A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities Page 3

by Dave Mckay

The Second Book: The Golden Thread

  1. Five Years Later

  Tellson's Bank in Temple Bar was behind the times, even in 1780. It was very small, dark, ugly, and not at all comfortable. Part of this was because its owners were proud that it was small, dark, ugly, and not comfortable. They would argue that it if were comfortable and not so old, small, dark, and ugly, it would not be the good bank that it was. They used these qualities like a weapon, to prove that they were better than their competition in the banking world. Tellson's, they would say, was not interested in such things as more space and light, or having more beautiful and comfortable furniture. The competition might want to waste money on such things, but not Tellson's.

  Any one of the men who owned Tellson's would have kicked his own son out of the family if his son had encouraged him to build a new bank. In this way, Tellson's was much like the country as a whole, for England would often kick out its sons if they talked of changing things that were very wrong, at a time when most people still believed them to be good.

  And so it happened that Tellson's was the most perfectly awful bank in England. After forcing a sticky door open that had a bad sound in its throat as it turned, one would fall down two steps into a very little shop, with two little counters, where the oldest men in the world would shake your cheque like it was blowing in the wind, while they studied your name on it through what little light was coming through a dirty little window that was always being hit by mud from the coaches going by on the street outside. The window was made to look worse by the strong iron bars across it.

  If you needed to see 'the house' to finish your business, they would put you in a little room out the back, like the one that prisoners stay in before they are hanged. There you could think about all the bad things you have done with your life until 'the house' came with his hands in his pockets to see you.

  Your money would come out of, or go into, old drawers that had worms eating away at them, so that some of the powdered timber would go up your nose when they were opened or shut. Paper money had the smell of paper being destroyed by the wet. Silver was forced to live in a place where everything next to it was old and dirty; the effect of living close to such bad neighbours was that a bright piece of silver today would turn grey tomorrow. Papers showing you owned your house would be put on shelves in an old kitchen, and boxes of less important family papers went to the room above, which always had a big dinner table in it, even if no one ever ate there. Even in 1780, the first letters written to you by your old love or by your little children would have just then been moved away from the window, where people had looked through at them with as little feeling for you as one would find in cruelest Africa or India.

  At that time putting people to death was the thing to do, all over England. Tellson's too was a part of it. Death is the end to all of life's problems, and so the government chose to fix its problems in the same way. If one signed a false name to an important paper, they were put to death. If one passed counterfeit money they were put to death. If one opened a letter that was not theirs, they were put to death. If one robbed forty shillings, they were put to death. If one was left to hold a horse at the door to Tellson's and then made off with it, they were put to death. Three out of four of the rules used in the courts were made right by putting someone to death. Not that it did the least good in stopping such actions. Truth is, the opposite seemed to happen. But it had a way of putting an end to a lot of paper work if the courts could just put someone to death and be finished with it. And so it was that Tellson's, like other banks at the time, had helped to take so many lives that if the heads that had been cut off had been put one on the other in front of the bank, instead of being buried quietly, they would probably have shut out what little light the ground floor now had.

  Pushed into all kinds of dark corners, the oldest of men at Tellson's carried on their business very seriously. If young men worked there at all, the old men would hide them until they, too, became old. A young man must be put in a dark place like a cheese, waiting for him to get the Tellson smell and colour. Only then would he be let out to be seen leaning over big books and adding his pants and shirt to the general weight of the business.

  Outside Tellson's -- never in it unless asked in -- was a worker who would take and bring letters and other things when he was needed. When he was not doing that, he was like a living sign for the bank. He was there at all hours when the bank was open, apart from when he was off doing a job for the bank; and when he was doing that, his son would be there in his place. The son was a poor, rough boy of twelve, who looked just like his father. People understood that Tellson's was being kind to keep the man, as it had always been kind enough to keep such a man. His last name was Cruncher, and when he was baptised, he received a first name... Jerry.

  The scene is Mr. Cruncher's room, at 7:30 on a windy March morning, in the year of our Lord 1780. (Mr. Cruncher always called the year of our Lord 'Anna Dominoes', maybe thinking that the Christian church started with the invention of dominoes by a woman named Anna.)

  Cruncher's rooms were not in a nice part of the city, and there were only two of them, if you can count a very little room with one small piece of glass for a window as the second. But the place was neat and clean. Even as early as it was, the room where Cruncher was still sleeping had been fully cleaned; and between the cups and dishes set out for breakfast, and the rough timber table was a very clean white cloth. Mr. Cruncher was lying under a brightly coloured quilt that made him look like a sleeping clown. He had been sleeping deeply at the start of the scene, but by steps he moved and turned until he lifted his messy head of hair to shout in anger, "Break my head if she's not at it again!"

  A neat hard-working woman got up from her knees in a corner. She did it quickly enough and showing enough fear to make it clear that she was the person he was shouting about.

  "What?” said Mr. Cruncher, looking out of the bed for a shoe. "You're at it again, aren't you?"

  He followed this by throwing a boot at her. It was covered with mud, which is one of the strangest things. He often came home after banking hours with clean shoes, but when he got up the next morning, the same boots were covered with clay.

  "What are you up to, Aggerawayter?"

  "I was only saying my prayers."

  "Saying your prayers, are you? What a nice woman! What do you mean by throwing yourself down and praying against me?"

  "I wasn't praying against you. I was praying for you."

  "No you weren't. And even if you was, I won't be used like that. Look here! Your mother's a nice woman, young Jerry, up and praying against your father's wealth. You have a faithful mother, you have, my son. You've got a religious mother, you have, my boy: going and throwing herself down and praying that the bread and butter may be taken out of the mouth of her only child."

  The younger Cruncher, who was in his shirt, took this badly. He turned on his mother, angry at anyone who would pray away his food.

  "And what do you think, you selfish woman," said Mr. Cruncher, "the worth of your prayers is? Name the price you put on them!"

  "They only come from the heart, Jerry. They're worth no more than that."

  "Worth no more than that?” Mr. Cruncher repeated. "They aren't worth much then. Worth much or not, I won't be prayed against, I tell you. It'll cost me too much. You won't take my luck away by throwing yourself down when I'm not looking. If you must go throwing yourself down, do it to help your husband and child, and not to hurt us. If I had had any but a religious wife, and this boy had had any but a religious mother, I might have made some money last week instead of being prayed against and religiously cut off from good luck. Break my head!" said Mr. Cruncher, who all this time had been putting on his clothes, "if I wasn't, with religion and one awful thing after another, pushed this last week into as bad luck as ever a poor devil of an honest worker met with! Young Jerry, dress yourself, my boy, and while I clean my boots keep an eye on y
our mother now and then, and if you see any signs of more throwing down, give me a call. For I tell you," and here he turned to his wife once more, "I won't be letting this happen again. I'm shaking like an old coach, as tired as if I was drugged; my nerves are pulled to the point that if it wasn't for the pain, I wouldn't know if I was me or if I was someone else. Yet I'm none the better for it in pocket. And it's my feeling that you've been at it from morning to night to stop me from being the better for it, too. I won't put up with it, Aggerawayter. And what do you say now?"

  Angrily answering her with things like, "Oh, yes, you're religious too. You wouldn't put yourself against the interests of your husband and child, would you? Not you!" Mr. Cruncher went about the business of cleaning his boots and making himself ready for work. At the same time, his son, whose hair was as wild as his father's and whose young eyes were close to each other like his father's, watched his mother as he had been told to. He greatly worried her from time to time by racing out of his little room, where he was dressing, to shout, "You're going to throw yourself down, aren't you? Hello, father!" and after giving this false warning, racing back in again with an evil smile on his face.

  Mr. Cruncher's spirit was no better when he came to breakfast. He was angry that Mrs. Cruncher thanked God for the food.

  "Now, Aggerawayter! What're you up to? Are you at it agin?"

  His wife said that she had only "asked a blessing".

  "Don't do it!" said Mr. Cruncher, looking around like he believed the bread would disappear under the power of his wife's prayer. "I'm not to be blessed out of my house and home. I won't have my food blessed off my table. Now keep quiet!"

  Jerry Cruncher's eyes were red and he was in bad spirits, like he had been up all night at a party that had been anything but friendly. He fought with his food, making sounds like some four-footed prisoner in a zoo. When it was close to nine o'clock, he smoothed himself and did the best he could to cover the truth about himself with a business-like look before leaving for work.

  It was not much of a job, even if he liked to call himself an honest worker. His only tool was a little chair without a back, that young Jerry, walking at his father's side, carried every morning to the window of the bank in Temple Bar. After taking some dry grass from the first vehicle to go past, and putting it in his shoes to keep out the cold and wet, that little chair became his office for the day. Mr. Cruncher, sitting on that little chair was as much a part of Temple Bar (and known as well) as anything else that was there.

  Arriving well before nine, Mr. Cruncher was able to touch his three-cornered hat to the oldest men in the world as they arrived for work at Tellson's. Jerry would stand beside him when he was not busy fighting with passing boys who were small enough for him to hurt. Father and son, so much the same and with their heads as close to each other as their eyes were, looked quietly out at the people passing by, like two monkeys. The older Jerry added to the monkey look by chewing on a piece of dry grass, and the ever moving eyes of the younger Jerry watched him doing it as much as he watched everything else on the street.

  One of the inside workers put his head out the door and said, "Worker wanted!"

  "Hooray, father! A job already!"

  Wishing his father the best, young Jerry seated himself on the little chair, picked up the piece of dry grass that his father had been chewing, and thought, "Always covered with rust. His fingers are always covered with rust. Where does my father get that iron rust from? He don't get no iron rust here."

  2. The Show

  "You know the Old Bailey well, I'm sure?” said one of the very old workers to Mr. Cruncher.

  "Umm... well... yes, sir," returned Jerry shyly. "I do know it."

  "Good. And you know Mr. Lorry?"

  "Oh yes, I know Mr. Lorry, sir, much better than I know the Bailey. Much better," said Jerry, sounding like one of the witnesses in the old court as he finished, "better than I, as an honest worker, wish to know the Bailey, sir."

  "Very well. Find the door where the witnesses go in, and show the door-keeper this letter for Mr. Lorry. He will then let you in."

  "Into the court, sir?"

  "Into the court."

  Mr. Cruncher's eyes seemed to move a little closer to one another, and to ask each other, "What is this leading to?"

  As an effect of this thought, he asked, "Am I to wait there, sir?"

  "I am going to tell you. The door-keeper will pass the letter to Mr. Lorry. Do anything you can to make Mr. Lorry see you, and show him where you are going to stand. Then your job is just to wait there until he wants you."

  "Is that all, sir?"

  "That's all. He wants a worker on hand to take a letter from him if he needs to send one. This letter tells him you're the worker."

  As the old man carefully folded and put a name on the letter, Mr. Cruncher, who had been watching quietly, said, "So they must be judging someone for writing bad cheques this morning?"

  "Treason!"

  "That's death by torture, sir. Oooh! That's awful!"

  "It's the law," said the old man, turning his surprised glasses in Jerry's direction. "It's the law."

  "It's hard of the law to cut a man up, I think. It's hard enough to kill him, but it's very hard to cut him up, sir."

  "Not at all," returned the old man. "Speak well of the law. Take care of your chest and voice, my good friend, and leave the law to take care of itself. Those are my words to you."

  "It's the wet, sir, what gets into my chest and voice," said Jerry. "I leave you to judge what a wet way of making a living mine is."

  "Well," said the old man, "we all have our different ways to make a living. Some of us have wet ways and some of us have dry ways. Here's the letter. Now go along."

  Jerry took the letter, and, secretly feeling less humble than his words showed, he said, "I can see that you too have had a hard life.” He bowed his head, told his son in passing where he was going, and then went on his way.

  In those days they hanged people at Tyburn, so the street outside Newgate Prison was not known in the same way that it is today. But the prison was still an evil place, with every kind of bad action and deadly sickness free to move around in it. The sicknesses came into the court with the prisoners, and often they would jump from the prisoner to the judge himself. More than once the judge had marked his own death in marking the prisoner's death, and even died before the prisoner did. For most, the Old Bailey was like a deadly hotel yard, where sick travellers would ride off in wagons and coaches on a rough trip to the other world, covering some two and a half miles of open road. Few, if any, of the people watching along the way would see anything wrong in what was happening. That is how it is when people become used to a thing; and when they become used to it, they make it good in their minds even if it is not. The Bailey was also remembered for the special timbers that were used to hold prisoners by the head and hands while others shouted hateful words at them. It was a smart piece of furniture, because the pain it brought left no marks. Then there was the whipping post, a much loved instrument for making people part of a good and kind world when it was used well. Topping it all off was the blood-money. The Old Bailey was a place where, for a price, one could have another killed. This led to some of the most awful things that could happen under heaven.

  On the whole, the Old Bailey was, at that time, a perfect picture of the teaching that "Whatever is, is right," a saying that would be as free from change as it is lazy, if it were not that it would also say of those who came there that none of them had ever been wrong.

  Making his way through the crowd at this awful scene of action, with the ability of a man who often moved about secretly, Tellson's small job man found the door he was looking for, and handed in his letter through an opening in it. In those days, one paid for entertainment at the Old Bailey just as they paid to see the crazy people at Bedlam (but the price was higher at the Bailey). Because of this, there were guards at all of the doors -- all,
that is, but the door where the criminals were brought in. Those were always wide open.

  After some waiting and arguing, the door turned slowly just enough to let Mr. Jerry Cruncher squeeze himself into the court.

  "What's up?” he whispered to the man next to him.

  "Nothing yet."

  "What's coming on?"

  "The treason."

  "Oh, the torturing one, eh?"

  "Ah!" returned the man with enthusiasm. "He'll be pulled through the streets to be half-hanged, and then they'll take him down to be cut before his own face. His intestines will be taken out and burned while he looks on. Then his head will be cut off, and his body cut into four pieces. That's what they'll do."

  "You mean, if they think he's guilty?” Jerry added to be sure.

  "Oh, they'll find him guilty," said the other. "Don't you fear that."

  At this point Mr. Cruncher turned to see the doorman make his way to Mr. Lorry with the letter. Mr. Lorry was at a table close to where the wig-wearing men were. He was not far from the one who was to argue for the prisoner. This man had many papers with him. Almost opposite that man was another with a wig. He had his hands in his pockets, and whenever Mr. Cruncher looked at him, then or later, he was always looking at the roof of the court. After Jerry did some loud coughing and rubbing his chin and lifting his hands, Mr. Lorry, who had stood up to look for him, saw him, moved his head to show that he saw him, and then sat down again.

  "What's he got to do with the case?” asked the man Jerry had been whispering to.

  "Blessed if I know," said Jerry.

  "So what have you got to do with it, then, if one may ask?”

  "Blessed if I know that either," said Jerry.

  Just then the judge came in, and the talking stopped. From then on, all eyes were on the place where the prisoner would stand. Two policemen, who had been standing there, went out and returned with him.

  Apart from the wig-wearing man who was looking at the roof, everyone looked at the prisoner with interest. Together they breathed a storm in his direction. Enthusiastic faces looked around posts and corners to see him better. People in the back stood up, so as not to miss one hair of him. People standing on the court floor stood up on their toes, putting their hands on the shoulders of others, to see every inch of him. Standing out in this group of people, like part of a living wall, was Jerry, breathing the smell of beer toward the prisoner (for he had had just a small drink on the way), and this joined with the beer and spirits and tea and coffee in the breathing of all who looked toward the prisoner, so that it was already turning to water on the big windows behind the prisoner.

  What they were looking at was a young man, about 25, good-looking, with white skin, made darker by much time in the sun, and dark eyes. He was well dressed in black or dark grey. His long black hair was tied with a bow at the back of his neck. He was well controlled, bowed to the judge, and stood there quietly.

