A Tale of Two Cities
Spy, and looks attentively at him, and goes his way.
The clocks are on the stroke of three, and the furrow ploughed among the
populace is turning round, to come on into the place of execution, and
end. The ridges thrown to this side and to that, now crumble in and
close behind the last plough as it passes on, for all are following
to the Guillotine. In front of it, seated in chairs, as in a garden of
public diversion, are a number of women, busily knitting. On one of the
fore-most chairs, stands The Vengeance, looking about for her friend.
“Thérèse!” she cries, in her shrill tones. “Who has seen her? Thérèse
Defarge!”
“She never missed before,” says a knitting-woman of the sisterhood.
“No; nor will she miss now,” cries The Vengeance, petulantly. “Thérèse.”
“Louder,” the woman recommends.
Ay! Louder, Vengeance, much louder, and still she will scarcely hear
thee. Louder yet, Vengeance, with a little oath or so added, and yet
it will hardly bring her. Send other women up and down to seek her,
lingering somewhere; and yet, although the messengers have done dread
deeds, it is questionable whether of their own wills they will go far
enough to find her!
“Bad Fortune!” cries The Vengeance, stamping her foot in the chair, “and
here are the tumbrils! And Evrémonde will be despatched in a wink, and
she not here! See her knitting in my hand, and her empty chair ready for
her. I cry with vexation and disappointment!”
As The Vengeance descends from her elevation to do it, the tumbrils
begin to discharge their loads. The ministers of Sainte Guillotine are
robed and ready. Crash!--A head is held up, and the knitting-women who
scarcely lifted their eyes to look at it a moment ago when it could
think and speak, count One.
The second tumbril empties and moves on; the third comes up. Crash!--And
the knitting-women, never faltering or pausing in their Work, count Two.
The supposed Evrémonde descends, and the seamstress is lifted out next
after him. He has not relinquished her patient hand in getting out, but
still holds it as he promised. He gently places her with her back to the
crashing engine that constantly whirrs up and falls, and she looks into
his face and thanks him.
“But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so composed, for I am
naturally a poor little thing, faint of heart; nor should I have been
able to raise my thoughts to Him who was put to death, that we might
have hope and comfort here to-day. I think you were sent to me by
Heaven.”
“Or you to me,” says Sydney Carton. “Keep your eyes upon me, dear child,
and mind no other object.”
“I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall mind nothing when I let
it go, if they are rapid.”
“They will be rapid. Fear not!”
The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak as
if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to
heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart
and differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair home
together, and to rest in her bosom.
“Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you one last question? I
am very ignorant, and it troubles me--just a little.”
“Tell me what it is.”
“I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself, whom I
love very dearly. She is five years younger than I, and she lives in a
farmer’s house in the south country. Poverty parted us, and she knows
nothing of my fate--for I cannot write--and if I could, how should I
tell her! It is better as it is.”
“Yes, yes: better as it is.”
“What I have been thinking as we came along, and what I am still
thinking now, as I look into your kind strong face which gives me so
much support, is this:--If the Republic really does good to the poor,
and they come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer less, she may
live a long time: she may even live to be old.”
“What then, my gentle sister?”
“Do you think:” the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so much
endurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and tremble:
“that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land
where I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?”
“It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and no trouble there.”
“You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant. Am I to kiss you now? Is the
moment come?”
“Yes.”
She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each other.
The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse than
a sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next before
him--is gone; the knitting-women count Twenty-Two.
“I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believeth
in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and
believeth in me shall never die.”
The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing
on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swells
forward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away.
Twenty-Three.
*****
They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the
peacefullest man’s face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked
sublime and prophetic.
One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe--a woman--had asked
at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed to
write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given any
utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these:
“I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge,
long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of
the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease
out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people
rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in
their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evil
of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural
birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.
“I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful,
prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see
Her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father,
aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his
healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their
friend, in ten years’ time enriching them with all he has, and passing
tranquilly to his reward.
“I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of
their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping
for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their
course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I know
that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other’s soul,
than I was in the souls of both.
“I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man
winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him
winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the
light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him,
fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name,
with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place--then fair to
look upon, with not a trace of this day’s disfigurement--and I hear him
tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a
far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”