellata dalla mente già da tempo. Buon Dio, c’era qualcosa da dimenticare? Non ho avuto cose più importanti a cui pensare, per il grande servizio che mi hai reso quel giorno?»
«Per quanto riguarda il grande servizio», disse Carton, «sono costretto a confessarvi, quando ne parlate in quel modo, che fu solo un discorso professionale senza senso, non so se mi importasse di quello che sarebbe successo a voi, quando lo resi. — Attenzione! Dico quando lo resi; sto parlando del passato.»
«Voi riducete a nulla l’obbligo», rispose Darnay, «ma non discuterò della vostra leggera risposta.»
«Verità autentica, signor Darnay, mi creda! Mi sono discostato dal mio scopo; stavo parlando del fatto che siamo amici. Ora, lei mi conosce; sa che non sono capace di tutte le più alte e nobili imprese degli uomini. Se ne dubita, chieda a Stryver, e lui glielo dirà.»
“Preferisco farmi la mia opinione senza il suo aiuto.”
«Bene! Comunque mi conosci come un cane dissoluto che non ha mai fatto nulla di buono e non lo farà mai.»
“Non so se ‘non lo farai mai’.”
«Ma io lo faccio e dovete prendermi per quello che dico. Bene! Se poteste sopportare di avere un tale individuo senza valore, e un individuo dalla reputazione così indifferente, che viene e va a orari disparati, chiederei di essere autorizzato ad andare e venire come persona privilegiata qui; che io possa essere considerato un pezzo d’arredamento inutile (e aggiungerei, se non fosse per la somiglianza che ho notato tra voi e me, anche privo di ornamenti), tollerato per il suo vecchio servizio e ignorato. Dubito che abuserei del permesso. È cento a uno se ne approfitterei quattro volte in un anno. Mi accontenterei, oserei dire, sapendo di averlo».
“Vuoi provarci?”
«Questo è un altro modo per dire che mi trovo nella condizione da me indicata. La ringrazio, Darnay. Posso permettermi questa libertà con il suo nome?»
«Penso di sì, Carton, a quest’ora.»
Si strinsero la mano e Sydney si voltò dall’altra parte. Un minuto dopo, a prima vista, era diventato di nuovo tanto inconsistente come sempre.
Quando fu andato via e nel corso di una serata passata con Miss Pross, il Dottore e Mr Lorry, Charles Darnay fece qualche accenno a questa conversazione in termini generali e parlò di Sydney Carton come un problema di disinvoltura e sconsideratezza. Insomma, ne parlò senza amarezza o con l’intenzione di essere severo nei suoi confronti, ma come avrebbe potuto fare chiunque lo vedesse per quello che era.
Non aveva idea che questo potesse albergare nei pensieri della sua giovane e bella moglie; ma quando successivamente la raggiunse nelle loro stanze, la trovò ad aspettarlo con quella vecchia graziosa sollevazione della fronte fortemente marcata.
“Siamo pensierosi questa sera!”, disse Darnay cingendola con un braccio.
“Sì, caro Charles”, con le mani sul suo petto e lo sguardo interrogativo e attento fisso su di lui; “siamo piuttosto pensierosi stasera, perché abbiamo qualcosa in mente stasera.”
“Cosa c’è, mia Lucie?”
“Mi prometti di non farmi una domanda se ti supplico di non chiedermela?”
«Prometterò? Cosa non prometterei al mio amore?»
Che dire poi della sua mano che scostava i capelli dorati dalla guancia e dell’altra premuta sul cuore che batteva per lui!
«Penso, Charles, che il povero signor Carton meriti più considerazione e rispetto di quanto tu gli abbia dimostrato questa sera.»
“Proprio la mia? Perché?”
“Questo è ciò che non devi chiedermi. Ma penso, so che lo fa.”
“Se lo sai, è sufficiente. Cosa vuoi che faccia, mia vita?”
«Ti chiederei, mia cara, di essere sempre molto generosa con lui e molto tollerante verso i suoi difetti quando non è presente. Ti chiederei di credere che ha un cuore che rivela molto, ma molto raramente, e che ci sono ferite profonde in esso. Mia cara, l’ho visto sanguinare».
«È una riflessione dolorosa per me», disse Charles Darnay, del tutto stupito, «che io gli abbia fatto qualcosa di male. Non ho mai pensato questo di lui».
«Mio marito, è così. Temo che non sia possibile riportarlo sulla retta via; c’è a malapena una speranza che qualcosa nel suo carattere o nelle sue fortune possa essere riparato ora. Ma sono sicura che lui è capace di cose buone, gentili, persino magnanime».
Era così bella nella purezza della sua fede in quell’uomo perduto che suo marito avrebbe potuto guardarla così com’era per ore e ore.
“E o, mio caro amore!” lo esortò, stringendosi più vicino a lui, posando la testa sul suo petto e alzando gli occhi verso i suoi, “ricorda quanto siamo forti nella nostra felicità, e quanto è debole lui nella sua miseria!”
La supplica lo colpì nel vivo. «Me ne ricorderò sempre, caro cuore! Me ne ricorderò finché avrò vita».
Si chinò sulla testa dorata e le posò sulle labbra rosate un bacio, stringendola tra le braccia. Se qualche pellegrino solitario che in quel momento stava camminando per le strade buie avesse potuto udire la sua innocente confessione e vedere le lacrime di compassione asciugate con un bacio dal marito dagli occhi azzurri così teneri verso quella moglie, forse avrebbe gridato alla notte — e quelle parole non sarebbero uscite dalle sue labbra per la prima volta —
“Dio la benedica per la sua dolce compassione!”
CHAPTER XXI. Echoing Footsteps
A wonderful corner for echoes, it has been remarked, that corner where the Doctor lived. Ever busily winding the golden thread which bound her husband, and her father, and herself, and her old directress and companion, in a life of quiet bliss, Lucie sat in the still house in the tranquilly resounding corner, listening to the echoing footsteps of years.
At first, there were times, though she was a perfectly happy young wife, when her work would slowly fall from her hands, and her eyes would be dimmed. For, there was something coming in the echoes, something light, afar off, and scarcely audible yet, that stirred her heart too much. Fluttering hopes and doubts—hopes, of a love as yet unknown to her: doubts, of her remaining upon earth, to enjoy that new delight—divided her breast. Among the echoes then, there would arise the sound of footsteps at her own early grave; and thoughts of the husband who would be left so desolate, and who would mourn for her so much, swelled to her eyes, and broke like waves.
That time passed, and her little Lucie lay on her bosom. Then, among the advancing echoes, there was the tread of her tiny feet and the sound of her prattling words. Let greater echoes resound as they would, the young mother at the cradle side could always hear those coming. They came, and the shady house was sunny with a child’s laugh, and the Divine friend of children, to whom in her trouble she had confided hers, seemed to take her child in his arms, as He took the child of old, and made it a sacred joy to her.
Ever busily winding the golden thread that bound them all together, weaving the service of her happy influence through the tissue of all their lives, and making it predominate nowhere, Lucie heard in the echoes of years none but friendly and soothing sounds. Her husband’s step was strong and prosperous among them; her father’s firm and equal. Lo, Miss Pross, in harness of string, awakening the echoes, as an unruly charger, whip-corrected, snorting and pawing the earth under the plane-tree in the garden!
Even when there were sounds of sorrow among the rest, they were not harsh nor cruel. Even when golden hair, like her own, lay in a halo on a pillow round the worn face of a little boy, and he said, with a radiant smile, “Dear papa and mamma, I am very sorry to leave you both, and to leave my pretty sister; but I am called, and I must go!” those were not tears all of agony that wetted his young mother’s cheek, as the spirit departed from her embrace that had been entrusted to it. Suffer them and forbid them not. They see my Father’s face. O Father, blessed words!
Thus, the rustling of an Angel’s wings got blended with the other echoes, and they were not wholly of earth, but had in them that breath of Heaven. Sighs of the winds that blew over a little garden-tomb were mingled with them also, and both were audible to Lucie, in a hushed murmur—like the breathing of a summer sea asleep upon a sandy shore—as the little Lucie, comically studious at the task of the morning, or dressing a doll at her mother’s footstool, chattered in the tongues of the Two Cities that were blended in her life.
The Echoes rarely answered to the actual tread of Sydney Carton. Some half-dozen times a year, at most, he claimed his privilege of coming in uninvited, and would sit among them through the evening, as he had once done often. He never came there heated with wine. And one other thing regarding him was whispered in the echoes, which has been whispered by all true echoes for ages and ages.
No man ever really loved a woman, lost her, and knew her with a blameless though an unchanged mind, when she was a wife and a mother, but her children had a strange sympathy with him—an instinctive delicacy of pity for him. What fine hidden sensibilities are touched in such a case, no echoes tell; but it is so, and it was so here. Carton was the first stranger to whom little Lucie held out her chubby arms, and he kept his place with her as she grew. The little boy had spoken of him, almost at the last. “Poor Carton! Kiss him for me!”
Mr. Stryver shouldered his way through the law, like some great engine forcing itself through turbid water, and dragged his useful friend in his wake, like a boat towed astern. As the boat so favoured is usually in a rough plight, and mostly under water, so, Sydney had a swamped life of it. But, easy and strong custom, unhappily so much easier and stronger in him than any stimulating sense of desert or disgrace, made it the life he was to lead; and he no more thought of emerging from his state of lion’s jackal, than any real jackal may be supposed to think of rising to be a lion. Stryver was rich; had married a florid widow with property and three boys, who had nothing particularly shining about them but the straight hair of their dumpling heads.
These three young gentlemen, Mr. Stryver, exuding patronage of the most offensive quality from every pore, had walked before him like three sheep to the quiet corner in Soho, and had offered as pupils to Lucie’s husband: delicately saying “Halloa! here are three lumps of bread-and-cheese towards your matrimonial picnic, Darnay!” The polite rejection of the three lumps of bread-and-cheese had quite bloated Mr. Stryver with indignation, which he afterwards turned to account in the training of the young gentlemen, by directing them to beware of the pride of Beggars, like that tutor-fellow. He was also in the habit of declaiming to Mrs. Stryver, over his full-bodied wine, on the arts Mrs. Darnay had once put in practice to “catch” him, and on the diamond-cut-diamond arts in himself, madam, which had rendered him “not to be caught.” Some of his King’s Bench familiars, who were occasionally parties to the full-bodied wine and the lie, excused him for the latter by saying that he had told it so often, that he believed it himself—which is surely such an incorrigible aggravation of an originally bad offence, as to justify any such offender’s being carried off to some suitably retired spot, and there hanged out of the way.
CAPITOLO XXI. Echi di passi
Un angolo meraviglioso per gli echi, si è osservato, quell’angolo dove il Dottore viveva. Lucie, sempre intenta a tessere il filo d’oro che legava suo marito, suo padre, lei stessa e la sua vecchia direttrice e compagna in una vita di tranquilla felicità, sedeva nella quieta casa nell’angolo tranquillamente risonante, ascoltando i passi risonanti degli anni.
All’inizio, anche se era una giovane moglie perfettamente felice, capitava che il suo lavoro le cadesse lentamente dalle mani e che i suoi occhi si offuscassero. Perché nelle eco stava arrivando qualcosa, qualcosa di leggero, lontano e ancora appena percettibile, che commuoveva troppo il suo cuore. Speranze e dubbi fluttuanti: speranze in un amore ancora sconosciuto a lei: dubbi sulla sua permanenza sulla terra per godere di quel nuovo piacere, le dividevano il petto. Tra le eco, allora, si levava il suono dei passi alla sua stessa precoce tomba; e i pensieri del marito che sarebbe rimasto così desolato, e che avrebbe pianto tanto per lei, gli salivano agli occhi e si infrangevano come onde.
Quel tempo passò e la sua piccola Lucie giaceva sul suo seno. Poi, tra gli echi che si avvicinavano, c’era il rumore dei suoi piccoli piedi e il suono delle sue parole balbettanti. Che gli echi più grandi risuonassero come volevano, la giovane madre accanto alla culla poteva sempre sentire quelli che arrivavano. Arrivarono, e la casa ombrosa fu illuminata dalla risata di un bambino, e il Divino amico dei bambini, a cui in difficoltà aveva affidato il suo, sembrò prendere tra le braccia il suo bambino, come prese i bambini di un tempo, e lo rese una gioia sacra per lei.
Sempre intenta a filare il filo d’oro che li univa tutti insieme, intessendo l’influenza felice del suo servizio nel tessuto di tutte le loro vite, e facendolo predominare da nessuna parte, Lucie udiva negli echi degli anni solo suoni amichevoli e rassicuranti. Il passo di suo marito era forte e prospero tra essi; quello di suo padre fermo ed eguale. Ecco Miss Pross, in finimenti di corda, che risvegliava gli echi come un purosangue indisciplinato corretto con la frusta, nitrendo e scalpitando sulla terra sotto il platano nel giardino!
Anche quando c’erano suoni di dolore tra gli altri, non erano né duri né crudeli. Anche quando i capelli dorati, come quelli suoi, giacevano in un’aureola sul cuscino intorno al volto consumato di un piccolo ragazzo, e lui diceva con un sorriso radioso: “Caro papà e mamma, mi dispiace molto lasciarvi entrambi e lasciare la mia bella sorellina; ma sono chiamato, e devo andare!”, quelle non erano tutte lacrime di agonia che bagnavano la guancia della sua giovane madre mentre lo spirito si allontanava dal suo abbraccio in cui era stato affidato. Sopportateli e non glielo proibite. Vedono il volto del mio Padre. O Padre, parole benedette!
Così il fruscio delle ali di un Angelo si mescolò con gli altri echi, e non erano del tutto terreni, ma contenevano quel soffio del Cielo. Anche i sospiri dei venti che spiravano sopra una piccola tomba-giardino si univano a loro, e tutti e due erano udibili per Lucie in un mormorio soffocato — come il respiro di un mare d’estate che dorme su una spiaggia sabbiosa — mentre la piccola Lucie, buffamente studiosa nel compito del mattino, o vestendo una bambola sul poggiapiedi della madre, chiacchierava nelle lingue delle Due Città che si fondevano nella sua vita.
Gli Echi rispondevano raramente al passo reale di Sydney Carton. Al massimo una mezza dozzina di volte l’anno, si faceva valere il suo privilegio di entrare senza invito e sedeva tra loro per tutta la sera, come aveva fatto spesso un tempo. Non andava mai da loro con il fiato corto per via del vino. E c’era un’altra cosa riguardante lui che veniva sussurrata dagli echi, una cosa che tutti gli echi veri hanno sussurrato per secoli e secoli.
Nessun uomo ha mai veramente amato una donna, l’ha persa e conosciuta poi con un animo incolpevole sebbene immutato quando lei era moglie e madre, senza che i suoi figli avessero per lui una strana simpatia - una delicata pietà istintiva. Quali fini sensibilità nascoste siano toccate in un caso del genere nessun eco lo dice; ma è così ed era così qui. Carton fu il primo estraneo a cui la piccola Lucie tendesse le sue braccia paffute, e mantenne il suo posto con lei mentre cresceva. Il bambino aveva parlato di lui quasi all’ultimo momento: «Povero Carton! Bacialo per me!»
Il signor Stryver si fece strada nel campo giuridico come un enorme motore che si apre la via attraverso acque torbide acqua, e trascinò dietro di sé il suo utile amico, come una barca trainata a rimorchio. E così come la barca favorita in tal modo è solitamente in cattive condizioni e per lo più sotto acqua, allo stesso modo Sydney conduceva una vita sommersa. Ma l’abitudine facile e forte, purtroppo molto più facile e forte in lui di qualsiasi stimolante senso del merito o della disgrazia, ne fece la vita che doveva condurre; e non pensò mai di emergere dal suo stato di iena del leone, così come si può supporre che nessuna vera iena pensi di diventare un leone. Stryver era ricco; aveva sposato una vedova florida con dei beni e tre ragazzi, che non avevano nulla di particolarmente brillante se non i capelli lisci delle loro teste tonde.
Questi tre giovani signori, il signor Stryver, che emanava un’aria di protezione della qualità più offensiva da ogni poro, avevano camminato davanti a lui come tre pecore fino all’angolo tranquillo a Soho e si erano offerti come allievi al marito di Lucie: dicendo con delicatezza “Ehi! ecco qui tre pezzi di pane-e-formaggio per il tuo picnic nuziale, Darnay!” Il rifiuto cortese dei tre pezzi di pane-e-formaggio aveva gonfiato d’indignazione il signor Stryver, che in seguito ne trasse vantaggio nell’addestramento dei giovani signori, esortandoli a guardarsi dal orgoglio degli accattoni, come quel tizio precettore. Era anche solito declamare alla signora Stryver, sopra il suo vino corposo, sulle arti che la signora Darnay aveva un tempo messo in pratica per “catturarlo”, e sulle arti diamante-che-taglia-diamante in lui stesso, madame, che lo avevano reso “non catturabile”. Alcuni dei suoi familiari del Re’s Bench, che occasionalmente partecipavano al vino corposo e alla bugia, lo scusavano per quest’ultima dicendo che l’aveva raccontata così spesso da crederci lui stesso — il che è sicuramente un aggravante incorreggibile di un reato originariamente grave, tale da giustificare che ogni simile colpevole venga portato via in qualche luogo opportunamente appartato e lì impiccato fuori dai piedi.
These were among the echoes to which Lucie, sometimes pensive, sometimes amused and laughing, listened in the echoing corner, until her little daughter was six years old. How near to her heart the echoes of her child’s tread came, and those of her own dear father’s, always active and self-possessed, and those of her dear husband’s, need not be told. Nor, how the lightest echo of their united home, directed by herself with such a wise and elegant thrift that it was more abundant than any waste, was music to her. Nor, how there were echoes all about her, sweet in her ears, of the many times her father had told her that he found her more devoted to him married (if that could be) than single, and of the many times her husband had said to her that no cares and duties seemed to divide her love for him or her help to him, and asked her “What is the magic secret, my darling, of your being everything to all of us, as if there were only one of us, yet never seeming to be hurried, or to have too much to do?”
But, there were other echoes, from a distance, that rumbled menacingly in the corner all through this space of time. And it was now, about little Lucie’s sixth birthday, that they began to have an awful sound, as of a great storm in France with a dreadful sea rising.
On a night in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine, Mr. Lorry came in late, from Tellson’s, and sat himself down by Lucie and her husband in the dark window. It was a hot, wild night, and they were all three reminded of the old Sunday night when they had looked at the lightning from the same place.
“I began to think,” said Mr. Lorry, pushing his brown wig back, “that I should have to pass the night at Tellson’s. We have been so full of business all day, that we have not known what to do first, or which way to turn. There is such an uneasiness in Paris, that we have actually a run of confidence upon us! Our customers over there, seem not to be able to confide their property to us fast enough. There is positively a mania among some of them for sending it to England.”
“That has a bad look,” said Darnay—
“A bad look, you say, my dear Darnay? Yes, but we don’t know what reason there is in it. People are so unreasonable! Some of us at Tellson’s are getting old, and we really can’t be troubled out of the ordinary course without due occasion.”
“Still,” said Darnay, “you know how gloomy and threatening the sky is.”
“I know that, to be sure,” assented Mr. Lorry, trying to persuade himself that his sweet temper was soured, and that he grumbled, “but I am determined to be peevish after my long day’s botheration. Where is Manette?”
“Here he is,” said the Doctor, entering the dark room at the moment.
“I am quite glad you are at home; for these hurries and forebodings by which I have been surrounded all day long, have made me nervous without reason. You are not going out, I hope?”
“No; I am going to play backgammon with you, if you like,” said the Doctor.
“I don’t think I do like, if I may speak my mind. I am not fit to be pitted against you to-night. Is the teaboard still there, Lucie? I can’t see.”
“Of course, it has been kept for you.”
“Thank ye, my dear. The precious child is safe in bed?”
“And sleeping soundly.”
“That’s right; all safe and well! I don’t know why anything should be otherwise than safe and well here, thank God; but I have been so put out all day, and I am not as young as I was! My tea, my dear! Thank ye. Now, come and take your place in the circle, and let us sit quiet, and hear the echoes about which you have your theory.”
“Not a theory; it was a fancy.”
“A fancy, then, my wise pet,” said Mr. Lorry, patting her hand. “They are very numerous and very loud, though, are they not? Only hear them!”
Headlong, mad, and dangerous footsteps to force their way into anybody’s life, footsteps not easily made clean again if once stained red, the footsteps raging in Saint Antoine afar off, as the little circle sat in the dark London window.
Saint Antoine had been, that morning, a vast dusky mass of scarecrows heaving to and fro, with frequent gleams of light above the billowy heads, where steel blades and bayonets shone in the sun. A tremendous roar arose from the throat of Saint Antoine, and a forest of naked arms struggled in the air like shrivelled branches of trees in a winter wind: all the fingers convulsively clutching at every weapon or semblance of a weapon that was thrown up from the depths below, no matter how far off.
Who gave them out, whence they last came, where they began, through what agency they crookedly quivered and jerked, scores at a time, over the heads of the crowd, like a kind of lightning, no eye in the throng could have told; but, muskets were being distributed—so were cartridges, powder, and ball, bars of iron and wood, knives, axes, pikes, every weapon that distracted ingenuity could discover or devise. People who could lay hold of nothing else, set themselves with bleeding hands to force stones and bricks out of their places in walls. Every pulse and heart in Saint Antoine was on high-fever strain and at high-fever heat. Every living creature there held life as of no account, and was demented with a passionate readiness to sacrifice it.
As a whirlpool of boiling waters has a centre point, so, all this raging circled round Defarge’s wine-shop, and every human drop in the caldron had a tendency to be sucked towards the vortex where Defarge himself, already begrimed with gunpowder and sweat, issued orders, issued arms, thrust this man back, dragged this man forward, disarmed one to arm another, laboured and strove in the thickest of the uproar.
“Keep near to me, Jacques Three,” cried Defarge; “and do you, Jacques One and Two, separate and put yourselves at the head of as many of these patriots as you can. Where is my wife?”
Questi erano tra gli echi ai quali Lucie, a volte pensierosa, a volte divertita e ridacchiante, ascoltava nell’angolo risonante, fino a quando la sua piccola figlia non compì sei anni. Quanto vicini al suo cuore fossero gli echi dei passi del suo bambino e quelli di suo padre, sempre attivo e padrone di sé, e quelli del suo caro marito, non c’è bisogno di dirlo. Né come il più leggero eco della loro unità familiare, guidata da lei con una saggezza ed eleganza così parsimoniosa che era più abbondante di ogni spreco, fosse musica per lei. Né come ci fossero echi tutto intorno a lei, dolci alle sue orecchie, delle molte volte in cui suo padre le aveva detto di averla trovata (se possibile) ancora più devota a lui da sposata che da nubile, e delle molte volte in cui suo marito le aveva detto che nessuna preoccupazione o dovere sembrava dividerle il amore per lui o l’aiuto che gli dava, e le chiedeva “Qual è il segreto magico, mia cara, di essere tutto per tutti noi, come se fossimo solo uno, senza mai sembrare affannata o avere troppo da fare?”
Ma c’erano altri echi, da lontano, che rimbombavano minacciosi nell’angolo per tutto questo spazio di tempo. E fu proprio ora, intorno al sesto compleanno della piccola Lucie, che iniziarono ad avere un suono terribile, come quello di una grande tempesta in Francia con un mare spaventoso che si levava.
Una notte a metà di luglio, millenovecentoottantanove, il signor Lorry tornò tardi da Tellson e si sedette accanto a Lucie e suo marito nella buia finestra. Era una calda, selvaggia notte, e tutti e tre furono ricordati della vecchia domenica sera quando avevano guardato il fulmine dallo stesso posto.
“Cominciavo a pensare”, disse il signor Lorry, spingendo indietro la sua parrucca castana, “che avrei dovuto passare la notte da Tellson. Siamo stati così pieni di lavoro tutto il giorno che non abbiamo saputo cosa fare per prima o dove voltarci. C’è un tale disagio a Parigi che ci è addirittura stata una corsa alla fiducia! I nostri clienti laggiù sembrano proprio incapaci di affidare le loro proprietà a noi abbastanza in fretta. Tra alcuni c’è positivamente una mania per mandarle in Inghilterra.”
“Questo ha un brutto aspetto”, disse Darnay -
«Un brutto affare, dite, caro Darnay? Sì, ma non sappiamo quali ragioni ci siano dietro. La gente è così irragionevole! Alcuni di noi alla Tellson stanno invecchiando e davvero non possiamo essere disturbati fuori dal corso ordinario senza una giusta occasione».
“Comunque,” disse Darnay, “sai quanto sia cupo e minaccioso il cielo.”
«Lo so bene», acconsentì il signor Lorry, cercando di persuadersi che il suo dolce temperamento si fosse inasprito e che lui brontolasse, «ma sono deciso a essere scontroso dopo la lunga giornata di fastidi. Dov’è Manette?»
«Eccolo qui», disse il dottore entrando in quel momento nella stanza buia.
«Sono davvero contenta che tu sia a casa; perché queste corse e presentimenti in cui sono stata immersa tutto il giorno mi hanno resa nervosa senza motivo. Non hai intenzione di uscire, lo spero?»
«No; se vuole giocherò a trictrac con lei», disse il dottore.
«Non credo di essere in grado di farlo, se posso dire la mia opinione. Non sono all’altezza per affrontarti questa sera. Il vassoio del tè è ancora lì, Lucie? Non riesco a vedere».
“Naturalmente, è stato conservato per te.”
«Grazie, mia cara. La preziosa bambina è a letto al sicuro?»
“E dormendo profondamente.”
“Esatto; tutti al sicuro e benissimo! Non capisco perché qualcosa non dovrebbe essere al sicuro e bene qui, grazie a Dio; ma sono stata così sconvolta tutto il giorno, e non sono più giovane come una volta! Il mio tè, caro mio! Grazie. Ora, vieni a prendere posto nel cerchio, e stiamo tranquilli ad ascoltare gli echi di cui hai elaborato la teoria.”
“Non una teoria; era un’idea.”
«Un capriccio, dunque, mia saggia piccola amica», disse il signor Lorry, accarezzandole la mano. «Ma sono davvero numerosi e rumorosi, non è vero? Ascoltali!»
Passi precipitosi, folli e pericolosi che cercano di forzarsi un varco nella vita di chiunque, passi difficili da ripulire se una volta macchiati di rosso, i passi che imperversavano a Saint Antoine lontano, mentre il piccolo gruppo sedeva al buio nella finestra oscura di Londra.
Quella mattina Saint Antoine era stato una vasta massa scura di spaventapasseri che si agitava avanti e indietro, con frequenti lampi di luce sopra le teste ondulate, dove lame d’acciaio e baionette brillavano al sole. Un immenso ruggito sorse dalla gola di Saint Antoine, e una foresta di braccia nude si dibatteva nell’aria come rami secchi di alberi in un vento invernale: tutte le dita stringevano convulsamente ogni arma o similitudine di arma che veniva lanciata dalle profondità sottostanti, non importa quanto lontana.
Chi le distribuiva, da dove provenissero l’ultima volta, dove fossero iniziate, attraverso quale agenzia si torcessero e vibrassero obliquamente, a decine alla volta, sopra la testa della folla, come una specie di fulmine, nessun occhio nella calca avrebbe potuto dirlo; ma i moschetti venivano distribuiti - così come cartucce, polvere e palle, sbarre di ferro e legno, coltelli, asce, picche, ogni arma che l’ingegnosità distratta potesse scoprire o ideare. Persone che non riuscivano a mettere le mani su nient’altro si mettevano con le mani sanguinanti a forzare pietre e mattoni fuori dai loro posti nei muri. Ogni polso e cuore a Saint Antoine era in tensione febbrile e alla temperatura della febbre alta. Ogni creatura vivente lì considerava la vita senza valore ed era demente per una pronta disponibilità passionale a sacrificarla.
Come un vortice di acque bollenti ha un punto centrale, così tutto questo furore ruotava intorno alla bottega del vino di Defarge e ogni goccia umana nel calderone aveva la tendenza ad essere risucchiata verso il vortice dove lo stesso Defarge, già imbrattato di polvere da sparo e sudore, impartiva ordini, distribuiva armi, spingeva indietro quest’uomo, trascinava avanti quell’altro, disarmava uno per armarne un altro, lavorava e si affannava nel cuore del tumulto.
«Restate vicino a me, Giacomo Tre», gridò Defarge; «e voi, Giacomo Uno e Due, separategli e mettetevi alla testa di quanti più patrioti potete. Dov’è mia moglie?»
“Eh, well! Here you see me!” said madame, composed as ever, but not knitting to-day. Madame’s resolute right hand was occupied with an axe, in place of the usual softer implements, and in her girdle were a pistol and a cruel knife.
“Where do you go, my wife?”
“I go,” said madame, “with you at present. You shall see me at the head of women, by-and-bye.”
“Come, then!” cried Defarge, in a resounding voice. “Patriots and friends, we are ready! The Bastille!”
With a roar that sounded as if all the breath in France had been shaped into the detested word, the living sea rose, wave on wave, depth on depth, and overflowed the city to that point. Alarm-bells ringing, drums beating, the sea raging and thundering on its new beach, the attack began.
Deep ditches, double drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. Through the fire and through the smoke—in the fire and in the smoke, for the sea cast him up against a cannon, and on the instant he became a cannonier—Defarge of the wine-shop worked like a manful soldier, Two fierce hours.
Deep ditch, single drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight great towers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. One drawbridge down! “Work, comrades all, work! Work, Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques One Thousand, Jacques Two Thousand, Jacques Five-and-Twenty Thousand; in the name of all the Angels or the Devils—which you prefer—work!” Thus Defarge of the wine-shop, still at his gun, which had long grown hot.
“To me, women!” cried madame his wife. “What! We can kill as well as the men when the place is taken!” And to her, with a shrill thirsty cry, trooping women variously armed, but all armed alike in hunger and revenge.
Cannon, muskets, fire and smoke; but, still the deep ditch, the single drawbridge, the massive stone walls, and the eight great towers. Slight displacements of the raging sea, made by the falling wounded. Flashing weapons, blazing torches, smoking waggonloads of wet straw, hard work at neighbouring barricades in all directions, shrieks, volleys, execrations, bravery without stint, boom smash and rattle, and the furious sounding of the living sea; but, still the deep ditch, and the single drawbridge, and the massive stone walls, and the eight great towers, and still Defarge of the wine-shop at his gun, grown doubly hot by the service of Four fierce hours.
A white flag from within the fortress, and a parley—this dimly perceptible through the raging storm, nothing audible in it—suddenly the sea rose immeasurably wider and higher, and swept Defarge of the wine-shop over the lowered drawbridge, past the massive stone outer walls, in among the eight great towers surrendered!
So resistless was the force of the ocean bearing him on, that even to draw his breath or turn his head was as impracticable as if he had been struggling in the surf at the South Sea, until he was landed in the outer courtyard of the Bastille. There, against an angle of a wall, he made a struggle to look about him. Jacques Three was nearly at his side; Madame Defarge, still heading some of her women, was visible in the inner distance, and her knife was in her hand. Everywhere was tumult, exultation, deafening and maniacal bewilderment, astounding noise, yet furious dumb-show.
“The Prisoners!”
“The Records!”
“The secret cells!”
“The instruments of torture!”
“The Prisoners!”
Of all these cries, and ten thousand incoherences, “The Prisoners!” was the cry most taken up by the sea that rushed in, as if there were an eternity of people, as well as of time and space. When the foremost billows rolled past, bearing the prison officers with them, and threatening them all with instant death if any secret nook remained undisclosed, Defarge laid his strong hand on the breast of one of these men—a man with a grey head, who had a lighted torch in his hand—separated him from the rest, and got him between himself and the wall.
“Show me the North Tower!” said Defarge. “Quick!”
“I will faithfully,” replied the man, “if you will come with me. But there is no one there.”
“What is the meaning of One Hundred and Five, North Tower?” asked Defarge. “Quick!”
“The meaning, monsieur?”
“Does it mean a captive, or a place of captivity? Or do you mean that I shall strike you dead?”
“Kill him!” croaked Jacques Three, who had come close up.
“Monsieur, it is a cell.”
“Show it me!”
“Pass this way, then.”
Jacques Three, with his usual craving on him, and evidently disappointed by the dialogue taking a turn that did not seem to promise bloodshed, held by Defarge’s arm as he held by the turnkey’s. Their three heads had been close together during this brief discourse, and it had been as much as they could do to hear one another, even then: so tremendous was the noise of the living ocean, in its irruption into the Fortress, and its inundation of the courts and passages and staircases. All around outside, too, it beat the walls with a deep, hoarse roar, from which, occasionally, some partial shouts of tumult broke and leaped into the air like spray.
Through gloomy vaults where the light of day had never shone, past hideous doors of dark dens and cages, down cavernous flights of steps, and again up steep rugged ascents of stone and brick, more like dry waterfalls than staircases, Defarge, the turnkey, and Jacques Three, linked hand and arm, went with all the speed they could make. Here and there, especially at first, the inundation started on them and swept by; but when they had done descending, and were winding and climbing up a tower, they were alone. Hemmed in here by the massive thickness of walls and arches, the storm within the fortress and without was only audible to them in a dull, subdued way, as if the noise out of which they had come had almost destroyed their sense of hearing.
“Ebbene! Ecco qui me!” disse madame, calma come sempre, ma senza lavorare ai ferri quel giorno. La mano destra risoluta di madame era occupata con un’ascia, al posto degli abituali strumenti più morbidi, e nella sua cintura c’erano una pistola e un coltello crudele.
“Dove vai, mia moglie?”
«Vengo» disse la signora «con voi per ora. Vedrete che presto sarò alla testa delle donne».
«Allora, via!» gridò Defarge con voce tonante. «Patrioti e amici, siamo pronti! Alla Bastiglia!»
Con un ruggito che sembrava come se tutto il respiro della Francia fosse stato modellato nella parola odiata, il mare vivente salì, onda dopo onda, profondità dopo profondità, e travolse la città fino a quel punto. Le campane d’allarme suonavano, i tamburi battevano, il mare infuriava e tuonava sulla sua nuova spiaggia: l’attacco era iniziato.
Fosse profonde, ponte levatoio doppio, massicci muri di pietra, otto grandi torri, cannoni, moschetti, fuoco e fumo. Attraverso il fuoco e attraverso il fumo—nel fuoco e nel fumo, perché il mare lo aveva scagliato contro un cannone, e in quell’istante era diventato un cannoniere—Defarge della cantina lavorava come un soldato valoroso. Due ore feroci.
Fosso profondo, un solo ponte levatoio, massicci muri di pietra, otto grandi torri, cannoni, moschetti, fuoco e fumo. Un ponte levatoio abbassato! “Lavorate, compagni tutti, lavorate! Lavorate, Jacques Uno, Jacques Due, Jacques Mille, Jacques Duemila, Jacques Venticinquemila; in nome di tutti gli Angeli o dei Diavoli—quello che preferite—lavorate!” Così Defarge della bottega del vino, ancora al suo fucile, che si era scaldato da tempo.
“A me, donne!” gridò madama sua moglie. “Che cosa! Possiamo uccidere altrettanto bene degli uomini quando il posto sarà preso!” E verso di lei, con un grido acuto e assetato, accorsero le donne armate in vari modi, ma tutte ugualmente armate di fame e vendetta.
Cannoni, moschetti, fuoco e fumo; ma ancora il profondo fossato, l’unico ponte levatoio, le massicce mura di pietra e le otto grandi torri. Piccoli spostamenti del mare in tempesta causati dai feriti che cadevano. Armi scintillanti, torce ardenti, carichi fumanti di paglia bagnata, duro lavoro alle barricate vicine in tutte le direzioni, strilli, raffiche, imprecazioni, coraggio senza limiti, boati, schianti e fragori, e il furioso suono del mare vivente; ma ancora il profondo fossato, l’unico ponte levatoio, le massicce mura di pietra, le otto grandi torri, e ancora Defarge della cantina al suo cannone, reso doppiamente caldo dal servizio di quattro ore feroci.
Una bandiera bianca dalla fortezza e un parlay - questo appena percettibile attraverso la furiosa tempesta, nulla di udibile in esso - improvvisamente il mare si alzò immensamente più largo e alto, e trascinò Defarge del vino sopra il ponte levatoio abbassato, oltre le massicce mura esterne di pietra, tra le otto grandi torri arrese!
La forza dell’oceano che lo spingeva era così irresistibile che anche respirare o girare la testa gli risultava impossibile come se stesse lottando tra le onde del Pacifico, finché non fu scaricato nel cortile esterno della Bastiglia. Lì, appoggiato a un angolo di muro, cercò di guardarsi intorno. Jacques Tre era quasi al suo fianco; Madame Defarge, ancora alla testa di alcune delle sue donne, era visibile in lontananza e il coltello le era in mano. Ovunque c’era tumulto, esultanza, confusione assordante e maniacale, un rumore incredibile, ma anche una furiosa pantomima muto.
“I prigionieri!”
“I Registri!”
“Le celle segrete!”
Gli strumenti di tortura!
“I prigionieri!”
Di tutti questi gridi e diecimila incoerenze, “I prigionieri!” era il grido più ripreso dal mare che si riversava dentro come se ci fosse un’eternità di persone, oltre che di tempo e spazio. Quando le onde più avanzate rotolarono via portando con sé gli ufficiali della prigione e minacciandoli tutti di morte istantanea se qualche angolo segreto fosse rimasto nascosto, Defarge posò la sua forte mano sul petto di uno di questi uomini - un uomo dai capelli grigi che aveva una torcia accesa in mano - lo separò dagli altri e lo mise tra sé e il muro.
“Mostratemi la Torre Nord!” disse Defarge. “In fretta!”
«Lo farò fedelmente», rispose l’uomo, «se verrai con me. Ma non c’è nessuno là».
“Qual è il significato di Centocinque, Torre Nord?” chiese Defarge. “Svelto!”
“Significato, signore?”
«Vuoi dire un prigioniero o un luogo di prigionia? O intendi forse che ti ucciderò?»
«Uccidetelo!» gracchiò Jacques Tre, che si era avvicinato.
“Signore, è una cella.”
“Mostramelo!”
“Seguitemi.”
Jacques Terzo, con la sua solita voglia di sangue e chiaramente deluso dal fatto che il dialogo prendesse una piega che non sembrava promettere sanguinosi eventi, veniva trattenuto dal braccio da Defarge come era stato trattenuto dal secondino. Le loro tre teste erano state vicine durante questo breve discorso e avevano fatto del loro meglio per sentire l’uno l’altro: tanto tremendo era il rumore dell’oceano vivente, nella sua irruzione nella Fortezza e nell’inondazione dei cortili, dei passaggi e delle scale. Anche tutto intorno all’esterno, batteva le mura con un profondo ruggito roco, dal quale occasionalmente si staccavano e balzavano in aria come schiuma alcuni urli parziali di tumulto.
Attraverso cupi volteggi dove la luce del giorno non era mai penetrata, oltre porte mostruose di buie tane e gabbie, giù per caverne volti di scale, e poi su ripide aspre salite di pietra e mattoni, più simili a cascate secche che a scale, Defarge, il secondino, e Jacques Tre, uniti mano nella mano, procedevano con tutta la velocità possibile. Di tanto in tanto, specialmente all’inizio, l’inondazione li raggiungeva e li travolgeva; ma quando ebbero finito di scendere e si arrampicavano su una torre, erano soli. Qui, circondati dalla massiccia spessore delle mura e degli archi, la tempesta dentro e fuori la fortezza era percepibile solo in modo sordo e attenuato, come se il rumore da cui erano venuti avesse quasi distrutto il loro senso dell’udito.
The turnkey stopped at a low door, put a key in a clashing lock, swung the door slowly open, and said, as they all bent their heads and passed in:
“One hundred and five, North Tower!”
There was a small, heavily-grated, unglazed window high in the wall, with a stone screen before it, so that the sky could be only seen by stooping low and looking up. There was a small chimney, heavily barred across, a few feet within. There was a heap of old feathery wood-ashes on the hearth. There was a stool, and table, and a straw bed. There were the four blackened walls, and a rusted iron ring in one of them.
“Pass that torch slowly along these walls, that I may see them,” said Defarge to the turnkey.
The man obeyed, and Defarge followed the light closely with his eyes.
“Stop!—Look here, Jacques!”
“A. M.!” croaked Jacques Three, as he read greedily.
“Alexandre Manette,” said Defarge in his ear, following the letters with his swart forefinger, deeply engrained with gunpowder. “And here he wrote ‘a poor physician.’ And it was he, without doubt, who scratched a calendar on this stone. What is that in your hand? A crowbar? Give it me!”
He had still the linstock of his gun in his own hand. He made a sudden exchange of the two instruments, and turning on the worm-eaten stool and table, beat them to pieces in a few blows.
“Hold the light higher!” he said, wrathfully, to the turnkey. “Look among those fragments with care, Jacques. And see! Here is my knife,” throwing it to him; “rip open that bed, and search the straw. Hold the light higher, you!”
With a menacing look at the turnkey he crawled upon the hearth, and, peering up the chimney, struck and prised at its sides with the crowbar, and worked at the iron grating across it. In a few minutes, some mortar and dust came dropping down, which he averted his face to avoid; and in it, and in the old wood-ashes, and in a crevice in the chimney into which his weapon had slipped or wrought itself, he groped with a cautious touch.
“Nothing in the wood, and nothing in the straw, Jacques?”
“Nothing.”
“Let us collect them together, in the middle of the cell. So! Light them, you!”
The turnkey fired the little pile, which blazed high and hot. Stooping again to come out at the low-arched door, they left it burning, and retraced their way to the courtyard; seeming to recover their sense of hearing as they came down, until they were in the raging flood once more.
They found it surging and tossing, in quest of Defarge himself. Saint Antoine was clamorous to have its wine-shop keeper foremost in the guard upon the governor who had defended the Bastille and shot the people. Otherwise, the governor would not be marched to the Hotel de Ville for judgment. Otherwise, the governor would escape, and the people’s blood (suddenly of some value, after many years of worthlessness) be unavenged.
In the howling universe of passion and contention that seemed to encompass this grim old officer conspicuous in his grey coat and red decoration, there was but one quite steady figure, and that was a woman’s. “See, there is my husband!” she cried, pointing him out. “See Defarge!” She stood immovable close to the grim old officer, and remained immovable close to him; remained immovable close to him through the streets, as Defarge and the rest bore him along; remained immovable close to him when he was got near his destination, and began to be struck at from behind; remained immovable close to him when the long-gathering rain of stabs and blows fell heavy; was so close to him when he dropped dead under it, that, suddenly animated, she put her foot upon his neck, and with her cruel knife—long ready—hewed off his head.
The hour was come, when Saint Antoine was to execute his horrible idea of hoisting up men for lamps to show what he could be and do. Saint Antoine’s blood was up, and the blood of tyranny and domination by the iron hand was down—down on the steps of the Hotel de Ville where the governor’s body lay—down on the sole of the shoe of Madame Defarge where she had trodden on the body to steady it for mutilation. “Lower the lamp yonder!” cried Saint Antoine, after glaring round for a new means of death; “here is one of his soldiers to be left on guard!” The swinging sentinel was posted, and the sea rushed on.
The sea of black and threatening waters, and of destructive upheaving of wave against wave, whose depths were yet unfathomed and whose forces were yet unknown. The remorseless sea of turbulently swaying shapes, voices of vengeance, and faces hardened in the furnaces of suffering until the touch of pity could make no mark on them.
But, in the ocean of faces where every fierce and furious expression was in vivid life, there were two groups of faces—each seven in number—so fixedly contrasting with the rest, that never did sea roll which bore more memorable wrecks with it. Seven faces of prisoners, suddenly released by the storm that had burst their tomb, were carried high overhead: all scared, all lost, all wondering and amazed, as if the Last Day were come, and those who rejoiced around them were lost spirits. Other seven faces there were, carried higher, seven dead faces, whose drooping eyelids and half-seen eyes awaited the Last Day. Impassive faces, yet with a suspended—not an abolished—expression on them; faces, rather, in a fearful pause, as having yet to raise the dropped lids of the eyes, and bear witness with the bloodless lips, “THOU DIDST IT!”
Seven prisoners released, seven gory heads on pikes, the keys of the accursed fortress of the eight strong towers, some discovered letters and other memorials of prisoners of old time, long dead of broken hearts,—such, and such—like, the loudly echoing footsteps of Saint Antoine escort through the Paris streets in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine. Now, Heaven defeat the fancy of Lucie Darnay, and keep these feet far out of her life! For, they are headlong, mad, and dangerous; and in the years so long after the breaking of the cask at Defarge’s wine-shop door, they are not easily purified when once stained red.
Il secondino si fermò davanti a una bassa porta, inserì la chiave nella serratura che cigolava, aprì lentamente la porta e disse mentre tutti chinavano il capo ed entravano:
“Uno zero cinque, Torre Nord!”
C’era una piccola finestra senza vetro e con grate fitte ad alto sulla parete, con uno schermo di pietra davanti, così che il cielo si poteva vedere solo chinandosi molto e guardando in su. C’era un piccolo camino, pesantemente sbarrato a pochi piedi all’interno. C’era un mucchio di vecchie ceneri legnose sul focolare. C’era uno sgabello, un tavolo e un letto di paglia. C’erano le quattro pareti annerite e un anello di ferro arrugginito in una di esse.
«Fate scorrere lentamente quella torcia lungo queste pareti, affinché io possa vederle», disse Defarge al secondino.
L’uomo obbedì e Defarge seguì la luce con gli occhi.
“Fermati! Guarda qui, Jacques!”
«A.M.!» gracchiò Jacques Tre mentre leggeva avidamente.
«Alexandre Manette», disse Defarge al suo orecchio, seguendo le lettere con il suo dito indice scuro e profondamente imbrattato di polvere da sparo. «E qui ha scritto “un povero medico”. E fu lui, senza dubbio, a incidere un calendario su questa pietra. Cosa hai in mano? Un piede di porco? Dammi!»
Aveva ancora il calcio del fucile nella propria mano. Scambiò di colpo i due strumenti e, voltandosi verso lo sgabello mangiato dai tarli e il tavolo, li ridusse in pezzi con pochi colpi.
«Alza la luce più in alto!» disse con ira al secondino. «Cerca tra quei frammenti con attenzione, Jacques. E guarda! Ecco il mio coltello», e glielo lanciò; «apri quel letto e cerca nella paglia. Alza la luce più in alto, tu!»
Dopo aver lanciato uno sguardo minaccioso al secondino si arrampicò sul focolare e scrutando su per il camino colpì e forzò i lati con la leva e lavorò alla grata di ferro che lo attraversava. In pochi minuti, un po’ di malta e polvere cominciarono a cadere, e lui si voltò dall’altra parte per evitarle; in mezzo a queste ultime, alle vecchie ceneri del legno e in una fessura nel camino nella quale la sua arma era scivolata o si era insinuata, frugò con cautela.
“Niente nel bosco e niente nella paglia, Jacques?”
“Niente.”
“Raccogliamoli al centro della cella. Ecco! Accendili tu!”
Il secondino accese il piccolo mucchio che prese fuoco alto e caldo. Curvandosi di nuovo per uscire dalla bassa porta ad arco, lo lasciarono bruciare, e tornarono indietro verso il cortile; sembrava che recuperassero la capacità di udire mentre scendevano, fino a quando non furono nuovamente nella rabbiosa folla.
Lo trovarono in tumulto e agitazione, alla ricerca dello stesso Defarge. Saint Antoine chiedeva a gran voce che il suo venditore di vino fosse in prima linea nella guardia del governatore che aveva difeso la Bastiglia e sparato al popolo. Altrimenti, il governatore non sarebbe stato condotto all’Hôtel de Ville per essere giudicato. Altrimenti, il governatore sarebbe fuggito, e il sangue del popolo (improvvisamente di qualche valore, dopo tanti anni di inutilità) non avrebbe trovato vendetta.
Nell’universo ululante di passione e contesa che sembrava avvolgere questo vecchio ufficiale severo, vistoso nel suo cappotto grigio e nella sua decorazione rossa, c’era solo una figura del tutto immobile, ed era quella di una donna. «Guardate, quello è mio marito!» gridò indicandolo. «Guardate Defarge!» Rimase ferma vicino al vecchio ufficiale severo, e rimase ferma vicino a lui; rimase ferma vicino a lui per le strade, mentre Defarge e gli altri lo trascinavano; rimase immobile vicino a lui quando fu portato vicino alla sua destinazione e cominciarono ad attaccarlo da dietro; rimase immobile vicino a lui quando la pioggia di pugnalate e colpi, accumulatasi per tanto tempo, cadde pesantemente; era così vicina a lui quando cadde morto sotto quel peso che, improvvisamente animata, gli mise il piede sul collo e con il suo crudele coltello - da tempo pronto - gli tagliò la testa.
Era giunta l’ora in cui Saint Antoine avrebbe messo in atto la sua orribile idea di issare uomini come lampade per mostrare ciò che poteva essere e fare. Il sangue di Saint Antoine era acceso, mentre il sangue della tirannia e del dominio con mano di ferro era versato - versato sui gradini dell’Hôtel de Ville dove giaceva il corpo del governatore - versato sulla suola della scarpa di Madame Defarge che vi aveva calpestato sopra per immobilizzare il corpo e mutilarlo. «Abbassate quella lampada!» gridò Saint Antoine, dopo aver scrutato intorno in cerca di un nuovo mezzo di morte; «ecco uno dei suoi soldati da lasciare di guardia!». Il sentinella oscillante fu posto al suo posto e il mare continuò a scorrere.
Il mare di acque nere e minacciose, e di distruttive onde che si scontrano l’una contro l’altra, le cui profondità erano ancora inesplorate e le cui forze erano ancora ignote. Il mare implacabile di forme che oscillavano turbolente, voci della vendetta e volti induriti nelle fornaci del dolore fino a quando il tocco della pietà non poté lasciare alcuna traccia su di loro.
Ma nell’oceano di volti dove ogni espressione feroce e furiosa era vivida, c’erano due gruppi di volti — ognuno composto da sette persone — così contrapposti al resto che nessun mare avrebbe mai rotolato portando con sé relitti più memorabili. Sette volti di prigionieri, improvvisamente liberati dalla tempesta che aveva sfondato la loro tomba, furono trasportati in alto: tutti spaventati, tutti persi, tutti stupiti e sbalorditi, come se fosse giunto l’Ultimo Giorno, e coloro che si rallegravano intorno a loro fossero spiriti perduti. C’erano altri sette volti, trasportati più in alto, sette volti morti i cui ciglia cadenti e occhi mezzo visibili attendevano l’Ultimo Giorno. Volto impassibile, ma con un’espressione sospesa — non abolita — su di esso; piuttosto, volti in una pausa terribile, come se dovessero ancora sollevare le palpebre cadenti degli occhi e testimoniare con le labbra senza sangue: “L’hai fatto tu!”
Sette prigionieri rilasciati, sette teste insanguinate infisse su picche, le chiavi della maledetta fortezza delle otto torri forti, alcune lettere scoperte e altri ricordi di prigionieri dei tempi antichi, morti da tempo con il cuore spezzato: tali sono i passi rumorosi che riecheggiano dell’accompagnamento di Saint Antoine per le strade di Parigi a metà luglio del millenovecento ottantanove. Ora, che il Cielo sconfigga la fantasia di Lucie Darnay e tenga questi piedi lontani dalla sua vita! Perché sono impetuosi, folli e pericolosi; e negli anni trascorsi da quando il barile si è rotto alla porta del vinaio Defarge, non sono facilmente purificati una volta macchiati di rosso.
CHAPTER XXII. The Sea Still Rises
Haggard Saint Antoine had had only one exultant week, in which to soften his modicum of hard and bitter bread to such extent as he could, with the relish of fraternal embraces and congratulations, when Madame Defarge sat at her counter, as usual, presiding over the customers. Madame Defarge wore no rose in her head, for the great brotherhood of Spies had become, even in one short week, extremely chary of trusting themselves to the saint’s mercies. The lamps across his streets had a portentously elastic swing with them.
Madame Defarge, with her arms folded, sat in the morning light and heat, contemplating the wine-shop and the street. In both, there were several knots of loungers, squalid and miserable, but now with a manifest sense of power enthroned on their distress. The raggedest nightcap, awry on the wretchedest head, had this crooked significance in it: “I know how hard it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to support life in myself; but do you know how easy it has grown for me, the wearer of this, to destroy life in you?” Every lean bare arm, that had been without work before, had this work always ready for it now, that it could strike. The fingers of the knitting women were vicious, with the experience that they could tear. There was a change in the appearance of Saint Antoine; the image had been hammering into this for hundreds of years, and the last finishing blows had told mightily on the expression.
Madame Defarge sat observing it, with such suppressed approval as was to be desired in the leader of the Saint Antoine women. One of her sisterhood knitted beside her. The short, rather plump wife of a starved grocer, and the mother of two children withal, this lieutenant had already earned the complimentary name of The Vengeance.
“Hark!” said The Vengeance. “Listen, then! Who comes?”
As if a train of powder laid from the outermost bound of Saint Antoine Quarter to the wine-shop door, had been suddenly fired, a fast-spreading murmur came rushing along.
“It is Defarge,” said madame. “Silence, patriots!”
Defarge came in breathless, pulled off a red cap he wore, and looked around him! “Listen, everywhere!” said madame again. “Listen to him!” Defarge stood, panting, against a background of eager eyes and open mouths, formed outside the door; all those within the wine-shop had sprung to their feet.
“Say then, my husband. What is it?”
“News from the other world!”
“How, then?” cried madame, contemptuously. “The other world?”
“Does everybody here recall old Foulon, who told the famished people that they might eat grass, and who died, and went to Hell?”
“Everybody!” from all throats.
“The news is of him. He is among us!”
“Among us!” from the universal throat again. “And dead?”
“Not dead! He feared us so much—and with reason—that he caused himself to be represented as dead, and had a grand mock-funeral. But they have found him alive, hiding in the country, and have brought him in. I have seen him but now, on his way to the Hotel de Ville, a prisoner. I have said that he had reason to fear us. Say all! Had he reason?”
Wretched old sinner of more than threescore years and ten, if he had never known it yet, he would have known it in his heart of hearts if he could have heard the answering cry.
A moment of profound silence followed. Defarge and his wife looked steadfastly at one another. The Vengeance stooped, and the jar of a drum was heard as she moved it at her feet behind the counter.
“Patriots!” said Defarge, in a determined voice, “are we ready?”
Instantly Madame Defarge’s knife was in her girdle; the drum was beating in the streets, as if it and a drummer had flown together by magic; and The Vengeance, uttering terrific shrieks, and flinging her arms about her head like all the forty Furies at once, was tearing from house to house, rousing the women.
The men were terrible, in the bloody-minded anger with which they looked from windows, caught up what arms they had, and came pouring down into the streets; but, the women were a sight to chill the boldest. From such household occupations as their bare poverty yielded, from their children, from their aged and their sick crouching on the bare ground famished and naked, they ran out with streaming hair, urging one another, and themselves, to madness with the wildest cries and actions. Villain Foulon taken, my sister! Old Foulon taken, my mother! Miscreant Foulon taken, my daughter! Then, a score of others ran into the midst of these, beating their breasts, tearing their hair, and screaming, Foulon alive! Foulon who told the starving people they might eat grass! Foulon who told my old father that he might eat grass, when I had no bread to give him! Foulon who told my baby it might suck grass, when these breasts were dry with want! O mother of God, this Foulon! O Heaven our suffering! Hear me, my dead baby and my withered father: I swear on my knees, on these stones, to avenge you on Foulon! Husbands, and brothers, and young men, Give us the blood of Foulon, Give us the head of Foulon, Give us the heart of Foulon, Give us the body and soul of Foulon, Rend Foulon to pieces, and dig him into the ground, that grass may grow from him! With these cries, numbers of the women, lashed into blind frenzy, whirled about, striking and tearing at their own friends until they dropped into a passionate swoon, and were only saved by the men belonging to them from being trampled under foot.
Nevertheless, not a moment was lost; not a moment! This Foulon was at the Hotel de Ville, and might be loosed. Never, if Saint Antoine knew his own sufferings, insults, and wrongs! Armed men and women flocked out of the Quarter so fast, and drew even these last dregs after them with such a force of suction, that within a quarter of an hour there was not a human creature in Saint Antoine’s bosom but a few old crones and the wailing children.
No. They were all by that time choking the Hall of Examination where this old man, ugly and wicked, was, and overflowing into the adjacent open space and streets. The Defarges, husband and wife, The Vengeance, and Jacques Three, were in the first press, and at no great distance from him in the Hall.
“See!” cried madame, pointing with her knife. “See the old villain bound with ropes. That was well done to tie a bunch of grass upon his back. Ha, ha! That was well done. Let him eat it now!” Madame put her knife under her arm, and clapped her hands as at a play.
The people immediately behind Madame Defarge, explaining the cause of her satisfaction to those behind them, and those again explaining to others, and those to others, the neighbouring streets resounded with the clapping of hands. Similarly, during two or three hours of drawl, and the winnowing of many bushels of words, Madame Defarge’s frequent expressions of impatience were taken up, with marvellous quickness, at a distance: the more readily, because certain men who had by some wonderful exercise of agility climbed up the external architecture to look in from the windows, knew Madame Defarge well, and acted as a telegraph between her and the crowd outside the building.
At length the sun rose so high that it struck a kindly ray as of hope or protection, directly down upon the old prisoner’s head. The favour was too much to bear; in an instant the barrier of dust and chaff that had stood surprisingly long, went to the winds, and Saint Antoine had got him!
It was known directly, to the furthest confines of the crowd. Defarge had but sprung over a railing and a table, and folded the miserable wretch in a deadly embrace—Madame Defarge had but followed and turned her hand in one of the ropes with which he was tied—The Vengeance and Jacques Three were not yet up with them, and the men at the windows had not yet swooped into the Hall, like birds of prey from their high perches—when the cry seemed to go up, all over the city, “Bring him out! Bring him to the lamp!”
Down, and up, and head foremost on the steps of the building; now, on his knees; now, on his feet; now, on his back; dragged, and struck at, and stifled by the bunches of grass and straw that were thrust into his face by hundreds of hands; torn, bruised, panting, bleeding, yet always entreating and beseeching for mercy; now full of vehement agony of action, with a small clear space about him as the people drew one another back that they might see; now, a log of dead wood drawn through a forest of legs; he was hauled to the nearest street corner where one of the fatal lamps swung, and there Madame Defarge let him go—as a cat might have done to a mouse—and silently and composedly looked at him while they made ready, and while he besought her: the women passionately screeching at him all the time, and the men sternly calling out to have him killed with grass in his mouth. Once, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; twice, he went aloft, and the rope broke, and they caught him shrieking; then, the rope was merciful, and held him, and his head was soon upon a pike, with grass enough in the mouth for all Saint Antoine to dance at the sight of.
Nor was this the end of the day’s bad work, for Saint Antoine so shouted and danced his angry blood up, that it boiled again, on hearing when the day closed in that the son-in-law of the despatched, another of the people’s enemies and insulters, was coming into Paris under a guard five hundred strong, in cavalry alone. Saint Antoine wrote his crimes on flaring sheets of paper, seized him—would have torn him out of the breast of an army to bear Foulon company—set his head and heart on pikes, and carried the three spoils of the day, in Wolf-procession through the streets.
Not before dark night did the men and women come back to the children, wailing and breadless. Then, the miserable bakers’ shops were beset by long files of them, patiently waiting to buy bad bread; and while they waited with stomachs faint and empty, they beguiled the time by embracing one another on the triumphs of the day, and achieving them again in gossip. Gradually, these strings of ragged people shortened and frayed away; and then poor lights began to shine in high windows, and slender fires were made in the streets, at which neighbours cooked in common, afterwards supping at their doors.
Scanty and insufficient suppers those, and innocent of meat, as of most other sauce to wretched bread. Yet, human fellowship infused some nourishment into the flinty viands, and struck some sparks of cheerfulness out of them. Fathers and mothers who had had their full share in the worst of the day, played gently with their meagre children; and lovers, with such a world around them and before them, loved and hoped.
It was almost morning, when Defarge’s wine-shop parted with its last knot of customers, and Monsieur Defarge said to madame his wife, in husky tones, while fastening the door:
“At last it is come, my dear!”
“Eh well!” returned madame. “Almost.”
Saint Antoine slept, the Defarges slept: even The Vengeance slept with her starved grocer, and the drum was at rest. The drum’s was the only voice in Saint Antoine that blood and hurry had not changed. The Vengeance, as custodian of the drum, could have wakened him up and had the same speech out of him as before the Bastille fell, or old Foulon was seized; not so with the hoarse tones of the men and women in Saint Antoine’s bosom.
CAPITOLO XXII. Il mare continua a salire
Il macilento Saint Antoine aveva avuto solo una settimana di esultanza per ammorbidire la sua piccola porzione di pane duro e amaro, quanto più poteva, con il gusto degli abbracci fraterni e delle congratulazioni, quando Madame Defarge sedeva al suo banco come al solito, presiedendo sui clienti. Madame Defarge non portava alcuna rosa tra i capelli, perché la grande fratellanza degli Spie era diventata, anche in una sola settimana, estremamente cauta nel fidarsi delle mercè del santo. Le lampade lungo le sue strade oscillavano con un movimento minacciosamente elastico.
Madame Defarge, con le braccia incrociate, sedeva nella luce e nel calore del mattino, contemplando la cantina e la strada. In entrambi i luoghi c’erano diversi gruppi di oziosi, squallidi e miserabili, ma ora con un manifesto senso di potere insediato sulla loro miseria. Il berretto più logoro, storto sulla testa più infelice, aveva questo significato contorto: “So quanto è diventato difficile per me, chi lo indossa, sostenere la vita in me; ma sapete quanto è diventato facile per me, chi lo indossa, distruggere la vita in voi?” Ogni braccio magro e nudo, che prima era senza lavoro, aveva ora sempre pronto questo compito, di poter colpire. Le dita delle donne che facevano a maglia erano maliziose, con l’esperienza che potevano strappare. C’era un cambiamento nell’aspetto di Saint Antoine; l’immagine era stata martellata in questo per centinaia di anni, e gli ultimi colpi decisivi avevano avuto un grande impatto sull’espressione.
La signora Defarge sedeva osservandola con quell’approvazione repressa che si poteva desiderare in una capo delle donne di Saint Antoine. Una delle sue compagne stava lavorando a maglia accanto a lei. Bassa, piuttosto paffuta, moglie di un emaciato droghiere e madre di due bambini, questa luogotenente si era già guadagnata il nome affettuoso di La Vendetta.
“Silenzio!” disse La Vendetta. “Ascolta, chi arriva?”
Come se una miccia di polvere fosse stata posta dal confine più esterno del quartiere Saint Antoine fino alla porta della cantina e fosse stata improvvisamente accesa, un mormorio che si diffondeva rapidamente arrivò in gran fretta.
«È Defarge», disse la signora. «Silenzio, patrioti!»
Defarge entrò senza fiato, si tolse un berretto rosso che portava e guardò intorno! «Ascoltate, dappertutto!» ripeté madame. «Ascoltatelo!» Defarge rimase in piedi, ansimante, contro uno sfondo di occhi avidi e bocche aperte formatosi fuori dalla porta; tutti quelli all’interno del vinaio si erano alzati in piedi.
“Dimmi allora, mio marito. Cosa c’è?”
“Novità dall’altro mondo!”
“Come allora?” gridò la signora, con disprezzo. “L’altro mondo?”
«Tutti qui ricordano il vecchio Foulon che disse alla gente affamata di mangiare erba e morì ed andò all’Inferno?»
«Tutti!» da tutte le gole.
“La notizia riguarda lui. È tra noi!”
“Tra noi!” di nuovo dalla gola universale. “E morto?”
“Non morto! Ci temeva così tanto — e con ragione — che si fece rappresentare come morto e celebrò un grandioso funerale finto. Ma l’hanno trovato vivo, nascosto in campagna, e lo hanno riportato qui. L’ho appena visto mentre veniva portato prigioniero all’Hôtel de Ville. Ho detto che aveva ragione di temerci. Dite tutto! Aveva ragione?”
Miserabile vecchio peccatore di più di settant’anni, se non lo avesse mai saputo, l’avrebbe saputo nel profondo del cuore se avesse potuto sentire il grido in risposta.
Seguì un momento di profondo silenzio. Defarge e sua moglie si guardarono con fermezza. La Vendetta si chinò, e il rumore di una cassa fu udito mentre la muoveva ai suoi piedi dietro al bancone.
“Patrioti!” disse Defarge con voce decisa, “siamo pronti?”
Il coltello di Madame Defarge fu immediatamente nella sua cintura; il tamburo batteva per le strade, come se esso e un tamburino fossero volati insieme per magia; e La Vendetta, emettendo terrificanti urla e agitando le braccia sopra la testa come tutte e quaranta le Furie contemporaneamente, stava correndo da una casa all’altra, svegliando le donne.
Gli uomini erano terribili nella loro rabbia sanguinaria mentre guardavano dalle finestre, afferravano le armi che avevano e si riversavano nelle strade; ma le donne erano una vista da gelare il più coraggioso. Dalle occupazioni domestiche cui la loro nuda povertà poteva dedicarsi, dai loro bambini, dai loro anziani e malati accovacciati sul terreno spoglio affamati e nudi, uscivano con i capelli che scendevano in disordine, incitandosi a vicenda e se stesse alla pazzia con le grida più selvagge e gesti altrettanto violenti. Il villano Foulon è stato preso, mia sorella! Lo vecchio Foulon è stato preso, mamma mia! L’empio Foulon è stato preso, figlia mia! Poi una ventina di altre donne si unì a loro battendosi il petto, strappandosi i capelli e gridando: “Foulon vivo! Foulon che ha detto alla gente affamata che poteva mangiare l’erba! Foulon che ha detto al mio vecchio padre di mangiare l’erba quando non avevo pane da dargli! Foulon che ha detto al mio bambino di succhiare l’erba quando queste mammelle erano secche per la fame! O madre di Dio, questo Foulon! O cielo del nostro dolore! Ascoltami, mio bambino morto e mio padre avvizzito: giuro sulle mie ginocchia, su queste pietre, di vendicarvi con Foulon! Mariti, fratelli e giovani uomini, datemi il sangue di Foulon, datemi la testa di Foulon, datemi il cuore di Foulon, datemi il corpo e l’anima di Foulon, strappate Foulon a pezzi e scavategli una fossa nel terreno affinché possa crescere erba da lui!”. Con questi gridi, molte donne, frustate in una cieca frenesia, si agitavano colpendo e graffiando le proprie amiche fino a svenire per la passione, e furono salvate solo dagli uomini che le accompagnavano dall’essere calpestate.
Tuttavia non si perse un solo istante; neppure uno! Questo Foulon era all’Hôtel de Ville e poteva essere liberato. Mai, se Saint-Antoine conosceva le proprie sofferenze, insulti e ingiustizie! Uomini e donne armate uscirono dal quartiere così in fretta e trascinarono anche queste ultime canaglie dietro di loro con tale forza d’attrazione che entro un quarto d’ora non c’era più una creatura umana nel cuore di Saint-Antoine, a parte alcune vecchie streghe e i bambini che piangevano.
No. Erano tutti a quell’ora che affollavano la Sala dell’esame dove si trovava questo vecchio uomo brutto e malvagio, e traboccavano nello spazio aperto adiacente e nelle strade. I Defarge, marito e moglie, La Vendetta e Jacques Tre erano nella prima fila e non troppo lontani da lui nella Sala.
«Guardate!» esclamò la signora, indicando con il coltello. «Guardate quel vecchio brutto legato con le corde. È stato bene fatto mettergli un fascio d’erba sulla schiena. Ah ah! È stato bene fatto. Ora può mangiarla!» La signora mise il coltello sotto il braccio e batté le mani come se fosse al teatro.
La gente immediatamente dietro alla signora Defarge, spiegando la causa della sua soddisfazione a quelli dietro di loro, e questi ultimi che spiegavano ancora ad altri, e questi ad altri ancora, fece risuonare le strade vicine con il battito delle mani. Allo stesso modo, durante due o tre ore di discorsi monotoni e la separazione di molti boccali di parole, le frequenti espressioni d’impazienza della signora Defarge furono riprese, con una rapidità straordinaria, a distanza: tanto più facilmente in quanto certi uomini che erano riusciti, grazie ad un incredibile esercizio di agilità, a scalare l’architettura esterna per guardare dentro dalle finestre, conoscevano la signora Defarge bene, e fungevano da telegrafo tra lei e la folla fuori dall’edificio.
Alla fine il sole si alzò così alto che lanciò un raggio benevolo come di speranza o protezione direttamente sulla testa del vecchio prigioniero. La grazia era troppo grande da sopportare; in un istante la barriera di polvere e crusca che aveva resistito sorprendentemente a lungo, volò via al vento, e Saint Antoine lo ebbe!
Era noto direttamente fino ai confini più remoti della folla. Defarge non aveva fatto altro che saltare oltre una ringhiera e un tavolo, e avvolgere il povero disgraziato in un abbraccio mortale — Madame Defarge non aveva fatto altro che seguirlo e girare la mano su una delle corde con cui era legato — La Vendetta e Jacques Tre non erano ancora arrivati, e gli uomini alle finestre non si erano ancora abbattuti nella Sala come uccelli rapaci dalle loro alte perche — quando il grido sembrò levarsi da tutta la città, “Portatelo fuori! Portatelo alla lampada!”
In basso e in alto, con la testa per prima sui gradini dell’edificio; ora sulle ginocchia, ora in piedi, ora supino; trascinato, colpito, soffocato dai ciuffi d’erba e paglia che gli venivano spinti in faccia da centinaia di mani; lacerato, contuso, ansante, sanguinante, ma sempre implorando pietà; ora pieno di violenta agonia nell’azione, con uno spazio libero intorno a lui mentre la gente si tirava indietro per poter vedere; ora un tronco di legno morto trascinato attraverso una foresta di gambe; fu trainato all’angolo più vicino della strada dove oscillava una delle fatali lampade, e lì Madame Defarge lo lasciò andare - come avrebbe potuto fare un gatto con un topo - e lo guardò in silenzio e con compostezza mentre si preparavano, e mentre lui la supplicava: le donne gli urlavano contro appassionatamente tutto il tempo, e gli uomini gridavano severi di ucciderlo con l’erba in bocca. Una volta salì in alto, ma la corda si ruppe e lo acchiapparono mentre urlava; due volte salì in alto, ma la corda si ruppe e lo acchiapparono mentre urlava; poi la corda fu misericordiosa e lo tenne, e ben presto la sua testa fu su una picca, con abbastanza erba in bocca perché tutto Saint Antoine potesse danzare alla vista.
E questo non fu il termine delle malefatte di quel giorno, perché Saint Antoine gridò e danzò fino a far ribollire il suo sangue irato, che bollì nuovamente quando al calar della sera seppe che il genero del fucilato, un altro nemico e oltraggiatore del popolo, stava entrando a Parigi scortato da cinquecento uomini, solo di cavalleria. Saint Antoine scrisse i suoi crimini su fogli di carta infuocati, lo catturò - l’avrebbe strappato dal seno di un esercito pur di far compagnia a Foulon - mise la sua testa e il suo cuore su picche e portò in trionfo le tre prede del giorno, in una processione da lupi per le vie della città.