  The kind of interest that the people had in this man was not the kind of interest that said much for people as animals. If he had not been in danger of being tortured to death, if even one part of his torture was to be passed over, by just that much the people would have lost interest in him. The body that was to be destroyed in such an awful way was the thing to see. Whatever reason each person gave for being there, to hide the truth from themselves, their real interest was that of cruel devils.

  Quiet in the court! Charles Darnay had yesterday said that he was not guilty of what the court said of him (with no end of confusing talk), namely that he had helped in a war against our wonderful, beautiful, peace-loving, and so on leader, our Lord the King, by reason of him having, at different times and in different ways, helped Louis, the French King in his war against our wonderful, beautiful, peace-loving, and so on; that was to say, by coming and going between the country of our said wonderful, beautiful, peace-loving and so on, and the country of the said French Louis, and falsely, cruelly, badly (and many other evil adverbs) telling the said French Louis what forces our said wonderful, beautiful, peace-loving, and so on, King had prepared to send to Canada and North America.

  This much Jerry proudly understood, after much thought, to be saying that the one said (and over and over said) Charles Darnay, was standing there to be judged; that the jury was being brought in, and that Mr. Attorney-General was preparing to speak.

  The man himself, who was (and who knew he was), in the minds of all the people looking at him, to be tortured, have his head cut off, and be cut into four pieces, did not show fear or any other emotion. He was quietly and seriously listening to all that was being said as he stood there with his hands resting on the horizontal timber bar in front of him.

  Over his head was a mirror to throw the light down on him. The faces of many evil people had been seen in that mirror in the past, and they had moved away from the earth and from that mirror at the same time. It may be that the prisoner had a passing thought about others who had been there before him. Be that as it may, a movement of his body made a bar of light land on his face, and he looked up at the mirror. On seeing it, his face turned red.

  He then turned his face away, toward the side of the court that was on his left, and his eyes landed on two people. The change in his look was so strong that all those people who had been looking at him turned to look at the same two people.

  They could see a young woman who was little more than twenty, and an older man, who seemed to be her father. He was an interesting man, with very white hair, and a look on his face that was hard to put into words. It was the look of one who is thinking deeply, and talking to himself about what he is thinking. When doing this, he looked quite old. But when he pulled himself away from this, as happened now as he said something to his daughter, he became a good-looking man in the best years of his life.

  His daughter had one hand through his arm as she sat by him, and her other hand was holding the same arm. She was holding him closely both because of her fear of the scene and because of her sadness for the prisoner. Her forehead had fear and love written all over it, as she could see nothing but the worst of danger for the prisoner. Her feelings were so easy to see that people in the court who had no feeling for Charles Darnay, were touched by her. The whispers went about: "Who are they?"

  Jerry, who had seen what he could see, and who was chewing the rust off his fingers in his deep thoughts, pushed his neck out to see if he could hear who they were. The crowd around him whispered questions to each other until they reached a court worker, who whispered the answers back. At last it reached Jerry.

  "Witnesses.”

  "For which side?”

  "Against."

  The judge, who had been looking around, brought his eyes back, leaned back in his seat, and looked seriously at the man whose life was in his hand, while Mr. Attorney-General stood up to make the rope, sharpen the axe, and nail together the pieces of the stage on which the prisoner would be hanged.

  3. A Sad Ending

  Mr. Attorney-General had to tell the jury that the man in front of them, who was young in years, was old in the evil work for which he would die. That his sins had not happened only over a day or two or even over a year, but he had for longer than that, been travelling to and from France on secret business for which he could give no honest reason. That with luck (and people who do that kind of business do not have much luck), he would have been doing it still. But that God had put it into the heart of a brave and honest man to learn the secrets of the prisoner's plans; and when he saw how awful they were, he knew he had no choice but to tell the government about it. That this one who had such love for his country would be coming soon to tell his story in person. That he was a man with a strong and holy spirit. That he had been the prisoner's friend, but when he learned the truth about the man, he chose to give his friend's life over to the courts as proof of his great love for his country. That if statues were put up by the government in Britain today as they were in Greece
and Rome in the past, then most surely one would have been made of this wonderful man. That all good qualities, as the jury would know from their understanding of some of the greatest poets (at which the jury dropped their heads, because they did not know of such poets), quickly move from one person to another, and that this was truest of one's love for his country. That the bright light from the Crown witness' good spirit had passed to a servant who worked for the prisoner, and this servant secretly went through his master's papers to find the proof that was needed for this court. That he (Mr. Attorney-General) was prepared to hear the man's lawyer try to find a wrong in the servant who took the papers, but that in a general way, he thought more highly of that servant than he did of his own (Mr. Attorney-General's) brothers and sisters, and looked up to him more than he did to his (Mr. Attorney-General's) father and mother. That he was confident that the jury would feel the same. That the word of these two men, and the papers they would bring with them would show that the prisoner had lists of where the king's men and weapons were to be sent, both over water and over land, and that he had been for some time, giving these lists to a country that was at war with Britain. That the writing in these lists would be quite different from the writing of the prisoner, but that this would only show that the prisoner was very smart about hiding the truth, so much so that he was able to change his writing when making them. That these criminal actions had gone back some five years, so that the prisoner was already doing his evil work as early as a few weeks before the first fighting between Britain and America. That, for these reasons, the jury, being people who love their country (as he knew they were), and being people who would always do what they knew to be right (as, surely, they knew themselves) must surely find the prisoner guilty, and have him killed, even if they did not like the thought of doing it. That they could never put their heads on their pillows; that they could never be at peace with their wives putting their heads on their pillows; that they could never be at peace with their children putting their heads on their pillows; in short, that there could never be any peace for any of them to put their heads on pillows if the prisoner's head was not first taken off. That head, Mr. Attorney-General told them, must, in the name of everything he could think of that was good, be given by them because of his own religious belief that the prisoner was already as good as dead.

  When the Attorney-General stopped, a buzz moved around the court like there was a cloud of flies in there waiting for the prisoner to die. When this died down, the man who had perfect love for his country stepped into the witness box.

  The Attorney-General's top lawyer, following in the steps of his leader, asked questions of the witness, whose name was Barsad. Mr. Barsad told the court that the story of his good spirit was perfectly the same as Mr. Attorney-General had said. If there was anything wrong with it, it was only that it was too perfectly the same. Having told the court how good he was, Mr. Barsad would have humbly stepped down, but the man with a wig sitting closest to Mr. Lorry asked to speak to him. The man with a wig who was sitting opposite to him was still looking at the roof of the court.

  Had he ever given secrets to another country himself? No, he was hurt that anyone would think such a thing. What did he live on? His wealth. Where was his wealth? He didn't remember where it was. What was his wealth made up of? It was not anyone's business what it was made up of. Had he been given it by a relative? Yes, he had. By whom? A little known relative. Little known? Yes, very little known. Had he ever been in prison? Surely not! Never been in a prison for not paying money? He didn't see what that had to do with it. Never in a prison for not paying money, never at any time? Okay, yes. How many times? Two or three times. Not five or six? Maybe. What is his job? A man of wealth. Ever been kicked? Maybe. Often? No. Ever kicked down steps? No way; but did once receive a kick at the top of some steps, and fell down them without any help. Kicked at that time for tricking a man at dice? The man who kicked him said something like that at the time, but he was lying and had been drinking. Sure that the man who did the kicking was not speaking the truth? Yes, very sure. Ever make a living by tricking people at such games? Never. Ever make a living by playing such games? No more than other rich men do. Ever borrow money from the prisoner? Yes. Ever pay him back? No. Was not this being 'friends' with the prisoner very shallow, being forced on the prisoner in coaches, hotels, and ships? No. Sure he saw the prisoner with these lists? Very sure. Knew nothing more about the lists? No. Had not, maybe, made the lists himself? No. Hoping to get anything for being a witness here? No. Not often paid by the government to trick people in this way? Oh, no, no, no. Or paid to do anything for the government? No, no. Promise that? Over and over. No reason for being here apart from his love for his country? None at all.

  The good servant, Roger Cly, who had worked for the prisoner, was next. He had started working for the prisoner in good faith four years ago, after meeting him on the ship to France. He had not begged for the job because he was in need -- never thought of such a thing. He started to think that the prisoner was up to something soon after that. In putting out his clothes, when travelling, he had seen lists like the ones handed to the court over and over again.

  He had taken them from a drawer in the prisoner's desk. Heavens, no, he did not put them there. He had seen the prisoner give the lists to French men after they landed in France. He loved his country and that is why he gave the papers to the police. No, he had never been in trouble for robbing a silver tea-pot. He had been in trouble for robbing a smaller silver pot, and even then, it was only covered in silver and not solid silver. He had been a friend of the first witness for seven or eight years, but that was not important. He saw no reason to think they had planned anything against the prisoner. And he saw no reason why he too should not be acting out of deep love for his country, just as the earlier witness had acted. He was a true friend of his country, as he hoped others were.

  The flies were buzzing again, and Mr. Attorney-General called Mr. Jarvis Lorry.

  "Mr. Jarvis Lorry, do you work for Tellson's bank?

  "I do."

  “On a Friday night in November, 1775, did business force you to travel from London to Dover on the mail coach?”

  "It did."

  "Were there other passengers in the coach?"

  "Yes, two."

  "Did they leave the coach when you were sleeping, before it reached Dover?"

  "They did."

  "Mr. Lorry, look at the prisoner. Was he one of those two passengers?"

  "I cannot say that he was."

  "Does he look like either of the two passengers?"

  "Both were so covered in scarves, and the night was so dark, and we were all so quiet, that I cannot even say that."

  "Mr. Lorry, look again at the prisoner. Think of him covered as those two passengers were. Is there anything in his size and shape to make it clear he was not one of them?"

  "No."

  "So you cannot say for sure that he was not one of the passengers?"

  "No."

  "So you can say that he may have been one of them?"

  "Yes. But I remember them both to have been, like myself, afraid of robbers. The prisoner does not show any fear at all."

  "Did you ever see anyone show false fear, Mr. Lorry?"

  "Yes, I have seen that."

  "Mr. Lorry, look once again at the prisoner. Have you seen him at any time when you knew it was him?"

  "I have."

  "When?"

  "A few days after the trip to Dover, I was returning from France, and the prisoner came on the ship, and travelled with me back to England."

  "At what hour did he come on the ship?"

  "A little after midnight."

  "In the middle of the night. Was he the only passenger to come on at that time of night?"

  "He happened to be the only one."

  "Never mind about 'happening', Mr. Lorry. He was the only passenger to come on in
the middle of the night?"

  "He was."

  "Were you travelling alone, Mr. Lorry, or with someone else?"

  "With two friends. An older man and a young woman. They are here."

  "They are here. Did you talk to the prisoner on that trip?"

  "Not much. The weather was bad, and the trip was long and rough. I was resting on a couch almost from start to finish."

  "Miss Manette!"

  All heads turned to the woman everyone had been looking at earlier. She stood up, and her father stood with her, holding her hand, which went through his folded arm.

  "Miss Manette, look at the prisoner."

  To see such love in the eyes of such a beautiful young woman was harder for the prisoner than all the looks he had received from the crowd. In his mind he was standing alone with her just before he was to be killed, and thoughts about the crowd did not stop him from moving in his place almost like he was reaching out to her. It was difficult for him to control his breathing, as the colour from his lips went to his heart instead. The buzzing of the flies was loud again.

  "Miss Manette, have you seen the prisoner before?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Where?"

  "On the ship, the same one the other witness was talking about, and on the same trip."

  "You are the young woman he said he was travelling with?"

  "Oh, most sadly, I am!"

  The sad sound of her kind spirit hit strongly against the less musical sound of the judge's voice, as he said angrily, "Answer the question, and do not add to it with your own thoughts."

  "Miss Manette, did you talk to the prisoner on that trip across the Channel?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Remember it?"

  The court was very quiet as she started.

  "When the man came onto the ship..."

  "Do you mean the prisoner?” asked the judge, knitting his forehead into many parallel lines.

  "Yes, my lord."

  "Then say the prisoner."

  "When the prisoner came on the ship, he could see that my father," turning her eyes lovingly toward her father as he stood beside her, "was very tired and not at all well. He was so weak that I was afraid to take him out of the open air. I had made him a bed out in the open, near the steps leading to the rooms, and I sat at his side to take care of him. We four were the only passengers that night. The prisoner was so good as to ask if he could show me how to better protect my father from the wind and the weather. I had not done a very good job of it, because I did not understand how the wind would change after we were out on the open water. He made the changes for me, and showed great kindness for my father. I am sure that he felt this kindness from his heart. That is how we started to talk together."

  "Let me stop you for a minute. Had he come onto the ship alone?"

  "No."

  "How many were with him?"

  "Two French men."

  "Did they talk together?"

  "They did, until the last minute before the ship was to leave, when the others were taken back to the beach in their boat."

  "Were any papers like these lists handed between them?"

  "Some papers were passed around between them, but I cannot say what kind of papers."

  "Like these in shape and size?"

  "Maybe, but I really cannot say, because they were standing at the top of the steps, where the light from the lantern was. It was a weak lantern, and they spoke very softly, so I did not hear what they said, and saw only that they were looking at papers.

  "Now what did the prisoner say to you, Miss Manette?"

  "The prisoner was as open with me -- seeing that I needed help -- as he was kind and good in helping my father. I hope," starting to cry, "that I do not return his help by hurting him here today."

  Buzzing from the flies.

  "Miss Manette, if the prisoner does not perfectly understand that you are only doing what you have been forced to do here today, he is the only person in this room who does not understand that. Please go on."

  "He told me that he was travelling on important secret business that could bring trouble for some people, and because of that, he was using a false name. He said that this business had taken him to France for a few days, and that it might, at times, take him backward and forward between France and England for a long time to come."

  "Did he say anything about America, Miss Manette? Tell us clearly what he said."

  "He tried to tell me how that war had started, and he said that as far as he could see, it was wrong and foolish for England to be fighting there. He added, in a joking way, that George Washington could end up with a better name in history than King George the Third. But there was no anger in his words. He said it laughingly, and to pass the time."

  In a scene of deep emotion, when an actor makes a special face, the people watching will often, without thinking, make the same face. Her forehead showed how seriously worried she was, and each time she stopped for the judge to write down what she was saying, she would see her own look on the faces of the lawyers both for and against the prisoner. In every corner of the court, the people watching had the same serious look, making them little mirrors of the woman herself. The judge looked up from his writing with a very angry look at the woman when she said those awful words about George Washington.

  Mr. Attorney-General then let the judge know that he needed to ask some questions of the young woman's father, Doctor Manette, and the judge agreed.

  "Doctor Manette, look at the prisoner. Have you ever seen him before?"

  "Once. When he came to my place in London, some three or three and a half years ago.

  "Can you tell us if he is the man who travelled on a ship with you and your daughter, and if you can remember what he said to your daughter?"

  "No, sir, I cannot."

  "Is there any special reason why you cannot tell us either of these things?"

  He answered in a low voice, "There is."

  "Has it happened that you were in prison for a long time, without even so much as a hearing in court, in the country where you were born, Doctor Manette?"

  He answered with a sadness that went to every heart. "It was a very long time."

  "At the time of the boat trip that we are talking about, was that a short while after you were let out of prison?"

  "They tell me it was."

  "Are you not able to remember the trip?"

  "I remember nothing... nothing from a time -- and I cannot say what time it was -- when I was making shoes in the prison, to a time when I found myself living with my kind daughter here. I knew her to be my daughter when God gave me my mind back, but I cannot even remember how I learned who she was."

  Mr. Attorney-General sat down, and the father and daughter sat down.

