All this was seen in a moment, as the vision of a drowning man, or of any human creature at any very great pass, could see a world if it were there. They drew back from the window, and the doctor looked for explanation in his friend’s ashy face.
‘They are,’ Mr Lorry whispered the words glancing fearfully round at the locked room, ‘Murdering the prisoners. If you are sure of what you say; if you really have the power you think you have – as I believe you have – make yourself known to these devils, and get taken to La Force. It may be too late, I don’t know, but let it not be a minute later!’
Doctor Manette pressed his hand, hastened bareheaded out of the room, and was in the court-yard when Mr Lorry regained the blind.
His streaming white hair, his remarkable face, and the impetuous confidence of his manner, as he put the weapons aside like water, carried him in an instant to the heart of the concourse at the stone. For a few moments there was a pause, and a hurry, and a murmur, and the unintelligible sound of his voice; and then Mr Lorry saw him, surrounded by all, and in the midst of a line twenty men long, all linked shoulder to shoulder, and hand to shoulder, hurried out with cries of ‘Live the Bastille prisoner! Help for the Bastille prisoner’s kindred in La Force! Room for the Bastille prisoner in front there! Save the prisoner Evrémonde at La Force!’ and a thousand answering shouts.
He closed the lattice again with a fluttering heart, closed the window and the curtain, hastened to Lucie, and told her that her father was assisted by the people, and gone in search of her husband. He found her child and Miss Pross with her; but, it never occurred to him to be surprised by their appearance until a long time afterwards, when he sat watching them in such quiet as the night knew.
Lucie had, by that time, fallen into a stupor on the floor at his feet, clinging to his hand. Miss Pross had laid the child down on his own bed, and her head had gradually fallen on the pillow beside her pretty charge. O the long, long night, with the moans of the poor wife. And O the long, long night, with no return of her father and no tidings!
Twice more in the darkness the bell at the great gate sounded, and the irruption was repeated, and the grindstone whirled and spluttered. ‘What is it?’ cried Lucie, affrighted. ‘Hush! The soldiers’ swords are sharpened there,’ said Mr Lorry. ‘The place is National property now, and used as a kind of armoury, my love.’
Twice more in all; but, the last spell of work was feeble and fitful. Soon afterwards the day began to dawn, and he softly detached himself from the clasping hand, and cautiously looked out again. A man, so besmeared that he might have been a sorely wounded soldier creeping back to consciousness on a field of slain, was rising from the pavement by the side of the grindstone, and looking about him with a vacant air. Shortly, this worn-out murderer descried in the imperfect light one of the carriages of Monseigneur, and, staggering to that gorgeous vehicle, climbed in at the door, and shut himself up to take his rest on its dainty cushions.
The great grindstone, Earth, had turned when Mr Lorry looked out again, and the sun was red on the court-yard. But, the lesser grindstone stood alone there in the calm morning air, with a red upon it that the sun had never given, and would never take away.
CHAPTER 3
The Shadow
One of the first considerations which arose in the business mind of Mr Lorry when business hours came round, was this: – that he had no right to imperil Tellson’s, by sheltering the wife of an emigrant prisoner under the Bank roof. His own possessions, safety, life, he would have hazarded for Lucie and her child, without a moment’s demur; but, the great trust he held was not his own, and as to that business charge he was a strict man of business.
At first, his mind reverted to Defarge, and he thought of finding out the wine-shop again and taking counsel with its master in reference to the safest dwelling-place in the distracted state of the city. But, the same consideration that suggested him, repudiated him; he lived in the most violent Quarter, and doubtless was influential there, and deep in its dangerous workings.
Noon coming, and the Doctor not returning, and every minute’s delay tending to compromise Tellson’s, Mr Lorry advised with Lucie. She said that her father had spoken of hiring a lodging for a short term, in that Quarter, near the Banking-house. As there was no business objection to this, and as he foresaw that even if it were all well with Charles, and he were to be released, he could not hope to leave the city, Mr Lorry went out in quest of such a lodging, and found a suitable one, high up in a removed by-street where the closed blinds in all the other windows of a high melancholy square of buildings marked deserted homes.