Non prima che calasse la notte gli uomini e le donne tornarono dai bambini, piangendo e senza pane. Allora i miseri negozi di panettieri furono assediati da lunghe file di loro, in attesa paziente per comprare il pane scadente; e mentre aspettavano con lo stomaco debole e vuoto, ingannavano il tempo abbracciandosi l’un l’altro sui trionfi della giornata, e rivivendoli in chiacchiere. Gradualmente, queste file di persone stracciate si accorciarono e si diradarono; e allora povere luci cominciarono a brillare nelle finestre alte, e piccoli fuochi furono accesi per le strade, dove i vicini cucinavano in comune, cenando poi alle loro porte.
Cene scarse e insufficienti quelle, e innocenti di carne, come della maggior parte delle altre salse per il misero pane. Eppure, la compagnia umana infondeva un po’ di sostanza negli alimenti duri e faceva sprizzare qualche scintilla di allegria da essi. Padri e madri che avevano avuto la loro piena parte del peggio della giornata giocavano dolcemente con i loro magri bambini; e gli innamorati, con un tale mondo intorno a loro e davanti a loro, amavano e speravano.
Era quasi mattina quando l’osteria di Defarge si liberò del suo ultimo gruppo di clienti e il signor Defarge disse alla moglie, Madame, con voce roca mentre chiudeva la porta:
“Finalmente è arrivato, mia cara!”
«Ebbene bene!» rispose la signora. «Quasi.»
San Antonio dormiva, i Defarge dormivano: anche La Vendetta dormiva con il suo affamato droghiere, e la tamburo era a riposo. Quella del tamburo era l’unica voce in San Antonio che non fosse cambiata dal sangue e dalla fretta. La Vendetta, come custode del tamburo, avrebbe potuto svegliarlo e averne fuori la stessa risposta di prima della caduta della Bastiglia o dell’arresto del vecchio Foulon; non così con i toni rochi degli uomini e delle donne nel cuore di San Antonio.
CHAPTER XXIII. Fire Rises
There was a change on the village where the fountain fell, and where the mender of roads went forth daily to hammer out of the stones on the highway such morsels of bread as might serve for patches to hold his poor ignorant soul and his poor reduced body together. The prison on the crag was not so dominant as of yore; there were soldiers to guard it, but not many; there were officers to guard the soldiers, but not one of them knew what his men would do—beyond this: that it would probably not be what he was ordered.
Far and wide lay a ruined country, yielding nothing but desolation. Every green leaf, every blade of grass and blade of grain, was as shrivelled and poor as the miserable people. Everything was bowed down, dejected, oppressed, and broken. Habitations, fences, domesticated animals, men, women, children, and the soil that bore them—all worn out.
Monseigneur (often a most worthy individual gentleman) was a national blessing, gave a chivalrous tone to things, was a polite example of luxurious and shining life, and a great deal more to equal purpose; nevertheless, Monseigneur as a class had, somehow or other, brought things to this. Strange that Creation, designed expressly for Monseigneur, should be so soon wrung dry and squeezed out! There must be something short-sighted in the eternal arrangements, surely! Thus it was, however; and the last drop of blood having been extracted from the flints, and the last screw of the rack having been turned so often that its purchase crumbled, and it now turned and turned with nothing to bite, Monseigneur began to run away from a phenomenon so low and unaccountable.
But, this was not the change on the village, and on many a village like it. For scores of years gone by, Monseigneur had squeezed it and wrung it, and had seldom graced it with his presence except for the pleasures of the chase—now, found in hunting the people; now, found in hunting the beasts, for whose preservation Monseigneur made edifying spaces of barbarous and barren wilderness. No. The change consisted in the appearance of strange faces of low caste, rather than in the disappearance of the high caste, chiselled, and otherwise beautified and beautifying features of Monseigneur.
For, in these times, as the mender of roads worked, solitary, in the dust, not often troubling himself to reflect that dust he was and to dust he must return, being for the most part too much occupied in thinking how little he had for supper and how much more he would eat if he had it—in these times, as he raised his eyes from his lonely labour, and viewed the prospect, he would see some rough figure approaching on foot, the like of which was once a rarity in those parts, but was now a frequent presence. As it advanced, the mender of roads would discern without surprise, that it was a shaggy-haired man, of almost barbarian aspect, tall, in wooden shoes that were clumsy even to the eyes of a mender of roads, grim, rough, swart, steeped in the mud and dust of many highways, dank with the marshy moisture of many low grounds, sprinkled with the thorns and leaves and moss of many byways through woods.
Such a man came upon him, like a ghost, at noon in the July weather, as he sat on his heap of stones under a bank, taking such shelter as he could get from a shower of hail.
The man looked at him, looked at the village in the hollow, at the mill, and at the prison on the crag. When he had identified these objects in what benighted mind he had, he said, in a dialect that was just intelligible:
“How goes it, Jacques?”
“All well, Jacques.”
“Touch then!”
They joined hands, and the man sat down on the heap of stones.
“No dinner?”
“Nothing but supper now,” said the mender of roads, with a hungry face.
“It is the fashion,” growled the man. “I meet no dinner anywhere.”
He took out a blackened pipe, filled it, lighted it with flint and steel, pulled at it until it was in a bright glow: then, suddenly held it from him and dropped something into it from between his finger and thumb, that blazed and went out in a puff of smoke.
“Touch then.” It was the turn of the mender of roads to say it this time, after observing these operations. They again joined hands.
“To-night?” said the mender of roads.
“To-night,” said the man, putting the pipe in his mouth.
“Where?”
“Here.”
He and the mender of roads sat on the heap of stones looking silently at one another, with the hail driving in between them like a pigmy charge of bayonets, until the sky began to clear over the village.
“Show me!” said the traveller then, moving to the brow of the hill.
“See!” returned the mender of roads, with extended finger. “You go down here, and straight through the street, and past the fountain—”
“To the Devil with all that!” interrupted the other, rolling his eye over the landscape. “I go through no streets and past no fountains. Well?”
“Well! About two leagues beyond the summit of that hill above the village.”
“Good. When do you cease to work?”
“At sunset.”
“Will you wake me, before departing? I have walked two nights without resting. Let me finish my pipe, and I shall sleep like a child. Will you wake me?”
“Surely.”
The wayfarer smoked his pipe out, put it in his breast, slipped off his great wooden shoes, and lay down on his back on the heap of stones. He was fast asleep directly.
As the road-mender plied his dusty labour, and the hail-clouds, rolling away, revealed bright bars and streaks of sky which were responded to by silver gleams upon the landscape, the little man (who wore a red cap now, in place of his blue one) seemed fascinated by the figure on the heap of stones. His eyes were so often turned towards it, that he used his tools mechanically, and, one would have said, to very poor account. The bronze face, the shaggy black hair and beard, the coarse woollen red cap, the rough medley dress of home-spun stuff and hairy skins of beasts, the powerful frame attenuated by spare living, and the sullen and desperate compression of the lips in sleep, inspired the mender of roads with awe. The traveller had travelled far, and his feet were footsore, and his ankles chafed and bleeding; his great shoes, stuffed with leaves and grass, had been heavy to drag over the many long leagues, and his clothes were chafed into holes, as he himself was into sores. Stooping down beside him, the road-mender tried to get a peep at secret weapons in his breast or where not; but, in vain, for he slept with his arms crossed upon him, and set as resolutely as his lips. Fortified towns with their stockades, guard-houses, gates, trenches, and drawbridges, seemed to the mender of roads, to be so much air as against this figure. And when he lifted his eyes from it to the horizon and looked around, he saw in his small fancy similar figures, stopped by no obstacle, tending to centres all over France.
CAPITOLO VENTITREESIMO. Sorge la fiamma
C’era un cambiamento nel villaggio dove cadeva la fontana e dove il riparatore di strade usciva ogni giorno per martellare le pietre sulla strada principale, cercando di ottenere quei pezzetti di pane che potessero servire come toppe per tenere insieme la sua povera anima ignorante e il suo povero corpo ridotto. La prigione sulla rupe non era più così dominante come un tempo; c’erano soldati a guardarla, ma non molti; c’erano ufficiali per sorvegliare i soldati, ma nessuno di loro sapeva cosa avrebbero fatto i suoi uomini - oltre questo: che probabilmente non sarebbe stato ciò che gli era stato ordinato.
Per miglia e miglia si stendeva un paese in rovina che non dava altro che desolazione. Ogni foglia verde, ogni filo d’erba e spiga di grano era appassito e misero come la gente infelice. Tutto era curvo, abbattuto, oppresso e rotto. Abitazioni, recinti, animali domestici, uomini, donne, bambini e il suolo che li sosteneva: tutto consumato.
Monseigneur (spesso un gentiluomo individuo assai degno) era una benedizione nazionale, conferiva un tono cavalleresco alle cose, era un esempio cortese di vita lussuosa e sfarzosa, e molto altro ancora allo stesso scopo; nondimeno, Monseigneur come classe aveva, in qualche modo o per altri motivi, portato le cose a questo punto. Strano che la Creazione, progettata espressamente per Monseigneur, si fosse così presto essiccata e strizzata! Ci deve essere qualcosa di miope negli arrangiamenti eterni, davvero! Così stava però; e dopo che l’ultima goccia di sangue era stata estratta dalle pietre, e l’ultimo bullone della tortura era stato girato così spesso che il suo punto d’appoggio si sgretolava, e ora girava e girava senza nulla a cui aggrapparsi, Monseigneur iniziò a fuggire da un fenomeno così basso e inspiegabile.
Ma questo non era il cambiamento nel villaggio e in molti altri villaggi simili. Per decine di anni Monseigneur l’aveva spremuto e strizzato, e raramente lo aveva onorato della sua presenza se non per i piaceri della caccia: ora si dedicava a cacciare la gente; ora a cacciare le bestie, la cui conservazione Monseigneur garantiva creando spazi edificanti di selvaggia e sterile desolazione. No. Il cambiamento consisteva nell’apparizione di volti sconosciuti di bassa casta, piuttosto che nella scomparsa delle alte caste, dei lineamenti cesellati e altrimenti abbelliti e abbellenti di Monseigneur.
Perché, in quei tempi, mentre il riparatore di strade lavorava solitario nella polvere, non si preoccupava spesso di riflettere che quella polvere era ciò che lui era e a quella polvere sarebbe ritornato, essendo per la maggior parte del tempo troppo occupato a pensare quanto poco avesse da mangiare per cena e quanto di più avrebbe voluto se ne avesse avuto l’opportunità - in quei tempi, mentre alzava gli occhi dal suo lavoro solitario e osservava il panorama, vedeva una figura grossolana che si avvicinava a piedi, simile a quella che un tempo era rara in quelle zone, ma ora era una presenza frequente. Mentre si avvicinava, il riparatore di strade poteva discernere senza sorpresa che si trattava di un uomo dai capelli arruffati, dall’aspetto quasi barbarico, alto, con scarpe di legno che erano goffe anche agli occhi di un riparatore di strade, severo, ruvido, scuro, intriso del fango e della polvere di molte autostrade, umido dell’umidità paludosa di molti terreni bassi, cosparso di spine e foglie e muschio di molti sentieri attraverso i boschi.
Un uomo del genere gli si presentò davanti come un fantasma, a mezzogiorno in pieno luglio, mentre lui sedeva sulla sua pila di pietre sotto una scarpata, cercando riparo dalla grandine.
L’uomo lo guardò, guardò il villaggio nella conca, la mulino e la prigione sulla rupe. Quando ebbe identificato questi oggetti nel suo povero cervello, disse in un dialetto appena comprensibile:
“Come va, Jacques?”
“Tutto bene, Jacques.”
“Tocca allora!”
Si strinsero la mano e l’uomo si sedette sulla pila di pietre.
“Niente cena?”
«Niente altro che la cena ora», disse il riparatore di strade con un viso affamato.
“È di moda”, brontolò l’uomo, “non riesco mai ad andare a cena da nessuna parte.”
Estrasse una pipa annerita, la riempì, l’accese con acciarino e pietra focaia, aspirò finché non fu ben accesa: poi, all’improvviso, la tenne lontana da sé e vi fece cadere dentro qualcosa tra pollice e indice che si incendiò e si spense in una nuvola di fumo.
«Tocca a te allora». Questa volta era il turno del riparatore di strade di dirlo, dopo aver osservato queste operazioni. Si tennero di nuovo per mano.
“Questa sera?” disse il riparatore di strade.
«Questa sera», disse l’uomo, mettendosi la pipa in bocca.
“Dove?”
“Ecco.”
Lui e il riparatore di strade sedevano sulla pila di pietre guardandosi in silenzio, mentre la grandine li investiva come una carica di baionette pigmee, fino a quando il cielo non cominciò a schiarirsi sopra il villaggio.
«Mostratemi!», disse il viaggiatore allora, spostandosi verso la sommità della collina.
«Vedete!» rispose il riparatore di strade, con un dito teso. «Scendete qui e filate diritti per la via fino a passare oltre la fontana, »
“Al diavolo tutto questo!” lo interruppe l’altro, facendo roteare gli occhi sul paesaggio. “Io non passo per nessuna strada e non vado vicino a fontane. Ebbene?”
«Bene! Circa due leghe oltre la cima di quella collina sopra il villaggio.»
“Ottimo. Quando smetti di lavorare?”
“Alla luce del tramonto.”
«Mi sveglierai prima di partire? Ho camminato per due notti senza riposare. Fammi finire la pipa e poi dormirò come un bambino dormo. Mi sveglierai?»
“Certo.”
Il viandante finì di fumare la pipa, se la mise al petto, si tolse i grandi calzari di legno e si sdraiò supino sul mucchio di pietre. Si addormentò subito.
Mentre il stradale si dedicava al suo polveroso lavoro e le nubi di grandine, allontanandosi, rivelavano luminose strisce e fasce di cielo che si riflettevano in bagliori argentei sul paesaggio, il piccolo uomo (che ora portava un berretto rosso al posto di quello blu) sembrava affascinato dalla figura ammassata tra le pietre. I suoi occhi erano così spesso rivolti verso di essa che usava gli attrezzi in modo meccanico, e si sarebbe detto con scarso risultato. Il volto bronzato, i capelli neri arruffati e la barba, il ruvido berretto rosso di lana grossa, l’abito eterogeneo fatto di stoffa fatta in casa e pelli di animali pelose, la possente struttura fisica emaciata dalla vita frugale e la compressione cupa e disperata delle labbra nel sonno, ispiravano al riparatore di strade un senso di timore. Il viaggiatore aveva percorso molta strada, i suoi piedi erano doloranti, le caviglie irritate e sanguinanti; le sue grandi scarpe, imbottite di foglie ed erba, erano state pesanti da trascinare su tante lunghe leghe, e i suoi vestiti erano logori come lui era pieno di piaghe. Chinandosi accanto a lui, il riparatore di strade cercò di dare un’occhiata alle armi nascoste nel suo petto o altrove; ma invano, perché dormiva con le braccia incrociate sul petto, serrate con la stessa risolutezza delle sue labbra. Le città fortificate con i loro pali, guardie, porte, fossati e ponti levatoi sembravano al riparatore di strade aria fritta contro quella figura. E quando sollevò gli occhi da essa all’orizzonte e si guardò intorno, vide nella sua piccola fantasia figure simili, che nessun ostacolo poteva fermare, dirigersi verso centri in tutta la Francia.
The man slept on, indifferent to showers of hail and intervals of brightness, to sunshine on his face and shadow, to the paltering lumps of dull ice on his body and the diamonds into which the sun changed them, until the sun was low in the west, and the sky was glowing. Then, the mender of roads having got his tools together and all things ready to go down into the village, roused him.
“Good!” said the sleeper, rising on his elbow. “Two leagues beyond the summit of the hill?”
“About.”
“About. Good!”
The mender of roads went home, with the dust going on before him according to the set of the wind, and was soon at the fountain, squeezing himself in among the lean kine brought there to drink, and appearing even to whisper to them in his whispering to all the village. When the village had taken its poor supper, it did not creep to bed, as it usually did, but came out of doors again, and remained there. A curious contagion of whispering was upon it, and also, when it gathered together at the fountain in the dark, another curious contagion of looking expectantly at the sky in one direction only. Monsieur Gabelle, chief functionary of the place, became uneasy; went out on his house-top alone, and looked in that direction too; glanced down from behind his chimneys at the darkening faces by the fountain below, and sent word to the sacristan who kept the keys of the church, that there might be need to ring the tocsin by-and-bye.
The night deepened. The trees environing the old chateau, keeping its solitary state apart, moved in a rising wind, as though they threatened the pile of building massive and dark in the gloom. Up the two terrace flights of steps the rain ran wildly, and beat at the great door, like a swift messenger rousing those within; uneasy rushes of wind went through the hall, among the old spears and knives, and passed lamenting up the stairs, and shook the curtains of the bed where the last Marquis had slept. East, West, North, and South, through the woods, four heavy-treading, unkempt figures crushed the high grass and cracked the branches, striding on cautiously to come together in the courtyard. Four lights broke out there, and moved away in different directions, and all was black again.
But, not for long. Presently, the chateau began to make itself strangely visible by some light of its own, as though it were growing luminous. Then, a flickering streak played behind the architecture of the front, picking out transparent places, and showing where balustrades, arches, and windows were. Then it soared higher, and grew broader and brighter. Soon, from a score of the great windows, flames burst forth, and the stone faces awakened, stared out of fire.
A faint murmur arose about the house from the few people who were left there, and there was a saddling of a horse and riding away. There was spurring and splashing through the darkness, and bridle was drawn in the space by the village fountain, and the horse in a foam stood at Monsieur Gabelle’s door. “Help, Gabelle! Help, every one!” The tocsin rang impatiently, but other help (if that were any) there was none. The mender of roads, and two hundred and fifty particular friends, stood with folded arms at the fountain, looking at the pillar of fire in the sky. “It must be forty feet high,” said they, grimly; and never moved.
The rider from the chateau, and the horse in a foam, clattered away through the village, and galloped up the stony steep, to the prison on the crag. At the gate, a group of officers were looking at the fire; removed from them, a group of soldiers. “Help, gentlemen—officers! The chateau is on fire; valuable objects may be saved from the flames by timely aid! Help, help!” The officers looked towards the soldiers who looked at the fire; gave no orders; and answered, with shrugs and biting of lips, “It must burn.”
As the rider rattled down the hill again and through the street, the village was illuminating. The mender of roads, and the two hundred and fifty particular friends, inspired as one man and woman by the idea of lighting up, had darted into their houses, and were putting candles in every dull little pane of glass. The general scarcity of everything, occasioned candles to be borrowed in a rather peremptory manner of Monsieur Gabelle; and in a moment of reluctance and hesitation on that functionary’s part, the mender of roads, once so submissive to authority, had remarked that carriages were good to make bonfires with, and that post-horses would roast.
The chateau was left to itself to flame and burn. In the roaring and raging of the conflagration, a red-hot wind, driving straight from the infernal regions, seemed to be blowing the edifice away. With the rising and falling of the blaze, the stone faces showed as if they were in torment. When great masses of stone and timber fell, the face with the two dints in the nose became obscured: anon struggled out of the smoke again, as if it were the face of the cruel Marquis, burning at the stake and contending with the fire.
The chateau burned; the nearest trees, laid hold of by the fire, scorched and shrivelled; trees at a distance, fired by the four fierce figures, begirt the blazing edifice with a new forest of smoke. Molten lead and iron boiled in the marble basin of the fountain; the water ran dry; the extinguisher tops of the towers vanished like ice before the heat, and trickled down into four rugged wells of flame. Great rents and splits branched out in the solid walls, like crystallisation; stupefied birds wheeled about and dropped into the furnace; four fierce figures trudged away, East, West, North, and South, along the night-enshrouded roads, guided by the beacon they had lighted, towards their next destination. The illuminated village had seized hold of the tocsin, and, abolishing the lawful ringer, rang for joy.
Not only that; but the village, light-headed with famine, fire, and bell-ringing, and bethinking itself that Monsieur Gabelle had to do with the collection of rent and taxes—though it was but a small instalment of taxes, and no rent at all, that Gabelle had got in those latter days—became impatient for an interview with him, and, surrounding his house, summoned him to come forth for personal conference. Whereupon, Monsieur Gabelle did heavily bar his door, and retire to hold counsel with himself. The result of that conference was, that Gabelle again withdrew himself to his housetop behind his stack of chimneys; this time resolved, if his door were broken in (he was a small Southern man of retaliative temperament), to pitch himself head foremost over the parapet, and crush a man or two below.
Probably, Monsieur Gabelle passed a long night up there, with the distant chateau for fire and candle, and the beating at his door, combined with the joy-ringing, for music; not to mention his having an ill-omened lamp slung across the road before his posting-house gate, which the village showed a lively inclination to displace in his favour. A trying suspense, to be passing a whole summer night on the brink of the black ocean, ready to take that plunge into it upon which Monsieur Gabelle had resolved! But, the friendly dawn appearing at last, and the rush-candles of the village guttering out, the people happily dispersed, and Monsieur Gabelle came down bringing his life with him for that while.
Within a hundred miles, and in the light of other fires, there were other functionaries less fortunate, that night and other nights, whom the rising sun found hanging across once-peaceful streets, where they had been born and bred; also, there were other villagers and townspeople less fortunate than the mender of roads and his fellows, upon whom the functionaries and soldiery turned with success, and whom they strung up in their turn. But, the fierce figures were steadily wending East, West, North, and South, be that as it would; and whosoever hung, fire burned. The altitude of the gallows that would turn to water and quench it, no functionary, by any stretch of mathematics, was able to calculate successfully.
L’uomo continuò a dormire, indifferente alle raffiche di grandine e agli intervalli di luminosità, al sole sul suo viso e all’ombra, ai pezzi di ghiaccio opaco che gli battevano addosso e ai diamanti in cui il sole li trasformava, finché il sole non fu basso a ovest e il cielo divenne incandescente. Allora l’uomo che riparava le strade, avendo raccolto i suoi attrezzi e preparato tutto per scendere nel villaggio, lo svegliò.
“Bene!” disse il dormiente, sollevandosi sul gomito. “Due leghe oltre la cima della collina?”
“Su, davvero.”
“Su. Bene!”
Il riparatore di strade tornò a casa, con la polvere che gli andava davanti secondo il soffio del vento, e presto fu alla fontana, stringendosi tra le magre mucche portate lì a bere, e sembrando persino sussurrare loro mentre bisbigliava a tutto il villaggio. Quando il villaggio ebbe preso la sua povera cena, non si ritirò a letto come di solito faceva, ma uscì di nuovo dalle case e rimase fuori. Su di esso era scesa una curiosa contagiosità di sussurri, e anche, quando si radunava insieme alla fontana al buio, un’altra curiosa contagiosità di guardare con aspettativa il cielo in una sola direzione. Monsieur Gabelle, funzionario capo del luogo, divenne irrequieto; uscì sul tetto della sua casa da solo, e guardò anche lui in quella direzione; lanciò un’occhiata da dietro i suoi camini ai volti che si oscuravano presso la fontana sottostante, e mandò a dire al sagrestano che custodiva le chiavi della chiesa, che forse ci sarebbe stato bisogno di suonare l’alarma più tardi.
La notte si fece più fonda. Gli alberi che circondavano il vecchio castello, mantenendone l’isolamento, si agitavano in un crescente vento, come se minacciassero l’imponente e scura costruzione avvolta nell’oscurità. La pioggia scorreva impetuosamente su entrambe le scale delle terrazze, e batteva contro la grande porta, come un messaggero veloce che risvegliava gli occupanti; raffiche inquiete di vento attraversavano l’atrio, tra le vecchie lance e i pugnali, e salivano lamentandosi su per le scale, scuotendo le tende del letto dove aveva dormito l’ultimo marchese. Est, Ovest, Nord e Sud, tra gli alberi, quattro figure trascurate e pesanti calpestarono l’erba alta e spezzarono i rami, avanzando cautamente per riunirsi nel cortile. Quattro luci si accesero là, e si allontanarono in direzioni diverse, e tutto fu di nuovo buio.
Ma non per molto tempo. Ben presto il castello cominciò a rendersi stranamente visibile grazie alla propria luce, come se stesse diventando luminoso. Poi una scia tremolante si diffuse dietro la facciata, evidenziando i punti trasparenti e mostrando dove si trovavano le balaustrate, gli archi e le finestre. Quindi salì più in alto, divenne più ampia e luminosa. Ben presto dalle grandi finestre scoppiarono fiamme e i volti di pietra si svegliarono, fissando attraverso il fuoco.
Un debole mormorio si levò dalla casa dalle poche persone che vi erano rimaste, e ci fu il sellaggio di un cavallo e la partenza a cavallo. Ci furono spronate e schizzi d’acqua nel buio, e le redini furono tirate nello spazio accanto alla fontana del villaggio, e il cavallo, tutto sudato, si fermò davanti alla porta di Monsieur Gabelle. «Aiuto, Gabelle! Aiuto, tutti quanti!» Il tocsin suonava impaziente, ma non c’era altro aiuto (se mai ce ne fosse stato). Il riparatore di strade e duecentocinquanta amici particolari stavano con le braccia conserte accanto alla fontana, guardando la colonna di fuoco nel cielo. «Dovrà essere alta quaranta piedi», dissero cupamente; e non si mossero mai.
Il cavaliere del castello e il cavallo ricoperto di schiuma si allontanarono rumorosamente dal villaggio e galopparono su per la ripida strada sterrata fino alla prigione sulla rupe. All’ingresso, un gruppo di ufficiali osservava il fuoco; più in là, un gruppo di soldati. «Aiuto, signori, ufficiali! Il castello è in fiamme; oggetti preziosi possono essere salvati dalle fiamme con l’aiuto tempestivo! Aiuto, aiuto!» Gli ufficiali guardarono verso i soldati che osservavano il fuoco; non diedero ordini e risposero, stringendosi nelle spalle e mordendosi le labbra: «Deve bruciare.»
Quando il cavaliere si rimise al galoppo lungo la collina e per le vie del paese, i villaggi erano illuminati. Il riparatore di strade e i duecentocinquanta amici particolari, ispirati come un solo uomo e una sola donna dall’idea dell’accensione delle luci, si erano precipitati nelle loro case e stavano mettendo candele in ogni piccola finestra opaca. La generale penuria di tutto aveva fatto sì che le candele venissero prese in prestito da Monsieur Gabelle in modo piuttosto perentorio; e in un momento di riluttanza ed esitazione da parte di quell’ufficiale, il riparatore di strade, un tempo così sottomesso all’autorità, aveva osservato che le carrozze erano buone per fare falò e che i cavalli postali sarebbero stati arrostiti.
Il castello fu lasciato a se stesso per ardere e bruciare. Nel ruggito e nella furia dell’incendio, un vento rovente, che soffiava dritto dalle regioni infernali, sembrava spazzar via l’edificio. Con il sorgere e il calare delle fiamme, i volti di pietra apparivano come se fossero in tormento. Quando grandi masse di pietra e legno crollavano, il volto con le due fossette sul naso veniva oscurato: poi riemergeva dal fumo, come se fosse il volto del crudele marchese, bruciato sul rogo e che lottava contro il fuoco.
Il castello bruciò; gli alberi più vicini, presi dal fuoco, si annerirono e si raggrinzirono; gli alberi lontani, incendiati dalle quattro feroci figure, circondarono l’edificio in fiamme con una nuova foresta di fumo. Il piombo e il ferro fusi bollivano nella vasca marmorea della fontana; la acqua si prosciugò; i tetti estintori delle torri scomparvero come ghiaccio al calore, e sgocciolarono in quattro ruvidi pozzi di fiamme. Grandi crepe e fenditure si diramarono nelle solide mura, come cristallizzazioni; gli uccelli storditi volteggiarono intorno e caddero nella fornace; le quattro feroci figure si allontanarono a fatica verso Est, Ovest, Nord e Sud lungo le strade avvolte dalla notte, guidate dal segnale che avevano acceso, verso la loro prossima destinazione. Il villaggio illuminato aveva preso possesso del tocsin, e, abolendo il suonatore legittimo, suonò per la gioia.
Non solo questo; ma il villaggio, stordito dalla fame, dal fuoco e dalle campane, e ricordandosi che Monsieur Gabelle aveva a che fare con la riscossione di affitti e tasse - anche se si trattava solo di una piccola quota di tasse, e nessun affitto, che Gabelle avesse incassato in quei giorni recenti - divenne impaziente di un colloquio con lui, e circondando la sua casa, lo chiamò a uscire per una conferenza personale. Allora Monsieur Gabelle chiuse pesantemente la porta e si ritirò per consultarsi da solo. Il risultato di quella consultazione fu che Gabelle si ritirò nuovamente sul tetto della sua casa, dietro il suo mucchio di camini; questa volta risoluto, se la sua porta fosse stata sfondata (era un piccolo uomo del Sud dal temperamento vendicativo), a buttarsi testa avanti oltre il parapetto e schiacciare uno o due uomini sotto.
Probabilmente il signor Gabelle passò una lunga notte lassù, con il castello distante che faceva da fuoco e candela, e i colpi alla sua porta, uniti al suono gioioso delle campane, che gli servivano da musica; per non parlare poi della lampada di malaugurio appesa sulla strada davanti all’ingresso del suo ufficio postale, che il villaggio mostrava una viva propensione a spostare in suo favore. Una sospensione difficile, passare un’intera notte d’estate sul bordo dell’oceano nero, pronto a fare quel tuffo nel quale il signor Gabelle si era risolto! Ma finalmente apparve l’amichevole alba, e le candele di canna del villaggio si spensero, la gente si disperse felicemente, e il signor Gabelle scese portando con sé la sua vita per quel momento.
Entro un raggio di cento miglia e alla luce di altri incendi c’erano altri funzionari meno fortunati che quella notte e in altre notti il sole al sorgere trovava appesi sopra strade un tempo tranquille, dove erano nati e cresciuti; c’erano anche altri contadini e cittadini meno fortunati del riparatore di strade e dei suoi compagni, contro i quali funzionari e soldati si scagliavano con successo e che a loro volta impiccavano. Ma le feroci figure continuavano inesorabilmente ad andare verso Est, Ovest, Nord e Sud, fosse come fosse; e chiunque fosse appeso, il fuoco ardeva. L’altezza della forca che si sarebbe trasformata in acqua per spegnerlo nessun funzionario, con qualsiasi calcolo matematico, era in grado di determinare con successo.
CHAPTER XXIV. Drawn to the Loadstone Rock
In such risings of fire and risings of sea—the firm earth shaken by the rushes of an angry ocean which had now no ebb, but was always on the flow, higher and higher, to the terror and wonder of the beholders on the shore—three years of tempest were consumed. Three more birthdays of little Lucie had been woven by the golden thread into the peaceful tissue of the life of her home.
Many a night and many a day had its inmates listened to the echoes in the corner, with hearts that failed them when they heard the thronging feet. For, the footsteps had become to their minds as the footsteps of a people, tumultuous under a red flag and with their country declared in danger, changed into wild beasts, by terrible enchantment long persisted in.
Monseigneur, as a class, had dissociated himself from the phenomenon of his not being appreciated: of his being so little wanted in France, as to incur considerable danger of receiving his dismissal from it, and this life together. Like the fabled rustic who raised the Devil with infinite pains, and was so terrified at the sight of him that he could ask the Enemy no question, but immediately fled; so, Monseigneur, after boldly reading the Lord’s Prayer backwards for a great number of years, and performing many other potent spells for compelling the Evil One, no sooner beheld him in his terrors than he took to his noble heels.
The shining Bull’s Eye of the Court was gone, or it would have been the mark for a hurricane of national bullets. It had never been a good eye to see with—had long had the mote in it of Lucifer’s pride, Sardanapalus’s luxury, and a mole’s blindness—but it had dropped out and was gone. The Court, from that exclusive inner circle to its outermost rotten ring of intrigue, corruption, and dissimulation, was all gone together. Royalty was gone; had been besieged in its Palace and “suspended,” when the last tidings came over.
The August of the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two was come, and Monseigneur was by this time scattered far and wide.
As was natural, the head-quarters and great gathering-place of Monseigneur, in London, was Tellson’s Bank. Spirits are supposed to haunt the places where their bodies most resorted, and Monseigneur without a guinea haunted the spot where his guineas used to be. Moreover, it was the spot to which such French intelligence as was most to be relied upon, came quickest. Again: Tellson’s was a munificent house, and extended great liberality to old customers who had fallen from their high estate. Again: those nobles who had seen the coming storm in time, and anticipating plunder or confiscation, had made provident remittances to Tellson’s, were always to be heard of there by their needy brethren. To which it must be added that every new-comer from France reported himself and his tidings at Tellson’s, almost as a matter of course. For such variety of reasons, Tellson’s was at that time, as to French intelligence, a kind of High Exchange; and this was so well known to the public, and the inquiries made there were in consequence so numerous, that Tellson’s sometimes wrote the latest news out in a line or so and posted it in the Bank windows, for all who ran through Temple Bar to read.
On a steaming, misty afternoon, Mr. Lorry sat at his desk, and Charles Darnay stood leaning on it, talking with him in a low voice. The penitential den once set apart for interviews with the House, was now the news-Exchange, and was filled to overflowing. It was within half an hour or so of the time of closing.
“But, although you are the youngest man that ever lived,” said Charles Darnay, rather hesitating, “I must still suggest to you—”
“I understand. That I am too old?” said Mr. Lorry.
“Unsettled weather, a long journey, uncertain means of travelling, a disorganised country, a city that may not be even safe for you.”
“My dear Charles,” said Mr. Lorry, with cheerful confidence, “you touch some of the reasons for my going: not for my staying away. It is safe enough for me; nobody will care to interfere with an old fellow of hard upon fourscore when there are so many people there much better worth interfering with. As to its being a disorganised city, if it were not a disorganised city there would be no occasion to send somebody from our House here to our House there, who knows the city and the business, of old, and is in Tellson’s confidence. As to the uncertain travelling, the long journey, and the winter weather, if I were not prepared to submit myself to a few inconveniences for the sake of Tellson’s, after all these years, who ought to be?”
“I wish I were going myself,” said Charles Darnay, somewhat restlessly, and like one thinking aloud.
“Indeed! You are a pretty fellow to object and advise!” exclaimed Mr. Lorry. “You wish you were going yourself? And you a Frenchman born? You are a wise counsellor.”
“My dear Mr. Lorry, it is because I am a Frenchman born, that the thought (which I did not mean to utter here, however) has passed through my mind often. One cannot help thinking, having had some sympathy for the miserable people, and having abandoned something to them,” he spoke here in his former thoughtful manner, “that one might be listened to, and might have the power to persuade to some restraint. Only last night, after you had left us, when I was talking to Lucie—”
“When you were talking to Lucie,” Mr. Lorry repeated. “Yes. I wonder you are not ashamed to mention the name of Lucie! Wishing you were going to France at this time of day!”
“However, I am not going,” said Charles Darnay, with a smile. “It is more to the purpose that you say you are.”
“And I am, in plain reality. The truth is, my dear Charles,” Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and lowered his voice, “you can have no conception of the difficulty with which our business is transacted, and of the peril in which our books and papers over yonder are involved. The Lord above knows what the compromising consequences would be to numbers of people, if some of our documents were seized or destroyed; and they might be, at any time, you know, for who can say that Paris is not set afire to-day, or sacked to-morrow! Now, a judicious selection from these with the least possible delay, and the burying of them, or otherwise getting of them out of harm’s way, is within the power (without loss of precious time) of scarcely any one but myself, if any one. And shall I hang back, when Tellson’s knows this and says this—Tellson’s, whose bread I have eaten these sixty years—because I am a little stiff about the joints? Why, I am a boy, sir, to half a dozen old codgers here!”
CAPITOLO XXIV. Attratto dalla Roccia di Magnetite
In tali insorgenze di fuoco e insorgenze del mare - la terra ferma scossa dalle ondate di un oceano in collera che ora non aveva più riflusso, ma era sempre in piena, più alta e più alta ancora, al terrore e alla meraviglia degli spettatori sulla riva - si consumarono tre anni di tempesta. Altri tre compleanni della piccola Lucie erano stati intessuti dal filo d’oro nel tessuto pacifico della vita del suo casa.
Molte notti e molti giorni i suoi abitanti avevano ascoltato gli echi nell’angolo, con cuori che li tradivano quando sentivano il trambusto dei passi. Perché, ai loro occhi, quei passi erano diventati come quelli di un popolo in tumulto sotto una bandiera rossa e con la patria in pericolo, trasformati in belve feroci da un terribile incantesimo a lungo persistito.
Monseigneur, come classe sociale, si era dissociato dal fenomeno di non essere apprezzato: di essere così poco desiderato in Francia da correre un notevole pericolo di ricevere il suo congedo dalla nazione e insieme da questa vita. Come il contadino della favola che evocò il Diavolo con infinite fatiche, e fu così terrorizzato alla vista di lui che non poté fare al Nemico alcuna domanda, ma fuggì immediatamente; così Monseigneur, dopo aver osato recitare l’Ora del Signore all’inverso per un gran numero di anni e aver eseguito molti altri potenti incantesimi per costringere il Maligno, non appena lo vide nei suoi terrori prese a correre sui suoi nobili talloni.
Il brillante Occhio di Bue della Corte era sparito, altrimenti sarebbe stato il bersaglio per un uragano di proiettili nazionali. Non era mai stato un buon occhio con cui vedere: da tempo aveva in sé la pagliuzza dell’orgoglio di Lucifero, del lusso di Sardanapalo e della cecità di una talpa; ma era caduto ed era sparito. La Corte, da quell’esclusivo cerchio interno al suo più esterno anello marcio di intrighi, corruzione e dissimulazione, era scomparsa tutta insieme. Era finita la regalità; era stata assediata nel suo Palazzo ed “sospesa”, quando giunsero le ultime notizie.
Agosto dell’anno mille settecento novantadue era giunto e Monseigneur in questo periodo si trovava disperso lontano e in giro per il mondo.
Come era naturale, il quartier generale e il grande luogo di ritrovo del Monseigneur a Londra era la Banca Tellson. Si suppone che gli spiriti infestino i luoghi dove le loro spoglie mortali si recavano più frequentemente, e così Monseigneur senza una ghinea infestava il posto in cui un tempo erano custodite le sue ghinee. Inoltre, era il luogo a cui giungevano più rapidamente tutte le notizie francesi di cui ci si poteva fidare. Ancora: la casa Tellson era munifica e mostrava grande liberalità verso i vecchi clienti che erano decaduti dal loro stato elevato. Ancora: quei nobili che avevano visto l’avvicinarsi della tempesta in tempo, prevedendo saccheggi o confische, avevano inviato alla Banca Tellson somme di denaro per precauzione e potevano sempre essere contattati dai loro fratelli bisognosi. A ciò si deve aggiungere che ogni nuovo arrivato dalla Francia si presentava con le sue notizie presso la Banca Tellson, quasi come una cosa scontata. Per queste varie ragioni, al tempo la Banca Tellson era per quanto riguarda le informazioni francesi una specie di Borsa; e questo era così bene noto al pubblico che le richieste di informazioni erano così numerose, che a volte la Banca scriveva le ultime novità in una riga o due e le affiggeva sulle vetrine della banca, perché tutti coloro che passavano da Temple Bar potessero leggerle.
In un pomeriggio afoso e nebbioso, il signor Lorry sedeva alla sua scrivania mentre Charles Darnay vi si appoggiava sopra parlandogli a bassa voce. La cella penitenziale che un tempo era stata adibita agli incontri con la Banca, ora fungeva da borsa dei titoli ed era strapiena. Mancavano circa mezz’ora al momento di chiusura.
«Ma, sebbene tu sia l’uomo più giovane che sia mai vissuto», disse Charles Darnay, esitando un po’, «devo comunque suggerirti, »
«Capisco. Che sono troppo vecchio?» disse il signor Lorry.
«Meteo incerto, un lungo viaggio, mezzi di trasporto incerti, un paese disorganizzato, una città che potrebbe non essere nemmeno sicura per voi.»
“Mio caro Charles”, disse il signor Lorry con fiduciosa allegria, “tocchi alcuni dei motivi per cui vado: non per quelli che mi tengono lontano. È abbastanza sicuro per me; nessuno si preoccuperà di interferire con un vecchio vicino agli ottant’anni quando ci sono tante persone là molto più degne di essere disturbate. Per quanto riguarda il fatto che sia una città disorganizzata, se non fosse una città disorganizzata non ci sarebbe motivo di mandare qualcuno dalla nostra Casa qui alla nostra Casa là, che conosce la città e gli affari da tempo ed è nella fiducia di Tellson. Per quanto riguarda i viaggi incerti, il lungo viaggio e il clima invernale, se non fossi preparato a sottopormi a qualche disagio per il bene di Tellson dopo tutti questi anni, chi dovrebbe esserlo?”
“Vorrei andarci io stesso”, disse Charles Darnay con un certo nervosismo, come se parlasse tra sé e sé.
«Davvero! Sei un bel tipo tu, che obietti e dai consigli!» esclamò il signor Lorry. «Vorresti andarci tu stesso? E sei nato francese per giunta? Sei un saggio consigliere.»
«Mio caro signor Lorry, è proprio perché sono nato francese che il pensiero (che non intendevo esprimere qui, comunque) mi ha attraversato spesso la mente. Non si può fare a meno di pensarci, avendo provato un po’ di simpatia per quella gente miserabile e avendo rinunciato a qualcosa per loro», parlò in questo punto nel suo precedente tono pensieroso, «che ci si potrebbe essere ascoltati, e che si potrebbe avere il potere di persuadere ad un po’ di moderazione. Proprio la scorsa notte, dopo che voi ci avete lasciato, mentre parlavo con Lucie—»
«Quando parlavi con Lucie», ripeté il signor Lorry. «Sì, mi meraviglio che tu non abbia vergogna a menzionare il nome di Lucie! Che desideri andare in Francia proprio a quest’ora del giorno!»
«Tuttavia io non ci vado», disse Charles Darnay con un sorriso, «è più al caso che lo dica lei».
«E lo sono davvero. La verità, mio caro Charles», Mr Lorry lanciò uno sguardo alla lontana Banca e abbassò la voce, «è che non potete immaginare le difficoltà con cui gestiamo i nostri affari e il pericolo in cui si trovano i nostri registri e documenti laggiù. Dio sa quali conseguenze compromettenti ci sarebbero per molte persone se alcuni dei nostri documenti venissero sequestrati o distrutti; e potrebbe accadere in qualsiasi momento, sapete, perché chi può dire che Parigi non venga data alle fiamme oggi o saccheggiata domani! Ora, una scelta giudiziosa tra questi documenti, con il minor ritardo possibile, e la loro sepoltura o comunque la loro messa in salvo, è alla portata (senza perdita di prezioso tempo) di appena pochi, se non solo mia. E dovrei tirarmi indietro quando Tellson lo sa e lo dice - Tellson, il cui pane ho mangiato per sessant’anni - perché sono un po’ rigido nelle articolazioni? Ma io sono un ragazzo, signore, rispetto a una mezza dozzina di vecchi rimbambiti qui!»
“How I admire the gallantry of your youthful spirit, Mr. Lorry.”
“Tut! Nonsense, sir!—And, my dear Charles,” said Mr. Lorry, glancing at the House again, “you are to remember, that getting things out of Paris at this present time, no matter what things, is next to an impossibility. Papers and precious matters were this very day brought to us here (I speak in strict confidence; it is not business-like to whisper it, even to you), by the strangest bearers you can imagine, every one of whom had his head hanging on by a single hair as he passed the Barriers. At another time, our parcels would come and go, as easily as in business-like Old England; but now, everything is stopped.”
“And do you really go to-night?”
“I really go to-night, for the case has become too pressing to admit of delay.”
“And do you take no one with you?”
“All sorts of people have been proposed to me, but I will have nothing to say to any of them. I intend to take Jerry. Jerry has been my bodyguard on Sunday nights for a long time past and I am used to him. Nobody will suspect Jerry of being anything but an English bull-dog, or of having any design in his head but to fly at anybody who touches his master.”
“I must say again that I heartily admire your gallantry and youthfulness.”
“I must say again, nonsense, nonsense! When I have executed this little commission, I shall, perhaps, accept Tellson’s proposal to retire and live at my ease. Time enough, then, to think about growing old.”
This dialogue had taken place at Mr. Lorry’s usual desk, with Monseigneur swarming within a yard or two of it, boastful of what he would do to avenge himself on the rascal-people before long. It was too much the way of Monseigneur under his reverses as a refugee, and it was much too much the way of native British orthodoxy, to talk of this terrible Revolution as if it were the only harvest ever known under the skies that had not been sown—as if nothing had ever been done, or omitted to be done, that had led to it—as if observers of the wretched millions in France, and of the misused and perverted resources that should have made them prosperous, had not seen it inevitably coming, years before, and had not in plain words recorded what they saw. Such vapouring, combined with the extravagant plots of Monseigneur for the restoration of a state of things that had utterly exhausted itself, and worn out Heaven and earth as well as itself, was hard to be endured without some remonstrance by any sane man who knew the truth. And it was such vapouring all about his ears, like a troublesome confusion of blood in his own head, added to a latent uneasiness in his mind, which had already made Charles Darnay restless, and which still kept him so.
Among the talkers, was Stryver, of the King’s Bench Bar, far on his way to state promotion, and, therefore, loud on the theme: broaching to Monseigneur, his devices for blowing the people up and exterminating them from the face of the earth, and doing without them: and for accomplishing many similar objects akin in their nature to the abolition of eagles by sprinkling salt on the tails of the race. Him, Darnay heard with a particular feeling of objection; and Darnay stood divided between going away that he might hear no more, and remaining to interpose his word, when the thing that was to be, went on to shape itself out.
The House approached Mr. Lorry, and laying a soiled and unopened letter before him, asked if he had yet discovered any traces of the person to whom it was addressed? The House laid the letter down so close to Darnay that he saw the direction—the more quickly because it was his own right name. The address, turned into English, ran:
“Very pressing. To Monsieur heretofore the Marquis St. Evrémonde, of France. Confided to the cares of Messrs. Tellson and Co., Bankers, London, England.”
On the marriage morning, Doctor Manette had made it his one urgent and express request to Charles Darnay, that the secret of this name should be—unless he, the Doctor, dissolved the obligation—kept inviolate between them. Nobody else knew it to be his name; his own wife had no suspicion of the fact; Mr. Lorry could have none.
“No,” said Mr. Lorry, in reply to the House; “I have referred it, I think, to everybody now here, and no one can tell me where this gentleman is to be found.”
The hands of the clock verging upon the hour of closing the Bank, there was a general set of the current of talkers past Mr. Lorry’s desk. He held the letter out inquiringly; and Monseigneur looked at it, in the person of this plotting and indignant refugee; and Monseigneur looked at it in the person of that plotting and indignant refugee; and This, That, and The Other, all had something disparaging to say, in French or in English, concerning the Marquis who was not to be found.
“Nephew, I believe—but in any case degenerate successor—of the polished Marquis who was murdered,” said one. “Happy to say, I never knew him.”
“A craven who abandoned his post,” said another—this Monseigneur had been got out of Paris, legs uppermost and half suffocated, in a load of hay—“some years ago.”
“Infected with the new doctrines,” said a third, eyeing the direction through his glass in passing; “set himself in opposition to the last Marquis, abandoned the estates when he inherited them, and left them to the ruffian herd. They will recompense him now, I hope, as he deserves.”
“Hey?” cried the blatant Stryver. “Did he though? Is that the sort of fellow? Let us look at his infamous name. D—n the fellow!”
Darnay, unable to restrain himself any longer, touched Mr. Stryver on the shoulder, and said:
“I know the fellow.”
“Do you, by Jupiter?” said Stryver. “I am sorry for it.”
“Why?”
“Why, Mr. Darnay? D’ye hear what he did? Don’t ask, why, in these times.”
“Come ammiro il coraggio del suo spirito giovanile, signor Lorry.”
«Tut! Sciocchezze, signore!—E, mio caro Charles», disse il signor Lorry, lanciando un’occhiata alla casa ancora una volta, «dovete ricordare che portare fuori le cose da Parigi in questo momento presente, non importa quali siano, è quasi impossibile. Documenti e oggetti preziosi sono stati portati qui proprio oggi (parlo con la massima riservatezza; non è cosa da uomini d’affari bisbigliarlo, anche a voi), dai portatori più strani che possiate immaginare, ognuno dei quali aveva la testa appesa per un solo capello mentre passava le Barriere. In un altro momento, i nostri pacchi andrebbero e venirebbero con la stessa facilità che in una Old England dedita agli affari; ma ora, tutto è bloccato».
«E andate davvero stanotte?»
“Vado davvero stanotte, perché il caso è diventato troppo urgente per permettere ulteriori ritardi.”
“E non porti nessuno con te?”
«Mi hanno proposto persone di ogni tipo, ma non voglio avere nulla a che fare con nessuno di loro. Intendo prendere Jerry. Jerry è stato il mio guardia del corpo nelle notti di domenica per un lungo periodo e sono abituato a lui. Nessuno sospetterà mai in Jerry altro che un bulldog inglese, o che possa avere altri propositi se non quello di attaccare chiunque tocchi il suo padrone.»
“Devo dire ancora una volta che ammiro sinceramente il tuo coraggio e la tua giovinezza.”
“Devo ripetere ancora una volta: sciocchezze, sciocchezze! Quando avrò eseguito questa piccola commissione, forse accetterò la proposta di Tellson di ritirarmi e vivere comodamente. Avrò allora tutto il tempo per pensare a invecchiare.”
Questo dialogo era avvenuto alla solita scrivania del signor Lorry, con Monseigneur che si aggirava a un paio di metri da essa, vantandosi di ciò che avrebbe fatto per vendicarsi presto della canaglia. Era troppo il modo di fare di Monseigneur in seguito alle sue sfortune come rifugiato, e era molto troppo il modo di fare dell’ortodossia britannica indigena, parlare di questa terribile Rivoluzione come se fosse l’unica raccolto mai conosciuto sotto il cielo che non fosse stato seminato—come se nulla fosse mai stato fatto, o tralasciato di fare, che avesse portato a questo—come se gli osservatori dei miserabili milioni in Francia e delle risorse mal utilizzate e pervertite che avrebbero dovuto renderli prosperi non l’avessero vista inevitabilmente arrivare, anni prima, e non avessero registrato in parole povere ciò che avevano visto. Un tale vaporare, combinato con le stravaganti trame di Monseigneur per il ripristino di uno stato di cose che si era completamente esaurito, e aveva logorato il Cielo e la terra così come se bene, era difficile da sopportare senza alcuna protesta da parte di qualsiasi uomo sano di mente che conoscesse la verità. E tale vaporare tutto intorno alle sue orecchie, simile a una fastidiosa confusione di sangue nella sua stessa testa, aggiunto a un latente disagio nella sua mente, aveva già reso irrequieto Charles Darnay, e lo teneva ancora così.
Tra i conversatori c’era Stryver, del Re’s Bench Bar, ben avviato sulla strada della promozione statale e quindi molto loquace sull’argomento: espose a Monseigneur le sue idee per far saltare in aria il popolo ed estirparlo dalla faccia della terra, e fare a meno di lui; e per realizzare molti altri obiettivi simili nella loro natura all’abolizione degli aquili spargendo sale sulle code della razza. Darnay lo ascoltò con una particolare sensazione di disapprovazione; e Darnay rimase diviso tra l’andarsene per non sentire altro, e il restare per intervenire con la sua parola, quando la cosa che doveva accadere continuò a prendere forma.
La Banca si avvicinò a Mr. Lorry e posandogli davanti una lettera sporca e non ancora aperta gli chiese se aveva scoperto qualche traccia della persona alla quale era indirizzata? La Banca mise la lettera così vicino a Darnay che questi poté vedere l’indirizzo, tanto più rapidamente in quanto era il suo vero nome. L’indirizzo, tradotto in inglese, diceva:
«Molto urgente. Al signor finora marchese di Saint-Evrémonde, della Francia. Affidato alle cure dei signori Tellson e C., banchieri, Londra, Inghilterra».
La mattina del matrimonio, il dottor Manette aveva fatto un’unica, urgente e esplicita richiesta a Charles Darnay: che il segreto di quel nome fosse mantenuto inviolato tra loro, a meno che lui, il dottore, non sciogliesse l’obbligo. Nessun altro sapeva che quello era il suo nome; nemmeno sua moglie sospettava la verità; Mr. Lorry non poteva certo saperlo.
“No”, disse il signor Lorry, rispondendo alla Banca, “credo di averlo chiesto a tutti quelli che sono qui ora e nessuno può dirmi dove si trova questo gentiluomo”.
Le lancette dell’orologio si avvicinavano all’ora di chiusura della Banca e il flusso dei conversatori passava compattamente davanti alla scrivania del signor Lorry. Egli teneva la lettera in mano, interrogativo; Monseigneur la guardò nella persona di quel profugo intrigante e indignato; e Monseigneur la guardò nella persona di quell’altro profugo intrigante e indignato; e Questo, Quello e l’Altro avevano tutti qualcosa da dire in tono dispregiativo, in francese o in inglese, riguardo il Marchese che non si trovava.
«Nipote, credo - ma comunque successore degenerato - del raffinato marchese che fu assassinato», disse uno. «Per fortuna non l’ho mai conosciuto».
«Un codardo che abbandonò il suo posto», disse un altro - questo Monseigneur era stato tirato fuori da Parigi con le gambe all’aria e mezzo soffocato, in una carica di fieno - «alcuni anni fa.»
«Contagiato dalle nuove dottrine», disse un terzo, scrutando la direzione attraverso il cannocchiale mentre passava; «si è messo in opposizione all’ultimo Marchese, ha abbandonato i possedimenti quando li ha ereditati e li ha lasciati alla marmaglia. Ora spero che lo ripagheranno come merita».
«Eh?» gridò il tronfio Stryver. «L’ha fatto davvero? È questo il tipo di persona? Vediamo il suo infame nome. Maledetto!»
Darnay, non potendo più trattenersi, toccò la spalla al signor Stryver e disse:
Conosco quel tipo.
“Lo fai davvero?” disse Stryver. “Mi dispiace.”
“Perché?”
“Perché, signor Darnay? Avete sentito cosa ha fatto? Non chiedetelo perché, in questi tempi.”
“But I do ask why?”
“Then I tell you again, Mr. Darnay, I am sorry for it. I am sorry to hear you putting any such extraordinary questions. Here is a fellow, who, infected by the most pestilent and blasphemous code of devilry that ever was known, abandoned his property to the vilest scum of the earth that ever did murder by wholesale, and you ask me why I am sorry that a man who instructs youth knows him? Well, but I’ll answer you. I am sorry because I believe there is contamination in such a scoundrel. That’s why.”
Mindful of the secret, Darnay with great difficulty checked himself, and said: “You may not understand the gentleman.”
“I understand how to put you in a corner, Mr. Darnay,” said Bully Stryver, “and I’ll do it. If this fellow is a gentleman, I don’t understand him. You may tell him so, with my compliments. You may also tell him, from me, that after abandoning his worldly goods and position to this butcherly mob, I wonder he is not at the head of them. But, no, gentlemen,” said Stryver, looking all round, and snapping his fingers, “I know something of human nature, and I tell you that you’ll never find a fellow like this fellow, trusting himself to the mercies of such precious protégés. No, gentlemen; he’ll always show ’em a clean pair of heels very early in the scuffle, and sneak away.”
With those words, and a final snap of his fingers, Mr. Stryver shouldered himself into Fleet-street, amidst the general approbation of his hearers. Mr. Lorry and Charles Darnay were left alone at the desk, in the general departure from the Bank.
“Will you take charge of the letter?” said Mr. Lorry. “You know where to deliver it?”
“I do.”
“Will you undertake to explain, that we suppose it to have been addressed here, on the chance of our knowing where to forward it, and that it has been here some time?”
“I will do so. Do you start for Paris from here?”
“From here, at eight.”
“I will come back, to see you off.”
Very ill at ease with himself, and with Stryver and most other men, Darnay made the best of his way into the quiet of the Temple, opened the letter, and read it. These were its contents:
“June 21, 1792. “MONSIEUR HERETOFORE THE MARQUIS.
“After having long been in danger of my life at the hands of the village, I have been seized, with great violence and indignity, and brought a long journey on foot to Paris. On the road I have suffered a great deal. Nor is that all; my house has been destroyed—razed to the ground.
“The crime for which I am imprisoned, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, and for which I shall be summoned before the tribunal, and shall lose my life (without your so generous help), is, they tell me, treason against the majesty of the people, in that I have acted against them for an emigrant. It is in vain I represent that I have acted for them, and not against, according to your commands. It is in vain I represent that, before the sequestration of emigrant property, I had remitted the imposts they had ceased to pay; that I had collected no rent; that I had had recourse to no process. The only response is, that I have acted for an emigrant, and where is that emigrant?
“Ah! most gracious Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, where is that emigrant? I cry in my sleep where is he? I demand of Heaven, will he not come to deliver me? No answer. Ah Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, I send my desolate cry across the sea, hoping it may perhaps reach your ears through the great bank of Tilson known at Paris!
“For the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the honour of your noble name, I supplicate you, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, to succour and release me. My fault is, that I have been true to you. Oh Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, I pray you be you true to me!
“From this prison here of horror, whence I every hour tend nearer and nearer to destruction, I send you, Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, the assurance of my dolorous and unhappy service.
“Your afflicted,
“Gabelle.”
The latent uneasiness in Darnay’s mind was roused to vigourous life by this letter. The peril of an old servant and a good one, whose only crime was fidelity to himself and his family, stared him so reproachfully in the face, that, as he walked to and fro in the Temple considering what to do, he almost hid his face from the passersby.
He knew very well, that in his horror of the deed which had culminated the bad deeds and bad reputation of the old family house, in his resentful suspicions of his uncle, and in the aversion with which his conscience regarded the crumbling fabric that he was supposed to uphold, he had acted imperfectly. He knew very well, that in his love for Lucie, his renunciation of his social place, though by no means new to his own mind, had been hurried and incomplete. He knew that he ought to have systematically worked it out and supervised it, and that he had meant to do it, and that it had never been done.
The happiness of his own chosen English home, the necessity of being always actively employed, the swift changes and troubles of the time which had followed on one another so fast, that the events of this week annihilated the immature plans of last week, and the events of the week following made all new again; he knew very well, that to the force of these circumstances he had yielded:—not without disquiet, but still without continuous and accumulating resistance. That he had watched the times for a time of action, and that they had shifted and struggled until the time had gone by, and the nobility were trooping from France by every highway and byway, and their property was in course of confiscation and destruction, and their very names were blotting out, was as well known to himself as it could be to any new authority in France that might impeach him for it.
“Ma io chiedo perché?”
«Allora glielo ripeto, signor Darnay, mi dispiace. Mi dispiace sentirle fare domande così straordinarie. Ecco un tizio che, infettato dal codice più pestilenziale e blasfemo di demoniaca malvagità mai conosciuto, ha abbandonato i suoi beni al peggiore scarto della terra che abbia mai fatto ammazzare all’ingrosso, e lei mi chiede perché mi dispiace che un uomo che istruisce la gioventù lo conosca? Beh, ma le rispondo. Mi dispiace perché credo che ci sia contaminazione in uno scellerato del genere. Ecco perché.»
Ricordando il segreto, Darnay con grande difficoltà si trattenne e disse: «Potrebbe darsi che non capiate l’interlocutore».
“Capisco come mettere lei all’angolo, signor Darnay”, disse il prepotente Stryver, “e lo farò. Se questo tizio è un gentiluomo, non lo capisco. Può dirglielo da parte mia, con i miei complimenti. Può anche dirgli, per conto mio, che dopo aver abbandonato i suoi beni e la sua posizione a questa folla di macellai, mi chiedo come mai non ne sia alla testa. Ma no”, disse Stryver guardandosi intorno e schioccando le dita, “conosco un po’ la natura umana, e vi dico che non troverete mai uno come questo tizio a fidarsi delle grazie di protettori così preziosi. No, signori; lui mostrerà loro sempre una bella paia di talloni ben presto nella mischia, e se la filerà.”
Con queste parole e un ultimo schiocco delle dita, il signor Stryver si fece largo in Fleet Street tra l’approvazione generale dei presenti. Il signor Lorry e Charles Darnay rimasero soli alla scrivania, mentre tutti lasciavano la banca.
“Vuoi occuparti della lettera?” disse il signor Lorry. “Sai dove consegnarla?”
“I do.”
«Vi impegnate a spiegare che supponiamo sia stato indirizzato qui, nella speranza di sapere dove inoltrarlo, e che è qui da un po’ di tempo?»
«Lo farò. Partite per Parigi da qui?»
“Da qui, alle otto.”
Tornerò per salutarti.
Molto a disagio con se stesso e con Stryver e la maggior parte degli altri uomini, Darnay si diresse verso il rifugio tranquillo del Temple, aprì la lettera e la lesse. Ecco il contenuto:
«21 giugno 1792. «Monsieur precedentemente Marchese.
«Dopo essere stato a lungo in pericolo di vita per mano del villaggio, sono stato catturato con grande violenza e ignominia e condotto a piedi fino a Parigi dopo un lungo viaggio. Sulla strada ho sofferto molto. E non è tutto: la mia casa è stata distrutta, rasa al suolo.
«Il crimine per cui sono imprigionato, signore un tempo marchese, e per il quale sarò chiamato davanti al tribunale e perderò la vita (senza il suo così generoso aiuto), è, mi dicono, tradimento contro la maestà del popolo, in quanto ho agito contro di loro per conto di un emigrato. È vano che io sostenga di aver agito per loro e non contro, secondo i suoi ordini. È vano che io sostenga che, prima della sequestro dei beni degli emigrati, avevo rimesso le imposte che essi avevano smesso di pagare; che non avevo riscosso alcun affitto; che non mi ero avvalso di nessuna procedura. L’unica risposta è che ho agito per conto di un emigrato e dove si trova quell’emigrato?
«Ah! molto gentile Monsieur un tempo Marchese, dov’è quell’emigrato? Io grido nel mio sonno: “Dov’è lui?” Chiedo al Cielo: “Non verrà a liberarmi?” Nessuna risposta. Ah Monsieur un tempo Marchese, mando il mio desolato grido oltre il mare, sperando che possa forse raggiungere le tue orecchie attraverso la grande banca di Tilson conosciuta a Parigi!
«Per l’amore del Cielo, della giustizia, della generosità e dell’onore del vostro nobile nome, vi supplico, Monsieur ex Marchese, di soccorrermi e liberarmi. La mia colpa è stata quella di essere stato fedele a voi. Oh, Monsieur ex Marchese, ve ne prego, siate fedele anche voi a me!
«Da questa prigione di orrore, da cui ogni ora mi avvicino sempre più alla distruzione, vi mando, signor ex marchese, l’assicurazione del mio servizio dolente e infelice.
“La tua afflitta,”
“Gabelle.”
L’inquietudine latente nella mente di Darnay fu risvegliata a una vita vigorosa da questa lettera. Il pericolo che minacciava un vecchio servitore e un buon uomo, il cui unico crimine era la fedeltà verso lui e la sua famiglia, lo fissava con tale rimprovero negli occhi che, mentre camminava avanti e indietro al Temple riflettendo su cosa fare, si vergognò quasi di mostrare il viso ai passanti.
Egli sapeva molto bene che nel suo orrore per l’atto che aveva culminato i cattivi atti e la cattiva reputazione della vecchia famiglia, nelle sue risentite sospettosità verso lo zio, e nell’avversione con cui la sua coscienza guardava alla struttura in rovina che si supponeva dovesse sostenere, aveva agito imperfettamente. Egli sapeva molto bene che nel suo amore per Lucie, la sua rinuncia al suo posto sociale, sebbene non fosse affatto nuova alla sua mente, era stata frettolosa e incompleta. Sapeva che avrebbe dovuto elaborarla sistematicamente e supervisionarla, e che aveva inteso farlo, e che non era mai stato fatto.
La felicità della sua scelta casa inglese, la necessità di essere sempre attivamente occupato, i rapidi cambiamenti e le difficoltà del tempo che si erano susseguiti così velocemente da far sì che gli eventi di questa settimana annullassero i piani immaturi della scorsa settimana, e quelli della settimana successiva rendessero tutto nuovo; sapeva molto bene di essersi arreso alla forza di queste circostanze: non senza inquietudine, ma comunque senza resistenza continua e accumulata. Sapeva che aveva osservato i tempi per un momento d’azione, e che questi si erano spostati e combattuti fino a quando il tempo non era passato e la nobiltà stava fuggendo dalla Francia su ogni strada e sentiero, e le loro proprietà erano in corso di confisca e distruzione, e i loro nomi venivano cancellati; questo gli era noto quanto potesse esserlo a qualsiasi nuova autorità in Francia che avrebbe potuto accusarlo per questo.
But, he had oppressed no man, he had imprisoned no man; he was so far from having harshly exacted payment of his dues, that he had relinquished them of his own will, thrown himself on a world with no favour in it, won his own private place there, and earned his own bread. Monsieur Gabelle had held the impoverished and involved estate on written instructions, to spare the people, to give them what little there was to give—such fuel as the heavy creditors would let them have in the winter, and such produce as could be saved from the same grip in the summer—and no doubt he had put the fact in plea and proof, for his own safety, so that it could not but appear now.
This favoured the desperate resolution Charles Darnay had begun to make, that he would go to Paris.
Yes. Like the mariner in the old story, the winds and streams had driven him within the influence of the Loadstone Rock, and it was drawing him to itself, and he must go. Everything that arose before his mind drifted him on, faster and faster, more and more steadily, to the terrible attraction. His latent uneasiness had been, that bad aims were being worked out in his own unhappy land by bad instruments, and that he who could not fail to know that he was better than they, was not there, trying to do something to stay bloodshed, and assert the claims of mercy and humanity. With this uneasiness half stifled, and half reproaching him, he had been brought to the pointed comparison of himself with the brave old gentleman in whom duty was so strong; upon that comparison (injurious to himself) had instantly followed the sneers of Monseigneur, which had stung him bitterly, and those of Stryver, which above all were coarse and galling, for old reasons. Upon those, had followed Gabelle’s letter: the appeal of an innocent prisoner, in danger of death, to his justice, honour, and good name.
His resolution was made. He must go to Paris.
Yes. The Loadstone Rock was drawing him, and he must sail on, until he struck. He knew of no rock; he saw hardly any danger. The intention with which he had done what he had done, even although he had left it incomplete, presented it before him in an aspect that would be gratefully acknowledged in France on his presenting himself to assert it. Then, that glorious vision of doing good, which is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds, arose before him, and he even saw himself in the illusion with some influence to guide this raging Revolution that was running so fearfully wild.
As he walked to and fro with his resolution made, he considered that neither Lucie nor her father must know of it until he was gone. Lucie should be spared the pain of separation; and her father, always reluctant to turn his thoughts towards the dangerous ground of old, should come to the knowledge of the step, as a step taken, and not in the balance of suspense and doubt. How much of the incompleteness of his situation was referable to her father, through the painful anxiety to avoid reviving old associations of France in his mind, he did not discuss with himself. But, that circumstance too, had had its influence in his course.
He walked to and fro, with thoughts very busy, until it was time to return to Tellson’s and take leave of Mr. Lorry. As soon as he arrived in Paris he would present himself to this old friend, but he must say nothing of his intention now.
A carriage with post-horses was ready at the Bank door, and Jerry was booted and equipped.
“I have delivered that letter,” said Charles Darnay to Mr. Lorry. “I would not consent to your being charged with any written answer, but perhaps you will take a verbal one?”
“That I will, and readily,” said Mr. Lorry, “if it is not dangerous.”
“Not at all. Though it is to a prisoner in the Abbaye.”
“What is his name?” said Mr. Lorry, with his open pocket-book in his hand.
“Gabelle.”
“Gabelle. And what is the message to the unfortunate Gabelle in prison?”
“Simply, ‘that he has received the letter, and will come.’”
“Any time mentioned?”
“He will start upon his journey to-morrow night.”
“Any person mentioned?”
“No.”
He helped Mr. Lorry to wrap himself in a number of coats and cloaks, and went out with him from the warm atmosphere of the old Bank, into the misty air of Fleet-street. “My love to Lucie, and to little Lucie,” said Mr. Lorry at parting, “and take precious care of them till I come back.” Charles Darnay shook his head and doubtfully smiled, as the carriage rolled away.
That night—it was the fourteenth of August—he sat up late, and wrote two fervent letters; one was to Lucie, explaining the strong obligation he was under to go to Paris, and showing her, at length, the reasons that he had, for feeling confident that he could become involved in no personal danger there; the other was to the Doctor, confiding Lucie and their dear child to his care, and dwelling on the same topics with the strongest assurances. To both, he wrote that he would despatch letters in proof of his safety, immediately after his arrival.
It was a hard day, that day of being among them, with the first reservation of their joint lives on his mind. It was a hard matter to preserve the innocent deceit of which they were profoundly unsuspicious. But, an affectionate glance at his wife, so happy and busy, made him resolute not to tell her what impended (he had been half moved to do it, so strange it was to him to act in anything without her quiet aid), and the day passed quickly. Early in the evening he embraced her, and her scarcely less dear namesake, pretending that he would return by-and-bye (an imaginary engagement took him out, and he had secreted a valise of clothes ready), and so he emerged into the heavy mist of the heavy streets, with a heavier heart.
The unseen force was drawing him fast to itself, now, and all the tides and winds were setting straight and strong towards it. He left his two letters with a trusty porter, to be delivered half an hour before midnight, and no sooner; took horse for Dover; and began his journey. “For the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the honour of your noble name!” was the poor prisoner’s cry with which he strengthened his sinking heart, as he left all that was dear on earth behind him, and floated away for the Loadstone Rock.
The end of the second book.
Ma non aveva opprimere nessuno, non aveva imprigionato nessuno; era così lontano dall’aver esattamente richiesto il pagamento dei suoi debiti che li aveva rinunciati di sua spontanea volontà, si era affidato a un mondo senza favori, vi aveva conquistato il suo posto privato e guadagnava il proprio pane. Monsieur Gabelle aveva gestito l’impoverito e complicato patrimonio su istruzioni scritte, per risparmiare la gente, dar loro quel poco che c’era da dare - quel combustibile che i pesanti creditori gli avrebbero permesso di avere in inverno, e quei prodotti che potevano essere salvati dalla stessa presa in estate - e senza alcun dubbio aveva messo il fatto in appello e prova, per la sua sicurezza, così che non potesse che apparire ora.
Questo favorì la disperata risoluzione che Charles Darnay aveva iniziato a prendere, di recarsi a Parigi.