  At this point, something strange happened. The plan was to show that the prisoner went down with a friend in the Dover mail that night five years earlier, but that they left the coach in the middle of the night at a place where they did not stay. The prisoner had then travelled back some twelve miles or more to a place where many soldiers and ships were staying, to get the papers that he was in the court for now. A witness was called up to say that he saw the prisoner drinking coffee in a hotel in that town on the day in question, and to say that he had been waiting there for someone. The lawyer working for the prisoner was questioning the witness without getting anywhere, when the other lawyer, the one who had been looking up at the roof, wrote one or two words on a piece of paper, squeezed it into a little ball, and threw it to the lawyer who was questioning the witness. When there was time to do it, the lawyer opened the piece of paper, looked at it, and then looked at the prisoner with great interest.

  "You say again that you are quite sure that it was the prisoner?"

  The witness was quite sure.

  "Did you ever see anyone who looked very much like the prisoner?"

  Not enough like him (said the witness) to make it difficult to tell the difference.<
br />
  "Look closely at that man, my lawyer friend over there," pointing to the one who had thrown the paper. "And then look at the prisoner. What do you think? Are they not very much the same?"

  Apart from the lawyer's hair being rough and his clothes being messy, their looks were so much the same that they not only surprised the witness, but they surprised everyone in the court when the two men were made to stand side by side. The judge being asked to let the lawyer take off his wig, and the judge agreeing after some argument, the two men looked even more surprisingly equal. The judge asked the prisoner's lawyer (Mr. Stryver) if he should not think about having his lawyer friend (Mr. Carton) arrested for the same crime.

  Mr. Stryver said no, but he said that he would ask the witness again: If this could happen in the court, could it not have also happened in that hotel he was talking about? Could he really be so confident about who he saw that night? The effect of it all was that the witness lost his confidence, and the Attorney-General lost that part of his proof that the prisoner was guilty.

  Mr. Cruncher, by this time, had chewed his fingers enough to make a full lunch of rust as he had followed what was happening. He now watched as Mr. Stryver spoke to the jury, telling them that the man who was believed to have acted out of love for his country was himself a seller of secrets, prepared to see an innocent person die if he could make money from it. He was one of the worst people on earth since the time of Judas, and he even looked a little like Judas himself. The servant who was believed to have been an honest man was in truth a secret friend of the seller of secrets; and together they had learned that the prisoner travelled between France and England on some serious business for his family -- business that was so serious that he was prepared to die before he would put his family in danger by telling it. He said that the words of the young woman had been so bent as to show that it came to nothing more than the kind of foolish talk that would pass between a young man and a young woman on meeting. The only bad thing said, that awful joke about George Washington one day being greater than King George, was so wrong as to be seen as nothing but empty foolish talk. It was a weakness in the government to give in to arguments like what the Attorney-General was using in this case, because it played on the hates and fears of the people for other countries; and the man being used to argue for the government, like so many men who are being used in courts these days, was an evil man who wanted only to make money by helping to get an innocent man hanged. At that point, the judge spoke up and, with a face that was so serious that one could think he was telling the truth, said that he could not sit there and let such things be said about the courts of England.

  Mr. Stryver then called for a few witnesses, and Mr. Cruncher had to listen while Mr. Attorney-General turned the clothes that Mr. Stryver had made for the jury inside out, showing how Barsad and Cly were a hundred times better than he had thought them, and the prisoner a hundred times worse. And then came the judge himself, turning the clothes now inside out, now outside in, but on the whole cutting and shaping them into clothes for the prisoner to be buried in.

  And then the jury turned to think about all of this, and the great flies returned to buzzing.

  Even in all that was happening, Mr. Carton, who had sat so long looking at the roof of the court, did not change his place or the direction in which he looked. His good friend, Mr. Stryver pulled his papers together, whispered to those who sat near him, and from time to time looked worriedly at the jury. The people watching moved together in little groups to whisper. Even the judge stood up and walked up and down on his stage, giving many people to think that he was sick. As all of this was happening, this one man sat, leaning back in his chair, his robe, hanging half off him, with a very big tear in it, his wig put back on roughly, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes on the roof as they had been all day. His spirit was so wild and lazy that now (when he was not being serious as he had been when he stood beside the prisoner) people were starting to say that it was hard to think of the two as being at all the same. Mr. Cruncher said to his neighbour, "I would put money on it, that he don't get no law work to do. Don't look the kind to get any, do he?"

  Yet this Mr. Carton knew what was happening around him better than most people believed. When Miss Manette's head dropped onto her father's chest, he was the first to see it and to say, "Officer! Look to that young woman. Help her father take her out. Can't you see that she is about to faint?"

  There were many people feeling sorry for her and for her father as they were leaving. The crowd had seen by the look on Doctor Manette's face when he had talked of his time in prison that it was not easy for him. And that look, which made him seem so much older than he was, stayed on his face like a heavy cloud. As he was leaving the court room, the jury turned back to face the court.

  They said that they could not agree, and the head jury man asked if they could leave the court to talk more freely between themselves. The judge (maybe thinking about George Washington) showed some surprise that they were not in agreement, but said that they could leave under guard, and he himself would leave for a break. It was now late in the day and the lanterns were being lighted. It was understood that the jury could be quite some time, so many people left to get food, and the prisoner sat down against the wall where he was being held.

  Mr. Lorry, who had gone out with the young woman and her father, now returned and waved his hand for Jerry, who was easily able to come to him now that so many people had left.

  "Jerry, if you wish to have something to eat, feel free to do it; but stay close by. When the jury comes in, please come in with them, because I want you to run to the bank with the news when it comes. You will be able to get there much more quickly than me."

  Mr. Carton came up at that time, and touched Mr. Lorry on the arm.

  "How is the young woman?"

  "She is very worried; but her father is helping her through it. She is glad to be out of the court."

  "I'll tell the prisoner. It would not be wise for a banker like yourself to be seen with him, you know."

  Mr. Lorry turned red, as if he disagreed with the point, but was not going to argue it. Mr. Carton walked toward the bar that was around where the prisoner was seated, and, as that was the way out of the court, Jerry followed him, all eyes and ears.

  "Mr. Darnay!"

  The prisoner came forward.

  "You must be wanting to know what has happened to the witness, Miss Manette. She should be okay now. She was at her worst when she was in here."

  "I am very sorry to be the reason for her troubles. Could you tell her so for me, with my sincere thanks?"

  "I could. And I will, if you ask me.” Mr. Carton's spirit was one of little or no interest in Mr. Darnay. He was half turned away from the prisoner, with his elbow leaning on the bar.

  "I do ask. And you have my sincere thanks."

  "What," asked Carton, still half turned, "do you think they'll say?"

  "The worst."

  "It is the wisest way to see it, and what is probably going to happen. But I think their going out is a good sign."

  Because he had to move along, Jerry heard no more. He left them -- so much the same in looks, but so different in spirit -- standing side by side under the mirror above them.

  It was a slow hour and a half that Jerry had to wait outside the court. The crowd was rough, but the meat pie and beer were good, and Jerry was just going off to sleep on a hard, rough bench when talk and movement from people around him made him know that things were happening inside the court, and so he moved with the crowd toward the door.

  "Jerry! Jerry!" Mr. Lorry was already calling at the door when he got there.

  "Here, sir! I had to fight to get back in. Here I am, sir."

  Mr. Lorry handed him a paper through the crowd. "Quickly. Have you got it?"

  "Yes, sir!"

  "Written on the paper were the words Not Guilty.

  "If you had said 'Called back to life'," Jerry said
as he turned, "this time I would have known what you were trying to say by it."

  He had no way to say or even think more than that until he was clear of the Old Bailey, because the crowd came pouring out of the court and almost pushed him over in their anger at the sad ending to such a long day. The loud buzz filled the street like the sound of flies looking for another piece of dead meat to land on.

  4. The Winner's Happiness

  In the dark roads behind the court, the last of those people who had become a soup of hate, cooking in the Old Bailey all day, was leaving. Doctor Manette and his daughter, Lucie, Mr. Lorry, and the defence lawyer, Mr. Stryver, were, at that same time, standing in a circle around Mr. Charles Darnay -- just freed -- sharing his happiness on having just been saved from death.

  Even if the light had been better, it would be difficult to think of Doctor Manette, who was standing straight and tall, as the old shoemaker from the room in Paris. Yet, anyone who looked at him closely would see that there was something strange about him. He would still lose his thoughts at times, and there was often a sadness in his low voice without any good reason. When the reason was clear, as happened in the court when he was questioned about his time in prison, it was easy to understand the change in him. But at other times, without any good reason, one could almost see the shadow of the government prison in Paris, some three hundred miles away, coming over his face.

  Only his daughter would be able to pull him out of those sad times. She was the golden thread that held together his past and his present in a way that was stronger than the sadness he felt in both. The sound of her voice, the light of her face, and the touch of her hand almost always helped him through the dark times. But not quite always, for there were times she could remember, not many, when her powers had failed for a while. Yet, for now, she believed that those times were over.

  Mr. Darnay had kissed her hand sincerely and with many thanks, and had turned to Mr. Stryver, whom he also thanked warmly. Mr. Stryver, a man of little more than thirty, but looking twenty years older, was fat, loud, red, and free from anything that would keep him from pushing his way into and through a crowd or any other thing standing in his way. It seemed that it was this spirit that had served most to move him up in the world.

  Mr. Stryver still had his wig and robe on, and he said, pushing himself up close in front of Darnay, so much so that he squeezed innocent Mr. Lorry right out of the picture, "I'm glad to have saved you so well, Mr. Darnay. It was an awful set of arguments that the Attorney-General used, very awful; not that it would have stopped them from winning on most days."

  "I will owe you for life, in more ways than one," said the man who had been a prisoner, taking Mr. Stryver's hand.

  "I did my best, Mr. Darnay, and I believe my best is as good as any other man's."

  Mr. Stryver was clearly waiting for someone to say that his best had been better than most, and so Mr. Lorry said it, not with much enthusiasm, but more as a way to squeeze back into the circle.

  "Do you think so?” said Mr. Stryver. "Well, you have been there all day, and you should know, as you too are a man of business."

  Mr. Stryver now worked as hard to shoulder Mr. Lorry back into the group as he had earlier worked to shoulder him out.

  "As such," said Mr. Lorry, "I will now ask Doctor Manette to break up this meeting and send us all to our homes. Miss Lucie looks sick and Mr. Darnay has had an awful day. We are all tired."

  "Speak for yourself, Mr. Lorry," said Stryver. "I have a night's work to do yet. Speak for yourself."

  "I do 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 all of us?” He asked her with a look toward her father.

  Doctor Manette's face had become locked in a strange look at Darnay, a strong look that turned into one of hate and fear. With this strange look on his face, his thoughts had moved away from what was happening around him.

  "Father," said Lucie softly, laying her hand on his. He slowly shook the shadow off, and turned to her.

  "Shall we go home, father?"

  Breathing in deeply, he answered, "Yes."

  The friends of the freed prisoner went their way, thinking, because he himself had told them so, that he would not be free to leave the place until the next day. Most of the lights were put out around the Old Bailey, the iron gates were being closed with much noise, and the court was empty, waiting for the next morning's interest in hanging and whipping and burning with a hot iron. Walking between her father and Mr. Darnay, Lucie Manette stepped out into the open air. A coach was called and the father and daughter left.

  Mr. Stryver had left them outside so he could shoulder his way back to the court dressing room to take off his robe and wig. Another person, who had not joined the group or said a word to any of them, but who had been leaning against the wall where its shadow was the darkest, quietly walked out after the Manette's left and watched the coach drive away. He now walked up to where Mr. Lorry and Mr. Darnay were standing on the footpath.

  "So Mr. Lorry. Men of business may talk with Mr. Darnay now?"

  Nothing had been said about Mr. Carton's part in saving Darnay, because no one but Stryver knew of it. Mr. Carton had his court robe off now, but he did not look any better for it, as he spoke:

  "If you knew the war that goes on in the mind of a businessman, Mr. Darnay, when he is pulled between doing what is right and doing what will help his business, you would laugh."

  Mr. Lorry turned red, and said with some fire, "You have said that before. But we who work for a business are not our own masters. We must think of the business more than ourselves."

  "I know, I know," said Mr. Carton with little interest. "Don't be angry, Mr. Lorry. You're as good as the next businessman, I should think. Better, I would say."

  "The truth, sir," said Mr. Lorry, not listening to him, "is that my business is none of your business, if I may say that as one who is much older than you."

  "Business? Bless me, I don't have a business," said Mr. Carton.

  "It is too bad that you do not, sir."

  "I think so too."

  "If you did, maybe you would be busy with it now," Mr. Lorry said, pushing his point farther.

  "Bless you, Mr. Lorry, but I'm sure I would not be," said Mr. Carton.

  "Well, sir!" cried Mr. Lorry, who was quite angry that the man showed so little interest in what he was saying, "business is a very good thing, and something others think well of. And, sir, if business stops us from doing or saying some things, then Mr. Darnay, as a young man who understands life, you must know how to make room for that in your thinking. Good night, Mr. Darnay, and may God bless you, sir! I hope that you have been saved today for a rich and happy life. Coach, here!"

  Just a little angry with himself as well as with the lawyer, Mr. Lorry climbed into the coach and headed off to Tellson's. Carton, who had the smell of wine on him, laughed and turned to Darnay.

  "This is a strange day that puts the two of us together. This must be a strange night for you, standing here on these street stones with one who is so much like you in looks."

  "I hardly feel yet that I am a part of this world," returned Darnay.

  "I am not surprised. Only a short while ago you were well on your way to another world. You speak very softly."

  "I am feeling a little weak."

  "Then why the devil don't you get something to eat? I ate when we were waiting for that stupid jury to say which world you should be in. Come with me and I'll show you to the closest hotel, where you can get a good meal."

  Pulling Darnay's arm through his own, he led him through a few streets and up a covered walk into a hotel. Here they were taken to a little room where Charles Darnay was soon building up his strength with a good meal and a good wine. Carton sat at the same table, opposite to him, with a separate bottle of wine and his rough way still about him.

  "Do you now feel a part of the world again,
Mr. Darnay?"

  "I am very confused about time and place, but I do feel that."

  "It must make you feel very good.” He said it bitterly, and again filled his glass, which was a big one. "As for me, I would really like to forget that I am part of this earth. It has nothing in it for me -- apart from wines like this -- and I have nothing for it. So we are very different in that way. In truth, I am starting to think that we are not the same in anything, you and I."

  Confused by all that happened that day, and feeling that his being there with this awful man was like a dream, Charles Darnay did not know how to answer. In the end, he did not answer at all.

  "Now that your dinner is finished," Carton said after some time, why don't we drink to someone? You name it."

  "Drink to someone? To whom?"

  "Just say it. It's on the end of your tongue.”

  "Miss Manette, then!"

  "Miss Manette, then!"

  Looking straight in the other man's face, while drinking to Miss Manette, Carton threw his glass over his shoulder against the wall, where it broke into pieces. Then he shook the bell and asked for another.

  "That was a beautiful young woman to give to a coach in the dark, Mr. Darnay!" he said, filling his new glass.

  A small look of anger and a smaller word, "Yes", were Darnay's answer.

  "She's a nice young woman to be crying for you and feeling sorry for you! How does it feel? Is it worth the danger of almost losing your life to receive such love, Mr. Darnay?"

  Darnay said nothing.

  "She was very happy to hear what you said when I gave it to her. Not that she showed it, but I think she was."

  This made Darnay remember that this man had freely helped to save his life. So he changed the talk to that, and thanked him for his help.

  "I don't want thanks, and I have done nothing to receive it," was Carton's answer. "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."

  "Gladly. It is a small return for your help."

  "Do you think that I like you?"

  "Really, Mr. Carton," he answered, worried about where this was leading, "I have not asked myself this question."

  "So ask yourself now."

  "You have acted like you do, but I don't think you do."

  "I don't think I do," said Carton. "But I do think you have understood me well."

  "All the same," Darnay went on, reaching to ring the bell, "I hope there is nothing in that to stop me from paying for our drinks, and leaving without bad blood on either side."

