XXI. Echoing Footsteps
A wonderful corner for echoes, it has been remarked, that corner wherethe Doctor lived. Ever busily winding the golden thread which boundher husband, and her father, and herself, and her old directress andcompanion, in a life of quiet bliss, Lucie sat in the still house inthe tranquilly resounding corner, listening to the echoing footsteps ofyears.
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 bedimmed. 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--dividedher breast. Among the echoes then, there would arise the sound offootsteps at her own early grave; and thoughts of the husband who wouldbe left so desolate, and who would mourn for her so much, swelled to hereyes, and broke like waves.
That time passed, and her little Lucie lay on her bosom. Then, among theadvancing echoes, there was the tread of her tiny feet and the sound ofher prattling words. Let greater echoes resound as they would, the youngmother at the cradle side could always hear those coming. They came, andthe shady house was sunny with a child's laugh, and the Divine friend ofchildren, to whom in her trouble she had confided hers, seemed to takeher child in his arms, as He took the child of old, and made it a sacredjoy to her.
Ever busily winding the golden thread that bound them all together,weaving the service of her happy influence through the tissue of alltheir lives, and making it predominate nowhere, Lucie heard in theechoes of years none but friendly and soothing sounds. Her husband'sstep was strong and prosperous among them; her father's firm and equal.Lo, Miss Pross, in harness of string, awakening the echoes, as anunruly charger, whip-corrected, snorting and pawing the earth under theplane-tree in the garden!
Even when there were sounds of sorrow among the rest, they were notharsh nor cruel. Even when golden hair, like her own, lay in a halo on apillow round the worn face of a little boy, and he said, with a radiantsmile, "Dear papa and mamma, I am very sorry to leave you both, and toleave my pretty sister; but I am called, and I must go!" those were nottears all of agony that wetted his young mother's cheek, as the spiritdeparted from her embrace that had been entrusted to it. Suffer them andforbid them not. They see my Father's face. O Father, blessed words!
Thus, the rustling of an Angel's wings got blended with the otherechoes, and they were not wholly of earth, but had in them that breathof Heaven. Sighs of the winds that blew over a little garden-tomb weremingled with them also, and both were audible to Lucie, in a hushedmurmur--like the breathing of a summer sea asleep upon a sandy shore--asthe little Lucie, comically studious at the task of the morning, ordressing a doll at her mother's footstool, chattered in the tongues ofthe Two Cities that were blended in her life.
The Echoes rarely answered to the actual tread of Sydney Carton. Somehalf-dozen times a year, at most, he claimed his privilege of coming inuninvited, and would sit among them through the evening, as he had oncedone often. He never came there heated with wine. And one other thingregarding him was whispered in the echoes, which has been whispered byall true echoes for ages and ages.
No man ever really loved a woman, lost her, and knew her with ablameless though an unchanged mind, when she was a wife and a mother,but her children had a strange sympathy with him--an instinctivedelicacy of pity for him. What fine hidden sensibilities are touched insuch a case, no echoes tell; but it is so, and it was so here. Cartonwas 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 ofhim, almost at the last. "Poor Carton! Kiss him for me!"
Mr. Stryver shouldered his way through the law, like some great engineforcing itself through turbid water, and dragged his useful friend inhis wake, like a boat towed astern. As the boat so favoured is usuallyin a rough plight, and mostly under water, so, Sydney had a swampedlife of it. But, easy and strong custom, unhappily so much easier andstronger in him than any stimulating sense of desert or disgrace, madeit the life he was to lead; and he no more thought of emerging from hisstate of lion's jackal, than any real jackal may be supposed to think ofrising to be a lion. Stryver was rich; had married a florid widow withproperty and three boys, who had nothing particularly shining about thembut the straight hair of their dumpling heads.
These three young gentlemen, Mr. Stryver, exuding patronage of the mostoffensive quality from every pore, had walked before him like threesheep to the quiet corner in Soho, and had offered as pupils toLucie's husband: delicately saying "Halloa! here are three lumps ofbread-and-cheese towards your matrimonial picnic, Darnay!" The politerejection of the three lumps of bread-and-cheese had quite bloated Mr.Stryver with indignation, which he afterwards turned to account in thetraining of the young gentlemen, by directing them to beware of thepride of Beggars, like that tutor-fellow. He was also in the habit ofdeclaiming to Mrs. Stryver, over his full-bodied wine, on the artsMrs. Darnay had once put in practice to "catch" him, and on thediamond-cut-diamond arts in himself, madam, which had rendered him "notto be caught." Some of his King's Bench familiars, who were occasionallyparties to the full-bodied wine and the lie, excused him for thelatter by saying that he had told it so often, that he believedit himself--which is surely such an incorrigible aggravation of anoriginally bad offence, as to justify any such offender's being carriedoff to some suitably retired spot, and there hanged out of the way.
