《A Tale of Two Cities》 Book2 CHAPTER
XVII One Night
by Charles Dickens
NEVER did the sun go
down with a brighter glory on the quiet comer in Soho, than one memorable evening when
Doctor and his daughter sat under the plane-tree together. Never did the moon rise with a
milder radiance over great London, than on that night when it found them still seated
under the tree, and shone upon their faces through its leaves.
Lucie was to be married to-morrow. She had reserved this last evening for her father, and
they sat alone under the plane-tree.
`You are happy, my dear father?'
`Quite, my child.'
They had said little though they had been there a long time. When it was yet light enough
to work and read, she had neither engaged herself in her usual work, nor had she read to
him. She had employed herself in both ways, at his side under the tree, many and many a
time; but, this time was not quite like any other, and nothing could make it so.
And I am very happy to-night, dear father. I am deeply happy in the love that Heaven has
so blessed--my love for Charles, and Charles's love for me. But, if my life were not to be
still consecrated to you, or if my marriage were so arranged as that it would part us,
even by the length of a few of these streets, I should be more unhappy and
self-reproachful now than I can tell you. Even as it is---'
Even as it was, she could not command her voice.
In the sad moonlight, she clasped him by the neck, and lad her face upon his breast. In
the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of the sun itself Bas the light called
human life is---at its coming and its going.
`Dearest dear! Can you tell me, this last time, that you feel quite, quite sure, no new
affections of mine, and no new duties of mine, will ever interpose between us? I know it
well, but do you know it? In your own heart, do you feel quite certain?'
Her father answered, with a cheerful firmness of conviction he could scarcely have
assumed, `Quite sure, my darling! More than that,' he added, as he tenderly kissed her:
`my future is far brighter, Lucie, seen through your marriage, than it could have
been--nay, than it ever was--without it.'
`If I could hope that, my father!---'
`Believe it, love! Indeed it is so. Consider how natural and how plain it is, my dear,
that it should be so. You, devoted and young, cannot fully appreciate the anxiety I have
felt that your life should not be wasted'
She moved her hand towards his lips, but he took it in his, and repeated the word.
`--wasted, my child--should not be wasted, struck aside from the natural order of
things--for my sake. Your unselfishness cannot entirely comprehend how much my mind has
gone on this; but, only ask yourself how could my happiness be perfect, while yours was
incomplete?'
`If I had never seen Charles, my father, I should have been quite happy with you.'
He smiled at her unconscious admission that she would have been unhappy without Charles,
having seen him; and replied:
`My child, you did see him, and it is Charles. If it had not been Charles, it would have
been another. Or, if it had been no other, I should have been the cause, and then the dark
part of my life would have cast its shadow beyond myself and would have fallen on you.'
It was the first time, except at the trial, of her ever hearing him refer to the period of
his suffering. It gave her a strange and new sensation while his words were in her ears;
and she remembered it long afterwards.
`See!' said the Doctor of Beauvais, raising his hand towards the moon. `I have looked at
her from my prison-window, when I could not bear her light. I have looked at her when it
has been such torture to me to think of her shining upon what I had lost, that I have
beaten my head against my prison-walls. I have looked at her, in a state so dull and
lethargic, that I have thought of nothing but the number of horizontal lines `I could draw
across her at the full, and the number of perpendicular lines with which I could intersect
them.' He added in his inward and pondering manner, as he looked at the moon, `It was
twenty either way, I remember, and the twentieth was difficult to squeeze in.'
The strange thrill with which she heard him go back to that time, deepened as he dwelt
upon it; but, there was nothing to shock her in the manner of his reference. He only
seemed to contrast his present cheerfulness and felicity with the dire endurance that
was over.
`I have looked at her, speculating thousands of times upon the unborn child from whom I
had been rent. Whether it was alive. Whether it had been born alive, or the poor mother's
shock had killed it. Whether it was a son who would some day avenge his father. (There was
a time in my imprisonment, when my desire for vengeance was unbearable.) Whether it was a
son who would never know his father's story; who might even live to weigh the possibility
of his father's having disappeared of his own will and act. Whether it was a daughter who
would grow to be a woman.'