  "Nothing at all," Carton answered. "Are you going to pay for everything?” When Darnay said he was, Carton said to the servant,

  "Then bring me another bottle of this same wine, and wake me at ten."

  When he had paid the waiter, Charles Darnay stood up and wished Carton a good night. Without returning the wish, Carton stood up and with a touch of anger in his way of looking at Darnay, said, "A last word, Mr. Darnay; do 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, yes, I know it."

  "Then you shall also know why. I am a bored worker, sir. I care for no one on earth, and no one on earth cares for me."

  "That is very sad. You might have used your abilities better."

  "Maybe so, Mr. Darnay; maybe not. But don't let your serious face lift you up too much. You don't know what it may come to. Good night!"

  When he was alone, this strange man took a candle, walked over to a mirror on the wall, and looked at himself closely in it.

  "Do you like the man?” he whispered, looking at his own face. "Why should you like a man who looks like you? There is nothing in you to like; you know that. Ah, be gone with you! How you have changed! A good reason to like the man is that he has showed you where you have failed, and what you could have been. Change places with him, and would you have been looked at with as much love by those blue eyes as what he received? Come out with it and speak the truth. You hate him."

  He returned to his wine, finished it all in a few minutes, and fell asleep on his arms with his hair hanging across the table.

  5. The Wild Dog

  In those days men were often given to drinking, and it is a sign of how much we have changed to say that what a man could drink in one night then without anyone thinking badly of him would greatly surprise a person today. Well educated lawyers were not one step behind people in any other job when it came to drinking, and Mr. Stryver was shouldering his way to the front in this part of being a lawyer as well as he had ever done in the drier parts of being a lawyer.

  By winning cases at a number of courts, Mr. Stryver had been doing well on the lower steps of a ladder leading to a much higher target. In the garden of wigs that was his work place, he was like a great sunflower reaching to be taller than all around him, in the hope that one day he could take the place of the judge himself.

  Some lawyers had once said that Mr. Stryver was able, willing, and brave enough to break any rule to get to the top, but that he did not have the ability to find the most important point in an argument when preparing a case. But of late, he had changed in a surprising way. The more business he got, the better he became at getting to the point that was most needed; and he could stay up as late as he liked partying with his friends, and still put his finger right on what was needed the next morning.

  Sydney Carton, the laziest of men, was Stryver's great helper. The beer and wine that these two men went through would have been enough to sail a ship in, but Carton was always there with Stryver in any court he visited, with his hands in his pockets, looking at the roof of the court. They went to the same places, and would drink far into the night, with word being that Carton often walked home drunk well after the sun had come up, like a cat that had been out all night. For those who were interested in the man, word soon went around that Carton, who would never be a lion, had learned to be a wild dog, living off the work of his lion-like friend, Stryver.

  "Ten o'clock, sir," said the man at the hotel when he had tried to wake him. "Ten o'clock, sir."

  "What is that?"

  "Ten o'clock, sir."

  "What do you mean? Ten o'clock at night?” "Yes, sir. You told me to call you."

  "Oh, yes, I remember. Very well, very well."

  After trying weakly a few times to get back to sleep, wisely made difficult by noises from the owner, who was at the fireplace pushing and pulling coals and pieces of timber, Mr. Carton got up, put his hat on, and walked out. He went through a few streets before coming to Mr. Stryver's rooms.

  Mr. Stryver's office worker, who never helped at these late meetings, had gone home, and Stryver himself opened the door. He had open house shoes and a sleeping robe on, and no scarf around his throat. He had that wild burned look about his eyes, which can be seen in all those of his class who lived too freely.

  "You are a little late, my rememberer," said Stryver.

  "Close enough. I may be fifteen minutes late."

  They went into a dark room with books covering the walls and papers everywhere, where a fire was burning, and a kettle was on it. In the middle of all the papers was a table with wine and spirits on it, as well as sugar and lemons.

  "I see that you have had your bottle, Sydney."

  "Two tonight, I think. I have been eating with our man from today, or watching him eat; it's all the same."

  "That was a very good point, Sydney, that you brought up today. It helped us destroy the witness who said he had seen our man. How did you come by it? When did you see it?"

  "I saw that he was very good looking, and I was thinking that I could have been very much like him with a little luck."

  Mr. Stryver laughed until his big stomach was shaking. "You and your luck, Sydney! Get to work, get to work."

  In a quiet, angry way, the wild dog opened his coat
and went into the next room, returning with a pot of cold water, a bowl, and a cloth or two. Putting the cloths in the water and then squeezing them a little, he folded them on his head, sat down at the table, and said, "I'm ready now."

  "Not much to work on tonight, my rememberer," said Mr. Stryver happily as he looked through his papers.

  "How much?"

  "Only two."

  "Give me the worst first."

  "There they are, Sydney. Fire away!"

  The lion then rested back on the couch on one side of the drinking table, while the wild dog sat at his own paper-covered table on the other side of it, with the bottles and glasses close at hand. They both went to the drinking table as often as they liked, but each in a different way. The lion, half lying down with one hand in his belt, and looking at the fire or at times looking with little interest at some paper; the wild dog with a knitted forehead and serious face, so deep into his work that his eyes did not even follow the hand that reached out for a glass and brought it to his lips. Two or three times the business was so difficult that the wild dog needed to get up and put more water on the cloths. From these trips to the pot and bowl, he would return with a strange wet hat that was made to look more foolish by the serious way that he went back to his work.

  At last, the wild dog had fixed a small meal for the lion and he gave it to him. The lion took it with care, reading some parts and talking them over after the wild dog told him which parts he should study most seriously. When the meal was fully talked over, the lion put both hands in the belt of his pants and lay himself down to think. The wild dog then gave himself new life with a deep drink for his throat, and more water for the cloths on his head before starting to work on a second meal for the lion. By the time the lion had finished with that one, it was after three in the morning.

  "And now that we've finished, Sydney, pour yourself a tall drink," said Mr. Stryver.

  The wild dog took the cloths off his head, shook himself, exercised his arms and legs a little, and then did as he had been told.

  "You were quite right, Sydney, with how to handle those crown witnesses today. Every question cut right to the root."

  "I'm always right, am I not?"

  "I won't argue that. But what has made your spirit so rough? Have another drink to smooth it."

  "He made a sound to show he disagreed, but he obeyed when it came to having another drink.

  "Good old Sydney Carton from Shrewsbury School," said Stryver, looking him over as he thought about him, past and present. "Good old Carton, up one minute and down the next. Now in high spirits; now wanting to die."

  "Ah, yes!" the other returned, breathing out sadly. "The same Sydney with the same luck I have now. Even then I did exercises for the other boys, but not my own."

  "And why not?"

  "God knows. It was just my way, I think."

  He sat with his hands in his pockets and his legs projecting out in front of him, as he looked at the fire.

  "Carton," said his friend, squaring up with him as if the fireplace was where one learned to work hard, and the kindest thing he could do for Carton was to shoulder him into it. "Your way was always a crippled way. You never knew what you wanted. But look at me."

  "Oh be gone with you!" returned Sydney with a lighter, more friendly laugh. "Don't you start preaching at me!"

  "How have I done what I've done?” said Stryver. "How do I do what I do?"

  "Partly by paying me to do it for you. But it is a waste of time to ask such foolish questions. You do what you want to do. And you always wanted to be the leader, while I was happy to be the follower."

  "I had to get into the lead. I wasn't born there, was I?"

  "I wasn't there when you were born; but I would say yes, you were born in the lead.” At this he laughed, and then they both laughed.

  "Before Shrewsbury, at Shrewsbury, and ever since Shrewsbury, you just dropped into your class, and I dropped into mine. Even when we studied together in Paris, you were always somewhere, and I was always... nowhere."

  "And why was that?"

  "I think it may have been because of you. You were always driving and breaking and pushing and shouldering to the point where I had nothing left to do but to rest and to rust. But it is boring to talk about one's past when the sun is almost up. Turn me in some other direction before I go."

  "Well, then, let's have a drink to the beautiful witness," said Stryver, lifting his glass. "Tell me that isn't a good direction."

  He must not have thought so, because his spirits dropped again. "Beautiful witness?” he said softly. "I've had enough of witnesses today and tonight. Who are you talking about?"

  "The beautiful doctor's daughter, Miss Manette.”

  "She? Beautiful?"

  "Isn't she?"

  "No."

  "Don't be foolish. Everyone in the court loved her."

  "To hell with the love of the court. What made the Old Bailey the judge of who is beautiful? She was just a doll with golden hair."

  "Do you know, Sydney," Stryver said with a sharp eye, and pulling his hand across his red face, "do you know, that I had the feeling at the time that you were very interested in this doll with the golden hair. You were the first to see what happened to her when she was feeling faint."

  "First to see? If a girl, doll or not, faints just a few feet from a man's nose, he can see it without a telescope. I'll drink to her, but I won't say that she was beautiful. And that's all for me. I'll not have another drink tonight. It's time I went to bed."

  When Mr. Stryver took Carton out to the steps, carrying a candle to show him the way, the day was starting to show like it was coming through a dirty window. Outside the house, the air was cold and sad, the grey sky cloudy, the river dark, and the whole scene like a desert of death. Dirt from the streets moved in circles with the early morning winds like a warning to the city about a wild sand storm coming from far away.

  Feeling empty, inside and out, this man stopped on a quiet piece of garden in the middle of a wide road to see in his mind, one who was sincere, hard-working, and faithful. He lived in a beautiful city, where all the good things of life were his, where the waters were full of hope, and where love looked kindly on him. But in a second the vision was gone. He climbed to a room at the top of a square of houses, threw himself down in his clothes on a messy bed, and wet the pillow with his tears.

  Sadly, sadly, the sun came up. It came up on nothing sadder than the man with good abilities and good feelings, who, not able to make himself follow rules and not able to see what it was doing to him, chose instead to let it eat away at him.

  6. Hundreds of People

  Doctor Manette's quiet rooms were on a quiet street corner not far from Soho Square. On a clear Sunday afternoon, four months after Mr. Darnay had been found innocent of treason, Mr. Jarvis Lorry was walking along the sunny streets from where he lived toward the Doctor's house, to have dinner with him. Over and above all of his interest in business, Mr. Lorry had found time to become the Doctor's friend, and the quiet street corner had become the sunny part of his life.

  On this beautiful afternoon there were three reasons for Mr. Lorry to be walking over to the Doctor's house. The first was that he often went for walks with the Doctor and Lucie before dinner on clear Sundays. The second was that on cloudy or rainy Sundays he often stayed inside with them as a friend of the family, talking, reading, or looking out the window. And the third was that today he had his own little questions that needed answers, and from what he knew of the Manettes, this would be a good time to get his answers.

  There was not a nicer corner to be found in London, than the one where the Doctor lived. The windows of the Doctor's rooms looked out on the corner, and in those days there were few buildings around it. One could see trees and wild flowers, and there were peaches growing not far from there. The clean air of the country was free to move about, instead of slowly dying out like a lost beggar in a jungle of bui
ldings.

  In the early part of the day, the summer sun was quite bright there on the corner. But later in the day, when it was becoming hot, the corner would be in shadows; not dark shadows but a cool, quiet, and friendly place where one could listen to the sounds of busy streets not far away.

  It was the perfect place for a ship to come and hide from the storms of life; and the two floors of a very big house where the Doctor had his rooms had become that ship. There were signs to say that other businesses were going on in the same building, but there was very little sound from them by day, and even less by night. In a building at the back, on the other side of a closed in yard where a tree with big green leaves grew, it was said that church pianos were made. And a sign, projecting like a giant golden arm from the front wall said that gold and silver could be made into jewelry there, as if the man doing it had changed himself into gold and was promising to do the same to others who came to visit him. Very little was ever seen or heard of these businesses, or of the man who was said to live alone at the top of the building, or of a half-blind man who made parts for coaches who was said to have an office below. At times one would see a worker walking through the building while putting his coat on, or a stranger looking for someone, or the sound of a tool hitting something in the distance, either from across the yard or from the golden giant. But these were only little happenings that proved the bigger rule, which was that the sparrows in the big tree in the yard and the quiet sounds of movement off in the distance had their way on that corner from Sunday morning until Saturday night.

  Doctor Manette received patients here who heard of his ability in whispers from others who had been there. His education, hard work, and ability were enough to bring all the people he needed to make as much as he wanted.

  Mr. Jarvis Lorry knew these things, and was thinking about them when he pushed the door bell of the quiet house on the corner on that beautiful Sunday afternoon.

  "Is Doctor Manette at home?”

  "He will be soon."

  "Is Miss Lucie at home?” "She will be soon."

  "Is Miss Pross at home?"

  Maybe, but she was not sure, because the servant did not yet know if Miss Pross wanted to make that known.

  "As I am at home myself, I will go up," said Mr. Lorry.

  The Doctor's daughter would not have remembered anything from the country where she was born, but she still had the French ability to make much of very little. As simple as the furniture was, she had added a few cheap but nice little things that had the effect of making the whole scene quite beautiful. Her good taste could be seen in everything in the room. As Mr. Lorry looked around, it was like even the chairs and tables were asking if he liked the place.

  Each floor had three rooms, and the doors between them had been left open to let the air move freely between them. Mr. Lorry, smiling to himself, walked from room to room. The first room was the best one. In it were Lucie's flowers, and birds, and books, and desk, and work table, and box of paints. The second was the Doctor's office, also used for meals. The third, made alive by light coming in through the movement of the big tree outside the window, was the Doctor's bedroom, and there in the corner was the Doctor's old shoemaking bench and box of tools, much as they had been in the room on the fifth floor of the dark house by the wine shop in the Saint Antoine part of Paris.

  "Now why would he keep that?” Mr. Lorry asked himself quietly as he stopped in front of the bench. "It must only make him think of that awful time in his past."

  "And why should you ask a question like that?” came a voice behind him, making him jump. It had come from Miss Pross, the wild woman in red, the one with the strong hand, whom he had first met at the King George Hotel in Dover. They had since become much better friends.

  "I would have thought...” Mr. Lorry started.

  "Really? You would have thought?” said Miss Pross, and Mr. Lorry left it at that.

  Then she said sharply, yet in a in a way that was to show she was not angry at him, "How do you do?"

  "I'm well, thank you," Mr. Lorry answered kindly. "How are you?"

  "Nothing to be proud of," said Miss Pross.

  "Is that true?"

  "Yes, it is.” said Miss Pross. "I am very worried about Ladybird."

  "Is that true?"

  "Mercy me! Do say something besides 'Is that true?' or you will worry me to death," said Miss Pross, whose way (so opposite to her size) was to be short with those around her.

  "Really, then?” Mr. Lorry said, as a way of changing his answer.

  "Really is bad enough," returned Miss Pross, "but better. Yes, I am very much put out."

  "May I ask why?"

  "I don't want dozens of people who are not at all good enough for Ladybird to come here looking after her," said Miss Pross.

  "Do dozens of people come for that reason?"

  "Hundreds," said Miss Pross.

  'It was the way of this woman (as has been for others both before and since) when questioned about saying more than what was true to make it worse, and by doing it, adding to the sin.

  "My, my!" said Mr. Lorry, as the safest thing he could think of to say.

  "I have lived with my sweet one -- or my sweet one has lived with me, and never paid me for it -- which she surely should never have done.-- since she was ten years old. But it's really very hard now."

  Not seeing clearly what was so hard about it, Mr. Lorry just shook his head, using that important part of himself to hide from having to give a clear answer.

  "So many people who are not in the least measure good enough for Ladybird, are always turning up," said Miss Pross. "When you started it..."

  "I started it, Miss Pross?"

  "Didn't you? Who brought her father back to life?”

  "Oh, if that was starting it...” said Mr. Lorry.

