A Tale of Two Cities Page 8

  II. A Sight

  "You know the Old Bailey well, no doubt?" said one of the oldest ofclerks to Jerry the messenger.

  "Ye-es, sir," returned Jerry, in something of a dogged manner. "I _do_know the Bailey."

  "Just so. And you know Mr. Lorry."

  "I know Mr. Lorry, sir, much better than I know the Bailey. Muchbetter," said Jerry, not unlike a reluctant witness at the establishmentin question, "than I, as a honest tradesman, wish to know the Bailey."

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

  "Into the court, sir?"

  "Into the court."

  Mr. Cruncher's eyes seemed to get a little closer to one another, and tointerchange the inquiry, "What do you think of this?"

  "Am I to wait in the court, sir?" he asked, as the result of thatconference.

  "I am going to tell you. The door-keeper will pass the note to Mr.Lorry, and do you make any gesture that will attract Mr. Lorry'sattention, and show him where you stand. Then what you have to do, is,to remain there until he wants you."

  "Is that all, sir?"

  "That's all. He wishes to have a messenger at hand. This is to tell himyou are there."

  As the ancient clerk deliberately folded and superscribed the note,Mr. Cruncher, after surveying him in silence until he came to theblotting-paper stage, remarked:

  "I suppose they'll be trying Forgeries this morning?"

  "Treason!"

  "That's quartering," said Jerry. "Barbarous!"

  "It is the law," remarked the ancient clerk, turning his surprisedspectacles upon him. "It is the law."

  "It's hard in the law to spile a man, I think. It's hard enough to killhim, but it's wery hard to spile him, sir."

  "Not at all," retained the ancient clerk. "Speak well of the law. Takecare of your chest and voice, my good friend, and leave the law to takecare of itself. I give you that advice."

  "It's the damp, sir, what settles on my chest and voice," said Jerry. "Ileave you to judge what a damp way of earning a living mine is."

  "Well, well," said the old clerk; "we all have our various ways ofgaining a livelihood. Some of us have damp ways, and some of us have dryways. Here is the letter. Go along."

  Jerry took the letter, and, remarking to himself with less internaldeference than he made an outward show of, "You are a lean old one,too," made his bow, informed his son, in passing, of his destination,and went his way.

  They hanged at Tyburn, in those days, so the street outside Newgate hadnot obtained one infamous notoriety that has since attached to it.But, the gaol was a vile place, in which most kinds of debauchery andvillainy were practised, and where dire diseases were bred, that cameinto court with the prisoners, and sometimes rushed straight from thedock at my Lord Chief Justice himself, and pulled him off the bench. Ithad more than once happened, that the Judge in the black cap pronouncedhis own doom as certainly as the prisoner's, and even died before him.For the rest, the Old Bailey was famous as a kind of deadly inn-yard,from which pale travellers set out continually, in carts and coaches, ona violent passage into the other world: traversing some two miles and ahalf of public street and road, and shaming few good citizens, if any.So powerful is use, and so desirable to be good use in the beginning. Itwas famous, too, for the pillory, a wise old institution, that inflicteda punishment of which no one could foresee the extent; also, forthe whipping-post, another dear old institution, very humanising andsoftening to behold in action; also, for extensive transactions inblood-money, another fragment of ancestral wisdom, systematicallyleading to the most frightful mercenary crimes that could be committedunder Heaven. Altogether, the Old Bailey, at that date, was a choiceillustration of the precept, that "Whatever is is right;" an aphorismthat would be as final as it is lazy, did it not include the troublesomeconsequence, that nothing that ever was, was wrong.

  Making his way through the tainted crowd, dispersed up and down thishideous scene of action, with the skill of a man accustomed to make hisway quietly, the messenger found out the door he sought, and handed inhis letter through a trap in it. For, people then paid to see the playat the Old Bailey, just as they paid to see the play in Bedlam--only theformer entertainment was much the dearer. Therefore, all the Old Baileydoors were well guarded--except, indeed, the social doors by which thecriminals got there, and those were always left wide open.

  After some delay and demur, the door grudgingly turned on its hinges avery little way, and allowed Mr. Jerry Cruncher to squeeze himself intocourt.

  "What's on?" he asked, in a whisper, of the man he found himself nextto.

  "Nothing yet."

  "What's coming on?"

  "The Treason case."

  "The quartering one, eh?"

  "Ah!" returned the man, with a relish; "he'll be drawn on a hurdle tobe half hanged, and then he'll be taken down and sliced before his ownface, and then his inside will be taken out and burnt while he looks on,and then his head will be chopped off, and he'll be cut into quarters.That's the sentence."

  "If he's found Guilty, you mean to say?" Jerry added, by way of proviso.

  "Oh! they'll find him guilty," said the other. "Don't you be afraid ofthat."

  Mr. Cruncher's attention was here diverted to the door-keeper, whom hesaw making his way to Mr. Lorry, with the note in his hand. Mr. Lorrysat at a table, among the gentlemen in wigs: not far from a wiggedgentleman, the prisoner's counsel, who had a great bundle of papersbefore him: and nearly opposite another wigged gentleman with his handsin his pockets, whose whole attention, when Mr. Cruncher looked at himthen or afterwards, seemed to be concentrated on the ceiling of thecourt. After some gruff coughing and rubbing of his chin and signingwith his hand, Jerry attracted the notice of Mr. Lorry, who had stood upto look for him, and who quietly nodded and sat down again.

  "What's _he_ got to do with the case?" asked the man he had spoken with.

  "Blest if I know," said Jerry.

  "What have _you_ got to do with it, then, if a person may inquire?"

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

  The entrance of the Judge, and a consequent great stir and settlingdown in the court, stopped the dialogue. Presently, the dock became thecentral point of interest. Two gaolers, who had been standing there,went out, and the prisoner was brought in, and put to the bar.

