“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 carriages 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 her 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 his 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
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A Tale of Two Cities
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
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A Tale of Two Cities
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 was 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 courtyard. 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 guardhouse
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
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A Tale of Two Cities
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.”
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
BOOK THE SECOND
THE GOLDEN
THREAD
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
Chapter VII
FIVE YEARS LATER
T ellson’s Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place,
even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty.
It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very
incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the
moral attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its
smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its
incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in
those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction that, if it
were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was no
passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more
convenient places of business. Tellson’s (they said) wanted no
elbow-room, Tellson’s wanted no light, Tellson’s wanted no
embellishment. Noakes and Co.’s might, or Snooks Brothers’
might; but Tellson’s, thank Heaven!— Any one of these partners
would have disinherited his son on the question of rebuilding
Tellson’s. In this respect the House was much on a par with the
Country; which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting
improvements in laws and customs that had long been highly
objectionable, but were only the more respectable.
Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson’s was the triumphant
perfection of inconvenience. After bursting open a door of idiotic
obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson’s
down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop,
with two little counters, where the oldest of men made your
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cheque shake as if the wind rustled it, while they examined the
signature by the dingiest of windows, which were always under a
shower-bath of mud from Fleet Street, and which were made the
dingier by their own iron bars proper, and the heavy shadow of
Temple Bar. If your business necessitated your seeing “the
House,” you were put into a species of Condemned Hold at the
back, where you meditated on a misspent life, until the House
came with its hands in its pockets, and you could hardly blink at it
in the dismal twilight. Your money came out of, or went into,
wormy old wooden drawers, particles of which flew up your nose
and down your throat when they were opened and shut. Your
banknotes had a musty odour, as if they were fast decomposing
into rags again. Your plate was stowed away among the
neighbouring cesspools, and evil communications corrupted its
good polish in a day or two. Your deeds got into extemporised
strong-rooms made of kitchens and sculleries, and fretted all the
fat out of their parchments into the banking-house air. Your
lighter boxes of family papers went upstairs into a Barmecide
room, that always had a great dining-table in it and never had a
dinner, and where, even in the year one thousand seven hundred
and eighty, the first letters written to you by your old love, or by
your little children, were but newly released from the horror of
being ogled through the windows, by the heads exposed on
Temple Bar with an insensate brutality and ferocity worthy of
Abyssinia or Ashantee.
But indeed, at that time, putting to death was a recipe much in
vogue with all trades and professions, and not least of all with
Tellson’s. Death is Nature’s remedy for all things, and why not
Legislation’s? Accordingly, the forger was put to Death; the
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A Tale of Two Cities
utterer of a bad note was put to Death; the unlawful opener of a
letter was put to Death; the purloiner of forty shillings and
sixpence was put to Death; the holder of a horse at Tellson’s door,
who made off with it, was put to Death; the coiner of a bad shilling
was put to Death; the sounders of three-fourths of the notes in the
whole gamut of Crime, were put to Death. Not that it did the least
good in the way of prevention—it might almost have been worth
remarking that the fact was exactly the reverse—but, it cleared off
(as to this world) the trouble of each particular case, and left
nothing else connected with it to be looked after. Thus, Tellson’s,
in its day, like greater places of business, its contemporaries, had
taken so many lives, that, if the heads laid low before it had been
ranged on Temple Bar instead of being privately disposed of, they
would probably have excluded what little light the ground floor
had, in a rather significant manner.
Cramped in all kinds of dim cupboards and hutches at
Tellson’s, the oldest of men carried on the business gravely. When
they took a young man into Tellson’s London house, they hid him
somewhere till he was old. They kept him in a dark place, like a
cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon
him. Then only was he permitted to be seen, spectacularly poring
over large books, and casting his breeches and gaiters into the
general weight of the establishment.
Outside Tellson’s—never by any means in it, unless called in—
was an odd-job-man, an occasional porter and messenger, who
served as the live sign of the house. He was never absent during
business hours, unless upon an errand, and then he was
represented by his son: a grisly urchin of twelve, who was his
express image. People understood that Tellson’s, in a stately way,
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A Tale of Two Cities
tolerated the odd-job-man. The house had always tolerated some
person in that capacity, and time and tide had drifted this person
to the post. His surname was Cruncher, and on the youthful
occasion of his renouncing by proxy the works of darkness, in the
easterly parish church of Houndsditch, he had received the added
appellation of Jerry.
