A Tale of Two Cities Page 6

  VI. The Shoemaker

  "Good day!" said Monsieur Defarge, looking down at the white head thatbent low over the shoemaking.

  It was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice responded to thesalutation, as if it were at a distance:

  "Good day!"

  "You are still hard at work, I see?"

  After a long silence, the head was lifted for another moment, and thevoice replied, "Yes--I am working." This time, a pair of haggard eyeshad looked at the questioner, before the face had dropped again.

  The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not thefaintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare nodoubt had their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it wasthe faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echoof a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the life andresonance of the human voice, that it affected the senses like a oncebeautiful colour faded away into a poor weak stain. So sunken andsuppressed it was, that it was like a voice underground. So expressiveit was, of a hopeless and lost creature, that a famished traveller,wearied out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would have rememberedhome and friends in such a tone before lying down to die.

  Some minutes of silent work had passed: and the haggard eyes had lookedup again: not with any interest or curiosity, but with a dull mechanicalperception, beforehand, that the spot where the only visitor they wereaware of had stood, was not yet empty.

  "I want," said Defarge, who had not removed his gaze from the shoemaker,"to let in a little more light here. You can bear a little more?"

  The shoemaker stopped his work; looked with a vacant air of listening,at the floor on one side of him; then similarly, at the floor on theother side of him; then, upward at the speaker.

  "What did you say?"

  "You can bear a little more light?"

  "I must bear it, if you let it in." (Laying the palest shadow of astress upon the second word.)

  The opened half-door was opened a little further, and secured at thatangle for the time. A broad ray of light fell into the garret, andshowed the workman with an unfinished shoe upon his lap, pausing in hislabour. His few common tools and various scraps of leather were at hisfeet and on his bench. He had a white beard, raggedly cut, but not verylong, a hollow face, and exceedingly bright eyes. The hollowness andthinness of his face would have caused them to look large, under his yetdark eyebrows and his confused white hair, though they had been reallyotherwise; but, they were naturally large, and looked unnaturally so.His yellow rags of shirt lay open at the throat, and showed his bodyto be withered and worn. He, and his old canvas frock, and his loosestockings, and all his poor tatters of clothes, had, in a long seclusionfrom direct light and air, faded down to such a dull uniformity ofparchment-yellow, that it would have been hard to say which was which.

  He had put up a hand between his eyes and the light, and the very bonesof it seemed transparent. So he sat, with a steadfastly vacant gaze,pausing in his work. He never looked at the figure before him, withoutfirst looking down on this side of himself, then on that, as if he hadlost the habit of associating place with sound; he never spoke, withoutfirst wandering in this manner, and forgetting to speak.

  "Are you going to finish that pair of shoes to-day?" asked Defarge,motioning to Mr. Lorry to come forward.

  "What did you say?"

  "Do you mean to finish that pair of shoes to-day?"

  "I can't say that I mean to. I suppose so. I don't know."

  But, the question reminded him of his work, and he bent over it again.

  Mr. Lorry came silently forward, leaving the daughter by the door. Whenhe had stood, for a minute or two, by the side of Defarge, the shoemakerlooked up. He showed no surprise at seeing another figure, but theunsteady fingers of one of his hands strayed to his lips as he looked atit (his lips and his nails were of the same pale lead-colour), and thenthe hand dropped to his work, and he once more bent over the shoe. Thelook and the action had occupied but an instant.

  "You have a visitor, you see," said Monsieur Defarge.

  "What did you say?"

  "Here is a visitor."

  The shoemaker looked up as before, but without removing a hand from hiswork.

  "Come!" said Defarge. "Here is monsieur, who knows a well-made shoe whenhe sees one. Show him that shoe you are working at. Take it, monsieur."

  Mr. Lorry took it in his hand.

  "Tell monsieur what kind of shoe it is, and the maker's name."

  There was a longer pause than usual, before the shoemaker replied:

  "I forget what it was you asked me. What did you say?"

  "I said, couldn't you describe the kind of shoe, for monsieur'sinformation?"

  "It is a lady's shoe. It is a young lady's walking-shoe. It is in thepresent mode. I never saw the mode. I have had a pattern in my hand." Heglanced at the shoe with some little passing touch of pride.

  "And the maker's name?" said Defarge.

  Now that he had no work to hold, he laid the knuckles of the right handin the hollow of the left, and then the knuckles of the left hand in thehollow of the right, and then passed a hand across his bearded chin, andso on in regular changes, without a moment's intermission. The task ofrecalling him from the vagrancy into which he always sank when hehad spoken, was like recalling some very weak person from a swoon, orendeavouring, in the hope of some disclosure, to stay the spirit of afast-dying man.

  "Did you ask me for my name?"

