A Tale of Two Cities
Within half an hour from the first starting, they were beyond the
winking lamps, and the more than winking watchmen, and were out upon a
lonely road. Another fisherman was picked up here--and that so silently,
that if Young Jerry had been superstitious, he might have supposed the
second follower of the gentle craft to have, all of a sudden, split
himself into two.
The three went on, and Young Jerry went on, until the three stopped
under a bank overhanging the road. Upon the top of the bank was a low
brick wall, surmounted by an iron railing. In the shadow of bank and
wall the three turned out of the road, and up a blind lane, of which
the wall--there, risen to some eight or ten feet high--formed one side.
Crouching down in a corner, peeping up the lane, the next object that
Young Jerry saw, was the form of his honoured parent, pretty well
defined against a watery and clouded moon, nimbly scaling an iron gate.
He was soon over, and then the second fisherman got over, and then the
third. They all dropped softly on the ground within the gate, and lay
there a little--listening perhaps. Then, they moved away on their hands
and knees.
It was now Young Jerry’s turn to approach the gate: which he did,
holding his breath. Crouching down again in a corner there, and looking
in, he made out the three fishermen creeping through some rank grass!
and all the gravestones in the churchyard--it was a large churchyard
that they were in--looking on like ghosts in white, while the church
tower itself looked on like the ghost of a monstrous giant. They did not
creep far, before they stopped and stood upright. And then they began to
fish.
They fished with a spade, at first. Presently the honoured parent
appeared to be adjusting some instrument like a great corkscrew.
Whatever tools they worked with, they worked hard, until the awful
striking of the church clock so terrified Young Jerry, that he made off,
with his hair as stiff as his father’s.
But, his long-cherished desire to know more about these matters, not
only stopped him in his running away, but lured him back again. They
were still fishing perseveringly, when he peeped in at the gate for
the second time; but, now they seemed to have got a bite. There was a
screwing and complaining sound down below, and their bent figures were
strained, as if by a weight. By slow degrees the weight broke away the
earth upon it, and came to the surface. Young Jerry very well knew what
it would be; but, when he saw it, and saw his honoured parent about to
wrench it open, he was so frightened, being new to the sight, that he
made off again, and never stopped until he had run a mile or more.
He would not have stopped then, for anything less necessary than breath,
it being a spectral sort of race that he ran, and one highly desirable
to get to the end of. He had a strong idea that the coffin he had seen
was running after him; and, pictured as hopping on behind him, bolt
upright, upon its narrow end, always on the point of overtaking him
and hopping on at his side--perhaps taking his arm--it was a pursuer to
shun. It was an inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend too, for, while it
was making the whole night behind him dreadful, he darted out into the
roadway to avoid dark alleys, fearful of its coming hopping out of them
like a dropsical boy’s kite without tail and wings. It hid in doorways
too, rubbing its horrible shoulders against doors, and drawing them up
to its ears, as if it were laughing. It got into shadows on the road,
and lay cunningly on its back to trip him up. All this time it was
incessantly hopping on behind and gaining on him, so that when the boy
got to his own door he had reason for being half dead. And even then
it would not leave him, but followed him upstairs with a bump on every
stair, scrambled into bed with him, and bumped down, dead and heavy, on
his breast when he fell asleep.
From his oppressed slumber, Young Jerry in his closet was awakened after
daybreak and before sunrise, by the presence of his father in the
family room. Something had gone wrong with him; at least, so Young Jerry
inferred, from the circumstance of his holding Mrs. Cruncher by the
ears, and knocking the back of her head against the head-board of the
bed.
“I told you I would,” said Mr. Cruncher, “and I did.”
“Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!” his wife implored.
“You oppose yourself to the profit of the business,” said Jerry, “and me
and my partners suffer. You was to honour and obey; why the devil don’t
you?”
“I try to be a good wife, Jerry,” the poor woman protested, with tears.
“Is it being a good wife to oppose your husband’s business? Is it
honouring your husband to dishonour his business? Is it obeying your
husband to disobey him on the wital subject of his business?”
“You hadn’t taken to the dreadful business then, Jerry.”
“It’s enough for you,” retorted Mr. Cruncher, “to be the wife of a
honest tradesman, and not to occupy your female mind with calculations
when he took to his trade or when he didn’t. A honouring and obeying
wife would let his trade alone altogether. Call yourself a religious
woman? If you’re a religious woman, give me a irreligious one! You have
no more nat’ral sense of duty than the bed of this here Thames river has
of a pile, and similarly it must be knocked into you.”
The altercation was conducted in a low tone of voice, and terminated in
the honest tradesman’s kicking off his clay-soiled boots, and lying down
at his length on the floor. After taking a timid peep at him lying on
his back, with his rusty hands under his head for a pillow, his son lay
down too, and fell asleep again.
There was no fish for breakfast, and not much of anything else. Mr.
Cruncher was out of spirits, and out of temper, and kept an iron pot-lid
by him as a projectile for the correction of Mrs. Cruncher, in case
he should observe any symptoms of her saying Grace. He was brushed
and washed at the usual hour, and set off with his son to pursue his
ostensible calling.