Sì. Come il marinaio della vecchia storia, i venti e le correnti lo avevano spinto sotto l’influenza della Roccia di Magnetite, che lo attirava a sé, e lui doveva andare. Tutto ciò che gli sorgeva davanti alla mente lo trascinava più velocemente, sempre più costantemente, verso quella terribile attrazione. La sua inquietudine latente era stata che cattivi scopi venivano realizzati nella sua infelice patria da strumenti malvagi, e che lui, che non poteva ignorare di essere migliore di loro, non fosse lì a cercare di fare qualcosa per fermare lo spargimento di sangue e affermare le rivendicazioni della misericordia e dell’umanità. Con questa inquietudine a metà soffocata e a metà che lo rimproverava, era stato portato al confronto diretto con il coraggioso vecchio gentiluomo in cui il dovere era così forte; su quel confronto (prejudizievole per lui) erano immediatamente seguiti gli scherni del Monseigneur, che lo avevano ferito amaramente, e quelli di Stryver, che sopra ogni cosa erano volgari e irritanti, per vecchie ragioni. Su questi era seguita la lettera di Gabelle: l’appello di un prigioniero innocente, in pericolo di morte, alla sua giustizia, onore e buona reputazione.
La sua decisione era presa. Doveva andare a Parigi.
Sì. La roccia calamitata lo attirava e lui doveva continuare a navigare finché non fosse incagliato. Non conosceva nessuna roccia; quasi non vedeva alcun pericolo. L’intenzione che aveva avuto nel fare ciò che aveva fatto, anche se l’aveva lasciata incompleta, gliela presentava sotto un aspetto che sarebbe stato riconosciuto con gratitudine in Francia quando si fosse presentato a rivendicarla. Poi, quella visione gloriosa di fare del bene, che così spesso è l’ottimistico miraggio di tante menti buone, gli apparve davanti e lui si vide persino nell’illusione con un certo influsso per guidare questa furiosa Rivoluzione che stava correndo in modo così terribilmente sfrenato.
Mentre camminava avanti e indietro con la sua decisione presa, pensò che né Lucie né suo padre dovevano saperne nulla finché non fosse partito. Lucie sarebbe stata risparmiata dal dolore della separazione; e suo padre, sempre riluttante a rivolgere i suoi pensieri verso il terreno pericoloso del passato, avrebbe appreso la notizia del passo compiuto come un fatto compiuto, non in bilico tra l’incertezza e il dubbio. Quanto dell’incompletezza della sua situazione fosse attribuibile a suo padre, attraverso l’angosciosa ansia di evitare di rievocare vecchie associazioni con la Francia nella sua mente, non lo discusse con se stesso. Ma anche quella circostanza aveva avuto la sua influenza sulla sua decisione.
Camminò avanti e indietro, con i pensieri molto occupati, fino a quando fu ora di tornare da Tellson e salutare il signor Lorry. Appena arrivato a Parigi si sarebbe presentato a questo vecchio amico, ma non doveva dire nulla della sua intenzione ora.
Una carrozza con cavalli da posta era pronta davanti alla porta della Banca e Jerry era in sella e attrezzato.
«Ho consegnato quella lettera», disse Charles Darnay al signor Lorry. «Non vorrei che vi si chiedesse di rispondere per iscritto, ma forse vorrete darmi una risposta verbale?»
“Lo farò volentieri,” disse il signor Lorry, “se non è pericoloso.”
“Per niente. Anche se è per un prigioniero nell’Abbazia.”
“Come si chiama?” chiese il signor Lorry con il taccuino aperto in mano.
“Gabelle.”
«Gabelle. E qual è il messaggio per l’infortunato Gabelle nella prigione?»
“Semplicemente: ‘ha ricevuto la lettera e verrà’.”
«È stato menzionato qualche momento?»
“Comincerà il suo viaggio domani sera.”
“Qualcuno nominato?”
“No.”
Aiutò il signor Lorry a avvolgersi in diversi cappotti e mantelli, e uscì con lui dall’atmosfera calda della vecchia Banca, nell’ aria nebbiosa di Fleet-street. “Mandate i miei saluti a Lucie e alla piccola Lucie”, disse il signor Lorry al momento del distacco, “e prendetevi cura di loro finché non torno.” Charles Darnay scosse la testa e sorrise dubbiosamente, mentre la carrozza si allontanava.
Quella notte — era il quattordici agosto — rimase sveglio fino a tardi e scrisse due lettere appassionate; una era per Lucie, in cui spiegava di essere obbligato ad andare a Parigi, e le mostrava, con dovizia di particolari, i motivi che lo rendevano fiducioso di non correre alcun rischio personale; l’altra era per il Dottore, in cui gli affidava Lucie e la loro cara bambina, insistendo sugli stessi argomenti con le più solenni assicurazioni. A entrambi scrisse che avrebbe spedito lettere a prova della sua incolumità subito dopo il suo arrivo.
Fu una giornata difficile quella passata tra loro, con il primo pensiero alla loro vita in comune che gli gravava sulla mente. Fu un compito arduo mantenere l’inganno innocente di cui erano profondamente ignari. Ma uno sguardo affettuoso verso sua moglie, così felice e occupata, lo indusse a non rivelarle ciò che si prospettava (era stato quasi tentato di farlo, tanto gli era strano agire senza il suo tranquillo aiuto), e la giornata trascorse in fretta. All’inizio della serata l’abbracciò, insieme alla sua quasi altrettanto cara omonima, fingendo che sarebbe tornato presto (un impegno immaginario lo portò fuori casa, e aveva nascosto una valigia con i vestiti pronta), e così emerse nella fitta nebbia delle strade pesanti, con un cuore ancora più pesante.
La forza invisibile lo stava attirando a sé con rapidità, ora, e tutte le maree e i venti si dirigevano dritti e vigorosi verso di essa. Lasciò le sue due lettere a un portiere fidato, affinché fossero consegnate mezz’ora prima di mezzanotte, e non prima; prese cavallo per Dover; e iniziò il suo viaggio. “Per l’amore del Cielo, della giustizia, della generosità, dell’onore del tuo nobile nome!” era il grido del povero prigioniero con cui rafforzava il suo cuore che vacillava, mentre lasciava dietro di sé tutto ciò che gli era caro sulla terra e si allontanava verso la roccia calamitata.
La fine del secondo libro.
Book the Third—the Track of a Storm CHAPTER I. In Secret
The traveller fared slowly on his way, who fared towards Paris from England in the autumn of the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two. More than enough of bad roads, bad equipages, and bad horses, he would have encountered to delay him, though the fallen and unfortunate King of France had been upon his throne in all his glory; but, the changed times were fraught with other obstacles than these. Every town-gate and village taxing-house had its band of citizen-patriots, with their national muskets in a most explosive state of readiness, who stopped all comers and goers, cross-questioned them, inspected their papers, looked for their names in lists of their own, turned them back, or sent them on, or stopped them and laid them in hold, as their capricious judgment or fancy deemed best for the dawning Republic One and Indivisible, of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death.
A very few French leagues of his journey were accomplished, when Charles Darnay began to perceive that for him along these country roads there was no hope of return until he should have been declared a good citizen at Paris. Whatever might befall now, he must on to his journey’s end. Not a mean village closed upon him, not a common barrier dropped across the road behind him, but he knew it to be another iron door in the series that was barred between him and England. The universal watchfulness so encompassed him, that if he had been taken in a net, or were being forwarded to his destination in a cage, he could not have felt his freedom more completely gone.
This universal watchfulness not only stopped him on the highway twenty times in a stage, but retarded his progress twenty times in a day, by riding after him and taking him back, riding before him and stopping him by anticipation, riding with him and keeping him in charge. He had been days upon his journey in France alone, when he went to bed tired out, in a little town on the high road, still a long way from Paris.
Nothing but the production of the afflicted Gabelle’s letter from his prison of the Abbaye would have got him on so far. His difficulty at the guard-house in this small place had been such, that he felt his journey to have come to a crisis. And he was, therefore, as little surprised as a man could be, to find himself awakened at the small inn to which he had been remitted until morning, in the middle of the night.
Awakened by a timid local functionary and three armed patriots in rough red caps and with pipes in their mouths, who sat down on the bed.
“Emigrant,” said the functionary, “I am going to send you on to Paris, under an escort.”
“Citizen, I desire nothing more than to get to Paris, though I could dispense with the escort.”
“Silence!” growled a red-cap, striking at the coverlet with the butt-end of his musket. “Peace, aristocrat!”
“It is as the good patriot says,” observed the timid functionary. “You are an aristocrat, and must have an escort—and must pay for it.”
“I have no choice,” said Charles Darnay.
“Choice! Listen to him!” cried the same scowling red-cap. “As if it was not a favour to be protected from the lamp-iron!”
“It is always as the good patriot says,” observed the functionary. “Rise and dress yourself, emigrant.”
Darnay complied, and was taken back to the guard-house, where other patriots in rough red caps were smoking, drinking, and sleeping, by a watch-fire. Here he paid a heavy price for his escort, and hence he started with it on the wet, wet roads at three o’clock in the morning.
The escort were two mounted patriots in red caps and tri-coloured cockades, armed with national muskets and sabres, who rode one on either side of him.
The escorted governed his own horse, but a loose line was attached to his bridle, the end of which one of the patriots kept girded round his wrist. In this state they set forth with the sharp rain driving in their faces: clattering at a heavy dragoon trot over the uneven town pavement, and out upon the mire-deep roads. In this state they traversed without change, except of horses and pace, all the mire-deep leagues that lay between them and the capital.
They travelled in the night, halting an hour or two after daybreak, and lying by until the twilight fell. The escort were so wretchedly clothed, that they twisted straw round their bare legs, and thatched their ragged shoulders to keep the wet off. Apart from the personal discomfort of being so attended, and apart from such considerations of present danger as arose from one of the patriots being chronically drunk, and carrying his musket very recklessly, Charles Darnay did not allow the restraint that was laid upon him to awaken any serious fears in his breast; for, he reasoned with himself that it could have no reference to the merits of an individual case that was not yet stated, and of representations, confirmable by the prisoner in the Abbaye, that were not yet made.
But when they came to the town of Beauvais—which they did at eventide, when the streets were filled with people—he could not conceal from himself that the aspect of affairs was very alarming. An ominous crowd gathered to see him dismount of the posting-yard, and many voices called out loudly, “Down with the emigrant!”
He stopped in the act of swinging himself out of his saddle, and, resuming it as his safest place, said:
“Emigrant, my friends! Do you not see me here, in France, of my own will?”
“You are a cursed emigrant,” cried a farrier, making at him in a furious manner through the press, hammer in hand; “and you are a cursed aristocrat!”
The postmaster interposed himself between this man and the rider’s bridle (at which he was evidently making), and soothingly said, “Let him be; let him be! He will be judged at Paris.”
Libro terzo - La scia di una tempesta CAPITOLO I. In segreto
Il viaggiatore procedeva lentamente verso la sua meta, che era Parigi dalla Inghilterra nell’autunno dell’anno mille settecento novantadue. Avrebbe incontrato più che abbastanza di cattive strade, cattivi equipaggi e cavalli scadenti per ritardare il suo cammino, anche se il caduto e sfortunato Re di Francia fosse stato sul trono in tutta la sua gloria; ma i tempi cambiati erano pieni di altri ostacoli oltre a questi. Ogni cancello della città e ogni casello del villaggio avevano il loro gruppo di cittadini-patrioti, con le loro armi nazionali in uno stato di prontezza esplosiva, che fermavano tutti i viaggiatori in arrivo o in partenza, li interrogavano a fondo, ispezionavano i loro documenti, cercavano i loro nomi nelle proprie liste, li facevano tornare indietro, li mandavano avanti, oppure li fermavano e li mettevano in isolamento, secondo il loro giudizio capriccioso o la loro fantasia, ritenendo ciò più utile per la neonata Repubblica Una e Indivisibile di Libertà, Uguaglianza, Fratellanza o Morte.
Erano state compiute pochissime leghe francesi del suo viaggio, quando Charles Darnay cominciò ad accorgersi che per lui, su quelle strade di campagna, non c’era più alcuna speranza di tornare indietro finché non fosse stato dichiarato un buon cittadino a Parigi. Qualunque cosa gli potesse accadere ora, doveva proseguire fino alla fine del suo viaggio. Non c’era villaggio misero che si chiudesse su di lui, non c’era semplice barriera che calasse sulla strada alle sue spalle, senza che egli la sapesse un’altra porta di ferro nella serie di quelle sbarrate tra lui e l’Inghilterra. La vigilanza universale lo circondava così completamente che se fosse stato catturato in una rete o inviato a destinazione dentro una gabbia, non avrebbe potuto sentirsi più completamente privato della sua libertà.
Questa vigilanza universale non solo lo fermava sulla strada venti volte per tappa, ma ritardava il suo progresso venti volte al giorno, inseguendolo e riportandolo indietro, precedendolo e bloccandolo in anticipo, cavalcando con lui e tenendolo sotto controllo. Era stato giorni sul suo viaggio in Francia da solo, quando andò a letto esausto, in un piccolo paese sulla strada principale, ancora molto lontano da Parigi.
Nulla se non la produzione della lettera del povero Gabelle dalla sua prigione dell’Abbaye lo avrebbe portato fin qui. La difficoltà alla guardia-casa in questo piccolo paese era stata tale che aveva sentito il suo viaggio giungere a una crisi. E perciò non fu affatto sorpreso, come un uomo poteva esserlo, di trovarsi svegliato nella piccola locanda in cui era stato rimandato fino al mattino, nel cuore della notte.
Svegliato da un timido funzionario locale e tre patrioti armati con rozzi cappelli rossi e pipa in bocca che si sedettero sul letto.
«Emigrante», disse l’impiegato, «la manderò a Parigi sotto scorta.»
«Cittadino, non desidero altro che arrivare a Parigi, anche se potrei fare a meno dell’escorta.»
«Silenzio!» ringhiò un berretto rosso, colpendo la coperta con il calcio del suo fucile. «Pace, aristocratico!»
«È come dice il buon patriota», osservò l’impiegato timido, «siete un aristocratico e dovete avere una scorta, e pagarla.»
“Non ho scelta”, disse Charles Darnay.
«Scelta! Ascoltatelo!» gridò lo stesso cappello rosso accigliato. «Come se non fosse un favore essere protetti dal ferro da stiro!»
«È sempre come dice il buon patriota», osservò l’impiegato. «Alzati e vestiti, emigrante».
Darnay acconsentì e fu ricondotto alla guardia-casa, dove altri patrioti con rozzi berretti rossi fumavano, bevevano e dormivano accanto a un fuoco di guardia. Qui pagò una cifra esorbitante per la sua scorta, e quindi partì con essa sulle strade bagnate, bagnatissime alle tre del mattino.
La scorta era composta da due patrioti a cavallo con berretti rossi e coccarde tricolori, armati di fucili nazionali e sciabole, che cavalcavano uno per lato.
L’accompagnatore governava il proprio cavallo, ma una corda sciolta era attaccata alla sua briglia e uno dei patrioti la teneva avvolta intorno al polso. In questo stato si misero in cammino con la pioggia battente che li colpiva in faccia: scalpitando a un pesante trotto da dragoni sul diseguale selciato cittadino, e poi sulle strade profonde nel fango. In questo stato attraversarono senza cambiamenti, tranne quelli di cavalli e ritmo, tutte le leghe profonde nel fango che li separavano dalla capitale.
Viaggiarono di notte, facendo sosta un’ora o due dopo l’alba e riposando fino al crepuscolo. Gli uomini della scorta erano così miseramente vestiti che si avvolgevano paglia intorno alle gambe nude e coprivano le loro spalle stracciate per proteggersi dall’umidità. A parte il disagio personale di essere accompagnato in questo modo, e a parte le considerazioni sul pericolo immediato derivanti dal fatto che uno dei patrioti era cronico ubriacone e maneggiava il fucile con grande imprudenza, Charles Darnay non lasciò che la costrizione cui era sottoposto gli suscitasse seri timori; infatti si diceva che ciò non poteva avere alcun riferimento ai meriti di un caso individuale ancora non esposto e a delle dichiarazioni, confermate dal prigioniero all’Abbaye, che non erano state ancora presentate.
Ma quando arrivarono alla città di Beauvais — cosa che accadde al tramonto, quando le strade erano piene di gente — non poté nascondere a se stesso che la situazione era molto allarmante. Una folla minacciosa si radunò per vederlo smontare nella corte della posta, e molte voci gridarono forte: «Abbasso l’emigrato!»
Si fermò mentre stava per scendere dalla sella e, riprendendo posto perché era il più sicuro, disse:
“Emigrante, miei amici! Non mi vedete qui in Francia di mia volontà?”
«Sei un dannato emigrante», gridò un maniscalco, facendosi strada verso di lui furiosamente tra la folla con il martello in mano; «e sei un dannato aristocratico!»
Il postino si frappose tra quell’uomo e la briglia del cavaliere (verso cui evidentemente stava avanzando) e disse con tono rassicurante: “Lasciatelo stare; lasciatelo stare! Sarà giudicato a Parigi.”
“Judged!” repeated the farrier, swinging his hammer. “Ay! and condemned as a traitor.” At this the crowd roared approval.
Checking the postmaster, who was for turning his horse’s head to the yard (the drunken patriot sat composedly in his saddle looking on, with the line round his wrist), Darnay said, as soon as he could make his voice heard:
“Friends, you deceive yourselves, or you are deceived. I am not a traitor.”
“He lies!” cried the smith. “He is a traitor since the decree. His life is forfeit to the people. His cursed life is not his own!”
At the instant when Darnay saw a rush in the eyes of the crowd, which another instant would have brought upon him, the postmaster turned his horse into the yard, the escort rode in close upon his horse’s flanks, and the postmaster shut and barred the crazy double gates. The farrier struck a blow upon them with his hammer, and the crowd groaned; but, no more was done.
“What is this decree that the smith spoke of?” Darnay asked the postmaster, when he had thanked him, and stood beside him in the yard.
“Truly, a decree for selling the property of emigrants.”
“When passed?”
“On the fourteenth.”
“The day I left England!”
“Everybody says it is but one of several, and that there will be others—if there are not already—banishing all emigrants, and condemning all to death who return. That is what he meant when he said your life was not your own.”
“But there are no such decrees yet?”
“What do I know!” said the postmaster, shrugging his shoulders; “there may be, or there will be. It is all the same. What would you have?”
They rested on some straw in a loft until the middle of the night, and then rode forward again when all the town was asleep. Among the many wild changes observable on familiar things which made this wild ride unreal, not the least was the seeming rarity of sleep. After long and lonely spurring over dreary roads, they would come to a cluster of poor cottages, not steeped in darkness, but all glittering with lights, and would find the people, in a ghostly manner in the dead of the night, circling hand in hand round a shrivelled tree of Liberty, or all drawn up together singing a Liberty song. Happily, however, there was sleep in Beauvais that night to help them out of it and they passed on once more into solitude and loneliness: jingling through the untimely cold and wet, among impoverished fields that had yielded no fruits of the earth that year, diversified by the blackened remains of burnt houses, and by the sudden emergence from ambuscade, and sharp reining up across their way, of patriot patrols on the watch on all the roads.
Daylight at last found them before the wall of Paris. The barrier was closed and strongly guarded when they rode up to it.
“Where are the papers of this prisoner?” demanded a resolute-looking man in authority, who was summoned out by the guard.
Naturally struck by the disagreeable word, Charles Darnay requested the speaker to take notice that he was a free traveller and French citizen, in charge of an escort which the disturbed state of the country had imposed upon him, and which he had paid for.
“Where,” repeated the same personage, without taking any heed of him whatever, “are the papers of this prisoner?”
The drunken patriot had them in his cap, and produced them. Casting his eyes over Gabelle’s letter, the same personage in authority showed some disorder and surprise, and looked at Darnay with a close attention.
He left escort and escorted without saying a word, however, and went into the guard-room; meanwhile, they sat upon their horses outside the gate. Looking about him while in this state of suspense, Charles Darnay observed that the gate was held by a mixed guard of soldiers and patriots, the latter far outnumbering the former; and that while ingress into the city for peasants’ carts bringing in supplies, and for similar traffic and traffickers, was easy enough, egress, even for the homeliest people, was very difficult. A numerous medley of men and women, not to mention beasts and vehicles of various sorts, was waiting to issue forth; but, the previous identification was so strict, that they filtered through the barrier very slowly. Some of these people knew their turn for examination to be so far off, that they lay down on the ground to sleep or smoke, while others talked together, or loitered about. The red cap and tri-colour cockade were universal, both among men and women.
When he had sat in his saddle some half-hour, taking note of these things, Darnay found himself confronted by the same man in authority, who directed the guard to open the barrier. Then he delivered to the escort, drunk and sober, a receipt for the escorted, and requested him to dismount. He did so, and the two patriots, leading his tired horse, turned and rode away without entering the city.
He accompanied his conductor into a guard-room, smelling of common wine and tobacco, where certain soldiers and patriots, asleep and awake, drunk and sober, and in various neutral states between sleeping and waking, drunkenness and sobriety, were standing and lying about. The light in the guard-house, half derived from the waning oil-lamps of the night, and half from the overcast day, was in a correspondingly uncertain condition. Some registers were lying open on a desk, and an officer of a coarse, dark aspect, presided over these.
“Citizen Defarge,” said he to Darnay’s conductor, as he took a slip of paper to write on. “Is this the emigrant Evrémonde?”
“This is the man.”
“Your age, Evrémonde?”
“Thirty-seven.”
“Married, Evrémonde?”
“Yes.”
“Where married?”
“In England.”
“Without doubt. Where is your wife, Evrémonde?”
“In England.”
“Without doubt. You are consigned, Evrémonde, to the prison of La Force.”
«Giudicato!» ripeté il maniscalco, facendo oscillare il martello. «Sì! E condannato come traditore». A questo punto la folla esplose in un boato di approvazione.
Controllando il postiglione che stava per girare la testa del cavallo verso il cortile (il patriota ubriaco sedeva composto in sella a guardarlo, con la corda avvolta intorno al polso), Darnay disse non appena poté farsi sentire:
“Amici, vi illudete o siete ingannati. Non sono un traditore.”
“Mente!” gridò il fabbro. “È un traditore dal decreto. La sua vita è perduta per la gente. La sua maledetta vita non gli appartiene più!”
Nel momento in cui Darnay vide un impeto negli occhi della folla che, un attimo dopo, si sarebbe abbattuto su di lui, il postiglione fece entrare il suo cavallo nel cortile, la scorta cavalcò vicino ai fianchi del suo cavallo, e il postiglione chiuse e sbarrò le vecchie porte doppie. Il maniscalco diede un colpo alle porte con il martello, e la folla gemette; ma non accadde altro.
“Che decreto è questo di cui ha parlato il fabbro?”, chiese Darnay al postiglione, dopo averlo ringraziato e essersi fermato accanto a lui nel cortile.
“Veramente, un decreto per vendere i beni degli emigranti.”
“Quando è successo?”
“Il quattordici.”
“Il giorno in cui lasciai l’Inghilterra!”
«Tutti dicono che è solo uno di diversi editti e che ce ne saranno altri - se non ci sono già - che bandiscono tutti gli emigrati e condannano a morte chiunque torna. È questo che intendeva quando ha detto che la tua vita non ti appartiene più».
“Ma non ci sono ancora tali decreti?”
«Che ne so io!» disse il postino alzando le spalle «forse ci sono o forse ci saranno. È la stessa cosa. Che volete che sia?»
Riposarono su un po’ di paglia in un sottotetto fino a metà notte, e poi ripresero il cammino quando tutta la città dormiva. Tra i tanti cambiamenti selvaggi osservabili nelle cose familiari che rendevano questa corsa selvaggia irreale, non dei meno era l’apparente rarità del sonno. Dopo aver spronato a lungo e solitariamente su strade desolate, si imbattevano in un gruppo di povere casupole, non immerso nell’oscurità, ma tutto risplendente di luci, e trovavano la gente, in maniera spettrale nel cuore della notte, che girava mano nella mano intorno a un albero della Libertà avvizzito, o tutti raccolti insieme cantando una canzone della Libertà. Fortunatamente, tuttavia, c’era del sonno a Beauvais quella notte per aiutarli a uscirne e ripresero il cammino ancora una volta nella solitudine e loneliness: tintinnando nel freddo e nell’umidità fuori stagione, tra campi impoveriti che quell’anno non avevano dato frutti della terra, variati dai resti anneriti di case bruciate, e dall’improvvisa comparsa da un agguato e dalla brusca frenata attraverso il loro cammino, dei pattuglie patriottiche in guardia su tutte le strade.
La luce del giorno alla fine li trovò davanti al muro di Parigi. La barriera era chiusa e fortemente sorvegliata quando vi giunsero a cavallo.
«Dov’è la documentazione di questo prigioniero?», chiese un uomo dall’aria risoluta e autoritaria che era stato convocato dalla guardia.
Naturalmente colpito dalla spiacevole parola, Charles Darnay chiese all’oratore di notare che era un viaggiatore libero e cittadino francese, a capo di una scorta imposta dallo stato turbolento del paese e per la quale aveva pagato.
«Dove», ripeté la stessa persona senza prestargli alcuna attenzione, «sono i documenti di questo prigioniero?»
Il patriota ubriaco le aveva nel cappello e le tirò fuori. Gettando lo sguardo sulla lettera di Gabelle, la stessa autorità mostrò un certo disordine e sorpresa, e guardò Darnay con grande attenzione.
Se ne andò senza dire una parola, accompagnato e scortato, ed entrò nella guardiola; nel frattempo loro rimasero a cavallo fuori dal cancello. Guardandosi intorno in quello stato di sospensione, Charles Darnay notò che il cancello era presidiato da una guardia mista di soldati e patrioti, questi ultimi molto più numerosi dei primi; e che mentre l’ingresso nella città per i carri contadini che portavano viveri e per traffici e commercianti simili era abbastanza facile, l’uscita, anche per le persone più comuni, era molto difficile. Una numerosa mescolanza di uomini e donne, senza parlare di bestie e veicoli di vario genere, aspettava di uscire; ma la precedente identificazione era così rigorosa che passavano attraverso il cancello con grande lentezza. Alcune di queste persone sapevano che il loro turno per essere esaminate era ancora molto lontano e si sdraiavano a terra per dormire o fumare, mentre altre parlavano tra loro o vagabondavano in giro. Il berretto rosso e la coccarda tricolore erano universali sia tra gli uomini che tra le donne.
Dopo essere rimasto in sella per circa mezz’ora, osservando queste cose, Darnay si trovò di fronte lo stesso uomo in autorità che ordinò alla guardia di aprire il cancello. Poi consegnò all’accompagnatore, ubriaco e sobrio, una ricevuta per l’accompagnato e gli chiese di smontare. Lui lo fece e i due patrioti, guidando il suo stanco cavallo, si voltarono e se ne andarono senza entrare nella città.
Lo accompagnò nel locale della guardia, che sapeva di vino comune e tabacco, dove alcuni soldati e patrioti dormivano o erano svegli, ubriachi o sobri, in vari stati intermedi tra sonno e veglia, ebbrezza e sobrietà. La luce nella guardiola, metà proveniente dalle lampade a olio che si consumavano della notte e metà dal giorno nuvoloso, era in uno stato altrettanto incerto. Alcuni registri erano aperti su una scrivania, e un ufficiale dall’aspetto scuro e grossolano li sorvegliava.
«Cittadino Defarge», disse al conduttore di Darnay mentre prendeva un foglio per scrivere. «È questo l’emigrato Evrémonde?»
“Questo è l’uomo.”
“La tua età, Evrémonde?”
“Trentasette.”
“Sposato, Evrémonde?”
“Sì, davvero.”
“Dove si è sposato?”
“In Inghilterra.”
«Senza ombra di dubbio. Dove si trova sua moglie, Evrémonde?»
“In Inghilterra.”
«Senza ombra di dubbio. Lei è condannato, Evrémonde, alla prigione della Force».
“Just Heaven!” exclaimed Darnay. “Under what law, and for what offence?”
The officer looked up from his slip of paper for a moment.
“We have new laws, Evrémonde, and new offences, since you were here.” He said it with a hard smile, and went on writing.
“I entreat you to observe that I have come here voluntarily, in response to that written appeal of a fellow-countryman which lies before you. I demand no more than the opportunity to do so without delay. Is not that my right?”
“Emigrants have no rights, Evrémonde,” was the stolid reply. The officer wrote until he had finished, read over to himself what he had written, sanded it, and handed it to Defarge, with the words “In secret.”
Defarge motioned with the paper to the prisoner that he must accompany him. The prisoner obeyed, and a guard of two armed patriots attended them.
“Is it you,” said Defarge, in a low voice, as they went down the guardhouse steps and turned into Paris, “who married the daughter of Doctor Manette, once a prisoner in the Bastille that is no more?”
“Yes,” replied Darnay, looking at him with surprise.
“My name is Defarge, and I keep a wine-shop in the Quarter Saint Antoine. Possibly you have heard of me.”
“My wife came to your house to reclaim her father? Yes!”
The word “wife” seemed to serve as a gloomy reminder to Defarge, to say with sudden impatience, “In the name of that sharp female newly-born, and called La Guillotine, why did you come to France?”
“You heard me say why, a minute ago. Do you not believe it is the truth?”
“A bad truth for you,” said Defarge, speaking with knitted brows, and looking straight before him.
“Indeed I am lost here. All here is so unprecedented, so changed, so sudden and unfair, that I am absolutely lost. Will you render me a little help?”
“None.” Defarge spoke, always looking straight before him.
“Will you answer me a single question?”
“Perhaps. According to its nature. You can say what it is.”
“In this prison that I am going to so unjustly, shall I have some free communication with the world outside?”
“You will see.”
“I am not to be buried there, prejudged, and without any means of presenting my case?”
“You will see. But, what then? Other people have been similarly buried in worse prisons, before now.”
“But never by me, Citizen Defarge.”
Defarge glanced darkly at him for answer, and walked on in a steady and set silence. The deeper he sank into this silence, the fainter hope there was—or so Darnay thought—of his softening in any slight degree. He, therefore, made haste to say:
“It is of the utmost importance to me (you know, Citizen, even better than I, of how much importance), that I should be able to communicate to Mr. Lorry of Tellson’s Bank, an English gentleman who is now in Paris, the simple fact, without comment, that I have been thrown into the prison of La Force. Will you cause that to be done for me?”
“I will do,” Defarge doggedly rejoined, “nothing for you. My duty is to my country and the People. I am the sworn servant of both, against you. I will do nothing for you.”
Charles Darnay felt it hopeless to entreat him further, and his pride was touched besides. As they walked on in silence, he could not but see how used the people were to the spectacle of prisoners passing along the streets. The very children scarcely noticed him. A few passers turned their heads, and a few shook their fingers at him as an aristocrat; otherwise, that a man in good clothes should be going to prison, was no more remarkable than that a labourer in working clothes should be going to work. In one narrow, dark, and dirty street through which they passed, an excited orator, mounted on a stool, was addressing an excited audience on the crimes against the people, of the king and the royal family. The few words that he caught from this man’s lips, first made it known to Charles Darnay that the king was in prison, and that the foreign ambassadors had one and all left Paris. On the road (except at Beauvais) he had heard absolutely nothing. The escort and the universal watchfulness had completely isolated him.
That he had fallen among far greater dangers than those which had developed themselves when he left England, he of course knew now. That perils had thickened about him fast, and might thicken faster and faster yet, he of course knew now. He could not but admit to himself that he might not have made this journey, if he could have foreseen the events of a few days. And yet his misgivings were not so dark as, imagined by the light of this later time, they would appear. Troubled as the future was, it was the unknown future, and in its obscurity there was ignorant hope. The horrible massacre, days and nights long, which, within a few rounds of the clock, was to set a great mark of blood upon the blessed garnering time of harvest, was as far out of his knowledge as if it had been a hundred thousand years away. The “sharp female newly-born, and called La Guillotine,” was hardly known to him, or to the generality of people, by name. The frightful deeds that were to be soon done, were probably unimagined at that time in the brains of the doers. How could they have a place in the shadowy conceptions of a gentle mind?
Of unjust treatment in detention and hardship, and in cruel separation from his wife and child, he foreshadowed the likelihood, or the certainty; but, beyond this, he dreaded nothing distinctly. With this on his mind, which was enough to carry into a dreary prison courtyard, he arrived at the prison of La Force.
A man with a bloated face opened the strong wicket, to whom Defarge presented “The Emigrant Evrémonde.”
“What the Devil! How many more of them!” exclaimed the man with the bloated face.
«Proprio il Paradiso!», esclamò Darnay. «Sotto quale legge e per quale reato?»
L’ufficiale alzò lo sguardo dal suo foglietto per un momento.
«Abbiamo nuove leggi e nuovi reati da quando sei stato qui, Evrémonde». Lo disse con un sorriso duro e continuò a scrivere.
«Vi prego di osservare che sono venuto qui volontariamente, in risposta a quell’appello scritto di un connazionale che giace davanti a voi. Non chiedo altro che la possibilità di farlo senza indugio. Non è forse questo il mio diritto?»
«Gli emigrati non hanno diritti, Evrémonde», fu la risposta ottusa. L’ufficiale scrisse fino a quando ebbe finito, rilesse ciò che aveva scritto, lo cosparse di sabbia e lo consegnò a Defarge con le parole «In segreto».
Defarge fece cenno al prigioniero con il giornale di doverlo accompagnare. Il prigioniero obbedì e una scorta di due patrioti armati li seguì.
«Sei tu», disse Defarge con voce bassa, mentre scendevano i gradini della guardiola e svoltavano verso Parigi, «che hai sposato la figlia di dottor Manette, un tempo prigioniero nella Bastiglia che non c’è più?»
«Sì», rispose Darnay guardandolo con sorpresa.
«Mi chiamo Defarge e tengo un negozio di vini nel quartiere Saint Antoine. Forse avrete sentito parlare di me».
“Mia moglie è venuta alla tua casa per riprendersi suo padre? Sì!”
La parola «moglie» sembrò servire da tetra monita a Defarge per dire con improvvisa impazienza: «Per l’amor di quella femmina acuminata appena nata e chiamata La Ghigliottina, perché sei venuto in Francia?»
«Avete sentito perché l’ho detto un minuto fa. Non credete che sia la verità?»
“Una brutta verità per voi”, disse Defarge, aggrottando la fronte e guardando dritto davanti a sé.
«In verità sono smarrito qui. Tutto è così inaudito, così cambiato, così improvviso e ingiusto che sono completamente disorientato. Mi aiuterete un po’?»
«Nessuno». Defarge parlò, continuando a guardare sempre dritto davanti a sé.
“Mi risponderai a una sola domanda?”
«Forse. Secondo la sua natura. Puoi dire che cos’è».
«In questa prigione in cui sto per entrare così ingiustamente, avrò qualche libero contatto con il mondo esterno?»
“Lo vedrai.”
“Non posso essere sepolto lì, condannato in anticipo e senza alcuna possibilità di difendermi?”
«Lo vedrete. Ma, e allora? Altre persone sono state sepolte in modo simile in prigioni peggiori di questa, prima d’ora».
“Ma mai da parte mia, Cittadino Defarge.”
Defarge gli lanciò uno sguardo torvo in risposta e proseguì a passo fermo nel più assoluto silenzio. Più si addentrava in questo silenzio, meno c’era speranza - o almeno così pensava Darnay - che potesse ammorbidirsi anche solo un po’. Per questo, si affrettò a dire:
«È di estrema importanza per me (tu sai, Cittadino, anche meglio di me, quanto sia importante), che io possa comunicare a Mr. Lorry della Banca Tellson, un gentiluomo inglese ora in Parigi, il semplice fatto, senza commenti, che sono stato gettato nella prigione di La Force. Vuoi farlo per me?»
«Farò», rispose ostinatamente Defarge, «nulla per voi. Il mio dovere è verso la mia patria e il Popolo. Sono il servitore giurato di entrambi contro di voi. Non farò nulla per voi».
Charles Darnay si sentì inutile continuare a supplicarlo, e il suo orgoglio ne risentiva. Mentre camminavano nel silenzio, non poteva fare a meno di notare quanto la gente fosse abituata allo spettacolo dei prigionieri che passavano per le strade. Anche i bambini appena lo notavano. Qualche passante si voltava, e qualcuno gli faceva il gesto del dito come a un aristocratico; altrimenti, che un uomo ben vestito stesse andando in prigione, non era più strano di quanto lo fosse per un operaio in tuta da lavoro andare al lavoro. In una via stretta, buia e sporca attraverso cui passarono, un oratore eccitato, salito su uno sgabello, stava rivolgendosi a un pubblico altrettanto eccitato sui crimini contro il popolo del re e della famiglia reale. Le poche parole che gli giunsero dalle labbra di quell’uomo rivelarono per la prima volta a Charles Darnay che il re era in prigione, e che tutti gli ambasciatori stranieri avevano lasciato Parigi. Sulla strada (tranne a Beauvais) non aveva sentito assolutamente nulla. La scorta e la vigilanza universale lo avevano completamente isolato.
Ora sapeva naturalmente che era caduto tra pericoli molto più grandi di quelli che si erano manifestati quando aveva lasciato l’Inghilterra. Ora sapeva naturalmente che i pericoli si erano addensati rapidamente intorno a lui e potevano addensarsi sempre più velocemente ancora. Non poteva non ammettere con se stesso che forse non avrebbe intrapreso questo viaggio se avesse potuto prevedere gli eventi di pochi giorni dopo. Eppure i suoi timori non erano così oscuri come, alla luce di questo successivo periodo, sarebbero apparsi. Per quanto fosse incerto il futuro, era un futuro sconosciuto e nella sua oscurità c’era una speranza ingenua. Il terribile massacro che si sarebbe protratto per giorni e notti intere e che, entro poche ore dall’inizio del tempo, avrebbe lasciato un grande segno di sangue sul tempo benedetto della mietitura, era lontano dalla sua conoscenza come se fosse stato a centomila anni di distanza. La “femmina acuminata appena nata e chiamata ghigliottina” era a malapena conosciuta per nome da lui o dalla maggior parte delle persone. Le azioni spaventose che sarebbero state compiute presto erano probabilmente inimmaginabili in quel periodo nelle menti degli stessi esecutori. Come avrebbero potuto avere un posto nelle concezioni ombrose di una mente gentile?
Di trattamento ingiusto in detenzione e di dure condizioni, e nella crudele separazione dalla moglie e dal figlio, egli prevedeva la probabilità o addirittura la certezza; ma oltre a ciò non temeva nulla di preciso. Con questo pensiero in mente, che era sufficiente per portarlo in un cupo cortile della prigione, arrivò alla prigione di La Force.
Un uomo con il viso gonfio aprì la robusta porticina, al quale Defarge presentò «L’emigrato Evrémonde».
«Che diavolo! Quanti altri ce ne sono ancora!», esclamò l’uomo dal viso gonfio.
Defarge took his receipt without noticing the exclamation, and withdrew, with his two fellow-patriots.
“What the Devil, I say again!” exclaimed the gaoler, left with his wife. “How many more!”
The gaoler’s wife, being provided with no answer to the question, merely replied, “One must have patience, my dear!” Three turnkeys who entered responsive to a bell she rang, echoed the sentiment, and one added, “For the love of Liberty;” which sounded in that place like an inappropriate conclusion.
The prison of La Force was a gloomy prison, dark and filthy, and with a horrible smell of foul sleep in it. Extraordinary how soon the noisome flavour of imprisoned sleep, becomes manifest in all such places that are ill cared for!
“In secret, too,” grumbled the gaoler, looking at the written paper. “As if I was not already full to bursting!”
He stuck the paper on a file, in an ill-humour, and Charles Darnay awaited his further pleasure for half an hour: sometimes, pacing to and fro in the strong arched room: sometimes, resting on a stone seat: in either case detained to be imprinted on the memory of the chief and his subordinates.
“Come!” said the chief, at length taking up his keys, “come with me, emigrant.”
Through the dismal prison twilight, his new charge accompanied him by corridor and staircase, many doors clanging and locking behind them, until they came into a large, low, vaulted chamber, crowded with prisoners of both sexes. The women were seated at a long table, reading and writing, knitting, sewing, and embroidering; the men were for the most part standing behind their chairs, or lingering up and down the room.
In the instinctive association of prisoners with shameful crime and disgrace, the new-comer recoiled from this company. But the crowning unreality of his long unreal ride, was, their all at once rising to receive him, with every refinement of manner known to the time, and with all the engaging graces and courtesies of life.
So strangely clouded were these refinements by the prison manners and gloom, so spectral did they become in the inappropriate squalor and misery through which they were seen, that Charles Darnay seemed to stand in a company of the dead. Ghosts all! The ghost of beauty, the ghost of stateliness, the ghost of elegance, the ghost of pride, the ghost of frivolity, the ghost of wit, the ghost of youth, the ghost of age, all waiting their dismissal from the desolate shore, all turning on him eyes that were changed by the death they had died in coming there.
It struck him motionless. The gaoler standing at his side, and the other gaolers moving about, who would have been well enough as to appearance in the ordinary exercise of their functions, looked so extravagantly coarse contrasted with sorrowing mothers and blooming daughters who were there—with the apparitions of the coquette, the young beauty, and the mature woman delicately bred—that the inversion of all experience and likelihood which the scene of shadows presented, was heightened to its utmost. Surely, ghosts all. Surely, the long unreal ride some progress of disease that had brought him to these gloomy shades!
“In the name of the assembled companions in misfortune,” said a gentleman of courtly appearance and address, coming forward, “I have the honour of giving you welcome to La Force, and of condoling with you on the calamity that has brought you among us. May it soon terminate happily! It would be an impertinence elsewhere, but it is not so here, to ask your name and condition?”
Charles Darnay roused himself, and gave the required information, in words as suitable as he could find.
“But I hope,” said the gentleman, following the chief gaoler with his eyes, who moved across the room, “that you are not in secret?”
“I do not understand the meaning of the term, but I have heard them say so.”
“Ah, what a pity! We so much regret it! But take courage; several members of our society have been in secret, at first, and it has lasted but a short time.” Then he added, raising his voice, “I grieve to inform the society—in secret.”
There was a murmur of commiseration as Charles Darnay crossed the room to a grated door where the gaoler awaited him, and many voices—among which, the soft and compassionate voices of women were conspicuous—gave him good wishes and encouragement. He turned at the grated door, to render the thanks of his heart; it closed under the gaoler’s hand; and the apparitions vanished from his sight forever.
The wicket opened on a stone staircase, leading upward. When they had ascended forty steps (the prisoner of half an hour already counted them), the gaoler opened a low black door, and they passed into a solitary cell. It struck cold and damp, but was not dark.
“Yours,” said the gaoler.
“Why am I confined alone?”
“How do I know!”
“I can buy pen, ink, and paper?”
“Such are not my orders. You will be visited, and can ask then. At present, you may buy your food, and nothing more.”
There were in the cell, a chair, a table, and a straw mattress. As the gaoler made a general inspection of these objects, and of the four walls, before going out, a wandering fancy wandered through the mind of the prisoner leaning against the wall opposite to him, that this gaoler was so unwholesomely bloated, both in face and person, as to look like a man who had been drowned and filled with water. When the gaoler was gone, he thought in the same wandering way, “Now am I left, as if I were dead.” Stopping then, to look down at the mattress, he turned from it with a sick feeling, and thought, “And here in these crawling creatures is the first condition of the body after death.”
“Five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half, five paces by four and a half.” The prisoner walked to and fro in his cell, counting its measurement, and the roar of the city arose like muffled drums with a wild swell of voices added to them. “He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes.” The prisoner counted the measurement again, and paced faster, to draw his mind with him from that latter repetition. “The ghosts that vanished when the wicket closed. There was one among them, the appearance of a lady dressed in black, who was leaning in the embrasure of a window, and she had a light shining upon her golden hair, and she looked like * * * * Let us ride on again, for God’s sake, through the illuminated villages with the people all awake! * * * * He made shoes, he made shoes, he made shoes. * * * * Five paces by four and a half.” With such scraps tossing and rolling upward from the depths of his mind, the prisoner walked faster and faster, obstinately counting and counting; and the roar of the city changed to this extent—that it still rolled in like muffled drums, but with the wail of voices that he knew, in the swell that rose above them.
Defarge prese la ricevuta senza far caso all’esclamazione e si ritirò con i suoi due compagni patrioti.
“Che diavolo, dico ancora!” esclamò il carceriere, rimasto con sua moglie. “Quanti altri ancora!”
La moglie del carceriere, non ricevendo risposta alla domanda, si limitò a dire: «Bisogna avere pazienza, mia cara!» Tre secondini che entrarono in risposta al campanello che suonò, fecero eco al sentimento e uno aggiunse: «Per l’amore della Libertà;» il che in quel luogo suonava come una conclusione inappropriata.
La prigione di La Force era una tetra prigione, buia e sporca, con un orribile odore di sonno fetido. È straordinario come il disgustoso sapore del sonno imprigionato si manifesti rapidamente in tutti i luoghi così trascurati!
«Anche in segreto», borbottò il carceriere guardando la carta scritta. «Come se non fossi già pieno fino a scoppiare!»
Appiccicò il foglio su un fascicolo con malumore e Charles Darnay attese per mezz’ora che si degnasse di occuparsi ulteriormente della sua faccenda: a volte camminando avanti e indietro nella robusta stanza a volta, a volte seduto su una panchina di pietra; in entrambi i casi trattenuto perché venisse impresso nella memoria del capo e dei suoi subalterni.
“Vieni!” disse il capo, prendendo infine le sue chiavi, “vieni con me, emigrante.”
Attraverso la tetra penombra della prigione, il suo nuovo carcerato lo accompagnò lungo corridoi e scale, molte porte che sbattevano e si chiudevano dietro di loro, finché non arrivarono in una grande sala volta a cupola, affollata da prigionieri di entrambi i sessi. Le donne erano sedute attorno a un lungo tavolo, leggendo e scrivendo, facendo maglia, cucendo e ricamando; gli uomini per la maggior parte stavano in piedi dietro le loro sedie o si aggiravano su e giù per la stanza.
Nell’associazione istintiva dei prigionieri con crimini vergognosi e disgrazie, il nuovo arrivato si ritrasse da questa compagnia. Ma l’apice dell’irrealtà del suo lungo viaggio irreale fu che tutti si alzarono in piedi per riceverlo, con ogni raffinatezza di comportamento nota all’epoca, e con tutte le grazie e cortesie accattivanti della vita.
Questi raffinamenti erano così stranamente offuscati dai modi e dall’atmosfera tetra del carcere, diventavano così spettrali nel degrado e nella miseria inadeguati attraverso cui venivano osservati, che a Charles Darnay sembrava di trovarsi in compagnia dei morti. Tutti fantasmi! Il fantasma della bellezza, il fantasma dell’eleganza, il fantasma dell’orgoglio, il fantasma della frivolezza, il fantasma dell’ingegno, il fantasma della giovinezza, il fantasma della vecchiaia, tutti in attesa di essere congedati da quella riva desolata, tutti rivolgendo verso di lui occhi mutati dalla morte che avevano vissuto venendo lì.
Lo colpì immobile. Il carceriere in piedi al suo fianco e gli altri secondini che si muovevano intorno, i quali sarebbero stati abbastanza presentabili nell’esercizio ordinario delle loro funzioni, apparivano così straordinariamente rozzi in contrasto con le madri addolorate e le figlie fiorite che erano lì - con gli spettri della civetta, della giovane bellezza e della donna matura di raffinata educazione - che l’inversione di ogni esperienza e verosimiglianza presentata dalla scena delle ombre veniva esaltata al massimo. Sicuramente, erano tutti fantasmi. Sicuramente, quel lungo viaggio irreale era il segno di un progressivo peggioramento della malattia che lo aveva portato in quelle tenebrose ombre!
«A nome dei compagni riuniti nella sventura», disse un gentiluomo dall’aspetto e dal portamento cortesi, facendosi avanti, «ho l onore di darvi il benvenuto a La Force e di porgervi le mie condoglianze per la calamità che vi ha portato tra noi. Possa terminare presto felicemente! Sarebbe una impertinenza altrove, ma qui non lo è, chiedere il vostro nome e la vostra condizione?»
Charles Darnay si riprese e fornì le informazioni richieste, con parole più adatte che poté trovare.
«Ma io spero», disse il gentiluomo, seguendo con gli occhi il capocarceriere che si muoveva per la stanza, «che lei non sia qui di nascosto?»
“Non capisco il significato del termine, ma li ho sentiti dire così.”
«Ahimè! Che peccato! Ne siamo davvero dispiaciuti. Ma prendete coraggio; diversi membri della nostra società all’inizio sono stati in segreto, e questo è durato solo un breve periodo.» Poi aggiunse, alzando la voce: «Mi dispiace dover informare la società, in segreto.»
Ci fu un mormorio di compassione mentre Charles Darnay attraversava la stanza verso una porta inferriata dove il carceriere lo attendeva, e molte voci - tra le quali spiccavano quelle dolci e compassionevoli delle donne - gli augurarono buona fortuna e lo incoraggiarono. Si voltò alla porta inferriata per esprimere la gratitudine del suo cuore; questa si chiuse sotto la mano del carceriere, e le apparizioni svanirono dalla sua vista per sempre.
Il cancello si aprì su una scala di pietra che saliva verso l’alto. Quando ebbero salito quaranta gradini (il prigioniero, già da mezz’ora, li aveva contati), il carceriere aprì una bassa porta nera e passarono in una cella solitaria. Era fredda e umida, ma non buia.
«La sua», disse il carceriere.
«Perché sono confinato da solo?»
“Come faccio a saperlo!”
“Posso comprare penna, inchiostro e carta?”
«Non sono questi i miei ordini. Sarai visitato e potrai chiedere allora. Per ora puoi acquistare il tuo cibo e nient’altro».
Nella cella c’erano una sedia, un tavolo e un materasso di paglia. Mentre il carceriere faceva un’ispezione generale di questi oggetti e delle quattro pareti prima di uscire, un pensiero vagante attraversò la mente del prigioniero appoggiato alla parete opposta a lui: questo carceriere era così gonfio in viso e nel corpo da sembrare un uomo che fosse stato annegato e riempito d’acqua. Quando il carceriere se ne fu andato, pensò nello stesso modo vagante: “Ora sono lasciato come se fossi morto”. Si fermò quindi a guardare il materasso, si allontanò da esso con una sensazione di nausea e pensò: “E qui in queste creature striscianti è la prima condizione del corpo dopo la morte.”
“Cinque passi per quattro e mezzo, cinque passi per quattro e mezzo, cinque passi per quattro e mezzo.” Il prigioniero camminava avanti e indietro nella sua cella, contando le misure, mentre il ruggito della città si levava come di tamburi soffocati con un selvaggio crescendo di voci aggiunto ad essi. “Faceva scarpe, faceva scarpe, faceva scarpe.” Il prigioniero contò nuovamente le misure e camminò più in fretta per distogliere la mente da quell’ultima ripetizione. “I fantasmi che scomparvero quando si chiuse il cancelletto. C’era uno di loro, l’apparizione di una signora vestita di nero, che era appoggiata nell’intrico di una finestra, e aveva una luce che brillava sui suoi capelli dorati, e sembrava * * * * Andiamo avanti ancora, per amor di Dio, attraverso i villaggi illuminati con tutti gli abitanti svegli! * * * * Faceva scarpe, faceva scarpe, faceva scarpe. * * * * Cinque passi per quattro e mezzo.” Con questi frammenti che si agitavano e rotolavano verso l’alto dalle profondità della sua mente, il prigioniero camminava sempre più in fretta, contando ostinatamente e ripetutamente; e il ruggito della città cambiò fino a questo punto: che ancora rotolava dentro come di tamburi soffocati, ma con il lamento delle voci che lui conosceva, nel crescendo che sorgeva al di sopra di esse.
CHAPTER II. The Grindstone
Tellson’s Bank, established in the Saint Germain Quarter of Paris, was in a wing of a large house, approached by a courtyard and shut off from the street by a high wall and a strong gate. The house belonged to a great nobleman who had lived in it until he made a flight from the troubles, in his own cook’s dress, and got across the borders. A mere beast of the chase flying from hunters, he was still in his metempsychosis no other than the same Monseigneur, the preparation of whose chocolate for whose lips had once occupied three strong men besides the cook in question.
Monseigneur gone, and the three strong men absolving themselves from the sin of having drawn his high wages, by being more than ready and willing to cut his throat on the altar of the dawning Republic one and indivisible of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, Monseigneur’s house had been first sequestrated, and then confiscated. For, all things moved so fast, and decree followed decree with that fierce precipitation, that now upon the third night of the autumn month of September, patriot emissaries of the law were in possession of Monseigneur’s house, and had marked it with the tri-colour, and were drinking brandy in its state apartments.
A place of business in London like Tellson’s place of business in Paris, would soon have driven the House out of its mind and into the Gazette. For, what would staid British responsibility and respectability have said to orange-trees in boxes in a Bank courtyard, and even to a Cupid over the counter? Yet such things were. Tellson’s had whitewashed the Cupid, but he was still to be seen on the ceiling, in the coolest linen, aiming (as he very often does) at money from morning to night. Bankruptcy must inevitably have come of this young Pagan, in Lombard-street, London, and also of a curtained alcove in the rear of the immortal boy, and also of a looking-glass let into the wall, and also of clerks not at all old, who danced in public on the slightest provocation. Yet, a French Tellson’s could get on with these things exceedingly well, and, as long as the times held together, no man had taken fright at them, and drawn out his money.
What money would be drawn out of Tellson’s henceforth, and what would lie there, lost and forgotten; what plate and jewels would tarnish in Tellson’s hiding-places, while the depositors rusted in prisons, and when they should have violently perished; how many accounts with Tellson’s never to be balanced in this world, must be carried over into the next; no man could have said, that night, any more than Mr. Jarvis Lorry could, though he thought heavily of these questions. He sat by a newly-lighted wood fire (the blighted and unfruitful year was prematurely cold), and on his honest and courageous face there was a deeper shade than the pendent lamp could throw, or any object in the room distortedly reflect—a shade of horror.
He occupied rooms in the Bank, in his fidelity to the House of which he had grown to be a part, like strong root-ivy. It chanced that they derived a kind of security from the patriotic occupation of the main building, but the true-hearted old gentleman never calculated about that. All such circumstances were indifferent to him, so that he did his duty. On the opposite side of the courtyard, under a colonnade, was extensive standing—for carriages—where, indeed, some carriages of Monseigneur yet stood. Against two of the pillars were fastened two great flaring flambeaux, and in the light of these, standing out in the open air, was a large grindstone: a roughly mounted thing which appeared to have hurriedly been brought there from some neighbouring smithy, or other workshop. Rising and looking out of window at these harmless objects, Mr. Lorry shivered, and retired to his seat by the fire. He had opened, not only the glass window, but the lattice blind outside it, and he had closed both again, and he shivered through his frame.
From the streets beyond the high wall and the strong gate, there came the usual night hum of the city, with now and then an indescribable ring in it, weird and unearthly, as if some unwonted sounds of a terrible nature were going up to Heaven.
“Thank God,” said Mr. Lorry, clasping his hands, “that no one near and dear to me is in this dreadful town to-night. May He have mercy on all who are in danger!”
Soon afterwards, the bell at the great gate sounded, and he thought, “They have come back!” and sat listening. But, there was no loud irruption into the courtyard, as he had expected, and he heard the gate clash again, and all was quiet.
The nervousness and dread that were upon him inspired that vague uneasiness respecting the Bank, which a great change would naturally awaken, with such feelings roused. It was well guarded, and he got up to go among the trusty people who were watching it, when his door suddenly opened, and two figures rushed in, at sight of which he fell back in amazement.
Lucie and her father! Lucie with her arms stretched out to him, and with that old look of earnestness so concentrated and intensified, that it seemed as though it had been stamped upon her face expressly to give force and power to it in this one passage of her life.
“What is this?” cried Mr. Lorry, breathless and confused. “What is the matter? Lucie! Manette! What has happened? What has brought you here? What is it?”
With the look fixed upon him, in her paleness and wildness, she panted out in his arms, imploringly, “O my dear friend! My husband!”
“Your husband, Lucie?”
“Charles.”
“What of Charles?”
“Here.
“Here, in Paris?”
“Has been here some days—three or four—I don’t know how many—I can’t collect my thoughts. An errand of generosity brought him here unknown to us; he was stopped at the barrier, and sent to prison.”
CAPITOLO II. La macina
La Banca Tellson, fondata nel quartiere di Saint Germain a Parigi, era situata in un’ala di una grande casa, raggiungibile attraverso un cortile e separata dalla strada da un alto muro e un robusto cancello. La casa apparteneva a un nobile che vi aveva vissuto fino a quando, travestito da cuoco per sfuggire ai disordini, era fuggito oltre i confini. Una semplice preda della caccia in fuga dai cacciatori, nonostante la sua metempsicosi non era altro che lo stesso Monseigneur, il cui cioccolato veniva preparato per le sue labbra da tre robusti uomini oltre al cuoco in questione.
Andato via Monseigneur e i tre uomini forti che si assolvevano dal peccato di aver percepito il suo alto stipendio dimostrandosi più che pronti e disposti a tagliargli la gola sull’altare della nascente Repubblica una e indivisibile di Libertà, Uguaglianza, Fratellanza o morte, la casa di Monseigneur era stata prima sequestrata e poi confiscata. Infatti tutto si muoveva così velocemente e i decreti seguivano l’uno dopo l’altro con quella furiosa precipitazione che ora, nella terza notte del mese di settembre, emissari patrioti della legge erano in possesso della casa di Monseigneur e l’avevano contrassegnata con il tricolore, bevendo brandy nei suoi appartamenti di stato.
Un posto di lavoro a Londra come quello della Tellson’s a Parigi, avrebbe presto fatto perdere la testa alla Banca e mandato il suo nome sulla Gazette. Infatti, che cosa avrebbero detto la seriosa responsabilità britannica e la rispettabilità di aranci in vaso nel cortile di una banca, e addirittura di un Cupido sopra al banco? Eppure queste cose esistevano. La Tellson’s aveva imbiancato il Cupido, ma lui era ancora visibile sul soffitto, in fresco linneo, che mirava (come spesso fa) ai soldi da mattina a sera. L’inevitabile bancarotta sarebbe derivata da questo giovane Pagano, in Lombard-street, Londra, e anche da un angolo tendato dietro al ragazzo immortale, e anche da uno specchio incastonato nel muro, e anche da impiegati non affatto anziani che ballavano in pubblico al minimo pretesto. Eppure, una Tellson’s francese poteva andare avanti con queste cose in modo straordinariamente buono, e finché i tempi rimanevano stabili, nessuno si era spaventato per questo motivo e aveva ritirato il proprio denaro.
Che denaro sarebbe stato prelevato da Tellson’s d’ora in poi e quale sarebbe rimasto lì, perduto e dimenticato; quali argenti e gioielli si sarebbero opacizzati nei nascondigli di Tellson mentre i depositanti marcivano nelle prigioni e quando fossero violentemente periti; quante contabilità con Tellson’s mai saldate in questo mondo, dovevano essere portate avanti nel prossimo; nessuno avrebbe potuto dirlo quella notte, non più di quanto lo stesso Jarvis Lorry avrebbe potuto farlo, anche se egli rifletteva seriamente su tali questioni. Sedeva accanto a un nuovo camino acceso (l’anno sterile e infruttuoso era prematuramente freddo), e sul suo onesto e coraggioso volto c’era un’ombra più profonda di quella che la lampada pendente poteva proiettare, o qualsiasi oggetto nella stanza riflettere in modo distorto: un’ombra d’orrore.
Occupava degli uffici nella Banca, e la sua fedeltà alla Casa di cui era ormai parte integrante come una robusta edera radicata, gli aveva procurato un certo senso di sicurezza grazie all’occupazione patriottica dell’edificio principale. Ma il vecchio gentiluomo dal cuore sincero non si preoccupava mai di questo. Tutte queste circostanze erano indifferenti per lui, purché facesse il suo dovere. Sul lato opposto del cortile, sotto una colonnata, c’era un ampio spazio riservato alle carrozze, dove infatti alcune delle carrozze di Monseigneur erano ancora parcheggiate. A due dei pilastri erano fissati due grandi e luminosi falò, e alla luce di questi, all’aperto, c’era una grande macina: un oggetto montato in modo grossolano che sembrava essere stato portato frettolosamente da qualche fabbro vicino o da un altro laboratorio. Alzandosi e guardando fuori dalla finestra verso quegli oggetti innocui, il signor Lorry rabbrividì e tornò al suo posto accanto al fuoco. Aveva aperto non solo la finestra di vetro ma anche le persiane esterne, e poi aveva richiuso entrambe, eppure continuava a tremare in tutto il corpo.
Dalle strade oltre il muro alto e la robusta porta giungeva il solito ronzio notturno della città, con di tanto in tanto un suono indescrivibile, strano e sovrannaturale, come se alcuni rumori insoliti di una terribile natura stessero salendo al Cielo.
«Grazie a Dio», disse il signor Lorry, stringendosi le mani, «che nessuno caro e vicino a me si trovi stan-notte in questa terribile città. Possa Egli avere pietà di tutti coloro che sono in pericolo!»
Poco dopo la campana del grande cancello suonò e lui pensò: «Sono tornati!» e si sedette ad ascoltare. Ma non ci fu l’irruzione rumorosa nel cortile che si era aspettato, anzi sentì il cancello richiudersi di nuovo e tutto tornò tranquillo.
Il nervosismo e la paura che lo attanagliavano ispirarono quel vago senso di disagio nei confronti della Banca che un grande cambiamento avrebbe naturalmente suscitato, con sentimenti così acuiti. Era ben protetta, e lui si alzò per andare tra le persone fidate che la sorvegliavano, quando improvvisamente la sua porta si aprì e due figure irrompevano dentro; alla vista di queste egli indietreggiò stupito.
Lucy e suo padre! Lucy con le braccia tese verso di lui, e con quell’antica espressione di serietà così concentrata ed intensificata che sembrava come se fosse stata impressa sul suo volto appositamente per conferirle forza e potere in questo unico momento della sua vita.
«Che cosa è successo?» gridò il signor Lorry, senza fiato e confuso. «Che cosa succede? Lucie! Manette! Che cosa è accaduto? Cosa vi ha portati qui? Che cosa c’è?»
Con lo sguardo fisso su di lui, nella sua pallidezza e disperazione, ansimò tra le sue braccia, supplicante: «Oh mio caro amico! Mio marito!»
“Vostro marito, Lucie?”
“Carlo.”
“Che ne è di Charles?”
«Ecco qua.
«Qui, a Parigi?»
«È qui da alcuni giorni, tre o quattro, non so quanti, non riesco a concentrarmi. Un’impresa di generosità lo ha portato qui senza che noi lo sapessimo; è stato fermato al cancello e mandato in prigione.»
The old man uttered an irrepressible cry. Almost at the same moment, the bell of the great gate rang again, and a loud noise of feet and voices came pouring into the courtyard.
“What is that noise?” said the Doctor, turning towards the window.
“Don’t look!” cried Mr. Lorry. “Don’t look out! Manette, for your life, don’t touch the blind!”
The Doctor turned, with his hand upon the fastening of the window, and said, with a cool, bold smile:
“My dear friend, I have a charmed life in this city. I have been a Bastille prisoner. There is no patriot in Paris—in Paris? In France—who, knowing me to have been a prisoner in the Bastille, would touch me, except to overwhelm me with embraces, or carry me in triumph. My old pain has given me a power that has brought us through the barrier, and gained us news of Charles there, and brought us here. I knew it would be so; I knew I could help Charles out of all danger; I told Lucie so.—What is that noise?” His hand was again upon the window.
“Don’t look!” cried Mr. Lorry, absolutely desperate. “No, Lucie, my dear, nor you!” He got his arm round her, and held her. “Don’t be so terrified, my love. I solemnly swear to you that I know of no harm having happened to Charles; that I had no suspicion even of his being in this fatal place. What prison is he in?”
“La Force!”
“La Force! Lucie, my child, if ever you were brave and serviceable in your life—and you were always both—you will compose yourself now, to do exactly as I bid you; for more depends upon it than you can think, or I can say. There is no help for you in any action on your part to-night; you cannot possibly stir out. I say this, because what I must bid you to do for Charles’s sake, is the hardest thing to do of all. You must instantly be obedient, still, and quiet. You must let me put you in a room at the back here. You must leave your father and me alone for two minutes, and as there are Life and Death in the world you must not delay.”
“I will be submissive to you. I see in your face that you know I can do nothing else than this. I know you are true.”
The old man kissed her, and hurried her into his room, and turned the key; then, came hurrying back to the Doctor, and opened the window and partly opened the blind, and put his hand upon the Doctor’s arm, and looked out with him into the courtyard.
Looked out upon a throng of men and women: not enough in number, or near enough, to fill the courtyard: not more than forty or fifty in all. The people in possession of the house had let them in at the gate, and they had rushed in to work at the grindstone; it had evidently been set up there for their purpose, as in a convenient and retired spot.
But, such awful workers, and such awful work!
The grindstone had a double handle, and, turning at it madly were two men, whose faces, as their long hair flapped back when the whirlings of the grindstone brought their faces up, were more horrible and cruel than the visages of the wildest savages in their most barbarous disguise. False eyebrows and false moustaches were stuck upon them, and their hideous countenances were all bloody and sweaty, and all awry with howling, and all staring and glaring with beastly excitement and want of sleep. As these ruffians turned and turned, their matted locks now flung forward over their eyes, now flung backward over their necks, some women held wine to their mouths that they might drink; and what with dropping blood, and what with dropping wine, and what with the stream of sparks struck out of the stone, all their wicked atmosphere seemed gore and fire. The eye could not detect one creature in the group free from the smear of blood. Shouldering one another to get next at the sharpening-stone, were men stripped to the waist, with the stain all over their limbs and bodies; men in all sorts of rags, with the stain upon those rags; men devilishly set off with spoils of women’s lace and silk and ribbon, with the stain dyeing those trifles through and through. Hatchets, knives, bayonets, swords, all brought to be sharpened, were all red with it. Some of the hacked swords were tied to the wrists of those who carried them, with strips of linen and fragments of dress: ligatures various in kind, but all deep of the one colour. And as the frantic wielders of these weapons snatched them from the stream of sparks and tore away into the streets, the same red hue was red in their frenzied eyes;—eyes which any unbrutalised beholder would have given twenty years of life, to petrify with a well-directed gun.
All this was seen in a moment, as the vision of a drowning man, or of any human creature at any very great pass, could see a world if it were there. They drew back from the window, and the Doctor looked for explanation in his friend’s ashy face.
“They are,” Mr. Lorry whispered the words, glancing fearfully round at the locked room, “murdering the prisoners. If you are sure of what you say; if you really have the power you think you have—as I believe you have—make yourself known to these devils, and get taken to La Force. It may be too late, I don’t know, but let it not be a minute later!”
Doctor Manette pressed his hand, hastened bareheaded out of the room, and was in the courtyard when Mr. Lorry regained the blind.
His streaming white hair, his remarkable face, and the impetuous confidence of his manner, as he put the weapons aside like water, carried him in an instant to the heart of the concourse at the stone. For a few moments there was a pause, and a hurry, and a murmur, and the unintelligible sound of his voice; and then Mr. Lorry saw him, surrounded by all, and in the midst of a line of twenty men long, all linked shoulder to shoulder, and hand to shoulder, hurried out with cries of—“Live the Bastille prisoner! Help for the Bastille prisoner’s kindred in La Force! Room for the Bastille prisoner in front there! Save the prisoner Evrémonde at La Force!” and a thousand answering shouts.
He closed the lattice again with a fluttering heart, closed the window and the curtain, hastened to Lucie, and told her that her father was assisted by the people, and gone in search of her husband. He found her child and Miss Pross with her; but, it never occurred to him to be surprised by their appearance until a long time afterwards, when he sat watching them in such quiet as the night knew.
Lucie had, by that time, fallen into a stupor on the floor at his feet, clinging to his hand. Miss Pross had laid the child down on his own bed, and her head had gradually fallen on the pillow beside her pretty charge. O the long, long night, with the moans of the poor wife! And O the long, long night, with no return of her father and no tidings!
Twice more in the darkness the bell at the great gate sounded, and the irruption was repeated, and the grindstone whirled and spluttered. “What is it?” cried Lucie, affrighted. “Hush! The soldiers’ swords are sharpened there,” said Mr. Lorry. “The place is national property now, and used as a kind of armoury, my love.”
Twice more in all; but, the last spell of work was feeble and fitful. Soon afterwards the day began to dawn, and he softly detached himself from the clasping hand, and cautiously looked out again. A man, so besmeared that he might have been a sorely wounded soldier creeping back to consciousness on a field of slain, was rising from the pavement by the side of the grindstone, and looking about him with a vacant air. Shortly, this worn-out murderer descried in the imperfect light one of the carriages of Monseigneur, and, staggering to that gorgeous vehicle, climbed in at the door, and shut himself up to take his rest on its dainty cushions.
The great grindstone, Earth, had turned when Mr. Lorry looked out again, and the sun was red on the courtyard. But, the lesser grindstone stood alone there in the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had never given, and would never take away.
Il vecchio emise un grido irrefrenabile. Quasi nello stesso istante, la campana del grande cancello suonò di nuovo e un forte rumore di passi e voci si riversò nel cortile.
“Che rumore è quello?”, disse il Dottore, voltandosi verso la finestra.
«Non guardare!» gridò il signor Lorry. «Non guardare fuori! Manette, per la tua vita, non toccare le persiane!»
Il dottore si voltò, con la mano sul chiavistello della finestra, e disse, con un sorriso freddo e audace:
“Mio caro amico, ho una vita incantata in questa città. Sono stato un prigioniero della Bastiglia. Non c’è patriota a Parigi—a Parigi? In Francia—che, sapendo che sono stato prigioniero nella Bastiglia, mi toccherebbe se non per sommergermi di abbracci o portarmi in trionfo. Il mio vecchio dolore mi ha dato un potere che ci ha fatto superare la barriera, e ottenere notizie di Charles là, e portarci qui. Lo sapevo che sarebbe stato così; sapevo che avrei potuto aiutare Charles a uscire da ogni pericolo; l’ho detto a Lucie.—Che rumore è quello?” La sua mano era di nuovo sulla finestra.
«Non guardare!» gridò il signor Lorry, disperato. «No, Lucie, mia cara, nemmeno tu!» Le mise un braccio intorno e la tenne stretta. «Non aver tanta paura, mio amore. Ti giuro solennemente che non so di alcun male accaduto a Charles; che non avevo nemmeno il sospetto che si trovasse in questo luogo fatale. In quale prigione è?»
“La Forza!”
«La Force! Lucie, mia figlia, se mai fosti coraggiosa e servizievole nella tua vita - e lo sei sempre stata - ora ti calmerai per fare esattamente come ti dico; perché dipende da questo più di quanto tu possa pensare o io dire. Non c’è aiuto per te in nessuna azione che farai stasera; non puoi assolutamente muoverti. Lo dico perché ciò che devo chiederti di fare per amore di Charles è la cosa più difficile da fare di tutte. Devi essere immediatamente obbediente, calma e silenziosa. Devi lasciare che ti metta in una stanza sul retro qui. Devi lasciare tuo padre e me soli per due minuti, e poiché ci sono la Vita e la morte nel mondo non devi ritardare».