  "Assuredly I did."

  "One Hundred and Five, North Tower."

  "Is that all?"

  "One Hundred and Five, North Tower."

  With a weary sound that was not a sigh, nor a groan, he bent to workagain, until the silence was again broken.

  "You are not a shoemaker by trade?" said Mr. Lorry, looking steadfastlyat him.

  His haggard eyes turned to Defarge as if he would have transferred thequestion to him: but as no help came from that quarter, they turned backon the questioner when they had sought the ground.

  "I am not a shoemaker by trade? No, I was not a shoemaker by trade. I-Ilearnt it here. I taught myself. I asked leave to--"

  He lapsed away, even for minutes, ringing those measured changes on hishands the whole time. His eyes came slowly back, at last, to the facefrom which they had wandered; when they rested on it, he started, andresumed, in the manner of a sleeper that moment awake, reverting to asubject of last night.

  "I asked leave to teach myself, and I got it with much difficulty aftera long while, and I have made shoes ever since."

  As he held out his hand for the shoe that had been taken from him, Mr.Lorry said, still looking steadfastly in his face:

  "Monsieur Manette, do you remember nothing of me?"

  The shoe dropped to the ground, and he sat looking fixedly at thequestioner.

  "Monsieur Manette"; Mr. Lorry laid his hand upon Defarge's arm; "do youremember nothing of this man? Look at him. Look at me. Is there no oldbanker, no old business, no old servant, no old time, rising in yourmind, Monsieur Manette?"

  As the captive of many years sat looking fixedly, by turns, at Mr.Lorry and at Defarge, some long obliterated marks of an actively intentintelligence in the middle of the forehead, gradually forced themselvesthrough the black mist that had fallen on him. They were overcloudedagain, they were fainter, they were gone; but they had been there. Andso exactly was the expression repeated on the fair young face of her whohad crept along the wall to a point where she could see him, and whereshe now stood looking at him, with hands which at first had been onlyraised in frightened compassion, if not even to keep him off andshut out the sight of him, but which were now extending towards him,trembling with eagerness to lay the spectral face upon her warm youngbreast, and love it back to life and hope--so exactly was the expressionrepeated (though in stronger characters) on her fair young face, that itlooked as though it had passed like a moving light, from him to her.

  Darkness had fallen on him in its place. He looke
d at the two, less andless attentively, and his eyes in gloomy abstraction sought the groundand looked about him in the old way. Finally, with a deep long sigh, hetook the shoe up, and resumed his work.

  "Have you recognised him, monsieur?" asked Defarge in a whisper.

  "Yes; for a moment. At first I thought it quite hopeless, but I haveunquestionably seen, for a single moment, the face that I once knew sowell. Hush! Let us draw further back. Hush!"

  She had moved from the wall of the garret, very near to the bench onwhich he sat. There was something awful in his unconsciousness of thefigure that could have put out its hand and touched him as he stoopedover his labour.

  Not a word was spoken, not a sound was made. She stood, like a spirit,beside him, and he bent over his work.

  It happened, at length, that he had occasion to change the instrumentin his hand, for his shoemaker's knife. It lay on that side of himwhich was not the side on which she stood. He had taken it up, and wasstooping to work again, when his eyes caught the skirt of her dress. Heraised them, and saw her face. The two spectators started forward,but she stayed them with a motion of her hand. She had no fear of hisstriking at her with the knife, though they had.

  He stared at her with a fearful look, and after a while his lips beganto form some words, though no sound proceeded from them. By degrees, inthe pauses of his quick and laboured breathing, he was heard to say:

  "What is this?"

  With the tears streaming down her face, she put her two hands to herlips, and kissed them to him; then clasped them on her breast, as if shelaid his ruined head there.

  "You are not the gaoler's daughter?"

  She sighed "No."

  "Who are you?"

  Not yet trusting the tones of her voice, she sat down on the benchbeside him. He recoiled, but she laid her hand upon his arm. A strangethrill struck him when she did so, and visibly passed over his frame; helaid the knife down softly, as he sat staring at her.

  Her golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had been hurriedly pushedaside, and fell down over her neck. Advancing his hand by little andlittle, he took it up and looked at it. In the midst of the actionhe went astray, and, with another deep sigh, fell to work at hisshoemaking.

  But not for long. Releasing his arm, she laid her hand upon hisshoulder. After looking doubtfully at it, two or three times, as if tobe sure that it was really there, he laid down his work, put his handto his neck, and took off a blackened string with a scrap of folded ragattached to it. He opened this, carefully, on his knee, and it containeda very little quantity of hair: not more than one or two long goldenhairs, which he had, in some old day, wound off upon his finger.

  He took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it. "It isthe same. How can it be! When was it! How was it!"

