A Tale of Two Cities
which the mad scene was acted, seemed to run mad, like the people on the
shore.
They put him into a great chair they had among them, and which they had
taken either out of the Court itself, or one of its rooms or passages.
Over the chair they had thrown a red flag, and to the back of it they
had bound a pike with a red cap on its top. In this car of triumph, not
even the Doctor’s entreaties could prevent his being carried to his home
on men’s shoulders, with a confused sea of red caps heaving about him,
and casting up to sight from the stormy deep such wrecks of faces, that
he more than once misdoubted his mind being in confusion, and that he
was in the tumbril on his way to the Guillotine.
In wild dreamlike procession, embracing whom they met and pointing
him out, they carried him on. Reddening the snowy streets with the
prevailing Republican colour, in winding and tramping through them, as
they had reddened them below the snow with a deeper dye, they carried
him thus into the courtyard of the building where he lived. Her father
had gone on before, to prepare her, and when her husband stood upon his
feet, she dropped insensible in his arms.
As he held her to his heart and turned her beautiful head between his
face and the brawling crowd, so that his tears and her lips might come
together unseen, a few of the people fell to dancing. Instantly, all the
rest fell to dancing, and the courtyard overflowed with the Carmagnole.
Then, they elevated into the vacant chair a young woman from the
crowd to be carried as the Goddess of Liberty, and then swelling and
overflowing out into the adjacent streets, and along the river’s bank,
and over the bridge, the Carmagnole absorbed them every one and whirled
them away.
After grasping the Doctor’s hand, as he stood victorious and proud
before him; after grasping the hand of Mr. Lorry, who came panting in
breathless from his struggle against the waterspout of the Carmagnole;
after kissing little Lucie, who was lifted up to clasp her arms round
his neck; and after embracing the ever zealous and faithful Pross who
lifted her; he took his wife in his arms, and carried her up to their
rooms.
“Lucie! My own! I am safe.”
“O dearest Charles, let me thank God for this on my knees as I have
prayed to Him.”
They all reverently bowed their heads and hearts. When she was again in
his arms, he said to her:
“And now speak to your father, dearest. No other man in all this France
could have done what he has done for me.”
She laid her head upon her father’s breast, as she had laid his poor
head on her own breast, long, long ago. He was happy in the return he
had made her, he was recompensed for his suffering, he was proud of his
strength. “You must not be weak, my darling,” he remonstrated; “don’t
tremble so. I have saved him.”
CHAPTER VII.
A Knock at the Door
“I have saved him.” It was not another of the dreams in which he had
often come back; he was really here. And yet his wife trembled, and a
vague but heavy fear was upon her.
All the air round was so thick and dark, the people were so passionately
revengeful and fitful, the innocent were so constantly put to death on
vague suspicion and black malice, it was so impossible to forget that
many as blameless as her husband and as dear to others as he was to
her, every day shared the fate from which he had been clutched, that her
heart could not be as lightened of its load as she felt it ought to be.
The shadows of the wintry afternoon were beginning to fall, and even now
the dreadful carts were rolling through the streets. Her mind pursued
them, looking for him among the Condemned; and then she clung closer to
his real presence and trembled more.
Her father, cheering her, showed a compassionate superiority to this
woman’s weakness, which was wonderful to see. No garret, no shoemaking,
no One Hundred and Five, North Tower, now! He had accomplished the task
he had set himself, his promise was redeemed, he had saved Charles. Let
them all lean upon him.
Their housekeeping was of a very frugal kind: not only because that was
the safest way of life, involving the least offence to the people, but
because they were not rich, and Charles, throughout his imprisonment,
had had to pay heavily for his bad food, and for his guard, and towards
the living of the poorer prisoners. Partly on this account, and
partly to avoid a domestic spy, they kept no servant; the citizen and
citizeness who acted as porters at the courtyard gate, rendered them
occasional service; and Jerry (almost wholly transferred to them by
Mr. Lorry) had become their daily retainer, and had his bed there every
night.
It was an ordinance of the Republic One and Indivisible of Liberty,
Equality, Fraternity, or Death, that on the door or doorpost of every
house, the name of every inmate must be legibly inscribed in letters
of a certain size, at a certain convenient height from the ground. Mr.
Jerry Cruncher’s name, therefore, duly embellished the doorpost down
below; and, as the afternoon shadows deepened, the owner of that name
himself appeared, from overlooking a painter whom Doctor Manette had
employed to add to the list the name of Charles Evrémonde, called
Darnay.
In the universal fear and distrust that darkened the time, all the usual
harmless ways of life were changed. In the Doctor’s little household, as
in very many others, the articles of daily consumption that were wanted
were purchased every evening, in small quantities and at various small
shops. To avoid attracting notice, and to give as little occasion as
possible for talk and envy, was the general desire.
