《A Tale of Two Cities》 Book1 CHAPTER VI The Shoemaker
by Charles Dickens
`GOOD DAY!' said Monsieur Defarge,
looking down at he white head that bent low over the shoemaking.
It was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice responded to the salutation, as if it
were at a distance:
`Good day!'
`You are still hard at work, I see?'
After a long silence, the head was lifted for another moment, and the voice replied,
`Yes--I am working.' This time, a pair of haggard eyes had looked at the
questioner, before the face had dropped again.
The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the faintness of physical
weakness, though confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in it. Its deplorable
peculiarity was, that it was the faintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last
feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the life and
resonance of the human voice, that it affected the senses like a once beautiful colour
faded away into a poor weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was like a
voice under-ground. So expressive it was, of a hopeless and lost creature, that a famished
traveller, wearied Out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would have remembered home and
friends in such a tone before lying down to die.
Some minutes of silent work had passed: and the haggard eyes had looked up again: not with
any interest or curiosity, but with a dull mechanical perception, beforehand, that the
spot where the only visitor they were aware of had stood, was not yet empty.
`I want,' said Defarge, who had not removed his gaze from the shoemaker, `to let in a
little more light here. You can bear a little more?'
The shoemaker stopped his work; looked with a vacant air of listening, at the floor on one
side of him; then similarly, at the floor on the other side of him; then, upward at the
speaker.
`What did you say?'
`You can bear a little more light?'
`I must bear it, if you let it in.' (Laying the palest shadow of a stress upon the second
word.)
The opened half-door was opened a little further, and secured at that angle for the time.
A broad ray of light fell into the garret, and showed the workman with an un-finished shoe
upon his lap, pausing in his labour. His few common tools and various scraps of leather
were at his feet and on his bench. He had a white beard, raggedly cut, but not very long,
a hollow face, and exceedingly bright eyes. The hollowness and thinness of his face would
have caused them to look large, under his yet dark eyebrows and his confused white hair,
though they had been really otherwise; but, they were naturally large, and looked
un-naturally so. His yellow rags of shirt lay open at the throat, and showed his body to
be withered and worn. He, and his old canvas frock, and his loose stockings, and all his
poor tatters of clothes, had, in a long seclusion from direct light and air, faded down to
such a dull uniformity of parchment-yellow, that it would have been hard to say which was
which.
He had put up a hand between his eyes and the light, and the very bones of it seemed
transparent. So he sat, with a steadfastly vacant gaze, pausing in his work. He never
looked at the figure before him, without first looking down on this side of himself, then
on that, as if he had lost the habit of associating place with sound; he never spoke,
without first pandering in this manner, and forgetting to speak.
`Are you going to finish that pair of shoes to-day?' asked Defarge, motioning to Mr. Lorry
to come forward.
`What did you say?'
`Do you mean to finish that pair of shoes to-day?' `I can't say that I mean to. I suppose
so. I don't know.'
But, the question reminded him of his work, and he bent over it again.
Mr. Lorry came silently forward, leaving the daughter by the door. When he had stood, for
a minute or two, by the side of Defarge, the shoemaker looked up. He showed no
surprise at seeing another figure, but the unsteady fingers of one of his hands strayed to
his lips as he looked at it (his lips and his nails were of the same pale lead-colour),
and then the hand dropped to his work, and he once more bent over the shoe. The look and
the action had occupied but an instant.
`You have a visitor, you see,' said Monsieur Defarge.
`What did you say?'
`Here is a visitor.'
The shoemaker looked up as before, but without removing a hand from his work.
`Come!' said Defarge. `Here is monsieur, who knows a well-made shoe when he sees one. Show
him that shoe you are working at. Take it, monsieur.'
Mr. Lorry took it in his hand.
`Tell monsieur what kind of shoe it is, and the maker's name.'
There was a longer pause than usual, before the shoe-maker replied:
`I forget what it was you asked me. What did you say?'
`I said, couldn't you describe the kind of shoe, for monsieur's information?'
`It is a lady's shoe. It is a young lady's walking-shoe. It is in the present mode. I
never saw the mode. I have had a pattern in my hand.' He glanced at the shoe with some
little passing touch of pride.
`And the maker's name?' said Defarge.
Now that he had no work to hold, he laid the knuckles of the right hand in the hollow of
the left, and then the knuckles of the left hand in the hollow of the right, and then
passed a hand across his bearded chin, and so on in regular changes, without a moment's
intermission. The task of recalling him from the vacancy into which he always sank when he
had spoken, was like recalling some very weak person from a swoon, or endeavouring, in the
hope of some disclosure, to stay the spirit of a fast-dying man.