  "Well, it wasn't ending it, was it? I say, when you started it, it was hard enough, not that I have any argument with Doctor Manette, apart from him not being good enough for such a daughter, which he cannot help, for there is no one who could be good enough for her. But it really is two or three times harder to have crowds of people turning up after him to take Ladybird's love away from me."

  Mr. Lorry knew Miss Pross to be very jealous of Lucie, but he also knew by this time that, under her rough covering, she was one of those kind people -- and they are always women -- who will, for love alone, make themselves willing slaves to qualities in others that are not really there. He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart. It is so free from any thought of making money, that his own feeling about Miss Pross was that she was much nearer to being an angel than many women who were much more beautiful and who had wealth at Tellson's.

  "There never was, and there never will be but one man good enough for Ladybird," said Miss Pross, "and that was my brother Solomon, if only he had not made one wrong choice."

  Mr. Lorry had learned enough from Miss Pross' history to know that her brother Solomon was a hard-hearted man who had robbed her of all that she owned, only to waste it on a plan to get rich that did not work, and then he had left her, without any feeling of guilt about what he had done. Miss Pross' belief in him (taking off very little for his 'one wrong choice') was a serious part of why Mr. Lorry thought so highly of Miss Pross.

  "As we happen to be alone for a while, and are both busy people," he said when they were back in the sitting room and seated, "let me ask you -- does the Doctor, in talking with Lucie, ever, even now, talk about the time when he made shoes?"

  "Never."

  "And yet he keeps that bench and those tools beside him?"

  "Ah!" returned Miss Pross, shaking her head. "But I didn't say that he does not talk about it to himself."

  "Do you think he thinks about it much?"

  "I do," said Miss Pross.

  "Do you picture...?” Mr. Lorry had started when Miss Pross cut him short with:

  "Never pict
ure anything. Stay with what is real."

  "You are right. Do you think... you do go so far as to think at times, do you not?"

  "Now and then," said Miss Pross.

  "Do you think," Mr. Lorry went on with a laughing smile in his bright eye, as it looked kindly at her, "that Doctor Manette has any understanding after all these years, of what the reason was for him being put in prison, or maybe even who was behind it?"

  "I don't think anything about it but what Ladybird tells me.”

  "And that is...?"

  "That she thinks he does."

  "Now don't be angry at me asking all these questions; because I am a slow man of business, and you too are a woman of business."

  "A slow woman?” Miss Pross asked quietly.

  Wishing he had not said slow, Mr. Lorry answered, "No, no, no. Surely not. But to return to business... Is it not strange that Doctor Manette, who is clearly innocent of any crime, should never touch on that question? He and I have done business for many years, and we have now become close friends, yet I am not saying that he should talk of it with me. But what about his daughter, whom he loves so much, and who loves him so much? Believe me, Miss Pross, I am not asking about this without a reason. I have a very strong interest in this."

  "Well, to the best of my understanding and my best is still bad," said Miss Pross, who was softer now, "he's afraid to talk about it."

  "Afraid?"

  "It's easy to see why he should be. It's an awful thing to remember. His mind was changed by it, and there is so much he cannot remember. He can never be sure it will not happen again. I should think that alone would make him not want to talk about it."

  It was a wiser answer than Mr. Lorry had been looking for. "True," he said, "and awful to think about. Yet I fear that it may not be good for Doctor Manette to close everything up inside his head. The truth is that it is this worry that has brought me to talk alone with you now."

  "Can't be helped," said Miss Pross, shaking her head. "Touch that nerve, and he quickly changes for the worse. Better to leave it alone. In short, we must leave it alone, like it or not. At times he gets up in the middle of the night and we can hear him from above there walking up and down, up and down in his room. Ladybird has learned that at those times he is, in his mind, back in prison. She comes down here quickly when that happens, and they go together, walking up and down, up and down until he is over it. But he never says a word of his real reason for being up, and she finds it best not to ask. They just walk together without talking, up and down, up and down, until her love and her being there brings him back to himself."

  Miss Pross had said not to picture things that are not real, but in her saying "up and down" so many times, it was clear that she was picturing what Doctor Manette was going through.

  It has been said that the corner was a place where sound travelled well, and it was interesting that, just as Miss Pross talked of walking up and down, the sound of steps could be heard from a distance.

  "Here they are!" said Miss Pross, standing up to end their talk. "And now we will have hundreds of people coming soon!"

  It was such an interesting corner in the way that sound travelled across it, that, as Mr. Lorry stood at the window waiting for the father and daughter to arrive, it seemed like they would never get there. The sound would die out, like they had gone away; and then other steps would come in their place before dying away too just when it seemed that they were there. All the same, father and daughter did at last arrive, and Miss Pross was ready at the street door to receive them.

  Miss Pross was interesting to watch, taking off her love's hat for her as she was coming up the steps, touching it with the ends of a cloth, and blowing the dirt off it, then folding her coat and smoothing her rich hair with as much pride as she could possibly have taken in her own hair if she had been the proudest and most beautiful of women. It was nice to see Ladybird hugging Miss Pross and thanking her and asking her not to go to so much trouble for her. This last line she did not say very seriously, or Miss Pross would have been hurt, and surely would have gone to her room and cried. The Doctor, too, was nice to watch, as he looked on at the two of them, telling Miss Pross that she was being too kind to Lucie when his own eyes and words showed that he too was as kind to Lucie as Miss Pross, and would be kinder if it were possible. And last, there was Mr. Lorry himself in his little wig, who looked at it all with a big smile on his face, as he thanked his good luck that he had found such a nice family to be his friends in his old age.

  But no, the hundreds of people that Miss Pross had promised would follow the others, were not there!

  Time for dinner came, and still no hundreds of people. Miss Pross, whose job it was to care for the lower rooms, always did her job well. Her meals, made from simple food, were so well cooked and so well served, half French and half English, that nothing could be better. When Miss Pross made friends, she did so for practical reasons. She had looked around Soho to find some poor French people who, for a few coins, would tell her how to make the best French dishes. From these poor sons and daughters of France, she had learned to be such a good cook that the servants there at the house believed she was like a god, who could send out for a chicken, a rabbit, or a few vegetables from the garden and change them into anything she liked

  On Sundays Miss Pross would eat at the Doctor's table, but on other days she would always eat alone, either in the lower rooms or in her own room on the second floor, a blue room where no one but her Ladybird ever went. On this day, probably as an effect of Ladybird's sweet spirit, Miss Pross was much softer than was her way most of the time, and so the meal, too, was much nicer for everyone.

  It was a hot day, and so after dinner, Lucie asked if they could go out back, under the big tree, to drink their wine. Because everything moved around her anyway, the others agreed, and she carried the wine out as a special kindness to Mr. Lorry. She had, some time ago, given herself the job of keeping Mr. Lorry's wine glass filled, and she did that on this day too, as they sat talking under the big tree. The backs and ends of houses looked at them, and the tree itself whispered to them in its own way, above their heads, as they talked.

  Still, the hundreds of people did not come. But Mr. Darnay did come, when they were out under the tree. And yet he was only one person.

  Doctor Manette received him kindly, as did Lucie. But Miss Pross started shaking about in her head and body and left to go to her room. It often happened that she had this problem, which she called "a touch of the shakes".

  The Doctor was at his best, and looked especially young. At times like this, it was easy to see how Lucie looked like him. As they sat side by side, with her leaning on his shoulder, and him resting his arm on the back of her chair, it was quite nice to see how much they looked the same.

  They had been talking about the old buildings of London, and Doctor Manette had been speaking confidently, when Mr. Darnay asked, "Tell us, Doctor Manette, have you seen much of the Tower?"

  "Lucie and I have been there, but only for a short time. We have seen enough of it to know that there must be much to see there; little more."

  "I have been there, as you remember," said Darnay with a little smile, but also with a little red colour coming to his face to show his anger. "I was there for a different reason, and not for a reason that left me free to see much of the place. But they told me an interesting thing when I was there."

  "What was that?” Lucie asked.

  "When they were making some changes to the building, the workers opened up a part of the prison that had been covered over for many years. Every stone on the inside wall was covered with writing, cut into it by the prisoners -- names, years, prayers, and things they were angry about. On a stone in one corner of the wall, one prisoner, who must have been killed, had cut his last work, just three letters. They were done with some very poor instrument, and done quickly, with a weak hand. At first, they believed them to be D.I.C.; but, on looking more closel
y, they found the last letter to be G. There was no history of a prisoner with three names starting with those letters, and many people tried to say who the prisoner might be. At length, someone said that the letters might be a word in themselves: DIG. They looked closely at the floor under it, and in the dirt under a stone, they found what was left of a piece of paper and a small leather bag that had been burned. It was not possible to read what he said, but it was clear that a prisoner had written a secret on the paper before hiding it there."

  "Father!" Lucie shouted. "You look sick!"

  He had quickly put his hands to his head and there was a look of fear on his face. It was so strong that it scared them all.

  "No, my sweet, not sick. There are big drops of rain falling and they made me jump. It would be best if we were to go in."

  He returned quickly to a good spirit, and rain really was falling in big drops now. He showed the back of his hand with rain on it. But he said nothing about Darnay's story, and as they went into the house, Mr. Lorry's business eye either saw or thought he saw on the Doctor's face, as the Doctor turned toward Mr. Darnay, the same special look that had been on it when he had turned toward him in the court house.

  He was so quickly back to his old ways that Mr. Lorry started to question his business eye. When he stopped under the golden arm on the way back to their rooms, Doctor Manette was as solid as the arm itself as he said that he was still not able (and maybe would never be able) to stop from jumping when he was surprised, as the rain had just surprised him.

  It came time for some tea, and Miss Pross brought it in, with another touch of the shakes when Mr. Carton came by. There were yet no hundreds of people, but Mr. Carton did make two.

  The night was so warm that even with the rain and with the doors and windows open, they were not comfortable because of the heat. When they had finished their tea, they all moved to one of the windows and looked out at the night. Lucie sat by her father; Darnay sat beside her; and Carton leaned against a window.

  When wind from the coming storm came into the room, the white curtains flew up in the air like wings on a ghost.

  "The rain drops are still falling, big, heavy, and few," said Doctor Manette. "It comes slowly."

  "But it comes surely," said Carton.

  They spoke quietly, as people watching and waiting often do; and especially as people in a dark room watching and waiting for lightning always do.

  Out in the streets, people were running to find cover before the storm broke. On that corner, where sound travelled so well, one could hear many steps of people running, but there was not one person there.

  "So many people, and yet not one out there," said Darnay, when they had listened for a while.

  "Isn't it interesting, Mr. Darnay?” asked Lucie. "At times I have sat here in the evening listening, until I have started to think... but even remembering my foolish thoughts makes me shake tonight, when all is so black and serious..."

  "Let us shake too. Tell us what you have thought."

  "It will seem nothing to you. Such thoughts are only real to the people who have them, I think. Words cannot make them real for others; but I have at times sat here alone at night, listening, until I started to believe that the steps I was hearing were the steps of all the people who will come into our lives."

  "If that is so, then there is a great crowd coming our way one day," Sydney Carton added in his sad way.

  The steps did not stop, and they moved more and more quickly. The sound came over and over there at the corner; some, as it seemed, under the window, some, as it seemed, in the room, some coming, some going, some turning away, some stopping; all far off in the street, and not one that they could see.

  "Are all of these coming to all of us, Miss Manette, or will some be for one and some for another?"

  "I don't know, Mr. Darnay. I told you it was a foolish thought, but you asked for it. When the thought has come to me, I have been alone, so I believed the steps were coming only into my life and into the life of my father."

  "I take them into mine too!" said Carton. "I ask no question, and agree with all that you have said. There is a great crowd coming toward us, Miss Manette, and I see them... by the lightning.” He added the last words after there was a bright explosion of lightning that showed him leaning back in the window.

  "And I hear them!" he added again, after the noise that followed the lightning. "Here they come, fast, dangerous, and angry!"

  It was the sound of the rain that these last words marked, and it stopped him, because no voice could be heard in it. A great lightning storm followed, and there was not a minute's break in the noise and light and rain until the moon came up at midnight

  The great bell of the church was hitting one in the morning when Mr. Lorry, helped by Jerry, who was carrying a lantern in the now clear night air, left to walk back toward his home. There were some dark streets on the way, and because Mr. Lorry was always afraid of robbers, he always had Jerry come for him. But this time, Jerry had been two hours late in getting there.

  "What a night this has been! Almost a night, Jerry, to bring the dead back to life," said Mr. Lorry.

  "I never see the night myself, sir -- and don't think I ever will -- that would do that," answered Jerry.

  "Good night, Mr. Carton," said the businessman. "Good night, Mr. Darnay. Shall we ever see such a night together again?"

  Maybe. And maybe see the great crowd of people with all its noise and anger coming toward them too.

  7. Sir in the Town

  Once every two weeks, Sir the Governor, one of the top men in the government of France, would hold a party at his great hotel in Paris. Sir was, on the day in question, in his secret room, the holiest of holy places for all of the worshippers who were partying in the many other rooms of the hotel. He was about to drink a cup of hot chocolate. The Governor was a man who found it easy to swallow many things, for there were some who said that he was quickly swallowing all of France, but his morning chocolate could not so much as get into his throat without the help of four strong men besides the cook.

  This is true. It took four men, all four dressed most beautifully, and the most important one not able to live without at least two gold watches in his pocket, in keeping with the perfect pattern set out by Sir himself, to bring the happy chocolate to the Governor's lips. One servant carried the pot of chocolate into his holy room; a second mixed it by turning around and around a special little instrument that he carried with him; a third handed the Governor a cloth with which to cover himself; and a fourth (he of the two gold watches) poured the chocolate into the Governor's cup. It would not be possible for Sir to do away with even one of these men and still be able to hold his head up before the heavens. His family name would have been deeply marked if he had so much as tried to drink chocolate with the help of only three men; and if he should have tried to do it with only two, he would have surely died.

  The night before, Sir's entertainment had been music and jokes, with food on the side. Food and entertainment were his on most nights, and always in company with beautiful people. So open was Sir the Governor to what others said, that the jokes and music had far more effect on him and his thinking than all the boring rules and needs of France. Doing things in this way was destroying France, as always happens in countries where the leaders are like that -- just as it did for England in the days when one of its leaders just up and sold it.

  Sir's general plan for government business was to let it go on in its own way; and for any one part of that government business the plan was that it should all go his way, giving him more power and filling his pockets more fully. As for what his way was, his plan, both general and special, was that the world was made to let him do what he liked to do. The Bible verse for his business (which only has one little word changed in it) is this one, "The earth is mine and all that is in it," says Sir the Governor.

  Yet, Sir had slowly been having more problems with things going wrong both
in his family business and in his government business, and so he joined with a controller-general to fix both problems. His government business was in trouble because he could not make anything of it, and so he needed to give it to one who could. His family business was in trouble because he had been spending more than he was making, and so he needed a rich relative to help him out. He had a sister whom he had given to the Catholic Church; but just before she finished her studies, he pulled her out and gave her as a gift to a very rich controller-general who was poor in those qualities that it takes to get a wife. This same controller-general was in the next room, holding a stick with a golden apple on the top of it, while all others bowed down to him. All, that is, apart from Sir's family, who looked down on him with the greatest feelings of hate. And his own wife was a part of that group.

  A very rich man was the controller-general. He owned thirty horses, twenty-four male servants, and six body women to look after his wife. As one whose job it was to take money from anyone he could, the controller-general was the one person in Sir's hotel that day who most lived up to what his job asked of him.