The scene was Mr. Cruncher’s private lodging in Hanging-
sword Alley, Whitefriars: the time, half-past seven of the clock and
a windy March morning, Anno Domini seventeen hundred and
eighty. (Mr. Cruncher himself always spoke of the year of our Lord
as Anna Dominoes: apparently under the impression that the
Christian era dated from the invention of a popular game, by a
lady who had bestowed her name upon it.) Mr. Cruncher’s
apartments were not in a savoury neighbourhood, and were but
two in number, even if a closet with a single pane of glass in it
might be counted as one. But they were very decently kept. Early
as it was, on the windy March morning, the room in which he lay
a-bed was already scrubbed throughout; and between the cups
and saucers arranged for breakfast, and the lumbering deal table,
a very clean white cloth was spread.
Mr. Cruncher reposed under a patchwork counterpane, like a
Harlequin at home. At first, he slept heavily, but, by degrees,
began to roll and surge in bed, until he rose above the surface,
with his spiky hair looking as if it must tear the sheets to ribbons.
At which juncture, he exclaimed, in a voice of dire exasperation:
“Bust me, if she ain’t at it agin!”
A woman of orderly and industrious appearance rose from her
knees in a corner, with sufficient haste and trepidation to show
that she was the person referred to.
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
“What!” said Mr. Cruncher, looking out of bed for a boot.
“You’re at it agin, are you?”
After hailing the morn with this second salutation, he threw a
boot at the woman as a third. It was a very muddy boot, and may
introduce the odd circumstance connected with Mr. Cruncher’s
domestic economy, that, whereas he often came home after
banking hours with clean boots, he often got up next morning to
find the same boots covered with clay.
“What,” said Mr. Cruncher, varying his apostrophe after
missing his mark—“what are you up to, Aggerawayter?”
“I was only saying my prayers.”
“Saying your prayers! You’re a nice woman! What do you mean
by flopping yourself down and praying agin me?”
“I was not praying against you; I was praying for you.”
“You weren’t. And if you were, I won’t be took the liberty with.
Here! your mother’s a nice woman, young Jerry, going a praying
agin your father’s prosperity. You’ve got a dutiful mother, you
have, my son. You’ve got a religious mother, you have, my boy:
going and flopping herself down, and praying that the bread-andbutter may be snatched out of the mouth of her only child.”
Master Cruncher (who was in his shirt) took this very ill, and,
turning to his mother, strongly deprecated any praying away of his
personal board.
“And what do you suppose, you conceited female,” said Mr.
Cruncher, with unconscious inconsistency, “that the worth of your
prayers may be? Name the price that you put your prayers at!”
“They only come from the heart, Jerry. They are worth no more
than that.”
“Worth no more than that,” repeated Mr. Cruncher. “They ain’t
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A Tale of Two Cities
worth much, then. Whether or no, I won’t be prayed agin, I tell
you. I can’t afford it. I’m not a going to be made unlucky by your
sneaking. If you must go flopping yourself down, flop in favour of
your husband and child, and not in opposition to ’em. If I had had
any but a unnat’ral wife, and this poor boy had had any but a
unnat’ral mother, I might have made some money last week
instead of being counterprayed and countermined and religiously
circumwented into the worst of luck. B-u-u-ust me!” said Mr.
Cruncher, who all this time had been putting on his clothes, “if I
ain’t, what with piety and one blowed thing and another, been
choused this last week into as bad luck as ever a poor devil of a
honest tradesman met with! Young Jerry, dress yourself, my boy,
and while I clean my boots keep an eye upon your mother now
and then, and if you see any signs of more flopping, give me a call.
For, I tell you,” here he addressed his wife once more, “I won’t be
gone agin, in this matter. I am as rickety as a hackney-coach, I’m
as sleepy as laudanum, my lines is strained to that degree that I
shouldn’t know, if it wasn’t for the pain in ’em, which was me and
which somebody else, yet I’m none the better for it in pocket; and
it’s my suspicion that you’ve been at it from morning to night to
prevent me from being the better for it in pocket, and I won’t put
up with it, Aggerawayter, and what do you say now!”
Growling, in addition, such phrases as “Ah! yes! You’re
religious, too. You wouldn’t put yourself in opposition to the
interests of your husband and child, would you? Not you!” and
throwing off other sarcastic sparks from the whirling grindstone of
his indignation, Mr. Cruncher betook himself to his boot-cleaning
and his general preparation for business. In the meantime, his son,
whose head was garnished with tenderer spikes, and whose young
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A Tale of Two Cities
eyes stood close by one another, as his father’s did, kept the
required watch upon his mother. He greatly disturbed the poor
woman at intervals, by darting out of his sleeping closet, where he
made his toilet, with a suppressed cry of “You are going to flop,
mother.—Halloa, father!” and, after raising this fictitious alarm,
darting in again with an undutiful grin.
Mr. Cruncher’s temper was not at all improved when he came
to his breakfast. He resented Mrs. Cruncher’s saying grace with
particular animosity.
“Now, Aggerawayter! What are you up to? At it agin?”
His wife explained that she had merely “asked a blessing.”
“Don’t do it!” said Mr. Cruncher, looking about, as if he rather