`Did you ask me for my name?'
`Assuredly I did.'
`One Hundred and Five, North Tower.'
`Is that all?'
`One Hundred and Five, North Tower.'
With a weary sound that was not a sigh, nor a groan, he bent to work again, until the
silence was again broken.
`You are not a shoemaker by trade?' said Mr. Lorry, looking steadfastly at him.
His haggard eyes turned to Defarge as if he would have transferred the question to him:
but as no help came from that quarter, they turned back on the questioner when they had
sought the ground.
`I am not a shoemaker by trade? No, I was not a shoe-maker by trade. I--I learn't it here.
I taught myself. I asked leave to---'
He lapsed away, even for minutes, ringing those measured changes on his hands the whole
time. His eyes came slowly back, at last, to the face from which they had wandered; when
they rested on it, he started, and resumed, in the manner of a sleeper that moment awake,
reverting to a subject of last night.
`I asked leave to teach myself, and I got it with much difficulty after a long while, and
I have made shoes ever since.'
As he held out his hand for the shoe that had been taken from him, Mr. Lorry said, still
looking steadfastly in his face:
`Monsieur Manette, do you remember nothing of me?'
The shoe dropped to the ground, and he sat looking fixedly at the questioner.
`Monsieur Manette;' Mr. Lorry laid his hand upon Defarge's arm; `do you remember nothing
of this man? Look at him. Look at me. Is there no old banker, no old business, no old
servant, no old time, rising in your mind, Monsieur Manette?'
As the captive of many years sat looking fixedly, by turns, at Mr. Lorry and at Defarge,
some long obliterated marks of an actively intent intelligence in the middle of the
fore-head, gradually forced themselves through the black mist that had fallen on him. They
were overclouded again, they were fainter, they were gone; but they had been there. And so
exactly was the expression repeated on the fair young face of her who had crept along the
wall to a point where she could see him, and where she now stood looking at him, with
hands which at first had been only raised in frightened compassion, if not even to keep
him off and shut out the sight of him, but which were now extending towards him, trembling
with eagerness to lay the spectral face upon her warm young breast, and love it back to
life and hope--so exactly was the expression repeated (though in stronger
characters) on her fair young face, that it looked as though it had passed like a moving
light, from him to her.
Darkness had fallen on him in its place. He looked at the two, less and less attentively,
and his eyes in gloomy abstraction sought the ground and looked about him in the old way.
Finally, with a deep long sigh, he took the shoe up, and resumed his work.
`Have you recognised him, monsieur?' asked Defarge in a whisper.
`Yes; for a moment. At first I thought it quite hope-less, but I have unquestionably seen,
for a single moment, the face that I once knew so well. Hush! Let us draw further back.
Hush!'
She had moved from the wall of the garret, very near to the bench on which he sat. There
was something awful in his unconsciousness of the figure that could have put out its hand
and touched him as lie stooped over his labour.
Not a word was spoken, not a sound was made. She stood, like a spirit, beside him, and he
bent over his work.
It happened, at length, that he had occasion to change the instrument in his hand, for his
shoemaker's knife. It lay on that side of him which was not the side on which she stood.
He had taken it up, and was stooping to work again, when his eyes caught the skirt of her
dress. He raised them, and saw her face. The two spectators started forward, hut she
stayed them with a motion of her hand. She had no fear of his striking at her with the
knife, though they had.
He stared at her with a fearful look, and after a while his lips began to form some words,
though no sound proceeded from them. By degrees, in the pauses of his quick and laboured
breathing, he was heard to say:
`What is this?'
With the tears streaming down her face, she put her two hands to her lips, and kissed them
to him; then clasped them on her breast, as if she laid his ruined head there.
`You are not the gaoler's daughter?'
She sighed `No.'
`Who are you?'
Not yet trusting the tones of her voice, she sat down on the bench beside him. He
recoiled, but she laid her hand upon his arm. A strange thrill struck him when she did so,
and visibly passed over his frame; he laid the knife down softly, as he sat staring at
her.
Her golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had been hurriedly pushed aside, and fell
down over her neck. Advancing his hand by little and little, he took it up and looked at
it. In the midst of the action he went astray, and, with another deep sigh, fell to work
at his shoemaking.
But not for long. Releasing his arm, she laid her hand upon his shoulder. After looking
doubtfully at it, two or three times, as if to be sure that it was really there, he laid
down his work, put his hand to his neck, and took off a blackened string with a scrap of
folded rag attached to it. He opened this, carefully, on his knee, and it contained a very
little quantity of hair: not more than one or two long golden hairs, which he had, in some
old day, wound on upon his finger.