  For all the beautiful furniture, clothes and jewelry in those rooms, which were all the best that could be found anywhere at the time, the party-goers there were not, on the whole, ones who could do any real work. If you were to put them beside the poor scarecrows in rags who were not so far away that the watching towers of Notre Dame could not see them both, the scarecrows would have been, by far, the better workers, and done more to help Sir the Governor in a real way. There were army officers who knew nothing about the army; officers on ships who knew nothing about ships; government managers who knew nothing of government; and church leaders who had loose tongues and lived looser lives; all of them quite wrong for the jobs they had, and all living a lie. All of these people were from the class that Sir was in, and because of it, they took any job that they could use in a selfish way. But there were an equal number of people at the party who were not a part of Sir's class, but who were also not real people and not people who had travelled by any straight road to any true end. There were doctors who had made great wealth by selling strange mixtures as medicines for sicknesses that were not even real. They were there, being smiled at by the rich patients that they had used to make their wealth. There were planners who would promise to fix every little problem that touched the government, but who never fixed even one real sin. They came to the Governor's parties to whisper their empty promises into any ears they could find that would listen. Men of wisdom, who talked nothing but foolishness about how they were going to make a better world, talked with men of science who believed they could make gold through magic. Men from families of the highest class, which at that time and at this time as well, is marked by showing no interest toward anything that is really important to real people in the real world, talked themselves sick at the Governor's hotel. The homes that each of these people came from were such that people looking for secrets to tell Sir the Governor (who were about half of the people there) would have a hard time finding one real mother in any of them. Apart from the act of giving birth to a baby that was not wanted -- which is not enough to make one a real mother -- the wives of these men had nothing to do with their children. It was left to the poor women to care for their children, while the mothers themselves partied on even after their children had children, always trying to look like they were in their twenties.

  The sickness of hypocrisy crippled every person who came there to kiss up to Sir the Governor. In the farthest rooms were half a dozen people who had, for a few years, been thinking that something was not right in the country. Half of this half dozen had become members of a strange group of people who turned in on themselves looking for answers in one emotion or another. Even now they were asking themselves if they should shout, cry, or roll on the floor to warn the Governor about what they could feel was coming soon. The other three had joined a different group, that worked at fixing the problem through finding "the center of truth". They believed that the world had moved away from the center of truth (and it did not take much to prove that argument) but they said that we had not yet gone past the border of the circle. To keep the world under control, and to point people back to the center they would go without eating and talk to spirits. Many of these people were known to have talked at length with spirits, and through that to have fixed up many of the problems in the country, not that any of the answers came in a way that anyone else could see.

  But the good news was that everyone at Sir the Governor's great hotel was perfectly dressed. If the day when God is to judge the world could only be a dress day, everyone there would be right for eternity. Such shaping and powdering and sticking up of the hair, such beautiful skin, covered and fixed with the best pastes and powders, such brave swords to look at, and such careful interest to how they smelled would surely be enough to keep them saved forever. The men from the best families had little pieces of gold hanging here and there and making noises like little bells as they moved ever so smoothly from place to place. The sound of those bells and the movement of so much expensive material made a wind that must have touched Saint Antoine and his great hunger so far away.

  How one dressed was the safest way to keep everyone in their place. All of Sir's friends were dressed for a top class party that was to never stop. From the king's house, through to the courts, and the managers of government, and all of the country (apart from the scarecrows) the top class party look was the way to be. It went down even to the man whose job it was to kill people for the country. To keep the country beautiful, the rules said that he must wear powdered, shaped hair, a coat with gold stitching, special shoes, and special white socks that reached to his knees. When hanging a prisoner, or pulling his body apart on the wheel -- The axe was not used at this time. -- Mr. Paris, as he was often called by others doing the same job in other French cities, did his job dressed in this beautiful way. And who in the crowd at Sir's party in the year of our Lord, 1780, could possibly have believed that any government with such a beautiful man, could not have lasted longer than the stars themselves?

  Sir the Governor, having taken the weight off his four helpers by drinking his chocolate, had other workers throw open the doors of his holiest of holy places, so that he could explode out of it. And as he did, what acts of love and humble service, what bowing and shaking in front of him, what kissing up the people did to him. If there was anything they could do to show their love for God, they did it for Sir, which may be one reason of many why the worshippers of Sir the Governor never had time for God.

  Giving a word of promise here and a smile there, a whisper to one happy slave, and a wave of the hand to another, the Governor moved happily through his rooms to the farthest borders of the circle of truth. There he turned and came back by the same way that he went, until he was safely back inside his secret room, protected by his chocolate angels once again.

  The show being over, the movement of cloth and gold bells turned into a storm, as people crowded down the steps to leave. There was soon only one person left of all the crowd, and he, with his hat under his arm and his tobacco box in his hand, walked slowly by the mirrors on his way out.

  Stopping at the last door on the way and turning toward the secret room, this person said, "I give you to Satan!"

  With that, he shook the tobacco dust from his fingers as if he was shaking dust from his feet, and quietly walked down the steps.

  He was a man of about sixty, well dressed, proud in his actions, and with a face like a thin mask. His face was so white that you almost could see through it. Each part of it was clear and sharp. The look on his face never changed. His nose was beautifully shaped, but just above each opening was a small concave place that would move in and out. It was the only part of his face that ever changed. At times they would change colour. When they moved quickly in and out, they added a cruel look to the whole face. When looking closely at his face, one could see that what made the
little changes in the nose so strong was that the mouth and eyes were too perfectly horizontal and too thin. But on the whole, it was a good-looking face.

  The owner of that face walked down the steps and into the yard, climbed into his coach, and left. Not many people had talked with him at the party. He had stood apart by himself. Even Sir the Governor had been warmer than him. It seemed, as the coach moved through the streets, that he liked to see the poor people jump out of the way of his horses, with many of them almost being knocked over. The driver acted like he was at war with the people in the street, and his master showed nothing in his words or actions to say that he had any problem with this dangerous way of driving. Others had often said, even in that city without ears and at that time when most were without a voice, that in the narrow streets without footpaths the hard driving of the coaches crippled many in a cruel way. But few cared enough for that to think of it a second time, and in this, like in everything else, the poor were left to live with their problems in whatever way they could.

  With a wild noise and shaking and with no thought for the danger, the coach raced through the streets and around corners making women shout in fear before it, and making men pull each other and their children out of its way. At last, flying around a corner by a fountain, one of its front wheels hit something with a sound to make one sick. There was a loud cry from a number of voices, and the horses lifted themselves up on their back legs before falling over.

  If it were not for the horses falling, the driver probably would not have stopped at all. Coaches would often drive off, leaving the people they had hit behind them; and why not? But the driver was afraid, and he jumped down quickly. All at once there were twenty different hands pulling at the ropes on the horses.

  "What's wrong?” the man inside asked quietly, as he looked out. A tall man in a night hat had lifted something from under the feet of the horses and had put it at the foot of the fountain. Now he was down in the mud and wet, crying over it like a wild animal.

  "I'm sorry Sir the Marquis!" said a humble man in rags. "It is a child."

  "Why does he make that awful noise? Is it his child?"

  "I'm sorry, Sir the Marquis... It is too bad... yes."

  The fountain was some distance from the coach, as the street was much wider there. As the tall man jumped up from the ground and came running at the coach, Sir the Marquis put his hand, for a second, on the handle of his sword.

  "Killed!" shouted the man at the top of his voice, as he put both arms straight above his head. Then, looking at Sir the Marquis, he said "Dead!"

  The people pushed in and looked at Sir the Marquis. There was no anger showing in their many eyes, only an interest in seeing what would happen next. They did not say anything either. After the first shouts, they had been quiet, and stayed that way. The voice of the humble man who had first said that it was a child was flat and controlled. Sir the Marquis ran his eyes over them all like they were mice coming out of holes.

  He took out his money bag.

  "It is strange to me," he said, "that you people cannot take care of yourselves and of your children. One or the other of you is always in the way. How do I know what this has done to my horses? Here! Give him that."

  He threw out a gold coin for the driver to pick up, and all of the heads pushed forward to look down at it as it fell. The tall man called out again, with a cry of great pain, "Dead!"

  He was stopped by another man arriving, while the others moved back to make way for him. On seeing him, the poor man fell on his shoulder, crying loudly and pointing to the fountain, where some women were leaning over the shape that was lying there, and moving softly around it. They too were as quiet as the men.

  "I know, I know," said the man who had just arrived. "Be brave, Gaspard! It is better for the poor thing to die so than to live. She has died in a second, without pain. Could she have lived for an hour as happily?"

  "You are a wise man, you there," said the Marquis, smiling. "What do they call you?"

  "They call me Defarge.” "What is your job?"

  "Sir the Marquis, I sell wine."

  "Pick that up, wise man and seller of wine," said the Marquis, throwing him another gold coin, "and spend it as you will. The horses there... are they okay?"

  Without taking another look at the crowd, Sir the Marquis leaned back in the seat and was just leaving with the air of a man who has by accident broken some small thing, but who has easily been able to pay for it, when his rest was broken by a coin flying into the coach and hitting the floor.

  "Stop!" said Sir the Marquis. "Hold the horses. Who threw that?"

  He looked back at where Defarge the seller of wine had been standing, but the poor father was on his face on the footpath in that place, and the person standing there beside him now was a dark fat woman, and she was knitting.

  "You dogs!" said the Marquis, but he said it smoothly, and with no change to his face apart from the two sides of the end of his nose as he breathed in and out. "I would gladly drive over any of you, and end your life. If I knew which one of you threw at the coach, and if that trouble maker was close enough, he would be killed under my wheels."

  So scared were the people, and so long had they known what one could do to them, both under the law and outside it, that not a face or a hand or even an eye was lifted. Not one man. But the woman who was knitting lifted her head without fear and looked the Marquis in the eye. He was too proud to let her know that he saw it; his eyes of hate moved over her and over all the other rats. He then leaned back in his seat again, and gave the word, "Go on!"

  He went on, and other coaches came after him: the government leader, the planner, the controller-general, the doctor, the lawyer, the church leader, the singer, the joke teller, the whole crowd from the party in one long line came racing by. The rats were out of their holes now, looking, and they stayed looking on for hours. Soldiers and police often moved between them and the vehicles, making a wall that they were to stay behind and that they could look through. The father had long ago carried away his child, and the women who had stayed by the dead child when it was lying at the foot of the fountain sat there now watching the water run, and the coaches roll by. The one woman who had stood up, knitting, was still knitting as faithful as death. The water from the fountain ran; the river ran; the day ran into evening; and so much life in the city ran into death, each obeying the rule that says time and movement of the ocean wait for no one. And before long the rats were sleeping close together again in their dark holes, while the party went on into the night. All things went on to where they should one day finish.

  8. Sir in the Country

  The land itself was beautiful. The corn was bright even if there was not much of it. There were cheaper grains growing where the corn should have been growing; and there were places with poor peas and poor beans and other rough vegetables growing in the place of wheat. With the plants, as with the people growing them, there seemed to be little enthusiasm for life, almost a wish to die off.

  Sir the Marquis, in his heavy coach with four horses and two drivers, pushed slowly up a steep hill. A touch of colour on the cheeks of the Marquis did not prove that he was less than part of the highest class, for the colour was not coming from any feeling on his part. It was the effect of light from the sun, something that he could not control.

  The sun, as it was going down, was so strong when they reached the top of the hill, that the man in the coach was covered with a deep red colour. "It will die out," said the Marquis, looking at his hands. "Soon."

  And it is true that just then, the sun dropped below the line of the earth. When the heavy brake was put on the wheel, and it was going down the other side, with a burning smell and a cloud of dust, the red colour disappeared quickly. The sun and the Marquis both went down together. By the time the brake was taken off, the red colour was gone.

  But the coach was yet to travel over some rough open country, through a little villa
ge at the bottom of the hill, with a big slow turn on the other side before going up again, past a church tower, a windmill, a forest for hunting, and a big tall rock with a building on it that was used as a prison. The Marquis looked ahead to all of these things as the air turned dark, with the look of one who was coming close to home.

  The village had one poor street, with a poor building for making beer, a poor building for making leather, a poor building to drink beer in, a poor yard for horses, a poor fountain, and all the other poor things that made up a poor village. All of its people were poor, and many of them were sitting at their doors preparing onions and the like for their evening meal, while others were at the fountain washing leaves and grasses and any other thing that they could eat. There were many signs to show what made them so poor. A tax for the government, a tax for the church, a tax for their village leader, a village tax and a country tax were all to be paid here or there, as the signs said, until one wondered if all the different taxes would one day eat up the whole village.

  There were few children to be seen, and no dogs. As for the men and women, they had two choices: life that was little more than staying alive down in the village by the windmill, or prison and death up on the big, tall rock.

  With a shouted warning from a man riding ahead of the coach, and the sound of the whips flying like snakes over the heads of the two men on the coach horses, the Marquis came into the village as if he was coming with the gods of anger at his side. The coach pulled up at the post office next to the fountain, to change horses, and the poor people stopped what they were doing to look at him. He looked at them and saw, without knowing it, the slow sure wearing away of their tired faces and bodies that would make people from England believe for the next hundred years that everyone from France was thin and hungry even when it was no longer true.

  Sir the Marquis was looking at all the humble faces bowing in front of him like he and others like him had bowed in front of Sir the Governor at the hotel (but these bowed only to obey, not to ask for gifts), when a rough road worker joined the group.

  "Bring that man here!" said the Marquis to the man who had just arrived on a horse, with the mail for the post office.

  The man was brought, with his hat in his hand, and the other men closed around to look and listen, as the people had done at the fountain in Paris.

  "Didn't I pass you on the road?"

  "Sir, it is true. I was blessed to have you pass me on the road."

  "First at the bottom of the hill, and again at the top of the hill. Is that right?"

  "Sir, that is right."

  "What were you looking at so seriously, when I passed you?"

  "Sir, I was looking at the man.” He bent down a little, and with his rough blue hat he pointed under the coach. All of his neighbours bent down to look under the coach too.

  "What man, you pig? And why are you looking there?”

  "I'm sorry, sir. He was hanging by the brake chain.”

  "Who?” shouted the traveller.

  "Sir, the man."

  "May the devil carry these stupid people away! What was his name? Surely, you know all the men in these parts. Who was it?"

  "Mercy, sir! He was not from this part of the country. In my whole life, I have never seen him before."

  "Hanging by the chain, you said? Was he dead?"

  "If I may say so, sir, that was the strange thing about it. His head was hanging over... like this!"

  He turned himself in line with the coach and leaned back with his face looking up at the sky, and his head hanging down, then he stood back up, almost dropping his hat, and bowed.

  "What was he like?"

  "Sir, he was whiter than the man who makes the flour. All covered in dust like a ghost!"

  Talk of a ghost had a strong effect on the crowd, but, without looking at each other, all eyes stayed on the Marquis, to see if he had a reason to be afraid of ghosts too.

  "Truly, you did well," said the Marquis sweetly. He must not let such dirty people see him acting in fear. "To see a robber trying to get into my coach and not even open that big mouth of yours. That's awful! Send him away, Mr. Gabelle!"

  Mr. Gabelle was the owner of the post office and a tax collector as well, who had come out to help with the questioning. He had been holding the sleeve of the road worker's coat.

  "Go on! Get out of here!" said Mr. Gabelle.

  "Hold this stranger if he tries to stay in your village tonight, and find out what his reason is for being here, Gabelle."

  "Sir, I am blessed to be able to help you."

  "Did he run away, man? Where is that awful man?"

  The awful man was under the coach with half a dozen friends, pointing to the chain with his blue hat. Some half a dozen other friends quickly pulled him out and held him up for the Marquis.

  "Did the man run away, stupid? When we stopped to put the brake on? Did he run away?"

  "Sir, he jumped over the side of the hill, head first, the way a person goes into the river."

  "Do like I told you, Gabelle. Now, let's go!"

  The half dozen who were looking at the chain were still in the way of the wheels, like stupid sheep. The wheels started to roll so quickly that they were lucky to save their skin and bones. They had little more than that to save, or they might not have been so lucky.