Young Jerry, walking with the stool under his arm at his father’s side
along sunny and crowded Fleet-street, was a very different Young Jerry
from him of the previous night, running home through darkness and
solitude from his grim pursuer. His cunning was fresh with the day,
and his qualms were gone with the night--in which particulars it is not
improbable that he had compeers in Fleet-street and the City of London,
that fine morning.
“Father,” said Young Jerry, as they walked along: taking care to keep
at arm’s length and to have the stool well between them: “what’s a
Resurrection-Man?”
Mr. Cruncher came to a stop on the pavement before he answered, “How
should I know?”
“I thought you knowed everything, father,” said the artless boy.
“Hem! Well,” returned Mr. Cruncher, going on again, and lifting off his
hat to give his spikes free play, “he’s a tradesman.”
“What’s his goods, father?” asked the brisk Young Jerry.
“His goods,” said Mr. Cruncher, after turning it over in his mind, “is a
branch of Scientific goods.”
“Persons’ bodies, ain’t it, father?” asked the lively boy.
“I believe it is something of that sort,” said Mr. Cruncher.
“Oh, father, I should so like to be a Resurrection-Man when I’m quite
growed up!”
Mr. Cruncher was soothed, but shook his head in a dubious and moral way.
“It depends upon how you dewelop your talents. Be careful to dewelop
your talents, and never to say no more than you can help to nobody, and
there’s no telling at the present time what you may not come to be fit
for.” As Young Jerry, thus encouraged, went on a few yards in advance,
to plant the stool in the shadow of the Bar, Mr. Cruncher added to
himself: “Jerry, you honest tradesman, there’s hopes wot that boy will
yet be a blessing to you, and a recompense to you for his mother!”
CHAPTER XV.
Knitting
There had been earlier drinking than usual in the wine-shop of Monsieur
Defarge. As early as six o’clock in the morning, sallow faces peeping
through its barred windows had descried other faces within, bending over
measures of wine. Monsieur Defarge sold a very thin wine at the best
of times, but it would seem to have been an unusually thin wine that
he sold at this time. A sour wine, moreover, or a souring, for its
influence on the mood of those who drank it was to make them gloomy. No
vivacious Bacchanalian flame leaped out of the pressed grape of Monsieur
Defarge: but, a smouldering fire that burnt in the dark, lay hidden in
the dregs of it.
This had been the third morning in succession, on which there had been
early drinking at the wine-shop of Monsieur Defarge. It had begun
on Monday, and here was Wednesday come. There had been more of early
brooding than drinking; for, many men had listened and whispered and
slunk about there from the time of the opening of the door, who could
not have laid a piece of money on the counter to save their souls. These
were to the full as interested in the place, however, as if they could
have commanded whole barrels of wine; and they glided from seat to seat,
and from corner to corner, swallowing talk in lieu of drink, with greedy
looks.
Notwithstanding an unusual flow of company, the master of the wine-shop
was not visible. He was not missed; for, nobody who crossed the
threshold looked for him, nobody asked for him, nobody wondered to see
only Madame Defarge in her seat, presiding over the distribution of
wine, with a bowl of battered small coins before her, as much defaced
and beaten out of their original impress as the small coinage of
humanity from whose ragged pockets they had come.
A suspended interest and a prevalent absence of mind, were perhaps
observed by the spies who looked in at the wine-shop, as they looked in
at every place, high and low, from the king’s palace to the criminal’s
gaol. Games at cards languished, players at dominoes musingly built
towers with them, drinkers drew figures on the tables with spilt drops
of wine, Madame Defarge herself picked out the pattern on her sleeve
with her toothpick, and saw and heard something inaudible and invisible
a long way off.
Thus, Saint Antoine in this vinous feature of his, until midday. It was
high noontide, when two dusty men passed through his streets and under
his swinging lamps: of whom, one was Monsieur Defarge: the other a
mender of roads in a blue cap. All adust and athirst, the two entered
the wine-shop. Their arrival had lighted a kind of fire in the breast
of Saint Antoine, fast spreading as they came along, which stirred and
flickered in flames of faces at most doors and windows. Yet, no one had
followed them, and no man spoke when they entered the wine-shop, though
the eyes of every man there were turned upon them.
“Good day, gentlemen!” said Monsieur Defarge.
It may have been a signal for loosening the general tongue. It elicited
an answering chorus of “Good day!”
“It is bad weather, gentlemen,” said Defarge, shaking his head.
Upon which, every man looked at his neighbour, and then all cast down
their eyes and sat silent. Except one man, who got up and went out.
“My wife,” said Defarge aloud, addressing Madame Defarge: “I have
travelled certain leagues with this good mender of roads, called
Jacques. I met him--by accident--a day and half’s journey out of Paris.
He is a good child, this mender of roads, called Jacques. Give him to
drink, my wife!”
A second man got up and went out. Madame Defarge set wine before the
mender of roads called Jacques, who doffed his blue cap to the company,
and drank. In the breast of his blouse he carried some coarse dark
bread; he ate of this between whiles, and sat munching and drinking near
Madame Defarge’s counter. A third man got up and went out.
Defarge refreshed himself with a draught of wine--but, he took less