«Mi sottometterò a voi. Vi leggo in faccia che sapete che non posso fare altro. So che siete sincero».
Il vecchio la baciò e la fece entrare in fretta nella sua stanza, chiudendo a chiave; poi tornò di corsa dal dottore, aprì la finestra e sollevò parzialmente la tendina, gli mise una mano sul braccio e insieme al dottore guardò fuori nel cortile.
Guardò fuori e vide una folla di uomini e donne: non abbastanza numerosa o vicina da riempire il cortile, non più di quaranta o cinquanta in tutto. Le persone che occupavano la casa li avevano fatti entrare dal cancello ed essi si erano precipitati a lavorare alla macina; era evidente che era stata sistemata lì per il loro scopo, in un luogo comodo e appartato.
Ma che lavoratori terribili e che lavoro terribile!
La macina aveva una manovella doppia, e due uomini la facevano girare furiosamente; i loro volti, quando le capigliature lunghe si appiccicavano all’indietro durante le rotazioni della macina che li portavano in alto, erano più orribili e crudeli dei volti dei selvaggi più feroci nel loro travestimento più barbaro. Sopracciglia false e baffi falsi erano incollati su di essi, e i loro volti mostruosi erano tutti insanguinati e sudati, contorti dal ruggito, con gli occhi che fissavano e sbarravano per l’eccitazione animalesca e la mancanza di sonno. Mentre questi banditi giravano e giravano, le loro chiome aggrovigliate ora scagliate in avanti sugli occhi, ora scagliate all’indietro sulle spalle, alcune donne tenevano il vino alle loro bocche affinché potessero bere; e tra il sangue che cadeva, e il vino che gocciolava, e la scia di scintille sprigionate dalla pietra, tutta la loro malvagia atmosfera sembrava essere sangue e fuoco. L’occhio non riusciva a individuare una sola creatura nel gruppo che fosse immune dallo sporco del sangue. Spingendosi l’un l’altro per arrivare vicini alla pietra da affilatura, c’erano uomini seminudi con la macchia su tutto il corpo e sugli arti; uomini in ogni sorta di stracci, con la macchia su quegli stracci; uomini orribilmente abbigliati con bottino di merletti femminili, sete e nastri, con la macchia che tingeva quei fronzoli da cima a fondo. Asce, coltelli, baionette, spade, tutte portate per essere affilate, erano tutte rosse di sangue. Alcune delle spade sfracellate erano legate ai polsi di chi le portava con strisce di lino e frammenti di abiti: legature diverse nel genere ma tutte dello stesso colore intenso. E mentre i frenetici maneggiatori di queste armi le strappavano dalla scia di scintille e si allontanavano per le vie, lo stesso colore rosso appariva nei loro occhi folli; occhi che qualsiasi spettatore non ancora bestializzato avrebbe voluto pietrificare con un colpo ben puntato.
Tutto ciò fu visto in un istante, come la visione di un uomo che sta annegando, o di qualsiasi essere umano in una situazione disperata, potrebbe vedere il mondo se fosse lì. Si ritrassero dalla finestra, e il dottore cercò una spiegazione nel volto cinereo del suo amico.
«Lo stanno facendo», sussurrò Mr Lorry scrutando con timore la stanza chiusa a chiave «uccidono i prigionieri. Se sei sicuro di quello che dici; se hai davvero il potere che credi di avere, come io credo tu abbia, fatti riconoscere da questi demoni e fatti portare alla Force. Potrebbe essere troppo tardi, non lo so, ma non lasciare passare un minuto di più!»
Il dottor Manette strinse la sua mano, uscì di corsa dalla stanza a testa scoperta e si trovava nel cortile quando il signor Lorry raggiunse la vettura.
I suoi capelli bianchi fluenti, il suo volto notevole e la fiducia impetuosa del suo modo di fare, mentre metteva da parte le armi come acqua, lo portarono in un istante al cuore della folla presso la pietra. Per alcuni momenti ci fu una pausa, un affanno e un mormorio, e il suono incomprensibile della sua voce; poi il signor Lorry lo vide circondato da tutti, nel mezzo di una fila lunga venti uomini, tutti uniti spalla a spalla e mano a spalla, trascinato via con grida di: «Viva il prigioniero della Bastiglia! Aiuto per i parenti del prigioniero della Bastiglia nella La Force! Spazio per il prigioniero della Bastiglia lì davanti! Salvate il prigioniero Evrémonde alla La Force!», e mille grida di risposta.
Richiuse la grata con il cuore che gli batteva forte, chiuse la finestra e le tende, si affrettò da Lucie e le disse che suo padre era stato soccorso dalla gente ed era andato in cerca di suo marito. Trovò con lei sua figlia e la signorina Pross; ma non gli venne mai in mente di meravigliarsi della loro presenza fino a molto tempo dopo, quando sedeva vegliandole nel silenzio che conosceva la notte.
Lucie era ormai caduta in uno stupore sul pavimento ai suoi piedi, aggrappandosi alla sua mano. La signorina Pross aveva adagiato il bambino nel suo letto, e la sua testa si era lentamente posata sul cuscino accanto al grazioso piccolo affidatole. O la lunga, lunga notte, con i lamenti della povera moglie! E o la lunga, lunga notte, senza il ritorno del padre e senza notizie!
Per altre due volte nel buio la campana del grande cancello suonò e l’irruzione si ripeté, e la mola girò e sibilò. “Che cos’è?” gridò Lucie spaventata. “Ssst! Le spade dei soldati vengono affilate là”, disse il signor Lorry. “Il posto è proprietà nazionale ora, ed è usato come una sorta di arsenale, mia cara.”
Due volte ancora; ma l’ultima fatica fu debole e intermittente. Poco dopo il giorno cominciò a spuntare, ed egli si staccò dolcemente dalla mano che lo stringeva, e guardò di nuovo con cautela. Un uomo così imbrattato da poter essere un soldato gravemente ferito che tornava in sé su un campo di battaglia pieno di morti, si alzava dal marciapiede accanto alla mola, e guardava intorno con aria svogliata. Poco dopo, questo assassino esausto scorse nella luce incerta una delle carrozze del Monseigneur, e barcollando fino a quel sontuoso veicolo, vi salì dalla porta e si chiuse dentro per riposare sui suoi soffici cuscini.
La grande macina, la Terra, aveva girato quando il signor Lorry guardò di nuovo fuori, e il sole era rosso sul cortile. Ma la piccola macina stava lì sola nell’aria calma del mattino, con un rosso su di essa che il sole non aveva mai dato e non avrebbe mai tolto.
CHAPTER III. The Shadow
One of the first considerations which arose in the business mind of Mr. Lorry when business hours came round, was this:—that he had no right to imperil Tellson’s by sheltering the wife of an emigrant prisoner under the Bank roof. His own possessions, safety, life, he would have hazarded for Lucie and her child, without a moment’s demur; but the great trust he held was not his own, and as to that business charge he was a strict man of business.
At first, his mind reverted to Defarge, and he thought of finding out the wine-shop again and taking counsel with its master in reference to the safest dwelling-place in the distracted state of the city. But, the same consideration that suggested him, repudiated him; he lived in the most violent Quarter, and doubtless was influential there, and deep in its dangerous workings.
Noon coming, and the Doctor not returning, and every minute’s delay tending to compromise Tellson’s, Mr. Lorry advised with Lucie. She said that her father had spoken of hiring a lodging for a short term, in that Quarter, near the Banking-house. As there was no business objection to this, and as he foresaw that even if it were all well with Charles, and he were to be released, he could not hope to leave the city, Mr. Lorry went out in quest of such a lodging, and found a suitable one, high up in a removed by-street where the closed blinds in all the other windows of a high melancholy square of buildings marked deserted homes.
To this lodging he at once removed Lucie and her child, and Miss Pross: giving them what comfort he could, and much more than he had himself. He left Jerry with them, as a figure to fill a doorway that would bear considerable knocking on the head, and returned to his own occupations. A disturbed and doleful mind he brought to bear upon them, and slowly and heavily the day lagged on with him.
It wore itself out, and wore him out with it, until the Bank closed. He was again alone in his room of the previous night, considering what to do next, when he heard a foot upon the stair. In a few moments, a man stood in his presence, who, with a keenly observant look at him, addressed him by his name.
“Your servant,” said Mr. Lorry. “Do you know me?”
He was a strongly made man with dark curling hair, from forty-five to fifty years of age. For answer he repeated, without any change of emphasis, the words:
“Do you know me?”
“I have seen you somewhere.”
“Perhaps at my wine-shop?”
Much interested and agitated, Mr. Lorry said: “You come from Doctor Manette?”
“Yes. I come from Doctor Manette.”
“And what says he? What does he send me?”
Defarge gave into his anxious hand, an open scrap of paper. It bore the words in the Doctor’s writing:
“Charles is safe, but I cannot safely leave this place yet. I have obtained the favour that the bearer has a short note from Charles to his wife. Let the bearer see his wife.”
It was dated from La Force, within an hour.
“Will you accompany me,” said Mr. Lorry, joyfully relieved after reading this note aloud, “to where his wife resides?”
“Yes,” returned Defarge.
Scarcely noticing as yet, in what a curiously reserved and mechanical way Defarge spoke, Mr. Lorry put on his hat and they went down into the courtyard. There, they found two women; one, knitting.
“Madame Defarge, surely!” said Mr. Lorry, who had left her in exactly the same attitude some seventeen years ago.
“It is she,” observed her husband.
“Does Madame go with us?” inquired Mr. Lorry, seeing that she moved as they moved.
“Yes. That she may be able to recognise the faces and know the persons. It is for their safety.”
Beginning to be struck by Defarge’s manner, Mr. Lorry looked dubiously at him, and led the way. Both the women followed; the second woman being The Vengeance.
They passed through the intervening streets as quickly as they might, ascended the staircase of the new domicile, were admitted by Jerry, and found Lucie weeping, alone. She was thrown into a transport by the tidings Mr. Lorry gave her of her husband, and clasped the hand that delivered his note—little thinking what it had been doing near him in the night, and might, but for a chance, have done to him.
“DEAREST,—Take courage. I am well, and your father has influence around me. You cannot answer this. Kiss our child for me.”
That was all the writing. It was so much, however, to her who received it, that she turned from Defarge to his wife, and kissed one of the hands that knitted. It was a passionate, loving, thankful, womanly action, but the hand made no response—dropped cold and heavy, and took to its knitting again.
There was something in its touch that gave Lucie a check. She stopped in the act of putting the note in her bosom, and, with her hands yet at her neck, looked terrified at Madame Defarge. Madame Defarge met the lifted eyebrows and forehead with a cold, impassive stare.
“My dear,” said Mr. Lorry, striking in to explain; “there are frequent risings in the streets; and, although it is not likely they will ever trouble you, Madame Defarge wishes to see those whom she has the power to protect at such times, to the end that she may know them—that she may identify them. I believe,” said Mr. Lorry, rather halting in his reassuring words, as the stony manner of all the three impressed itself upon him more and more, “I state the case, Citizen Defarge?”
Defarge looked gloomily at his wife, and gave no other answer than a gruff sound of acquiescence.
“You had better, Lucie,” said Mr. Lorry, doing all he could to propitiate, by tone and manner, “have the dear child here, and our good Pross. Our good Pross, Defarge, is an English lady, and knows no French.”
The lady in question, whose rooted conviction that she was more than a match for any foreigner, was not to be shaken by distress and, danger, appeared with folded arms, and observed in English to The Vengeance, whom her eyes first encountered, “Well, I am sure, Boldface! I hope you are pretty well!” She also bestowed a British cough on Madame Defarge; but, neither of the two took much heed of her.
“Is that his child?” said Madame Defarge, stopping in her work for the first time, and pointing her knitting-needle at little Lucie as if it were the finger of Fate.
“Yes, madame,” answered Mr. Lorry; “this is our poor prisoner’s darling daughter, and only child.”
The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed to fall so threatening and dark on the child, that her mother instinctively kneeled on the ground beside her, and held her to her breast. The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed then to fall, threatening and dark, on both the mother and the child.
“It is enough, my husband,” said Madame Defarge. “I have seen them. We may go.”
But, the suppressed manner had enough of menace in it—not visible and presented, but indistinct and withheld—to alarm Lucie into saying, as she laid her appealing hand on Madame Defarge’s dress:
“You will be good to my poor husband. You will do him no harm. You will help me to see him if you can?”
“Your husband is not my business here,” returned Madame Defarge, looking down at her with perfect composure. “It is the daughter of your father who is my business here.”
“For my sake, then, be merciful to my husband. For my child’s sake! She will put her hands together and pray you to be merciful. We are more afraid of you than of these others.”
Madame Defarge received it as a compliment, and looked at her husband. Defarge, who had been uneasily biting his thumb-nail and looking at her, collected his face into a sterner expression.
“What is it that your husband says in that little letter?” asked Madame Defarge, with a lowering smile. “Influence; he says something touching influence?”
“That my father,” said Lucie, hurriedly taking the paper from her breast, but with her alarmed eyes on her questioner and not on it, “has much influence around him.”
“Surely it will release him!” said Madame Defarge. “Let it do so.”
“As a wife and mother,” cried Lucie, most earnestly, “I implore you to have pity on me and not to exercise any power that you possess, against my innocent husband, but to use it in his behalf. O sister-woman, think of me. As a wife and mother!”
Madame Defarge looked, coldly as ever, at the suppliant, and said, turning to her friend The Vengeance:
“The wives and mothers we have been used to see, since we were as little as this child, and much less, have not been greatly considered? We have known their husbands and fathers laid in prison and kept from them, often enough? All our lives, we have seen our sister-women suffer, in themselves and in their children, poverty, nakedness, hunger, thirst, sickness, misery, oppression and neglect of all kinds?”
“We have seen nothing else,” returned The Vengeance.
“We have borne this a long time,” said Madame Defarge, turning her eyes again upon Lucie. “Judge you! Is it likely that the trouble of one wife and mother would be much to us now?”
She resumed her knitting and went out. The Vengeance followed. Defarge went last, and closed the door.
“Courage, my dear Lucie,” said Mr. Lorry, as he raised her. “Courage, courage! So far all goes well with us—much, much better than it has of late gone with many poor souls. Cheer up, and have a thankful heart.”
“I am not thankless, I hope, but that dreadful woman seems to throw a shadow on me and on all my hopes.”
“Tut, tut!” said Mr. Lorry; “what is this despondency in the brave little breast? A shadow indeed! No substance in it, Lucie.”
But the shadow of the manner of these Defarges was dark upon himself, for all that, and in his secret mind it troubled him greatly.
CAPITOLO III. La Sombra
Una delle prime considerazioni che sorse nella mente commerciale del signor Lorry quando giunse l’ora di apertura fu questa: non aveva il diritto di mettere in pericolo Tellson’s ospitando la moglie di un prigioniero emigrato sotto il tetto della Banca. I suoi beni, la sua sicurezza, la sua vita li avrebbe messi a repentaglio per Lucie e suo figlio senza esitare; ma la grande fiducia che aveva ricevuto non era sua, e riguardo a quel compito commerciale era un uomo d’affari rigoroso.
All’inizio la sua mente tornò a Defarge e pensò di ritrovare il vino- spaccio e consultarsi con il suo padrone per quanto riguardava il posto più sicuro dove abitare nello stato di confusione della città. Ma, la stessa considerazione che gli suggerì l’idea lo fece scartare; Defarge viveva nel quartiere più violento e senza dubbio aveva influenza lì ed era profondamente coinvolto nei suoi pericolosi meccanismi.
Veniva il mezzogiorno, e il dottore non tornava, e ogni minuto di ritardo metteva in pericolo la Tellson’s; così Mr Lorry si consultò con Lucie. Lei disse che suo padre aveva parlato di prendere una sistemazione temporanea in quel quartiere, vicino alla sede della banca. Poiché non c’erano obiezioni dal punto di vista commerciale, e poiché prevedeva che anche se fosse andato tutto per il meglio con Charles e lui fosse stato rilasciato, non avrebbe potuto sperare di lasciare la città, Mr Lorry uscì in ricerca di un alloggio del genere e ne trovò uno adatto, molto in alto in una stradina appartata dove le tapparelle chiuse su tutte le altre finestre di un quadrato di edifici alti e di profonda malinconia segnalavano case disabitate.
In questo alloggio trasferì subito Lucie e il suo bambino, e la signorina Pross: dando loro tutto il conforto che poteva, e molto più di quello che aveva lui stesso. Lasciò Jerry con loro, come una figura adatta a riempire un portone che avrebbe sopportato notevoli colpi in testa, e tornò alle sue occupazioni. Portò su di esse una mente turbata e afflitta, e lentamente, con pesantezza, la giornata trascorse per lui.
Si consumò da sola e lo consumò insieme fino alla chiusura della Banca. Era di nuovo solo nella sua stanza della notte precedente, riflettendo su cosa fare dopo, quando sentì un passo sulle scale. In pochi istanti, un uomo si presentò davanti a lui e, con uno sguardo attento, lo chiamò per nome.
“Al vostro servizio,” disse il signor Lorry. “Mi riconoscete?”
Era un uomo robusto dai capelli ricci e scuri, di età compresa tra i quarantacinque e i cinquant’anni. In risposta ripeté le stesse parole senza alcun cambiamento nell’enfasi:
“Mi riconosci?”
“Ti ho già visto da qualche parte.”
“Magari al mio negozio di vini?”
Molto interessato e agitato, il signor Lorry disse: “Voi venite dal dottor Manette?”
“Sì. Vengo dal dottor Manette.”
“E cosa dice lui? Cosa mi manda?”
Defarge gli porse con premura un foglietto aperto. Era scritto a mano dal dottore e recitava:
«Charles è al sicuro, ma io non posso ancora lasciare questo luogo in tutta tranquillità. Ho ottenuto il favore che chi porta questa lettera possa consegnare una breve nota di Charles a sua moglie. Che colui che porta la lettera veda sua moglie».
Era datata da La Force, entro un’ora.
«Mi accompagnerà», disse il signor Lorry, sollevato e felice dopo aver letto ad alta voce questo biglietto, «dove risiede sua moglie?»
«Sì», rispose Defarge.
Non avendo ancora notato il modo singolarmente riservato e meccanico in cui parlava Defarge, Lorry si mise il cappello ed essi scesero nel cortile. Là trovarono due donne: una stava facendo maglia.
«Madame Defarge, senza dubbio!», disse il signor Lorry, che l’aveva lasciata nella stessa identica posizione circa diciassette anni prima.
«È lei», osservò il marito.
«Madame viene con noi?» chiese il signor Lorry, vedendo che si muoveva come loro.
“Sì. Affinché possa riconoscere i volti e conoscere le persone. È per la loro sicurezza.”
Iniziando a essere colpito dal comportamento di Defarge, il signor Lorry lo guardò con aria dubbiosa e prese la guida. Le due donne le seguirono; la seconda donna era La Vendetta.
Attraversarono le strade intermedie il più rapidamente possibile, salirono la scala del nuovo domicilio, furono fatti entrare da Jerry e trovarono Lucie che piangeva da sola. Fu sopraffatta dalla notizia che Mr. Lorry le diede di suo marito e strinse la mano che le consegnò il biglietto - senza sospettare cosa avesse fatto vicino a lui durante la notte e cosa, se non fosse stato per un caso, gli avrebbe potuto fare.
“CARA MIA, - Prendi coraggio. Sono bene, e tuo padre ha influenza intorno a me. Non puoi rispondere a questo. Bacia nostro figlio per me.”
Questo era tutto il messaggio scritto. Era però tanto per colei che lo riceveva, che si voltò da Defarge verso sua moglie e baciò una delle mani che facevano la maglia. Fu un gesto appassionato, amorevole, riconoscente, femminile, ma la mano non rispose e cadde fredda e pesante per poi riprendere a fare la maglia.
C’era qualcosa nel suo tocco che fece esitare Lucie. Si fermò mentre stava per infilare il biglietto tra i seni e, con le mani ancora sul collo, guardò terrorizzata Madame Defarge. Madame Defarge rispose alle sopracciglia inarcate e alla fronte aggrottata di Lucie con uno sguardo freddo e impassibile.
“Mia cara”, disse il signor Lorry, intervenendo per spiegare; “ci sono frequenti tumulti nelle strade; e, sebbene non sia probabile che vi daranno mai noia, Madame Defarge desidera vedere coloro che ha il potere di proteggere in tali momenti, affinché li conosca - affinché possa identificarli. Credo”, disse il signor Lorry, esitando un po’ nelle sue parole rassicuranti, mentre l’atteggiamento freddo dei tre gli faceva sempre più impressione, “di aver riassunto la situazione, cittadino Defarge?”
Defarge guardò cupamente sua moglie e non diede altra risposta che un grugnito di assenso.
“Faresti meglio, Lucie”, disse il signor Lorry, facendo tutto ciò che poteva per propiziarsi con tono e maniera, “a tenere qui la cara bambina e la nostra buona Pross. La nostra buona Pross, Defarge, è una signora inglese e non sa il francese.”
La signora in questione, la cui convinzione radicata di essere più che all’altezza di qualsiasi straniero non poteva essere scossa da angoscia e pericolo, apparve con le braccia conserte e osservò in inglese a The Vengeance, il primo che i suoi occhi incontrarono: “Beh, sono sicura, Boldface! Spero che tu stia abbastanza bene!” Concesse anche una tosse britannica alla signora Defarge; ma nessuna delle due prestò molta attenzione a lei.
«È suo figlio?», disse Madame Defarge, interrompendosi per la prima volta nel lavoro e puntando l’ago da calza verso il piccolo Lucie come se fosse il dito del Fato.
“Sì, signora”, rispose il signor Lorry; “questa è la cara figlia del nostro povero prigioniero e suo unico figlio.”
La ombra che accompagnava la signora Defarge e il suo gruppo sembrò cadere così minacciosa e oscura sulla bambina, che sua madre istintivamente si inginocchiò a terra accanto a lei e la strinse al seno. La ombra che accompagnava la signora Defarge e il suo gruppo sembrò allora cadere, minacciosa e oscura, sia sulla madre che sulla bambina.
«È sufficiente, mio marito», disse Madame Defarge. «Li ho visti. Possiamo andare».
Ma quel tono represso aveva abbastanza minaccia in sé — non visibile e manifesta, ma indistinta e trattenuta — da spaventare Lucie al punto che disse, mentre posava la sua mano supplichevole sul vestito di Madame Defarge:
«Sarete buona con mio povero marito. Non gli farete del male. Mi aiuterete a vederlo, se potete?»
“Qui non mi riguarda tuo marito”, rispose la signora Defarge guardandola con perfetta calma, “è la figlia di tuo padre che qui mi riguarda”.
«Per il mio bene, dunque, abbi pietà di mio marito. Per amore della mia figlia! Lei unirà le mani e ti pregherà di essere misericordioso. Abbiamo più paura di te che di questi altri.»
Madama Defarge lo prese come un complimento e guardò suo marito. Defarge, che si era stato mordendo inquieto la cuticola del pollice e guardandola, assunse un’espressione più severa.
«Che cosa dice suo marito in quella breve lettera?» chiese la signora Defarge con un sorriso torvo. «Parla di influenza; dice qualcosa riguardo all’influenza?»
«Che mio padre», disse Lucie, affrettandosi a prendere il foglio dal seno, ma con gli occhi allarmati fissi sull’interrogatore e non su di esso, «ha molta influenza intorno a sé.»
«Di certo lo libererà!» disse madama Defarge. «Che lo faccia.»
«Come moglie e madre», gridò Lucie con grande fervore, «vi prego di avere pietà di me e di non esercitare alcun potere che possedete contro mio marito innocente, ma di usarlo in suo favore. O sorella donna, pensate a me. Come moglie e madre!»
Madame Defarge guardò la supplice con il solito freddo distacco e disse, rivolgendosi alla sua amica La Vendetta:
“Le mogli e le madri che siamo abituati a vedere da quando eravamo piccoli come questo bambino o anche meno non sono state molto considerate? Abbiamo visto i loro mariti e padri messi in prigione e tenuti lontani da loro, spesso abbastanza? Tutta la nostra vita abbiamo visto le nostre donne sorelle soffrire, in se stesse e nei loro figli, povertà, nudità, fame, sete, malattia, miseria, oppressione e trascuratezza di ogni tipo?”
«Non abbiamo visto altro», rispose La Vendetta.
«Abbiamo sopportato questo per un lungo periodo», disse Madame Defarge, rivolgendo di nuovo lo sguardo su Lucie. «Giudicate voi! È probabile che il dolore di una moglie e madre sarebbe molto per noi ora?»
Riprese a lavorare ai ferri e uscì. La Vendetta la seguì. Defarge chiuse l’uscio per ultimo.
“Coraggio, mia cara Lucie”, disse il signor Lorry mentre la aiutava ad alzarsi. “Coraggio, coraggio! Finora tutto va bene per noi, molto meglio di quanto sia andato ultimamente per tante povere anime. Rallegrati e abbi un cuore grato.”
“Non sono ingrato, spero, ma quella terribile donna sembra gettare un ombra su di me e su tutte le mie speranze.”
«Tut, tut!», disse il signor Lorry; «che cosa è questa disperazione nel coraggioso piccolo cuore? Una ombra davvero! Non c’è sostanza in essa, Lucie.»
Ma l’ombra del comportamento di questi Defarge era scura su di lui, nonostante tutto ciò, e nella sua mente segreta lo turbava molto.
CHAPTER IV. Calm in Storm
Doctor Manette did not return until the morning of the fourth day of his absence. So much of what had happened in that dreadful time as could be kept from the knowledge of Lucie was so well concealed from her, that not until long afterwards, when France and she were far apart, did she know that eleven hundred defenceless prisoners of both sexes and all ages had been killed by the populace; that four days and nights had been darkened by this deed of horror; and that the air around her had been tainted by the slain. She only knew that there had been an attack upon the prisons, that all political prisoners had been in danger, and that some had been dragged out by the crowd and murdered.
To Mr. Lorry, the Doctor communicated under an injunction of secrecy on which he had no need to dwell, that the crowd had taken him through a scene of carnage to the prison of La Force. That, in the prison he had found a self-appointed Tribunal sitting, before which the prisoners were brought singly, and by which they were rapidly ordered to be put forth to be massacred, or to be released, or (in a few cases) to be sent back to their cells. That, presented by his conductors to this Tribunal, he had announced himself by name and profession as having been for eighteen years a secret and unaccused prisoner in the Bastille; that, one of the body so sitting in judgment had risen and identified him, and that this man was Defarge.
That, hereupon he had ascertained, through the registers on the table, that his son-in-law was among the living prisoners, and had pleaded hard to the Tribunal—of whom some members were asleep and some awake, some dirty with murder and some clean, some sober and some not—for his life and liberty. That, in the first frantic greetings lavished on himself as a notable sufferer under the overthrown system, it had been accorded to him to have Charles Darnay brought before the lawless Court, and examined. That, he seemed on the point of being at once released, when the tide in his favour met with some unexplained check (not intelligible to the Doctor), which led to a few words of secret conference. That, the man sitting as President had then informed Doctor Manette that the prisoner must remain in custody, but should, for his sake, be held inviolate in safe custody. That, immediately, on a signal, the prisoner was removed to the interior of the prison again; but, that he, the Doctor, had then so strongly pleaded for permission to remain and assure himself that his son-in-law was, through no malice or mischance, delivered to the concourse whose murderous yells outside the gate had often drowned the proceedings, that he had obtained the permission, and had remained in that Hall of Blood until the danger was over.
The sights he had seen there, with brief snatches of food and sleep by intervals, shall remain untold. The mad joy over the prisoners who were saved, had astounded him scarcely less than the mad ferocity against those who were cut to pieces. One prisoner there was, he said, who had been discharged into the street free, but at whom a mistaken savage had thrust a pike as he passed out. Being besought to go to him and dress the wound, the Doctor had passed out at the same gate, and had found him in the arms of a company of Samaritans, who were seated on the bodies of their victims. With an inconsistency as monstrous as anything in this awful nightmare, they had helped the healer, and tended the wounded man with the gentlest solicitude—had made a litter for him and escorted him carefully from the spot—had then caught up their weapons and plunged anew into a butchery so dreadful, that the Doctor had covered his eyes with his hands, and swooned away in the midst of it.
As Mr. Lorry received these confidences, and as he watched the face of his friend now sixty-two years of age, a misgiving arose within him that such dread experiences would revive the old danger.
But, he had never seen his friend in his present aspect: he had never at all known him in his present character. For the first time the Doctor felt, now, that his suffering was strength and power. For the first time he felt that in that sharp fire, he had slowly forged the iron which could break the prison door of his daughter’s husband, and deliver him. “It all tended to a good end, my friend; it was not mere waste and ruin. As my beloved child was helpful in restoring me to myself, I will be helpful now in restoring the dearest part of herself to her; by the aid of Heaven I will do it!” Thus, Doctor Manette. And when Jarvis Lorry saw the kindled eyes, the resolute face, the calm strong look and bearing of the man whose life always seemed to him to have been stopped, like a clock, for so many years, and then set going again with an energy which had lain dormant during the cessation of its usefulness, he believed.
Greater things than the Doctor had at that time to contend with, would have yielded before his persevering purpose. While he kept himself in his place, as a physician, whose business was with all degrees of mankind, bond and free, rich and poor, bad and good, he used his personal influence so wisely, that he was soon the inspecting physician of three prisons, and among them of La Force. He could now assure Lucie that her husband was no longer confined alone, but was mixed with the general body of prisoners; he saw her husband weekly, and brought sweet messages to her, straight from his lips; sometimes her husband himself sent a letter to her (though never by the Doctor’s hand), but she was not permitted to write to him: for, among the many wild suspicions of plots in the prisons, the wildest of all pointed at emigrants who were known to have made friends or permanent connections abroad.
CAPITOLO IV. Calma nella tempesta
Dottor Manette non tornò fino al mattino del quarto giorno della sua assenza. Quanto era accaduto in quel terribile periodo, e che poteva essere tenuto nascosto a Lucie, fu così bene occultato da lei, che solo molto tempo dopo, quando la Francia e lei erano lontane, seppe che undicimila prigionieri indifesi di entrambi i sessi e tutte le età erano stati uccisi dalla folla; che quattro giorni e notti erano stati oscurati da questo atto orribile; e che l’aria intorno a lei era stata contaminata dai cadaveri. Seppe solo che c’era stato un attacco alle prigioni, che tutti i prigionieri politici erano in pericolo, e che alcuni erano stati trascinati fuori dalla folla e assassinati.
Il dottore comunicò al signor Lorry, sotto il vincolo della segretezza che non aveva bisogno di ribadire, che la folla lo aveva condotto attraverso una scena di carnage alla prigione di La Force. Che in quella prigione aveva trovato un Tribunale auto-nominatosi seduto, davanti al quale i prigionieri venivano portati uno per volta e da cui erano rapidamente condannati a essere trucidati o rilasciati, oppure (in pochi casi) rimandati alle loro celle. Che, presentato dai suoi accompagnatori a questo Tribunale, si era identificato con nome e professione come un prigioniero segreto e non accusato della Bastiglia per diciotto anni; che uno dei membri del corpo giudicante si era alzato ed aveva riconosciuto lui, e che quell’uomo era Defarge.
Che, di conseguenza, aveva accertato, attraverso i registri sul tavolo, che suo genero era tra i prigionieri vivi e aveva supplicato il Tribunale — alcuni dei cui membri dormivano e altri erano svegli, alcuni sporchi di sangue e altri puliti, alcuni sobri e altri no — per la sua vita e libertà. Che, nei primi saluti frenetici riversati su di lui come un notevole sofferente sotto il sistema rovesciato, gli era stato concesso di far comparire Charles Darnay davanti al selvaggio Tribunale, e di essere esaminato. Che, sembrava sul punto di essere immediatamente rilasciato, quando la marea a suo favore incontrò un qualche ostacolo non spiegato (non comprensibile per il Dottore), che portò ad alcune parole di conferenza segreta. Che, l’uomo seduto come Presidente aveva poi informato Dottor Manette che il prigioniero doveva rimanere in custodia, ma sarebbe stato, per suo conto, tenuto inviolato in una custodia sicura. Che, immediatamente, su un segnale, il prigioniero fu rimosso all’interno della prigione di nuovo; ma, che lui, il Dottore, aveva poi così fortemente supplicato per ottenere il permesso di rimanere e assicurarsi che suo genero non fosse, per nessuna malizia o disgrazia, consegnato alla folla le cui urla omicide fuori del cancello avevano spesso soffocato i procedimenti, che aveva ottenuto il permesso, ed era rimasto in quell’Aula di Sangue fino a quando il pericolo non fosse finito.
Le scene che aveva visto lì, con brevi intervalli di cibo e sonno, rimarranno non raccontate. La gioia folle per i prigionieri salvati lo aveva sbalordito quasi quanto la ferocia folle contro coloro che erano stati sbranati. C’era un prigioniero, disse, che era stato scaricato in strada libero, ma a cui uno selvaggio confuso aveva piantato una picca mentre usciva. Essendo stato pregato di andare da lui e medicargli la ferita, il Dottore era uscito dalla stessa porta ed lo aveva trovato tra le braccia di un gruppo di samaritani che erano seduti sui corpi delle loro vittime. Con un’insensatezza tanto mostruosa quanto qualsiasi altra cosa in questo terribile incubo, essi avevano aiutato il medico e curato l’uomo ferito con la più gentile premura, gli avevano fatto una barella ed accompagnato con attenzione dal luogo; poi avevano afferrato le loro armi e si erano tuffati di nuovo in un massacro così orribile che il Dottore si era coperto gli occhi con le mani e svenne nel bel mezzo.
Mentre il signor Lorry riceveva queste confidenze e osservava il volto del suo amico ormai sessantaduenne, gli venne un dubbio: che quelle terribili esperienze risvegliassero l’antico pericolo.
Ma non aveva mai visto il suo amico in questo aspetto: non lo aveva mai conosciuto nel suo attuale ruolo. Per la prima volta il Dottore sentiva ora che la sua sofferenza era forza e potere. Per la prima volta sentì che in quel duro fuoco aveva lentamente forgiato il ferro capace di sfondare la porta della prigione del marito di sua figlia e liberarlo. «Tutto tendeva a un buon fine, amico mio; non fu solo spreco e distruzione. Come mia cara figlia mi aiutò a ritrovare me stesso, così ora io la aiuterò a riavere ciò che ha di più caro; con l’aiuto del Cielo lo farò!» Così parlava il Dottor Manette. E quando Jarvis Lorry vide gli occhi accesi, il volto risoluto, lo sguardo calmo e forte dell’uomo la cui vita gli era sempre sembrata essere stata fermata, come un orologio, per tanti anni, e poi rimessa in moto con una energia che aveva dormito durante l’interruzione della sua utilità, credette.
Cose più grandi di quelle con cui il dottore aveva a che fare in quel periodo si sarebbero arrese davanti alla sua perseveranza. Mentre lui manteneva la propria posizione come medico, la cui professione lo metteva in contatto con tutti i ceti della società, schiavi e liberi, ricchi e poveri, buoni e cattivi, usava la sua influenza personale con tanta saggezza che presto divenne il medico ispettore di tre prigioni, tra cui La Force. Ora poteva assicurare a Lucie che suo marito non era più rinchiuso da solo, ma era mescolato al corpo generale dei prigionieri; vedeva settimanalmente il marito di lei e le portava dolci messaggi direttamente dalle sue labbra; talvolta lo stesso marito le mandava una lettera (anche se mai per mano del dottore), ma a lei non era permesso scrivergli: perché, tra i tanti sospetti infondati di cospirazioni nelle prigioni, il più folle di tutti si rivolgeva agli emigrati noti per aver fatto amicizia o stabilito connessioni permanenti all’estero.
This new life of the Doctor’s was an anxious life, no doubt; still, the sagacious Mr. Lorry saw that there was a new sustaining pride in it. Nothing unbecoming tinged the pride; it was a natural and worthy one; but he observed it as a curiosity. The Doctor knew, that up to that time, his imprisonment had been associated in the minds of his daughter and his friend, with his personal affliction, deprivation, and weakness. Now that this was changed, and he knew himself to be invested through that old trial with forces to which they both looked for Charles’s ultimate safety and deliverance, he became so far exalted by the change, that he took the lead and direction, and required them as the weak, to trust to him as the strong. The preceding relative positions of himself and Lucie were reversed, yet only as the liveliest gratitude and affection could reverse them, for he could have had no pride but in rendering some service to her who had rendered so much to him. “All curious to see,” thought Mr. Lorry, in his amiably shrewd way, “but all natural and right; so, take the lead, my dear friend, and keep it; it couldn’t be in better hands.”
But, though the Doctor tried hard, and never ceased trying, to get Charles Darnay set at liberty, or at least to get him brought to trial, the public current of the time set too strong and fast for him. The new era began; the king was tried, doomed, and beheaded; the Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death, declared for victory or death against the world in arms; the black flag waved night and day from the great towers of Notre Dame; three hundred thousand men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rose from all the varying soils of France, as if the dragon’s teeth had been sown broadcast, and had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of the North, in fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds and among the cropped grass and the stubble of the corn, along the fruitful banks of the broad rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore. What private solicitude could rear itself against the deluge of the Year One of Liberty—the deluge rising from below, not falling from above, and with the windows of Heaven shut, not opened!
There was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest, no measurement of time. Though days and nights circled as regularly as when time was young, and the evening and morning were the first day, other count of time there was none. Hold of it was lost in the raging fever of a nation, as it is in the fever of one patient. Now, breaking the unnatural silence of a whole city, the executioner showed the people the head of the king—and now, it seemed almost in the same breath, the head of his fair wife which had had eight weary months of imprisoned widowhood and misery, to turn it grey.
And yet, observing the strange law of contradiction which obtains in all such cases, the time was long, while it flamed by so fast. A revolutionary tribunal in the capital, and forty or fifty thousand revolutionary committees all over the land; a law of the Suspected, which struck away all security for liberty or life, and delivered over any good and innocent person to any bad and guilty one; prisons gorged with people who had committed no offence, and could obtain no hearing; these things became the established order and nature of appointed things, and seemed to be ancient usage before they were many weeks old. Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world—the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine.
It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine, looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack. It was the sign of the regeneration of the human race. It superseded the Cross. Models of it were worn on breasts from which the Cross was discarded, and it was bowed down to and believed in where the Cross was denied.
It sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted, were a rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle for a young Devil, and was put together again when the occasion wanted it. It hushed the eloquent, struck down the powerful, abolished the beautiful and good. Twenty-two friends of high public mark, twenty-one living and one dead, it had lopped the heads off, in one morning, in as many minutes. The name of the strong man of Old Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed, he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of God’s own Temple every day.
Among these terrors, and the brood belonging to them, the Doctor walked with a steady head: confident in his power, cautiously persistent in his end, never doubting that he would save Lucie’s husband at last. Yet the current of the time swept by, so strong and deep, and carried the time away so fiercely, that Charles had lain in prison one year and three months when the Doctor was thus steady and confident. So much more wicked and distracted had the Revolution grown in that December month, that the rivers of the South were encumbered with the bodies of the violently drowned by night, and prisoners were shot in lines and squares under the southern wintry sun. Still, the Doctor walked among the terrors with a steady head. No man better known than he, in Paris at that day; no man in a stranger situation. Silent, humane, indispensable in hospital and prison, using his art equally among assassins and victims, he was a man apart. In the exercise of his skill, the appearance and the story of the Bastille Captive removed him from all other men. He was not suspected or brought in question, any more than if he had indeed been recalled to life some eighteen years before, or were a Spirit moving among mortals.
Questa nuova vita del Dottore era una vita ansiosa, senza dubbio; tuttavia, l’astuto Mr. Lorry vide che c’era un nuovo orgoglio sostenitore in essa. Niente di indecoroso macchiava l’orgoglio; era naturale e degno; ma lo osservò come una curiosità. Il Dottore sapeva, fino a quel momento, che la sua prigionia era stata associata nella mente di sua figlia e del suo amico con il suo personale dolore, privazione e debolezza. Ora che questo era cambiato, e sapeva di essere investito attraverso quella vecchia prova di forze in cui entrambi riponevano la speranza per l’ultima salvezza e liberazione di Charles, si sentiva così esaltato dal cambiamento, che prese il comando e la direzione, e li invitò come i deboli a fidarsi di lui come del forte. Le precedenti posizioni relative tra sé e Lucie erano invertite, ma solo come la più viva gratitudine e affetto potevano invertirle, perché non avrebbe potuto avere alcun orgoglio se non nel rendere qualche servizio a colei che gliene aveva resi così tanti. “Tutto molto curioso da vedere”, pensò Mr. Lorry, con la sua amabile perspicacia, “ma tutto naturale e giusto; quindi prendi il comando, mio caro amico, e mantienilo; non potrebbe essere in mani migliori.”
Ma sebbene il dottore si fosse impegnato con tutte le sue forze e non avesse mai smesso di tentare di far liberare Charles Darnay o almeno di farlo processare, la corrente pubblica del tempo era troppo forte e veloce per lui. Era iniziata una nuova era; il re fu processato, condannato e decapitato; la Repubblica della Libertà, dell’Uguaglianza, della Fratellanza o di morte, dichiarò guerra per la vittoria o per la morte contro il mondo in armi; la bandiera nera sventolava giorno e notte dalle grandi torri di Notre Dame; trecentomila uomini, chiamati a insorgere contro i tiranni della terra, si levarono da tutti i diversi terreni della Francia, come se i denti del drago fossero stati seminati dappertutto e avessero dato frutti ugualmente su collina e pianura, sulla roccia, sul ghiaione e nel fango alluvionale, sotto il cielo luminoso del Sud e sotto le nuvole del Nord, in montagna e nella foresta, nei vigneti e negli oliveti e tra l’erba tagliata e la paglia del grano, lungo le fertili rive dei grandi fiumi e sulla sabbia della costa marina. Quale preoccupazione privata avrebbe potuto ergersi contro il diluvio dell’Anno Uno della Libertà - il diluvio che saliva dal basso, non cadeva dall’alto, e con le finestre del Cielo chiuse, non aperte!
Non c’era tregua, né pietà, né pace, né intervallo di riposo, né misurazione del tempo. Sebbene giorni e notti si susseguissero con la stessa regolarità dei tempi in cui il tempo era giovane, e la sera e la mattina erano il primo giorno, non c’era altro modo di contare il tempo. La nozione del tempo si era persa nella febbre furiosa della nazione, come accade con un singolo malato. Ora, rompendo il silenzio innaturale di tutta la città, l’esecutore mostrava al popolo la testa del re - e ora, sembrava quasi nello stesso respiro, quella della sua bella moglie che aveva sopportato otto lunghi mesi di vedovanza e miseria in prigione, fino a farsi diventare i capelli grigi.
Eppure, osservando la strana legge di contraddizione che vale in tutti questi casi, il tempo era lungo mentre scorreva così veloce. Un tribunale rivoluzionario nella capitale e quaranta o cinquanta mila comitati rivoluzionari in tutto il paese; una legge dei Sospetti che privava di ogni sicurezza per la libertà o la vita, consegnando qualsiasi persona buona e innocente a chiunque fosse cattivo e colpevole; prigioni piene zeppo di persone che non avevano commesso alcun reato e non potevano ottenere udienza; queste cose divennero l’ordine costituito e la natura delle cose stabilite, e sembravano essere un’antica consuetudine prima che fossero passate molte settimane. Soprattutto, una figura orribile crebbe fino a diventare familiare come se fosse stata davanti allo sguardo generale fin dalle fondamenta del mondo: la figura della femmina affilata chiamata La Guillotine.
Era il tema popolare per gli scherzi; era la migliore cura contro l’emicrania, impediva infallibilmente ai capelli di diventare grigi, conferiva una delicatezza peculiare al colorito, era il Rasoio Nazionale che rasava da vicino: chi baciava La Guillotine, guardava attraverso la piccola finestra e starnutiva nel sacco. Era il segno della rigenerazione del genere umano. Sostituì la Croce. Modelli di essa venivano indossati sul petto da cui la Croce era stata scartata, e ad essa si inchinavano e ci si credeva dove la Croce era negata.
Tagliò tante teste che essa e il terreno più inquinato da essa erano di un rosso marcio. Fu smontata a pezzi come se fosse un puzzle giocattolo per un giovane Diavolo, e fu rimessa insieme quando l’occasione lo richiese. Zittì gli eloquenti, abbatté i potenti, abolì il bello e il buono. Ventidue amici di alto rango pubblico, ventuno vivi e uno morto, ebbero la testa tagliata in una sola mattinata, in altrettanti minuti. Il nome del gigante della Sacra Scrittura era sceso al funzionario capo che lo faceva funzionare; ma così armato egli era più forte di colui che gli aveva dato il suo nome e più cieco, e ogni giorno strappava via le porte del Tempio stesso di Dio.
Tra questi terrori e la loro progenie, il Dottore camminava con la testa ferma: fiducioso nel suo potere, cauto e perseverante nel suo scopo, senza mai dubitare che alla fine avrebbe salvato il marito di Lucie. Eppure la corrente del tempo scorreva così forte e profonda, e trascinava via il tempo con tanta furia, che Charles era rimasto in prigione per un anno e tre mesi quando il Dottore era così fermo e fiducioso. La Rivoluzione era diventata tanto più malvagia e disperata in quel mese di dicembre, che i fiumi del Sud erano ingombrati dai corpi dei violentemente annegati di notte, e i prigionieri venivano fucilati in fila e a quadrato sotto il sole invernale del sud. Eppure, il Dottore camminava tra i terrori con la testa ferma. Nessuno era più noto di lui a Parigi in quel periodo; nessuno si trovava in una situazione più strana. Silenzioso, umano, indispensabile all’ospedale e nella prigione, usava la sua arte allo stesso modo tra assassini e vittime, era un uomo a parte. Nell’esercizio della sua abilità, l’apparenza e la storia del Prigioniero della Bastiglia lo separavano da tutti gli altri uomini. Non veniva sospettato o messo in questione più di quanto non sarebbe stato se fosse davvero stato richiamato in vita diciotto anni prima, o fosse uno Spirito che si muoveva tra i mortali.
CHAPTER V. The Wood-Sawyer
One year and three months. During all that time Lucie was never sure, from hour to hour, but that the Guillotine would strike off her husband’s head next day. Every day, through the stony streets, the tumbrils now jolted heavily, filled with Condemned. Lovely girls; bright women, brown-haired, black-haired, and grey; youths; stalwart men and old; gentle born and peasant born; all red wine for La Guillotine, all daily brought into light from the dark cellars of the loathsome prisons, and carried to her through the streets to slake her devouring thirst. Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death;—the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine!
If the suddenness of her calamity, and the whirling wheels of the time, had stunned the Doctor’s daughter into awaiting the result in idle despair, it would but have been with her as it was with many. But, from the hour when she had taken the white head to her fresh young bosom in the garret of Saint Antoine, she had been true to her duties. She was truest to them in the season of trial, as all the quietly loyal and good will always be.
As soon as they were established in their new residence, and her father had entered on the routine of his avocations, she arranged the little household as exactly as if her husband had been there. Everything had its appointed place and its appointed time. Little Lucie she taught, as regularly, as if they had all been united in their English home. The slight devices with which she cheated herself into the show of a belief that they would soon be reunited—the little preparations for his speedy return, the setting aside of his chair and his books—these, and the solemn prayer at night for one dear prisoner especially, among the many unhappy souls in prison and the shadow of death—were almost the only outspoken reliefs of her heavy mind.
She did not greatly alter in appearance. The plain dark dresses, akin to mourning dresses, which she and her child wore, were as neat and as well attended to as the brighter clothes of happy days. She lost her colour, and the old and intent expression was a constant, not an occasional, thing; otherwise, she remained very pretty and comely. Sometimes, at night on kissing her father, she would burst into the grief she had repressed all day, and would say that her sole reliance, under Heaven, was on him. He always resolutely answered: “Nothing can happen to him without my knowledge, and I know that I can save him, Lucie.”
They had not made the round of their changed life many weeks, when her father said to her, on coming home one evening:
“My dear, there is an upper window in the prison, to which Charles can sometimes gain access at three in the afternoon. When he can get to it—which depends on many uncertainties and incidents—he might see you in the street, he thinks, if you stood in a certain place that I can show you. But you will not be able to see him, my poor child, and even if you could, it would be unsafe for you to make a sign of recognition.”
“O show me the place, my father, and I will go there every day.”
From that time, in all weathers, she waited there two hours. As the clock struck two, she was there, and at four she turned resignedly away. When it was not too wet or inclement for her child to be with her, they went together; at other times she was alone; but, she never missed a single day.
It was the dark and dirty corner of a small winding street. The hovel of a cutter of wood into lengths for burning, was the only house at that end; all else was wall. On the third day of her being there, he noticed her.
“Good day, citizeness.”
“Good day, citizen.”
This mode of address was now prescribed by decree. It had been established voluntarily some time ago, among the more thorough patriots; but, was now law for everybody.
“Walking here again, citizeness?”
“You see me, citizen!”
The wood-sawyer, who was a little man with a redundancy of gesture (he had once been a mender of roads), cast a glance at the prison, pointed at the prison, and putting his ten fingers before his face to represent bars, peeped through them jocosely.
“But it’s not my business,” said he. And went on sawing his wood.
Next day he was looking out for her, and accosted her the moment she appeared.
“What? Walking here again, citizeness?”
“Yes, citizen.”
“Ah! A child too! Your mother, is it not, my little citizeness?”
“Do I say yes, mamma?” whispered little Lucie, drawing close to her.
“Yes, dearest.”
“Yes, citizen.”
“Ah! But it’s not my business. My work is my business. See my saw! I call it my Little Guillotine. La, la, la; La, la, la! And off his head comes!”
The billet fell as he spoke, and he threw it into a basket.
“I call myself the Samson of the firewood guillotine. See here again! Loo, loo, loo; Loo, loo, loo! And off her head comes! Now, a child. Tickle, tickle; Pickle, pickle! And off its head comes. All the family!”
Lucie shuddered as he threw two more billets into his basket, but it was impossible to be there while the wood-sawyer was at work, and not be in his sight. Thenceforth, to secure his good will, she always spoke to him first, and often gave him drink-money, which he readily received.
He was an inquisitive fellow, and sometimes when she had quite forgotten him in gazing at the prison roof and grates, and in lifting her heart up to her husband, she would come to herself to find him looking at her, with his knee on his bench and his saw stopped in its work. “But it’s not my business!” he would generally say at those times, and would briskly fall to his sawing again.
In all weathers, in the snow and frost of winter, in the bitter winds of spring, in the hot sunshine of summer, in the rains of autumn, and again in the snow and frost of winter, Lucie passed two hours of every day at this place; and every day on leaving it, she kissed the prison wall. Her husband saw her (so she learned from her father) it might be once in five or six times: it might be twice or thrice running: it might be, not for a week or a fortnight together. It was enough that he could and did see her when the chances served, and on that possibility she would have waited out the day, seven days a week.
CAPITOLO V. Il Segatore di Legna
Un anno e tre mesi. Durante tutto quel tempo Lucie non fu mai sicura, ora per ora, che la ghigliottina non avrebbe mozzato il giorno dopo la testa di suo marito. Ogni giorno, attraverso le strade lastricate, i tumbrili traballavano pesantemente carichi di condannati. Ragazze incantevoli; donne luminose, dai capelli castani, neri e grigi; giovani; uomini robusti e anziani; nati nobili e contadini; tutti vino rosso per la ghigliottina, tutti portati alla luce ogni giorno dalle buie cantine delle prigioni odiate, e condotti a lei attraverso le strade per placare la sua sete divorante. Libertà, uguaglianza, fraternità o morte;— quest’ultima, molto più facile da concedere, o ghigliottina!
Se la rapidità della sua disgrazia e le ruote vorticose del tempo avessero stordito la figlia del dottore al punto da farla attendere il risultato in un ozioso dispero, non sarebbe stato diversamente che per molti altri. Ma, dall’ora in cui aveva accolto quella testa bianca sul suo fresco e giovane seno nella soffitta di Saint Antoine, era stata fedele ai suoi doveri. Fu più fedele a essi nel momento della prova, come sempre saranno tutti i tranquillamente leali e buoni.
Appena si furono stabiliti nella loro nuova residenza, e suo padre ebbe iniziato la routine delle sue occupazioni, lei organizzò il piccolo focolare con la stessa precisione di quando fosse stato presente suo marito. Ogni cosa aveva il suo posto assegnato e il suo tempo stabilito. Insegnava alla piccola Lucie con la stessa regolarità, come se tutti fossero stati uniti nella loro casa inglese. I piccoli stratagemmi con cui si illudeva di credere che presto sarebbero stati riuniti - i preparativi per il suo rapido ritorno, la messa da parte della sua sedia e dei suoi libri - questi, e la solenne preghiera alla notte per un caro prigioniero in particolare, tra le tante anime infelici in prigione e nell’ombra della morte - erano quasi gli unici sollievi espliciti della sua mente oppressa.
Il suo aspetto non cambiò molto. Gli abiti scuri e semplici, simili a quelli da lutto, che indossavano lei e il suo bambino, erano altrettanto ordinati e curati quanto i vestiti più vivaci dei giorni felici. Perse colore, e la vecchia espressione attenta divenne una costante, non un fatto occasionale; altrimenti rimase molto carina e graziosa. A volte, di notte, quando baciava suo padre, scoppiava nel dolore che aveva represso tutto il giorno, e diceva che la sua unica speranza, sotto al Cielo, era in lui. Lui rispondeva sempre con fermezza: “Niente può accadergli senza che io lo sappia, e so di poterlo salvare, Lucie.”
Non erano passate molte settimane dalla loro nuova vita quando suo padre le disse, tornando a casa una sera:
“Mia cara, c’è una finestra superiore nella prigione alla quale Charles può talvolta accedere alle tre del pomeriggio. Quando riesce ad arrivarci - il che dipende da molte incertezze e circostanze - potrebbe vederti in strada, pensa lui, se ti mettessi in un certo punto che posso mostrarti. Ma tu non sarai in grado di vederlo, mia povera figlia, e anche se potessi, sarebbe pericoloso da parte tua fare un segno di riconoscimento.”
“Mostrami il luogo, padre mio, e ci andrò ogni giorno.”
Da quel momento, in tutte le stagioni e con ogni tempo, aspettò lì due ore. Quando la campana batteva le due lei era già lì, e alle quattro si allontanava rassegnata. Se non pioveva troppo o se il tempo non era troppo inclemente per portare con sé il suo bambino, andavano insieme; in altri casi rimaneva sola; ma, non mancò mai un solo giorno.
Era l’angolo buio e sporco di una piccola strada tortuosa. L’abitazione di un tagliatore di legna a pezzi per il fuoco era l’unica casa in quella zona; tutto il resto era muro. Al terzo giorno del suo soggiorno, lui la notò.
“Buona giornata, cittadina.”
“Buona giornata, cittadino.”
Questo modo di rivolgersi era ora prescritto per decreto. Era stato stabilito volontariamente qualche tempo fa tra i patrioti più convinti; ma adesso era legge per tutti.
“Cammina di nuovo qui, cittadina?”
“Mi vedi, cittadino!”
Il segatore di legna, che era un uomo piccolo con una sovrabbondanza di gesti (era stato un tempo riparatore di strade), lanciò uno sguardo alla prigione, indicò la prigione e, mettendo le dieci dita davanti al viso per rappresentare le sbarre, sbirciò attraverso di esse in modo scherzoso.
«Ma non è affar mio», disse lui. E continuò a segare la sua legna.
Il giorno dopo la stava aspettando e le si avvicinò non appena apparve.
“Che cosa? Cammina di nuovo qui, cittadina?”
“Sì, cittadino.”
«Ah! Anche un bambino! È tua madre, non è vero, mia piccola cittadina?»
«Dico di sì, mamma?» bisbigliò la piccola Lucie avvicinandosi a lei.
“Sì, mia cara.”
“Sì, cittadino.”
«Ah! Ma non è affar mio. Il mio lavoro è il mio affare. Guardate la mia sega! Io la chiamo la mia Piccola Ghigliottina. Lá, lá, lá; Lá, lá, lá! E via che va la sua testa!»
Il biglietto cadde mentre parlava e lo gettò in un cesto.
“Mi chiamo il Sansone della ghigliottina per la legna. Guardate ancora! Loo, loo, loo; Loo, loo, loo! E via viene la testa di lei! Ora un bambino. Solletico, solletico; Piccolo, piccolo! E via viene la sua testa. Tutta la famiglia!”
Lucie rabbrividì mentre lui gettava altri due pezzi di legna nel suo cesto, ma era impossibile stare lì mentre il segatore lavorava senza essere vista. Da quel momento in poi, per assicurarsi la sua benevolenza, lei gli parlò sempre prima e spesso gli diede dei soldi da bere, che lui accettava prontamente.
Era un tipo curioso e talvolta, quando lei lo aveva completamente dimenticato mentre fissava il tetto della prigione e le sbarre, e si rivolgeva al marito con il cuore, tornava in sé per trovarlo che la guardava, con un ginocchio sul banco di lavoro e la sega ferma. “Ma non è affar mio!” diceva solitamente in quei momenti, e riprendeva energicamente a segare.
In tutte le stagioni, nella neve e nel gelido freddo dell’inverno, nei venti pungenti della primavera, sotto il caldo sole dell’estate, nelle piogge dell’autunno, e di nuovo nella neve e nel gelido freddo dell’inverno, Lucie trascorreva due ore ogni giorno in quel luogo; e ogni giorno, prima di andarsene, baciava il muro della prigione. Suo marito la vedeva (così aveva appreso da suo padre) forse una volta su cinque o sei: poteva essere due o tre volte di seguito: poteva anche non vederla per una settimana o quindici giorni. Era sufficiente che lui potesse e sapesse vederla quando le circostanze lo permettevano, e su questa possibilità lei avrebbe atteso tutto il giorno, sette giorni alla settimana.
These occupations brought her round to the December month, wherein her father walked among the terrors with a steady head. On a lightly-snowing afternoon she arrived at the usual corner. It was a day of some wild rejoicing, and a festival. She had seen the houses, as she came along, decorated with little pikes, and with little red caps stuck upon them; also, with tricoloured ribbons; also, with the standard inscription (tricoloured letters were the favourite), Republic One and Indivisible. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death!
The miserable shop of the wood-sawyer was so small, that its whole surface furnished very indifferent space for this legend. He had got somebody to scrawl it up for him, however, who had squeezed Death in with most inappropriate difficulty. On his house-top, he displayed pike and cap, as a good citizen must, and in a window he had stationed his saw inscribed as his “Little Sainte Guillotine”—for the great sharp female was by that time popularly canonised. His shop was shut and he was not there, which was a relief to Lucie, and left her quite alone.
But, he was not far off, for presently she heard a troubled movement and a shouting coming along, which filled her with fear. A moment afterwards, and a throng of people came pouring round the corner by the prison wall, in the midst of whom was the wood-sawyer hand in hand with The Vengeance. There could not be fewer than five hundred people, and they were dancing like five thousand demons. There was no other music than their own singing. They danced to the popular Revolution song, keeping a ferocious time that was like a gnashing of teeth in unison. Men and women danced together, women danced together, men danced together, as hazard had brought them together. At first, they were a mere storm of coarse red caps and coarse woollen rags; but, as they filled the place, and stopped to dance about Lucie, some ghastly apparition of a dance-figure gone raving mad arose among them. They advanced, retreated, struck at one another’s hands, clutched at one another’s heads, spun round alone, caught one another and spun round in pairs, until many of them dropped. While those were down, the rest linked hand in hand, and all spun round together: then the ring broke, and in separate rings of two and four they turned and turned until they all stopped at once, began again, struck, clutched, and tore, and then reversed the spin, and all spun round another way. Suddenly they stopped again, paused, struck out the time afresh, formed into lines the width of the public way, and, with their heads low down and their hands high up, swooped screaming off. No fight could have been half so terrible as this dance. It was so emphatically a fallen sport—a something, once innocent, delivered over to all devilry—a healthy pastime changed into a means of angering the blood, bewildering the senses, and steeling the heart. Such grace as was visible in it, made it the uglier, showing how warped and perverted all things good by nature were become. The maidenly bosom bared to this, the pretty almost-child’s head thus distracted, the delicate foot mincing in this slough of blood and dirt, were types of the disjointed time.
This was the Carmagnole. As it passed, leaving Lucie frightened and bewildered in the doorway of the wood-sawyer’s house, the feathery snow fell as quietly and lay as white and soft, as if it had never been.
“O my father!” for he stood before her when she lifted up the eyes she had momentarily darkened with her hand; “such a cruel, bad sight.”
“I know, my dear, I know. I have seen it many times. Don’t be frightened! Not one of them would harm you.”
“I am not frightened for myself, my father. But when I think of my husband, and the mercies of these people—”
“We will set him above their mercies very soon. I left him climbing to the window, and I came to tell you. There is no one here to see. You may kiss your hand towards that highest shelving roof.”
“I do so, father, and I send him my Soul with it!”
“You cannot see him, my poor dear?”
“No, father,” said Lucie, yearning and weeping as she kissed her hand, “no.”
A footstep in the snow. Madame Defarge. “I salute you, citizeness,” from the Doctor. “I salute you, citizen.” This in passing. Nothing more. Madame Defarge gone, like a shadow over the white road.
“Give me your arm, my love. Pass from here with an air of cheerfulness and courage, for his sake. That was well done;” they had left the spot; “it shall not be in vain. Charles is summoned for to-morrow.”
“For to-morrow!”
“There is no time to lose. I am well prepared, but there are precautions to be taken, that could not be taken until he was actually summoned before the Tribunal. He has not received the notice yet, but I know that he will presently be summoned for to-morrow, and removed to the Conciergerie; I have timely information. You are not afraid?”
She could scarcely answer, “I trust in you.”
“Do so, implicitly. Your suspense is nearly ended, my darling; he shall be restored to you within a few hours; I have encompassed him with every protection. I must see Lorry.”
He stopped. There was a heavy lumbering of wheels within hearing. They both knew too well what it meant. One. Two. Three. Three tumbrils faring away with their dread loads over the hushing snow.
“I must see Lorry,” the Doctor repeated, turning her another way.
The staunch old gentleman was still in his trust; had never left it. He and his books were in frequent requisition as to property confiscated and made national. What he could save for the owners, he saved. No better man living to hold fast by what Tellson’s had in keeping, and to hold his peace.
A murky red and yellow sky, and a rising mist from the Seine, denoted the approach of darkness. It was almost dark when they arrived at the Bank. The stately residence of Monseigneur was altogether blighted and deserted. Above a heap of dust and ashes in the court, ran the letters: National Property. Republic One and Indivisible. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death!
Who could that be with Mr. Lorry—the owner of the riding-coat upon the chair—who must not be seen? From whom newly arrived, did he come out, agitated and surprised, to take his favourite in his arms? To whom did he appear to repeat her faltering words, when, raising his voice and turning his head towards the door of the room from which he had issued, he said: “Removed to the Conciergerie, and summoned for to-morrow?”
Queste occupazioni la portarono fino al mese di dicembre, in cui suo padre camminava tra i terrori con una testa ferma. In un pomeriggio leggermente innevato arrivò all’angolo solito. Era un giorno di grande gioia e festeggiamenti. Aveva visto le case, mentre passava, decorate con piccole picche e con piccoli berretti rossi infilzati su di esse; anche con nastri tricolori; anche con l’iscrizione standard (le lettere tricolori erano quelle preferite), Repubblica Una e Indivisibile. Libertà, Uguaglianza, Fratellanza o morte!
Il misero negozio del taglialegna era così piccolo che tutta la sua superficie offriva uno spazio molto mediocre per questa scritta. Tuttavia aveva fatto venire qualcuno a scarabocchiarla, e quello aveva inserito morte con grande difficoltà e in modo del tutto inappropriato. Sulla sua casa, esibiva pica e berretto, come deve fare un buon cittadino, e in una finestra aveva collocato la sua sega su cui era scritto “La mia piccola Sainte Guillotine” — perché la grande femmina affilata era stata popolarmente canonizzata a quell’epoca. Il suo negozio era chiuso e lui non c’era, il che fu un sollievo per Lucie, lasciandola completamente sola.
Ma non era lontano, perché subito dopo sentì un movimento agitato e delle grida che si avvicinavano, riempiendola di paura. Un attimo dopo, una folla di persone sbucò dall’angolo accanto al muro della prigione, in mezzo alla quale c’era il segatore di legna mano nella mano con La Vendetta. Non potevano essere meno di cinquecento persone, e danzavano come cinquemila demoni. Non c’era altra musica se non il loro stesso canto. Danzavano sul popolare canto della Rivoluzione, mantenendo un feroce ritmo che era come uno stridere di denti all’unisono. Uomini e donne danzavano insieme, le donne danzavano tra loro, gli uomini danzavano insieme, come il caso li aveva riuniti. All’inizio erano solo un tumulto di rozzi berretti rossi e rozze stracci di lana; ma man mano che riempivano il luogo e si fermavano a danzare intorno a Lucie, tra loro sorse una ghastly apparizione di una figura da ballo impazzita. Avanzavano, indietreggiavano, colpivano le mani degli altri, afferravano le teste gli uni degli altri, giravano su se stessi da soli, si prendevano per mano e giravano a coppie, finché molti di loro crollarono. Mentre questi erano a terra, gli altri si tenevano per mano, e tutti giravano insieme: poi il cerchio si spezzava, e in anelli separati di due e quattro continuavano a girare fino a fermarsi all’unisono, ricominciare, colpire, afferrare, strappare, e poi invertire la rotazione, e tutti giravano nella direzione opposta. Improvvisamente si fermarono di nuovo, fecero una pausa, ripresero il ritmo da capo, si disposero in file larghe quanto la strada pubblica, e con le teste basse e le mani alte, spiccarono un urlo e volarono via. Nessuna lotta avrebbe potuto essere nemmeno la metà di quanto terribile fosse questa danza. Era così enfaticamente uno sport decaduto - una cosa che era stata una volta innocente e ora consegnata a ogni sorta di demoniaca influenza - un passatempo sano trasformato in mezzo per far ribollire il sangue, confondere i sensi, e indurire il cuore. La poca grazia che vi era visibile la rendeva ancora più brutta, mostrando quanto fossero distorte e corrotte tutte le cose buone di natura. Il seno verginale esposto a questo, la testa quasi-infantile così distratta, il piede delicato che calpestava in questa pozza di sangue e sporcizia, erano simboli del tempo disgiunto.
Era la Carmagnola. Mentre passava, lasciando Lucie spaventata e disorientata sulla porta della casa del segatore di legname, la piumosa neve cadeva silenziosamente e giaceva bianca e soffice come se non fosse mai stata disturbata.
«Oh, mio padre!» perché egli stava davanti a lei quando ella alzò gli occhi che aveva momentaneamente oscurato con la mano; «una vista così crudele e terribile.»
«Lo so, mia cara, lo so. L’ho visto tante volte. Non aver paura! Nessuno di loro ti farebbe del male».
«Non ho paura per me stessa, padre mio. Ma quando penso a mio marito e alla clemenza di queste persone, »
«Lo metteremo presto sotto la loro protezione. L’ho lasciato mentre saliva alla finestra, e sono venuto a dirtelo. Non c’è nessuno qui che ci veda. Puoi mandargli un bacio con la mano verso quel tetto più alto in salita.»
«Lo faccio, padre, e gli mando la mia anima con esso!»
“Non lo vedi, mia povera cara?”
“No, padre,” disse Lucie, desiderando e piangendo mentre gli baciava la mano, “no.”
Un passo nella neve. Madame Defarge. «Vi saluto, cittadina», dal Dottore. «Vi saluto, cittadino». Questo di sfuggita. Nulla altro. Madame Defarge svanì come un’ombra sulla bianca strada.
«Dammi il braccio, mio amore. Esci da qui con un’aria di allegria e coraggio, per lui. Questo è stato fatto bene;» erano usciti dal luogo; «non sarà stato inutile. Charles è convocato per domani.»
“Per domani!”
«Non c’è tempo da perdere. Sono ben preparata, ma ci sono delle precauzioni che non potevano essere prese finché lui non fosse stato effettivamente convocato davanti al Tribunale. Non ha ancora ricevuto la notifica, ma so che sarà presto convocato per domani e trasferito alla Conciergerie; ho informazioni tempestive. Non hai paura?»
Non riusciva quasi a rispondere: “Mi fido di te.”
«Fatelo senza esitare. La vostra attesa sta per finire, mia cara; lui vi sarà restituito entro poche ore; l’ho circondato di ogni protezione. Devo vedere Lorry.»
Si fermò. Si udì un pesante rumore di ruote. Entrambi sapevano troppo bene cosa significasse. Uno. Due. Tre. Tre tumbrili che si allontanavano con i loro carichi terribili sopra la neve silenziosa.
«Devo vedere Lorry», ripeté il dottore, facendola voltare in un’altra direzione.
Il fedele vecchio signore era ancora nella sua fiducia; non l’aveva mai abbandonata. Lui e i suoi libri erano spesso richiesti per quanto riguardava le proprietà confiscate e nazionalizzate. Quello che poteva salvare per i proprietari, lo salvava. Non c’era uomo migliore al mondo per custodire ciò che Tellson aveva in deposito e mantenere il silenzio.
Un cielo torbido di rosso e giallo e una nebbia che si levava dalla Senna denotavano l’avvicinarsi del buio. Era quasi notte quando arrivarono alla Banca. La maestosa residenza di Monseigneur era completamente devastata e deserta. Sopra un mucchio di polvere e cenere nel cortile, erano scritte le parole: Proprietà Nazionale. Repubblica Una e Indivisibile. Libertà, Uguaglianza, Fratellanza o morte!
Chi poteva essere con il signor Lorry — il proprietario del soprabito da equitazione sulla sedia — che non doveva essere visto? Da chi era appena arrivato uscì agitato e sorpreso per prendere tra le braccia la sua preferita? A chi sembrava ripetesse le sue parole incerte, quando, alzando la voce e girando il capo verso la porta della stanza da cui era uscito, disse: «Trasferita alla Conciergerie e convocata per domani?»
CHAPTER VI. Triumph
The dread tribunal of five Judges, Public Prosecutor, and determined Jury, sat every day. Their lists went forth every evening, and were read out by the gaolers of the various prisons to their prisoners. The standard gaoler-joke was, “Come out and listen to the Evening Paper, you inside there!”
“Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay!”
So at last began the Evening Paper at La Force.
When a name was called, its owner stepped apart into a spot reserved for those who were announced as being thus fatally recorded. Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay, had reason to know the usage; he had seen hundreds pass away so.
His bloated gaoler, who wore spectacles to read with, glanced over them to assure himself that he had taken his place, and went through the list, making a similar short pause at each name. There were twenty-three names, but only twenty were responded to; for one of the prisoners so summoned had died in gaol and been forgotten, and two had already been guillotined and forgotten. The list was read, in the vaulted chamber where Darnay had seen the associated prisoners on the night of his arrival. Every one of those had perished in the massacre; every human creature he had since cared for and parted with, had died on the scaffold.