  Everybody present, except the one wigged gentleman who looked at theceiling, stared at him. All the human breath in the place, rolledat him, like a sea, or a wind, or a fire. Eager faces strained roundpillars and corners, to get a sight of him; spectators in back rowsstood up, not to miss a hair of him; people on the floor of the court,laid their hands on the shoulders of the people before them, to helpthemselves, at anybody's cost, to a view of him--stood a-tiptoe, gotupon ledges, stood upon next to nothing, to see every inch of him.Conspicuous among these latter, like an animated bit of the spiked wallof Newgate, Jerry stood: aiming at the prisoner the beery breath of awhet he had taken as he came along, and discharging it to mingle withthe waves of other beer, and gin, and tea, and coffee, and what not,that flowed at him, and already broke upon the great windows behind himin an impure mist and rain.

  The object of all this staring and blaring, was a young man of aboutfive-and-twenty, well-grown and well-looking, with a sunburnt cheek anda dark eye. His condition was that of a young gentleman. He was plainlydressed in black, or very dark grey, and his hair, which was long anddark, was gathered in a ribbon at the back of his neck; more to be outof his way than for ornament. As an emotion of the mind will expressitself through any covering of the body, so the paleness which hissituation engendered came through the brown upon his cheek, showing thesoul to be stronger than the sun. He was otherwise quite self-possessed,bowed to the Judge, and stood quiet.

  The sort of interest with which this man was stared and breathed at,was not a sort that elevated humanity. Had he stood in peril of a lesshorrible sentence--had there been a chance of any one
of its savagedetails being spared--by just so much would he have lost in hisfascination. The form that was to be doomed to be so shamefully mangled,was the sight; the immortal creature that was to be so butcheredand torn asunder, yielded the sensation. Whatever gloss the variousspectators put upon the interest, according to their several arts andpowers of self-deceit, the interest was, at the root of it, Ogreish.

  Silence in the court! Charles Darnay had yesterday pleaded Not Guilty toan indictment denouncing him (with infinite jingle and jangle) for thathe was a false traitor to our serene, illustrious, excellent, and soforth, prince, our Lord the King, by reason of his having, on diversoccasions, and by divers means and ways, assisted Lewis, the FrenchKing, in his wars against our said serene, illustrious, excellent, andso forth; that was to say, by coming and going, between the dominions ofour said serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, and those of thesaid French Lewis, and wickedly, falsely, traitorously, and otherwiseevil-adverbiously, revealing to the said French Lewis what forces oursaid serene, illustrious, excellent, and so forth, had in preparationto send to Canada and North America. This much, Jerry, with his headbecoming more and more spiky as the law terms bristled it, made out withhuge satisfaction, and so arrived circuitously at the understanding thatthe aforesaid, and over and over again aforesaid, Charles Darnay, stoodthere before him upon his trial; that the jury were swearing in; andthat Mr. Attorney-General was making ready to speak.

  The accused, who was (and who knew he was) being mentally hanged,beheaded, and quartered, by everybody there, neither flinched fromthe situation, nor assumed any theatrical air in it. He was quiet andattentive; watched the opening proceedings with a grave interest;and stood with his hands resting on the slab of wood before him, socomposedly, that they had not displaced a leaf of the herbs with whichit was strewn. The court was all bestrewn with herbs and sprinkled withvinegar, as a precaution against gaol air and gaol fever.

  Over the prisoner's head there was a mirror, to throw the light downupon him. Crowds of the wicked and the wretched had been reflected init, and had passed from its surface and this earth's together. Hauntedin a most ghastly manner that abominable place would have been, if theglass could ever have rendered back its reflections, as the ocean is oneday to give up its dead. Some passing thought of the infamy and disgracefor which it had been reserved, may have struck the prisoner's mind. Bethat as it may, a change in his position making him conscious of a barof light across his face, he looked up; and when he saw the glass hisface flushed, and his right hand pushed the herbs away.

  It happened, that the action turned his face to that side of the courtwhich was on his left. About on a level with his eyes, there sat,in that corner of the Judge's bench, two persons upon whom his lookimmediately rested; so immediately, and so much to the changing of hisaspect, that all the eyes that were turned upon him, turned to them.

  The spectators saw in the two figures, a young lady of little more thantwenty, and a gentleman who was evidently her father; a man of a veryremarkable appearance in respect of the absolute whiteness of his hair,and a certain indescribable intensity of face: not of an active kind,but pondering and self-communing. When this expression was upon him, helooked as if he were old; but when it was stirred and broken up--asit was now, in a moment, on his speaking to his daughter--he became ahandsome man, not past the prime of life.

  His daughter had one of her hands drawn through his arm, as she sat byhim, and the other pressed upon it. She had drawn close to him, in herdread of the scene, and in her pity for the prisoner. Her forehead hadbeen strikingly expressive of an engrossing terror and compassionthat saw nothing but the peril of the accused. This had been so verynoticeable, so very powerfully and naturally shown, that starers whohad had no pity for him were touched by her; and the whisper went about,"Who are they?"

  Jerry, the messenger, who had made his own observations, in his ownmanner, and who had been sucking the rust off his fingers in hisabsorption, stretched his neck to hear who they were. The crowd abouthim had pressed and passed the inquiry on to the nearest attendant, andfrom him it had been more slowly pressed and passed back; at last it gotto Jerry:

  "Witnesses."

  "For which side?"

  "Against."

  "Against what side?"

  "The prisoner's."

  The Judge, whose eyes had gone in the general direction, recalled them,leaned back in his seat, and looked steadily at the man whose life wasin his hand, as Mr. Attorney-General rose to spin the rope, grind theaxe, and hammer the nails into the scaffold.