He took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it. `It is the same. How can
it be! When was it! How was it!'
As the concentrating expression returned to his forehead, he seemed to become conscious
that it was in hers too. He turned her full to the light, and looked at her.
`She had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was summoned out--she had a
fear of my going, though I had none--and when I was brought to the North Tower they found
these upon my sleeve. "You will leave me them? They can never help me to escape in
the body, though they may in the spirit." Those were the words I said. I remember
them very well.'
He formed this speech with his lips many times before he could utter it. But when he did
find spoken words for it, they came to him coherently, though slowly.
`How was this?--Was it you?'
Once more, the two spectators started, as he turned upon her with a frightful suddenness.
But she sat perfectly still in his grasp, and only said, in a low voice, `I entreat you,
good gentlemen, do not come near us, do not speak, do not move!'
`Hark!' he exclaimed. `Whose voice was that?'
His hands released her as he uttered this cry, and went up to his white hair, which they
tore in a frenzy. It died out, as everything but his shoemaking did die out of him, and he
refolded his little packet and tried to secure it in his breast; but he still looked at
her, and gloomily shook his head.
`No, no, no; you are too young, too blooming. It can't be. See what the prisoner is. These
are not the hands she knew, this is not the face she knew, this is not a voice she ever
heard. No, no. She was--and He was--before the slow years of the North Tower--ages ago.
What is your name, my gentle angel?'
Hailing his softened tone and manner, his daughter fell upon her knees before him, with
her appealing hands upon his breast.
`O, sir, at another time you shall know my name, and who my mother was, and who my father,
and how I never knew their hard, hard history. But I cannot tell you at this time, and I
cannot tell you here. All that I may tell you, here and now, is, that I pray to you to
touch me and to bless me. Kiss me, kiss me! O my dear, my dear!'
His cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and lighted it as though
it were the light of Freedom shining on him.
`If you hear in my voice--I don't know that it is so, but I hope it is--if you hear in my
voice any resemblance to a voice that once was sweet music in your ears, weep for it, weep
for it! If you touch, in touching my hair, anything that recalls a beloved head that lay
on your breast when you were young and free, weep for it, weep for it! If, when I hint to
you of a Home that is before us, where I will be true to you with all my duty and with all
my faithful service, I bring back the remembrance of a Home long desolate, while your poor
heart pined away, weep for it, weep for it!'
She held him closer round the neck, and rocked him on her breast like a child.
`If' when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is over, and that I have come here to
take you from it, and that we go to England to be at peace and at rest, I cause you to
think of your useful life laid waste, and of our native France so wicked to you, weep for
it, weep for it! And if' when I shall tell you of my name, and of my father who is living,
and of my mother who is dead, you learn that I have to kneel to my honoured father, and
implore his pardon for having never for his sake striven all day and lain awake and wept
all night, because the love of my poor mother hid his torture from me, weep for it, weep
for it! Weep
for her, then, and for me! Good gentlemen, thank God! I feel his sacred tears upon my
face, and his sobs strike against my heart. O, see Thank God for us, thank God!'
He had sunk in her arms, and his face dropped on her breast: a sight so touching, yet so
terrible in the tremendous wrong and suffering which had gone before it, that the two
beholders covered their faces.
When the quiet of the garret had been long undisturbed, and his heaving breast and shaken
form had long yielded to the calm that must follow all storms--emblem to humanity, of the
rest and silence into which the storm called Life must hush at last--they came forward to
raise the father and daughter from the ground. He had gradually dropped to the floor, and
lay there in a lethargy, worn out. She had nestled down with him, that his head might lie
upon her arm; and her hair drooping over him curtained him from the light.
`If, without disturbing him,' she said, raising her hand to Mr. Lorry as he stooped over
them, after repeated blowings of his nose, `all could be arranged for our leaving Paris at
once, so that, from the very door, he could be taken away---'
`But, consider. Is he fit for the journey?' asked Mr. Lorry.
`More fit for that, I think, than to remain in this city, so dreadful to him.'
`It is true,' said Defarge, who was kneeling to look on and hear. `More than that;
Monsieur Manette is, for all reasons, best out of France. Say, shall I hire a carriage and
post-horses?'
`That's business,' said Mr. Lorry, resuming on the shortest notice his methodical manners;
`and if business is to be dune, I had better do it.'
`Then be so kind,' urged Miss Manette, `as to leave us here. You see how composed he has
become, and you cannot be afraid to leave him with me now. Why should you be? If you will
lock the door to secure us from interruption, I do not doubt that you will find him, when
you come back, as quiet as you leave him. In any case, I will take care of him until you
return, and then we will remove him straight.'