There were hurried words of farewell and kindness, but the parting was soon over. It was the incident of every day, and the society of La Force were engaged in the preparation of some games of forfeits and a little concert, for that evening. They crowded to the grates and shed tears there; but, twenty places in the projected entertainments had to be refilled, and the time was, at best, short to the lock-up hour, when the common rooms and corridors would be delivered over to the great dogs who kept watch there through the night. The prisoners were far from insensible or unfeeling; their ways arose out of the condition of the time. Similarly, though with a subtle difference, a species of fervour or intoxication, known, without doubt, to have led some persons to brave the guillotine unnecessarily, and to die by it, was not mere boastfulness, but a wild infection of the wildly shaken public mind. In seasons of pestilence, some of us will have a secret attraction to the disease—a terrible passing inclination to die of it. And all of us have like wonders hidden in our breasts, only needing circumstances to evoke them.
The passage to the Conciergerie was short and dark; the night in its vermin-haunted cells was long and cold. Next day, fifteen prisoners were put to the bar before Charles Darnay’s name was called. All the fifteen were condemned, and the trials of the whole occupied an hour and a half.
“Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay,” was at length arraigned.
His judges sat upon the Bench in feathered hats; but the rough red cap and tricoloured cockade was the head-dress otherwise prevailing. Looking at the Jury and the turbulent audience, he might have thought that the usual order of things was reversed, and that the felons were trying the honest men. The lowest, cruelest, and worst populace of a city, never without its quantity of low, cruel, and bad, were the directing spirits of the scene: noisily commenting, applauding, disapproving, anticipating, and precipitating the result, without a check. Of the men, the greater part were armed in various ways; of the women, some wore knives, some daggers, some ate and drank as they looked on, many knitted. Among these last, was one, with a spare piece of knitting under her arm as she worked. She was in a front row, by the side of a man whom he had never seen since his arrival at the Barrier, but whom he directly remembered as Defarge. He noticed that she once or twice whispered in his ear, and that she seemed to be his wife; but, what he most noticed in the two figures was, that although they were posted as close to himself as they could be, they never looked towards him. They seemed to be waiting for something with a dogged determination, and they looked at the Jury, but at nothing else. Under the President sat Doctor Manette, in his usual quiet dress. As well as the prisoner could see, he and Mr. Lorry were the only men there, unconnected with the Tribunal, who wore their usual clothes, and had not assumed the coarse garb of the Carmagnole.
Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay, was accused by the public prosecutor as an emigrant, whose life was forfeit to the Republic, under the decree which banished all emigrants on pain of Death. It was nothing that the decree bore date since his return to France. There he was, and there was the decree; he had been taken in France, and his head was demanded.
“Take off his head!” cried the audience. “An enemy to the Republic!”
The President rang his bell to silence those cries, and asked the prisoner whether it was not true that he had lived many years in England?
Undoubtedly it was.
Was he not an emigrant then? What did he call himself?
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.
CAPITOLO VI. Trionfo
Il tribunale spaventoso di cinque giudici, procuratore pubblico e giuria determinata si riuniva ogni giorno. Le loro liste venivano pubblicate ogni sera e lette dai secondini delle varie prigioni ai detenuti. La battuta standard dei secondini era: «Uscite a sentire il giornale della sera, voi là dentro!»
“Charles Evrémonde, detto Darnay!”
Così alla fine iniziò il giornale serale a La Force.
Quando veniva chiamato un nome, il suo proprietario si metteva da parte in un luogo riservato a coloro che erano annunciati come fatalmente registrati. Charles Evrémonde, detto Darnay, aveva motivo di conoscere l’usanza; ne aveva visti passare via così centinaia.
Il suo gonfio carceriere, che portava occhiali da lettura, li guardò per assicurarsi di aver preso posto e passò in rassegna l’elenco, facendo una breve pausa simile a ogni nome. C’erano ventitré nomi, ma solo venti risposero; perché uno dei prigionieri così convocati era morto in carcere ed era stato dimenticato e due erano già stati ghigliottinati e dimenticati. L’elenco fu letto nella sala a volta dove Darnay aveva visto i prigionieri associati la notte del suo arrivo. Tutti quelli erano periti nel massacro; ogni creatura umana di cui si era preso cura e con cui si era separato, era morta sul patibolo.
Ci furono affrettate parole di commiato e gentilezza, ma la separazione fu presto finita. Era un fatto che accadeva ogni giorno, e i detenuti della La Force erano impegnati nella preparazione di alcuni giochi con le multe e di un piccolo concerto per quella sera. Si affollarono alle grate e versarono lacrime lì; ma bisognava rimpiazzare venti posti nelle attività previste, e il tempo era comunque breve rispetto all’ora di chiusura, quando le sale comuni e i corridoi sarebbero stati affidati ai grandi cani che li sorvegliavano durante la notte. I prigionieri erano tutt’altro che insensibili o indifferenti; il loro comportamento derivava dalle condizioni dell’epoca. Allo stesso modo, sebbene con una sottile differenza, un genere di fervore o ebbrezza, noto senza dubbio per aver spinto alcune persone a sfidare inutilmente la ghigliottina e morire sotto di essa, non era semplice fanfaronata, ma una selvaggia infezione della mente pubblica violentemente scossa. In certe stagioni di pestilenza, alcuni di noi provano un’attrazione segreta per la malattia — un terribile impulso passeggero a morirne. E tutti noi abbiamo simili meraviglie nascoste nel nostro cuore, che aspettano solo le circostanze ad evocarle.
Il passaggio alla Conciergerie era breve e buio; la notte nelle sue celle infestate dai parassiti era lunga e fredda. Il giorno dopo, quindici prigionieri furono portati al banco prima che venisse chiamato il nome di Charles Darnay. Tutti i quindici furono condannati, e i processi dell’intero gruppo occuparono un’ora e mezza.
«Charles Evrémonde, detto Darnay», fu infine processato.
I suoi giudici sedevano sul banco con cappelli piumati; ma il berretto rosso e la coccarda tricolore era l’abbigliamento prevalente per tutti gli altri. Guardando la giuria e il pubblico turbolento, avrebbe potuto pensare che l’ordine consueto delle cose fosse stato rovesciato, e che i criminali stessero processando gli uomini onesti. La popolazione più bassa, crudele e malvagia di una città, mai priva della sua quantità di persone basse, crudeli e cattive, erano le menti direttive della scena: commentavano rumorosamente, applaudivano, disapprovavano, anticipavano e precipitavano il risultato senza alcun controllo. La maggior parte degli uomini era armata in vari modi; delle donne, alcune portavano coltelli, altre pugnali, altre mangiavano e bevevano mentre guardavano, molte facevano maglia. Tra queste ultime, c’era una donna con un pezzo di maglieria in più sotto il braccio mentre lavorava. Era nella prima fila, accanto a un uomo che non aveva mai visto da quando era arrivato alla Barriera, ma che riconobbe immediatamente come Defarge. Notò che gli sussurrava all’orecchio una o due volte e che sembrava essere sua moglie; ma ciò che notò di più nelle due figure fu che, sebbene fossero posizionate il più vicino possibile a lui, non lo guardavano mai. Sembravano aspettare qualcosa con determinazione ostinata, e guardavano la giuria, ma nient’altro. Sotto il Presidente sedeva il dottor Manette, nel suo solito abito tranquillo. Per quanto il prigioniero potesse vedere, lui e il signor Lorry erano gli unici uomini lì, non collegati al Tribunale, che indossavano i loro vestiti usuali e non avevano assunto la rozza veste della Carmagnola.
Charles Evrémonde, detto Darnay, fu accusato dal pubblico ministero di essere un emigrato la cui vita era stata confiscata dalla Repubblica ai sensi del decreto che bandiva tutti gli emigrati a pena di morte. Non contava nulla il fatto che il decreto fosse stato emanato dopo il suo ritorno in Francia. Ecco lì lui, ed ecco lì il decreto; era stato catturato in Francia e si chiedeva la sua testa.
“Tagliategli la testa!” gridò il pubblico. “Un nemico della Repubblica!”
Il presidente suonò il suo campanello per zittire quei gridi e chiese al prigioniero se non era vero che aveva vissuto molti anni in Inghilterra.
Era indubbiamente così.
Non era forse un emigrante allora? Come si definiva?
Non un emigrante, sperava, nel senso e nello spirito della legge.
Perché no?, volle sapere il presidente.
Perché aveva volontariamente rinunciato a un titolo che gli era sgradito, e a una posizione che gli era sgradita, e aveva lasciato il suo paese - si arrese prima che la parola emigrante nella sua attuale accezione fosse in uso - per vivere del proprio lavoro in Inghilterra, piuttosto che sul lavoro del popolo sovraccarico di Francia.
Quali prove aveva di ciò?
Presentò i nomi di due testimoni: Teofilo Gabble e Alexandre Manette.
Ma si era sposato in Inghilterra? gli ricordò il presidente.
È vero, ma non è una donna inglese.
Una cittadina francese?
Sì. Per nascita.
Il suo nome e la sua famiglia?
«Lucie Manette, unica figlia del dottor Manette, il buon medico che sta lì.»
Questa risposta ebbe un felice effetto sul pubblico. Grida in esaltazione del ben noto bravo medico squarciarono la sala. La gente era così capricciosamente commossa che le lacrime rotolarono immediatamente lungo diversi volti feroci che un attimo prima avevano fissato il prigioniero come se non vedessero l’ora di trascinarlo fuori in strada e ucciderlo.
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.”
Su questi pochi passi del suo pericoloso cammino, Charles Darnay aveva posato il piede secondo le istruzioni reiterate di Doctor Manette. Lo stesso consiglio cauto dirigeva ogni passo che lo attendeva e aveva preparato ogni centimetro della sua strada.
Il presidente chiese perché fosse tornato in Francia quando lo aveva fatto e non prima.
Egli non era tornato prima, rispose, semplicemente perché non aveva mezzi per vivere in Francia, a parte quelli che aveva rinunciato; mentre, in Inghilterra, viveva dando lezioni di lingua e letteratura francese. Era tornato quando lo fece, su insistente e scritta supplica di un cittadino francese, il quale sosteneva che la sua vita era messa in pericolo dalla sua assenza. Era tornato per salvare la vita di un cittadino e per testimoniare a favore della verità, qualunque fosse stato il rischio personale. Questo era forse criminoso agli occhi della Repubblica?
La folla gridò con entusiasmo: «No!», e il presidente suonò il campanello per farli tacere. Ma non ci riuscì, perché continuarono a urlare «No!» finché non smisero di loro spontanea volontà.
Il presidente chiese il nome di quel cittadino. L’imputato spiegò che il cittadino era il suo primo testimone e si riferì con fiducia alla lettera del cittadino, che gli era stata tolta al valico ma che non dubitava sarebbe stata trovata tra i documenti allora davanti al presidente.
Il dottore si era assicurato che fosse lì — gli aveva garantito che ci sarebbe stato — e a questo punto della procedura fu presentato e letto. Il cittadino Gabelle fu chiamato per confermarlo, e lo fece. Con infinita delicatezza e cortesia il cittadino Gabelle lasciò intendere che nella pressione di lavoro imposta al Tribunale dalla moltitudine di nemici della Repubblica con cui doveva confrontarsi, era stato un po’ trascurato nella sua prigione dell’Abbaye — in effetti, era piuttosto uscito dal patriottico ricordo del Tribunale — fino a tre giorni fa; quando fu convocato davanti ad esso e messo in libertà dopo che la giuria si dichiarò soddisfatta che l’accusa contro di lui fosse stata risolta, per quanto lo riguardava, dalla resa del cittadino Evrémonde, chiamato Darnay.
Fu poi interrogato dottor Manette. La sua grande popolarità personale e la chiarezza delle sue risposte fecero una grande impressione; ma, man mano che procedeva, dimostrando che l’imputato era stato il suo primo amico dopo il rilascio dal lungo carcere; che l’imputato era rimasto in Inghilterra, sempre fedele e devoto a sua figlia e a lui stesso nel loro esilio; che, ben lungi dall’essere in favore presso il governo dell’aristocrazia inglese, era stato addirittura processato per la vita da esso come nemico dell’Inghilterra e amico degli Stati Uniti—man mano che portava alla luce queste circostanze con la massima discrezione e con la forza schietta della verità e della sincerità, giuria e popolo divennero una cosa sola. Alla fine, quando fece appello per nome a Monsieur Lorry, un gentiluomo inglese presente lì allora e lì, che, come lui stesso, era stato testimone di quel processo inglese e poteva corroborare il suo resoconto, la giuria dichiarò di aver sentito abbastanza e di essere pronta a votare se il presidente fosse stato disposto ad accettarli.
Ad ogni voto (i giurati votavano ad alta voce e individualmente) la folla scoppiava in un applauso. Tutte le voci erano a favore del prigioniero, e il presidente lo dichiarò libero.
Poi ebbe inizio una di quelle straordinarie scene con cui il popolo talvolta dava sfogo alla propria volubilità o ai propri migliori impulsi verso la generosità e la misericordia, oppure che considerava come un compenso per il loro conto gonfio di furore crudele. Nessuno può decidere ora a quale di questi motivi tali straordinarie scene fossero attribuibili; è probabile, a una combinazione di tutti e tre, con il secondo predominante. Non appena fu pronunciata l’assoluzione, le lacrime furono versate tanto liberamente quanto il sangue in un altro momento, e tali abbracci fraterni furono elargiti al prigioniero da quante più persone di entrambi i sessi poterono precipitarsi su di lui, che dopo la sua lunga e malsana reclusione era in pericolo di svenire per esaurimento; non meno perché sapeva molto bene che le stesse persone, portate da un’altra corrente, si sarebbero precipitate su di lui con la stessa intensità, per strapparlo a pezzi e spargerlo per le strade.
La sua rimozione, per fare spazio ad altri accusati che dovevano essere processati, lo salvò momentaneamente da queste effusioni. Cinque sarebbero stati giudicati insieme, subito dopo, come nemici della Repubblica, in quanto non l’avevano aiutata né con le parole né con i fatti. Il Tribunale era così sollecito a compensare se stesso e la nazione per una possibilità perduta che quei cinque lo raggiunsero prima che lasciasse il luogo, condannati a morire entro ventiquattro ore. Il primo di loro glielo disse con il consueto segno di morte in carcere - un dito alzato - e tutti aggiunsero a parole: “Viva la Repubblica!”
I cinque non avevano avuto, è vero, un pubblico a prolungare le loro procedure, perché quando lui e il dottor Manette uscirono dal cancello, c’era una grande folla intorno ad esso, in cui sembrava ci fosse ogni volto che aveva visto al tribunale—tranne due, per i quali cercò invano. Alla sua uscita, la folla gli si avventò di nuovo addosso, piangendo, abbracciandolo e gridando, tutti a turno e tutti insieme, finché la stessa marea del fiume sulla cui riva si svolgeva quella scena folle, sembrava impazzire come la gente sulla riva.
Lo misero su una grande sedia che avevano tra loro e che avevano preso o dalla Corte stessa, o da una delle sue stanze o corridoi. Sulla sedia avevano gettato un drappo rosso, e alla sua spalliera avevano fissato una picca con un cappello rosso sulla punta. In questo carro trionfale, nemmeno le suppliche del Dottore poterono impedire che venisse portato a casa sua sulle spalle degli uomini, con un mare confuso di berretti rossi che si agitavano intorno a lui e facevano emergere dal profondo burrascoso tali relitti di volti da fargli dubitare più volte che la sua mente fosse in preda alla confusione e che egli stesse andando verso il tumulo sulla via della Ghigliottina.
In una processione selvaggia e onirica, abbracciando chi incontravano e indicandolo, lo portarono avanti. Inondando le strade innevate con il colore dominante dei Repubblicani, mentre si snodavano e marciavano attraverso di esse, come avevano inondato quelle sotto la neve con una tinta più scura, lo portarono così nel cortile dell’edificio dove viveva. Suo padre era andato avanti per prepararla, e quando suo marito si alzò in piedi, lei svenne tra le sue braccia.
Mentre la stringeva al cuore e le nascondeva il bel viso tra il suo volto e la folla chiassosa, in modo che le sue lacrime e le sue labbra potessero incontrarsi senza essere viste, alcuni dei presenti cominciarono a ballare. Subito tutti gli altri si misero a ballare, e il cortile traboccò di Carmagnole. Poi issarono sulla sedia vuota una giovane donna della folla perché fosse portata come la Dea della Libertà, e poi gonfiandosi e riversandosi nelle strade adiacenti, lungo la riva del fiume e sul ponte, la Carmagnole li assorbì tutti quanti e li trascinò via.
Dopo aver stretto la mano del dottore, che stava vittorioso e orgoglioso davanti a lui; dopo aver stretto la mano di Mr. Lorry, che arrivò ansimante senza fiato dalla sua lotta contro il tornado della Carmagnole; dopo aver baciato la piccola Lucie, che fu sollevata per stringerlo con le braccia al collo; e dopo aver abbracciato la sempre zelante e fedele Pross che la sollevò; prese in braccio sua moglie e la portò fino alle loro stanze.
“Lucie! Mia! Sono al sicuro.”
“Caro Charles, lascia che ringrazi Dio per questo in ginocchio come ho pregato Lui.”
Tutti chinavano rispettosamente la testa e il cuore. Quando lei fu di nuovo fra le sue braccia, lui le disse:
«E ora parla con tuo padre, tesoro mio. Nessun altro uomo in tutta la Francia avrebbe potuto fare per me ciò che lui ha fatto».
Lei appoggiò la testa sul petto di suo padre, come aveva appoggiato la sua povera testa sul proprio seno tanto tempo fa. Lui era felice del ritorno che le aveva dato, era compensato per il suo dolore, era orgoglioso della sua forza. “Non devi essere debole, mia cara,” la rimproverò; “non tremare così. L’ho salvato.”
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!”
CAPITOLO VII. Un colpo alla porta
«L’ho salvato». Non era un altro dei sogni in cui lui spesso tornava; era davvero lì. Eppure sua moglie tremava, e su di lei gravava una vaga ma pesante paura.
Tutta l’aria circostante era così densa e scura, la gente era così appassionatamente vendicativa e irrequieta, gli innocenti venivano messi a morte con tanta costanza su vaghi sospetti e per nera malizia, era impossibile dimenticare che molti innocenti come suo marito e cari agli altri quanto lui lo era a lei, ogni giorno subivano il destino da cui lui era stato strappato, che il cuore non poteva liberarsi del suo fardello come avrebbe dovuto. Le ombre del pomeriggio invernale stavano cominciando ad addensarsi e già allora i carri spaventosi rotolavano per le strade. La sua mente li inseguiva, cercandolo tra i condannati; e poi si aggrappava più forte alla sua presenza reale e tremava di più.
Il padre, incoraggiandola, mostrò una compassione superiore a questa debolezza femminile che era meraviglioso vedere. Niente soffitta, niente calzoleria, niente Centocinque Torre Nord, adesso! Aveva portato a termine il compito che si era prefissato, la sua promessa era stata mantenuta, aveva salvato Charles. Tutti potevano appoggiarsi su di lui.
La loro gestione domestica era di un genere molto frugale: non solo perché quella era la maniera più sicura di vivere, comportando il minor offesa per le persone, ma anche perché non erano ricchi e Charles, durante la sua reclusione, aveva dovuto pagare pesantemente per il suo cibo scadente, per la sua guardia e per il sostentamento dei prigionieri più poveri. In parte per questo motivo, e in parte per evitare una spia domestica, non tenevano nessun servitore; i cittadini che agivano come portieri all’ingresso del cortile gli prestavano un servizio occasionale; e Jerry (quasi completamente trasferito a loro dal signor Lorry) era diventato il loro servo quotidiano, e aveva lì il suo letto ogni notte.
Era un decreto della Repubblica Una e Indivisibile di Libertà, Uguaglianza, Fratellanza o morte, che sulla porta o sullo stipite di ogni casa il nome di ogni inquilino dovesse essere scritto leggibilmente con lettere di una certa dimensione e a un’altezza conveniente dal suolo. Il nome del signor Jerry Cruncher, quindi, adornava debitamente lo stipite della porta giù di sotto; e mentre le ombre pomeridiane si facevano più dense, il proprietario di quel nome apparve lui stesso, dopo aver sorvegliato un pittore che il dottor Manette aveva incaricato di aggiungere alla lista il nome di Charles Evrémonde, detto Darnay.
Nell’universale paura e sfiducia che oscuravano il tempo, tutti i soliti innocui modi di vivere erano cambiati. Nella piccola famiglia del Dottore, come in molte altre, gli articoli di consumo quotidiano necessari venivano acquistati ogni sera, in piccole quantità e presso vari negozietti. Evitare di attirare l’attenzione e dare il meno possibile occasione a chiacchiere e invidia era il generale desiderio.
Da alcuni mesi ormai, Miss Pross e il signor Cruncher svolgevano l’incarico di fornitori; la prima portava i soldi, il secondo il cesto. Ogni pomeriggio, verso l’ora in cui si accendevano le lampade pubbliche, si mettevano in cammino per questo compito e facevano e riportavano a casa gli acquisti necessari. Sebbene Miss Pross, grazie alla sua lunga frequentazione di una famiglia francese, avrebbe potuto conoscere la loro lingua quanto la propria, se lo avesse voluto, non aveva alcuna intenzione in quella direzione; di conseguenza non sapeva nulla di quel “nonsenso” (come piaceva chiamarlo) più del signor Cruncher. Così il suo modo di fare la spesa era quello di lanciare un nome sostantivo alla testa di un negoziante senza alcuna introduzione in natura di articolo, e se per caso non fosse stato il nome della cosa che voleva, guardava intorno per quella cosa, la afferrava e la teneva stretta fino a quando l’affare non era concluso. Faceva sempre un patto su di esso, alzando come dichiarazione del suo giusto prezzo, un dito in meno rispetto a quelli che il mercante alzava, qualunque fosse il suo numero.
«Ora, signor Cruncher», disse Miss Pross, i cui occhi erano rossi di gioia; «se lei è pronto, lo sono anch’io».
Jerry si dichiarò con voce rauca a disposizione della signorina Pross. Aveva consumato da tempo tutto il suo arrugginito aspetto, ma nulla avrebbe potuto limare la sua testa spinosa.
«C’è bisogno di tutto», disse Miss Pross, «e ce ne sarà da fare! Abbiamo bisogno di vino, tra le altre cose. Che brindisi faranno questi Redheads, ovunque lo compriamo».
«Penso che per la sua conoscenza non ci sarà molta differenza, signorina», ribatté Jerry, «se brindano alla sua salute o a quella del Diavolo.»
«Chi è?» disse la signorina Pross.
Il signor Cruncher, con qualche esitazione, si spiegò intendendo “Vecchio Nick”.
«Ah!» disse Miss Pross, «non serve un interprete per spiegare il significato di queste creature. Ne hanno uno solo, e cioè Omicidio a Mezzanotte e Birbonate».
«Sst, cara! Ti prego, ti prego, stai attenta!» esclamò Lucie.
“Sì, sì, sì, starò attenta”, disse Miss Pross; “ma posso dire tra noi che spero proprio che non ci saranno soffocanti abbracci con odore di cipolla e tabacco per le strade. Ora, Ladybird, tu non ti muovere da quel fuoco finché non torno! Prenditi cura del caro marito che hai ritrovato e non spostare la tua graziosa testolina dalla sua spalla dove ora riposa fino a quando non mi rivedrai! Posso fare una domanda, dottor Manette, prima di andarmene?”
«Penso che possiate prendervi questa libertà», rispose il dottore sorridendo.
«Per amor del cielo, non parlate di Libertà; ne abbiamo già abbastanza», disse la signorina Pross.
«Ssst, caro! Di nuovo?» protestò Lucie.
“Beh, mia cara,” disse Miss Pross, annuendo con la testa in modo enfatico, “la storia è questa: sono suddita di Sua Graziosa Maestà il Re Giorgio Terzo;” Miss Pross fece una riverenza al nome del re; “e come tale, la mia massima è: Dannate le loro politiche, Frustrate i loro trucchi da furbi, Su di lui riponiamo le nostre speranze, Dio salvi il Re!”
Il signor Cruncher, in un impeto di lealtà, ripeté brontolando le parole dopo la signorina Pross, come se fosse in chiesa.
«Sono contenta che tu abbia tanto sangue inglese nelle vene, anche se avrei voluto che non ti fossi mai preso quel raffreddore alla voce», disse Miss Pross, con approvazione. «Ma la domanda, dottor Manette. C’è» — era il modo di questa buona creatura di minimizzare qualsiasi cosa fosse una grande preoccupazione per tutti loro e di affrontarla in questo modo casuale — «c’è ancora qualche speranza che possiamo uscire da questo posto?»
“Non ho ancora paura. Sarebbe pericoloso per Charles ancora”.
“Uhm-ahim!” disse Miss Pross, reprimendo allegramente un sospiro mentre guardava i capelli dorati della sua adorata alla luce del fuoco, “allora dobbiamo avere pazienza e aspettare: questo è tutto. Dobbiamo tenere alta la testa e combattere con umiltà, come solito dire mio fratello Salomone. Ora, signor Cruncher!—Non ti muovere, Ladybird!”
Uscirono lasciando Lucie e suo marito, suo padre e il bambino accanto ad un luminoso fuoco. Si aspettava da un momento all’altro che Mr Lorry tornasse dalla Banca. La signorina Pross aveva acceso la lampada, ma l’aveva messa in disparte in un angolo perché potessero godere della luce del fuoco senza essere disturbati. Piccola Lucie sedeva accanto a suo nonno con le mani intrecciate al suo braccio: e lui, con una voce che non si alzava molto sopra un sussurro, cominciò a raccontarle la storia di una grande e potente Fata che aveva aperto il muro di una prigione e fatto evadere un prigioniero che in passato le aveva reso un servizio. Tutto era calmo e tranquillo, e Lucie si sentiva più serena di prima.
«Che cos’è?» gridò di colpo.
«Mia cara!» disse suo padre, interrompendo il racconto e posandole la mano sulla sua «ti prego di controllarti. In che stato ti trovi! Il minimo rumore - nulla - ti fa trasalire! Tu, figlia di tuo padre!»
«Pensavo, papà», disse Lucie scusandosi con un volto pallido e una voce tremante, «di aver sentito dei passi strani sulle scale.»
“La mia amore, la scala è immobile come la morte.”
Mentre pronunciava la parola, un colpo fu dato alla porta.
“Oh padre, padre. Cosa può essere questo? Nascondi Charles. Salvalo!”
“Mia figlia”, disse il Dottore alzandosi e posando la mano sulla sua spalla, “l’ho salvato davvero. Ma che debolezza è questa, mia cara! Lasciami andare alla porta.”
Prese la lampada in mano, attraversò le due stanze esterne che si trovavano tra loro e l’aprì. Un rumoroso trambusto di piedi sul pavimento, e quattro uomini rozzi con berretti rossi, armati di sciabole e pistole, entrarono nella stanza.
«Il cittadino Evrémonde, chiamato Darnay», disse il primo.
«Chi lo cerca?» rispose Darnay.
«Lo cerco. Lo cerchiamo. Ti conosco, Evrémonde; ti ho visto oggi davanti al Tribunale. Sei di nuovo prigioniero della Repubblica».
I quattro lo circondarono mentre lui stava in piedi con sua moglie e il suo bambino che si aggrappavano a lui.
“Dimmi come e perché sono di nuovo prigioniero?”
«Basta che tu ritorni subito alla Conciergerie e lo saprai domani. Sei convocato per domani».
Dottor Manette, che questa visita aveva così trasformato in pietra da rimanere con la lampada in mano come se fosse una statua fatta per tenerla, si mosse dopo queste parole, posò la lampada e, affrontando il suo interlocutore e prendendolo non senza gentilezza per l’apertura della sua camicia di lana rossa, disse:
“Lo conosci, hai detto. E tu mi conosci?”
“Sì, ti conosco, Cittadino Dottore.”
«Noi tutti ti conosciamo, Cittadino Dottore», dissero gli altri tre.
Guardò distrattamente da uno all’altro e disse, dopo una pausa, con voce più bassa:
“Mi risponderai allora alla sua domanda? Come è successo?”
«Cittadino dottore», disse il primo a malincuore, «è stato denunciato alla Sezione di Saint Antoine. Questo cittadino», indicando il secondo che era entrato, «viene da Saint Antoine».
Il cittadino indicato qui annuì e aggiunse:
“È accusato da Saint Antoine.”
«Di che cosa?» chiese il dottore.
«Cittadino dottore», disse il primo con la sua solita riluttanza, «non chieda altro. Se la Repubblica le richiede dei sacrifici, senza dubbio lei come buon patriota sarà felice di farli. La Repubblica va prima di tutto. Il Popolo è sovrano. Evrémonde, siamo sotto pressione».
“Una parola”, pregò il dottore, “mi dirai chi lo ha denunciato?”
“È contro il regolamento”, rispose il primo, “ma puoi chiedere a Lui di Saint Antoine qui.”
Il dottore volse lo sguardo su quell’uomo che si mosse inquieto sui piedi, si lisciò un po’ la barba e infine disse:
«Bene! In verità è contro il regolamento. Ma egli è denunciato — e seriamente — dal Cittadino e dalla Cittadina Defarge. E da un altro ancora».
“Chi altro?”
“Chiedete voi, cittadino dottore?”
“Sì, davvero.”
«Allora», disse l’uomo di Saint-Antoine con uno sguardo strano, «domani avrai la risposta. Ora sono muto!»
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.”
CAPITOLO VIII. Una mano di carte
Felice di non essere consapevole della nuova calamità a casa, la signorina Pross si fece strada lungo le strette vie e attraversò il fiume sul ponte del Pont-Neuf, calcolando mentalmente il numero di acquisti indispensabili che doveva fare. Il signor Cruncher, con il cesto, camminava al suo fianco. Entrambi guardavano a destra e a sinistra nella maggior parte dei negozi che incontravano, avevano un occhio diffidente per tutti gli assembramenti di persone e si allontanavano dalla loro strada per evitare qualsiasi gruppo molto eccitato di conversatori. Era una serata fredda e umida, e il fiume nebbioso, sfocato agli occhi dalle luci accecanti e alle orecchie dai rumori aspri, mostrava dove erano ancorate le chiatte in cui lavoravano i fabbri, costruendo armi per l’Esercito della Repubblica. Guai all’uomo che faceva scherzi con quell’ Esercito o otteneva una promozione non meritata! Meglio per lui se la sua barba non fosse mai cresciuta, perché il Rasoio Nazionale lo avrebbe rasato da vicino.
Dopo aver acquistato alcuni piccoli articoli di generi alimentari e una quantità d’olio per la lampada, Miss Pross pensò al vino che gli serviva. Dopo aver sbirciato in diversi negozi di vini, si fermò all’insegna del Buon Repubblicano Bruto dell’Antichità, non lontano dal Palazzo Nazionale, un tempo (e due volte) le Tuileries, dove l’aspetto delle cose piuttosto la colpì. Aveva un aspetto più tranquillo di qualsiasi altro posto della stessa descrizione che avevano incontrato e, sebbene fosse rosso per i berretti patriottici, non era così rosso come gli altri. Dopo aver sondato il parere del signor Cruncher e scoperto che era d’accordo con lei, Miss Pross si recò dal Buon Repubblicano Bruto dell’Antichità, accompagnata dal suo cavaliere.
Osservando appena le luci fumose; la gente con la pipa in bocca che giocava con carte stropicciate e domino gialli; l’operaio a petto nudo e braccia scoperte, imbrattato di fuliggine, che leggeva ad alta voce un giornale, e gli altri che lo ascoltavano; le armi indossate o deposte per essere riprese; i due o tre clienti addormentati in avanti, che con l’ampio spencer popolare nero e peloso sembravano, in quella posizione, orsi o cani addormentati; i due stranieri si avvicinarono al bancone e mostrarono cosa volevano.
Mentre il loro vino veniva misurato, un uomo si separò da un altro in un angolo e si alzò per partire. Nel farlo, dovette affrontare Miss Pross. Non appena la affrontò, Miss Pross emise un urlo e batté le mani.
In un attimo tutti si alzarono in piedi. Era molto probabile che qualcuno venisse assassinato da qualcun altro per difendere una diversità di opinione. Tutti aspettavano di vedere cadere qualcuno, ma videro solo un uomo e una donna fermi a fissarsi l’un l’altro; l’uomo aveva tutti i tratti esteriori di un francese e di un repubblicano convinto; la donna era evidentemente inglese.
Quello che fu detto in questo deludente anticlimax dai discepoli del buon repubblicano Bruto dell’antichità, tranne che fosse qualcosa di molto volubile e rumoroso, sarebbe stato tanto ebraico o caldeo per la signorina Pross e il suo protettore, anche se avessero prestato tutta l’attenzione possibile. Ma non avevano orecchie per nulla nella loro sorpresa. Infatti, va registrato che non solo la signorina Pross era persa nello stupore e nell’agitazione, ma anche il signor Cruncher — sebbene sembrasse per suo conto separato e individuale — era in uno stato di grande meraviglia.
“Che succede?”, disse l’uomo che aveva fatto gridare Miss Pross; parlando con voce irritata e brusca (sebbene a bassa voce) e in inglese.
“Oh, Salomone, caro Salomone!” esclamò Miss Pross, battendo di nuovo le mani. “Dopo non aver messo gli occhi su di te né aver sentito parlare di te per così tanto tempo, ti trovo qui!”
«Non chiamarmi Salomone. Vuoi essere la morte di me?» chiese l’uomo, con aria furtiva e spaventata.
“Fratello, fratello!” gridò la signorina Pross, scoppiando in lacrime. “Sono mai stata così dura con te da farti fare una domanda tanto crudele?”
«Allora tieni a freno la tua lingua impicciona», disse Salomone, «e vieni fuori se vuoi parlarmi. Paga il tuo vino e esci. Chi è quest’uomo?»
La signorina Pross, scuotendo la testa con affetto e disperazione verso il fratello che non era per nulla affettuoso, disse tra le sue lacrime: “Signor Cruncher”.
«Facciamolo uscire anche lui», disse Salomone. «Mi crede forse un fantasma?»
A quanto pareva, il signor Cruncher lo faceva, almeno a giudicare dal suo aspetto. Tuttavia non disse una parola e Miss Pross, frugando con grande difficoltà nel suo reticolo attraverso le sue lacrime, pagò per il vino. Mentre lo faceva, Salomone si rivolse ai seguaci del buon repubblicano Bruto dell’antichità e offrì alcune parole di spiegazione in francese che li fecero tutti tornare ai loro posti e alle loro occupazioni precedenti.
“Ora”, disse Salomone fermandosi all’angolo buio della strada, “cosa vuoi?”
“Che terribile mancanza di gentilezza da parte di un fratello che non ha mai fatto nulla per allontanare il mio amore!” esclamò Miss Pross, “ricevere un saluto del genere e non mostrarmi affetto.”
«Ecco fatto. Maledizione! Ecco fatto», disse Salomone, sfiorando con le sue labbra quelle di Miss Pross. «Ora sei contenta?»
La signorina Pross si limitò a scuotere la testa e piangere in silenzio.
«Se ti aspetti che io sia sorpreso», disse suo fratello Salomone, «non sono affatto sorpreso; sapevo che eri qui; so di quasi tutti quelli che ci sono qui. Se davvero non vuoi mettere a repentaglio la mia esistenza - cosa della quale ho il sospetto - vattene al più presto e lascia che io faccia altrettanto. Sono occupato. Sono un funzionario».
“Mio fratello inglese Salomone”, piagnucolò Miss Pross, alzando i suoi occhi pieni di lacrime, “che aveva in sé le qualità per diventare uno degli uomini migliori e più grandi del suo paese natale, un funzionario tra gli stranieri, e che stranieri! Avrei quasi preferito vedere il caro ragazzo giacente nel suo—”
“Lo sapevo!” gridò suo fratello, interrompendola. “Lo sapevo. Vuoi essere la mia morte. Sarò dichiarato Sospetto dalla mia stessa sorella. Proprio ora che le cose vanno meglio!”
“Il cielo misericordioso e benigno lo vieti!” esclamò Miss Pross. “Preferirei di gran lunga non rivederti mai più, caro Salomone, anche se ti ho sempre amato sinceramente e continuerò a farlo. Dì solo una parola affettuosa per me, dimmi che tra noi non c’è nulla di ostile o di distante, e non ti tratterrò oltre.”
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.
«Il signor Barsad è stato riconosciuto da Miss Pross come il fratello affettuoso di cui avete sentito parlare», disse Sydney, «e ha ammesso la parentela. Passo a notizie peggiori. Darnay è stato arrestato di nuovo».
Colpito dallo sconcerto, il vecchio signore esclamò: «Che cosa mi dice? L’ho lasciato al sicuro e libero appena due ore fa, e sto per tornare da lui!»
“Arrestato per tutto questo. Quando è stato fatto, signor Barsad?”
“Proprio ora, se mai.”
«Il signor Barsad è l’autorità migliore possibile, signore», disse Sydney, «e lo so per una comunicazione del signor Barsad a un amico e fratello Pecora sopra una bottiglia di vino che l’arresto ha avuto luogo. Ha lasciato i messaggeri al cancello e li ha visti entrare con il permesso del portiere. Non c’è alcun dubbio umano che sia stato ripreso».
L’occhio da uomo d’affari del signor Lorry lesse sul volto dell’interlocutore che era una perdita di tempo insistere su quel punto. Confuso ma consapevole che qualcosa poteva dipendere dalla sua presenza di spirito, si controllò e rimase in silenzio ad ascoltare.
«Ora confido», disse Sydney a lui, «che il nome e l’influenza del dottor Manette gli possano essere altrettanto utili domani, avete detto che sarebbe comparso di nuovo davanti al Tribunale domani, signor Barsad?»
“Sì, credo di sì.”
«—Domani come oggi. Ma potrebbe non essere così. Ammetto, signor Lorry, di essere scosso dal fatto che il dottor Manette non abbia avuto la possibilità di impedire questo arresto.»
«Potrebbe non averlo saputo in anticipo», disse il signor Lorry.
«Ma proprio questa circostanza sarebbe allarmante, se pensiamo a quanto sia identificato con il genero.»
«È vero», ammise il signor Lorry, con la mano turbata sul mento e gli occhi turbati su Carton.
«In breve», disse Sydney, «questo è un tempo disperato, quando si giocano partite disperate per posti in gioco disperati. Che il Dottore giochi la partita vincente; io giocherò quella perdente. Qui non vale la pena comprare la vita di nessuno. Chiunque oggi sia portato a casa dal popolo, domani potrebbe essere condannato. Ora, il posto in gioco per cui ho deciso di giocare, nel caso peggiore, è un amico alla Conciergerie. E l’amico che mi propongo di vincere è il signor Barsad».
«Dovete avere buone carte, signore», disse lo spia.
«Li travolgo. Vediamo cosa ho in mano. Mr. Lorry, sa che sono un bruto; mi faccia dare un po’ di brandy».
Gli fu messo davanti e lui bevve un bicchiere, ne bevve un altro. spinse la bottiglia lontano pensieroso.
«Signor Barsad», continuò con il tono di chi sta davvero guardando le carte in mano: «agnello delle prigioni, emissario dei comitati repubblicani, ora secondino, ora prigioniero, sempre spia e informatore segreto, tanto più prezioso qui per essere inglese che un inglese è meno soggetto al sospetto di corruzione in quei ruoli rispetto a un francese, si presenta ai suoi datori di lavoro sotto falso nome. È una carta molto buona. Il signor Barsad, ora al servizio del governo repubblicano francese, era precedentemente al servizio dell’aristocratico governo inglese, nemico della Francia e della libertà. È un’ottima carta. La deduzione è chiara come il giorno in questa regione di sospetti: che il signor Barsad, ancora al soldo dell’aristocratico governo inglese, sia la spia di Pitt, l’avversario traditore della Repubblica accovacciato nel suo seno, il traditore inglese e agente di ogni male tanto discusso e così difficile da trovare. È una carta imbattibile. Ha seguito le mie mosse, signor Barsad?»
«Non capire la sua commedia», rispose lo spia, un po’ a disagio.
«Gioco il mio asso: denuncio il signor Barsad al Comitato della Sezione più vicina. Esamini le sue carte, signor Barsad, e veda che cosa ha. Non si affretti.»
Avvicinò la bottiglia, versò un altro bicchiere di brandy e lo bevve d’un fiato. Vide che lo spia era preoccupato che lui si ubriacasse fino a mettersi in condizione di denunciarlo immediatamente. Vedendolo, ne versò e bevve un altro bicchiere.
«Esamini attentamente la sua mano, signor Barsad. Prenda il tempo.»
Era una mano più povera di quanto sospettasse. Mr. Barsad vedeva carte perdenti che Sydney Carton non conosceva. Cacciato dal suo onorevole impiego in Inghilterra, a causa di troppe maledizioni infruttuose — non perché non fosse voluto lì; le nostre ragioni inglesi per vantare la nostra superiorità sul segreto e sugli spie sono molto recenti — sapeva che aveva attraversato la Manica e accettato un incarico in Francia: prima, come tentatore e spiaceggiatore tra i suoi connazionali lì; gradualmente, come tentatore e spiaceggiatore tra gli indigeni. Sapeva che sotto il rovesciato governo era stato una spia su Saint Antoine e la bottega di vino dei Defarge; aveva ricevuto dalla polizia vigilante tali informazioni riguardanti l’imprigionamento, il rilascio, e la storia del dottor Manette, che gli sarebbero servite per un’introduzione a una conversazione familiare con i Defarge; e le aveva provate su Madame Defarge, ed erano fallite clamorosamente. Ricordava sempre con paura e trepidazione, che quella terribile donna aveva lavorato a maglia mentre parlava con lei, e l’aveva guardato in modo minaccioso mentre le sue dita si muovevano. Da allora l’aveva vista, nella Sezione di Saint Antoine, più e più volte produrre i suoi registri lavorati a maglia, e denunciare persone la cui vita la ghigliottina inghiottiva sicuramente. Sapeva, come tutti coloro che erano impiegati come lui, che non era mai al sicuro; che fuggire era impossibile; che era legato saldamente sotto l’ombra della scure; e che nonostante la sua massima tergiversazione e tradimento a sostegno del regnante terrore, una parola poteva farla cadere su di lui. Una volta denunciato, e per motivi così gravi come quelli che gli erano stati appena suggeriti, prevedeva che la donna tremenda della cui implacabile natura aveva visto molte prove, avrebbe prodotto contro di lui quel registro fatale, e avrebbe annullato la sua ultima possibilità di vita. Oltre al fatto che tutti gli uomini segreti sono uomini presto terrorizzati, qui c’erano sicuramente abbastanza carte di un solo mazzo nero, per giustificare il detentore nel diventare piuttosto livido mentre le girava.
“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.”
«Non sembra che il suo gioco le piaccia molto», disse Sydney con la massima calma. «Gioca?»
«Penso, signore», disse lo spia in modo spregevole, mentre si rivolgeva a Mr. Lorry, «di poter fare appello a un gentiluomo dei suoi anni e della sua benevolenza, affinché chieda a quest’altro gentiluomo, così giovane rispetto a lei, se in alcuna circostanza possa conciliare con la propria posizione il fatto di giocare quell’Asso di cui ha parlato. Ammetto che io sono uno spia e che ciò è considerato una posizione discreditabile - anche se deve essere ricoperta da qualcuno; ma questo gentiluomo non è uno spia, e perché dovrebbe degradarsi a tal punto da farsene uno?»
«Gioco il mio asso, signor Barsad», disse Carton, assumendosi la risposta e guardando l’orologio, «senza alcun scrupolo, tra pochissimi minuti.»
«Avrei sperato, signori entrambi», disse lo spia, cercando sempre di coinvolgere il signor Lorry nella discussione, «che il vostro rispetto per mia sorella, »
“Non potrei testimoniare meglio il mio rispetto per tua sorella che liberandola finalmente dal fratello”, disse Sydney Carton.
“Non crede, signore?”
Ho preso una decisione definitiva in proposito.
Il modi affabili dello spia, curiosamente in dissonanza con i suoi abiti ostentatamente trasandati e probabilmente anche con il suo comportamento abituale, ricevettero un tale colpo dall’indecifrabilità di Carton - che era un mistero per uomini più saggi e onesti di lui - che vacillarono qui e lo tradirono. Mentre era in difficoltà, Carton disse riprendendo il suo precedente atteggiamento di contemplare le carte:
“E infatti, ora che ci ripenso, ho la forte impressione di avere un’altra buona carta da giocare qui, non ancora menzionata. Quel mio amico e compagno di gregge, che parlava di sé come pascolante nelle carceri del paese; chi era?”
«Francese. Non lo conoscete», disse la spia in fretta.
«Francese, eh?» ripeté Carton pensieroso e senza sembrare di accorgersi affatto di lui, sebbene avesse fatto eco alle sue parole. «Beh; potrebbe esserlo».
“Lo è”, assicurò lo spia; “anche se non ha importanza.”
«Anche se non è importante», ripeté Carton nello stesso modo meccanico «anche se non è importante — No, non è importante. No. Eppure conosco quel volto».
«Non credo. Sono sicuro di no. Non può essere», disse lo spia.
“Non può essere”, mormorò Sydney Carton ripensandoci e facendo nuovamente girare il bicchiere (che per fortuna era piccolo). “Non può essere. Parlava bene il francese. Eppure sembrava un forestiero, mi è parso?”
«Provinciale», disse lo spia.
«No. Straniero!» esclamò Carton battendo il palmo della mano aperta sul tavolo mentre una luce si accendeva chiaramente nella sua mente. «Cly! Camuffato, ma è lo stesso uomo. Abbiamo già avuto a che fare con quell’uomo all’Old Bailey».
«Ora, qui siete affrettato, signore», disse Barsad con un sorriso che dava al suo naso aquilino una inclinazione aggiuntiva da un lato; «qui mi date davvero un vantaggio su di voi. Cly (che ammetto senza riserve, a questa distanza di tempo, era mio socio) è morto diversi anni fa. L’ho assistito nella sua ultima malattia. Fu sepolto a Londra, nella chiesa di Saint Pancras-in-the-Fields. La sua impopolarità tra la feccia della folla in quel momento mi impedì di seguire i suoi resti, ma lo aiutai a sistemarsi nel suo feretro».
Qui, il signor Lorry si accorse, dal posto in cui sedeva, di un’ombra goblin ombra sulla parete davvero straordinaria. Risalendone alla fonte, scoprì che era causata da una improvvisa e straordinaria eruzione e irrigidimento di tutti i capelli già rizzati ed irti del signor Cruncher.
«Siamo ragionevoli», disse lo spia, «e siamo giusti. Per dimostrarvi quanto vi sbagliate e quanto sia infondata la vostra supposizione, vi mostrerò un certificato di sepoltura di Cly che mi è capitato di avere nel portafoglio»; con mano affrettata lo estrasse e lo aprì «da allora. Ecco qua. Oh, guardatelo, guardatelo! Potete prenderlo in mano; non è un falso».
Qui il signor Lorry vide allungarsi la propria immagine riflessa sul muro e il signor Cruncher si alzò e fece un passo avanti. I suoi capelli non potevano essere più arruffati, neppure se in quel momento fossero stati pettinati dalla Mucca con la corna storta nella casa che Jack costruì.
Senza che lo spiace se ne accorgesse, il signor Cruncher gli si fermò accanto e lo toccò sulla spalla come un agente giudiziario fantasma.
«Ecco qui Roger Cly, padrone», disse il signor Cruncher con un volto cupo e impenetrabile. «Siete stato voi, dunque, a metterlo nella sua bara?»
“L’ho fatto.”
“Chi lo ha tirato fuori?”
Barsad si appoggiò allo schienale della sedia e balbettò: “Cosa intendi?”
«Voglio dire», disse il signor Cruncher, «che lui non c’è mai stato dentro. No! Non lui! Mi tagliano la testa se ci è mai stato dentro».
Lo spia guardò i due signori; entrambi guardarono con indicibile stupore Jerry.
«Le dico», disse Jerry, «che lei ha seppellito pietre della pavimentazione e terra in quel feretro lì. Non venga a dirmi che ha sepolto Cly. È stata una truffa. Io e altri due lo sappiamo».
“Come lo sai?”
«Che cosa c’entri tu? Ecco!» ringhiò il signor Cruncher «è contro di te che ho un vecchio rancore, con le tue vergognose imposizioni sui commercianti! Ti afferrerei per la gola e ti soffocherei per mezza ghinea.»
Sydney Carton, che insieme a Mr. Lorry era rimasto sbalordito da questa svolta degli eventi, chiese qui a Mr. Cruncher di moderarsi e spiegarsi meglio.
«In un altro momento, signore», rispose evasivamente, «il momento attuale non è adatto per spiegazioni. Io sostengo che lui sa benissimo che quel Cly non c’era mai stato in quella bara. Se osa dire anche solo una sillaba, lo prendo per la gola e lo strozzo per mezza ghinea;» il signor Cruncher insistette su questo punto come se fosse un’offerta generosa; «oppure vado a denunciarlo.»
“Humph! Vedrei una cosa,” disse Carton. “Ho un’altra carta da giocare, signor Barsad. Impossibile qui a Parigi in fiamme, con il Sospetto nell’aria, che tu possa sopravvivere alla denuncia, quando sei in contatto con un altro spia aristocratico dalle stesse origini come te, che per giunta ha intorno a sé il mistero di aver simulato la morte e poi è risuscitato! Un complotto nelle prigioni, dell’estraneo contro la Repubblica. Una carta forte — una certa carta della Ghigliottina! Giocate?”
“No!” rispose lo spia. “Mi arrendo. Confesso che eravamo così impopolari tra la folla spropositata, che sono riuscito ad andarmene dall’Inghilterra solo a rischio di essere immerso fino alla morte, e che Cly è stato braccato su e giù al punto tale che non sarebbe mai riuscito a scappare se non fosse stato per quella messinscena. Ma come questo uomo sapeva che era una messinscena, è un mistero dei misteri per me.”
«Non ti preoccupare mai di quest’uomo», ribatté il contenzioso signor Cruncher; «avrai abbastanza problemi a prestare attenzione a quel gentiluomo. E guarda qui! Ancora una volta!» — Il signor Cruncher non poteva trattenersi dal fare piuttosto un’esibizione ostentata della sua liberalità — «ti afferrerei per la gola e ti soffocherei per mezza ghinea».
Le pecore delle prigioni si rivolsero a lui e a Sydney Carton, e dissero, con più decisione: “È arrivato il momento. Presto andrò in servizio, e non posso superare i miei limiti di tempo]]. Mi hai detto che avevi una proposta; qual è? Ora, non serve chiedere troppo da me. Chiedimi di fare qualsiasi cosa nel mio ufficio, mettendo la mia testa in grande pericolo extra, e sarebbe meglio affidare la mia vita alle possibilità di un rifiuto piuttosto che alle possibilità di consenso. In breve, farei quella scelta. Parli di disperazione. Siamo tutti disperati qui. Ricorda! Potrei denunciarti se lo ritengo opportuno, e posso giurare il mio cammino attraverso muri di pietra, e altri possono farlo. Ora, cosa vuoi da me?”
“Non molto. Lei è un secondino alla Conciergerie?”
«Vi dico una volta per tutte che non esiste la possibilità di evadere», disse lo spia con fermezza.
“Perché dovresti dirmi ciò che non ho chiesto? Sei un secondino alla Conciergerie?”
“Lo sono talvolta.”
“Si può essere quando si vuole?”
“Posso entrare ed uscire quando voglio.”
Sydney Carton riempì un altro bicchiere di brandy, lo versò lentamente sul focolare e lo osservò mentre cadeva. Dopo che tutto fu consumato, si alzò e disse:
«Finora abbiamo parlato davanti a queste due persone, perché era giusto che i meriti delle carte non rimanessero solo tra te e me. Entra in questa stanza buia e parliamo per l’ultima volta da soli.»
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.
CAPITOLO IX. La partita è fatta
Mentre Sydney Carton e le pecore delle prigioni erano nella stanza buia attigua, parlando così piano che non si sentiva alcun suono, il signor Lorry guardò Jerry con notevole dubbio e sfiducia. Il modo in cui quel commerciante onesto ricevette lo sguardo non ispirava fiducia; cambiava la gamba su cui si appoggiava, spesso come se ne avesse cinquanta di quelle membra, e le stesse provasse tutte; esaminò le sue unghie con una attenzione molto discutibile; e ogni volta che l’occhio del signor Lorry lo colpiva, veniva preso da quella specie particolare di tosse breve che richiede la cavità della mano prima, che è raramente, se mai, nota per essere una debolezza associata a un carattere perfettamente aperto.
«Jerry», disse il signor Lorry. «Vieni qui».
Il signor Cruncher avanzò di lato, con una delle sue spalle che lo precedeva.
“Cosa sei stato oltre che un messaggero?”
Dopo aver riflettuto un po’, accompagnando la sua meditazione con uno sguardo intenso al suo mecenate, il signor Cruncher ebbe l’idea brillante di rispondere: «Carattere agricolo».
“Mi preoccupa molto”, disse il signor Lorry scuotendo con rabbia un dito indice verso di lui, “che tu abbia usato la rispettabile e grande casa Tellson come una copertura, e che tu ti sia dedicato a un’attività illegale di descrizione infame. Se lo hai fatto, non aspettarti che io ti aiuti quando tornerai in Inghilterra. Se lo hai fatto, non aspettarti che io tenga il tuo segreto. Non si può ingannare la Tellson.”
“Spero, signore,” implorò il confuso Mr. Cruncher, “che un gentiluomo come lei, a cui ho avuto l’onore di fare lavori saltuari fino a diventare grigio per questo, penserebbe due volte prima di farmi del male, anche se fosse così—non dico che lo sia, ma anche se fosse. E bisogna tener conto che se fosse così, non sarebbe comunque tutto da un solo lato. Ci sarebbero due lati. Potrebbero esserci medici in questo momento, a raccogliere le loro ghinee dove un onesto commerciante non riesce a raccogliere i suoi penny—penny! no, nemmeno i suoi mezzo penny— mezzo penny! no, neanche i suoi quarti di penny—a fare affari come fumo presso la Tellson, e a lanciare occhiate furtive con i loro occhi da medici a quel commerciante, andando e venendo alle loro carrozze—ah! ugualmente come fumo, se non di più. Beh, anche questo sarebbe un inganno nei confronti della Tellson. Perché non si può spennare l’oca e lasciare il maschio. E qui c’è Mrs. Cruncher, o almeno lo era ai tempi dell’Old England, e lo sarebbe domani, se ci fosse motivo, a opporsi così fortemente all’affare da rovinarlo—rovinarlo completamente! Mentre le mogli di quei medici non si oppongono—provate a prenderle in flagrante! O, se si oppongono, la loro opposizione va a favore di più pazienti, e come potete avere l’uno senza l’altro? Poi, con i becchini, e con i cancellieri parrocchiali, e con i sagrestani, e con le guardie private (tutti avidi e tutti coinvolti), un uomo non ne trarrebbe molto vantaggio, anche se fosse così. E quel poco che un uomo otterrebbe, non prospererebbe mai con lui, Mr. Lorry. Non ne avrebbe mai alcun bene; vorrebbe sempre uscirne, se potesse trovare una via d’uscita, essendoci già dentro— anche se fosse così.”
«Ugh!» esclamò il signor Lorry, pur essendo un po’ più indulgente «sono scioccato nel vedervi».
«Ora, ciò che vorrei umilmente proporle, signore», continuò il signor Cruncher, «anche se fosse così, cosa che non affermo, »
«Non tergiversare», disse il signor Lorry.
«No, non lo farò, signore», rispose il signor Cruncher come se nulla fosse più lontano dai suoi pensieri o dalle sue pratiche — «e non dico che sia così» — quello che umilmente le propongo, signore, è questo. Su quel sgabello, a quel banco, siede quel mio ragazzo, cresciuto e diventato uomo, che farà da messaggero per lei, la servirà in ogni cosa finché i suoi piedi saranno dove è ora la sua testa, se tali dovessero essere i suoi desideri. Se così fosse — ma ancora non dico che sia così (perché non le mentirei, signore) — lasci che quel ragazzo prenda il posto di suo padre e si prenda cura di sua madre; non soffi sul padre di quel ragazzo — non lo faccia, signore — e lasci che quel padre passi alla linea della regolare sepoltura, e ripari per quello che avrebbe dissotterrato — se così fosse — seppellendoli con impegno e con convinzioni riguardo al loro futuro sicuro. Questo, signor Lorry», disse il signor Cruncher asciugandosi la fronte col braccio come a annunciare di essere arrivato alla perorazione del suo discorso, «è quello che le offrirei rispettosamente, signore. Un uomo non vede tutto questo orrore intorno a sé, con tutti questi Soggetti senza testa, così numerosi da abbassarne il prezzo fino al costo di un trasporto e poco più, senza avere seri pensieri su queste cose. E questi sarebbero i miei, se così fosse, pregandola di ricordare che quello che ho detto poc’anzi l’ho detto per una buona causa quando avrei potuto tenerlo per me».
«Questo almeno è vero», disse il signor Lorry. «Non aggiungere altro per ora. Potrebbe darsi che io diventi ancora tuo amico, se te lo meriterai e ti pentirai con i fatti — non con le parole. Non voglio più parole».
Il signor Cruncher si sfregò la fronte con le nocche mentre Sydney Carton e lo spia tornavano dalla stanza buia. «Addio, signor Barsad», disse il primo; «ora che abbiamo stabilito questo accordo, non avete nulla da temere da me».
Si sedette su una sedia accanto al focolare, di fronte a Mr. Lorry. Quando furono soli, Mr. Lorry gli chiese cosa avesse fatto?
“Non molto. Se andasse male per il prigioniero, mi sono assicurato di poterlo vedere una volta.”
Il volto del signor Lorry si rannuvolò.
«È tutto ciò che potevo fare», disse Carton. «Proporre di più sarebbe stato mettere la testa di quest’uomo sotto l’ascia, e come ha detto lui stesso, nulla di peggio gli potrebbe accadere se fosse denunciato. Era ovviamente il punto debole della posizione. Non c’è altro da fare».
«Ma l’accesso a lui», disse il signor Lorry, «se le cose dovessero andare male davanti al Tribunale, non lo salverà.»
“Non ho mai detto che lo avrei fatto.”
Gli occhi del signor Lorry cercarono gradualmente il fuoco; la sua compassione per la sua adorata e la pesante delusione dell’arresto successivo li indebolirono progressivamente; era un vecchio ormai, sopraffatto dall’ansia negli ultimi tempi, e le sue lacrime caddero.
“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.”
«Siete un uomo buono e un vero amico», disse Carton con voce alterata. «Perdonatemi se osservo che siete turbato. Non potrei vedere mio padre piangere, senza curarmene. E non potrei rispettare di più il vostro dolore, se foste mio padre. Siete però libero da tale disgrazia».
Anche se pronunciò le ultime parole con un ritorno al suo solito modo di fare, c’era una vera sensibilità e rispetto sia nel tono che nel gesto, a cui il signor Lorry, che non aveva mai visto in lui questo lato migliore, non era affatto preparato. Gli porse la mano, e Carton la strinse delicatamente.
«Per tornare al povero Darnay», disse Carton, «non raccontatele questo colloquio o questa sistemazione. Non le permetterebbe di andare a trovarlo. Potrebbe pensare che sia stato organizzato, nel caso del peggio, per trasmettergli i mezzi per anticipare la sentenza».
Il signor Lorry non ci aveva pensato e guardò rapidamente Carton per vedere se gli fosse venuto in mente. Sembrava di sì: ricambiò lo sguardo ed evidentemente capì.
“Potrebbe pensare a mille cose”, disse Carton, “e ognuna di esse non farebbe che aumentare i suoi problemi. Non parlarle di me. Come ti ho detto quando sono arrivato la prima volta, è meglio se non la vedo. Posso tendere la mano per farle qualsiasi piccolo lavoro utile che riesco a trovare da fare senza bisogno di questo. Stai andando da lei, lo spero? Stanotte deve sentirsi molto sola.”
“Sto per andare ora, subito.”
«Ne sono lieto. Lei ha un forte attaccamento per voi e si affida completamente a voi. Come sta?»
“Inquieta e infelice, ma molto bella.”
“Ah!”
Fu un lungo suono di dolore, come un sospiro - quasi un singhiozzo. Attese gli occhi del signor Lorry sul volto di Carton, che era rivolto verso il fuoco. Una luce o un’ombra (il vecchio gentiluomo non avrebbe saputo dire quale) passò su di esso veloce come un cambiamento può spazzare una collina in una giornata selvaggia e luminosa, e sollevò il piede per rimettere a posto uno dei piccoli tronchi ardenti che stava cadendo. Indossava la giacca bianca da equitazione e gli stivali alti allora di moda, e la luce del fuoco che toccava le loro superfici chiare lo faceva apparire molto pallido, con i suoi lunghi capelli castani, tutti arruffati, che gli cadevano sciolti sulle spalle. La sua indifferenza al fuoco era sufficientemente notevole da suscitare una parola di rimprovero dal signor Lorry; il suo stivale era ancora sopra le braci ardenti del tronco infuocato, quando questo si era spezzato sotto il peso del suo piede.
«Me ne sono dimenticato», disse.
Gli occhi del signor Lorry furono nuovamente attratti dal suo volto. Notando l’aria trascurata che offuscava i tratti naturalmente belli e avendo ancora fresco nella mente il volto dei prigionieri, gli fu fortemente ricordato quell’espressione.
«E i suoi doveri qui sono giunti al termine, signore?» disse Carton, rivolgendosi a lui.
«Sì. Come vi dicevo ieri sera quando Lucie è entrata così all’improvviso, ho finalmente fatto tutto ciò che potevo fare qui. Speravo di lasciarli in perfetta sicurezza e poi di partire da Parigi. Ho il mio permesso di passaggio. Ero pronto a partire».
Entrambi tacevano.
«La sua è una lunga vita su cui guardare indietro, signore?» disse Carton con malinconia.
Sono nel mio settantottesimo anno.
«Siete stati utili per tutta la vita; occupati in modo costante e regolare; fidati, rispettati e stimati?»
«Sono stato un uomo d’affari fin da quando sono diventato uomo. Anzi, posso dire che ero già un uomo d’affari quand’ero ragazzo».
«Vedete quale posto occupate a settantotto anni. Quante persone vi sentiranno mancare quando lo lascerete vuoto!»
«Un vecchio scapolo solitario», rispose il signor Lorry, scuotendo la testa. «Non c’è nessuno che pianga per me».
«Come puoi dire una cosa del genere? Non piangerebbe per te? E il suo bambino?»
“Sì, sì, grazie a Dio. Non intendevo esattamente quello che ho detto.”
“È una cosa per cui ringraziare Dio, non è vero?”
“Certamente, certamente.”
“Se poteste dire, con verità, al vostro cuore solitario, stasera, ‘Mi sono assicurato l’amore e il legame, la gratitudine o il rispetto di nessuna creatura umana; non mi sono conquistato un posto tenero in alcun riguardo; non ho fatto nulla di buono o utile per essere ricordato!’ i vostri settantotto anni sarebbero settantotto pesanti maledizioni; no?”
“Avete ragione, signor Carton; credo che lo sarebbero.”
Sydney rivolse di nuovo lo sguardo al fuoco e dopo un silenzio di qualche istante disse:
“Vorrei chiedervi: la vostra infanzia vi sembra lontana? I giorni in cui sedevate sulle ginocchia di vostra madre vi sembrano molto remoti?”
Rispondendo al suo tono più mite, il signor Lorry rispose:
«Venti anni fa, sì; a questa età della mia vita, no. Perché, avvicinandomi sempre più alla fine, viaggio nel cerchio, sempre più vicino all’inizio. Sembra essere uno di quegli addolcimenti e preparazioni del cammino. Il mio cuore è ora toccato da molti ricordi che da tempo erano caduti nel sonno, della mia bella giovane madre (e io così vecchio!), e da molte associazioni dei giorni in cui quello che chiamiamo il Mondo non era per me così reale, e i miei errori non erano ancora radicati in me.»
«Comprendo il sentimento!» esclamò Carton con un vivace rossore. «E ne trai giovamento?»
“Spero di sì.”
Carton pose fine alla conversazione alzandosi per aiutarlo a indossare il soprabito: «Ma lei», disse il signor Lorry tornando sull’argomento, «lei è giovane».
«Sì», disse Carton. «Non sono vecchio, ma la mia giovinezza non è mai stata tale da portarmi all’età avanzata. Basta parlare di me».
“E di me ne sono certo”, disse il signor Lorry. “Esci?”
“Camminerò con te fino al suo cancello. Conosci le mie abitudini vagabonde e irrequiete. Se dovessi aggirarmi per le strade a lungo tempo, non preoccuparti; riapparirò la mattina. Domani vai in tribunale?”
“Sì, purtroppo.”
«Ci sarò anch’io, ma solo come uno del pubblico. Il mio Spia troverà un posto per me. Prendete il mio braccio, signore».
Così fece il signor Lorry e scesero le scale per uscire nelle strade. Dopo pochi minuti arrivarono a destinazione dal signor Lorry. Carton lo lasciò lì, ma rimase indietro a una certa distanza e tornò verso il cancello quando fu chiuso, toccandolo. Aveva saputo che lei andava in prigione ogni giorno. “È uscita da qui”, disse guardandosi intorno, “è venuta da questa parte, deve aver calpestato spesso queste pietre. Lascia che io segua le sue orme.”
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.
Erano le dieci di sera quando si fermò davanti alla prigione della Force, dove lei era rimasta in piedi centinaia di volte. Un piccolo segatore di legname, avendo chiuso il suo negozio, stava fumando la pipa sulla porta del suo negozio.
«Buona notte, cittadino», disse Sydney Carton fermandosi mentre passava; infatti l’uomo lo guardava con aria indagatrice.
«Buona notte, cittadino».
“Come va la Repubblica?”
«Volete dire la ghigliottina. Non è malata. Oggi sono sessantatré. Presto arriveremo a cento. A volte Samson e i suoi uomini si lamentano di essere esausti. Ah, ah, ah! Che buffone quel Samson. Che barbiere!»
“Vai spesso a trovarlo, ”
“Radersi? Sempre. Ogni giorno. Che barbiere! L’hai visto all’opera?”
“Mai.”
«Andate a vederlo quando ha una bella partita. Immaginatevi questo, cittadino: si è rasato i sessantatré oggi, in meno di due pipe! Meno di due pipe. Parola di onore!»
Mentre l’uomo minuto e sorridente gli porgeva la pipa che stava fumando per spiegargli come aveva calcolato il momento dell’esecuzione, Carton sentì crescere in sé un tale desiderio di togliergli la vita da indurlo a voltarsi e andarsene.
“Ma lei non è inglese,” disse il segatore di legname, “anche se indossa abiti inglesi?”
«Sì», disse Carton, fermandosi di nuovo e rispondendo da sopra la spalla.
“Parli come un francese.”
“Sono un vecchio studente qui.”
«Ah, un perfetto francese! Buona notte, inglese».
«Buona notte, cittadino».
«Ma vai a vedere quel cane buffo», insistette l’omino chiamandolo dietro le spalle. «E porta con te una pipa!»
Sydney non era ancora scomparso alla vista quando si fermò nel mezzo della strada sotto una lampada tremolante e scrisse con la matita su un pezzetto di carta. Poi, attraversando con il passo deciso di chi ricordava bene bene diverse strade buie e sporche - molto più sporche del solito, poiché le migliori vie pubbliche rimanevano incustodite in quei tempi di terrore - si fermò davanti a una farmacia che il proprietario stava chiudendo con le proprie mani. Una piccola bottega oscura e contorta, situata in un tortuoso vicolo in salita in salita, gestita da un uomo piccolo, oscuro e contorto.
Dopo aver augurato la buona notte anche a questo cittadino, mentre lo affrontava al suo banco, gli mise davanti il pezzetto di carta. “Uff!” fischiò dolcemente il farmacista mentre lo leggeva. “Hi! hi! hi!”
Sydney Carton non ci badò e il farmacista disse:
“Per te, cittadino?”
“Per me.”
«Avrete cura di tenerli separati, cittadino? Conoscete le conseguenze del mescolarli?»
“Perfettamente.”
Gli furono preparati alcuni pacchetti di piccole dimensioni e consegnati a lui. Li mise, uno dopo l’altro, nella tasca interna del suo panciotto, contò i soldi per pagarli e deliberatamente uscì dal negozio. “Non c’è più niente da fare”, disse, guardando in su verso la luna, “fino a domani. Non riesco a dormire.”
Non era un modo sconsiderato quello in cui pronunciò quelle parole ad alta voce sotto le nuvole che velavano rapidamente il cielo, né era più espressivo di negligenza che di sfida. Era il modo deciso di un uomo stanco, che aveva vagabondato e lottato e si era perso, ma che alla fine imboccò la sua strada e ne vide la fine.
Molti anni prima, quando era stato famoso tra i suoi primi concorrenti come un giovane di grande promessa, aveva seguito suo padre fino alla tomba. Sua madre era morta molti anni prima. Queste solenni parole, che erano state lette sulla tomba di suo padre, gli tornarono in mente mentre percorreva le strade buie, tra le pesanti ombre, con la luna e le nuvole che navigavano alte sopra di lui. “Io sono la resurrezione e la vita, dice il Signore: chi crede in me, anche se muore, vivrà; e chi vive e crede in me non morirà mai.”
In una città dominata dall’ascia, solo di notte, con un dolore naturale che gli saliva dentro per i sessantatré che erano stati messi a morte quel giorno, e per le vittime del domani che aspettavano la loro sorte nelle prigioni, e ancora di domani e di dopodomani, la catena di associazioni che portava le parole a casa, come un vecchio e arrugginito ancora da nave dal profondo, sarebbe stata facilmente trovata. Lui non la cercò, ma le ripeté e proseguì.
Con un interesse solenne per le finestre illuminate dove la gente si sarebbe riposata, dimenticando per qualche ora di calma gli orrori che li circondavano; nelle torri delle chiese, dove non venivano recitate preghiere, poiché il disgusto popolare aveva persino raggiunto quel livello di auto-distruzione dopo anni di impostori sacerdoti, sacchegiatori e dissoluti; nei lontani cimiteri, riservati, come scritto sui cancelli, per un Sonno Eterno; nelle abbondanti prigioni; e nelle strade lungo le quali i sessantenni rotolavano verso una morte che era diventata così comune e materiale, che nessuna storia triste di uno Spirito inquietante sorse mai tra la gente a causa del funzionamento della Ghigliottina; con un interesse solenne per l’intera vita e morte della città che si apprestava alla sua breve pausa notturna nella furia; Sydney Carton attraversò di nuovo la Senna verso le strade più illuminate.
Pochi omnibus erano in giro, perché i passeggeri degli omnibus potevano essere sospettati e la gente per bene si nascondeva sotto berretti da notte rossi, indossava scarpe pesanti e camminava a piedi. Ma tutti i teatri erano ben affollati e le persone uscivano allegramente mentre lui passava e andavano chiacchierando verso casa. Alla porta di uno dei teatri, c’era una bambina con la madre che cercava un modo per attraversare la strada tra il fango. Lui portò a braccia la bambina dall’altra parte e prima che il timido braccio si staccasse dal suo collo le chiese un bacio.
