presently.
Again Mr. Cruncher nodded his head.
“I don’t hear it.”
“Gone deaf in a hour?” said Mr. Cruncher, ruminating, with his
mind much disturbed; “wot’s come to her?”
“I feel,” said Miss Pross, “as if there had been a flash and a
crash, and that crash was the last thing I should ever hear in this
life.”
“Blest if she ain’t in a queer condition!” said Mr. Cruncher,
more and more disturbed. “Wot can she have been a takin’, to
keep her courage up? Hark! There’s the roll of them dreadful
carts! You can hear that, Miss?”
“I can hear,” said Miss Pross, seeing that he spoke to her,
“nothing. O, my good man, there was first a great crash, and then
a great stillness, and that stillness seems to be fixed and
unchangeable, never to be broken any more as long as my life
lasts.”
“If she don’t hear the roll of those dreadful carts, now very nigh
their journey’s end,” said Mr. Cruncher, glancing over his
shoulder, “it’s my opinion that indeed she never will hear anything
else in this world.”
And indeed she never did.
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
Chapter XLV
THE FOOTSTEPS DIE OUT FOR EVER
Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and
harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day’s wine to La Guillotine.
All the devouring and insatiate Monsters imagined since
imagination could record itself, are fused in the one realisation,
Guillotine. And yet there is not in France, with its rich variety of
soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn,
which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain than
those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of
shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself
into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious
license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same
fruit according to its kind.
Six tumbrils roll along the streets. Change these back again to
what they were, thou powerful enchanter, Time, and they shall be
seen to be the carriages of absolute monarchs, the equipages of
feudal nobles, the toilettes of flaring Jezebels, the churches that
are not my Father’s house but dens of thieves, the huts of millions
of starving peasants! No; the great magician who majestically
works out the appointed order of the Creator, never reverses his
transformations. “If thou be changed into this shape by the will of
God,” say the seers to the enchanted, in the wise Arabian stories,
“then remain so! But, if thou wear this form through mere passing
conjuration, then resume thy former aspect!” Changeless and
hopeless, the tumbrils roll along.
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As the sombre wheels of the six carts go round, they seem to
plough up a long crooked furrow among the populace in the
streets. Ridges of faces are thrown to this side and to that, the
ploughs go steadily onward. So used are the regular inhabitants of
the houses to the spectacle, that in many windows there are no
people, and in some occupation of the hands is not so much as
suspended, while the eyes survey the faces in the tumbrils. Here
and there, the inmate has visitors to see the sight; then he points
his finger, with something of the complacency of a curator or
authorised exponent, to this cart and to this, and seems to tell who
sat here yesterday, and who there the day before.
Of the riders in the tumbrils, some observe these things, and all
things on their last roadside, with an impassive stare; others, with
a lingering interest in the ways of life and men. Some, seated with
drooping heads, are sunk in silent despair; again, there are some
so heedful of their looks that they cast upon the multitude such
glances as they have seen in theatres, and in pictures. Several
close their eyes, and think, or try to get their straying thoughts
together. Only one, and he a miserable creature, of a crazed
aspect, is so shattered and made drunk by horror, that he sings,
and tries to dance. Not one of the whole number appeals by look
or gesture, to the pity of the people.
There is a guard of sundry horsemen riding abreast of the
tumbrils, and faces are often turned up to some of them, and they
are asked some question. It would seem to be always the same
question, for it is always followed by a press of people towards the
third cart. The horsemen abreast of that cart, frequently point out
one man in it with their swords. The leading curiosity is, to know
which is he; he stands at the back of the tumbril with his head
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bent down, to converse with a mere girI who sits on the side of the
cart, and holds his hand. He has no curiosity or care for the scene
about him, and always speaks to the girl. Here and there in the
long street of St. Honore, cries are raised against him. If they move
him at all, it is only to a quiet smile, as he shakes his hair a little
more loosely about his face. He cannot easily touch his face, his
arms being bound.
On the steps of a church, awaiting the coming-up of the
tumbrils, stands the Spy and prison-sheep. He looks into the first
of them: not there. He looks into the second: not there. He already
asks himself, “Has he sacrificed me?” when his face clears, as he
looks into the third.
“Which is Evremonde?” says a man behind him.
“That. At the back there.”
“With his hand in the girl’s?”
“Yes.”
The man cries, “Down, Evremonde! To the Guillotine all
aristocrats! Down, Evremonde!”
“Hush, hush!” the Spy entreats him, timidly.
“And why not, citizen?”
“He is going to pay the forfeit: it will be paid in five minutes
more. Let him be at peace.”
But the man continuing to exclaim, “Down, Evremonde!” the
face of Evremonde is for a moment turned towards him.
Evremonde then sees the 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
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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 foremost chairs, stands The Vengeance,
looking about for her friend.
“Therese!” she cries, in her shrill tones. “Who has seen her?
Therese Defarge!”
“She never missed before,” says a knitting-woman of the
sisterhood.
“No; nor will she miss now,” cries The Vengeance petulantly.
“Therese.”
“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 Evremonde will be
dispatched 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.
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Crash!—And the knitting-women, never faltering or pausing in
their work, count Two.
The supposed Evremonde 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 today. 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
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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
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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 Jurymen,
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, 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
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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, foremost 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.”
The End
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