She drew closer to him, and kissed his cheek and his hand. `I have pictured my daughter,
to myself, as perfectly forgetful of me--rather, altogether ignorant of me, and
unconscious of me. I have cast up the years of her age, year after year. I have seen her
married to a man who knew nothing of my fate. I have altogether perished from the
remembrance of the living, and in the next generation my place was a blank.'
`My father! Even to hear that you had such thoughts of a daughter who never existed,
strikes to my heart as if I had been that child.'
`You, Lucie? It is out of the consolation and restoration you have brought to me, that
these remembrances arise, and pass between us and the moon on this last night.--what did I
say just now?'
She knew nothing of you. She cared nothing for you.'
`So! But on other moonlight nights, when the sadness and the silence have touched me in a
different way--have affected me with something as like a sorrowful sense of peace, as any
emotion that had pain for its foundations could--I have imagined her as coming to me in my
cell, and leading me out into the freedom beyond the fortress. I have seen her image in
the moonlight often, as I now see you; except that I never held her in my arms; it stood
between the little grated window and the door. But, you understand that that was not the
child I am speaking of?'
`The figure was not; the--the--image; the fancy?'
`No. That was another thing. It stood before my disturbed sense of sight, but it never
moved. The phantom that my mind pursued, was another and more real child. Of her outward
appearance I know no more than that she was like her mother. The other had that likeness
too--as you have--but was not the same. Can you follow me, Lucie? Hardly, I think I `doubt
you must have beer, a solitary prisoner to understand these prisoner perplexed
distinctions.
His collected and calm manner could not prevent her blood from running cold, as he thus
tried to anatomise his old condition.
`In that more peaceful state, I have imagined her, in the moonlight, coming to me and
taking me out to show me that the home of her married life was lull of her loving
remembrance of her lost father. My picture was in her room, and I was in her prayers.
Her life was active, cheerful, useful; hut my poor history pervaded it all.'
`I was that child,my father. I was not half so good, but in my love that was I.'
`And she showed me her children,' said the Doctor of Beauvais, `and they had heard of me,
and had been taught to pity me. When they passed a prison of the State, they kept far from
its frowning walls, and looked up at its bars, and spoke in whispers. She could never
deliver me; I imagined that she always brought me back after showing me such things. But
then, blessed with the relief of tears, I fell upon my knees, and blessed her.'
`I am that child, I hope, my father. O my dear, my dear, will you bless me as fervently
to-morrow?'
`Lucie, I recall these old troubles in the reason that I have to-night for loving you
better than words can tell, and thanking God for my great happiness. My thoughts, when
they were wildest, never rose near the happiness that I have known with you, and that we
have before us.
He embraced her, solemnly commended her to Heaven, and humbly thanked Heaven for having
bestowed her on him. By-and-by, they went into the house.
There was no one hidden to the marriage but Mr. Lorry; there was even to be no bridesmaid
but the gaunt Miss Pross. The marriage was to make no change in their place of residence;
they had been able to extend it, by taking to themselves the upper rooms formerly
belonging to the apocryphal invisible lodger, and they desired nothing more.
Doctor Manette was very cheerful at the little supper. They were only three at table, and
Miss Pross made the third. He regretted that Charles was not there; was more than half
disposed to object to the loving little plot that kept him away; and drank to him
affectionately.
So, the time came for him to bid Lucie good night, and they separated. But, in the
stillness of the third hour of the morning, Lucie came down stairs again, and stole into
his room; not free from unshaped fears, beforehand.
All things, however, were in their places; all was quiet; and he lay asleep, his white
hair picturesque on the untroubled pillow, and his hands lying quiet on the coverlet. She
put her needless candle in the shadow at a distance, crept up to his bed, and put her lips
to his; then, leaned over him, and looked at him.
Into his handsome face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn; but, he covered up their
tracks with a determination so strong, that he held the mastery of them even in his sleep.
A more remarkable face in its quiet, resolute, and guarded struggle with an unseen
assailant, was not to be beheld in all the wide dominions of sleep, that night.
She timidly laid her hand on his dear breast, and put up a prayer that she might ever be
as true to him as her love aspired to be, and as his sorrows deserved. Then, she withdrew
her hand, and kissed his lips once more, and went away. So, the sunrise came, and the
shadows of the leaves of the plane-tree moved upon his face, as softly as her lips had
moved in praying for him. |