To this lodging he at once removed Lucie and her child, and Miss Pross: giving them what comfort he could, and much more than he had himself. He left Jerry with them, as a figure to fill a doorway that would bear considerable knocking on the head, and returned to his own occupations. A disturbed and doleful mind he brought to bear upon them, and slowly and heavily the day lagged on with him.
It wore itself out, and wore him out with it, until the Bank closed. He was again alone in his room of the previous night, considering what to do next, when he heard a foot upon the stair. In a few moments, a man stood in his presence, who, with a keenly observant look at him, addressed him by his name.
‘Your servant,’ said Mr Lorry. ‘Do you know me?’
He was a strongly made man with dark curling hair, from forty-five to fifty years of age. For answer he repeated, without any change of emphasis, the words:
‘Do you know me?’
‘I have seen you somewhere.’
‘Perhaps at my wine-shop?’
Much interested and agitated, Mr Lorry said: ‘You come from Doctor Manette?’
‘Yes. I come from Doctor Manette.’
‘And what says he? What does he send me?’
Defarge gave into his anxious hand, an open scrap of paper. It bore the words in the Doctor’s writing,‘Charles is safe, but I cannot safely leave this place yet. I have obtained the favour that the bearer has a short note from Charles to his wife. Let the bearer see his wife.’
It was dated from La Force, within an hour.
‘Will you accompany me,’ said Mr Lorry, joyfully relieved after reading this note aloud, ‘to where his wife resides?’
‘Yes,’ returned Defarge.
Scarcely noticing, as yet, in what a curiously reserved and mechanical way Defarge spoke, Mr Lorry put on his hat and they went down into the court-yard. There, they found two women; one, knitting.
‘Madame Defarge, surely!’ said Mr Lorry, who had left her in exactly the same attitude some seventeen years ago.
‘It is she,’ observed her husband.
‘Does Madame go with us?’ inquired Mr Lorry, seeing that she moved as they moved.
‘Yes. That she may be able to recognise the faces and know the persons. It is for their safety.’
Beginning to be struck by Defarge’s manner, Mr Lorry looked dubiously at him, and led the way. Both the women followed; the second woman being The Vengeance.
They passed through the intervening streets as quickly as they might, ascended the staircase of the new domicile, were admitted by Jerry, and found Lucie weeping, alone. She was thrown into a transport by the tidings Mr Lorry gave her of her husband, and clasped the hand that delivered his note – little thinking what it had been doing near him in the night, and might, but for a chance, have done to him.
‘DEAREST, – Take courage. I am well, and your father has influence around me. You cannot answer this. Kiss our child for me.’
That was all the writing. It was so much, however, to her who received it, that she turned from Defarge to his wife, and kissed one of the hands that knitted. It was a passionate, loving, thankful, womanly action, but the hand made no response – dropped cold and heavy, and took to its knitting again.
There was something in its touch that gave Lucie a check. She stopped in the act of putting the note in her bosom, and, with her hands yet at her neck, looked terrified
at Madame Defarge. Madame Defarge met the lifted eyebrows and forehead with a cold, impassive stare.
‘My dear,’ said Mr Lorry, striking in to explain; ‘there are frequent risings in the streets; and, although it is not likely that they will ever trouble you, Madame Defarge wishes to see those whom she has the power to protect at such times, to the end that she may know them – that she may identify them. I believe,’ said Mr Lorry, rather halting in his reassuring words, as the stony manner of all the three impressed itself upon him more and more, ‘I state the case, Citizen Defarge?’
Defarge looked gloomily at his wife, and gave no other answer than a gruff sound of acquiescence.
‘You had better, Lucie,’ said Mr Lorry, doing all he could to propitiate, by tone and manner, ‘have the dear child here, and our good Pross. Our good Pross, Defarge, is an English lady, and knows no French.’
