A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (Oprah's Book Club)

by Charles Dickens

  ‘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 and 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-by 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 by 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 recal, 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 really 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 encumbrance 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 exchange
d 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, upstairs. 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 Honoré, 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!

  [END OF INSTALMENT 27]

  CHAPTER 11

  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 str
etching 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 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-by; 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!’