«Io sono la risurrezione e la vita, dice il Signore; chi crede in me, benché sia morto, vivrà; e chiunque vive e crede in me non morirà mai.»
Ora che le strade erano tranquille e la notte avanzava, quelle parole risuonavano negli echi dei suoi passi e nell’aria. Perfettamente calmo e fermo, a volte se le ripeteva tra sé mentre camminava; ma, le sentiva sempre.
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.
La notte volse al termine, e mentre egli stava sul ponte ad ascoltare l’acqua che schiaffeggiava le mura fluviali dell’Isola di Parigi, dove la pittoresca confusione di case e cattedrale brillavano alla luce della luna, il giorno giunse freddo, come un volto morto che spuntasse dal cielo. Poi, la notte, con la luna e le stelle, impallidì e morì, e per poco tempo sembrò che la Creazione fosse consegnata al dominio della morte.
Ma il glorioso sole che sorgeva sembrava colpire quelle parole, quel peso della notte, dritto e caldo nel suo cuore con i suoi lunghi raggi luminosi. E guardando lungo di essi, con occhi rispettosamente ombreggiati, un ponte di luce sembrava attraversare l’aria tra lui e il sole, mentre il fiume scintillava sotto di esso.
La forte corrente, così veloce, profonda e sicura, era come un amico congeniale, nella quiete del mattino. Camminava lungo il fiume, lontano dalle case, e nella luce e nel calore del sole si addormentò sulla riva. Quando si svegliò e riprese a camminare, indugiò ancora un po’, osservando una corrente vorticosi che girava senza scopo finché il fiume la assorbì e la portò verso il mare.—«Come me».
Una barca da pesca con una vela del colore attenuato di una foglia morta scivolò poi nel suo campo visivo, gli passò accanto e scomparve. Mentre la sua scia silenziosa nell’acqua svaniva, la preghiera che era sgorgata dal suo cuore per una misericordiosa considerazione di tutte le sue povere cecità e errori si concluse con le parole: “Io sono la resurrezione e la vita”.
Il signor Lorry era già uscito quando lui tornò e non fu difficile indovinare dove fosse andato il buon vecchio uomo. Sydney Carton bevve solo un po’ di caffè, mangiò del pane e, dopo essersi lavato e cambiato per rinfrescarsi, uscì per recarsi al luogo del processo.
Il tribunale era tutto un brusio e un fermento quando la pecora nera - da cui molti si allontanavano con timore - lo spinse in un angolo oscuro tra la folla. C’era il signor Lorry, c’era il dottor Manette. C’era anche lei, seduta accanto a suo padre.
Quando suo marito fu portato dentro, lei gli rivolse uno sguardo così sostenitore, così incoraggiante, così pieno di ammirazione e tenera pietà, eppure così coraggioso per il bene di lui, che fece affluire il sangue nelle sue guance, illuminò il suo sguardo e animò il suo cuore. Se ci fossero stati occhi in grado di notare l’influenza del suo sguardo su Sydney Carton, si sarebbe visto che era esattamente la stessa influenza.
Dinanzi a quel Tribunale ingiusto non c’era alcuna o quasi alcuna procedura ordinata che garantisse un ragionevole processo agli accusati. Non ci sarebbe stata una tale Rivoluzione se le leggi, i riti e le cerimonie non fossero stati prima così mostruosamente abusati da indurre la vendetta suicida della Rivoluzione a disperderli tutti al vento.
Ogni occhio era rivolto alla giuria. Gli stessi patriottici e determinati buoni repubblicani di ieri e del giorno prima, e di domani e del giorno dopo. Tra loro spiccava un uomo dal volto avido, con le dita che si muovevano in continuazione intorno alle labbra, la cui presenza procurò grande soddisfazione agli spettatori. Un giurato assetato di sangue, dall’aspetto cannibalesco e sanguinario, il Jacques Three di Saint-Antoine. L’intera giuria, come una giuria di cani convocata per processare la preda.
Ogni sguardo si volse quindi ai cinque giudici e al pubblico ministero. Nessuna simpatia favorevole in quella zona oggi. Un affare terribile, intransigente, omicida - tale era il significato lì presente. Ogni occhio cercò allora un altro occhio nella folla, e lo guardò con approvazione; e le teste si annuirono a vicenda, prima di piegarsi in avanti con una attenzione tesa.
Charles Evrémonde, detto Darnay. Rilasciato ieri. Ricacciato in giudizio e ricatturato ieri. L’accusa gli è stata notificata la scorsa notte. Sospettato e denunciato come nemico della Repubblica, aristocratico, membro di una famiglia di tiranni, di una stirpe proscritta per aver usato i loro privilegi aboliti per l’infame oppressione del popolo. Charles Evrémonde, detto Darnay, in virtù di tale proscrizione, assolutamente Morto ai sensi della Legge.
A questo scopo, con altrettante o minori parole, il Procuratore della Repubblica.
Il presidente chiese se l’imputato fosse stato denunciato apertamente o segretamente?
“Apertamente, Presidente.”
“Da chi?”
«Tre voci. Ernest Defarge, venditore di vino di Saint-Antoine».
“Bene.”
“Thérèse Defarge, sua moglie.”
“Bene.”
“Alexandre Manette, medico.”
Nel tribunale scoppiò un gran tumulto e, nel bel mezzo di esso, si vide il dottor Manette in piedi, pallido e tremante, dove era stato seduto.
«Presidente, protesto indignato presso di voi che si tratta di una falsificazione e un inganno. Sapete che l’accusato è il marito di mia figlia. Mia figlia, e coloro che le sono cari, mi sono più preziosi della vita stessa. Chi è e dove si trova il falso cospiratore che afferma che denuncio il marito del mio figlio!»
«Cittadino Manette, stia tranquillo. Non sottomettersi all’autorità del Tribunale significherebbe mettersi al di fuori della Legge. Quanto a ciò che le è più caro della vita, nulla può essere tanto caro a un buon cittadino quanto la Repubblica».
Furono accolte con vivaci applausi queste parole di rimprovero. Il presidente suonò il campanello e riprese a parlare con calore.
“Se la Repubblica dovesse chiedervi il sacrificio della vostra figlia, non avreste altro dovere che quello di sacrificarla. Ascoltate ciò che segue. Nel frattempo, tacete!”
Le acclamazioni frenetiche furono di nuovo levate. Dottor Manette si sedette, con gli occhi che guardavano intorno e le labbra tremanti; sua figlia si avvicinò a lui. L’uomo avido nella giuria si strofinò le mani insieme e riportò la mano consueta alla bocca.
Quando il tribunale fu abbastanza calmo da consentire che Defarge fosse ascoltato, questi venne presentato e raccontò rapidamente la storia della prigionia, di come lui fosse stato un semplice ragazzo al servizio del dottore, della liberazione e dello stato in cui si trovava il prigioniero quando fu rilasciato e affidato a lui. Seguì questo breve interrogatorio, perché il tribunale era rapido nel suo lavoro.
“Hai reso un buon servizio durante la presa della Bastiglia, cittadino?”
“Credo di sì.”
Qui una donna eccitata strillò dalla folla: «Eri uno dei migliori patrioti di allora. Perché non dirlo? Eri un cannoniere quel giorno lì e sei stato tra i primi a entrare nella maledetta fortezza quando cadde. Patrioti, dico la verità!»
Fu La Vendetta che, tra i calorosi elogi del pubblico, assistette così alla procedura. Il presidente suonò il suo campanello; ma La Vendetta, incoraggiata dagli applausi, gridò: «Mi oppongo a quel campanello!», per cui fu ugualmente molto lodata.
“Informate il Tribunale di ciò che avete fatto quel giorno nella Bastiglia, cittadino.”
“Lo sapevo”, disse Defarge guardando sua moglie che stava in piedi alla base dei gradini su cui lui era salito, fissandolo con sguardo fermo; “lo sapevo che questo prigioniero di cui parlo era stato rinchiuso in una cella conosciuta come Centocinque, Torre Nord. Lo sapevo da lui stesso. Lui non si chiamava altro che Centocinque, Torre Nord, quando faceva scarpe sotto la mia supervisione. Mentre quel giorno servivo il mio cannone, decisi, che quando il posto fosse caduto, di esaminare quella cella. È crollato. Salgo alla cella con un cittadino che fa parte della giuria, guidati da un carceriere. La esamino attentamente. In un buco nel camino, dove una pietra era stata rimossa e sostituita, trovo un foglio scritto. Questo è quel foglio scritto. Mi sono dato da fare per esaminare alcuni campioni della scrittura del dottor Manette. Questa è la scrittura del dottor Manette. Affido questo foglio, nella scrittura del dottor Manette, alle mani del Presidente.”
“Che sia letto.”
In un silenzio profondo e immobile - il prigioniero sotto processo che guarda amorevolmente sua moglie, la moglie che lo guarda solo per guardare poi con sollecitudine suo padre, il dottor Manette che tiene gli occhi fissi sul lettore, la signora Defarge che non distoglie mai i suoi dal prigioniero, Defarge che non distoglie mai i suoi dalla moglie intenta al banchetto e tutti gli altri occhi lì concentrati sul dottor Manette, che non vede nessuno di loro - il documento venne letto come segue.
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.
CAPITOLO X. La sostanza dell’ombra
“Io, Alexandre Manette, sfortunato medico, nativo di Beauvais e in seguito residente a Parigi, scrivo questo triste documento nella mia tetra cella della Bastiglia, nell’ultimo mese dell’anno 1767. Lo scrivo a intervalli rubati, tra ogni sorta di difficoltà. Ho intenzione di nasconderlo nel muro del camino, dove ho lentamente e con fatica creato un luogo in cui celarlo. Forse una mano compassionevole lo troverà lì quando io e le mie pene saremo polvere.
“Queste parole sono state scritte con la punta di ferro arrugginita che riesco a malapena ad usare per scrivere su frammenti di fuliggine e carbone prelevati dal camino, mescolati con sangue, nell’ultimo mese del decimo anno della mia prigionia. La speranza è completamente svanita dal mio cuore. So per i terribili segnali che ho notato in me stesso che la mia ragione non rimarrà a lungo intatta, ma dichiaro solennemente di essere al momento presente in possesso delle mie facoltà mentali — che la mia memoria è precisa e dettagliata — e che scrivo la verità come risponderò per queste mie ultime parole scritte, siano esse mai lette dagli uomini o no, al cospetto del Giudizio Eterno.”
«Una notte nuvolosa con luna piena notte nella terza settimana di dicembre (credo il ventidue del mese) dell’anno 1757, stavo passeggiando in un tratto appartato della banchina lungo la Senna per godere dell’aria gelida, a circa un’ora da casa mia nella Rue de l’École de Médecine, quando dietro di me arrivò una carrozza che veniva guidata molto velocemente. Mentre mi scostavo per lasciar passare quella carrozza, temendo che altrimenti avrebbe potuto travolgermi, una testa fu affacciata alla finestra e una voce ordinò all’autista di fermarsi.
“La carrozza si fermò non appena il cocchiere poté tirare le redini dei cavalli, e la stessa voce mi chiamò per nome. Risposi. La carrozza era ormai così lontana da me che due signori ebbero tempo di aprire lo sportello e scendere prima che io potessi raggiungerla.”
«Notai che erano avvolti entrambi in mantelli e sembravano voler nascondere qualcosa. Mentre stavano fianco a fianco vicino alla porta della carrozza, notai anche che avevano più o meno la mia età, anzi forse erano più giovani, e che si assomigliavano moltissimo per statura, maniera di fare, voce e (per quanto potevo vedere) anche nel volto.
«‘Siete il dottor Manette?’ disse uno di loro.
“I am.”
«‘Il dottor Manette, originario di Beauvais’, disse l’altro; ‘il giovane medico, inizialmente un chirurgo esperto, che negli ultimi uno o due anni ha acquisito una crescente reputazione a Parigi?’
«Signori», replicai io, «sono quel dottor Manette di cui parlate così gentilmente».
«‘Siamo stati alla sua residenza’, disse il primo, ‘e non avendo la fortuna di trovarla lì, e essendoci stati informati che probabilmente stava passeggiando in questa direzione, l’abbiamo seguita nella speranza di raggiungerla. Vuole avere la gentilezza di salire sulla carrozza?’»
«Il comportamento di entrambi era autoritario e si mossero, mentre pronunciavano queste parole, in modo da mettermi tra loro e la portiera della carrozza. Erano armati. Io no.
«Signori», dissi io, «perdonatemi; ma di solito chiedo chi mi fa il favore di cercare la mia assistenza e qual è la natura del caso per cui sono stato convocato».
“La risposta fu data da colui che aveva parlato per secondo. ‘Dottore, i suoi clienti sono persone di rango. Per quanto riguarda la natura della questione, la fiducia nelle sue capacità ci assicura che lei sarà in grado di accertarla meglio di come potremmo descriverla noi. Basta così. Vuole avere la cortesia di salire sulla carrozza?’”
“Non potevo fare altro che acconsentire e vi entrai in silenzio. Entrarono tutti e due dopo di me: l’ultimo saltò dentro dopo aver ripiegato i gradini. La carrozza fece inversione e proseguì alla sua precedente velocità.
«Ripeto questa conversazione esattamente come è avvenuta. Non ho alcun dubbio che sia, parola per parola, la stessa. Descrivo tutto esattamente com’è accaduto, costringendo me stesso a non distrarmi dal compito. Dove faccio i segni spezzati che seguono qui, mi fermo per il tempo, e metto il mio foglio nel suo nascondiglio.
“La carrozza lasciò alle spalle le strade, superò la Barriera Nord e si trovò sulla strada di campagna. A due terzi di lega dalla Barriera — non calcolai la distanza in quel momento, ma lo feci più tardi quando la percorrevo a piedi — svoltò dall’avenida principale e si fermò poco dopo davanti a una solitaria casa. Scendemmo tutti e tre e camminammo, su un sentiero fangoso e morbido in un giardino dove una fontana trascurata era traboccata, fino alla porta della casa. Non ci fu risposta immediata al nostro squillo di campanello, e uno dei miei due accompagnatori colpì con il suo pesante guanto da equitazione in pieno viso l’uomo che venne ad aprire.
«Non c’era nulla in questa azione che attirasse la mia particolare attenzione, perché avevo visto gente comune colpita più comunemente dei cani. Ma l’ altro dei due, essendo anch’egli arrabbiato, colpì l’uomo allo stesso modo con il suo braccio; l’aspetto e il comportamento dei fratelli erano allora così esattamente uguali, che fu allora che per la prima volta mi resi conto che fossero fratelli gemelli.
«Dalla volta che scendemmo al cancello esterno (che trovammo chiuso e che uno dei fratelli aveva aperto per farci entrare, e poi richiuso), avevo sentito delle grida provenire da una camera di sopra. Fui condotto subito in quella stanza, le grida si facevano più forti man mano che salivamo le scale, e trovai un paziente con una febbre cerebrale molto alta, disteso su un letto.
«La paziente era una donna di grande bellezza e giovane; assolutamente non molto più che ventenne. I suoi capelli erano strappati e scompigliati, e le braccia le erano legate ai fianchi con fasce e fazzoletti. Notai che questi lacci erano tutti parti di un abito da uomo. Su uno di essi, che era una sciarpa frangiata per un abito cerimoniale, vidi lo stemma araldico di un nobile e la lettera E.
«Vidi tutto questo nel primo minuto di osservazione della paziente; perché, nei suoi irrequieti sforzi, si era girata a faccia in giù sul bordo del letto, aveva portato l’estremità dello scialle alla bocca ed era in pericolo di soffocamento. Il mio primo gesto fu quello di allungare la mano per facilitarle il respiro; e nel togliere lo scialle, l’ricamo nell’angolo attirò il mio sguardo.
“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.
«La voltai delicatamente, le misi le mani sul petto per calmarla e tenerla ferma, e guardai il suo viso. I suoi occhi erano dilatati e selvaggi, ed ella emetteva continuamente strilli acutissimi, ripetendo: “Mio marito, mio padre e mio fratello!” e poi contava fino a dodici, dicendo: “Sst!” Per un istante, non di più, si fermava ad ascoltare, e poi gli strilli acuti ricominciavano, ed ella ripeteva il grido: “Mio marito, mio padre e mio fratello!” e contava fino a dodici, dicendo: “Sst!” Non c’era variazione nell’ordine o nel modo. Non c’era interruzione, ma la regolare pausa di un momento, nella pronuncia di questi suoni.
“Da quanto tempo dura tutto questo?” chiesi.
“Per distinguere i fratelli li chiamerò il maggiore e il minore; per maggiore intendo colui che esercitava la massima autorità. Fu il maggiore a rispondere: ‘Da circa questa ora della scorsa notte.’
“Ha un marito, un padre e un fratello?”
“Un fratello.”
“Non mi rivolgo forse a suo fratello?”
“Rispose con grande disprezzo: ‘No.’”
“Ha qualche recente associazione con il numero dodici?”
«Il fratello minore replicò impaziente: “Con le dodici?”»
«“Vedete, signori”, dissi io, continuando a tenere le mani sul suo petto, “quanto sono inutile, come mi avete portato! Se avessi saputo cosa sarei venuto a vedere, avrei potuto venire preparato. Com’è, il tempo deve essere perso. Non ci sono medicine da ottenere in questo luogo solitario.”»
«Il fratello maggiore guardò il minore che disse con aria altezzosa: “Qui c’è un caso di medicinali”; e lo prese da uno stanzino e lo mise sul tavolo.
«Aprii alcune delle bottiglie, le annusai e portai i tappi alle mie labbra. Se avessi voluto usare qualcosa di diverso dai medicinali narcotici che erano veleni in sé, non ne avrei somministrato nessuno.
«“Li metti in dubbio?” chiese il fratello minore.
«Vede, signore, li userò», risposi e non aggiunsi altro.
“Feci ingoiare al paziente la dose che desideravo somministrargli con grande difficoltà e dopo molti sforzi. Poiché avevo intenzione di ripeterla dopo un po’, e dato che era necessario osservarne l’effetto, mi sedetti accanto al letto. C’era una donna timida e riservata (moglie dell’uomo al piano terra) che si era ritirata in un angolo. La casa era umida e decadente, arredata con poca cura - evidentemente occupata di recente e usata temporaneamente. Alcuni vecchi tendaggi erano stati inchiodati davanti alle finestre per attutire il suono degli strilli. Questi continuavano a essere emessi in successione regolare, accompagnati dal grido: ‘Mio marito, mio padre e mio fratello!’, dalla conta fino a dodici e da un ‘Sst!’. La follia era così violenta che non avevo allentato le bende che trattenevano le braccia; ma mi ero assicurato che non fossero dolorose. L’unica scintilla di incoraggiamento in questa situazione era che la mia mano sul petto del sofferente aveva un effetto calmante tale da tranquillizzare il paziente per alcuni minuti alla volta. Non aveva alcun effetto sui lamenti; nessun pendolo poteva essere più regolare.”
«Per il fatto che la mia mano aveva questo effetto (suppongo) ero rimasto seduto accanto al letto per mezz’ora, con i due fratelli che mi osservavano, prima che il maggiore dicesse:
“C’è un altro paziente.”
“Mi sorpresi e chiesi: ‘È un caso urgente?’”
«Fareste meglio a vedere», rispose lui con nonchalance e accese una luce.
“L’altro paziente giaceva in una stanza sul retro oltre una seconda scala, che era una specie di soppalco sopra una stalla. Parte della stanza aveva un soffitto basso intonacato; il resto era aperto fino alla cresta del tetto di tegole, e c’erano travi trasversali. In quella parte dell’ambiente erano conservati fieno e paglia, fascine per il fuoco, e una catasta di mele nella sabbia. Dovevo passare da lì per raggiungere l’altro paziente. La mia memoria è minuziosa e inalterata. La metto alla prova con questi dettagli, e li vedo tutti, in questa mia cella nella Bastiglia, verso la fine del decimo anno della mia prigionia, come li vidi quella notte.
«Su un po’ di fieno per terra, con un cuscino buttato sotto la testa, giaceva un bel ragazzo contadino - non più che diciassette anni al massimo. Giaceva supino, digrignando i denti, con la mano destra stretta sul petto e gli occhi spalancati fissi verso l’alto. Non riuscivo a vedere dov’era ferito mentre mi inginocchiavo su un ginocchio sopra di lui; ma potevo capire che stava morendo per una ferita inferta da un oggetto appuntito.
“Sono un medico, mio povero amico,” dissi io. “Lascia che lo esamini.”
“Non voglio che venga esaminato,” rispose; “lasciatelo stare.”
«Era sotto la sua mano e lo calmai per poterla spostare. La ferita era un colpo di spada, ricevuto da venti a ventiquattro ore prima, ma nessuna abilità avrebbe potuto salvarlo se non fosse stata curata immediatamente. Stava morendo rapidamente. Quando girai lo sguardo verso il fratello maggiore, lo vidi guardare in basso verso quel bel ragazzo la cui vita stava svanendo, come se fosse un uccello ferito, o una lepre, o un coniglio; non affatto come se fosse un essere umano.
«Come è stato fatto questo, signore?» dissi io.
«“Un giovane cane comune pazzo! Un servo! Ha costretto mio fratello a sfoderare la spada contro di lui, e ora è caduto per mano della spada di mio fratello, come un gentiluomo.”»
«Non c’era traccia di pietà, dolore o umanità fraterna in questa risposta. Chi parlava sembrava riconoscere che fosse scomodo avere quella creatura diversa a morire lì e che sarebbe stato meglio se fosse morto nella solita oscura routine della sua specie di parassiti. Era del tutto incapace di provare qualsiasi sentimento compassionevole per il ragazzo o per la sua sorte.
«Gli occhi del ragazzo si erano lentamente spostati su di lui mentre parlava e ora si stavano lentamente spostando su di me.
«“Dottore, sono molto orgogliosi, questi Nobili; ma anche noi comuni cani siamo talvolta orgogliosi. Ci saccheggiano, ci oltraggiano, ci picchiano, ci uccidono; ma a volte ci resta un po’ di orgoglio. Lei, l’ha vista, Dottore?”»
«I gridi e le urla erano udibili lì, sebbene attenuati dalla distanza. Si riferiva a loro come se lei fosse lì sdraiata davanti a noi.
“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.’
Ho detto: “L’ho vista”.
«È mia sorella, dottore. Questi nobili hanno esercitato i loro vergognosi diritti sulla modestia e la virtù delle nostre sorelle per molti anni, ma tra di noi abbiamo avuto ragazze per bene. Lo so perché ho sentito mio padre dire così. Era una brava ragazza. Anche il suo fidanzato era un giovane perbene: un inquilino del padrone. Eravamo tutti suoi inquilini - di quell’uomo che sta lì. L’altro è suo fratello, il peggio di una cattiva razza».
«Fu con la massima difficoltà che il ragazzo riuscì a radunare le forze fisiche per parlare; ma lo spirito gli parlò con un’enfasi terribile.
«“Eravamo così derubati da quell’uomo che sta lì, come tutti noi comuni cani lo siamo da quegli Esseri superiori: tassati senza pietà, costretti a lavorare per lui senza paga, obbligati a macinare il nostro grano al suo mulino, costretti ad alimentare decine dei suoi addomesticati uccelli con i nostri miseri raccolti e proibiti, sotto pena di morte, di tenere un solo uccello domestico nostro; saccheggiati e depredati a tal punto che quando capitava di avere un pezzo di carne lo mangiavamo in paura, con la porta chiusa a chiave e gli scuri serrati, affinché i suoi uomini non lo vedessero e ce lo portassero via. Dico che eravamo così derubati, perseguitati e ridotti alla miseria, che nostro padre ci diceva che era una cosa terribile mettere al mondo un bambino e che ciò per cui avremmo dovuto pregare più di ogni altra cosa era che le nostre donne fossero sterili e la nostra miserabile razza si estinguesse!”»
“Non avevo mai prima d’ora visto il senso di essere oppressi, scoppiare come un fuoco. Avevo supposto che dovesse essere latente nel popolo da qualche parte; ma non l’avevo mai visto esplodere, fino a quando lo vidi nel ragazzo morente.
«“Tuttavia, dottore, mia sorella si sposò. Era malato in quel periodo, poveretto, e lei sposò il suo amante, per poterlo curare e consolare nella nostra casetta—la nostra baracca, come quell’uomo l’avrebbe chiamata. Non erano passate molte settimane dal matrimonio quando il fratello di quell’uomo la vide e ne rimase ammirato, e chiese a lui di prestargliela—perché che cosa sono i mariti tra noi! Lui era più che disposto, ma mia sorella era buona e virtuosa, ed odiava il fratello con un odio forte quanto il mio. Cosa fecero allora quei due per convincere suo marito a usare la sua influenza su di lei, per renderla disponibile?”»
«Gli occhi del ragazzo, che erano fissi nei miei, si volsero lentamente verso lo spettatore e vidi sulle due facce che tutto ciò che diceva era vero. Le due opposte specie di orgoglio che si fronteggiavano, posso vedere anche in questa Bastiglia; quello del gentiluomo, tutta negligenza e indifferenza; quello del contadino, tutto sentimento calpestato e vendetta appassionata.
«“Sapete, dottore, che tra i diritti di questi nobili c’è quello di attaccare cani comuni come noi ai carri e farci trainare. Così hanno fatto con lui: lo hanno attaccato al carro e costretto a tirarlo. Sapete anche che è loro diritto tenerci nei loro terreni tutta la notte per tenere tranquilli i rospi, affinché il nobile sonno non sia disturbato. Così hanno fatto con lui: lo hanno lasciato nelle nebbie malsane di notte, e gli hanno ordinato di tornare al suo giogo durante il giorno. Ma lui non si è piegato. No! Un giorno, tolto dal giogo a mezzogiorno per mangiare - se riusciva a trovare cibo - ha singhiozzato dodici volte, una per ogni rintocco della campana, ed è morto sul suo petto.”»
«Niente di umano avrebbe potuto mantenere in vita il ragazzo se non la sua determinazione a confessare tutto ciò che aveva fatto di male. Respinse le ombre sempre più fitte della morte, così come respinse l’istinto di aprire la mano destra stretta a pugno, e di coprirsi la ferita.
«“Allora, con il permesso di quell’uomo e persino con la sua complicità, il fratello se la portò via; nonostante ciò che so lei dovette aver detto al fratello—e quel che sia, non tarderà a essere noto anche a voi, dottore, se non lo è già—il fratello se la portò via—per il suo piacere e divertimento, per un po’. La vidi passare oltre di me sulla strada. Quando portai le novelle a casa, il cuore di nostro padre si spezzò; non pronunciò mai una delle parole che lo riempivano. Portai mia giovane sorella (perché ne ho un’altra) in un luogo oltre la portata di quell’uomo, e dove, almeno, lei non sarà mai sua vassalla. Poi, seguii il fratello fino qui, e l’ultima notte mi arrampicai dentro— un cane comune, ma con la spada in mano.—Dov’è la finestra del soppalco? Era da qualche parte qui?”»
«La stanza si oscurava ai suoi occhi; il mondo gli si stringeva intorno. Mi guardai attorno e vidi che il fieno e la paglia erano calpestati sul pavimento, come se ci fosse stata una lotta.
«“Mi ha sentito e è corsa dentro. Le ho detto di non avvicinarsi a noi finché lui non fosse morto. È entrato e prima mi ha lanciato alcuni pezzi di moneta; poi mi ha colpito con una frusta. Ma io, sebbene fossi un cane comune, l’ho attaccato in modo tale da costringerlo a sguainare la spada. Che si rompa in quante più parti vuole, la spada che ha macchiato del mio comune sangue; l’ha estratta per difendersi e mi ha colpito con tutta la sua abilità per salvarsi la vita.”»
“Lo sguardo mi era caduto pochi istanti prima sui frammenti di una spada rotta, tra il fieno. Quell’arma apparteneva a un gentiluomo. In un altro punto giaceva una vecchia spada che sembrava essere stata di un soldato.
“Sollevatemi, dottore; sollevarmi. Dov’è?”
«Non c’è», dissi sostenendo il ragazzo e pensando che si riferisse al fratello.
«“Eh! Per quanto siano orgogliosi questi nobili, lui ha paura di vedermi. Dov’è l’uomo che era qui? Voltate il mio viso verso di lui.”»
«Lo feci, sollevando la testa del ragazzo contro il mio ginocchio. Ma, investito in quel momento di una straordinaria forza, si alzò completamente: costringendomi a rialzarmi anch’io, o non avrei potuto continuare a sostenerlo.
«“Marchese”, disse il ragazzo, rivolgendosi a lui con gli occhi spalancati e la mano destra alzata, “nei giorni in cui si dovrà rispondere di tutte queste cose, io convoco te e i tuoi, fino all’ultimo della vostra cattiva razza, per renderne conto. Io segno questa croce di sangue su di te, come segno che lo faccio. Nei giorni in cui si dovrà rispondere di tutte queste cose, io convoco tuo fratello, il peggio della cattiva razza, per renderne conto separatamente. Io segno questa croce di sangue su di lui, come segno che lo faccio.”»
“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.
“Early in the morning, the rouleau of gold was left at my door in a little box, with my name on the outside. From the first, I had anxiously considered what I ought to do. I decided, that day, to write privately to the Minister, stating the nature of the two cases to which I had been summoned, and the place to which I had gone: in effect, stating all the circumstances. I knew what Court influence was, and what the immunities of the Nobles were, and I expected that the matter would never be heard of; but, I wished to relieve my own mind. I had kept the matter a profound secret, even from my wife; and this, too, I resolved to state in my letter. I had no apprehension whatever of my real danger; but I was conscious that there might be danger for others, if others were compromised by possessing the knowledge that I possessed.
«Due volte portò la mano alla ferita sul petto e con l’indice disegnò una croce in aria. Rimase per un istante con il dito ancora sollevato, e mentre lo abbassava cadde a sua volta, e io lo deposi morto.
“Quando tornai al capezzale della giovane donna, la trovai delirante nello stesso identico ordine di continuità. Sapevo che questo poteva durare per molte ore e che probabilmente sarebbe finito nel silenzio della tomba.
“Le ripetei i medicinali che le avevo dato e mi sedetti accanto al letto fino a quando la notte fu molto avanzata. Non attenuò mai l’acuta intensità dei suoi urli, non inciampò mai nella chiarezza o nell’ordine delle sue parole. Erano sempre ‘Mio marito, mio padre e mio fratello! Uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque, sei, sette, otto, nove, dieci, undici, dodici. Zitto!’
“Questo durò ventisei ore dal momento in cui la vidi per la prima volta. Ero venuto e andato due volte ed ero di nuovo seduto accanto a lei quando cominciò ad affievolirsi. Feci quel poco che poteva essere fatto per aiutare quella situazione, e dopo un po’ cadde in letargia e giacque come una morta.”
“Era come se il vento e la pioggia si fossero finalmente placati, dopo una lunga e terribile tempesta. Le lasciai andare le braccia e chiamai la donna per aiutarmi a sistemarle il corpo e l’abito che aveva strappato. Fu allora che seppi che era incinta; e fu allora che persi la piccola speranza che avevo riposto in lei.”
«È morta?» chiese il Marchese, che continuerò a descrivere come il fratello maggiore, entrando in stanza con gli stivali indosso dopo essere sceso dalla sua cavalla.
“Non è morto,” dissi io; “ma sta per morire.”
«“Che forza c’è in questi corpi comuni!” disse, guardandola con una certa curiosità.
«“C’è una forza enorme”, gli risposi, “nel dolore e nella disperazione.»
«All’inizio rise alle mie parole e poi le guardò con cipiglio. Si avvicinò una sedia con il piede alla mia, allontanò la donna e disse a voce bassa:
«Dottore, trovando mio fratello in questa difficoltà con questi contadini, ho raccomandato di chiedere il suo aiuto. La sua reputazione è alta e, come giovane uomo che deve ancora fare fortuna, lei è probabilmente attento ai suoi interessi. Le cose che vede qui sono cose da vedere, non da discutere».
«Ascoltai il respiro del paziente e non risposi.
«Mi onorate della vostra attenzione, dottore?»
«“Signore”, dissi io, “nella mia professione le comunicazioni dei pazienti sono sempre ricevute con riservatezza.” Fui cauto nella mia risposta, perché ero turbato da ciò che avevo sentito e visto.»
«Il suo respiro era così difficile da percepire che ho attentamente controllato il polso e il cuore. C’era vita, e nient’altro. Guardandomi intorno mentre riprendevo posto, vidi entrambi i fratelli fissarmi con attenzione.
“Scrivo con tanta difficoltà, il freddo è così intenso, ho tanto timore di essere scoperto e relegato in una cella sotterranea e nell’oscurità più totale che devo abbreviare questo racconto. Non c’è confusione né fallimento nella mia memoria; essa può ricordare, e potrebbe dettagliare, ogni parola che è mai stata pronunciata tra me e quei fratelli.
«Rimase con noi per una settimana. Verso la fine riuscivo a capire alcune sillabe che mi diceva avvicinando l’orecchio alle sue labbra. Mi chiese dove si trovasse e glielo dissi; chi fossi, e glielo dissi. Fu inutile che le chiedessi il suo cognome. Scosse debolmente la testa sul cuscino e custodì il suo segreto come aveva fatto il ragazzo.
«Non ebbi modo di farle domande finché non dissi ai fratelli che stava peggiorando rapidamente e non sarebbe vissuta un altro giorno. Fino ad allora, sebbene nessuno fosse mai stato presentato alla sua coscienza tranne la donna e me stesso, uno o l’altro di loro era sempre gelosamente seduto dietro la tenda in fondo al letto quando ero lì. Ma quando arrivò a quel punto, sembravano indifferenti alle comunicazioni che potevo avere con lei; come se - il pensiero mi attraversò la mente - stessi morendo anch’io.
«Ho sempre notato che il loro orgoglio risentiva amaramente del fatto che il fratello minore (come lo chiamo io) avesse incrociato la spada con un contadino, e quel contadino un ragazzo. L’unica considerazione che sembrava influenzare la mente di entrambi era che ciò fosse altamente degradante per la famiglia e ridicolo. Ogni volta che coglievo lo sguardo del fratello minore, la sua espressione mi ricordava che mi detestava profondamente perché sapevo quello che avevo saputo dal ragazzo. Era più gentile e cortese con me rispetto al maggiore; ma io capivo questo. Vedevo anche di essere un peso anche nella mente del fratello maggiore».
“La mia paziente morì due ore prima di mezzanotte - a un’ora, secondo il mio orologio, che corrispondeva quasi al minuto in cui l’avevo vista per la prima volta. Ero solo con lei, quando la sua giovane testa abbandonata si inclinò dolcemente da un lato e tutti i suoi torti terreni e le sue pene finirono.”
“I fratelli stavano aspettando in una stanza al piano terra, impazienti di partire a cavallo. Li avevo sentiti, solo accanto al letto, battere gli stivali con le fruste da equitazione e passeggiare avanti e indietro.”
«Allora è morta?», disse la maggiore quando entrai.
«È morta», dissi io.
«Vi congratulo, fratello mio», furono le sue parole mentre si voltava.
«Mi aveva già offerto del denaro in precedenza, che avevo rinviato ad accettare. Ora mi diede un rotolino d’oro. Lo presi dalla sua mano, ma lo posai sul tavolo. Avevo considerato la questione e deciso di non accettare nulla.
“Scusatemi,” dissi io. “Date le circostanze, no.”
«Si scambiarono un’occhiata, ma abbassarono la testa verso di me mentre io facevo lo stesso con loro, e ci separammo senza altre parole da nessuna parte.
«Sono stanco, stanco, stanco - consumato dalla miseria. Non riesco a leggere ciò che ho scritto con questa mano emaciata.
«All’inizio della mattina, il rotolo d’oro fu lasciato alla mia porta in una piccola scatola, con il mio nome all’esterno. Fin dall’inizio avevo considerato ansiosamente cosa avrei dovuto fare. Decisi, quel giorno, di scrivere privatamente al Ministro, esponendo la natura dei due casi per i quali ero stato convocato e il luogo in cui mi ero recato: in effetti, esponendo tutte le circostanze. Sapevo quale fosse l’influenza della Corte e quali fossero gli immunità dei Nobili, e mi aspettavo che la questione non sarebbe mai stata menzionata; ma desideravo alleviare il mio animo. Avevo mantenuto la cosa un segreto profondo, anche da mia moglie; e questo, pure, decisi di esporre nella mia lettera. Non avevo alcuna apprensione riguardo al mio reale pericolo; ma ero consapevole che ci potesse essere pericolo per altri, se altri fossero stati compromessi possedendo la conoscenza che io possedevo.
“I was much engaged that day, and could not complete my letter that night. I rose long before my usual time next morning to finish it. It was the last day of the year. The letter was lying before me just completed, when I was told that a lady waited, who wished to see me.
“I am growing more and more unequal to the task I have set myself. It is so cold, so dark, my senses are so benumbed, and the gloom upon me is so dreadful.
“The lady was young, engaging, and handsome, but not marked for long life. She was in great agitation. She presented herself to me as the wife of the Marquis St. Evrémonde. I connected the title by which the boy had addressed the elder brother, with the initial letter embroidered on the scarf, and had no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that I had seen that nobleman very lately.
“My memory is still accurate, but I cannot write the words of our conversation. I suspect that I am watched more closely than I was, and I know not at what times I may be watched. She had in part suspected, and in part discovered, the main facts of the cruel story, of her husband’s share in it, and my being resorted to. She did not know that the girl was dead. Her hope had been, she said in great distress, to show her, in secret, a woman’s sympathy. Her hope had been to avert the wrath of Heaven from a House that had long been hateful to the suffering many.
“She had reasons for believing that there was a young sister living, and her greatest desire was, to help that sister. I could tell her nothing but that there was such a sister; beyond that, I knew nothing. Her inducement to come to me, relying on my confidence, had been the hope that I could tell her the name and place of abode. Whereas, to this wretched hour I am ignorant of both.
“These scraps of paper fail me. One was taken from me, with a warning, yesterday. I must finish my record to-day.
“She was a good, compassionate lady, and not happy in her marriage. How could she be! The brother distrusted and disliked her, and his influence was all opposed to her; she stood in dread of him, and in dread of her husband too. When I handed her down to the door, there was a child, a pretty boy from two to three years old, in her carriage.
“‘For his sake, Doctor,’ she said, pointing to him in tears, ‘I would do all I can to make what poor amends I can. He will never prosper in his inheritance otherwise. I have a presentiment that if no other innocent atonement is made for this, it will one day be required of him. What I have left to call my own—it is little beyond the worth of a few jewels—I will make it the first charge of his life to bestow, with the compassion and lamenting of his dead mother, on this injured family, if the sister can be discovered.’
“She kissed the boy, and said, caressing him, ‘It is for thine own dear sake. Thou wilt be faithful, little Charles?’ The child answered her bravely, ‘Yes!’ I kissed her hand, and she took him in her arms, and went away caressing him. I never saw her more.
“As she had mentioned her husband’s name in the faith that I knew it, I added no mention of it to my letter. I sealed my letter, and, not trusting it out of my own hands, delivered it myself that day.
“That night, the last night of the year, towards nine o’clock, a man in a black dress rang at my gate, demanded to see me, and softly followed my servant, Ernest Defarge, a youth, up-stairs. When my servant came into the room where I sat with my wife—O my wife, beloved of my heart! My fair young English wife!—we saw the man, who was supposed to be at the gate, standing silent behind him.
“An urgent case in the Rue St. Honore, he said. It would not detain me, he had a coach in waiting.
“It brought me here, it brought me to my grave. When I was clear of the house, a black muffler was drawn tightly over my mouth from behind, and my arms were pinioned. The two brothers crossed the road from a dark corner, and identified me with a single gesture. The Marquis took from his pocket the letter I had written, showed it me, burnt it in the light of a lantern that was held, and extinguished the ashes with his foot. Not a word was spoken. I was brought here, I was brought to my living grave.
“If it had pleased God to put it in the hard heart of either of the brothers, in all these frightful years, to grant me any tidings of my dearest wife—so much as to let me know by a word whether alive or dead—I might have thought that He had not quite abandoned them. But, now I believe that the mark of the red cross is fatal to them, and that they have no part in His mercies. And them and their descendants, to the last of their race, I, Alexandre Manette, unhappy prisoner, do this last night of the year 1767, in my unbearable agony, denounce to the times when all these things shall be answered for. I denounce them to Heaven and to earth.”
A terrible sound arose when the reading of this document was done. A sound of craving and eagerness that had nothing articulate in it but blood. The narrative called up the most revengeful passions of the time, and there was not a head in the nation but must have dropped before it.
Little need, in presence of that tribunal and that auditory, to show how the Defarges had not made the paper public, with the other captured Bastille memorials borne in procession, and had kept it, biding their time. Little need to show that this detested family name had long been anathematised by Saint Antoine, and was wrought into the fatal register. The man never trod ground whose virtues and services would have sustained him in that place that day, against such denunciation.
And all the worse for the doomed man, that the denouncer was a well-known citizen, his own attached friend, the father of his wife. One of the frenzied aspirations of the populace was, for imitations of the questionable public virtues of antiquity, and for sacrifices and self-immolations on the people’s altar. Therefore when the President said (else had his own head quivered on his shoulders), that the good physician of the Republic would deserve better still of the Republic by rooting out an obnoxious family of Aristocrats, and would doubtless feel a sacred glow and joy in making his daughter a widow and her child an orphan, there was wild excitement, patriotic fervour, not a touch of human sympathy.
“Much influence around him, has that Doctor?” murmured Madame Defarge, smiling to The Vengeance. “Save him now, my Doctor, save him!”
At every juryman’s vote, there was a roar. Another and another. Roar and roar.
Unanimously voted. At heart and by descent an Aristocrat, an enemy of the Republic, a notorious oppressor of the People. Back to the Conciergerie, and Death within four-and-twenty hours!
“Ero molto occupato quel giorno e non potevo finire la mia lettera quella sera. Mi sono alzato molto prima del mio solito orario la mattina seguente per terminarla. Era l’ultimo giorno dell’anno. La lettera era davanti a me, appena completata, quando mi fu detto che una signora aspettava e desiderava vedermi.
«Sento di essere sempre meno all’altezza del compito che mi sono prefissato. Fa così freddo, è così buio, i miei sensi sono così intorpiditi e l’oscurità che mi avvolge è così terribile.
«La signora era giovane, affascinante e bella, ma non destinata a vivere a lungo. Era molto agitata. Si presentò come la moglie del marchese Saint Evrémonde. Collegai il titolo con cui il ragazzo aveva chiamato il fratello maggiore alla lettera ricamata sulla sciarpa e non fui in difficoltà nel giungere alla conclusione che avevo visto quel nobile molto di recente.
“La mia memoria è ancora precisa, ma non posso scrivere le parole della nostra conversazione. Sospetto che io sia sorvegliato più da vicino di quanto lo fossi prima e non so in quali momenti possa essere osservato. Lei aveva in parte sospettato ed in parte scoperto i fatti principali della crudele storia, la partecipazione del marito ad essa e il fatto che mi fosse stata chiesta consulenza. Non sapeva che la ragazza fosse morta. La sua speranza era stata, disse con grande angoscia, di mostrare a lei, in segreto, la simpatia di una donna. La sua speranza era stata quella di allontanare l’ira del Cielo da un casato che per lungo tempo era stato odioso ai molti sofferenti.
“Ella aveva ragione di credere che ci fosse una sorella minore in vita e il suo più grande desiderio era quello di aiutare quella sorella. Non potevo dirle altro se non che esisteva tale sorella; oltre a questo, non sapevo nulla. Il motivo per cui venne da me, confidando nella mia discrezione, fu la speranza che io potessi rivelarle il nome e il luogo di residenza della sorella. Invece, in questa miserabile ora, sono all’oscuro di entrambi.”
«Questi pezzi di carta mi tradiscono. Uno è stato portato via ieri con un avvertimento. Devo finire il mio racconto oggi stesso.
“Era una signora buona e compassionevole, ma non felice nel suo matrimonio. Come poteva esserlo! Il fratello la sospettava e la detestava, e la sua influenza era tutta contro di lei; aveva timore di lui e anche del marito. Quando l’aiutai a scendere dalla carrozza alla porta, c’era un bambino, un bel bambino di due o tre anni, nella sua carrozza.
«“Per il suo bene, dottore,” disse lei, indicandolo in lacrime, “farei tutto ciò che posso per fare quel povero ammenda che posso. Altrimenti non prospererà mai nella sua eredità. Ho un presentimento che se nessun altro atto di espiazione innocente viene compiuto per questo, un giorno gli verrà richiesto. Quello che mi rimane da chiamare mio - è poco oltre il valore di pochi gioielli - lo renderò la prima responsabilità della sua vita da donare, con la compassione e il lamento della madre defunta, a questa famiglia offesa, se la sorella può essere scoperta.”»
“Baciò il ragazzo e gli disse accarezzandolo: ‘È per il tuo caro bene. Sarai fedele, piccolo Carlo?’ Il bambino le rispose con coraggio: ‘Sì!’ Io baciai la sua mano e lei lo prese tra le braccia e se ne andò accarezzandolo. Non l’ho più rivista.”
“Poiché aveva menzionato il nome di suo marito nella fede che lo conoscessi, non aggiunsi alcuna menzione in proposito alla mia lettera. Sigillai la mia lettera e, non fidandomi a consegnarla per mano altrui, la portai io stesso quel giorno.
“Quella notte, l’ultima notte dell’anno, verso le nove in punto, un uomo vestito di nero suonò alla mia porta, chiese di vedermi e seguì dolcemente il mio domestico, Ernest Defarge, un giovane, al piano superiore. Quando il mio domestico entrò nella stanza dove sedevo con mia moglie - O mia moglie, amata del mio cuore! Mia bella giovane sposa inglese! - vedemmo l’uomo, che si supponeva fosse alla porta, in piedi e silenzioso dietro di lui.
«Un caso urgente in rue Saint-Honoré», disse. «Non mi tratterrà a lungo; ha una carrozza pronta.»
“Mi ha portato qui, mi ha portato alla mia tomba. Quando sono uscito dalla casa, un foulard nero è stato tirato strettamente sulla mia bocca da dietro e le mie braccia sono state immobilizzate. I due fratelli hanno attraversato la strada da un angolo buio, e mi hanno identificato con un solo gesto. Il Marchese ha tirato fuori dalla sua tasca la lettera che avevo scritto, me l’ha mostrata, l’ha bruciata alla luce di una lanterna che era stata tenuta accesa, ed ha spento le ceneri con il piede. Non è stata pronunciata una sola parola. Mi hanno portato qui, mi hanno portato nella mia tomba vivente.”
“Se Dio avesse voluto mettere nel cuore duro di uno dei due fratelli, in tutti questi anni spaventosi, la volontà di darmi qualche notizia della mia cara moglie—almeno per farmi sapere con una parola se era viva o morta—avrei potuto pensare che non li avesse completamente abbandonati. Ma ora credo che il segno della croce rossa sia fatale per loro, e che non abbiano parte nelle Sue misericordie. E a loro e ai loro discendenti, fino all’ultimo della loro razza, io, Alexandre Manette, infelice prigioniero, in questa ultima notte dell’anno 1767, nella mia insopportabile agonia, li denuncio per i tempi in cui tutte queste cose saranno pagate. Li denuncio al Cielo e alla terra.”
Quando la lettura di questo documento fu terminata, si levò un suono terribile: un suono di desiderio e avidità che non aveva nulla di articolato se non sangue. Il racconto evocava le passioni più vendicative del tempo, e non c’era testa in tutta la nazione che non dovesse chinarsi davanti ad esso.
Poco bisogno, alla presenza di quel tribunale e di quell’uditorio, di dimostrare come i Defarge non avessero reso pubblico il documento insieme agli altri ricordi della Bastiglia catturati portati in processione, ma lo avessero tenuto nascosto, aspettando il loro momento. Poco bisogno di dimostrare che questo nome di famiglia odiato era da tempo stato anatemizzato da Saint Antoine e inserito nel registro fatale. Non c’è uomo al mondo le cui virtù e servigi lo avrebbero sostenuto in quel luogo, quel giorno, contro una tale accusa.
E tutto ciò era tanto più grave per l’uomo condannato dal momento che il denunciante era un cittadino noto, suo amico intimo e padre di sua moglie. Una delle aspirazioni frenetiche della popolazione era quella di imitare le discutibili virtù pubbliche dell’antichità, e i sacrifici e le auto-immolazioni sull’altare del popolo. Pertanto quando il Presidente disse (altrimenti la sua stessa testa avrebbe tremato sulle sue spalle) che il buon medico della Repubblica si sarebbe meritato ancora di più dalla Repubblica estirpando una famiglia odiosa di aristocratici, e senza dubbio avrebbe provato un sacro entusiasmo e gioia nel rendere sua figlia vedova e suo figlio orfano, ci fu un’agitazione selvaggia, fervore patriottico, non una traccia di umana compassione.
«Ha molta influenza intorno a lui quel dottore?» mormorò madama Defarge, sorridendo alla Vendetta. «Salvatelo ora, mio dottore, salvatelo!»
Ad ogni voto dei giurati c’era un boato. Un altro e poi ancora un altro. Boato su boato.
Votato all’unanimità. Nel cuore e per discendenza un aristocratico, un nemico della Repubblica, un noto oppressore del Popolo. Tornare alla Conciergerie, e la morte entro ventiquattro ore!
CHAPTER XI. Dusk
The wretched wife of the innocent man thus doomed to die, fell under the sentence, as if she had been mortally stricken. But, she uttered no sound; and so strong was the voice within her, representing that it was she of all the world who must uphold him in his misery and not augment it, that it quickly raised her, even from that shock.
The Judges having to take part in a public demonstration out of doors, the Tribunal adjourned. The quick noise and movement of the court’s emptying itself by many passages had not ceased, when Lucie stood stretching out her arms towards her husband, with nothing in her face but love and consolation.
“If I might touch him! If I might embrace him once! O, good citizens, if you would have so much compassion for us!”
There was but a gaoler left, along with two of the four men who had taken him last night, and Barsad. The people had all poured out to the show in the streets. Barsad proposed to the rest, “Let her embrace him then; it is but a moment.” It was silently acquiesced in, and they passed her over the seats in the hall to a raised place, where he, by leaning over the dock, could fold her in his arms.
“Farewell, dear darling of my soul. My parting blessing on my love. We shall meet again, where the weary are at rest!”
They were her husband’s words, as he held her to his bosom.
“I can bear it, dear Charles. I am supported from above: don’t suffer for me. A parting blessing for our child.”
“I send it to her by you. I kiss her by you. I say farewell to her by you.”
“My husband. No! A moment!” He was tearing himself apart from her. “We shall not be separated long. I feel that this will break my heart by-and-bye; but I will do my duty while I can, and when I leave her, God will raise up friends for her, as He did for me.”
Her father had followed her, and would have fallen on his knees to both of them, but that Darnay put out a hand and seized him, crying:
“No, no! What have you done, what have you done, that you should kneel to us! We know now, what a struggle you made of old. We know, now what you underwent when you suspected my descent, and when you knew it. We know now, the natural antipathy you strove against, and conquered, for her dear sake. We thank you with all our hearts, and all our love and duty. Heaven be with you!”
Her father’s only answer was to draw his hands through his white hair, and wring them with a shriek of anguish.
“It could not be otherwise,” said the prisoner. “All things have worked together as they have fallen out. It was the always-vain endeavour to discharge my poor mother’s trust that first brought my fatal presence near you. Good could never come of such evil, a happier end was not in nature to so unhappy a beginning. Be comforted, and forgive me. Heaven bless you!”
As he was drawn away, his wife released him, and stood looking after him with her hands touching one another in the attitude of prayer, and with a radiant look upon her face, in which there was even a comforting smile. As he went out at the prisoners’ door, she turned, laid her head lovingly on her father’s breast, tried to speak to him, and fell at his feet.
Then, issuing from the obscure corner from which he had never moved, Sydney Carton came and took her up. Only her father and Mr. Lorry were with her. His arm trembled as it raised her, and supported her head. Yet, there was an air about him that was not all of pity—that had a flush of pride in it.
“Shall I take her to a coach? I shall never feel her weight.”
He carried her lightly to the door, and laid her tenderly down in a coach. Her father and their old friend got into it, and he took his seat beside the driver.
When they arrived at the gateway where he had paused in the dark not many hours before, to picture to himself on which of the rough stones of the street her feet had trodden, he lifted her again, and carried her up the staircase to their rooms. There, he laid her down on a couch, where her child and Miss Pross wept over her.
“Don’t recall her to herself,” he said, softly, to the latter, “she is better so. Don’t revive her to consciousness, while she only faints.”
“Oh, Carton, Carton, dear Carton!” cried little Lucie, springing up and throwing her arms passionately round him, in a burst of grief. “Now that you have come, I think you will do something to help mamma, something to save papa! O, look at her, dear Carton! Can you, of all the people who love her, bear to see her so?”
He bent over the child, and laid her blooming cheek against his face. He put her gently from him, and looked at her unconscious mother.
“Before I go,” he said, and paused—“I may kiss her?”
It was remembered afterwards that when he bent down and touched her face with his lips, he murmured some words. The child, who was nearest to him, told them afterwards, and told her grandchildren when she was a handsome old lady, that she heard him say, “A life you love.”
When he had gone out into the next room, he turned suddenly on Mr. Lorry and her father, who were following, and said to the latter:
“You had great influence but yesterday, Doctor Manette; let it at least be tried. These judges, and all the men in power, are very friendly to you, and very recognisant of your services; are they not?”
“Nothing connected with Charles was concealed from me. I had the strongest assurances that I should save him; and I did.” He returned the answer in great trouble, and very slowly.
“Try them again. The hours between this and to-morrow afternoon are few and short, but try.”
“I intend to try. I will not rest a moment.”
“That’s well. I have known such energy as yours do great things before now—though never,” he added, with a smile and a sigh together, “such great things as this. But try! Of little worth as life is when we misuse it, it is worth that effort. It would cost nothing to lay down if it were not.”
“I will go,” said Doctor Manette, “to the Prosecutor and the President straight, and I will go to others whom it is better not to name. I will write too, and—But stay! There is a Celebration in the streets, and no one will be accessible until dark.”
“That’s true. Well! It is a forlorn hope at the best, and not much the forlorner for being delayed till dark. I should like to know how you speed; though, mind! I expect nothing! When are you likely to have seen these dread powers, Doctor Manette?”
“Immediately after dark, I should hope. Within an hour or two from this.”
“It will be dark soon after four. Let us stretch the hour or two. If I go to Mr. Lorry’s at nine, shall I hear what you have done, either from our friend or from yourself?”
“Yes.”
“May you prosper!”
Mr. Lorry followed Sydney to the outer door, and, touching him on the shoulder as he was going away, caused him to turn.
“I have no hope,” said Mr. Lorry, in a low and sorrowful whisper.
“Nor have I.”
“If any one of these men, or all of these men, were disposed to spare him—which is a large supposition; for what is his life, or any man’s to them!—I doubt if they durst spare him after the demonstration in the court.”
“And so do I. I heard the fall of the axe in that sound.”
Mr. Lorry leaned his arm upon the door-post, and bowed his face upon it.
“Don’t despond,” said Carton, very gently; “don’t grieve. I encouraged Doctor Manette in this idea, because I felt that it might one day be consolatory to her. Otherwise, she might think ‘his life was wantonly thrown away or wasted,’ and that might trouble her.”
“Yes, yes, yes,” returned Mr. Lorry, drying his eyes, “you are right. But he will perish; there is no real hope.”
“Yes. He will perish: there is no real hope,” echoed Carton.
And walked with a settled step, down-stairs.
CAPITOLO XI. Crepuscolo
La misera moglie dell’uomo innocente così condannato a morte crollò sotto la sentenza come se fosse stata mortalmente ferita. Ma non emise alcun suono; e tanto forte era la voce interiore che le diceva che lei, di tutto il mondo, doveva sostenere lui nella sua miseria e non aumentarla, che rapidamente la rialzò anche da quel trauma.
I giudici dovendo prendere parte a una manifestazione pubblica all’aperto, il Tribunale si aggiornò. Il rapido rumore e movimento con cui il tribunale si svuotava per molti passaggi non erano ancora cessati, quando Lucie stette lì tendendo le braccia verso suo marito, senza nulla in volto se non amore e consolazione.
«Se potessi toccarlo! Se potessi abbracciarlo una volta sola! O buoni cittadini, se aveste tanta compassione per noi!»
Non rimaneva che il carceriere insieme con due degli uomini che lo avevano preso la notte scorsa notte e Barsad. Tutta la gente era uscita per assistere allo spettacolo in strada. Barsad propose agli altri: «Allora lasciatele abbracciare lui; è solo un momento». Fu acconsentito in silenzio, e lo fecero passare sopra i sedili nella sala fino a un posto rialzato dove, piegandosi sul banco degli imputati, poteva stringerla tra le braccia.
«Addio, mia cara dolcezza della mia anima. La mia benedizione d’addio alla mia amata. Ci rivedremo dove i stanchi riposano!»
Erano le parole di suo marito mentre la stringeva al petto.
«Posso sopportarlo, caro Carlo. Sono sostenuta dall’alto: non soffrire per me. Una benedizione d’addio per il nostro bambino.»
Gliela mando tramite te. La bacio tramite te. Mi congedo da lei tramite te.
«Mio marito! No! Un momento!» Si stava strappando via da lei. «Non saremo separati a lungo. Sento che questo mi spezzerà il cuore alla fine; ma farò il mio dovere finché potrò, e quando la lascerò, Dio le troverà degli amici, come ha fatto per me».
Suo padre l’aveva seguita e si sarebbe gettato in ginocchio davanti a entrambi, se Darnay non avesse teso una mano per trattenerlo esclamando:
“No, no! Cosa avete fatto, cosa avete fatto, che dovreste inginocchiarvi davanti a noi! Ora sappiamo quale lotta abbiate affrontato un tempo. Sappiamo ora quello che avete sopportato quando sospettavate della mia discendenza e quando la conoscete. Ora sappiamo qual era l’antipatia naturale contro cui vi siete battuta, e che avete vinto per il suo caro bene. Vi ringraziamo con tutto il nostro cuore, e con tutto il nostro amore e dovere. Che il Cielo sia con voi!”
L’unica risposta del padre fu passarsi le mani tra i capelli bianchi e torcerseli con un urlo di angoscia.
«Non poteva essere diversamente», disse il prigioniero. «Tutte le cose hanno agito insieme come sono avvenute. È stato lo sforzo sempre vano di liberarmi del fardello della fiducia della mia povera madre che mi ha portato per la prima volta, con la mia presenza funesta, vicino a voi. Un bene non sarebbe mai potuto derivare da un tale male; una fine più felice non era nella natura di un inizio così infelice. Consolatevi e perdonatemi. Il cielo vi benedica!»
Mentre veniva portato via, sua moglie lo lasciò andare e rimase a guardarlo allontanarsi con le mani che si sfioravano in atteggiamento di preghiera e con uno sguardo radioso sul viso, nel quale c’era persino un sorriso rassicurante. Quando uscì dalla porta dei prigionieri, lei si voltò, appoggiò amorevolmente la testa sul petto di suo padre, cercò di parlargli e cadde ai suoi piedi.
Poi, uscendo dall’angolo oscuro da cui non si era mai mosso, Sydney Carton venne e la prese tra le braccia. Solo suo padre e il signor Lorry erano con lei. Il suo braccio tremava mentre la sollevava e sosteneva la sua testa. Eppure, c’era qualcosa in lui che non era solo pietà: aveva un barlume di orgoglio.
“La porterò in carrozza? Non sentirò mai il suo peso.”
La portò leggermente alla porta e la depose teneramente su una carrozza. Suo padre e il loro vecchio amico vi salirono dentro, e lui prese posto accanto al cocchiere.
Quando arrivarono al cancello dove si era fermato nel buio non molte ore prima per immaginare su quale dei grossolani ciottoli della strada i suoi piedi avessero calpestato, la sollevò di nuovo e la portò su per le scale fino alle loro stanze. Lì, la adagiò su un divano dove il suo bambino e la signorina Pross piangevano sopra di lei.
«Non cercate di farla tornare in sé», disse dolcemente a quest’ultimo, «è meglio così. Non cercate di riportarla alla coscienza finché non si riprenderà da sola».
“Oh, Carton, Carton, caro Carton!” esclamò la piccola Lucie balzando in piedi e gettandogli le braccia al collo con passione, in un impeto di dolore. “Ora che sei venuto, penso che farai qualcosa per aiutare mamma, qualcosa per salvare papà! O, guardala, caro Carton! Puoi tu, tra tutte le persone che la amano, sopportare di vederla così?”
Si chinò sulla bambina e le appoggiò la guancia fiorita contro il suo viso. La allontanò delicatamente da sé e guardò sua madre incosciente.
“Prima di andarmene,” disse e fece una pausa — “posso baciarla?”
Si ricordò in seguito che quando si chinò e le sfiorò il volto con le labbra, mormorò alcune parole. La bambina, che gli stava più vicino, lo raccontò poi agli altri, e ai suoi nipoti quando divenne una signora anziana di bell’aspetto, che l’aveva sentito dire: “Una vita che ami amare.”.
Quando fu uscito nella stanza accanto, si voltò improvvisamente verso il signor Lorry e suo padre che lo seguivano, e disse a quest’ultimo:
«Aveva grande influenza ieri, dottor Manette; almeno proviamoci. Questi giudici e tutti gli uomini al potere sono molto amichevoli con lei e le riconoscono moltissimo i servizi resi; non è così?»
«Niente di ciò che riguardava Carlo mi fu nascosto. Mi furono date le più solide assicurazioni che lo avrei salvato; e così è stato». Rispose con grande turbamento e molto lentamente.
«Provateli ancora. Le ore tra adesso e domani pomeriggio sono poche e brevi, ma provate».
“Intendo provarci. Non riposerò un attimo.”
“È bene. Ho visto un’energia come la tua compiere grandi cose in passato — anche se mai”, aggiunse con un sorriso e un sospiro insieme, “grandi cose come questa. Ma prova! Per quanto poco valga la vita quando la sprechiamo, vale comunque quella fatica. Non costerebbe nulla abbandonarla, se non fosse così.”
«Ci andrò», disse dottor Manette, «dal procuratore e dal presidente subito, e ci andrò anche da altri che è meglio non nominare. Scriverò pure io, ma—Ma aspetti! C’è una festa per le strade, e nessuno sarà raggiungibile fino a sera».
«È vero. Bene! È una speranza remota nel migliore dei casi e non diventa più remota per il fatto di essere rimandata fino a sera. Vorrei sapere come ti va; però, bada bene! Non mi aspetto nulla! Quando pensi di aver visto queste terribili potenze, dottor Manette?»
«Immediatamente dopo il buio, spero io. Entro un’ora o due da questo momento».
«Sarà buio poco dopo le quattro. Allungiamo di un’ora o due. Se vado da Mr. Lorry alle nove, saprò cosa avete fatto, sia dal nostro amico che da voi stesso?»
“Sì, davvero.”
“Che tu prosperi!”
Il signor Lorry seguì Sydney fino alla porta esterna e, toccandogli la spalla mentre stava per andarsene, lo fece voltare.
“Non ho alcuna speranza”, disse il signor Lorry con un sussurro basso e triste.
“Nemmeno io.”
“Se uno qualsiasi di questi uomini, o tutti questi uomini, fossero disposti a risparmiarlo - il che è un’ipotesi molto remota; perché la sua vita, o quella di chiunque altro, cosa sono per loro? - dubito che oserebbero risparmiarlo dopo la dimostrazione in tribunale.”
“Anch’io. Ho sentito il colpo dell’ascia in quel suono.”
Il signor Lorry appoggiò il braccio allo stipite della porta e vi nascose sopra la faccia.
«Non disperatevi», disse Carton con grande dolcezza; «non addoloratevi. Ho incoraggiato il dottor Manette in questa idea, perché sentivo che un giorno avrebbe potuto consolarla. Altrimenti, lei potrebbe pensare “che la sua vita è stata buttata via o sprecata senza motivo”, e questo le darebbe pena».
“Sì, sì, sì”, rispose il signor Lorry asciugandosi gli occhi, “avete ragione. Ma perirà; non c’è alcuna vera speranza.”
“Sì. Morirà: non c’è vera speranza”, fece eco Carton.
E scese le scale con passo fermo.
CHAPTER XII. Darkness
Sydney Carton paused in the street, not quite decided where to go. “At Tellson’s banking-house at nine,” he said, with a musing face. “Shall I do well, in the mean time, to show myself? I think so. It is best that these people should know there is such a man as I here; it is a sound precaution, and may be a necessary preparation. But care, care, care! Let me think it out!”
Checking his steps which had begun to tend towards an object, he took a turn or two in the already darkening street, and traced the thought in his mind to its possible consequences. His first impression was confirmed. “It is best,” he said, finally resolved, “that these people should know there is such a man as I here.” And he turned his face towards Saint Antoine.
Defarge had described himself, that day, as the keeper of a wine-shop in the Saint Antoine suburb. It was not difficult for one who knew the city well, to find his house without asking any question. Having ascertained its situation, Carton came out of those closer streets again, and dined at a place of refreshment and fell sound asleep after dinner. For the first time in many years, he had no strong drink. Since last night he had taken nothing but a little light thin wine, and last night he had dropped the brandy slowly down on Mr. Lorry’s hearth like a man who had done with it.
It was as late as seven o’clock when he awoke refreshed, and went out into the streets again. As he passed along towards Saint Antoine, he stopped at a shop-window where there was a mirror, and slightly altered the disordered arrangement of his loose cravat, and his coat-collar, and his wild hair. This done, he went on direct to Defarge’s, and went in.
There happened to be no customer in the shop but Jacques Three, of the restless fingers and the croaking voice. This man, whom he had seen upon the Jury, stood drinking at the little counter, in conversation with the Defarges, man and wife. The Vengeance assisted in the conversation, like a regular member of the establishment.
As Carton walked in, took his seat and asked (in very indifferent French) for a small measure of wine, Madame Defarge cast a careless glance at him, and then a keener, and then a keener, and then advanced to him herself, and asked him what it was he had ordered.
He repeated what he had already said.
“English?” asked Madame Defarge, inquisitively raising her dark eyebrows.
After looking at her, as if the sound of even a single French word were slow to express itself to him, he answered, in his former strong foreign accent. “Yes, madame, yes. I am English!”
Madame Defarge returned to her counter to get the wine, and, as he took up a Jacobin journal and feigned to pore over it puzzling out its meaning, he heard her say, “I swear to you, like Evrémonde!”
Defarge brought him the wine, and gave him Good Evening.
“How?”
“Good evening.”
“Oh! Good evening, citizen,” filling his glass. “Ah! and good wine. I drink to the Republic.”
Defarge went back to the counter, and said, “Certainly, a little like.” Madame sternly retorted, “I tell you a good deal like.” Jacques Three pacifically remarked, “He is so much in your mind, see you, madame.” The amiable Vengeance added, with a laugh, “Yes, my faith! And you are looking forward with so much pleasure to seeing him once more to-morrow!”
Carton followed the lines and words of his paper, with a slow forefinger, and with a studious and absorbed face. They were all leaning their arms on the counter close together, speaking low. After a silence of a few moments, during which they all looked towards him without disturbing his outward attention from the Jacobin editor, they resumed their conversation.
“It is true what madame says,” observed Jacques Three. “Why stop? There is great force in that. Why stop?”
“Well, well,” reasoned Defarge, “but one must stop somewhere. After all, the question is still where?”
“At extermination,” said madame.
“Magnificent!” croaked Jacques Three. The Vengeance, also, highly approved.
“Extermination is good doctrine, my wife,” said Defarge, rather troubled; “in general, I say nothing against it. But this Doctor has suffered much; you have seen him to-day; you have observed his face when the paper was read.”
“I have observed his face!” repeated madame, contemptuously and angrily. “Yes. I have observed his face. I have observed his face to be not the face of a true friend of the Republic. Let him take care of his face!”
“And you have observed, my wife,” said Defarge, in a deprecatory manner, “the anguish of his daughter, which must be a dreadful anguish to him!”
“I have observed his daughter,” repeated madame; “yes, I have observed his daughter, more times than one. I have observed her to-day, and I have observed her other days. I have observed her in the court, and I have observed her in the street by the prison. Let me but lift my finger—!” She seemed to raise it (the listener’s eyes were always on his paper), and to let it fall with a rattle on the ledge before her, as if the axe had dropped.
“The citizeness is superb!” croaked the Juryman.
“She is an Angel!” said The Vengeance, and embraced her.
“As to thee,” pursued madame, implacably, addressing her husband, “if it depended on thee—which, happily, it does not—thou wouldst rescue this man even now.”
“No!” protested Defarge. “Not if to lift this glass would do it! But I would leave the matter there. I say, stop there.”
“See you then, Jacques,” said Madame Defarge, wrathfully; “and see you, too, my little Vengeance; see you both! Listen! For other crimes as tyrants and oppressors, I have this race a long time on my register, doomed to destruction and extermination. Ask my husband, is that so.”
“It is so,” assented Defarge, without being asked.
“In the beginning of the great days, when the Bastille falls, he finds this paper of to-day, and he brings it home, and in the middle of the night when this place is clear and shut, we read it, here on this spot, by the light of this lamp. Ask him, is that so.”
CAPITOLO XII. Oscurità
Sydney Carton si fermò in strada, non del tutto deciso su dove andare. “Alle nove alla banca di Tellson”, disse con aria pensierosa. “Faccio bene, nel frattempo, a farmi vedere? Credo di sì. È meglio che queste persone sappiano che c’è un uomo come me qui; è una precauzione salutare e potrebbe essere una preparazione necessaria. Ma attenzione, attenzione, attenzione! Lascia che ci pensi su!”
Fermando i passi che avevano cominciato ad avviarsi verso un obiettivo, fece due o tre giri per la strada già in oscuramento, e seguì il pensiero nella sua mente fino alle sue possibili conseguenze. La sua prima impressione fu confermata. “È meglio”, disse, finalmente deciso, “che queste persone sappiano che esiste un uomo come me qui.” E volse il viso verso Saint Antoine.
Defarge si era descritto quel giorno come il proprietario di un negozio di vini nel sobborgo Saint Antoine. Non era difficile per chi conosceva bene la città trovare la sua casa senza fare domande. Avendo accertato la posizione, Carton uscì di nuovo da quelle strade più vicine e pranzò in un luogo dove si poteva mangiare qualcosa; dopo pranzo cadde addormentato profondamente. Per la prima volta da molti anni non aveva bevuto alcolici forti. Dall’ultima notte in poi non aveva preso altro che un po’ di vino leggero e acquoso, e l’ultima notte aveva versato il brandy lentamente sul focolare del signor Lorry come uno che ne ha finito con quella roba.
Erano le sette di sera quando si svegliò riposato e uscì nuovamente per le strade. Mentre passava verso Saint Antoine, si fermò davanti alla vetrina di un negozio dove c’era uno specchio, e sistemò leggermente l’arruffata disposizione della sua cravatta allentata, del colletto del cappotto e dei suoi capelli selvaggi. Fatto ciò, proseguì dritto verso la casa di Defarge ed entrò.