Both Mr. Lorry and Defarge were rather disinclined to this course, and in favour of one of
them remaining. But, as there were not only carriage and horses to be seen to, but
travelling papers; and as time pressed, for the day was drawing to an end, it came at last
to their hastily dividing the business that was necessary to be done, and hurrying away to
do it.
Then, as the darkness closed in, the daughter laid her head down on the hard ground close
at the father's side, and watched him. The darkness deepened and deepened, and they both
lay quiet, until a light gleamed through the chinks in the wall.
Mr. Lorry and Monsieur Defarge had made all ready for the journey, and had brought with
them, besides travelling cloaks and wrappers, bread and meat, wine, and hot coffee.
Monsieur Defarge put this provender, and the lamp he carried, on the shoemaker's bench
(there was nothing else in the garret but a pallet bed), and he and Mr. Lorry roused the
captive, and assisted him to his feet.
No human intelligence could have read the mysteries of his mind, in the scared blank
wonder of his face. Whether he knew what had happened, whether he recollected what they
had said to him, whether he knew that he was free, were questions which no sagacity could
have solved. They tried speaking to him; but, he was so confused, and so very slow to
answer, that they took fright at his bewilderment, and agreed for the time to tamper with
him no more. He had a wild, lost manner of occasionally clasping his head in his hands,
that had not been seen in him before; yet, he had some pleasure in the mere sound of his
daughter's voice, and invariably turned to it when she spoke.
In the submissive way of one long accustomed to obey under coercion, he ate and drank what
they gave him to eat and drink, and put on the cloak and other wrappings, that they gave
him to wear. He readily responded to his daughter's drawing her arm through his, and
took--and kept--her hand in both his own.
They began to descend; Monsieur Defarge going first with the lamp, Mr. Lorry closing the
little procession. They had not traversed many steps of the long main staircase when he
stopped, and stared at the roof and round at the walls.
`You remember the place, my father? You remember coming up here?
`What did you say?'
But, before she could repeat the question, he murmured an answer as if she had repeated
it.
`Remember? No, I don't remember. It was so very long ago.'
That he had no recollection whatever of his having been brought from his prison to that
house, was apparent to them. They heard him mutter, `One Hundred and Five, North Tower;'
and when he looked about him, it evidently was for the strong fortress-walls which had
long encompassed him. On their reaching the courtyard he instinctively altered his tread,
as being in expectation of a drawbridge; and when there was no drawbridge, and he saw the
carriage waiting in the open street, he dropped his daughter's hand and clasped his head
again.
No crowd was about the door; no people were discernible at any of the many windows; not
even a chance passer-by was in the street. An unnatural silence and desertion reigned
there. Only one soul has to be seen, and that was Madame Defarge--who
leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing.
The prisoner had got into a coach, and his daughter had followed him, when Mr. Lorry's
feet were arrested on the step by his asking, miserably, for his shoemaking tools and the
unfinished shoes. Madame Defarge immediately called to her husband that she would get
them, and went, knitting, out of the lamplight, through the court-yard. She quickly
brought them down and handed them in ;--and immediately afterwards leaned against the
door-post, knitting, and saw nothing.
Defarge got upon the box, and gave the word `To the Barrier!' The postilion cracked his
whip, and they clattered away under the Feeble over swinging lamps.
Under the over-swinging lamps--swinging ever brighter in the better streets, and ever
dimmer in the worse--and by lighted shops, gay crowds, illuminated coffee-houses, and
theatre-doors, to one of the city gates. Soldiers with lanterns, at the guard-house there.
`Your papers, travellers!' `See here then, Monsieur the Officer,' said Defarge, getting
down, and taking him gravely apart, `these are the papers of monsieur inside, with the
white head. They were consigned to me, with him, at the---' He dropped his voice, there
was a flutter among the military lanterns, and one of them being handed into the coach by
an arm in uniform, the eyes connected with the arm looked, not an every-day or an
every-night look, at monsieur with the white head. `It is well. Forward!' from the
uniform. `Adieu!' from Defarge. And so, under a short grove of feebler and feebler over
swinging
lamps, out under the great grove of stars.
Beneath that arch of unmoved and eternal lights; some, so remote from this little earth
that the learned tell us it is doubtful whether their rays have even yet discovered it, as
a point in space where anything is suffered or done: the shadows of the night were broad
and black. All through the cold and restless interval, until dawn, they once more
whispered in the ears of Mr. Jarvis Lorry--sitting opposite the buried man who had been
dug out, and wondering what subtle powers were for ever lost to him, and what were capable
of restoration--the old inquiry:
`I hope you care to be recalled to life?'
And the old answer:
`I can't say.'
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