These were among the echoes to which Lucie, sometimes pensive, sometimesamused and laughing, listened in the echoing corner, until her littledaughter was six years old. How near to her heart the echoes of herchild's tread came, and those of her own dear father's, always activeand self-possessed, and those of her dear husband's, need not be told.Nor, how the lightest echo of their united home, directed by herselfwith such a wise and elegant thrift that it was more abundant than anywaste, was music to her. Nor, how there were echoes all about her, sweetin her ears, of the many times her father had told her that he found hermore devoted to him married (if that could be) than single, and of themany times her husband had said to her that no cares and duties seemedto divide her love for him or her help to him, and asked her "What isthe 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 tohave too much to do?"
But, there were other echoes, from a distance, that rumbled menacinglyin the corner all through this space of time. And it was now, aboutlittle 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 andher husband in the dark window. It was a hot, wild night, and they wereall three reminded of the old Sunday night when they had looked at thelightning from the same place.
"I began to think," said Mr. Lorry, pushing his brown wig back, "thatI should have to pass the night at Tellson's. We have been so full ofbusiness all day, that we have not known what to do first, or which wayto turn. There is such an uneasiness in Paris, that we have actually arun of confidence upon us! Our customers over there, seem not to be ableto confide their property to us fast enough. There is positively a maniaamong 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 reasonthere is in it. People are so unreasonable! Some of us at Tellson's aregetting old, and we really can't be troubled out of the ordinary coursewithout 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 persuadehimself that his sweet temper was soured, and that he grumbled, "but Iam determined to be peevish after my long day's botheration. Where isManette?"
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p; "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 bywhich I have been surrounded all day long, have made me nervous withoutreason. You are not going out, I hope?"
"No; I am going to play backgammon with you, if you like," said theDoctor.
"I don't think I do like, if I may speak my mind. I am not fit to bepitted against you to-night. Is the teaboard still there, Lucie? I can'tsee."
"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 beotherwise than safe and well here, thank God; but I have been so put outall 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 hearthe 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. "Theyare very numerous and very loud, though, are they not? Only hear them!"
Headlong, mad, and dangerous footsteps to force their way into anybody'slife, footsteps not easily made clean again if once stained red, thefootsteps raging in Saint Antoine afar off, as the little circle sat inthe dark London window.
Saint Antoine had been, that morning, a vast dusky mass of scarecrowsheaving to and fro, with frequent gleams of light above the billowyheads, where steel blades and bayonets shone in the sun. A tremendousroar arose from the throat of Saint Antoine, and a forest of naked armsstruggled in the air like shrivelled branches of trees in a winter wind:all the fingers convulsively clutching at every weapon or semblance of aweapon 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 whatagency they crookedly quivered and jerked, scores at a time, over theheads of the crowd, like a kind of lightning, no eye in the throng couldhave told; but, muskets were being distributed--so were cartridges,powder, and ball, bars of iron and wood, knives, axes, pikes, everyweapon that distracted ingenuity could discover or devise. People whocould lay hold of nothing else, set themselves with bleeding hands toforce stones and bricks out of their places in walls. Every pulse andheart 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 dementedwith a passionate readiness to sacrifice it.
As a whirlpool of boiling waters has a centre point, so, all this ragingcircled round Defarge's wine-shop, and every human drop in the caldronhad 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 armanother, laboured and strove in the thickest of the uproar.
"Keep near to me, Jacques Three," cried Defarge; "and do you, JacquesOne and Two, separate and put yourselves at the head of as many of thesepatriots as you can. Where is my wife?"
"Eh, well! Here you see me!" said madame, composed as ever, but notknitting 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 pistoland a cruel knife.
"Where do you go, my wife?"
"I go," said madame, "with you at present. You shall see me at the headof women, by-and-bye."
"Come, then!" cried Defarge, in a resounding voice. "Patriots andfriends, we are ready! The Bastille!"