Per caso non c’era nessun cliente nel negozio se non Jacques Tre, dalle dita irrequiete e dalla voce rauca. Quell’uomo, che aveva visto nella giuria, stava bevendo al piccolo bancone, in conversazione con i Defarge, marito e moglie. La Vendetta partecipava alla conversazione come un membro a tutti gli effetti della famiglia.
Mentre Carton entrava, prendeva posto e chiedeva (in un francese molto indifferente) una piccola misura di vino, Madame Defarge gli lanciò uno sguardo distratto, poi uno più attento, poi ancora più attento, e infine si avvicinò a lui in persona per chiedergli cosa aveva ordinato.
Ripeté ciò che aveva già detto.
“Inglese?” chiese Madame Defarge, sollevando interrogativamente le sue scure sopracciglia.
Dopo averla guardata come se il suono anche di una sola parola francese gli fosse lento a esprimersi, rispose con lo stesso forte accento straniero di prima: «Sì, signora, sì. Sono inglese!»
Madame Defarge tornò al suo banco per prendere il vino e mentre lui afferrava un giornale giacobino e fingeva di studiarlo cercando di decifrarne il significato, la sentì dire: «Te lo giuro, come Evrémonde!»
Defarge gli portò il vino e lo salutò con un buonasera.
“Come?”
“Buona sera.”
«Oh! Buona sera, cittadino», riempiendo il suo bicchiere. «Ah! e buon vino. Bevo alla Repubblica».
Defarge tornò al banco e disse: «Certo, un po’ simile». Madame replicò severamente: «Ti dico che è molto simile». Jacques Tre osservò pacificamente: «È così presente nella tua mente, vedi, madame». La gentile Vengeance aggiunse ridendo: «Sì, la mia fede! E non vedi l’ora di rivederlo domani con tanto piacere!»
Carton seguiva le righe e le parole del suo giornale con un lento dito indice, e con un’espressione attenta e assorta. Tutti erano appoggiati al bancone vicini tra loro, parlando a bassa voce. Dopo un silenzio di qualche istante, durante il quale tutti lo guardavano senza distrarlo dalla sua apparente concentrazione sul giornale giacobino, riprendevano la conversazione.
«È vero ciò che dice la signora», osservò Giacomo Tre. «Perché fermarsi? C’è una grande forza in questo. Perché fermarsi?»
«Bene, bene», ragionò Defarge, «ma bisogna pur fermarsi da qualche parte. Dopo tutto, la domanda è ancora dove?»
«Alla distruzione», disse la signora.
«Magnifico!» gracchiò Giacomo Terzo. Anche la Vendetta approvava vivamente.
«L’estirpazione è una buona dottrina, mia moglie», disse Defarge, piuttosto turbato; «in generale non ho nulla da obiettare. Ma questo dottore ha sofferto molto; l’hai visto oggi; hai osservato il suo volto quando è stato letto quel documento».
«Ho osservato il suo volto!» ripeté la signora con disprezzo e rabbia. «Sì, ho osservato il suo volto. Ho osservato che non è il volto di un vero amico della Repubblica. Che si guardi dal suo volto!»
«E avete notato, mia moglie», disse Defarge con tono di rimprovero, «l’angoscia della figlia, che per lui deve essere un’angoscia terribile!»
«Ho osservato sua figlia», ripeté la signora; «sì, l’ho osservata più di una volta. L’ho osservata oggi e l’ho osservata in altri giorni. L’ho osservata nel tribunale e l’ho osservata per strada vicino alla prigione. Basta che io alzi un dito,!» Sembrò sollevarlo (gli occhi dell’ascoltatore erano sempre sul suo foglio) e lasciarlo cadere con un tonfo sul davanzale di fronte a lei, come se fosse caduto l’ascia.
«La cittadina è superba!» gracchiò il giurato.
«È un angelo!» disse La Vendetta e la abbracciò.
«Quanto a te», proseguì la signora inesorabilmente, rivolgendosi al marito, «se dipendesse da te - il che, per fortuna, non è - tu lo salveresti anche adesso.»
«No!» protestò Defarge «Non se sollevare questo bicchiere lo facesse! Ma lascerei la questione così com’è. Dico di fermarsi qui».
“Ci vediamo allora, Jacques”, disse la signora Defarge, con rabbia; “e ci vediamo anche tu, piccola Vendetta; vi vedo entrambi! Ascoltate! Per altri crimini come tiranni e oppressori, ho questa razza da un lungo periodo nel mio registro, condannata alla distruzione e all’estirpazione. Chiedete a mio marito, è così.”
«È così», convenne Defarge senza essere stato interrogato.
«All’inizio dei grandi giorni, quando cade la Bastiglia, trova questo documento di oggi e lo porta a casa, e nel cuore della notte quando questo luogo è deserto e chiuso, lo leggiamo qui in questo punto alla luce di questa lampada. Chiedetegli se è così».
“It is so,” assented Defarge.
“That night, I tell him, when the paper is read through, and the lamp is burnt out, and the day is gleaming in above those shutters and between those iron bars, that I have now a secret to communicate. Ask him, is that so.”
“It is so,” assented Defarge again.
“I communicate to him that secret. I smite this bosom with these two hands as I smite it now, and I tell him, ‘Defarge, I was brought up among the fishermen of the sea-shore, and that peasant family so injured by the two Evrémonde brothers, as that Bastille paper describes, is my family. Defarge, that sister of the mortally wounded boy upon the ground was my sister, that husband was my sister’s husband, that unborn child was their child, that brother was my brother, that father was my father, those dead are my dead, and that summons to answer for those things descends to 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 deadly nature of her wrath—the listener could feel how white she was, without seeing her—and both highly commended it. Defarge, a weak minority, interposed a few words for the memory of the compassionate wife of the Marquis; but only elicited from his own wife a repetition of her last reply. “Tell the Wind and the Fire where to stop; not me!”
Customers entered, and the group was broken up. The English customer paid for what he had had, perplexedly counted his change, and asked, as a stranger, to be directed towards the National Palace. Madame Defarge took him to the door, and put her arm on his, in pointing out the road. The English customer was not without his reflections then, that it might be a good deed to seize that arm, lift it, and strike under it sharp and deep.
But, he went his way, and was soon swallowed up in the shadow of the prison wall. At the appointed hour, he emerged from it to present himself in Mr. Lorry’s room again, where he found the old gentleman walking to and fro in restless anxiety. He said he had been with Lucie until just now, and had only left her for a few minutes, to come and keep his appointment. Her father had not been seen, since he quitted the banking-house towards four o’clock. She had some faint hopes that his mediation might save Charles, but they were very slight. He had been more than five 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 arranged that he should go back to her, and come to the banking-house again at midnight. In the meanwhile, Carton would wait alone by the fire for the Doctor.
He waited and waited, and the clock struck twelve; but Doctor Manette did not come back. Mr. Lorry returned, and found no tidings of him, and brought none. Where could he be?
They were discussing this question, and were almost building up some weak structure of hope on his prolonged absence, when they heard him on the stairs. The instant he entered the room, it was plain that all was lost.
Whether he had really been to any one, or whether he had been all that time traversing the streets, was never known. As he stood staring at them, they asked him no question, for his face told them 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 helpless look straying all around, he took his coat off, and let it drop on the floor.
“Where is my bench? I have been looking everywhere for my bench, 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 me get to work. Give me my work.”
Receiving no answer, he tore his hair, and beat his feet upon the ground, like a distracted child.
“Don’t torture a poor forlorn wretch,” he implored them, with a dreadful cry; “but give me my work! What is to become of us, if those shoes are not done to-night?”
Lost, utterly lost!
It was so clearly beyond hope to reason with him, or try to restore him, that—as if by agreement—they each put a hand upon his shoulder, and soothed him to sit down before the fire, with a promise that he should have his work presently. He sank into the chair, and brooded over the embers, and shed tears. As if all that had happened since the garret time were a momentary fancy, or a dream, Mr. Lorry saw him shrink into the exact figure that Defarge had had in keeping.
Affected, and impressed with terror as they both were, by this spectacle of ruin, it was not a time to yield to such emotions. His lonely daughter, bereft of her final hope and reliance, appealed to them both too strongly. Again, as if by agreement, they looked at one another with one meaning in their faces. Carton was the first to speak:
“The last chance is gone: it was not much. Yes; he had better be taken to her. But, before you go, will you, for a moment, steadily attend to me? Don’t ask me why I make the stipulations I am going to make, and exact the promise I am going to exact; I have a reason—a good one.”
“I do not doubt it,” answered Mr. Lorry. “Say on.”
The figure in the chair between them, was all the time monotonously rocking itself to and fro, and moaning. They spoke in such a tone as they would have used if they had been watching by a sick-bed in the night.
Carton stooped to pick up the coat, which lay almost entangling his feet. As he did so, a small case in which the Doctor was accustomed to carry the lists of his day’s duties, fell lightly on the floor. Carton took it up, and there was a folded paper in it. “We should look at this!” he said. Mr. Lorry nodded his consent. He opened it, and exclaimed, “Thank God!”
«È così», convenne Defarge.
“Quella notte, gli dico, quando il giornale è stato letto e la lampada si è consumata e il giorno sta già filtrando attraverso quelle persiane e tra quelle sbarre di ferro, avrò un segreto da comunicargli. Chiedetegli se è così.”
«È così», acconsentì di nuovo Defarge.
«Gli comunico quel segreto. Mi batto il petto con queste due mani come lo batto ora e gli dico: ‘Defarge, sono stato allevato tra i pescatori della costa marina, e quella famiglia di contadini così oltraggiata dai due fratelli Evrémonde, come descrive quel documento della Bastiglia, è la mia famiglia. Defarge, quella sorella del ragazzo mortalmente ferito a terra era mia sorella, quell’uomo era il marito di mia sorella, quel non nato bambino era loro figlio, quel fratello era mio fratello, quel padre era mio padre, quei morti sono i miei morti e quella citazione a rispondere di quelle cose scende su di me!’ Chiedetegli se è così.»
«È così», assentì di nuovo Defarge.
«Allora dica al vento e al fuoco dove fermarsi», rispose la signora, «ma non lo dica a me.»
Entrambi i suoi ascoltatori traevano un orribile piacere dalla mortale natura della sua ira: chi l’ascoltava poteva immaginare quanto era pallida, senza vederla, e tutti e due la lodavano molto. Defarge, minoranza debole com’era, intervenne con poche parole in difesa della memoria della compassionevole moglie del Marchese; ma ottenne solo che sua moglie ripetesse l’ultima risposta: «Dite al Vento e alle Fiamme dove fermarsi, non a me!»
Entrarono dei clienti e il gruppo si sciolse. Il cliente inglese pagò per quello che aveva consumato, contò con aria perplessa il resto e chiese, da forestiero qual era, di essere indicata la strada verso il Palazzo Nazionale. Madame Defarge lo accompagnò alla porta e gli appoggiò il braccio sul suo mentre gli mostrava la strada. Allora il cliente inglese non poté fare a meno di pensare che sarebbe stata una buona azione afferrare quel braccio, sollevarlo e colpire sotto di esso con forza e profondità.
Ma lui proseguì per la sua strada e fu presto inghiottito dall’ombra del muro della prigione. All’ora stabilita, ne uscì per presentarsi di nuovo nella stanza del signor Lorry, dove trovò il vecchio gentiluomo che camminava avanti e indietro in irrequieta ansia. Disse che era stato con Lucie fino a poco prima, e l’aveva lasciata solo per pochi minuti, per venire a mantenere il suo appuntamento. Suo padre non si era più visto da quando aveva lasciato la banca verso le quattro o’di. Lei nutriva qualche vaga speranza che la sua mediazione potesse salvare Charles, ma erano davvero deboli. Era scomparso da più di cinque ore: dove poteva essere?
Il signor Lorry aspettò fino alle dieci; ma, non vedendo tornare il dottor Manette e non volendo lasciare Lucie più a lungo da sola, si accordarono che sarebbe tornato da lei e avrebbe fatto di nuovo capolino alla banca-casa a mezzanotte. Nel frattempo, Carton avrebbe aspettato solo accanto al fuoco il dottore.
Aspettò e aspettò, e la campana batté le dodici; ma il dottor Manette non tornava. Il signor Lorry ritornò, non trovò notizie di lui, e neppure ne portò. Dove poteva essere?
Stavano discutendo di questa questione e stavano quasi costruendo una debole struttura di speranza sulla sua prolungata assenza, quando lo sentirono sulle scale. Nel momento in cui entrò nella stanza, fu evidente che tutto era perduto.
Non si seppe mai se fosse davvero andato da qualcuno o se avesse trascorso tutto quel tempo a vagare per le strade. Mentre stava lì a fissarli, non gli fecero domande, perché il suo volto diceva loro tutto.
“Non riesco a trovarlo,” disse lui, “e devo averlo. Dov’è?”
La testa e il collo erano scoperti; mentre parlava con uno sguardo smarrito che vagava dappertutto si tolse la giacca e la lasciò cadere sul pavimento.
«Dov’è la mia panca? Ho cercato dappertutto la mia panca e non riesco a trovarla. Cosa hanno fatto del mio lavoro? Il tempo stringe: devo finire quelle scarpe».
Si guardarono l’un l’altro e il cuore si fermò loro nel petto.
«Dai, dai!» disse lui con tono lamentoso e miserevole «lascia che mi metta al lavoro. Dammi il mio lavoro».
Non ricevendo risposta, si strappò i capelli e batté i piedi per terra come un bambino disperato.
«Non torturate un povero disgraziato», li implorò con un urlo terribile, «ma datemi il mio lavoro! Cosa ne sarà di noi se quelle scarpe non saranno finite per stasera?»
Persi, completamente persi!
Era così chiaramente al di là della speranza ragionare con lui o tentare di riportarlo in sé, che - come se fosse stato stabilito per accordo - ciascuno gli posò una mano sulla spalla e lo indussero a sedersi davanti al fuoco, promettendogli che avrebbe potuto lavorare tra poco. Si lasciò cadere nella sedia, rimuginando sui tizzoni e versando lacrime. Come se tutto ciò che era accaduto da quando erano stati nel solaio fosse stato un’illusione momentanea o un sogno, il signor Lorry lo vide rimpicciolirsi fino a diventare la stessa persona esatta di cui Defarge si prendeva cura.
Impressionati e colpiti dal terrore com’erano entrambi da questo spettacolo di rovina, non era un momento per cedere a tali emozioni. La sua figlia solitaria, privata della sua ultima speranza e del suo sostegno, li esortava entrambi con troppa forza. Ancora una volta, come se fosse stato un accordo, si guardarono l’un l’altro con lo stesso significato nei loro volti. Carton fu il primo a parlare:
«L’ultima possibilità è svanita: non era molto. Sì, sarebbe meglio portarlo da lei. Ma prima di partire, vorresti prestarmi attenzione per un momento? Non chiedermi perché sto per fare le richieste che sto per fare e pretendere la promessa che sto per pretendere; ho una ragione - una buona ragione».
“Non ne ho dubbio,” rispose il signor Lorry, “prosegua pure”.
La figura sulla sedia tra loro si dondolava monotamente avanti e indietro tutto il tempo, lamentandosi. Parlavano con un tono che avrebbero usato se fossero stati di guardia accanto a un letto di malato nella notte.
Carton si chinò per raccogliere il cappotto che gli ingombrava quasi i piedi. Mentre lo faceva, una piccola custodia in cui il dottore era solito riporre l’elenco delle sue faccende quotidiane cadde leggermente sul pavimento. Carton la raccolse e vi trovò dentro un foglio piegato. «Dovremmo dare un’occhiata!» disse. Il signor Lorry annuì in segno di assenso. Lo aprì ed esclamò: «Grazie a Dio!»
“What is it?” asked Mr. Lorry, eagerly.
“A moment! Let me speak of it in its place. First,” he put his hand in his coat, and took another paper from it, “that is the certificate which enables me to pass out of this city. Look at it. You see—Sydney Carton, an Englishman?”
Mr. Lorry held it open in his hand, gazing in his earnest face.
“Keep it for me until to-morrow. I shall see him to-morrow, you remember, 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 that Doctor Manette has carried about him. It is a similar certificate, enabling him and his daughter and her child, at any time, to pass the barrier and the frontier! You see?”
“Yes!”
“Perhaps he obtained it as his last and utmost precaution against evil, yesterday. When is it dated? But no matter; don’t stay to 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 could have such a paper. It is good, until recalled. But it may be soon recalled, and, I have reason to think, will be.”
“They are not in danger?”
“They are in great danger. They are in danger of denunciation by Madame Defarge. I know it from her own lips. I have overheard words of that woman’s, to-night, which have presented their danger 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 the Defarges, and has been rehearsed by Madame Defarge as to his having seen Her”—he never mentioned Lucie’s name—“making signs and signals to prisoners. It is easy to foresee that the pretence will be the common one, a prison plot, and that it will involve her life—and perhaps her child’s—and perhaps her father’s—for both have been seen with her at that place. Don’t look 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 could depend on no better man. This new denunciation will certainly not take place until after to-morrow; probably not until two or three days afterwards; more probably a week afterwards. You know it is a capital crime, to mourn for, or sympathise with, a victim of the Guillotine. She and her father would unquestionably be guilty of this crime, and this woman (the inveteracy of whose pursuit cannot be described) would wait to add that strength to her case, and 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’s chair, “even of this distress.”
“You have money, and can buy the means of travelling to the seacoast as quickly as the journey can be made. Your preparations have been completed for some days, to return to England. Early to-morrow have your horses ready, so that they may be in starting trim at two o’clock in the afternoon.”
“It shall be done!”
His manner was so fervent and inspiring, that Mr. Lorry caught the flame, and was as quick as youth.
“You are a noble heart. Did I say we could depend upon no better man? Tell her, to-night, what you know of her danger as involving her child and her father. Dwell upon that, for she would lay her own fair head beside her husband’s cheerfully.” He faltered for an instant; then went on as before. “For the sake of her child 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’s last arrangement. Tell her that more depends upon it than she dare believe, or hope. You think that her father, even in this sad state, will submit himself to her; do you not?”
“I am sure of it.”
“I thought so. Quietly and steadily have all these arrangements made in the courtyard here, even to the taking of your own seat in the carriage. The moment I come to you, take me in, and drive away.”
“I understand that I wait for you under all circumstances?”
“You have my certificate in your hand with the rest, you know, and will reserve my place. Wait for nothing but to have my place occupied, and then for England!”
“Why, then,” said Mr. Lorry, grasping his eager but so firm and steady hand, “it does not all depend on one old man, but I shall have a young and ardent man at my side.”
“By the help of Heaven you shall! Promise me solemnly that nothing will influence you to alter the course on which we now stand pledged to one another.”
“Nothing, Carton.”
“Remember these words to-morrow: change the course, or delay in it—for any reason—and no life can possibly be saved, and many lives 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 though he even put the old man’s hand to his lips, he did not part from him then. He helped him so far to arouse the rocking figure before the dying embers, as to get a cloak and hat put upon it, and to tempt it forth to find where the bench and work were hidden that it still moaningly besought to have. He walked on the other side of it and protected it to the courtyard of the house where the afflicted heart—so happy in the memorable time when he had revealed his own desolate heart to it—outwatched the awful night. He entered the courtyard and remained there for a few moments alone, looking up at the light in the window of her room. Before he went away, he breathed a blessing towards it, and a Farewell.
«Che cosa è?» chiese il signor Lorry con impazienza.
“Un momento! Lasciatemi parlarne al momento giusto. Prima,” infilò la mano nel cappotto e ne estrasse un altro foglio, “questo è il certificato che mi permette di uscire da questa città. Guardatelo. Vedete? — Sydney Carton, inglese?”
Il signor Lorry lo teneva aperto nella sua mano, fissando il suo viso serio.
«Tienilo per me fino a domani. Vedrò lui domani, lo ricordi, e sarebbe meglio che non lo portassi dentro la prigione.»
“Perché no?”
“Non lo so; preferisco non farlo. Ora, prendi questo foglio che il dottor Manette ha portato con sé. È un certificato simile, che consente a lui e alla figlia e al suo bambino, in qualsiasi momento, di passare la barriera e il confine! Vedi?”
“Sì, davvero!”
«Forse l’ha ottenuto come sua ultima e massima precauzione contro il male, ieri. Quando è datato? Ma non importa; non perdere tempo a guardare; riponilo con cura insieme al mio e al tuo. Ora, bada bene! Non ho mai dubitato fino a un’ora o due fa che lui avesse, o potesse avere, un tale documento. È valido, finché non viene revocato. Ma potrebbe essere presto revocato, e io ho motivo di pensare che lo sarà».
“Non sono in pericolo?”
“Sono in grande pericolo. Sono in pericolo di essere denunciati da Madame Defarge. Lo so dalle sue stesse labbra. Ho ascoltato delle parole di quella donna, questa sera, che mi hanno mostrato il loro pericolo con forti colori. Non ho perso tempo e da allora ho visto lo spia. Mi ha confermato. Sa che un segatore di legna, che vive vicino al muro della prigione, è sotto il controllo dei Defarge, ed è stato istruito dalla Madame Defarge a dire che l’ha vista”—non ha mai menzionato il nome di Lucie— “fare segni e gesti ai prigionieri. È facile prevedere che la scusa sarà quella comune, un complotto in prigione, e che coinvolgerà la sua vita—e forse quella del suo bambino—e forse di suo padre—perché entrambi sono stati visti con lei in quel luogo. Non guardi così orripilato. Lei li salverà tutti.”
“Il cielo mi conceda di farlo, Carton! Ma come?”
«Le dirò come faremo. Dipenderà da lei e non potrebbe dipendere da persona migliore. Questa nuova denuncia certamente non avverrà prima di domani; probabilmente neppure entro due o tre giorni dopo, più probabilmente una settimana dopo. Sa che è un crimine capitale piangere per una vittima del patibolo o compatirla. Lei e suo padre sarebbero indubbiamente colpevoli di questo reato e questa donna (la cui ostinazione nel perseguire la sua preda non si può descrivere) aspetterebbe di aggiungere tale accusa al suo caso, per assicurarsi il doppio della sicurezza. Mi segue?»
«Con tanta attenzione e con tanta fiducia in ciò che dite, da farmi perdere di vista» toccando lo schienale della sedia del Dottore «per il momento anche questa disgrazia.»
“Avete denaro e potete acquistare i mezzi per viaggiare fino alla costa marina con la stessa rapidità con cui il viaggio può essere compiuto. I vostri preparativi sono stati completati da alcuni giorni, per tornare in Inghilterra. Domani mattina presto avete i cavalli pronti, così che siano in condizioni di partenza alle due o’clock del pomeriggio.”
“Sarà fatto!”
Il suo modo di fare era così appassionato e stimolante che il signor Lorry ne fu contagiato e divenne rapido come un giovane.
«Avete un cuore nobile. Ho detto che non potevamo contare su uomo migliore? Ditele, stasera sera, ciò che sapete del suo pericolo in quanto coinvolge il suo figlio e suo padre. Insistete su questo, perché lei metterebbe volentieri la sua bella testa accanto a quella di suo marito». Esitò un istante; poi continuò come prima. «Per amore del suo bambino e di suo padre, insistete con lei sulla necessità di lasciare Parigi, insieme a loro e a voi, in quell’ora. Ditele che è stata l’ultima disposizione di suo marito. Ditele che ne dipende più di quanto osi credere o sperare. Pensate che suo padre, anche in questo triste stato, si sottometterà a lei; non è così?»
Ne sono sicuro.
«Lo pensavo anch’io. Tutti questi preparativi sono stati fatti qui nel cortile con calma e senza fretta, fino a prendere posto tu stesso nella carrozza. Nel momento in cui vengo da te, portami dentro e partiamo».
“Capisco che ti aspetto in ogni caso?”
«Avete il mio certificato nelle mani con gli altri documenti, lo sapete, e mi riserverete un posto. Non aspettate altro che di vederlo occupato e poi via per l’Inghilterra!»
«Allora», disse il signor Lorry, stringendo la mano ansiosa ma così ferma e sicura di lui, «non dipende tutto da un vecchio, ma avrò al mio fianco un giovane uomo ardente.»
«Con l’aiuto del Cielo lo farai! Promettimi solennemente che nulla ti spingerà a cambiare la decisione alla quale ora siamo vincolati l’uno verso l’altra.»
“Niente, Carton.”
«Ricordate queste parole domani: cambiate rotta o ritardate a farlo — per qualsiasi motivo — e nessuna vita potrà essere salvata, mentre molte vite dovranno inevitabilmente essere sacrificate.»
“Li ricorderò. Spero di fare la mia parte fedelmente.”
“E spero di fare il mio. Ora arrivederci!”
Anche se lo disse con un sorriso grave e serio, e anche se mise la mano del vecchio sulle sue labbra, non si separò da lui allora. Lo aiutò ad alzare la figura che dondolava davanti alle braci morenti, a mettergli addosso mantello e cappello, e lo indusse a uscire per cercare il posto dove erano nascosti il banco di lavoro e gli attrezzi che ancora implorava con gemiti. Camminò al suo fianco proteggendolo fino al cortile della casa in cui quel cuore afflitto, così felice nel memorabile periodo quando lui aveva rivelato il proprio desolato cuore, vegliava la terribile notte. Entrò nel cortile e vi rimase per qualche momento solo, guardando verso la luce nella finestra della sua stanza. Prima di andarsene, rivolse a lei una benedizione e un addio.
CHAPTER XIII. Fifty-two
In the black prison of the Conciergerie, the doomed of the day awaited their fate. They were in number as the weeks of the year. Fifty-two were to roll that afternoon on the life-tide of the city to the boundless everlasting sea. Before their cells were quit of them, new occupants were appointed; before their blood ran into the blood spilled yesterday, the blood that was to mingle with theirs to-morrow was already set apart.
Two score and twelve were told off. From the farmer-general of seventy, whose riches could not buy his life, to the seamstress of twenty, whose poverty and obscurity could not save her. Physical diseases, engendered in the vices and neglects of men, will seize on victims of all degrees; and the frightful moral disorder, born of unspeakable suffering, intolerable oppression, and heartless indifference, smote equally without distinction.
Charles Darnay, alone in a cell, had sustained himself with no flattering delusion since he came to it from the Tribunal. In every line of the narrative he had heard, he had heard his condemnation. He had fully comprehended that no personal influence could possibly save him, that he was virtually sentenced by the millions, and that units could avail him nothing.
Nevertheless, it was not easy, with the face of his beloved wife fresh before him, to compose his mind to what it must bear. His hold on life was strong, and it was very, very hard, to loosen; by gradual efforts and degrees unclosed a little here, it clenched the tighter there; and when he brought his strength to bear on that hand and it yielded, this was closed again. There was a hurry, too, in all his thoughts, a turbulent and heated working of his heart, that contended against resignation. If, for a moment, he did feel resigned, then his wife and child who had to live after him, seemed to protest and to make it a selfish thing.
But, all this was at first. Before long, the consideration that there was no disgrace in the fate he must meet, and that numbers went the same road wrongfully, and trod it firmly every day, sprang up to stimulate him. Next followed the thought that much of the future peace of mind enjoyable by the dear ones, depended on his quiet fortitude. So, by degrees he calmed into the better state, when he could raise his thoughts much higher, and draw comfort down.
Before it had set in dark on the night of his condemnation, he had travelled thus far on his last way. Being allowed to purchase the means of writing, and a light, he sat down to write until such time as the prison lamps should be extinguished.
He wrote a long letter to Lucie, showing her that he had known nothing of her father’s imprisonment, until he had heard of it from herself, and that he had been as ignorant as she of his father’s and uncle’s responsibility for that misery, until the paper had been read. He had already explained to her that his concealment from herself of the name he had relinquished, was the one condition—fully intelligible now—that her father had attached to their betrothal, and was the one promise he had still exacted on the morning of their marriage. He entreated her, for her father’s sake, never to seek to know whether her father had become oblivious of the existence of the paper, or had had it recalled to him (for the moment, or for good), by the story of the Tower, on that old Sunday under the dear old plane-tree in the garden. If he had preserved any definite remembrance of it, there could be no doubt that he had supposed it destroyed with the Bastille, when he had found no mention of it among the relics of prisoners which the populace had discovered there, and which had been described to all the world. He besought her—though he added that he knew it was needless—to console her father, by impressing him through every tender means she could think of, with the truth that he had done nothing for which he could justly reproach himself, but had uniformly forgotten himself for their joint sakes. Next to her preservation of his own last grateful love and blessing, and her overcoming of her sorrow, to devote herself to their dear child, he adjured her, as they would meet in Heaven, to comfort her father.
To her father himself, he wrote in the same strain; but, he told her father that he expressly confided his wife and child to his care. And he told him this, very strongly, with the hope of rousing him from any despondency or dangerous retrospect towards which he foresaw he might be tending.
To Mr. Lorry, he commended them all, and explained his worldly affairs. That done, with many added sentences of grateful friendship and warm attachment, all was done. He never thought of Carton. His mind was so full of the others, that he never once thought of him.
He had time to finish these letters before the lights were put out. When he lay down on his straw bed, he thought he had done with this world.
But, it beckoned him back in his sleep, and showed itself in shining forms. Free and happy, back in the old house in Soho (though it had nothing in it like the real house), unaccountably released and light of heart, he was with Lucie again, and she told him it was all a dream, and he had never gone away. A pause of forgetfulness, and then he had even suffered, and had come back to her, dead and at peace, and yet there was no difference in him. Another pause of oblivion, and he awoke in the sombre morning, unconscious where he was or what had happened, until it flashed upon his mind, “this is the day of my death!”
Thus, had he come through the hours, to the day when the fifty-two heads were to fall. And now, while he was composed, and hoped that he could meet the end with quiet heroism, a new action began in his waking thoughts, which was very difficult to master.
CAPITOLO XIII. Cinquantadue
Nella nera prigione della Conciergerie, i condannati del giorno attendevano il loro destino. Erano in numero pari alle settimane dell’anno. Cinquantadue dovevano rotolare quel pomeriggio sulla corrente vitale della città verso il mare infinito e senza fine. Prima che le loro celle fossero liberate, erano già stati designati nuovi occupanti; prima che il loro sangue si unisse a quello versato ieri, il sangue destinato a mescolarsi con il loro domani era già stato separato.
Ne furono colpiti quarantadue. Dal generale agricoltore di settanta anni, cui le ricchezze non potevano comprare la vita, alla sarta di venti, cui la povertà e l’oscurità non potevano salvare. Le malattie fisiche, generate dai vizi e dalle negligenze degli uomini, colpiscono vittime di ogni condizione; e il terribile disordine morale, nato da indicibili sofferenze, oppressione insopportabile e indifferenza senza cuore, colpiva allo stesso modo senza distinzione.
Charles Darnay, solo in una cella, non si era illuso con nessuna lusinghiera fantasia da quando vi era stato condotto dal Tribunale. In ogni riga del racconto che aveva ascoltato, aveva udito la sua condanna. Aveva pienamente compreso che nessuna influenza personale avrebbe potuto salvarlo, che era praticamente condannato dai milioni e che le unità non potevano essergli di alcun aiuto.
Tuttavia non era facile, con il volto della sua amata moglie ancora fresco nella mente, prepararsi a ciò che doveva sopportare. La sua presa sulla vita era forte e fu molto, molto difficile allentare la morsa; con sforzi graduali e in piccole dosi si aprì un po’ qui, ma strinse più forte là; e quando concentrava le sue forze su quella mano e cedeva, questa si chiudeva di nuovo. C’era anche fretta, in tutti i suoi pensieri, un tumultuoso e febbrile lavorio del cuore che contrastava la rassegnazione. Se per un momento si sentiva rassegnato, allora sua moglie e il suo figlio che dovevano vivere dopo di lui, sembravano protestare e rendere egoista quella decisione.
Ma tutto ciò fu all’inizio. Ben presto la considerazione che non vi era alcuna vergogna nel destino che doveva affrontare e che molti percorrevano lo stesso cammino ingiustamente e lo calpestavano con fermezza ogni giorno, si fece strada per stimolarlo. Seguì il pensiero che gran parte della futura pace di mente dei cari dipendeva dalla sua tranquilla forza d’animo. Così, a poco a poco, si calmò e raggiunse uno stato migliore, in cui poteva elevare i suoi pensieri molto più in alto e trarre conforto da essi.
Prima che calasse il buio sulla notte della sua condanna, aveva percorso fin lì la sua ultima strada. Gli era stato concesso di acquistare i mezzi per scrivere e una luce, così si sedette a scrivere fino al momento in cui le lampade del carcere sarebbero state spente.
Le scrisse una lunga lettera a Lucie, dimostrandole che non aveva saputo nulla della prigionia di suo padre fino a quando non ne aveva sentito parlare da lei stessa e che era stato all’oscuro quanto lei delle responsabilità del padre e dello zio per quella tragedia finché il documento non fu letto. Le aveva già spiegato che la sua reticenza verso di lei sul nome che aveva rinunciato, era l’unica condizione - ora pienamente comprensibile - che suo padre aveva posto al loro fidanzamento e l’unica promessa che le aveva chiesto il mattino del loro matrimonio. La pregò, per amore di suo padre, di non cercare mai di sapere se suo padre avesse dimenticato l’esistenza del documento o se gli fosse stato richiamato alla memoria (per un momento o definitivamente) dalla storia della Torre, in quel vecchio domenica sotto il caro vecchio platano nel giardino. Se avesse conservato qualche ricordo preciso di esso, non ci sarebbe stato alcun dubbio che lo avesse creduto distrutto insieme alla Bastiglia quando non ne aveva trovata menzione tra le reliquie dei prigionieri scoperte dalla folla e descritte a tutto il mondo. La supplicò - sebbene aggiungesse di sapere che era inutile - di consolare suo padre, facendogli comprendere con ogni mezzo tenero che poteva pensare la verità che non aveva fatto nulla per cui potesse giustamente rimproverarsi, ma si era sempre dimenticato di sé stesso per il bene comune. Dopo averle chiesto di conservare il suo ultimo grato amore e la sua benedizione e di superare il proprio dolore per dedicarsi alla loro cara figlia, le impose, come si sarebbero incontrati in Paradiso, di confortare suo padre.
Al padre stesso di lei scrisse nello stesso tono; ma disse al padre che affidava espressamente sua moglie e il suo bambino alle sue cure. E glielo disse con grande enfasi, nella speranza di risvegliarlo da qualsiasi disperazione o pericoloso ripensamento verso cui prevedeva che potesse inclinare.
Raccomandò tutti a Mr Lorry e gli spiegò le sue faccende mondane. Finito questo, con molte frasi aggiunte di amicizia grata e affetto sincero, tutto fu fatto. Non pensò mai a Carton. La sua mente era così presidiata dagli altri che non gli venne in mente nemmeno una volta.
Aveva tempo per finire quelle lettere prima che le luci venissero spente. Quando si sdraiò sul suo letto di paglia, pensò di aver chiuso i conti con questo mondo.
Ma lo richiamò indietro nel suo sonno, e si mostrò in forme luminose. Libero e felice, di nuovo nella vecchia casa a Soho (anche se non aveva nulla della vera casa), inspiegabilmente liberato e leggero di cuore, era di nuovo con Lucie, e lei gli disse che tutto era un sogno, e che lui non era mai andato via. Una pausa d’oblio, e poi aveva anche sofferto, ed era tornato da lei, morto e in pace, eppure non c’era differenza in lui. Un’altra pausa di oblio, e si svegliò nella mattina tetra, ignaro di dove fosse o cosa fosse successo, finché gli balenò alla mente: “questa è la giornata della mia morte!”
Così era giunto attraverso le ore al giorno in cui sarebbero cadute le cinquantadue teste. E ora, mentre si manteneva calmo e sperava di poter affrontare la fine con tranquillo eroismo, un nuovo pensiero cominciò a manifestarsi nei suoi pensieri da sveglio, che era molto difficile controllare.
He had never seen the instrument that was to terminate his life. How high it was from the ground, how many steps it had, where he would be stood, how he would be touched, whether the touching hands would be dyed red, which way his face would be turned, whether he would be the first, or might be the last: these and many similar questions, in nowise directed by his will, obtruded themselves over and over again, countless times. Neither were they connected with fear: he was conscious of no fear. Rather, they originated in a strange besetting desire to know what to do when the time came; a desire gigantically disproportionate to the few swift moments to which it referred; a wondering that was more like the wondering of some other spirit within his, than his own.
The hours went on as he walked to and fro, and the clocks struck the numbers he would never hear again. Nine gone for ever, ten gone for ever, eleven gone for ever, twelve coming on to pass away. After a hard contest with that eccentric action of thought which had last perplexed him, he had got the better of it. He walked up and down, softly repeating their names to himself. The worst of the strife was over. He could walk up and down, free from distracting fancies, praying for himself and for them.
Twelve gone for ever.
He had been apprised that the final hour was Three, and he knew he would be summoned some time earlier, inasmuch as the tumbrils jolted heavily and slowly through the streets. Therefore, he resolved to keep Two before his mind, as the hour, and so to strengthen himself in the interval that he might be able, after that time, to strengthen others.
Walking regularly to and fro with his arms folded on his breast, a very different man from the prisoner, who had walked to and fro at La Force, he heard One struck away from him, without surprise. The hour had measured like most other hours. Devoutly thankful to Heaven for his recovered self-possession, he thought, “There is but another now,” and turned to walk again.
Footsteps in the stone passage outside the door. He stopped.
The key was put in the lock, and turned. Before the door was opened, or as it opened, a man said in a low voice, in English: “He has never seen me here; I have kept out of his way. Go you in alone; I wait near. Lose no time!”
The door was quickly opened and closed, and there stood before him face to face, quiet, intent upon him, with the light of a smile on his features, and a cautionary finger on his lip, Sydney Carton.
There was something so bright and remarkable in his look, that, for the first moment, the prisoner misdoubted him to be an apparition of his own imagining. But, he spoke, and it was his voice; he took the prisoner’s hand, and it was his real grasp.
“Of all the people upon earth, you least expected to see me?” he said.
“I could not believe it to be you. I can scarcely believe it now. You are not”—the apprehension came suddenly into his mind—“a prisoner?”
“No. I am accidentally possessed of a power over one of the keepers here, and in virtue of it I stand before you. I come from her—your wife, dear Darnay.”
The prisoner wrung his hand.
“I bring you a request from her.”
“What is it?”
“A most earnest, pressing, and emphatic entreaty, addressed to you in the most pathetic tones of the voice so dear to you, that you well remember.”
The prisoner turned his face partly aside.
“You have no time to ask me why I bring it, or what it means; I have no time to tell you. You must comply with it—take off those boots you wear, and draw on these of mine.”
There was a chair against the wall of the cell, behind the prisoner. Carton, pressing forward, had already, with the speed of lightning, got him down into it, and stood over him, barefoot.
“Draw on these boots of mine. Put your hands to them; put your will to them. Quick!”
“Carton, there is no escaping from this place; it never can be done. You will only die with me. It is madness.”
“It would be madness if I asked you to escape; but do I? When I ask you to pass out at that door, tell me it is madness and remain here. Change that cravat for this of mine, that coat for this of mine. While you do it, let me take this ribbon from your hair, and shake out your hair like this of mine!”
With wonderful quickness, and with a strength both of will and action, that appeared quite supernatural, he forced all these changes upon him. The prisoner was like a young child in his hands.
“Carton! Dear Carton! It is madness. It cannot be accomplished, it never can be done, it has been attempted, and has always failed. I implore you not to add your death to the bitterness of mine.”
“Do I ask you, my dear Darnay, to pass the door? When I ask that, refuse. There are pen and ink and paper on this table. Is your hand steady enough to write?”
“It was when you came in.”
“Steady it again, and write what I shall dictate. Quick, friend, quick!”
Pressing his hand to his bewildered head, Darnay sat down at the table. Carton, with his right hand in his breast, stood close beside him.
“Write exactly as I speak.”
“To whom do I address it?”
“To no one.” Carton still had his hand in his breast.
“Do I date it?”
“No.”
The prisoner looked up, at each question. Carton, standing over him with his hand in his breast, looked down.
“‘If you remember,’” said Carton, dictating, “‘the words that passed between us, long ago, you will readily comprehend this when you see it. You do remember them, I know. It is not in your nature to forget them.’”
He was drawing his hand from his breast; the prisoner chancing to look up in his hurried wonder as he wrote, the hand stopped, closing upon something.
“Have you written ‘forget them’?” Carton asked.
“I have. Is that a weapon in your hand?”
Non aveva mai visto lo strumento che avrebbe posto fine alla sua vita. Quanto era alto da terra, quanti gradini aveva, dove sarebbe stato messo in piedi, come sarebbe stato toccato, se le mani che lo avrebbero toccato si sarebbero tinte di rosso, verso quale direzione sarebbe stato rivolto il suo viso, se sarebbe stato il primo o forse l’ultimo: queste e molte altre domande simili, in nessun modo guidate dalla sua volontà, gli si affacciavano alla mente ripetutamente, innumerevoli volte. Non erano neppure connesse con la paura: non era consapevole di alcuna paura. Piuttosto, avevano origine da un strano e insistente desiderio di sapere cosa fare quando fosse giunto il momento; un desiderio gigantesco sproporzionato ai pochi rapidi istanti a cui si riferiva; una curiosità che era più simile alla curiosità di qualche altro spirito dentro di lui, che non la sua.
Le ore passavano mentre camminava avanti e indietro, e gli orologi battevano le ore che non avrebbe mai più udito: il nove era perduto per sempre, il dieci era perduto per sempre, l’undici era perduto per sempre, il dodici stava arrivando per scomparire. Dopo una dura lotta contro quell’eccentrica azione del pensiero che lo aveva ultimamente turbato, ne era uscito vincitore. Camminava avanti e indietro ripetendo dolcemente i loro nomi tra sé. La parte peggiore della lotta era finita. Poteva camminare su e giù libero da fantasie distraenti pregando per se stesso e per loro.
Dodici andati per sempre.
Era stato informato che l’ora finale era le Tre e sapeva che sarebbe stato convocato qualche tempo prima, dato che i tumbrili sobbalzavano pesantemente e lentamente per le strade. Pertanto, decise di tenere le Due davanti alla sua mente come l’ora, e così di rafforzarsi nell’intervallo in modo da poter essere capace, dopo quel tempo, di rafforzare gli altri.
Camminava regolarmente avanti e indietro con le braccia incrociate sul petto, un uomo molto diverso dal prigioniero che aveva camminato avanti e indietro a La Force, quando udì il primo colpo senza sorpresa. L’ora era trascorsa come la maggior parte delle altre ore. Devotamente grato al Cielo per aver ritrovato la sua padronanza di sé, pensò: “Ne resta solo un altro”, e si voltò per riprendere a camminare.
Passi nel corridoio di pietra fuori dalla porta. Si fermò.
La chiave fu inserita nella serratura e girata. Prima che la porta si aprisse, o mentre si stava aprendo, un uomo disse a bassa voce in inglese: “Non mi ha mai visto qui; sono rimasto lontano da lui. Entrate da sole; aspetto vicino. Non perdete tempo!”
La porta fu aperta e chiusa rapidamente, e di fronte a lui si ergeva, faccia a faccia, tranquillo, concentrato su di lui, con la luce di un sorriso sul volto e un dito ammonitore sulle labbra, Sydney Carton.
C’era qualcosa di così luminoso e notevole nel suo sguardo che, per un primo momento, il prigioniero dubitò che fosse una visione della sua immaginazione. Ma lui parlò, ed era la sua voce; prese la mano del prigioniero, ed era la sua presa reale.
«Di tutte le persone sulla terra, non ti aspettavi di vedermi proprio io?» disse.
«Non potevo credere che fossi tu. A malapena ci riesco anche adesso. Tu non sei» — l’apprensione gli balenò improvvisamente nella mente — «un prigioniero?»
«No. Per caso ho un certo potere su uno dei guardiani qui e grazie ad esso mi trovo davanti a voi. Vengo da lei, dalla vostra moglie, caro Darnay».
Il prigioniero strinse la mano.
Lei mi ha chiesto di farle una richiesta.
“Che cosa è?”
«Una preghiera molto seria, insistente e enfatica, rivolta a voi con i toni più patetici della voce così cara a voi, che ricordate bene.»
Il prigioniero girò il viso parzialmente di lato.
«Non avete tempo di chiedermi perché lo porto o cosa significa; io non ho tempo per dirvelo. Dovete acconsentire: toglietevi quegli stivali che indossate e mettete questi miei».
C’era una sedia contro la parete della cella, dietro il prigioniero. Carton, spingendosi in avanti, lo aveva già fatto sedere su quella sedia con la velocità del fulmine, e gli stava sopra a piedi nudi.
“Indossa questi miei stivali. Metti le tue mani su di loro, metti la tua volontà in essi. Svelto!”
«Carton, non c’è scampo da questo posto; è impossibile. Morirai solo con me. È pazzia.»
«Sarebbe pazzia se vi chiedessi di fuggire; ma lo faccio? Quando vi chiedo di uscire da quella porta, ditemi che è pazzia e restate qui. Cambiate quel cravattino con questo mio, quel soprabito con questo mio. Mentre lo fate, lasciatemi togliere questa fascia dai vostri capelli e scuotere i vostri capelli come questi miei!»
Con una rapidità straordinaria e con una forza sia di volontà che d’azione, che sembrava del tutto soprannaturale, impose tutte queste trasformazioni al prigioniero, che era come un giovane bambino nelle sue mani.
«Carton! Caro Carton! È pazzia. Non può essere compiuto, non potrà mai esserlo; è stato tentato e ha sempre fallito. Ti supplico di non aggiungere la tua morte all’amarezza della mia».
«Le chiedo, caro Darnay, di aprire la porta? Quando glielo chiederò, rifiuti. Su questo tavolo ci sono penna, inchiostro e carta. La sua mano è abbastanza ferma da scrivere?»
“È stato quando sei entrato.”
“Fermalo di nuovo e scrivi ciò che ti detterò. Svelto, amico, svelto!”
Premendosi la mano alla testa confusa, Darnay si sedette al tavolo. Carton, con la destra sul petto, gli stava vicino.
“Scrivi esattamente come parlo.”
“A chi lo indirizzo?”
«A nessuno». Carton aveva ancora la mano sul petto.
“Devo datarlo?”
“No.”
Il prigioniero alzava lo sguardo ad ogni domanda. Carton, che gli stava sopra con la mano sul petto, guardava giù.
«“Se ricordi,”» disse Carton dettando «le parole che ci siamo scambiati molto tempo fa, comprenderai facilmente questo quando lo vedrai. So che le ricordi. Non è nella tua natura dimenticarle».
Stava ritirando la mano dal petto; il prigioniero, per caso alzò lo sguardo nel suo affrettato stupore mentre scriveva e la mano si fermò, chiudendosi su qualcosa.
«Avete scritto “dimenticali”?» chiese Carton.
Ho visto. Quell’arma è nella tua mano?
“No; I am not armed.”
“What is it in your hand?”
“You shall know directly. Write on; there are but a few words more.” He dictated again. “‘I am thankful that the time has come, when I can prove them. That I do so is no subject for regret or grief.’” As he said these words with his eyes fixed on the writer, his hand slowly and softly moved down close to the writer’s face.
The pen dropped from Darnay’s fingers on the table, and he looked about him vacantly.
“What vapour is that?” he asked.
“Vapour?”
“Something that crossed me?”
“I am conscious of nothing; there can be nothing here. Take up the pen and finish. Hurry, hurry!”
As if his memory were impaired, or his faculties disordered, the prisoner made an effort to rally his attention. As he looked at Carton with clouded eyes and with an altered manner of breathing, Carton—his hand again in his breast—looked steadily at him.
“Hurry, hurry!”
The prisoner bent over the paper, once more.
“‘If it had been otherwise;’” Carton’s hand was again watchfully and softly stealing down; “‘I never should have used the longer opportunity. If it had been otherwise;’” the hand was at the prisoner’s face; “‘I should but have had so much the more to answer for. If it had been otherwise—’” Carton looked at the pen and saw it was trailing off into unintelligible signs.
Carton’s hand moved back to his breast no more. The prisoner sprang up with a reproachful look, but Carton’s hand was close and firm at his nostrils, and Carton’s left arm caught him round the waist. For a few seconds he faintly struggled with the man who had come to lay down his life for him; but, within a minute or so, he was stretched insensible on the ground.
Quickly, but with hands as true to the purpose as his heart was, Carton dressed himself in the clothes the prisoner had laid aside, combed back his hair, and tied it with the ribbon the prisoner had worn. Then, he softly called, “Enter there! Come in!” and the Spy presented himself.
“You see?” said Carton, looking up, as he kneeled on one knee beside the insensible figure, putting the paper in the breast: “is your hazard very great?”
“Mr. Carton,” the Spy answered, with a timid snap of his fingers, “my hazard is not that, in the thick of business here, if you are true to the whole of your bargain.”
“Don’t fear me. I will be true to the death.”
“You must be, Mr. Carton, if the tale of fifty-two is to be right. Being made right by you in that dress, I shall have no fear.”
“Have no fear! I shall soon be out of the way of harming you, and the rest will soon be far from here, please God! Now, get assistance and take me to the coach.”
“You?” said the Spy nervously.
“Him, man, with whom I have exchanged. You go out at the gate by which you brought me in?”
“Of course.”
“I was weak and faint when you brought me in, and I am fainter now you take me out. The parting interview has overpowered me. Such a thing has happened here, often, and too often. Your life is in your own hands. Quick! Call assistance!”
“You swear not to betray me?” said the trembling Spy, as he paused for a last moment.
“Man, man!” returned Carton, stamping his foot; “have I sworn by no solemn vow already, to go through with this, that you waste the precious moments now? Take him yourself to the courtyard you know of, place him yourself in the carriage, show him yourself to Mr. Lorry, tell him yourself to give him no restorative but air, and to remember my words of last night, and his promise of last night, and drive away!”
The Spy withdrew, and Carton seated himself at the table, resting his forehead on his hands. The Spy returned immediately, with two men.
“How, then?” said one of them, contemplating the fallen figure. “So afflicted to find that his friend has drawn a prize in the lottery of Sainte Guillotine?”
“A good patriot,” said the other, “could hardly have been more afflicted if the Aristocrat had drawn a blank.”
They raised the unconscious figure, placed it on a litter they had brought to the door, and bent to carry it away.
“The time is short, Evrémonde,” said the Spy, in a warning voice.
“I know it well,” answered Carton. “Be careful of my friend, I entreat you, and leave me.”
“Come, then, my children,” said Barsad. “Lift him, and come away!”
The door closed, and Carton was left alone. Straining his powers of listening to the utmost, he listened for any sound that might denote suspicion or alarm. There was none. Keys turned, doors clashed, footsteps passed along distant passages: no cry was raised, or hurry made, that seemed unusual. Breathing more freely in a little while, he sat down at the table, and listened again until the clock struck Two.
Sounds that he was not afraid of, for he divined their meaning, then began to be audible. Several doors were opened in succession, and finally his own. A gaoler, with a list in his hand, looked in, merely saying, “Follow me, Evrémonde!” and he followed into a large dark room, at a distance. It was a dark winter day, and what with the shadows within, and what with the shadows without, he could but dimly discern the others who were brought there to have their arms bound. Some were standing; some seated. Some were lamenting, and in restless motion; but, these were few. The great majority were silent and still, looking fixedly at the ground.
As he stood by the wall in a dim corner, while some of the fifty-two were brought in after him, one man stopped in passing, to embrace him, as having a knowledge of him. It thrilled him with a great dread of discovery; but the man went on. A very few moments after that, a young woman, with a slight girlish form, a sweet spare face in which there was no vestige of colour, and large widely opened patient eyes, rose from the seat where he had observed her sitting, and came to speak to him.
“Citizen Evrémonde,” she said, touching him with her cold hand. “I am a poor little seamstress, who was with you in La Force.”
“No; non sono armato.”
“Cosa hai in mano?”
«Lo saprete subito. Continuate a scrivere; mancano solo poche parole». Dettò di nuovo: «“Sono grato che sia giunto il momento in cui posso dimostrarlo. Che io lo faccia non è motivo di rimpianto o dolore”». Mentre pronunciava queste parole con gli occhi fissi sullo scrivano, la sua mano si mosse lentamente e dolcemente verso il viso dello scrivano.
La penna cadde dalle dita di Darnay sul tavolo e lui guardò intorno a sé con aria assente.
«Che vapore è quello?» chiese.
“Vapore?”
“Qualcosa che mi ha attraversato?”
«Non sono consapevole di nulla; qui non può esserci nulla. Prendi la penna e finisci. Affrettati, affrettati!»
Come se la sua memoria fosse compromessa o le sue facoltà disordinate, il prigioniero fece uno sforzo per raccogliere l’attenzione. Mentre lo guardava con occhi offuscati e con un respiro alterato, Carton — di nuovo la mano sul petto — lo fissò con determinazione.
“Fretta, fretta!”
Il prigioniero si chinò di nuovo sulla carta.
«“Se le cose fossero state diverse,”» la mano di Carton stava nuovamente scivolando giù con cautela e dolcezza; «“non avrei mai approfittato della maggiore opportunità. Se le cose fossero state diverse,”» la mano era sul volto del prigioniero; «“avrei solo avuto tanto di più da rimproverarmi. Se le cose fossero state diverse—”» Carton guardò la penna e vide che stava tracciando segni incomprensibili.
La mano di Carton non si mosse più verso il suo petto. Il prigioniero balzò in piedi con uno sguardo accusatorio, ma la mano di Carton era vicina e ferma sulle sue narici, e il braccio sinistro di Carton lo afferrò intorno alla vita. Per alcuni secondi lottò debolmente contro l’uomo che era venuto a sacrificare la sua vita per lui; ma, in un minuto o giù di lì, giaceva privo di sensi sul terreno.
In fretta, ma con mani altrettanto fedeli allo scopo quanto lo era il suo cuore, Carton si vestì degli abiti che il prigioniero aveva deposto, pettinò i capelli all’indietro e li legò col nastro che il prigioniero aveva indossato. Poi chiamò dolcemente: «Entrate là! Venite avanti!» e lo Spia si presentò.
«Vedete?», disse Carton alzando gli occhi mentre stava inginocchiato su un ginocchio accanto alla figura priva di sensi e metteva il foglio nel petto: «è molto grande il vostro rischio?»
«Signor Carton», rispose lo Spia con un timido schiocco delle dita, «il mio azzardo non è quello, nel pieno di questa faccenda, se lei resta fedele alla sua promessa.»
«Non mi temere. Sarò fedele fino alla morte.»
«Dovete esserlo, signor Carton, se la storia dei cinquantadue deve essere vera. Essendo messo a posto da voi con quell’abito, non avrò alcuna paura.»
«Non abbiate paura! Presto non sarò più in grado di nuocervi e gli altri saranno presto lontani da qui, Dio volendo! Ora, chiamate qualcuno in aiuto e portatemi alla carrozza.»
«Lei?» disse lo Spia con nervosismo.
“Lui, uomo, con cui ho scambiato. Uscite dal cancello da cui mi avete fatto entrare?”
“Naturalmente.”
«Ero debole e svenuto quando mi avete portato qui dentro, e sono più svenuto ora che mi portate fuori. L’intervista di congedo mi ha sopraffatto. Una cosa del genere è successa spesso, troppo spesso. La vostra vita è nelle vostre mani. In fretta! Chiamate aiuto!»
«Giurate di non tradirmi?» disse lo Spia tremante mentre si fermò per un ultimo momento.
«Uomo, uomo!» rispose Carton, battendo il piede; «Non ho già giurato con un voto solenne di portare a termine questo, che tu stai sprecando i preziosi momenti ora? Portalo tu stesso nel cortile che conosci, mettilo tu stesso nella carrozza, mostralo tu stesso al signor Lorry, digli tu stesso di non dargli alcun rimedio ma solo aria, e di ricordare le mie parole dell’ultima notte e la sua promessa dell’ultima notte, e poi vattene!»
La spia si ritirò e Carton sedette al tavolo appoggiando la fronte sulle mani. La spia tornò subito dopo con due uomini.
«E allora?» disse uno di loro, contemplando la figura caduta. «Così addolorato per aver scoperto che il suo amico ha vinto un premio alla lotteria della Santa Ghigliottina?»
“Un buon patriota”, disse l’altro, “non avrebbe potuto essere più afflitto se lo aristocratico avesse estratto un biglietto vincente”.
Sollevarono la figura priva di sensi e la posero su una barella che avevano portato alla porta, e si piegarono per trasportarla via.
«Il tempo è breve, Evrémonde», disse lo Spia con voce ammonitrice.
“Lo so bene”, rispose Carton. “Ti prego di fare attenzione al mio amico e lasciami solo”.
“Venite dunque, miei cari,” disse Barsad. “Sollevatelo e andiamocene!”
La porta si chiuse e Carton rimase solo. Tendendo al massimo i suoi poteri di ascolto, ascoltò qualsiasi suono che potesse denotare sospetto o allarme. Non ce n’erano. Le chiavi giravano, le porte sbattevano, dei passi si udivano lungo corridoi lontani: nessun grido veniva levato né nessuna fretta sembrava insolita. Respirando più liberamente dopo un po’, si sedette al tavolo e ascoltò di nuovo fino a quando la campana batté le Due.
Suoni che non lo spaventavano, perché ne intuiva il significato, cominciarono a farsi udire. Diverse porte si aprirono una dopo l’altra, e infine la sua. Un carceriere con un elenco in mano guardò dentro dicendo semplicemente: «Seguimi, Evrémonde!» e lui lo seguì fino a una grande stanza buia, in fondo al corridoio. Era un giorno invernale cupo, e tra le ombre all’interno e quelle all’esterno, riusciva appena a distinguere gli altri che erano stati portati lì per farsi legare i polsi. Alcuni stavano in piedi; alcuni seduti. Alcuni piangevano e si agitavano irrequieti; ma questi erano pochi. La grande maggioranza era silenziosa e immobile, con lo sguardo fisso a terra.
Mentre stava appoggiato al muro in un angolo buio, mentre alcuni dei cinquantadue venivano portati dentro dopo di lui, un uomo si fermò passando per abbracciarlo, come se lo conoscesse. Questo gli provocò una grande paura di essere scoperto; ma l’uomo proseguì. Pochi istanti dopo, una giovane donna, con una forma leggera e fanciullesca, un dolce viso smunto in cui non c’era traccia di colore, e grandi occhi pazienti spalancati, si alzò dal posto dove lui l’aveva vista seduta, e venne a parlargli.
«Cittadino Evrémonde», disse, toccandolo con la sua mano fredda, «sono una povera sarta che era con voi nella prigione di La Force».
He murmured for answer: “True. I forget what you were accused of?”
“Plots. Though the just Heaven knows that I am innocent of any. Is it likely? Who would think of plotting with a poor little weak creature like me?”
The forlorn smile with which she said it, so touched him, that tears started from his eyes.
“I am not afraid to die, Citizen Evrémonde, but I have done nothing. I am not unwilling to die, if the Republic which is to do so much good to us poor, will profit by my death; but I do not know how that can be, Citizen Evrémonde. Such a poor weak little creature!”
As the last thing on earth that his heart was to warm and soften to, it warmed and softened to this pitiable girl.
“I heard you were released, Citizen Evrémonde. I hoped it was true?”
“It was. But, I was again taken and condemned.”
“If I may ride with you, Citizen Evrémonde, will you let me hold your hand? I am not afraid, but I am little and weak, and it will give me more courage.”
As the patient eyes were lifted to his face, he saw a sudden doubt in them, and then astonishment. He pressed the work-worn, hunger-worn young fingers, and touched his lips.
“Are you dying for him?” she whispered.
“And his wife and child. Hush! Yes.”
“O you will let me hold your brave hand, stranger?”
“Hush! Yes, my poor sister; to the last.”
The same shadows that are falling on the prison, are falling, in that same hour of the early afternoon, on the Barrier with the crowd about it, when a coach going out of Paris drives up to be examined.
“Who goes here? Whom have we within? Papers!”
The papers are handed out, and read.
“Alexandre Manette. Physician. French. Which is he?”
This is he; this helpless, inarticulately murmuring, wandering old man pointed out.
“Apparently the Citizen-Doctor is not in his right mind? The Revolution-fever will have been too much for him?”
Greatly too much for him.
“Hah! Many suffer with it. Lucie. His daughter. French. Which is she?”
This is she.
“Apparently it must be. Lucie, the wife of Evrémonde; is it not?”
It is.
“Hah! Evrémonde has an assignation elsewhere. Lucie, her child. English. This is she?”
She and no other.
“Kiss me, child of Evrémonde. Now, thou hast kissed a good Republican; something new in thy family; remember it! Sydney Carton. Advocate. English. Which is he?”
He lies here, in this corner of the carriage. He, too, is pointed out.
“Apparently the English advocate is in a swoon?”
It is hoped he will recover in the fresher air. It is represented that he is not in strong health, and has separated sadly from a friend who is under the displeasure of the Republic.
“Is that all? It is not a great deal, that! Many are under the displeasure of the Republic, and must look out at the little window. Jarvis Lorry. Banker. English. Which is he?”
“I am he. Necessarily, being the last.”
It is Jarvis Lorry who has replied to all the previous questions. It is Jarvis Lorry who has alighted and stands with his hand on the coach door, replying to a group of officials. They leisurely walk round the carriage and leisurely mount the box, to look at what little luggage it carries on the roof; the country-people hanging about, press nearer to the coach doors and greedily stare in; a little child, carried by its mother, has its short arm held out for it, that it may touch the wife of an aristocrat who has gone to the Guillotine.
“Behold your papers, Jarvis Lorry, countersigned.”
“One can depart, citizen?”
“One can depart. Forward, my postilions! A good journey!”
“I salute you, citizens.—And the first danger passed!”
These are again the words of Jarvis Lorry, as he clasps his hands, and looks upward. There is terror in the carriage, there is weeping, there is the heavy breathing of the insensible traveller.
“Are we not going too slowly? Can they not be induced to go faster?” asks Lucie, clinging to the old man.
“It would seem like flight, my darling. I must not urge them too much; it would rouse suspicion.”
“Look back, look back, and see if we are pursued!”
“The road is clear, my dearest. So far, we are not pursued.”
Houses in twos and threes pass by us, solitary farms, ruinous buildings, dye-works, tanneries, and the like, open country, avenues of leafless trees. The hard uneven pavement is under us, the soft deep mud is on either side. Sometimes, we strike into the skirting mud, to avoid the stones that clatter us and shake us; sometimes, we stick in ruts and sloughs there. The agony of our impatience is then so great, that in our wild alarm and hurry we are for getting out and running—hiding—doing anything but stopping.
Out of the open country, in again among ruinous buildings, solitary farms, dye-works, tanneries, and the like, cottages in twos and threes, avenues of leafless trees. Have these men deceived us, and taken us back by another road? Is not this the same place twice over? Thank Heaven, no. A village. Look back, look back, and see if we are pursued! Hush! the posting-house.
Leisurely, our four horses are taken out; leisurely, the coach stands in the little street, bereft of horses, and with no likelihood upon it of ever moving again; leisurely, the new horses come into visible existence, one by one; leisurely, the new postilions follow, sucking and plaiting the lashes of their whips; leisurely, the old postilions count their money, make wrong additions, and arrive at dissatisfied results. All the time, our overfraught hearts are beating at a rate that would far outstrip the fastest gallop of the fastest horses ever foaled.
At length the new postilions are in their saddles, and the old are left behind. We are through the village, up the hill, and down the hill, and on the low watery grounds. Suddenly, the postilions exchange speech with animated gesticulation, and the horses are pulled up, almost on their haunches. We are pursued?
“Ho! Within the carriage there. Speak then!”
“What is it?” asks Mr. Lorry, looking out at window.
“How many did they say?”
“I do not understand you.”
“—At the last post. How many to the Guillotine to-day?”
“Fifty-two.”
“I said so! A brave number! My fellow-citizen here would have it forty-two; ten more heads are worth having. The Guillotine goes handsomely. I love it. Hi forward. Whoop!”
The night comes on dark. He moves more; he is beginning to revive, and to speak intelligibly; he thinks they are still together; he asks him, by his name, what he has in his hand. O pity us, kind Heaven, and help us! Look out, look out, and see if we are pursued.
The wind is rushing after us, and the clouds are flying after us, and the moon is plunging after us, and the whole wild night is in pursuit of us; but, so far, we are pursued by nothing else.
Rispose sottovoce: «Vero. Mi scordo di cosa sei stato accusato?»
«Intrighi. Sebbene il giusto Cielo sappia che io sono innocente di qualsiasi. È probabile? Chi penserebbe mai ad architettare intrighi con una povera piccola creatura debole come me?»
Il sorriso desolato con cui lo disse la commosse così tanto che le lacrime gli sgorgarono dagli occhi.
“Non ho paura di morire, Cittadino Evrémonde, ma non ho fatto nulla. Non sono contrario alla morte se la Repubblica che farà tanto bene a noi poveri trarrà profitto dalla mia morte; ma non vedo come ciò possa essere, Cittadino Evrémonde. Una così misera e debole creatura!”
Come l’ultima cosa al mondo verso cui il suo cuore avrebbe dovuto riscaldarsi e ammorbidirsi, si è invece riscaldato ed ammorbidito per questa povera ragazza.
“Ho sentito che sei stato rilasciato, Cittadino Evrémonde. Speravo fosse vero?”
“Lo era. Ma fui nuovamente catturato e condannato.”
«Se posso cavalcare con te, Cittadino Evrémonde, mi permetterai di tenerti la mano? Non ho paura, ma sono piccola e debole, e questo mi darà più coraggio.»
Quando gli occhi pazienti si alzarono verso il suo viso, vide un improvviso dubbio in essi e poi stupore. Strinse le giovani dita consumate dal lavoro e dalla fame e toccò le sue labbra.
«Stai morendo per lui?» sussurrò lei.
“E sua moglie e il suo bambino. Zitto! Sì.”
“Mi lascerai stringere la tua coraggiosa mano, sconosciuto?”
“Silenzio! Sì, mia povera sorella; fino alla fine.”
Le stesse ombre che si posano sulla prigione, si posano, in quell’ora del primo pomeriggio, sulla Barriera e sulla folla che la circonda quando una carrozza in uscita da Parigi arriva per essere ispezionata.
“Chi va là? Chi abbiamo qui dentro? Documenti!”
I fogli vengono distribuiti e letti.
“Alexandre Manette. Medico. Francese. Chi è?”
Ecco lui: questo vecchio smarrito, incapace di articolare parole e che mormora senza senso, fu indicato.
«Sembra che il Cittadino-Dottore non sia più sano di mente? La febbre della Rivoluzione sarà stata troppo forte per lui?»
Ben oltre le sue possibilità.
“Ah! Molti ne soffrono. Lucie. Sua figlia. Francese. Chi è?”
Questa è lei.
“Sembra che debba essere così. Lucie, la moglie di Evrémonde; non è vero?”
It is.
«Ah! Evrémonde ha un appuntamento altrove. Lucie, la sua figlia. Inglese. Questa è lei?»
Lei e nessun’altra.
«Baciami, figlio di Evrémonde. Ora hai baciato un buon repubblicano; qualcosa di nuovo nella tua famiglia; ricordalo! Sydney Carton. Avvocato. Inglese. Chi è lui?»
Egli giace qui, in questo angolo della carrozza. Anche lui viene indicato.
“Sembra che l’avvocato inglese sia svenuto?”
Si spera che si riprenderà nell’aria più fresca. Si riferisce che non gode di buona salute e si è tristemente separato da un amico che ha suscitato il dispiacere della Repubblica.
«È tutto qui? Non è molto, questo! Molti sono sotto la disapprovazione della Repubblica e devono guardare fuori dal piccolo finestrino. Jarvis Lorry. Banchiere. Inglese. Chi è lui?»
“Sono io. Per forza, essendo l’ultimo.”
È Jarvis Lorry che ha risposto a tutte le domande precedenti. È Jarvis Lorry che è sceso e sta con la mano sulla portiera della carrozza, rispondendo a un gruppo di funzionari. Camminano pigramente intorno alla carrozza e salgono lentamente sul predellino, per guardare il poco bagaglio che porta sul tetto; i contadini che si aggirano nei paraggi si avvicinano alle portiere della carrozza e fissano avidamente all’interno; un piccolo bambino, trasportato dalla madre, ha il suo braccio corto teso verso di lui, affinché possa toccare la moglie di un aristocratico che è andata alla ghigliottina.
«Ecco i suoi documenti, Jarvis Lorry, controfirmati».
“Si può partire, cittadino?”
«Si può partire. Avanti, miei postiglioni! Un buon viaggio!»
“Vi saluto, cittadini, e il primo pericolo è passato!”
Queste sono ancora le parole di Jarvis Lorry mentre si stringe le mani e guarda verso l’alto. C’è terrore nella carrozza, c’è pianto, c’è il respiro affannoso del viaggiatore privo di sensi.
«Non stiamo andando troppo lentamente? Non possiamo convincerli ad andare più veloce?» chiede Lucie, aggrappandosi al vecchio.
«Sembra una fuga, mia cara. Non devo insistere troppo, altrimenti desteremmo sospetti».
“Guardate indietro, guardate indietro e vedete se siamo inseguiti!”
«La strada è libera, mia cara. Finora non siamo inseguiti».
Ci passano accanto case a due o tre per volta, fattorie isolate, edifici in rovina, tintorie, concerie e cose del genere, campagna aperta, viali di alberi spogli. Sotto di noi il duro selciato irregolare, ai lati il morbido fango profondo. A volte ci addentriamo nel fango per evitare le pietre che ci scuotono e ci fanno battere i denti; a volte restiamo impantanati nelle buche e nei pantani. L’agonia della nostra impazienza è allora così grande, che nella nostra selvaggia agitazione e fretta vorremmo scendere e correre — nasconderci — fare qualsiasi cosa pur di non fermarci.
Fuori dalla campagna aperta, di nuovo tra edifici in rovina, fattorie isolate, impianti di tintura, concerie e cose del genere, casette a due o tre per volta, viali di alberi senza foglie. Questi uomini ci hanno ingannato e ci hanno riportati indietro su un’altra strada? Non è questo lo stesso posto due volte? Grazie al Cielo, no. Un villaggio. Guardate indietro, guardate indietro e vedete se siamo inseguiti! Silenzio! la stazione di posta-casa.
Con calma, i nostri quattro cavalli vengono portati fuori; con calma, la carrozza rimane nella piccola strada, priva di cavalli e senza alcuna probabilità di muoversi mai più; con calma, i nuovi cavalli appaiono uno dopo l’altro; con calma, arrivano anche i nuovi postiglioni che succhiano e intrecciano le fruste; con calma, i vecchi postiglioni contano il denaro, fanno somme errate e giungono a risultati insoddisfacenti. Tutto questo tempo, i nostri cuori sovraccarichi battono ad un ritmo che supererebbe di gran lunga il galoppo più veloce dei cavalli più veloci mai nati.