  As the concentrated expression returned to his forehead, he seemed tobecome conscious that it was in hers too. He turned her full to thelight, and looked at her.

  "She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was summonedout--she had a fear of my going, though I had none--and when I wasbrought to the North Tower they found these upon my sleeve. 'You willleave me them? They can never help me to escape in the body, though theymay in the spirit.' Those were the words I said. I remember them verywell."

  He formed this speech with his lips many times before he could utter it.But when he did find spoken words for it, they came to him coherently,though slowly.

  "How was this?--_Was it you_?"

  Once more, the two spectators started, as he turned upon her with afrightful suddenness. But she sat perfectly still in his grasp, and onlysaid, in a low voice, "I entreat you, good gentlemen, do not come nearus, do not speak, do not move!"

  "Hark!" he exclaimed. "Whose voice was that?"

  His hands released her as he uttered this cry, and went up to his whitehair, which they tore in a frenzy. It died out, as everything but hisshoemaking did die out of him, and he refolded his little packet andtried to secure it in his breast; but he still looked at her, andgloomily shook his head.

  "No, no, no; you are too young, too blooming. It can't be. See what theprisoner is. These are not the hands she knew, this is not the faceshe knew, this is not a voice she ever heard. No, no. She was--and Hewas--before the slow years of the North Tower--ages ago. What is yourname, my gentle angel?"

  Hailing his softened tone and manner, his daughter fell upon her kneesbefore him, with her appealing hands upon his breast.

  "O, sir, at another time you shall know my name, and who my mother was,and who my father, and how I never knew their hard, hard history. But Icannot tell you at this time, and I cannot tell you here. All that I maytell you, here and now, is, that I pray to you to touch me and to blessme. Kiss me, kiss me! O my dear, my dear!"

  His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed andlighted it as though it were the light of Freedom shining on him.

  "If you hear in my voice--I don't know that it is so, but I hope itis--if you hear in my voice any resemblance to a voice that once wassweet music in your ears, weep for it, weep for it! If you touch, intouching my hair, anything that recalls a beloved head that lay on yourbreast when you were young and free, weep for it, weep for it! If, whenI hint to you of a Home that is before us, where I will be true to youwith all my duty and with all my faithful service, I bring back theremembrance of a Home long desolate, while your poor heart pined away,weep for it, weep for it!"

  She held him closer round the neck, and rocked him on her breast like achild.

  "If, when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is over, and that Ihave come here to take you from it, and that we go to England to be atpeace and at rest, I cause you to think of your useful life laid waste,and of our native France so wicked to you, weep for it, weep for it! Andif, when I shall tell you of my name, and of my father who is living,and of my mother who is dead, you learn that I have to kneel to myhonoured father, and implore his pardon for having never for his sakestriven all day and lain awake and wept all night, because the love ofmy poor mother hid his torture from me, weep for it, weep for it! Weepfor her, then, and for me! Good gentlemen, thank God! I feel his sacredtears upon my face, and his sobs strike against my heart. O, see! ThankGod for us, thank God!"

  He had sunk in her arms, and his face dropped on her breast: a sight sotouching, yet so terrible in the tremendous wrong and suffering whichhad gone before it, that the two beholders covered their faces.

  When the quiet of the garret had been long undisturbed, and his heavingbreast and shaken form had long yielded to the calm that must follow allstorms--emblem to humanity, of the rest and silence into which the stormcalled Life must hush at last--they came forward to raise the father anddaughter from the ground. He had gradually dropped to the floor, and laythere in a lethargy, worn out. She had nestled down with him, that hishead might lie upon her arm; and her hair drooping over him curtainedhim from the light.

  "If, without disturbing him," she said, raising her hand to Mr. Lorry ashe stooped over them, after repeated blowings of his nose, "all could bearranged for our leaving Paris at once, so that, from the very door, hecould be taken away--"

  "But, consider. Is he fit for the journey?" asked Mr. Lorry.

  "More fit for that, I think, than to remain in this city, so dreadful tohim."

  "It is true," said Defarge, who was kneeling to look on and hear. "Morethan that; Monsieur Manette is, for all reasons, best out of France.Say, shall I hire a carriage and post-horses?"

  "That's business," said Mr. Lorry, resuming on the shortest notice hismethodical manners; "and if business is to be done, I had better do it."

  "Then be so kind," urged Miss Manette, "as to leave us here. You see howcomposed he has become, and you cannot be afraid to leave him with menow. Why should you be? If you will lock the door to secure us frominterruption, I do not doubt that you will find him, when you come back,as quiet as you leave him. In any case, I will take care of him untilyou return, and then we will remove him straig
ht."