The lady in question, whose rooted conviction that she was more than a match for any foreigner, was not to be shaken by distress and danger, appeared with folded arms, and observed in English to The Vengeance whom her eyes first encountered, ‘Well, I am sure, Boldface! I hope you are pretty well!’ She also bestowed a British cough on Madame Defarge; but, neither of the two took much heed of her.
‘Is that his child?’ said Madame Defarge, stopping in her work for the first time, and pointing her knitting-needle at little Lucie as if it were the finger of Fate.
‘Yes, madame,’ answered Mr Lorry; ‘this is our poor prisoner’s darling daughter, and only child.’
The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed to fall so threatening and dark on the child, that her mother instinctively kneeled on the ground beside her, and held her to her breast. The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed then to fall, threatening and dark, on both the mother and the child.
‘It is enough, my husband,’ said Madame Defarge. ‘I have seen them. We may go.’
But, the suppressed manner had enough of menace in it – not visible and presented, but indistinct and withheld – to alarm Lucie into saying, as she laid her appealing hand on Madame Defarge’s dress:
‘You will be good to my poor husband. You will do him no harm. You will help me to see him if you can?’
‘Your husband is not my business here,’ returned Madame Defarge, looking down at her with perfect composure. ‘It is the daughter of your father who is my business here.’
‘For my sake, then, be merciful to my husband. For my child’s sake! She will put her hands together and pray you to be merciful. We are more afraid of you than of these others.’
Madame Defarge received it as a compliment, and looked at her husband. Defarge, who had been uneasily biting his thumb-nail and looking at her, collected his face into a sterner expression.
‘What is it that your husband says in that little letter?’ asked Madame Defarge, with a lowering smile. ‘Influence; he says something touching influence?’
‘That my father,’ said Lucie, hurriedly taking the paper from her breast, but with her alarmed eyes on her questioner and not on it, ‘has much influence around him.’
‘Surely it will release him!’ said Madame Defarge. ‘Let it do so.’
‘As a wife and mother,’ cried Lucie, most earnestly, ‘I implore you to have pity on me and not to exercise any power that you possess, against my innocent husband, but to use it in his behalf. O sister-woman, think of me. As a wife and mother!’
Madame Defarge looked, coldly as ever, at the suppliant, and said, turning to her friend The Vengeance:
‘The wives and mothers we have been used to see, since we were as little as this child, and much less, have not been greatly considered? We have known their husbands and fathers laid in prison and kept from them, often enough? All our lives, we have seen our sister-women suffer, in themselves and in their children, poverty, nakedness, hunger, thirst, sickness, misery, oppression and neglect of all kinds?’
‘We have seen nothing else,’ returned The Vengeance.
‘We have borne this a long time,’ said Madame Defarge, turning her eyes again upon Lucie. ‘Judge you! Is it likely that the trouble of one wife and mother would be much to us now?’
She resumed her knitting and went out. The Vengeance followed. Defarge went last, and closed the door.
‘Courage, my dear Lucie,’ said Mr Lorry, as he raised her. ‘Courage, courage! So far all goes well with us – much, much better than it has of late gone with many poor souls. Cheer up, and have a thankful heart.’
‘I am not thankless, I hope, but that dreadful woman seems to throw a shadow on me and on all my hopes.’
‘Tut, tut!’ said Mr Lorry; ‘what is this despondency in the brave little breast? A shadow indeed! No substance in it, Lucie.’
But the shadow of the manner of these Defarges was dark upon himself, for all that, and in his secret mind it troubled him greatly.
[END OF INSTALMENT 22 ]
CHAPTER 4
Calm in Storm
Doctor Manette did not return until the morning of the fourth day of his absence. So much of what had happened in that dreadful time as could be kept from the knowledge of Lucie was so well concealed from her, that not until long afterwards when France and she were far apart, did she know that eleven hundred defenceless prisoners of both sexes and all ages had been killed by the populace; that four days and nights had been darkened by this deed of horror; and that the air around her had been tainted by the slain. She only knew that there had been an attack upon the prisons, that all political prisoners had been in danger, and that some had been dragged out by the crowd and murdered.