  The coach raced out of the village, but slowed down when it came to the hill outside the village. Soon it was moving no faster than a person could walk, moving slowly from side to side as it pushed up the hill in the many sweet smells of a summer night. The two drivers, with a thousand little flies around their heads in the place of the gods of anger who had been riding with them earlier, worked on fixing the ends of their whips. The Marquis' servant walked by the horses, and the mail carrier walked ahead on his horse, but was close enough to talk with the other riders.

  At the steepest part of the hill, there was a small piece of ground for burying people. A new cross had been put there, with a piece of timber that had been cut to look like Jesus hanging on it. It was rough, but one could see that the man who shaped it had shaped it from his own life, because it was very thin.

  A woman was on her knees in front of this sign of great pain that had long been growing worse, but was not yet at its worst. She turned as the coach came closer, jumped up and went to the door of the coach.

  "It is you, sir! Sir, I beg you."

  With a word to show he was not happy, but with no change to his face, Sir looked out.

  "How then! What is it? Always asking for something!"

  "Sir, for the love of the great God! My husband, the forest worker."

  "What of your husband, the forest worker? Always the same with you people. He cannot pay something?"

  "He has paid all, sir. He is dead."

  "Well! He's quiet. Do you think I can bring him back for you?”

  "Not now sir! But he's over there, under a hill of old grass.”

  "So?"

  "Sir, there are so many little hills of old grass."

  "Again, so?"

  She looked old, but was really young. Everything about her showed that her heart was breaking. She squeezed one rough hand in the other, and then put one of them on the carriage door, touching it lovingly, like it was a person.

  "Sir, please listen to me! Sir, listen to what I am asking. My husband died without enough food. So many die without enough food. So many more will die without enough food."

  "Again, I say, so? Can I feed them all?"

  "Sir, the good God knows; but I'm not asking for that. What I am asking is only that a little piece of stone or timber, with my husband's name on it, be put over him to show where he is lying. Without it, people will soon forget where he is. They will never be able to find it after I die from the same thing. They will put me under some other hill of poor grass. Sir, there are so many, and the number is growing so quickly because there is so much hunger. Sir! Sir!"

  The servant ha
d pushed her away from the door, and the horses were made to move more quickly, until she was left far behind, and Sir, again travelling with the gods of anger, was quickly covering the short distance between there and his castle.

  The sweet summer smells were all around him, and because smells are like the rain, falling on all equally, the dirty, tired group in rags at the fountain, not far away, were able to smell them too. The road worker, with the help of his blue hat, without which he was nothing, was still telling them about the man like a ghost, for as long as they would listen. One by one they lost interest and went to their houses, where little lights could be seen in the windows. As the night grew later, and the lights in the windows were put out, it was like they shot up into the sky to join the stars, and not like they were just put out.

  The shadow of a big house with a high roof and many tall trees was on Sir the Marquis by that time; and the shadow gave way to the light of a torch, as his coach stopped, and the great door of his castle was opened to him.

  "Has Mr. Charles arrived from England yet?” he asked. "No sir, not yet."

  9. The Gorgon's Head

  It was a heavy group of buildings, this castle of the Marquis', with a big yard of small stones in front of the two wide stone steps curving from opposite sides up to the stone verandah in front of the big front door. All in all, everywhere one looked there was stone work, with stone cylinders in the fence around the verandah, big stone pots, stone flowers, stone faces, and stone lion heads. It was like the head of the Gorgon had looked over the place after it was built, two centuries earlier.

  (*Gorgon was a woman from an old Greek story, who had snakes for hair, and who was able to turn people into stone just by looking at them.)

  Up the wide steps the Marquis walked, with a torch being carried in front of him. It was so quiet that even the flame on the torch (and on the other torch waiting for him at the door) burned like they were in a closed room, and not like they were burning in the open night air. The only sounds were the sound of a bird in the barn, and the sound of water from the fountain dropping into a big stone bowl. It was one of those nights when the air would stop breathing for a long time, then breathe out very slowly before stopping again.

  The big door closed loudly behind Sir the Marquis, and he walked across a room that was far from friendly. Many hunting weapons were hanging on the wall: spears, swords, and knives. It was even less friendly when one saw that there were heavy whips and sticks for hitting horses, which had also been used to kill some poor people when they made their lord angry.

  Passing by the bigger rooms, which were dark and closed for the night, the Marquis, with the torch carrier leading the way, climbed the steps to the second floor, where his rooms were. There were his bedroom and two other rooms. They were tall cool rooms with no rugs on the floor, and big dogs sleeping in front of the fireplaces. They had the best of furniture and everything that a rich marquis in a rich country could ask for. At this time in French

  history, when Louis the Fourteenth was leading the country, beautiful French furniture was at its best.

  A table was set for two in one of the side rooms, a round room in one of the castle's four covered towers. The windows had thin parallel stone-coloured boards turned at an angle to stop sun or rain from coming in, but they did not stop the cool night air.

  "For my brother's son?” said the Marquis, looking at the food on the table. "They said he hasn't arrived."

  But the servants had understood that he was coming with the Marquis.

  "I see! I don't think he'll come tonight. But leave the table as it is, and I'll eat in about fifteen minutes."

  Fifteen minutes later, Sir was ready. He sat down to the best of food, looking toward the window as he ate. He had just finished his soup and was putting a glass of wine to his lips when he put it down.

  "What is that?” he asked quietly, looking seriously at the horizontal lines of black and grey stone.

  "Sir? What is what?"

  "Outside the window. Open the window."

  It was done.

  "Well?"

  "Sir, it's nothing. The trees and the night are all that are here."

  The servant who was talking had opened the boards all the way, looked out into the empty darkness, and then turned to face his master.

  "Good," said his master, without emotion. "Close them again."

  That too was done, and the Marquis went on with his meal. He was half finished when he stopped again, his glass in his hand, because he had heard the sound of wheels. A coach was travelling quickly, and it stopped in front of the castle.

  "Ask who it is."

  It was his brother's son. He had been a few miles behind Sir early in the afternoon. He had travelled much more quickly, but not fast enough to catch up with him on the road. He had learned how close he was by asking at the post offices on the way.

  Sir told the servants to ask the young man to come eat with him. He soon arrived. He had been known in England as Charles Darnay.

  The Marquis welcomed him with a cool smile, but they did not shake hands.

  "You left Paris yesterday, sir?” asked the young man as he took a seat at the table.

  "Yesterday. And you?”

  "I came today."

  "From London?”

  "Yes."

  "You have been a long time getting here," said the uncle with a smile.

  "But I came straight here."

  "Forgive me. I did not mean a long time travelling. I mean that you took a long time getting around to travelling at all."

  "I was not able to come sooner because of...” and the young man stopped for a second before finishing, "...other business."

  "As I can see," said the smooth uncle.

  For as long as a servant was with them, they said no more. But when coffee had been served and they were alone together, the young man looked his uncle in the face and started the talk.

  "I have returned, sir, as you must know, for the same reason I left. What I have been looking for has put me in great danger; but I hoped that I would have been brave enough even if it had ended in my death."

  "Not your death," said the uncle. "You do not need to say, in my death."

  "I do not believe, sir," returned the other, "that if it had taken me to the point of death, you would have cared to stop it."

  The two marks in the Marquis' nose moved, and the lines of his cruel face grew longer in answer to what he heard. He made a movement with his hand as if to say that he would not have been so cruel as to let his nephew die, but it was so clearly being done to look good that it did not change the young man's belief.

  "Truth is," said the nephew, "I am not sure that you would not have acted to put me in even more trouble than I was in."

  "No, no, no," said the uncle kindly.

  "Whatever the truth is," the nephew went on, looking at his uncle with little faith in anything he might say, "I know that you would have done anything you could to stop me."

  "My friend, I told you so," said the uncle with a small movement in the two marks. "Do you remember me saying so, long ago?"

  "I remember."

  "Thank you," said the Marquis, very sweetly.

  The sound of his voice would hang in the air, much like the sound of a musical instrument.

  "In effect, sir," the young man went on, "I believe it has been your bad luck and my good luck that I have not been put into a prison here in France."

  "I don't quite understand," returned the uncle, taking little drinks of his coffee. "Can I ask you to say what you mean by that?"

  "I believe that if you were not in trouble yourself with the government, and had not been under the shadow of that cloud for years, a secret letter would have put me in a prison for good."

  "It's possible," said the uncle, at perfect peace with what he was saying. "For the good name of the family, I could see the point in doing that to you. Please try to overlook that."

  "I
see that, happily for me, your meeting with the Governor the day before yesterday was a cold one."

  "I would not say happily for you, my boy," answered the uncle, with friendly good taste. "I am not so sure that it would not truly help you to have time alone to think about where your actions are leading you. But it is a waste to talk about such a thing because, as you say, that door is not open to me. These little instruments that can be used to protect the good name of a family, these ways of controlling people like yourself come now only by begging and by knowing the right people. So many ask for such help, but so few get it. It was not always like that, but France is changing for the worse in all such things. Our fathers and grandfathers had the power of life and death over these evil people. From this room, many such dogs have been taken out to be hanged. In the next room (my bedroom) one man that I know of was stabbed to death for being so proud as to speak up for his daughter. His daughter! Can you believe that? We are losing so much of the power that should be ours. A new teaching is coming in. Just trying to do what is our right could (I am not going so far as to say that it would) bring serious problems. It's all bad, very bad!"

  The Marquis breathed a small measure of tobacco dust in through his nose, and shook his head. He was as proudly sad about where the country was heading as it was possible for him to be without forgetting that he was still a part of the country, and that, as such, there was still much hope for the future.

  "We have tried so hard to do what we think is our right to do, both in the past and in the present," said the nephew, sadly, "that I believe our name is the most hated name in all of France."

  "Let us hope so," said the uncle. "Hating the high is how the low show their place... and ours."

  "There is not," the young man carried on, "a face in all of this country around us that looks at us with any feeling better than fear... as our slaves."

  "And this is a good thing," said the Marquis. "It shows how great our family is. Only through this fear, and through them becoming our slaves, have we been able to become as great as we are. Ha!"

  With this, he breathed in another measure of tobacco dust, and crossed his legs.

  But when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table, covered his eyes sadly with his hand, to think about what was being said, the thin mask looked at him differently, and with a stronger mixture of hate and interest than the wearer was comfortable with.

  "Control is the only teaching that is eternal. This look of fear that you talk about from these slaves," pointed out the Marquis, "will keep the dogs obeying the whip as long as this roof," looking up at it, "shuts out the sky."

  And that might not have been so long as what the Marquis believed it would be. If he could see this castle, and fifty like it, in a few years' time, he might not have been able to even find where his room used to be in the coals of the burned out building. As for the roof that he talked of so proudly, he might have found it shutting out the sky in a different way, when the metal in it was melted down and turned into bullets, that would be used to close the eyes forever of the bodies that thousands of guns would fire into.

  "For the present," said the Marquis, "I will fight for the good name of our family even if you will not. But you must be tired. Shall we end our talk for the night?"

  "One minute more."

  "An hour if you like."

  "Sir," said the nephew, "We have done wrong, and now we are paying for it."

  "We have done wrong?” the Marquis asked with a smile, quietly pointing, first to the young man and then to himself.

  "Our family has. Our wonderful family, whose name is important to both of us, but in such different ways. Even when my father was alive, we did a world of wrong, hurting everyone who came between us and what we wanted. But why do I need to speak of my father, when you are equally wrong? Can I separate my father's brother, who will now lead our family, from himself?

  "It is only death that has made me leader!" said the Marquis.

  "And that death has left me tied to a family that preaches fear," answered the nephew. "I am a part of that family, yet I can do nothing to change it. I am trying to obey the last thing my sweet mother said, and the last look in her eyes, which were begging me to show mercy, and to be fair to the people we have hurt. I am tortured by the truth that I cannot do anything to change this family."

  "Trying to get those changes from me, my nephew," he said, pointing his finger into the young man's chest, as they stood beside the fireplace, "will be a waste of time. Believe me."

  Every line in his white face was cruelly and closely squeezed together as he looked quietly at his nephew with his tobacco box in his hand. Once again, he touched him on the chest, as if his finger was a sword and he was running him through with it, and said, "My friend, I will die fighting for things to stay as they are for us."

  When he had said that, he took one last measure of tobacco and put the box in his pocket.

  "Better to be a thinking animal," he added, after ringing a small bell on the table, "and to take what God has given you. But I see, Mr. Charles, that you are lost."

  "This land and France are lost to me," said the nephew sadly. "I don't want anything to do with them."

  "Are they really yours to throw away? France maybe, but what of this land? It is a small thing, but is it yours?"

  "I was not trying to say it was mine yet. But if it passed from you to me tomorrow..."

  "Which I am proud to say will probably not happen."

  "But even if it came to me in twenty years..."

  "You give me that long?," asked the Marquis. "But still, I like that better than tomorrow."

  "... I would leave it and live somewhere else and in some other way. It is nothing to throw away. What is it but a desert of sadness and pain?"

  "You think so?” said the Marquis, moving his eyes over all the wealth that was around them.

  "To the eye it is nice enough, here; but when one looks at the spirit behind it, in the open light, and through the eye of God, it is a broken tower of waste, pain, debt and hunger, that is built on robbing and hurting others.

  "You think so?” said the Marquis again, in a way that showed he was happy to have it be like that.

  "If it ever becomes mine, I will put it in the hands of someone who is better able than me to free it slowly (if such a thing is possible) from the weight that holds it down, so that the children of the poor people who cannot leave it and who have long been squeezed as far as they can go, may not have it so bad. But it is not for me to do. There is a curse on this land."

  "And you?” said the uncle. "Forgive my interest. Do you plan to keep living without all of this?"

  "To do that, I must do what others in France have had to do, even with people like you at their backs, and that is to work."

  "You mean in England?"

  "Yes. That way, the family name is safe, sir, from me in this country. And it cannot be hurt in any other country, because I don't use it in any other country.

  The bell had the effect of putting a light on in the next bedroom, and it could now be seen through the door between the two rooms. The Marquis looked in that direction and listened for the steps of the servant leaving.

  "You must love something in England, for you have not made any wealth there," he said, turning his quiet face to his nephew with a smile.

  "As I have already said, it is partly because of you that I live there. But I find it a safe place to hide as well."

  "Those proud English people say that there are many who hide there. Do you know another French man who is hiding there? A doctor?"

  "Yes."

  "With a daughter?"

  "Yes."

  "Yes," said the Marquis. "You must be tired. Have a good night."

  As he bent his head in his nicest way, there was a secret smile on his face, and a secret meaning in his words that were clear to his nephew. At the same time, the thin lines of his face and the markings in his nose moved in a wa
y that was not so different from a very good-looking devil.

  "Yes," answered the Marquis. "A doctor with a daughter. Yes. And so the new teaching starts. You look tired. Good night!"

  It would have been as easy to change one of the stone faces outside the building as it would have been to get the Marquis to change his feelings. The nephew looked at him and saw nothing as he passed him on the way to the door.

  "Good night!" said the uncle. "I look forward to seeing you again in the morning. Sleep well!" Turning to the servant, he said, "Lead my nephew to his bedroom there!" And then, to himself he added, "And burn my nephew in his bed if you will," before ringing the bell and calling another servant to take care of himself.

  When his servant was finished and had left, the Marquis walked around his room in his robe, preparing himself for sleep on that hot, quiet night. He was wearing soft house shoes, and so his walking was as quiet as that of a tiger; and he himself looked like an evil person in a story who could change himself into a tiger.

  He walked from end to end of his very big bedroom, going over the happenings of the day's trip. The slow climb up the hill as the sun was going down, the sun going down at the top of the hill, looking down on the windmill, the prison on the tall rock, and the little village at the bottom, the poor people at the fountain, and the road worker with his blue hat pointing to the chain under his coach. That fountain there had made him think of the fountain in Paris, that dead child lying on the step with women bending over it, and the tall man with his arms up, crying, "Dead!"

  "I am cool enough now," said Sir the Marquis to himself, "and so I may go to bed."