For some months past, Miss Pross and Mr. Cruncher had discharged the
office of purveyors; the former carrying the money; the latter, the
basket. Every afternoon at about the time when the public lamps were
lighted, they fared forth on this duty, and made and brought home
such purchases as were needful. Although Miss Pross, through her long
association with a French family, might have known as much of their
language as of her own, if she had had a mind, she had no mind in that
direction; consequently she knew no more of that “nonsense” (as she was
pleased to call it) than Mr. Cruncher did. So her manner of marketing
was to plump a noun-substantive at the head of a shopkeeper without any
introduction in the nature of an article, and, if it happened not to be
the name of the thing she wanted, to look round for that thing, lay hold
of it, and hold on by it until the bargain was concluded. She always
made a bargain for it, by holding up, as a statement of its just price,
one finger less than the merchant held up, whatever his number might be.
“Now, Mr. Cruncher,” said Miss Pross, whose eyes were red with felicity;
“if you are ready, I am.”
Jerry hoarsely professed himself at Miss Pross’s service. He had worn
all his rust off long ago, but nothing would file his spiky head down.
“There’s all manner of things wanted,” said Miss Pross, “and we shall
have a precious time of it. We want wine, among the rest. Nice toasts
these Redheads will be drinking, wherever we buy it.”
“It will be much the same to your knowledge, miss, I should think,”
retorted Jerry, “whether they drink your health or the Old Un’s.”
“Who’s he?” said Miss Pross.
Mr. Cruncher, with some diffidence, explained himself as meaning “Old
Nick’s.”
“Ha!” said Miss Pross, “it doesn’t need an interpreter to explain the
meaning of these creatures. They have but one, and it’s Midnight Murder,
and Mischief.”
“Hush, dear! Pray, pray, be cautious!” cried Lucie.
“Yes, yes, yes, I’ll be cautious,” said Miss Pross; “but I may say
among ourselves, that I do hope there will be no oniony and tobaccoey
smotherings in the form of embracings all round, going on in the
streets. Now, Ladybird, never you stir from that fire till I come back!
Take care of the dear husband you have recovered, and don’t move your
pretty head from his shoulder as you have it now, till you see me again!
May I ask a question, Doctor Manette, before I go?”
“I think you may take that liberty,” the Doctor answered, smiling.
“For gracious sake, don’t talk about Liberty; we have quite enough of
that,” said Miss Pross.
“Hush, dear! Again?” Lucie remonstrated.
“Well, my sweet,” said Miss Pross, nodding her head emphatically, “the
short and the long of it is, that I am a subject of His Most Gracious
Majesty King George the Third;” Miss Pross curtseyed at the name; “and
as such, my maxim is, Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish
tricks, On him our hopes we fix, God save the King!”
Mr. Cruncher, in an access of loyalty, growlingly repeated the words
after Miss Pross, like somebody at church.
“I am glad you have so much of the Englishman in you, though I wish you
had never taken that cold in your voice,” said Miss Pross, approvingly.
“But the question, Doctor Manette. Is there”--it was the good creature’s
way to affect to make light of anything that was a great anxiety
with them all, and to come at it in this chance manner--“is there any
prospect yet, of our getting out of this place?”
“I fear not yet. It would be dangerous for Charles yet.”
“Heigh-ho-hum!” said Miss Pross, cheerfully repressing a sigh as she
glanced at her darling’s golden hair in the light of the fire, “then we
must have patience and wait: that’s all. We must hold up our heads and
fight low, as my brother Solomon used to say. Now, Mr. Cruncher!--Don’t
you move, Ladybird!”
They went out, leaving Lucie, and her husband, her father, and the
child, by a bright fire. Mr. Lorry was expected back presently from the
Banking House. Miss Pross had lighted the lamp, but had put it aside in
a corner, that they might enjoy the fire-light undisturbed. Little Lucie
sat by her grandfather with her hands clasped through his arm: and he,
in a tone not rising much above a whisper, began to tell her a story of
a great and powerful Fairy who had opened a prison-wall and let out
a captive who had once done the Fairy a service. All was subdued and
quiet, and Lucie was more at ease than she had been.
“What is that?” she cried, all at once.
“My dear!” said her father, stopping in his story, and laying his hand
on hers, “command yourself. What a disordered state you are in! The
least thing--nothing--startles you! _You_, your father’s daughter!”
“I thought, my father,” said Lucie, excusing herself, with a pale face
and in a faltering voice, “that I heard strange feet upon the stairs.”
“My love, the staircase is as still as Death.”
As he said the word, a blow was struck upon the door.
“Oh father, father. What can this be! Hide Charles. Save him!”
“My child,” said the Doctor, rising, and laying his hand upon her
shoulder, “I _have_ saved him. What weakness is this, my dear! Let me go
to the door.”
He took the lamp in his hand, crossed the two intervening outer rooms,
and opened it. A rude clattering of feet over the floor, and four rough
men in red caps, armed with sabres and pistols, entered the room.
“The Citizen Evrémonde, called Darnay,” said the first.
“Who seeks him?” answered Darnay.
“I seek him. We seek him. I know you, Evrémonde; I saw you before the
Tribunal to-day. You are again the prisoner of the Republic.”
The four surrounded him, where he stood with his wife and child clinging
to him.
“Tell me how and why am I again a prisoner?”
“It is enough that you return straight to the Conciergerie, and will
know to-morrow. You are summoned for to-morrow.”
Doctor Manette, whom this visitation had so turned into stone, that he
stood with the lamp in his hand, as if he were a statue made to hold it,
moved after these words were spoken, put the lamp down, and confronting