With a roar that sounded as if all the breath in France had been shapedinto the detested word, the living sea rose, wave on wave, depth ondepth, and overflowed the city to that point. Alarm-bells ringing, drumsbeating, the sea raging and thundering on its new beach, the attackbegan.
Deep ditches, double drawbridge, massive stone walls, eight greattowers, cannon, muskets, fire and smoke. Through the fire and throughthe smoke--in the fire and in the smoke, for the sea cast him up againsta cannon, and on the instant he became a cannonier--Defarge of thewine-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, comradesall, work! Work, Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques One Thousand, JacquesTwo Thousand, Jacques Five-and-Twenty Thousand; in the name of allthe Angels or the Devils--which you prefer--work!" Thus Defarge of thewine-shop, still at his gun, which had long grown hot.
"To me, women!" cried madame his wife. "What! We can kill as well asthe men when the place is taken!" And to her, with a shrill thirstycry, trooping women variously armed, but all armed alike in hunger andrevenge.
Cannon, muskets, fire and smoke; but, still the deep ditch, the singledrawbridge, the massive stone walls, and the eight great towers. Slightdisplacements of the raging sea, made by the falling wounded. Flashingweapons, blazing torches, smoking waggonloads of wet straw, hard workat neighbouring barricades in all directions, shrieks, volleys,execrations, bravery without stint, boom smash and rattle, and thefurious sounding of the living sea; but, still the deep ditch, and thesingle drawbridge, and the massive stone walls, and the eight greattowers, and still Defarge of the wine-shop at his gun, grown doubly hotby the service of Four fierce hours.
A white flag from within the fortress, and a parley--this dimlyperceptible through the raging storm, nothing audible in it--suddenlythe sea rose immeasurably wider and higher, and swept Defarge of thewine-shop over the lowered drawbridge, past the massive stone outerwalls, in among the eight great towers surrendered!
So resistless was the force of the ocean bearing him on, that even todraw his breath or turn his head was as impracticable as if he had beenstruggling in the surf at the South Sea, until he was landed in theouter courtyard of the Bastille. There, against an angle of a wall, hemade a struggle to look about him. Jacques Three was nearly at his side;Madame Defarge, still heading some of her women, was visible in theinner distance, and her knife was in her hand. Everywhere was tumult,exultation, deafening and maniacal bewilderment, astounding noise, yetfurious 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!" wasthe cry most taken up by the sea that rushed in, as if there were aneternity of people, as well as of time and space. When the foremostbillows rolled past, bearing the prison officers with them, andthreatening them all with instant death if any secret nook remainedundisclosed, Defarge laid his strong hand on the breast of one ofthese men--a man with a grey head, who had a lighted torch in hishand--separated him from the rest, and got him between himself and thewall.
"Show me the North Tower!" said Defarge. "Quick!"
"I will faithfully," replied the man, "if you will come with me. Butthere is no one there."
"What is the meaning of One Hundred and Five, North Tower?" askedDefarge. "Quick!"
"The meaning, monsieur?"
"Does it mean a captive, or a place of captivity? Or do you mean that Ishall 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 disappointedby 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 hadbeen close together during this brief discourse, and it had been as muchas they could do to hear one another, even then: so tremendous was thenoise of the living ocean, in its irruption into the Fortress, andits inundation of the courts and passages and staircases. All aroundoutside, too, it beat the walls with a deep, hoarse roar, from which,occasionally, some partial shouts of tumult broke and leaped into theair like spray.
Through gloomy vaults where the light of day had never shone, pasth
ideous doors of dark dens and cages, down cavernous flights of steps,and again up steep rugged ascents of stone and brick, more like drywaterfalls than staircases, Defarge, the turnkey, and Jacques Three,linked hand and arm, went with all the speed they could make. Here andthere, especially at first, the inundation started on them and swept by;but when they had done descending, and were winding and climbing up atower, they were alone. Hemmed in here by the massive thickness of wallsand arches, the storm within the fortress and without was only audibleto them in a dull, subdued way, as if the noise out of which they hadcome had almost destroyed their sense of hearing.
The turnkey stopped at a low door, put a key in a clashing lock, swungthe door slowly open, and said, as they all bent their heads and passedin:
"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 bystooping low and looking up. There was a small chimney, heavily barredacross, a few feet within. There was a heap of old feathery wood-asheson the hearth. There was a stool, and table, and a straw bed. There werethe four blackened walls, and a rusted iron ring in one of them.