To Mr Lorry, the Doctor communicated under an injunction of secrecy on which he had no need to dwell, that the crowd had taken him through a scene of carnage to the prison of La Force. That, in the prison he had found a self-appointed Tribunal sitting, before which the prisoners were brought singly, and by which they were rapidly ordered to be put forth to be massacred, or to be released, or (in a few cases) to be sent back to their cells. That, presented by his conductors to this Tribunal, he had announced himself by name and profession as having been for eighteen years a secret and an unaccused prisoner in the Bastille; that, one of the body so sitting in judgment had risen and identified him, and that this man was Defarge.
That, hereupon he had ascertained, through the registers on the table, that his son-in-law was among the living prisoners, and had pleaded hard to the Tribunal – of whom some members were asleep and some awake, some dirty with murder and some clean, some sober and some not – for his life and liberty. That, in the first frantic greetings lavished on himself as a notable sufferer under the overthrown system, it had been accorded to him to have Charles Darnay brought before the lawless Court, and examined. That, he seemed on the point of being at once released, when the tide in his favour met with some unexplained check (not intelligible to the Doctor), which led to a few words of secret conference. That, the man sitting as President had then informed Doctor Manette that the prisoner must remain in custody, but should, for his sake, be held inviolate in safe custody. That, immediately, on a signal, the prisoner was removed to the interior of the prison again; but, that he, the Doctor, had then so strongly pleaded for permission to remain and assure himself that his son-in-law was, through no malice or mischance, delivered to the concourse whose murderous yells outside the gate had often drowned the proceedings, that he had obtained the permission, and had remained in that Hall of Blood until the danger was over.
The sights he had seen there, with brief snatches of food and sleep by intervals, shall remain untold. The mad joy over the prisoners who were saved, had astounded him scarcely less than the mad ferocity against those who were cut to pieces. One prisoner there was, he said, who had been discharged into the street free, but at whom a mistaken savage had thrust a pike as he passed out. Being besought to go to him and dress the wound, the Doctor had passed out at the same gate, and had found him in the arms of a company of Samaritans, who were seated o
n the bodies of their victims. With an inconsistency as monstrous as anything in this awful nightmare, they had helped the healer, and tended the wounded man with the gentlest solicitude – had made a litter for him and escorted him carefully from the spot – had then caught up their weapons and plunged anew into a butchery so dreadful, that the Doctor had covered his eyes with his hands, and swooned away in the midst of it.
As Mr Lorry received these confidences, and as he watched the face of his friend now sixty-two years of age, a misgiving arose within him that such dread experiences would revive the old danger. But, he had never seen his friend in his present aspect; he had never at all known him in his present character. For the first time the Doctor felt, now, that his suffering was strength and power. For the first time, he felt that in that sharp fire, he had slowly forged the iron which could break the prison door of his daughter’s husband, and deliver him. ‘It all tended to a good end, my friend; it was not mere waste and ruin. As my beloved child was helpful in restoring me to myself, I will be helpful now in restoring the dearest part of herself to her; by the aid of Heaven I will do it!’ Thus, Doctor Manette. And when Jarvis Lorry saw the kindled eyes, the resolute face, the calm strong look and bearing of the man whose life always seemed to him to have been stopped, like a clock, for so many years, and then set going again with an energy which had lain dormant during the cessation of its usefulness, he believed.
Greater things than the Doctor had at that time to contend with, would have yielded before his persevering purpose. While he kept himself in his place, as a physician whose business was with all degrees of mankind, bond and free, rich and poor, bad and good, he used his personal influence so wisely, that he was soon the inspecting physician of three prisons, and among them of La Force. He could now assure Lucie that her husband was no longer confined alone, but was mixed with the general body of prisoners; he saw her husband weekly, and brought sweet messages to her, straight from his lips; sometimes her husband himself sent a letter to her (though never by the Doctor’s hand), but she was not permitted to write to him; for, among the many wild suspicions of plots in the prisons, the wildest of all pointed at emigrants who were known to have made friends or permanent connexions abroad.
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