  Both Mr. Lorry and Defarge were rather disinclined to this course, andin favour of one of them remaining. But, as there were not only carriageand horses to be seen to, but travelling papers; and as time pressed,for the day was drawing to an end, it came at last to their hastilydividing the business that was necessary to be done, and hurrying awayto do it.

  Then, as the darkness closed in, the daughter laid her head down on thehard ground close at the father's side, and watched him. The darknessdeepened and deepened, and they both lay quiet, until a light gleamedthrough the chinks in the wall.

  Mr. Lorry and Monsieur Defarge had made all ready for the journey, andhad brought with them, besides travelling cloaks and wrappers, bread andmeat, wine, and hot coffee. Monsieur Defarge put this provender, and thelamp he carried, on the shoemaker's bench (there was nothing else in thegarret but a pallet bed), and he and Mr. Lorry roused the captive, andassisted him to his feet.

  No human intelligence could have read the mysteries of his mind, inthe scared blank wonder of his face. Whether he knew what had happened,whether he recollected what they had said to him, whether he knew thathe was free, were questions which no sagacity could have solved. Theytried speaking to him; but, he was so confused, and so very slow toanswer, that they took fright at his bewilderment, and agreed forthe time to tamper with him no more. He had a wild, lost manner ofoccasionally clasping his head in his hands, that had not been seenin him before; yet, he had some pleasure in the mere sound of hisdaughter's voice, and invariably turned to it when she spoke.

  In the submissive way of one long accustomed to obey under coercion, heate and drank what they gave him to eat and drink, and put on the cloakand other wrappings, that they gave him to wear. He readily responded tohis daughter's drawing her arm through his, and took--and kept--her handin both his own.

  They began to descend; Monsieur Defarge going first with the lamp, Mr.Lorry closing the little procession. They had not traversed many stepsof the long main staircase when he stopped, and stared at the roof andround at the walls.

  "You remember the place, my father? You remember coming up here?"

  "What did you say?"

  But, before she could repeat the question, he murmured an answer as ifshe had repeated it.

  "Remember? No, I don't remember. It was so very long ago."

  That he had no recollection whatever of his having been brought from hisprison to that house, was apparent to them. They heard him mutter,"One Hundred and Five, North Tower;" and when he looked about him, itevidently was for the strong fortress-walls which had long encompassedhim. On their reaching the courtyard he instinctively altered histread, as being in expectation of a drawbridge; and when there wasno drawbridge, and he saw the carriage waiting in the open street, hedropped his daughter's hand and clasped his head again.

  No crowd was about the door; no people were discernible at any of themany windows; not even a chance passerby was in the street. An unnaturalsilence and desertion reigned there. Only one soul was to be seen, andthat was Madame Defarge--who leaned against the door-post, knitting, andsaw nothing.

  The prisoner had got into a coach, and his daughter had followedhim, when Mr. Lorry's feet were arrested on the step by his asking,miserably, for his shoemaking tools and the unfinished shoes. MadameDefarge immediately called to her husband that she would get them, andwent, knitting, out of the lamplight, through the courtyard. She quicklybrought them down and handed them in;--and immediately afterwards leanedagainst the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing.

  Defarge got upon the box, and gave the word "To the Barrier!" Thepostilion cracked his whip, and they clattered away under the feebleover-swinging lamps.

  Under the over-swinging lamps--swinging ever brighter in the betterstreets, and ever dimmer in the worse--and by lighted shops, gay crowds,illuminated coffee-houses, and theatre-doors, to one of the citygates. Soldiers with lanterns, at the guard-house there. "Your papers,travellers!" "See here then, Monsieur the Officer," said Defarge,getting down, and taking him gravely apart, "these are the papers ofmonsieur inside, with the white head. They were consigned to me, withhim, at the--" He dropped his voice, there was a flutter among themilitary lanterns, and one of them being handed into the coach by an armin uniform, the eyes connected with the arm looked, not an every dayor an every night look, at monsieur with the white head. "It is well.Forward!" from the uniform. "Adieu!" from Defarge. And so, under a shortgrove of feebler and feebler over-swinging lamps, out under the greatgrove of stars.

  Beneath that arch of unmoved and eternal lights; some, so remote fromthis little earth that the learned tell us it is doubtful whether theirrays have even yet discovered it, as a point in space where anythingis suffered or done: the shadows of the night were broad and black.All through the cold and restless interval, until dawn, they once morewhispered in the ears of Mr. Jarvis Lorry--sitting opposite the buriedman who had been dug out, and wondering what subtle powers were for everlost to him, and what were capable of restoration--the old inquiry:

  "I hope you care to be recalled to life?"

  And the old answer:

  "I can't say."

  The end of the first book.

  Book the Second--the Golden Thread