  Leaving only one light burning on the stones in front of the fireplace, he let the thin curtain down around himself and listened to the night breathe out deeply after being quiet for a long time. He rested there before falling asleep.

  The stone faces on the outside wall looked without seeing at the black night for three heavy hours. For three heavy hours the horses in the barn made noises and they hit against their feed boxes, the dogs barked, and the night birds made sounds that were quite different to the sounds poets say they make. But it is the way with such birds never to say what we tell them to say.

  For three hours the stone faces of the castle, faces of both lions and people, looked blindly out at the night. Darkness as deep as death covered the land, adding its own quiet to the quieting dust on all the roads. In the darkness one could not tell one pile of dry grass from another where the poor dead people were buried. The shape on the cross could have come down off it, and no one would have known. In the village, taxers and those who were taxed were all fast asleep. Maybe they were dreaming of food, as hungry people often do, or of rest, as slaves and cows in a yoke must do. In their sleep, the thin people of the village were full and free.

  Water went on coming out from that fountain in the village, and from the fountain at the castle too, over those three hours, like the minutes that had been melting away from the start of time. Then the grey water in both turned to the colour of ghosts, and the eyes of the stone faces started to open.

  The sky became lighter and lighter until, at last, the sun touched the tops of the trees and poured its light over the hill. In the bright light of the sun, the colour of the water turned to blood, and the stone faces became red. The song of the birds was loud and high; and outside the great window of the Marquis' bedroom one little bird was singing its sweetest song with all of its strength. At this, the nearest stone face seemed to open its eyes wider, drop its mouth open, and look with great surprise.

  Now that the sun was fully up, movement started in the village. Windows opened, and the bars were taken off doors, as people stepped out into the cold sweet morning air. The work of the day started. Some to the fountain; some to the fields; men and women here to dig and look; men and women there to care for the animals, and to take their thin cows out to the side of the road to look for food. In the church and at the Cross, one or two people were on their knees, while the cows, doing what they could to answer those prayers, ate on the grass at their feet.

  The castle was later to wake, as always was its way. It was slow about doing so, but it was also sure. First the hunting knives and spears turned red, and then they just became very bright in the morning sunlight; now doors and windows were being thrown open; horses turned around in the barn, looking over their shoulders at the light pouring in through the door; leaves moved in the wind at the bottom of windows with iron bars on them; and dogs pulled hard at their chains, waiting to be let free.

  All of these little actions were part of life each morning. But that was surely not true of the big bell that was ringing in the castle. And it was not true of the people running up and down steps. It was not true of the people standing on the verandah, or running in different directions, or putting saddles on horses and riding away.

  It is not clear what wind carried the news to the old road worker who was already at work on the top of the hill on the other side of the village. His cloth-covered dinner (not much to carry) was lying on a pile of stones, with not enough in it to even interest the crows. Had the birds, carrying the grains of news from the castle dropped one on him, as they often did with seeds? It is not clear; but he did start running down the hill like he was running to save his life, kicking up dust all around him; and he did not stop until he reached the fountain at the bottom.

  Everyone in the village was at the fountain, standing about in their sad way, and whispering quietly, but showing no emotion apart from some surprise and a sad interest. The cows were back in the village, tied to anything that was near, or lying on the ground, chewing at anything they may have been able to find before the bell started ringing. Some people from the castle, and some from the post office, and all those who did the taxing had weapons now and were on the opposite side of the road not really knowing what they should do. Already the road worker was there in the middle of about fifty friends, hitting his chest with his blue hat. What was the meaning of this, and what was the meaning of Mr. Gabelle being lifted up onto a horse behind another rider, and the two of them, not worrying about the extra weight for the horse, racing off together?

  The meaning was that there was one stone face too many up at the castle.

  The Gorgon had looked at the building again in the middle of the night and had added one more stone face, one that it had been waiting for two hundred years to add.

  That face was lying on Sir the Marquis' pillow. It was like a thin mask, with a look of surprise turned to anger, and then turned to stone. In the heart of the body that was joined to that face was a knife; and around the handle of it was tied a piece of paper with these words on it. "Drive him quickly when you take him to be buried. This is from Jack."

  10. Two Promises

  Twelve more months had come and gone. During this time, Charles Darnay had started a job in England, teaching French. At that time there were no jobs for teachers of French in the universities of England. But he taught young men who had the time and interest to learn a language that could be used in many other countries around the world. Because of his great understanding of French writings, and because of his perfect English as well, he was able to teach his students to love the language and all that went with it. It was not easy to find such teachers at that time, as kings and other members of the King's family (those who knew such a language) were not the kind of people to take up teaching. Mr. Darnay was a teacher who could give his students much more than what they could learn from a dictionary. Because of this, many people came to know of his ability. And because of things happening in France at that time -- things that Charles Darnay knew and understood well, and things about which many people had an interest -- his work grew and his wealth grew with it.

  When he had returned to London, he had not expected to walk on gold footpaths or to sleep on a bed of flowers. If he had been looking for this, he would not have been able to do as much as he had been able to do.
It was because he had been willing to work so hard that he had done so well.

  He often taught students at Cambridge University, where he was like a smuggler, bringing in this living language from Europe instead of the dead languages of Greece and Rome. Yet most of the time he stayed in London.

  From the time when it was always summer in the Garden of Eden to the days when it is almost always winter here in our country, the world of a man has always gone the one way, which is the way of love for a woman. And Charles Darnay, too, was going that way.

  He had loved Lucie Manette from the hour of his danger. He had never heard a voice so sweet and lovely as her voice. He had never seen a face so beautiful as her face was when she saw him so close to death. But so far, he had not said anything to her about it. It had been a year since his uncle was killed in that solid stone castle, far across the waves and down that long dirt road from where he now lived, and in all that time he had not said one word to Lucie about the feelings he had for her.

  He had his reasons for waiting so long. But it was another summer day when he travelled to that quiet corner in Soho on returning to London from Cambridge, this time with a plan to open his mind to Doctor Manette. It was near the end of the day, and he knew that Lucie would be out with Miss Pross.

  He found the Doctor reading in an arm-chair by the window. The strength that had pulled Doctor Manette through his past troubles, had slowly returned to him. He was now quite strong in mind and body. There were times when he would still feel down, but they were becoming fewer and fewer and farther and farther apart.

  He studied much, was able to work long hours with little sleep, and was always happy and friendly. To him, Charles Darnay now came visiting. On seeing him, the Doctor put his book down and held out his hand.

  "Charles Darnay! I am happy to see you. We have been counting on your return these past three or four days. Mr. Stryver and Sydney Carton were both here yesterday, and both said they were surprised that you had not returned.

  "It is kind of them to take such interest in me," he said, a little coldly toward them, but very warmly toward the Doctor. "Miss Manette..."

  "Is well," said the Doctor as he stopped short, "and hearing about what you have been doing will be of interest to us all. She has gone out on some business for the house, but she will be home soon."

  "Doctor Manette, I knew she would not be home. It is why I have come, because I wish to speak to you alone."

  "Yes?” said the Doctor, trying not to show his deep interest. "Bring your chair here and speak on."

  Charles quickly brought a chair over, but did not find the speaking to be as easy.

  "I have had the happiness, Doctor Manette, of being here so much over the past year and a half," he started at length, "that I hope what I am going to say will not be..."

  He was held there by the Doctor putting out his hand to stop him. After holding it like this for a little while, Doctor Manette said, as he pulled his hand back:

  "Is it Lucie you want to talk about?"

  "She is."

  "It is difficult for me to speak of her at any time. It is even more difficult for me to hear one speak of her as I think you are going to speak, Charles Darnay."

  "I want only to talk of my love, Doctor Manette!" he said humbly.

  "I believe it. To be fair to you, I believe it."

  It was easy to see that the Doctor was holding back. It was also so easy to see that he was doing it because he did not want to hear what Darnay was going to say, that the younger man waited before saying:

  "Should I go on, sir?” Another long wait.

  "Yes, go on."

  "You know what I want to say, but you cannot know how sincerely I say it, or how deeply I feel it, without knowing the secrets of my heart, or the hopes and fears and worries that I have been carrying for some time. Doctor Manette, I love your daughter sincerely, deeply, without selfish interest. If ever there was love in the world, it is my love for her. You have loved in the past; let your old love speak for what I feel!"

  The Doctor sat with his face turned away, and his eyes on the ground. At the last words, he reached out his hand again, hurriedly, and cried:

  "Not that, sir! Let it be! I beg you, do not make me remember that!"

  His cry was so much like the cry of one in real pain that it stayed in Charles Darnay's ears long after he had stopped crying. A movement in his hand seemed to be asking Darnay to wait, and so he stayed there saying nothing.

  "Please forgive me," said the Doctor in a quiet voice after some time. "I do believe you love Lucie; you can be sure of that."

  He turned toward the younger man in his chair, but did not look at him or lift his eyes. His chin dropped onto his hand, and his white hair dropped over his face.

  "Have you talked to Lucie about it?”

  "No."

  "Written to her?"

  "Never."

  "It would not be fair of me to hide my understanding that you have held back out of kindness for her father. And her father thanks you."

  He held out his hand, but his eyes did not go with it.

  "I know," said Darnay humbly. "How can I not know, Doctor Manette, after seeing the two of you together day after day, that between you and Miss Manette there is a love so special, so sweet, so much a part of the things you have each been through, that there could be few with such strong love, even when one talks of fathers and their children. I know, Doctor Manette -- How can I not know? -- that together with the love of a daughter who is now a woman, there is in her heart all the love and desire for you of a little child. I know that, as she had no parents when she was very young, the strength in her adult love for you now is mixed with the need for you and the faith in you that she would have had if she had known you when she was a young child. I know perfectly well that if you had returned from the dead she would not think of you any more as a holy gift from God than what she does now. I know that when she hugs you, the hands of a baby, a girl, and a young woman are, all three, around your neck. I know that when she loves you she is loving her mother and all that she went through, and she is loving you as you were when you were my age, and all that you went through. I have known this, day and night, ever since I started coming here."

  Her father sat without saying a word, with his face bent down. He was able to hide all other signs of his feelings apart from that he was breathing more quickly.

  "Good Doctor Manette, it was because I knew this and because I have always been able to see this holy light around the two of you, that I have waited and waited for as long as it was possible for me to wait. I have always felt, and I feel it now too, that if I bring my love into the picture, it will touch your history with something that is not quite as good as what you now have. But I love her. Heaven is my witness that I love her!"

  "I believe it," her father answered sadly. "I have thought so before now. I believe it."

  "But do not believe," said Darnay, on hearing the sadness in the old man's voice and the meaning that had for him, "that even if my luck were such that she should one day become my wife because of what I am now saying, that I would breathe even one word of this now if I knew that at any time it would separate her from you. It would never work, and it would never be right. If I had even one such thought in my heart, or if I should ever have such a thought in my heart, I would not now be able to touch your great hand."

  With this, he put his hand on the Doctor's hand.

  "No, good Doctor Manette. Like you, I freely chose to leave France. Like you, I was forced to make that choice by the awful things that are happening there. Like you, I am trying, by my work here, to build a happier future. I want only to share your life, your home, and your good luck, being faithful to you to the point of dying for you. I am not asking to come between you and Lucie. I am asking to be able to help her in her place as your child and friend and to tie her even closer to you if that is possible."

  His touch was still there on
her father's hand. Answering it for a second or two, but not coldly, her father now rested his hands on the arms of his chair, and looked up for the first time since their talk had started. One could see in his face that a fight was going on. It was a fight with that look that he had so often shown in the past, a look of dark and deep fear.

  "You speak with such feeling and strength, Charles Darnay, that I thank you with all my heart, and will open all my heart -- or almost all my heart -- to you. Do you have any reason to believe that Lucie loves you?"

  "None. As yet, none."

  "Is your reason for talking to me now so that you can find that out?"

  "Not at all. I cannot even start to hope for such information just yet. But if our meeting goes well today, then maybe I can start to hope for an answer in a few weeks."

  "Are you looking for me to help you in what you are planning to do?'

  "I am not asking for that, sir. But I have thought it possible that you might be able to, if you think it is okay, to give some help."

  "Are you asking me to promise you anything?”

  "Yes, I am."

  "What is it?"

  "I understand well that, without you, I could have no hope. I understand well that, even if Miss Manette did feel for me as I feel for her -- Do not think that I believe that to be true. -- I could have no place in her heart if she had to go against her love for her father."

  "If that is true, how do you see things going?"

  "I know full well that a word from you would be enough to make her go against her own heart in choosing me or anyone else. Because of that," Darnay said, humbly but strongly, "I would not ask you to do that, not even to save my life."

  "I can see that. Charles Darnay, you never know where love may grow. It can happen between people who are very much the same and it can happen between people who are very different. When they are close, the seeds of love can be very difficult to see. In this, my daughter Lucie, is so secret from me that I cannot even come close to knowing what she feels about you.

  "May I ask, sir, if you think there is...” When he stopped, her father finished the question for him.

  "Is there another man who is interested in her?"

  "Yes, that is what I wanted to ask."

  Her father thought for a little while before he answered:

  "You have seen Mr. Carton here yourself. Mr. Stryver comes here too, at times. If there is anyone, it could only be one of these two."

  "Or both," said Darnay.

  "I was not thinking of both. I should not think it would be either. Do 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, word of a secret interest in me, then you will tell her of my love for her, and tell her that you believe I am honest about it. I hope that you think well enough of me that you would not say anything against me. I ask nothing more than this. Whatever you ask from me in return, I will do it here and now."

  "I give my promise," said the Doctor, "without asking anything from you in return. I believe that you are being very honest and very sincere in what you have said. I believe that you want to make the ties between me and my daughter stronger, and not to make them weaker. If she ever tells me that she thinks she can find happiness with you, I will give her to you. If there were... Charles Darnay, if there were..."

  The young man had taken his hand with deep thanks. Their hands were joined as the Doctor went on:

  "...any thoughts, any reasons, any fears, either new or old, that I had against the man she loved -- as long as they did not come from something that he freely chose to do -- they would all be rubbed out if it would make her happy. She is everything to me; more to me than any pain that I have felt, more to me than any wrong that I may receive, more to me... Enough! This is foolish talk."

  So strange was the way that the Doctor stopped talking, and so strange was his way of looking when he had stopped, that Darnay felt his own hand go cold in the hand that slowly stopped holding his, and that let it drop.

  "You said something to me," said Doctor Manette, breaking into a smile. "What was it you said to me?"

  Darnay did not know how to answer, until he remembered having said something about giving the Doctor something in return for his promise to speak up for him if needed.

  "Your faith in me should be returned with full honesty on my part. My present name, which is almost the same as my mother's name, is not, as you will remember from when I was in court, my real name. I want to tell you what my real name is, and why I am in England."

  Stop!" said the Doctor from Beauvais.

  "But I want to tell you, so that you will have more reason to trust me. I do not want to have any secrets from you."

  "Stop!"

  For a second the Doctor even put his two hands over his ears, and for another second he put them on Darnay's lips.

  "Tell me when I ask you, not now. If you get what you want, if Lucie happens to love you, you can tell me on the morning of your wedding. Will you just promise me that?"

  "Willingly."

  "Then give me your hand on that. She will be home soon, and it is better that she not see us together tonight. 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 to her room -- and was surprised to see that he was not in his chair reading.

  "Father!" she called. "Father, where are you?"

  There was no answer, but she heard a soft hammering sound in the bedroom. Going to his door, she looked in and came running back in fear, crying to herself, with her blood running cold, "What can I do? What can I do?"

  A short time later, she hurried back and knocked lightly on the door, calling to him softly. At the sound of her voice, the noise stopped. He soon came out, and they walked up and down together for a long time.

  She came down from her room later that night, to look in on him when he was asleep. He was sleeping heavily, and his box of cobbler tools were all back in their place

 

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