Finalmente i nuovi postiglioni sono in sella e gli altri rimangono indietro. Siamo usciti dal villaggio, saliti sulla collina e scesi dalla collina, e ora ci troviamo nelle basse terre paludose. Improvvisamente i postiglioni si scambiano parole con gesti animati e i cavalli vengono tirati indietro, quasi sulle zampe posteriori. Ci stanno inseguendo?
“Ehi! Dentro la carrozza. Parla!”
“Che cosa è?” chiede il signor Lorry guardando fuori dalla finestra.
“Quanti hanno detto?”
“Non ti capisco.”
All’ultimo posto. Quanti alla ghigliottina oggi?
“Cinquantadue.”
«Lo dicevo io! Un bel numero! Il mio compatriota qui sosteneva che fossero quarantadue; ma è sempre bene avere altre dieci teste. La ghigliottina funziona alla perfezione. Mi piace. Avanti, forza! Urrà!»
La notte scende oscura. Si muove di più; sta cominciando a riprendersi e a parlare in modo comprensibile; pensa che siano ancora insieme; lo chiama per nome e gli chiede cosa ha in mano. O compatiteci, cielo benigno, e aiutateci! State all’erta, state all’erta, e guardate se siamo inseguiti.
Il vento ci sta inseguendo e le nuvole stanno volando dietro di noi, e la luna si sta tuffando dietro di noi, e tutta la selvaggia notte ci sta dando la caccia; ma finora non ci insegue altro.
CHAPTER XIV. The Knitting Done
In that same juncture of time when the Fifty-Two awaited their fate Madame Defarge held darkly ominous council with The Vengeance and Jacques Three of the Revolutionary Jury. Not in the wine-shop did Madame Defarge confer with these ministers, but in the shed of the wood-sawyer, erst a mender of roads. The sawyer himself did not participate in the conference, but abided at a little distance, like an outer satellite who was not to speak until required, or to offer an opinion until invited.
“But our Defarge,” said Jacques Three, “is undoubtedly a good Republican? Eh?”
“There is no better,” the voluble Vengeance protested in her shrill notes, “in France.”
“Peace, little Vengeance,” said Madame Defarge, laying her hand with a slight frown on her lieutenant’s lips, “hear me speak. My husband, fellow-citizen, is a good Republican and a bold man; he has deserved well of the Republic, and possesses its confidence. But my husband has his weaknesses, and he is so weak as to relent towards this Doctor.”
“It is a great pity,” croaked Jacques Three, dubiously shaking his head, with his cruel fingers at his hungry mouth; “it is not quite like a good citizen; it is a thing to regret.”
“See you,” said madame, “I care nothing for this Doctor, I. He may wear his head or lose it, for any interest I have in him; it is all one to me. But, the Evrémonde people are to be exterminated, and the wife and child must follow the husband and father.”
“She has a fine head for it,” croaked Jacques Three. “I have seen blue eyes and golden hair there, and they looked charming when Samson held them up.” Ogre that he was, he spoke like an epicure.
Madame Defarge cast down her eyes, and reflected a little.
“The child also,” observed Jacques Three, with a meditative enjoyment of his words, “has golden hair and blue eyes. And we seldom have a child there. It is a pretty sight!”
“In a word,” said Madame Defarge, coming out of her short abstraction, “I cannot trust my husband in this matter. Not only do I feel, since last night, that I dare not confide to him the details of my projects; but also I feel that if I delay, there is danger of his giving warning, and then they might escape.”
“That must never be,” croaked Jacques Three; “no one must escape. We have not half enough as it is. We ought to have six score a day.”
“In a word,” Madame Defarge went on, “my husband has not my reason for pursuing this family to annihilation, and I have not his reason for regarding this Doctor with any sensibility. I must act for myself, therefore. Come hither, little citizen.”
The wood-sawyer, who held her in the respect, and himself in the submission, of mortal fear, advanced with his hand to his red cap.
“Touching those signals, little citizen,” said Madame Defarge, sternly, “that she made to the prisoners; you are ready to bear witness to them this very day?”
“Ay, ay, why not!” cried the sawyer. “Every day, in all weathers, from two to four, always signalling, sometimes with the little one, sometimes without. I know what I know. I have seen with my eyes.”
He made all manner of gestures while he spoke, as if in incidental imitation of some few of the great diversity of signals that he had never seen.
“Clearly plots,” said Jacques Three. “Transparently!”
“There is no doubt of the Jury?” inquired Madame Defarge, letting her eyes turn to him with a gloomy smile.
“Rely upon the patriotic Jury, dear citizeness. I answer for my fellow-Jurymen.”
“Now, let me see,” said Madame Defarge, pondering again. “Yet once more! Can I spare this Doctor to my husband? I have no feeling either way. Can I spare him?”
“He would count as one head,” observed Jacques Three, in a low voice. “We really have not heads enough; it would be a pity, I think.”
“He was signalling with her when I saw her,” argued Madame Defarge; “I cannot speak of one without the other; and I must not be silent, and trust the case wholly to him, this little citizen here. For, I am not a bad witness.”
The Vengeance and Jacques Three vied with each other in their fervent protestations that she was the most admirable and marvellous of witnesses. The little citizen, not to be outdone, declared her to be a celestial witness.
“He must take his chance,” said Madame Defarge. “No, I cannot spare him! You are engaged at three o’clock; you are going to see the batch of to-day executed.—You?”
The question was addressed to the wood-sawyer, who hurriedly replied in the affirmative: seizing the occasion to add that he was the most ardent of Republicans, and that he would be in effect the most desolate of Republicans, if anything prevented him from enjoying the pleasure of smoking his afternoon pipe in the contemplation of the droll national barber. He was so very demonstrative herein, that he might have been suspected (perhaps was, by the dark eyes that looked contemptuously at him out of Madame Defarge’s head) of having his small individual fears for his own personal safety, every hour in the day.
“I,” said madame, “am equally engaged at the same place. After it is over—say at eight to-night—come you to me, in Saint Antoine, and we will give information against these people at my Section.”
The wood-sawyer said he would be proud and flattered to attend the citizeness. The citizeness looking at him, he became embarrassed, evaded her glance as a small dog would have done, retreated among his wood, and hid his confusion over the handle of his saw.
Madame Defarge beckoned the Juryman and The Vengeance a little nearer to the door, and there expounded her further views to them thus:
“She will now be at home, awaiting the moment of his death. She will be mourning and grieving. She will be in a state of mind to impeach the justice of the Republic. She will be full of sympathy with its enemies. I will go to her.”
CAPITOLO XIV. Il Lavoro a Maglia Finito
In quella stessa congiuntura di tempo quando i Cinquantadue attendevano il loro destino, Madame Defarge tenne un consiglio oscuramente minaccioso con La Vendetta e Jacques Tre della Giuria Rivoluzionaria. Madame Defarge non si riunì con questi ministri nella cantina del vino, ma nel capanno del segatore di legna, un tempo riparatore di strade. Lo stesso segatore non partecipò alla conferenza, ma rimase a una certa distanza, come un satellite esterno che non doveva parlare finché non richiesto, o esprimere un’opinione finché non invitato.
“Ma il nostro Defarge,” disse Jacques Tre, “è senza dubbio un buon Repubblicano? Eh?”
“Non c’è di meglio,” protestò la loquace Vendetta con le sue acute note, “in Francia.”
«Pace, piccola Vendetta», disse Madame Defarge, posando la mano con una leggera espressione di disapprovazione sulle labbra del suo luogotenente, «ascoltami. Mio marito, compagno cittadino, è un buon repubblicano e un uomo coraggioso; ha ben meritato della Repubblica e gode della sua fiducia. Ma mio marito ha le sue debolezze, ed è così debole da provare pietà per questo Dottore».
«È un grande peccato», gracchiò Giacomo Terzo scuotendo il capo con dubbio, mentre le sue crudeli dita si portavano alla bocca affamata; «non è proprio da buon cittadino; è una cosa di cui rammaricarsi».
«Addio», disse madame, «non mi interessa nulla di questo dottore. Può tenersi la testa o perderla, per quanto mi riguarda; è tutt’uno per me. Ma i Evrémonde devono essere sterminati e la moglie e il figlio dovranno seguire marito e padre».
«Ha un’ottima predisposizione per questo», gracchiò Giacomo Tre. «Ho visto occhi azzurri e capelli dorati lì, ed erano incantevoli quando Sansone li sollevava». Nonostante fosse un orco, parlava come un epicureo.
Madame Defarge abbassò gli occhi e rifletté un po’.
“Anche il bambino,” osservò Jacques Tre con un piacere meditativo delle sue parole, “ha capelli biondi e occhi blu. E raramente abbiamo un bambino lì. È una vista graziosa!”
«In una parola», disse Madame Defarge, uscendo dalla sua breve astrazione, «non posso fidarmi di mio marito in questa faccenda. Non solo sento, da ieri sera, che non oso confidargli i dettagli dei miei progetti; ma anche che se ritardo c’è il pericolo che lui dia l’allarme, e allora potrebbero scappare».
«Questo non deve mai accadere», gracchiò Giacomo Terzo, «nessuno deve sfuggire. Non ne abbiamo nemmeno la metà di quante ce ne servono. Dovremmo averne centoventi al giorno».
«In una parola», continuò Madame Defarge, «mio marito non ha la mia ragione per perseguire questa famiglia fino alla distruzione e io non ho la sua ragione per considerare questo dottore con alcuna sensibilità. Devo quindi agire da sola. Avvicinati, piccolo cittadino».
Il segatore di legna, che la teneva nel rispetto e se stesso nella sottomissione della mortele terrore mortale, avanzò con la mano sul suo berretto rosso.
«Per quanto riguarda quei segnali, piccolo cittadino», disse la signora Defarge con severità, «che ha fatto ai prigionieri: sei pronto a testimoniare di essi proprio oggi?»
«Eh sì, perché no!» gridò il segatore «Ogni giorno, in tutte le stagioni e con ogni tempo, dalle due alle quattro, sempre a fare quei segnali, talvolta con la bambina, talaltra senza. So quel che so. Ho visto tutto coi miei occhi».
Mentre parlava faceva ogni sorta di gesti, come se imitasse per caso alcuni dei tanti segnali diversi che non aveva mai visto imitazione.
“Chiaramente complotti,” disse Giacomo Tre. “Trasparentemente!”
“Non c’è alcun dubbio della giuria?”, chiese Madame Defarge, lasciando che i suoi occhi si volgessero verso di lui con un sorriso cupo.
“Affidati alla giuria patriottica, cara cittadina. Mi fido dei miei colleghi giurati.”
«Ora, lasciatemi riflettere», disse madama Defarge, meditando di nuovo. «Ancora una volta! Posso concedere a mio marito questo dottore? Non ho sentimenti in un senso o nell’altro. Posso concederglielo?»
«Lo si potrebbe contare come una testa», osservò Jacques Tre sottovoce. «Non abbiamo davvero abbastanza teste; sarebbe un peccato, credo».
«Stava segnalando con lei quando l’ho vista», argomentò Madame Defarge; «non posso parlare dell’uno senza l’altra; e non devo tacere e affidare il caso interamente a lui, questo piccolo cittadino qui. Perché io non sono una cattiva testimone».
La Vendetta e Giacomo Tre si contendevano l’un l’altro nel fare ferventi protestazioni che lei era la testimone più ammirevole e meravigliosa. Il piccolo cittadino, per non essere da meno, dichiarò che fosse una testimone celestiale.
«Deve correre il rischio», disse la signora Defarge. «No, non posso concedergliela! Tu sei impegnato alle tre in punto; stai per vedere l’esecuzione del gruppo di oggi. —Tu?»
La domanda era rivolta al segatore di legna, che rispose affrettatamente in modo affermativo: cogliendo l’occasione per aggiungere che lui era il più ardente dei Repubblicani e che sarebbe stato in effetti il più desolato dei Repubblicani se qualcosa gli avesse impedito di godersi il piacere di fumare la sua pipa del pomeriggio contemplando il buffo barbiere nazionale. Era così dimostrativo al riguardo che si sarebbe potuto sospettare (forse lo era, da parte degli occhi scuri che lo guardavano con disprezzo dal capo di Madame Defarge) che avesse i suoi piccoli timori personali per la sua stessa incolumità, ogni ora del giorno.
«Io», disse la signora, «sono ugualmente impegnata nello stesso posto. Dopo che sarà finita - diciamo alle otto di sera - vieni da me a Saint Antoine e daremo informazioni contro queste persone alla mia Sezione».
Il segatore di legna disse che sarebbe stato orgoglioso e lusingato di accompagnare la cittadina. La cittadina lo guardò, lui si confuse, evitò il suo sguardo come avrebbe fatto un piccolo cane, indietreggiò tra i suoi tronchi e nascose la sua confusione sul manico della sega.
Madame Defarge fece cenno al giurato e alla Vendetta di avvicinarsi un po’ di più alla porta, e lì espresse loro le sue ulteriori opinioni in questo modo:
“Ora sarà a casa, in attesa del momento della sua morte. Sarà in lutto e addolorata. Sarà nello stato d’animo di contestare la giustizia della Repubblica. Sarà piena di simpatia per i suoi nemici. Andrò da lei.”
“What an admirable woman; what an adorable woman!” exclaimed Jacques Three, rapturously. “Ah, my cherished!” cried The Vengeance; and embraced her.
“Take you my knitting,” said Madame Defarge, placing it in her lieutenant’s hands, “and have it ready for me in my usual seat. Keep me my usual chair. Go you there, straight, for there will probably be a greater concourse than usual, to-day.”
“I willingly obey the orders of my Chief,” said The Vengeance with alacrity, and kissing her cheek. “You will not be late?”
“I shall be there before the commencement.”
“And before the tumbrils arrive. Be sure you are there, my soul,” said The Vengeance, calling after her, for she had already turned into the street, “before the tumbrils arrive!”
Madame Defarge slightly waved her hand, to imply that she heard, and might be relied upon to arrive in good time, and so went through the mud, and round the corner of the prison wall. The Vengeance and the Juryman, looking after her as she walked away, were highly appreciative of her fine figure, and her superb moral endowments.
There were many women at that time, upon whom the time laid a dreadfully disfiguring hand; but, there was not one among them more to be dreaded than this ruthless woman, now taking her way along the streets. Of a strong and fearless character, of shrewd sense and readiness, of great determination, of that kind of beauty which not only seems to impart to its possessor firmness and animosity, but to strike into others an instinctive recognition of those qualities; the troubled time would have heaved her up, under any circumstances. But, imbued from her childhood with a brooding sense of wrong, and an inveterate hatred of a class, opportunity had developed her into a tigress. She was absolutely without pity. If she had ever had the virtue in her, it had quite gone out of her.
It was nothing to her, that an innocent man was to die for the sins of his forefathers; she saw, not him, but them. It was nothing to her, that his wife was to be made a widow and his daughter an orphan; that was insufficient punishment, because they were her natural enemies and her prey, and as such had no right to live. To appeal to her, was made hopeless by her having no sense of pity, even for herself. If she had been laid low in the streets, in any of the many encounters in which she had been engaged, she would not have pitied herself; nor, if she had been ordered to the axe to-morrow, would she have gone to it with any softer feeling than a fierce desire to change places with the man who sent her there.
Such a heart Madame Defarge carried under her rough robe. Carelessly worn, it was a becoming robe enough, in a certain weird way, and her dark hair looked rich under her coarse red cap. Lying hidden in her bosom, was a loaded pistol. Lying hidden at her waist, was a sharpened dagger. Thus accoutred, and walking with the confident tread of such a character, and with the supple freedom of a woman who had habitually walked in her girlhood, bare-foot and bare-legged, on the brown sea-sand, Madame Defarge took her way along the streets.
Now, when the journey of the travelling coach, at that very moment waiting for the completion of its load, had been planned out last night, the difficulty of taking Miss Pross in it had much engaged Mr. Lorry’s attention. It was not merely desirable to avoid overloading the coach, but it was of the highest importance that the time occupied in examining it and its passengers, should be reduced to the utmost; since their escape might depend on the saving of only a few seconds here and there. Finally, he had proposed, after anxious consideration, that Miss Pross and Jerry, who were at liberty to leave the city, should leave it at three o’clock in the lightest-wheeled conveyance known to that period. Unencumbered with luggage, they would soon overtake the coach, and, passing it and preceding it on the road, would order its horses in advance, and greatly facilitate its progress during the precious hours of the night, when delay was the most to be dreaded.
Seeing in this arrangement the hope of rendering real service in that pressing emergency, Miss Pross hailed it with joy. She and Jerry had beheld the coach start, had known who it was that Solomon brought, had passed some ten minutes in tortures of suspense, and were now concluding their arrangements to follow the coach, even as Madame Defarge, taking her way through the streets, now drew nearer and nearer to the else-deserted lodging in which they held their consultation.
“Now what do you think, Mr. Cruncher,” said Miss Pross, whose agitation was so great that she could hardly speak, or stand, or move, or live: “what do you think of our not starting from this courtyard? Another carriage having already gone from here to-day, it might awaken suspicion.”
“My opinion, miss,” returned Mr. Cruncher, “is as you’re right. Likewise wot I’ll stand by you, right or wrong.”
“I am so distracted with fear and hope for our precious creatures,” said Miss Pross, wildly crying, “that I am incapable of forming any plan. Are you capable of forming any plan, my dear good Mr. Cruncher?”
“Respectin’ a future spear o’ life, miss,” returned Mr. Cruncher, “I hope so. Respectin’ any present use o’ this here blessed old head o’ mine, I think not. Would you do me the favour, miss, to take notice o’ two promises and wows wot it is my wishes fur to record in this here crisis?”
“Oh, for gracious sake!” cried Miss Pross, still wildly crying, “record them at once, and get them out of the way, like an excellent man.”
“First,” said Mr. Cruncher, who was all in a tremble, and who spoke with an ashy and solemn visage, “them poor things well out o’ this, never no more will I do it, never no more!”
«Che donna ammirevole! Che donna adorabile!» esclamò Giacomo Tre, entusiasta. «Oh, mia cara!», gridò La Vendetta e la abbracciò.
«Prendete voi il mio lavoro a maglia», disse Madame Defarge, mettendolo nelle mani del suo luogotenente, «e tenetelo pronto per me nel mio solito posto. Tenetemi la mia solita sedia. Andateci dritto, perché oggi probabilmente ci sarà un afflusso maggiore del solito».
«Obbedisco volentieri agli ordini del mio Capo», disse La Vendetta con vivacità e baciandole la guancia. «Non arriverai tardi?»
“Sarò lì prima dell’inizio.”
“E prima che arrivino i carri. Assicurati di essere lì, la mia anima”, disse La Vendetta chiamandola dietro di sé, perché lei si era già voltata verso la strada, “prima che arrivino i carri!”
Madame Defarge fece un piccolo gesto con la mano per far capire che aveva sentito e che si poteva contare sul suo arrivo in buon tempo, e così proseguì nel fango, girando l’angolo del muro della prigione. La Vendetta e il Giurato, guardandola allontanarsi, apprezzarono molto la sua bella figura e le sue superbe doti morali.
C’erano molte donne in quel periodo, sulle quali il tempo aveva posato una mano terribilmente sfigurante; ma non ce n’era nessuna tra loro più temibile di questa donna spietata, che ora si faceva strada per le vie. Di carattere forte e senza paura, di senso acuto e pronta, di grande determinazione, di quel tipo di bellezza che non solo sembra conferire al suo possessore fermezza e animosità, ma suscita negli altri un riconoscimento istintivo di tali qualità; il turbolento periodo l’avrebbe spinta in alto, in qualsiasi circostanza. Ma, avendo assorbito fin dalla sua infanzia un senso di torto e un odio inveterato verso una classe, l’occasione l’aveva trasformata in una tigre. Era completamente priva di pietà. Se mai aveva posseduto tale virtù, era ormai del tutto svanita.
Non le importava nulla che un uomo innocente dovesse morire per i peccati dei suoi antenati; non vedeva lui, ma loro. Non le importava nulla che sua moglie sarebbe diventata una vedova e sua figlia un’orfana; era una punizione insufficiente, perché erano i suoi nemici naturali e la sua preda, e come tali non avevano diritto di vivere. Farle appello era disperato, dato che non provava alcuna pietà, neppure per se stessa. Se fosse stata abbattuta nelle strade in uno qualsiasi dei numerosi scontri ai quali si era data battaglia, non avrebbe avuto pietà di sé; né, se le fosse stato ordinato di presentarsi al patibolo il giorno dopo, ci sarebbe andata con un sentimento più tenero di quello di un feroce desiderio di scambiare posto con l’uomo che la mandava là.
Un cuore del genere portava con sé Madame Defarge sotto la sua rozza veste. Indossata con disinvoltura, era un abito piuttosto adatto a lei in un certo modo strano e i suoi capelli scuri apparivano ricchi sotto il suo ruvido cappello rosso. Nascosta nel suo seno, c’era una pistola carica. Nascosta alla sua vita, c’era un pugnale affilato. Così attrezzata e camminando con l’andatura sicura di tale personaggio e con la flessibile libertà di una donna che da giovane aveva abitualmente camminato a piedi nudi, senza calze, sulla sabbia marrone del mare, Madame Defarge si fece strada per le vie.
Ora, quando il viaggio del diligenza in partenza, che in quel preciso momento stava aspettando di completare il suo carico, era stato pianificato la sera prima, la difficoltà di far salire Miss Pross a bordo aveva molto impegnato l’attenzione del signor Lorry. Non si trattava solo di evitare di sovraccaricare la diligenza, ma era di massima importanza che il tempo impiegato per esaminarla e i suoi passeggeri fosse ridotto al minimo; poiché la loro fuga poteva dipendere dal risparmio di solo qualche secondo qua e là. Infine, dopo averci riflettuto con ansia, aveva proposto che Miss Pross e Jerry, che erano liberi di lasciare la città, la lasciassero alle tre in punto in un mezzo a ruote leggere noto in quell’epoca. Senza bagagli, avrebbero presto raggiunto la diligenza e, superandola e precedendola sulla strada, avrebbero ordinato i cavalli in anticipo, facilitando enormemente il suo progresso durante le preziose ore della notte, quando il ritardo era più temuto.
Scorgendo in questo accordo la speranza di poter prestare un servizio reale in quella urgente emergenza, Miss Pross lo accolse con gioia. Lei e Jerry avevano visto partire il calesse, sapevano chi era che Salomone aveva portato, erano rimasti per circa dieci minuti in agonia di sospeso, e ora stavano completando i loro preparativi per seguire il calesse, proprio mentre Madame Defarge, facendosi strada tra le vie, si avvicinava sempre più all’alloggio altrimenti deserto dove essi tenevano la loro consultazione.
«Ora ditemi che ne pensate, signor Cruncher», disse Miss Pross, la cui agitazione era così grande da impedirle quasi di parlare, stare in piedi, muoversi o vivere: «che ne pensate se non partissimo da questo cortile? Un’altra carrozza è già passata qui oggi e potrebbe destare sospetti».
«Il mio parere, signorina», rispose il signor Cruncher «è che avete ragione. E inoltre vi sosterrò io, giusto o sbagliato».
«Sono così distratta dalla paura e dalla speranza per le nostre care creature», disse la signorina Pross, piangendo disperatamente, «che non sono in grado di fare alcun piano. Sei tu capace di fare un qualche piano, mio caro buon signor Cruncher?»
«Per quanto riguarda un futuro germoglio della vita, signorina», rispose il signor Cruncher, «spero di sì. Per quanto riguarda l’attuale utilità di questo mio vecchio e benedetto cranio, non credo proprio. Mi farebbe la gentilezza, signorina, di prendere nota di due promesse e giuramenti che desidero registrare in questa crisi?»
«Oh, per amor del cielo!» gridò la signorina Pross, ancora in lacrime e disperata, «annotateli subito e toglietevi questo pensiero, come un brav’uomo.»
«Prima di tutto», disse il signor Cruncher, che era tutto tremante e parlava con un volto pallido e solenne, «che quelle povere creature se ne vadano ben lontane da qui, non lo farò mai più, mai più!»
“I am quite sure, Mr. Cruncher,” returned Miss Pross, “that you never will do it again, whatever it is, and I beg you not to think it necessary to mention more particularly what it is.”
“No, miss,” returned Jerry, “it shall not be named to you. Second: them poor things well out o’ this, and never no more will I interfere with Mrs. Cruncher’s flopping, never no more!”
“Whatever housekeeping arrangement that may be,” said Miss Pross, striving to dry her eyes and compose herself, “I have no doubt it is best that Mrs. Cruncher should have it entirely under her own superintendence.—O my poor darlings!”
“I go so far as to say, miss, moreover,” proceeded Mr. Cruncher, with a most alarming tendency to hold forth as from a pulpit—“and let my words be took down and took to Mrs. Cruncher through yourself—that wot my opinions respectin’ flopping has undergone a change, and that wot I only hope with all my heart as Mrs. Cruncher may be a flopping at the present time.”
“There, there, there! I hope she is, my dear man,” cried the distracted Miss Pross, “and I hope she finds it answering her expectations.”
“Forbid it,” proceeded Mr. Cruncher, with additional solemnity, additional slowness, and additional tendency to hold forth and hold out, “as anything wot I have ever said or done should be wisited on my earnest wishes for them poor creeturs now! Forbid it as we shouldn’t all flop (if it was anyways conwenient) to get ’em out o’ this here dismal risk! Forbid it, miss! Wot I say, for-bid it!” This was Mr. Cruncher’s conclusion after a protracted but vain endeavour to find a better one.
And still Madame Defarge, pursuing her way along the streets, came nearer and nearer.
“If we ever get back to our native land,” said Miss Pross, “you may rely upon my telling Mrs. Cruncher as much as I may be able to remember and understand of what you have so impressively said; and at all events you may be sure that I shall bear witness to your being thoroughly in earnest at this dreadful time. Now, pray let us think! My esteemed Mr. Cruncher, let us think!”
Still, Madame Defarge, pursuing her way along the streets, came nearer and nearer.
“If you were to go before,” said Miss Pross, “and stop the vehicle and horses from coming here, and were to wait somewhere for me; wouldn’t that be best?”
Mr. Cruncher thought it might be best.
“Where could you wait for me?” asked Miss Pross.
Mr. Cruncher was so bewildered that he could think of no locality but Temple Bar. Alas! Temple Bar was hundreds of miles away, and Madame Defarge was drawing very near indeed.
“By the cathedral door,” said Miss Pross. “Would it be much out of the way, to take me in, near the great cathedral door between the two towers?”
“No, miss,” answered Mr. Cruncher.
“Then, like the best of men,” said Miss Pross, “go to the posting-house straight, and make that change.”
“I am doubtful,” said Mr. Cruncher, hesitating and shaking his head, “about leaving of you, you see. We don’t know what may happen.”
“Heaven knows we don’t,” returned Miss Pross, “but have no fear for me. Take me in at the cathedral, at Three o’Clock, or as near it as you can, and I am sure it will be better than our going from here. I feel certain of it. There! Bless you, Mr. Cruncher! Think-not of me, but of the lives that may depend on both of us!”
This exordium, and Miss Pross’s two hands in quite agonised entreaty clasping his, decided Mr. Cruncher. With an encouraging nod or two, he immediately went out to alter the arrangements, and left her by herself to follow as she had proposed.
The having originated a precaution which was already in course of execution, was a great relief to Miss Pross. The necessity of composing her appearance so that it should attract no special notice in the streets, was another relief. She looked at her watch, and it was twenty minutes past two. She had no time to lose, but must get ready at once.
Afraid, in her extreme perturbation, of the loneliness of the deserted rooms, and of half-imagined faces peeping from behind every open door in them, Miss Pross got a basin of cold water and began laving her eyes, which were swollen and red. Haunted by her feverish apprehensions, she could not bear to have her sight obscured for a minute at a time by the dripping water, but constantly paused and looked round to see that there was no one watching her. In one of those pauses she recoiled and cried out, for she saw a figure standing in the room.
The basin fell to the ground broken, and the water flowed to the feet of Madame Defarge. By strange stern ways, and through much staining blood, those feet had come to meet that water.
Madame Defarge looked coldly at her, and said, “The wife of Evrémonde; where is she?”
It flashed upon Miss Pross’s mind that the doors were all standing open, and would suggest the flight. Her first act was to shut them. There were four in the room, and she shut them all. She then placed herself before the door of the chamber which Lucie had occupied.
Madame Defarge’s dark eyes followed her through this rapid movement, and rested on her when it was finished. Miss Pross had nothing beautiful about her; years had not tamed the wildness, or softened the grimness, of her appearance; but, she too was a determined woman in her different way, and she measured Madame Defarge with her eyes, every inch.
“You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer,” said Miss Pross, in her breathing. “Nevertheless, you shall not get the better of me. I am an Englishwoman.”
Madame Defarge looked at her scornfully, but still with something of Miss Pross’s own perception that they two were at bay. She saw a tight, hard, wiry woman before her, as Mr. Lorry had seen in the same figure a woman with a strong hand, in the years gone by. She knew full well that Miss Pross was the family’s devoted friend; Miss Pross knew full well that Madame Defarge was the family’s malevolent enemy.
“Ne sono assolutamente certa, signor Cruncher”, rispose Miss Pross, “che non lo farà mai più, qualunque cosa sia, e la prego di non ritenere necessario specificare meglio di che si tratta.”
“No, signorina”, rispose Jerry, “non vi dirò il nome. In secondo luogo: quelle povere creature stanno bene e non interferirò mai più con le smanie della signora Cruncher, mai più!”
«Qualunque sia l’organizzazione domestica», disse Miss Pross, cercando di asciugarsi gli occhi e riprendere il controllo, «non ho alcun dubbio che sia meglio che la signora Cruncher ne abbia interamente la supervisione. — O miei poveri tesori!»
«Arrivo al punto di dire, signorina, inoltre», continuò il signor Cruncher con una tendenza davvero preoccupante a esprimersi come se fosse su un pulpito, «e che le mie parole vengano riferite e portate alla signora Cruncher attraverso di voi: che cioè le mie opinioni riguardanti la speranza hanno subito una trasformazione, e che io ora spero con tutto il cuore che la signora Cruncher possa essere in uno stato di gravidanza al momento presente.»
«Ecco, ecco, ecco! Spero che lo sia, mio caro amico», esclamò la distratta signorina Pross, «e spero che trovi tutto all’altezza delle sue aspettative.»
«Che non sia mai», proseguì il signor Cruncher con maggiore solennità, maggior lentezza e maggior tendenza ad allungarsi e protrarsi, «che qualcosa di ciò che ho mai detto o fatto possa essere attribuito ai miei sinceri desideri per quelle povere creature ora! Che non sia mai che non ci affanneremmo tutti (se fosse in qualche modo conveniente) a tirarle fuori da questo rischio così triste! Che non sia mai, signorina! Quello che dico è che non lo permetterò!» Questa fu la conclusione del signor Cruncher dopo un prolungato ma vano tentativo di trovare una conclusione migliore.
E ancora madama Defarge, proseguendo per le strade, si avvicinava sempre più.
«Se mai torneremo nella nostra terra natia», disse Miss Pross, «può contare sul fatto che dirò a Mrs. Cruncher tutto ciò che sarò in grado di ricordare e comprendere di quanto lei ha detto così impressionantemente; e comunque può essere certo che testimonierò il suo profondo impegno in questo terribile momento. Ora, la prego, pensiamo! Il mio stimato Mr. Cruncher, pensiamo!»
Tuttavia, la signora Defarge, proseguendo per le strade, si avvicinava sempre più.
«Se tu dovessi andare prima», disse Miss Pross, «e fermare il veicolo e i cavalli dal venire qui, e aspettarmi da qualche parte; non sarebbe meglio?»
Il signor Cruncher pensò che potesse essere la cosa migliore.
«Dove potrebbe aspettarmi?» chiese la signorina Pross.
Il signor Cruncher era così disorientato che non riusciva a pensare ad altro luogo se non al Temple Bar. Ahimè! Il Temple Bar si trovava a centinaia di miglia di distanza, e la signora Defarge stava avvicinandosi davvero molto.
«Alla porta della cattedrale», disse Miss Pross. «Sarebbe molto fuori strada portarmi vicino alla grande porta della cattedrale tra le due torri?»
«No, signorina», rispose il signor Cruncher.
«Allora, come farebbe il migliore degli uomini», disse Miss Pross, «recati subito alla stazione di posta e fai quel cambiamento.»
«Ne ho dei dubbi», disse il signor Cruncher esitando e scuotendo la testa, «sul lasciarti qui, capisci. Non sappiamo cosa potrebbe succedere».
«Il cielo sa che non lo sappiamo», rispose Miss Pross, «ma non avere paura per me. Portami alla cattedrale, alle Tre in punto, o il più vicino possibile, e sono sicura che sarà meglio di andarcene da qui. Ne sono certa. Ecco! Dio ti benedica, signor Cruncher! Non pensare a me, ma alle vite che potrebbero dipendere da entrambi noi!»
Questo esordio e le due mani della signorina Pross che stringevano le sue in un’implorazione quasi angosciata decisero il signor Cruncher. Con uno o due cenni incoraggianti, uscì immediatamente per modificare gli accordi e la lasciò da sola a seguirlo come aveva proposto.
Il fatto di aver messo in atto una precauzione che era già stata intrapresa fu un grande sollievo per la signorina Pross. La necessità di comporre il suo aspetto in modo tale da non attirare particolari attenzioni per le strade, fu un altro sollievo. Guardò l’orologio e erano le due passate venti minuti. Non aveva tempo da perdere, ma doveva prepararsi subito.
Spaventata, nella sua estrema agitazione, dalla solitudine delle stanze deserte e dai volti mezzo immaginati che sbirciavano da dietro ogni porta aperta, Miss Pross prese una bacinella d’acqua fredda e iniziò a lavarsi gli occhi, che erano gonfi e rossi. Perseguitata dalle sue apprensioni febbrili, non poteva sopportare di avere la vista offuscata per un minuto alla volta dall’acqua che gocciolava, ma si fermava costantemente e guardava intorno per assicurarsi che nessuno la stesse osservando. In una di quelle pause indietreggiò e gridò, perché vide una figura in piedi nella stanza.
Il bacino cadde a terra rotto e l’acqua fluì ai piedi di Madame Defarge. Per strani sentieri severi, attraverso tanta macchia di sangue, quei piedi erano giunti incontro a quell’acqua.
Madame Defarge la guardò freddamente e disse: «La moglie di Evrémonde; dov’è?»
A Miss Pross balenò nella mente che tutte le porte erano spalancate e avrebbero suggerito la fuga. Il suo primo gesto fu di chiuderle. Ce n’erano quattro nella stanza, e lei le chiuse tutte. Poi si piazzò davanti alla porta della camera in cui aveva soggiornato Lucie.
Gli occhi scuri della signora Defarge la seguirono durante questo rapido movimento e si posarono su di lei quando fu finito. La signorina Pross non aveva nulla di bello; gli anni non avevano domato la sua selvatichezza né addolcito l’asprezza del suo aspetto, ma anche lei era una donna decisa a modo suo e squadrò la signora Defarge con lo sguardo da cima a fondo.
«Potreste, dal vostro aspetto, essere la moglie di Lucifero», disse Miss Pross tra un respiro e l’altro. «Nonostante ciò, non riuscirete a superarmi. Sono una donna inglese».
Madame Defarge la guardò con disprezzo, ma ancora con qualcosa della stessa percezione di Miss Pross che le due fossero in trappola. Vide davanti a sé una donna robusta, dura e nervosa, come Mr. Lorry aveva visto nella stessa figura una donna dalla mano forte negli anni passati. Sapeva benissimo bene che Miss Pross era l’amica devota della famiglia; Miss Pross sapeva benissimo bene che Madame Defarge era la nemica malevola della famiglia.
“On my way yonder,” said Madame Defarge, with a slight movement of her hand towards the fatal spot, “where they reserve my chair and my knitting for me, I am come to make my compliments to her in passing. I wish to see her.”
“I know that your intentions are evil,” said Miss Pross, “and you may depend upon it, I’ll hold my own against them.”
Each spoke in her own language; neither understood the other’s words; both were very watchful, and intent to deduce from look and manner, what the unintelligible words meant.
“It will do her no good to keep herself concealed from me at this moment,” said Madame Defarge. “Good patriots will know what that means. Let me see her. Go tell her that I wish to see her. Do you hear?”
“If those eyes of yours were bed-winches,” returned Miss Pross, “and I was an English four-poster, they shouldn’t loose a splinter of me. No, you wicked foreign woman; I am your match.”
Madame Defarge was not likely to follow these idiomatic remarks in detail; but, she so far understood them as to perceive that she was set at naught.
“Woman imbecile and pig-like!” said Madame Defarge, frowning. “I take no answer from you. I demand to see her. Either tell her that I demand to see her, or stand out of the way of the door and let me go to her!” This, with an angry explanatory wave of her right arm.
“I little thought,” said Miss Pross, “that I should ever want to understand your nonsensical language; but I would give all I have, except the clothes I wear, to know whether you suspect the truth, or any part of it.”
Neither of them for a single moment released the other’s eyes. Madame Defarge had not moved from the spot where she stood when Miss Pross first became aware of her; but, she now advanced one step.
“I am a Briton,” said Miss Pross, “I am desperate. I don’t care an English Twopence for myself. I know that the longer I keep you here, the greater hope there is for my Ladybird. I’ll not leave a handful of that dark hair upon your head, if you lay a finger on me!”
Thus Miss Pross, with a shake of her head and a flash of her eyes between every rapid sentence, and every rapid sentence a whole breath. Thus Miss Pross, who had never struck a blow in her life.
But, her courage was of that emotional nature that it brought the irrepressible tears into her eyes. This was a courage that Madame Defarge so little comprehended as to mistake for weakness. “Ha, ha!” she laughed, “you poor wretch! What are you worth! I address myself to that Doctor.” Then she raised her voice and called out, “Citizen Doctor! Wife of Evrémonde! Child of Evrémonde! Any person but this miserable fool, answer the Citizeness Defarge!”
Perhaps the following silence, perhaps some latent disclosure in the expression of Miss Pross’s face, perhaps a sudden misgiving apart from either suggestion, whispered to Madame Defarge that they were gone. Three of the doors she opened swiftly, and looked in.
“Those rooms are all in disorder, there has been hurried packing, there are odds and ends upon the ground. There is no one in that room behind you! Let me look.”
“Never!” said Miss Pross, who understood the request as perfectly as Madame Defarge understood the answer.
“If they are not in that room, they are gone, and can be pursued and brought back,” said Madame Defarge to herself.
“As long as you don’t know whether they are in that room or not, you are uncertain what to do,” said Miss Pross to herself; “and you shall not know that, if I can prevent your knowing it; and know that, or not know that, you shall not leave here while I can hold you.”
“I have been in the streets from the first, nothing has stopped me, I will tear you to pieces, but I will have you from that door,” said Madame Defarge.
“We are alone at the top of a high house in a solitary courtyard, we are not likely to be heard, and I pray for bodily strength to keep you here, while every minute you are here is worth a hundred thousand guineas to my darling,” said Miss Pross.
Madame Defarge made at the door. Miss Pross, on the instinct of the moment, seized her round the waist in both her arms, and held her tight. It was in vain for Madame Defarge to struggle and to strike; Miss Pross, with the vigorous tenacity of love, always so much stronger than hate, clasped her tight, and even lifted her from the floor in the struggle that they had. The two hands of Madame Defarge buffeted and tore her face; but, Miss Pross, with her head down, held her round the waist, and clung to her with more than the hold of a drowning woman.
Soon, Madame Defarge’s hands ceased to strike, and felt at her encircled waist. “It is under my arm,” said Miss Pross, in smothered tones, “you shall not draw it. I am stronger than you, I bless Heaven for it. I hold you till one or other of us faints or dies!”
Madame Defarge’s hands were at her bosom. Miss Pross looked up, saw what it was, struck at it, struck out a flash and a crash, and stood alone—blinded with smoke.
All this was in a second. As the smoke cleared, leaving an awful stillness, it passed out on the air, like the soul of the furious woman whose body lay lifeless on the ground.
In the first fright and horror of her situation, Miss Pross passed the body as far from it as she could, and ran down the stairs to call for fruitless help. Happily, she bethought herself of the consequences of what she did, in time to check herself and go back. It was dreadful to go in at the door again; but, she did go in, and even went near it, to get the bonnet and other things that she must wear. These she put on, out on the staircase, first shutting and locking the door and taking away the key. She then sat down on the stairs a few moments to breathe and to cry, and then got up and hurried away.
«Nel mio cammino verso quel luogo», disse Madame Defarge, con un leggero movimento della mano verso il fatidico posto, «dove mi riservano la mia sedia e i miei ferri da calza, sono venuta a porgere i miei omaggi mentre passavo. Desidero vederla».
“So che le tue intenzioni sono malvagie”, disse Miss Pross, “e puoi star certo che saprò difendermi da sole”.
Ognuna parlava nella propria lingua; nessuna capiva le parole dell’altra; entrambe erano molto attente e cercavano di dedurre dall’espressione e dal comportamento cosa significassero quelle parole incomprensibili.
«Non le farà alcun bene nascondersi da me in questo momento», disse la signora Defarge. «I buoni patrioti sapranno cosa significa. Voglio vederla. Va’ a dirle che desidero vederla. Mi hai sentito?»
«Se quei tuoi occhi fossero viti da letto», ribatté Miss Pross, «e io fossi un letto inglese a quattro pali, non riuscirebbero a staccarmi neanche una scheggia. No, tu cattiva straniera; sono alla tua altezza».
Madame Defarge non era propensa a seguire questi commenti idiomatici nei dettagli; ma li capì abbastanza da rendersi conto di essere stata ignorata.
«Donna imbecille e porcina!» disse Madame Defarge, aggrottando la fronte. «Non voglio risposte da te. Voglio vederla. O le dici che voglio vederla, o ti sposti dalla porta e mi lasci andare da lei!» Questo, con un gesto esplicativo della destra pieno di rabbia.
“Non avrei mai pensato,” disse Miss Pross, “che mi sarebbe mai venuto il desiderio di capire la vostra assurda lingua; ma darei tutto ciò che possiedo, tranne i vestiti che indosso, per sapere se sospettate la verità o anche solo una parte di essa.”
Nessuna delle due distolse per un solo istante lo sguardo dagli occhi dell’altra. Madame Defarge non si era mossa dal punto in cui stava quando Miss Pross l’aveva vista la prima volta; ma ora fece un passo avanti.
«Sono una britannica», disse Miss Pross, «sono disperata. Non mi importa nulla di me stessa. So che più a lungo ti tengo qui, maggiore è la speranza per il mio Ladybird. Non lascerò un ciuffo di quei capelli scuri sulla tua testa, se mi tocchi anche solo con un dito!»
Così fece la signorina Pross, scuotendo il capo e lanciando sguardi infuocati tra ogni rapida frase, e ogni rapida frase era un respiro intero. Così fece la signorina Pross, che non aveva mai sferrato un pugno in vita sua.
Ma il suo coraggio era di quella natura emotiva che le portava le irrefrenabili lacrime agli occhi. Questo era un coraggio che Madame Defarge non comprendeva affatto e scambiava per debolezza. “Ah, ah!” rise, “tu povera disgraziata! Che valore hai! Mi rivolgo a quel Dottore.” Poi alzò la voce e gridò: “Cittadino Dottore! Moglie di Evrémonde! Figlio di Evrémonde! Qualsiasi persona tranne questa miserabile sciocca, risponda alla Cittadina Defarge!”
Forse il seguente silenzio, forse qualche segreto indizio nell’espressione del volto di Miss Pross, forse un improvviso dubbio al di là di entrambe le ipotesi, sussurrarono a Madame Defarge che erano spariti. Lei aprì rapidamente tre delle porte e guardò dentro.
«Quelle stanze sono tutte in disordine, c’è stato un imballaggio affrettato, ci sono oggetti sparsi per terra. Non c’è nessuno nella stanza dietro di voi! Lasciatemi guardare».
«Mai!» disse Miss Pross, che comprese la richiesta perfettamente come Madame Defarge comprese la risposta.
“Se non sono in quella stanza, se ne sono andati e possono essere inseguitori e riportati indietro”, disse a sé stessa la signora Defarge.
«Finché non saprai se sono in quella stanza o no, sarai incerto su cosa fare», disse Miss Pross tra sé e sé; «e tu non lo saprai, se posso impedirti di saperlo; e che tu lo sappia o no, non lascerai questo posto finché potrò trattenermi.»
«Sono stata per le strade fin dall’inizio, nulla mi ha fermata, ti ridurrò in pezzi, ma ti avrò da quella porta», disse madama Defarge.
“Siamo sole in cima a una alta casa in un cortile solitario, non è probabile che ci sentano e prego di avere la forza fisica per tenerla qui, mentre ogni minuto che lei resta qui vale centomila ghinee per il mio caro”, disse Miss Pross.
Madame Defarge si fermò sulla porta. Miss Pross, guidata dall’istinto del momento, la afferrò con entrambe le braccia alla vita e la tenne stretta. Fu inutile che Madame Defarge lottasse e colpisse; Miss Pross, con la vigorosa tenacia dell’amore, sempre tanto più forte dell’odio, la strinse saldamente, e nella lotta che ebbero arrivò persino a sollevarla da terra. Le due mani di Madame Defarge la percuotevano e le sfiguravano il volto; ma Miss Pross, con la testa china, la teneva alla vita, e si aggrappava a lei più che non faccia una donna in procinto di annegare.
Ben presto le mani di Madame Defarge cessarono di colpire e si posero sulla sua vita circondata da un abbraccio. «È sotto il mio braccio», disse Miss Pross, a voce soffocata, «non lo prenderai. Sono più forte di te, ringrazio il Cielo per questo. Ti tengo stretta finché una delle due svena o muore!»
Le mani della signora Defarge erano sul suo petto. La signorina Pross alzò lo sguardo, vide cosa fosse, colpì, provocando un lampo e uno scoppio, e rimase sola—accecata dal fumo.
Tutto ciò avvenne in un secondo. Quando il fumo si diradò, lasciando dietro di sé una terribile immobilità, svanì nell’aria come la anima della furiosa donna la cui carcassa giaceva senza vita a terra.
Nel primo spavento e orrore della sua situazione, Miss Pross allontanò il più possibile il corpo e corse giù per le scale a chiamare aiuto inutile. Fortunatamente si ricordò delle conseguenze di ciò che aveva fatto, in tempo da fermarsi e tornare indietro. Era terribile rientrare dalla porta; ma ci rientrò, e addirittura si avvicinò per prendere il cappello e altre cose che doveva indossare. Le mise su, fuori sulla scala, prima di chiudere e serrare la porta e portar via la chiave. Poi si sedette sulle scale per qualche momento a respirare e piangere, quindi si alzò e corse via.
By good fortune she had a veil on her bonnet, or she could hardly have gone along the streets without being stopped. By good fortune, too, she was naturally so peculiar in appearance as not to show disfigurement like any other woman. She needed both advantages, for the marks of gripping fingers were deep in her face, and her hair was torn, and her dress (hastily composed with unsteady hands) was clutched and dragged a hundred ways.
In crossing the bridge, she dropped the door key in the river. Arriving at the cathedral some few minutes before her escort, and waiting there, she thought, what if the key were already taken in a net, what if it were identified, what if the door were opened and the remains discovered, what if she were stopped at the gate, sent to prison, and charged with murder! In the midst of these fluttering thoughts, the escort appeared, took her in, and took her away.
“Is there any noise in the streets?” she asked him.
“The usual noises,” Mr. Cruncher replied; and looked surprised by the question and by her aspect.
“I don’t hear you,” said Miss Pross. “What do you say?”
It was in vain for Mr. Cruncher to repeat what he said; Miss Pross could not hear him. “So I’ll nod my head,” thought Mr. Cruncher, amazed, “at all events she’ll see that.” And she did.
“Is there any noise in the streets now?” asked Miss Pross again, presently.
Again Mr. Cruncher nodded his head.
“I don’t hear it.”
“Gone deaf in an hour?” said Mr. Cruncher, ruminating, with his mind much disturbed; “wot’s come to her?”
“I feel,” said Miss Pross, “as if there had been a flash and a crash, and that crash was the last thing I should ever hear in this life.”
“Blest if she ain’t in a queer condition!” said Mr. Cruncher, more and more disturbed. “Wot can she have been a takin’, to keep her courage up? Hark! There’s the roll of them dreadful carts! You can hear that, miss?”
“I can hear,” said Miss Pross, seeing that he spoke to her, “nothing. O, my good man, there was first a great crash, and then a great stillness, and that stillness seems to be fixed and unchangeable, never to be broken any more as long as my life lasts.”
“If she don’t hear the roll of those dreadful carts, now very nigh their journey’s end,” said Mr. Cruncher, glancing over his shoulder, “it’s my opinion that indeed she never will hear anything else in this world.”
And indeed she never did.
Per fortuna aveva una velina sul cappello, altrimenti non avrebbe potuto camminare per le strade senza essere fermata. Per fortuna anche il suo aspetto era naturalmente così peculiare da non far risaltare la deturpazione come sarebbe accaduto a qualsiasi altra donna. Aveva bisogno di entrambi questi vantaggi, perché i segni delle dita che l’avevano stretta erano profondi sul suo viso, e i suoi capelli erano strappati, e il suo abito (indossato frettolosamente con mani tremanti) era afferrato e tirato in cento modi.
Attraversando il ponte, lasciò cadere la chiave della porta nel fiume. Arrivata alla cattedrale qualche minuto prima del suo scortatore e aspettandolo lì, pensò: “E se la chiave fosse già stata pescata con una rete? E se fosse stata identificata? E se la porta fosse stata aperta e i resti scoperti? E se mi fermassero all’ingresso, mi mandassero in prigione e mi accusassero di omicidio?” Mentre questi pensieri le turbinavano nella mente, apparve lo scortatore, la fece entrare e la portò via.
«C’è qualche rumore per le strade?» gli chiese lei.
«I soliti rumori», rispose il signor Cruncher e parve sorpreso dalla domanda e dal suo aspetto.
“Non ti sento”, disse Miss Pross, “cosa dici?”
Fu inutile che il signor Cruncher ripetesse ciò che aveva detto; Miss Pross non poteva sentirlo. “Allora annuirò”, pensò il signor Cruncher, stupito, “almeno questo lo vedrà”. E infatti lo vide.
«C’è qualche rumore per le strade adesso?» chiese di nuovo Miss Pross, poco dopo.
Di nuovo il signor Cruncher annuì col capo.
“Non lo sento.”
«Sorda in un’ora?», disse il signor Cruncher, meditando con la mente molto turbata: «Che cosa le è venuto?»
«Mi sento», disse Miss Pross, «come se ci fosse stato un lampo e uno schianto,
e quello schianto è stata l’ultima cosa che avrei mai dovuto sentire in questa vita.»
«Benedetta se non è in uno stato strano!» disse il signor Cruncher, sempre più turbato. «Che cosa avrà mai preso per tenere su il coraggio? Ascolti! Ecco il rumore di quei carri terribili! Lo sente anche lei, miss?»
«Posso sentire», disse Miss Pross, vedendo che le stava parlando, «nulla. O, mio buon uomo, prima ci fu una grande esplosione e poi un gran silenzio, e quel silenzio sembra essere fisso e immutabile, che non verrà mai più interrotto finché durerà la mia vita».
«Se non sente il rumore di quei terribili carri che ormai sono quasi alla fine del loro viaggio», disse il signor Cruncher, guardandosi alle spalle, «è mia opinione che davvero non sentirà mai più nulla in questo mondo.»
E infatti non lo fece mai.
CHAPTER XV. The Footsteps Die Out For Ever
Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day’s wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and insatiate Monsters imagined since imagination could record itself, are fused in the one realisation, Guillotine. And yet there is not in France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.
Six tumbrils roll along the streets. Change these back again to what they were, thou powerful enchanter, Time, and they shall be seen to be the carriages of absolute monarchs, the equipages of feudal nobles, the toilettes of flaring Jezebels, the churches that are not my father’s house but dens of thieves, the huts of millions of starving peasants! No; the great magician who majestically works out the appointed order of the Creator, never reverses his transformations. “If thou be changed into this shape by the will of God,” say the seers to the enchanted, in the wise Arabian stories, “then remain so! But, if thou wear this form through mere passing conjuration, then resume thy former aspect!” Changeless and hopeless, the tumbrils roll along.
As the sombre wheels of the six carts go round, they seem to plough up a long crooked furrow among the populace in the streets. Ridges of faces are thrown to this side and to that, and the ploughs go steadily onward. So used are the regular inhabitants of the houses to the spectacle, that in many windows there are no people, and in some the occupation of the hands is not so much as suspended, while the eyes survey the faces in the tumbrils. Here and there, the inmate has visitors to see the sight; then he points his finger, with something of the complacency of a curator or authorised exponent, to this cart and to this, and seems to tell who sat here yesterday, and who there the day before.
Of the riders in the tumbrils, some observe these things, and all things on their last roadside, with an impassive stare; others, with a lingering interest in the ways of life and men. Some, seated with drooping heads, are sunk in silent despair; again, there are some so heedful of their looks that they cast upon the multitude such glances as they have seen in theatres, and in pictures. Several close their eyes, and think, or try to get their straying thoughts together. Only one, and he a miserable creature, of a crazed aspect, is so shattered and made drunk by horror, that he sings, and tries to dance. Not one of the whole number appeals by look or gesture, to the pity of the people.
There is a guard of sundry horsemen riding abreast of the tumbrils, and faces are often turned up to some of them, and they are asked some question. It would seem to be always the same question, for, it is always followed by a press of people towards the third cart. The horsemen abreast of that cart, frequently point out one man in it with their swords. The leading curiosity is, to know which is he; he stands at the back of the tumbril with his head bent down, to converse with a mere girl who sits on the side of the cart, and holds his hand. He has no curiosity or care for the scene about him, and always speaks to the girl. Here and there in the long street of St. Honore, cries are raised against him. If they move him at all, it is only to a quiet smile, as he shakes his hair a little more loosely about his face. He cannot easily touch his face, his arms being bound.
On the steps of a church, awaiting the coming-up of the tumbrils, stands the Spy and prison-sheep. He looks into the first of them: not there. He looks into the second: not there. He already asks himself, “Has he sacrificed me?” when his face clears, as he looks into the third.
“Which is Evrémonde?” says a man behind him.
“That. At the back there.”
“With his hand in the girl’s?”
“Yes.”
The man cries, “Down, Evrémonde! To the Guillotine all aristocrats! Down, Evrémonde!”
“Hush, hush!” the Spy entreats him, timidly.
“And why not, citizen?”
“He is going to pay the forfeit: it will be paid in five minutes more. Let him be at peace.”
But the man continuing to exclaim, “Down, Evrémonde!” the face of Evrémonde is for a moment turned towards him. Evrémonde then sees the Spy, and looks attentively at him, and goes his way.
The clocks are on the stroke of three, and the furrow ploughed among the populace is turning round, to come on into the place of execution, and end. The ridges thrown to this side and to that, now crumble in and close behind the last plough as it passes on, for all are following to the Guillotine. In front of it, seated in chairs, as in a garden of public diversion, are a number of women, busily knitting. On one of the fore-most chairs, stands The Vengeance, looking about for her friend.
“Thérèse!” she cries, in her shrill tones. “Who has seen her? Thérèse Defarge!”
“She never missed before,” says a knitting-woman of the sisterhood.
“No; nor will she miss now,” cries The Vengeance, petulantly. “Thérèse.”
“Louder,” the woman recommends.
Ay! Louder, Vengeance, much louder, and still she will scarcely hear thee. Louder yet, Vengeance, with a little oath or so added, and yet it will hardly bring her. Send other women up and down to seek her, lingering somewhere; and yet, although the messengers have done dread deeds, it is questionable whether of their own wills they will go far enough to find her!
“Bad Fortune!” cries The Vengeance, stamping her foot in the chair, “and here are the tumbrils! And Evrémonde will be despatched in a wink, and she not here! See her knitting in my hand, and her empty chair ready for her. I cry with vexation and disappointment!”
CAPITOLO XV. I passi svaniscono per sempre
Lungo le strade di Parigi, i carri della morte rimbombano vuoti e aspri. Sei tumbrili trasportano il vino del giorno alla ghigliottina. Tutti i mostri divoratori e insaziabili immaginati da quando l’immaginazione poté registrarsi, si fondono in un’unica realizzazione: la ghigliottina. Eppure non c’è in Francia, con la sua ricca varietà di suoli e climi, una lama d’erba, una foglia, una radice, un rametto, un pepe, che possa giungere a maturità in condizioni più certe di quelle che hanno prodotto questo orrore. Schiacciare ancora una volta l’umanità fuori forma sotto martelli simili, e si torcerà nelle stesse forme torturate. Seminare nuovamente lo stesso seme di licenza rapace e oppressione, e sicuramente darà il suo frutto secondo la sua specie.
Sei carri funebri rotolano per le strade. Riportali indietro a ciò che erano, tu potente incantatore, tempo, e si vedrà che sono le carrozze di monarchi assoluti, gli equipaggi dei nobili feudatari, i truccamenti delle sfarzose Izebelle, le chiese che non sono la casa del mio Padre ma tane di ladri, le capanne di milioni di contadini affamati! No; il grande mago che opera con maestà l’ordine stabilito dal Creatore, non inverte mai le sue trasformazioni. «Se sei cambiato in questa forma per volontà di Dio», dicono i veggenti agli incantati nelle sagge storie arabe, «allora rimani così! Ma se porti questa forma solo grazie a una semplice magia passeggera, allora riprendi il tuo aspetto precedente!» Immutabili e senza speranza, i carri funebri rotolano lungo le strade.
Mentre le cupe ruote dei sei carri girano, sembrano arare una lunga e tortuosa zolla tra la folla per le strade. I cumuli di volti vengono gettati da un lato e dall’altro mentre gli aratri procedono costantemente in avanti. Gli abitanti fissi delle case sono così abituati allo spettacolo che in molte finestre non c’è nessuno, e in alcune le mani continuano a lavorare senza sosta mentre gli occhi osservano i volti sui carri. Di tanto in tanto, un residente ha ospiti per vedere lo spettacolo; allora indica con il dito, con una certa compiacenza da custode o esperto autorizzato, questo carro e quello, e sembra raccontare chi era seduto qui ieri e chi là il giorno prima.
Tra i condannati sui tumulti, alcuni osservano queste cose e tutto ciò che si trova lungo la loro ultima strada con uno sguardo impassibile; altri, con un interesse persistente per le vie della vita e degli uomini. Alcuni, seduti con la testa china, sono immersi in un silenzioso dispero; di nuovo, ce ne sono alcuni così attenti al loro aspetto che lanciano alla folla sguardi come quelli che hanno visto nei teatri e nelle immagini. Diversi chiudono gli occhi e pensano, o cercano di riunire i loro pensieri vaganti. Solo uno, ed è una creatura miserabile, dall’aspetto folle, è così distrutto e reso ubriaco dal terrore che canta e cerca di danzare. Nessuno dell’intero gruppo fa appello con lo sguardo o il gesto alla pietà della gente.
C’è una guardia di vari cavalieri che cavalcano affiancati ai tumbrili, e spesso dei volti si rivolgono verso alcuni di loro e gli fanno qualche domanda. Sembra sempre la stessa domanda, perché è sempre seguita da un afflusso di persone verso il terzo carro. I cavalieri accanto a quel carro indicano frequentemente un uomo con le spade. La curiosità principale è sapere chi sia; egli sta sul retro del tumbril con la testa china, per conversare con una semplice ragazza che siede sul lato del carro e gli tiene la mano. Non ha alcuna curiosità o preoccupazione per la scena intorno a lui, e parla sempre alla ragazza. Qui e là nella lunga strada di Saint-Honoré, si levano grida contro di lui. Se lo muovono in qualche modo, è solo verso un sorriso tranquillo, mentre si scuote i capelli un po’ più liberamente intorno al viso. Non può facilmente toccare il suo volto, essendo le sue braccia legate.
Sui gradini di una chiesa, in attesa dell’arrivo dei tumbrili, si trovano lo Spia e la pecora del carcere. Egli guarda nel primo: non c’è. Guarda nel secondo: non c’è. Già si domanda: “Mi ha sacrificato?” quando il suo volto si schiarisce mentre guarda nel terzo.
«Chi è Evrémonde?» dice un uomo dietro di lui.
“Quello dietro.”
“Con la mano di lui nella sua?”
“Sì, davvero.”
L’uomo grida: «Abbasso, Evrémonde! Alla ghigliottina tutti gli aristocratici! Abbasso, Evrémonde!»
«Sst, sst!» lo esorta timidamente lo Spia.
“E perché no, cittadino?”
«Pagherà la multa; sarà pagata tra cinque minuti. Che riposi in pace».
Ma l’uomo continuando ad esclamare: «Abbasso, Evrémonde!», il volto di Evrémonde si rivolge per un momento verso di lui. Evrémonde vede quindi lo Spia e lo guarda attentamente, poi prosegue la sua strada.
Gli orologi battono le tre e la zolla arata tra il popolo si sta girando per entrare nel luogo dell’esecuzione e finire. Le creste getate da una parte e dall’altra ora crollano e si chiudono dietro l’ultimo aratro che passa, perché tutti seguono verso la ghigliottina. Davanti ad essa, sedute su sedie come in un giardino pubblico di svago, sono numerose donne intente a lavorare a maglia. Su una delle sedie più in primo piano si trova La Vendetta che guarda attorno alla ricerca della sua amica.
“Thérèse!” grida lei con la sua voce stridula. “Chi l’ha vista? Thérèse Defarge!”
«Non era mai mancata prima», dice una donna che fa maglia della confraternita.
“No; né ora la perderà,” grida La Vendetta, con tono capriccioso. “Thérèse.”
«Più forte», consiglia la donna.
Ah! Più forte, Vendetta, molto più forte, e ancora a malapena ti sentirà. Più forte ancora, Vendetta, con qualche bestemmia aggiunta, eppure non riuscirai quasi a raggiungerla. Manda altre donne in giro per cercarla, fermandosi qua e là; e tuttavia, sebbene gli inviati abbiano compiuto azioni terribili, è dubbio che di loro volontà vadano abbastanza lontano da trovarla!
«Sfortuna!» grida La Vendetta, battendo il piede sulla sedia «e eccoci con i tumbrili! E Evrémonde sarà mandato al patibolo in un batter d’occhio, ed ella non è qui! Guardate i ferri da calza che tiene in mano e la sua sedia vuota pronta per lei. Io grido di rabbia e delusione!»
As The Vengeance descends from her elevation to do it, the tumbrils begin to discharge their loads. The ministers of Sainte Guillotine are robed and ready. Crash!—A head is held up, and the knitting-women who scarcely lifted their eyes to look at it a moment ago when it could think and speak, count One.
The second tumbril empties and moves on; the third comes up. Crash!—And the knitting-women, never faltering or pausing in their Work, count Two.
The supposed Evrémonde descends, and the seamstress is lifted out next after him. He has not relinquished her patient hand in getting out, but still holds it as he promised. He gently places her with her back to the crashing engine that constantly whirrs up and falls, and she looks into his face and thanks him.
“But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so composed, for I am naturally a poor little thing, faint of heart; nor should I have been able to raise my thoughts to Him who was put to death, that we might have hope and comfort here to-day. I think you were sent to me by Heaven.”
“Or you to me,” says Sydney Carton. “Keep your eyes upon me, dear child, and mind no other object.”
“I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall mind nothing when I let it go, if they are rapid.”
“They will be rapid. Fear not!”
The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home together, and to rest in her bosom.
“Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you one last question? I am very ignorant, and it troubles me—just a little.”
“Tell me what it is.”
“I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself, whom I love very dearly. She is five years younger than I, and she lives in a farmer’s house in the south country. Poverty parted us, and she knows nothing of my fate—for I cannot write—and if I could, how should I tell her! It is better as it is.”
“Yes, yes: better as it is.”
“What I have been thinking as we came along, and what I am still thinking now, as I look into your kind strong face which gives me so much support, is this:—If the Republic really does good to the poor, and they come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer less, she may live a long time: she may even live to be old.”
“What then, my gentle sister?”
“Do you think:” the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so much endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and tremble: “that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land where I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?”
“It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and no trouble there.”
“You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant. Am I to kiss you now? Is the moment come?”
“Yes.”
She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each other. The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse than a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before him—is gone; the knitting-women count Twenty-Two.
“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.”
The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away. Twenty-Three.
They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the peacefullest man’s face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic.
One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe—a woman—had asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed to write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given any utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these:
“I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.
“I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years’ time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward.
“I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other’s soul, than I was in the souls of both.
“I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place—then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day’s disfigurement—and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”
Mentre La Vendetta scende dalla sua posizione elevata per farlo, i tumbrili iniziano a scaricare il loro carico. I ministri della Santa Guillotine sono vestiti e pronti. Crash!—Una testa viene sollevata, e le donne che fanno maglia che appena un attimo fa hanno alzato gli occhi per guardarla quando poteva pensare e parlare, contano Uno.
Il secondo carretto si svuota e prosegue; arriva il terzo. Frastuono! – E le donne che lavorano a maglia, senza mai esitare o fermarsi nel loro lavoro, contano Due.
Il presunto Evrémonde scende e la sarta viene tirata fuori subito dopo di lui. Non ha lasciato la sua mano paziente nel uscire, ma ancora la tiene come aveva promesso. La pone delicatamente con le spalle rivolte verso il motore che continua a ronzare e cadere, e lei lo guarda in faccia e lo ringrazia.
«Ma per voi, caro forestiero, non sarei così composta, perché sono naturalmente una povera creatura, debole di cuore; né avrei potuto elevare i miei pensieri a Colui che fu messo a morte, affinché noi potessimo avere speranza e conforto qui oggi. Penso che voi siate stato mandato da me dal Cielo.»
«O tu a me», dice Sydney Carton. «Tieni gli occhi su di me, cara bambina, e non badare ad altro.»
«Non mi importa nulla finché tengo la tua mano. Non mi importerà nulla quando la lascerò andare, se saranno veloci».
«Saranno rapide. Non temere!»
I due si trovano nella folla di vittime che si assottiglia rapidamente, ma parlano come se fossero soliti. Occhi negli occhi, voce contro voce, mano nella mano, cuore a cuore, questi due figli della Madre Universale, altrimenti così lontani e diversi, si sono riuniti sulla strada buia per tornare a casa insieme e riposarsi nel suo grembo.
«Amico coraggioso e generoso, mi permetta di farle un’ultima domanda. Sono molto ignorante, e ciò mi preoccupa, solo un pochino».
Dimmi di cosa si tratta.
“Ho una cugina, unica parente e come me orfana, che io amo molto. Ha cinque anni meno di me e vive in una casa di contadini nel sud del paese. La povertà ci ha divise, e lei non sa nulla della mia sorte — perché non posso scrivere — e se anche potessi, come le direi! È meglio così.”
“Sì, sì: meglio così.”
“Quello che ho pensato mentre venivamo qui e quello che sto ancora pensando ora, guardando il tuo viso gentile e forte che mi dà tanto conforto, è questo: se la Repubblica fa davvero del bene ai poveri, e loro smettono di avere fame e in tutti i modi soffrono meno, allora essa potrà vivere a lungo tempo: potrebbe anche diventare vecchia.”
“E allora, mia dolce sorella?”
«Pensi che:» gli occhi rassegnati nei quali c’è tanta resistenza si riempiono di lacrime, e le labbra si aprono un po’ di più e tremano: «mi sembrerà lunga l’attesa, mentre aspetto per lei nella terra migliore dove confido che sia tu che io saremo misericordiosamente accolti?»
“Non può essere, mio bambino; lì non c’è tempo, e non ci sono problemi”.
“Mi consoli tanto! Sono così ignorante. Devo baciarti ora? È arrivato il momento?”
“Sì, davvero.”
Gli bacia le labbra; lui bacia le sue; si benedicono solennemente a vicenda. La mano libera non trema mentre la lascia andare; nulla di peggio che una dolce, luminosa costanza è sul volto paziente. Lei va avanti di lui—è sparita; le donne che fanno i maglioni contano Ventidue.
«Io sono la resurrezione e la vita, dice il Signore; chi crede in me, benché sia morto, vivrà; e chiunque vive e crede in me non morirà mai.»
Il mormorio di molte voci, il sollevarsi di molti volti, la pressione di molti passi ai margini della folla, tanto che essa si gonfia in avanti in massa, come un grande moto d’acqua, tutto svanisce. Ventitré.
Di lui dissero, riguardo alla città quella notte, che era il volto più pacifico mai visto lì. Molti aggiunsero che appariva sublime e profetico.
Una delle più straordinarie vittime della stessa scure - una donna - aveva chiesto ai piedi dello stesso patibolo, poco prima, di poter scrivere i pensieri che la ispiravano. Se lui avesse espresso i suoi e fossero stati profetici, sarebbero stati questi:
“Vedo Barsad e Cly, Defarge, La Vendetta, il giurato, il giudice, lunghe file di nuovi oppressori che sono sorti sulla distruzione dei vecchi, perire per questo strumento di punizione prima che esso cessi dal suo attuale uso. Vedo una città splendida e un popolo brillante sorgere da questo abisso, e nelle loro lotte per essere veramente liberi, nei loro trionfi e sconfitte, attraverso lunghi anni a venire, vedo il male di questo tempo e del precedente tempo di cui questo è la naturale progenie, che gradualmente si espia da sé stesso ed esaurisce.
“Vedo le vite per cui ho sacrificato la mia, pacifiche, utili, prosperose e felici, in quell’Inghilterra che non vedrò più. La vedo con un bambino sul suo seno, che porta il mio nome. Vedrei suo padre, anziano e curvo, ma altrimenti ristabilito, fedele a tutti gli uomini nel suo ufficio di guaritore, e in pace. Vedo il buon vecchio, amico loro da tanto tempo, arricchirli in dieci anni’ tempo con tutto ciò che possiede, e passare tranquillamente alla sua ricompensa.
“Vedo che ho un santuario nei loro cuori e nei cuori dei loro discendenti per le generazioni a venire. La vedo, una vecchia signora, piangere per me nell’anniversario di questo giorno. La vedo lei e suo marito, giunti al termine del loro cammino, sdraiati fianco a fianco nel loro ultimo letto terreno, e so che nessuno dei due fu più onorato e venerato nell’[L01|anima]] dell’altro di quanto lo fossi io nelle anime di entrambi.
“Vedo quel bambino che giaceva sul suo seno e che portava il mio nome, un uomo che si fa strada in quella via della vita che una volta era la mia. Lo vedo riuscirci così bene, che il mio nome è reso illustre dalla luce del suo. Lo vedo, primo tra i giudici e gli uomini onorati, portare un ragazzo di nome mio, con una fronte che conosco e capelli d’oro, in questo luogo—allora bello da vedere, senza traccia dello sfiguramento di oggi—e lo sento raccontare al bambino la mia storia, con voce tenera e incerta.
«È una cosa molto, molto migliore quella che faccio ora di qualsiasi altra abbia mai fatto; è un riposo molto, molto più dolce quello verso cui vado di qualunque altro io abbia mai conosciuto.»