"Pass that torch slowly along these walls, that I may see them," saidDefarge 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 letterswith his swart forefinger, deeply engrained with gunpowder. "And here hewrote 'a poor physician.' And it was he, without doubt, who scratcheda calendar on this stone. What is that in your hand? A crowbar? Give itme!"
He had still the linstock of his gun in his own hand. He made a suddenexchange of the two instruments, and turning on the worm-eaten stool andtable, beat them to pieces in a few blows.
"Hold the light higher!" he said, wrathfully, to the turnkey. "Lookamong those fragments with care, Jacques. And see! Here is my knife,"throwing it to him; "rip open that bed, and search the straw. Hold thelight 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 mortarand dust came dropping down, which he averted his face to avoid; andin it, and in the old wood-ashes, and in a crevice in the chimneyinto which his weapon had slipped or wrought itself, he groped with acautious touch.
"Nothing in the wood, and nothing in the straw, Jacques?"
"Nothing."
"Let us collect them together, in the middle of the cell. So! Lightthem, you!"
The turnkey fired the little pile, which blazed high and hot. Stoopingagain to come out at the low-arched door, they left it burning, andretraced their way to the courtyard; seeming to recover their senseof hearing as they came down, until they were in the raging flood oncemore.
They found it surging and tossing, in quest of Defarge himself. SaintAntoine was clamorous to have its wine-shop keeper foremost in the guardupon the governor who had defended the Bastille and shot the people.Otherwise, the governor would not be marched to the Hotel de Ville forjudgment. Otherwise, the governor would escape, and the people'sblood (suddenly of some value, after many years of worthlessness) beunavenged.
In the howling universe of passion and contention that seemed toencompass this grim old officer conspicuous in his grey coat and reddecoration, there was but one quite steady figure, and that was awoman's. "See, there is my husband!" she cried, pointing him out."See Defarge!" She stood immovable close to the grim old officer, andremained immovable close to him; remained immovable close to him throughthe streets, as Defarge and the rest bore him along; remained immovableclose to him when he was got near his destination, and began tobe struck at from behind; remained immovable close to him when thelong-gathering rain of stabs and blows fell heavy; was so close to himwhen he dropped dead under it, that, suddenly animated, she put her footupon 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 ideaof hoisting up men for lamps to show what he could be and do. SaintAntoine's blood was up, and the blood of tyranny and domination by theiron hand was down--down on the steps of the Hotel de Ville where thegovernor's body lay--down on the sole of the shoe of Madame Defargewhere she had trodden on the body to steady it for mutilation. "Lowerthe lamp yonder!" cried Saint Antoine, after glaring round for a newmeans of death; "here is one of his soldiers to be left on guard!" Theswinging sentinel was posted, and the sea rushed on.
The sea of black and threatening waters, and of destructive upheavingof wave against wave, whose depths were yet unfathomed and whose forceswere yet unknown. The remorseless sea of turbulently swaying shapes,voices of vengeance, and faces hardened in the furnaces of sufferinguntil the touch of pity could make no mark on them.
But, in the ocean of faces where every fierce and furious expression wasin vivid life, there were two groups of faces--each seven in number--sofixedly contrasting with the rest, that never did sea roll which boremore memorable wrecks with it. Seven faces of prisoners, suddenlyreleased by the storm that had burst their tomb, were carried highoverhead: all scared, all lost, all wondering and amazed, as if the LastDay were come, and those who rejoiced around them were lost spirits.Other seven faces there were, carried higher, seven dead faces, whosedrooping eyelids and half-seen eyes awaited the Last Day. Impassivefaces, yet with a suspended--not an abolished--expression on them;faces, rather, in a fearful pause, as having yet to raise the droppedlids of the eyes, and bear witness with the bloodless lips, "THOU DIDSTIT!"
Seven prisoners released, seven gory heads on pikes, the keys of theaccursed fortress of the eight strong towers, some discovered lettersand other memorials of prisoners of old time, long dead of brokenhearts,--such, and such--like, the loudly echoing footsteps of SaintAntoine escort through the Paris streets in mid-July, one thousand sevenhundred 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 caskat Defarge's wine-shop door, they are not easily purified when oncestained red.
A Tale of Two Cities Page 27
