A Tale Of Two Cities
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Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 Next page Then madame, with her teeth set, tied a very terrible knot indeed. "Hold!" cried Defarge, reddening a little as if he felt charged with cowardice; "I too, my dear, will stop at nothing." "Yes! But it is your weakness that you sometimes need to see your victim and your opportunity, to sustain you. Sustain yourself without that. When the time comes, let loose a tiger and a devil; but wait for the time with the tiger and the devil chained--not shown--yet always ready." Madame enforced the conclusion of this piece of advice by striking her little counter with her chain of money as if she knocked its brains out, and then gathering the heavy handkerchief under her arm in a serene manner, and observing that it was time to go to bed. Next noontide saw the admirable woman in her usual place in the wine-shop, knitting away assiduously. A rose lay beside her, and if she now and then glanced at the flower, it was with no infraction of her usual preoccupied air. There were a few customers, drinking or not drinking, standing or seated, sprinkled about. The day was very hot, and heaps of flies, who were extending their inquisitive and adventurous perquisitions into all the glutinous little glasses near madame, fell dead at the bottom. Their decease made no impression on the other flies out promenading, who looked at them in the coolest manner (as if they themselves were elephants, or something as far removed), until they met the same fate. Curious to consider how heedless flies are!--perhaps they thought as much at Court that sunny summer day. A figure entering at the door threw a shadow on Madame Defarge which she felt to be a new one. She laid down her knitting, and began to pin her rose in her head-dress, before she looked at the figure. It was curious. The moment Madame Defarge took up the rose, the customers ceased talking, and began gradually to drop out of the wine-shop. "Good day, madame," said the new-comer. "Good day, monsieur." She said it aloud, but added to herself, as she resumed her knitting: "Hah! Good day, age about forty, height about five feet nine, black hair, generally rather handsome visage, complexion dark, eyes dark, thin, long and sallow face, aquiline nose but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left cheek which imparts a sinister expression! Good day, one and all!" "Have the goodness to give me a little glass of old cognac, and a mouthful of cool fresh water, madame." Madame complied with a polite air. "Marvellous cognac this, madame!" It was the first time it had ever been so complemented, and Madame Defarge knew enough of its antecedents to know better. She said, however, that the cognac was flattered, and took up her knitting. The visitor watched her fingers for a few moments, and took the opportunity of observing the place in general. "You knit with great skill, madame." "I am accustomed to it." "A pretty pattern too!" "YOU think so?" said madame, looking at him with a smile. "Decidedly. May one ask what it is for?" "Pastime," said madame, still looking at him with a smile while her fingers moved nimbly. "Not for use?" "That depends. I may find a use for it one day. If I do--Well," said madame, drawing a breath and nodding her head with a stem kind of coquetry, "I'll use it!" It was remarkable; but, the taste of Saint Antoine seemed to be decidedly opposed to a rose on the head-dress of Madame Defarge. Two men had entered separately, and had been about to order drink, when, catching sight of that novelty, they faltered, made a pretence of looking about as if for some friend who was not there, and went away. Nor, of those who had been there when this visitor entered, was there one left. They had all dropped off. The spy had kept his eyes open, but had been able to detect no sign. They had lounged away in a poverty-stricken, purposeless, accidental manner, quite natural and unimpeachable. "JOHN," thought madame, checking off her work as her fingers knitted, and her eyes looked at the stranger. "Stay long enough, and I shall knit `BARSAD' before you go." "You have a husband, madame?" "I have." "Children?" "No children." "Business seems bad?" "Business is very bad; the people are so poor." "Ah, the unfortunate, miserable people! So oppressed, too--as you say." "As YOU say," madame retorted, correcting him, and deftly knitting an extra something into his name that boded him no good. "Pardon me; certainly it was I who said so, but you naturally think so. Of course." "_I_ think?" returned madame, in a high voice. "I and my husband have enough to do to keep this wine-shop open, without thinking. All we think, here, is how to live. That is the subject WE think of, and it gives us, from morning to night, enough to think about, without embarrassing our heads concerning others. _I_ think for others? No, no." The spy, who was there to pick up any crumbs he could find or make, did not allow his baffled state to express itself in his sinister face; but, stood with an air of gossiping gallantry, leaning his elbow on Madame Defarge's little counter, and occasionally sipping his cognac. "A bad business this, madame, of Gaspard's execution. Ah! the poor Gaspard!" With a sigh of great compassion. "My faith!" returned madame, coolly and lightly, "if people use knives for such purposes, they have to pay for it. He knew beforehand what the price of his luxury was; he has paid the price." "I believe," said the spy, dropping his soft voice to a tone that invited confidence, and expressing an injured revolutionary susceptibility in every muscle of his wicked face: "I believe there is much compassion and anger in this neighbourhood, touching the poor fellow? Between ourselves." "Is there?" asked madame, vacantly. "Is there not?" "--Here is my husband!" said Madame Defarge. As the keeper of the wine-shop entered at the door, the spy saluted him by touching his hat, and saying, with an engaging smile, "Good day, Jacques!" Defarge stopped short, and stared at him. "Good day, Jacques!" the spy repeated; with not quite so much confidence, or quite so easy a smile under the stare. "You deceive yourself, monsieur," returned the keeper of the wine-shop. "You mistake me for another. That is not my name. I am Ernest Defarge." "It is all the same," said the spy, airily, but discomfited too: "good day!" "Good day!" answered Defarge, drily. "I was saying to madame, with whom I had the pleasure of chatting when you entered, that they tell me there is--and no wonder!--much sympathy and anger in Saint Antoine, touching the unhappy fate of poor Gaspard." "No one has told me so," said Defarge, shaking his head. "I know nothing of it." Having said it, he passed behind the little counter, and stood with his hand on the back of his wife's chair, looking over that barrier at the person to whom they were both opposed, and whom either of them would have shot with the greatest satisfaction. The spy, well used to his business, did not change his unconscious attitude, but drained his little glass of cognac, took a sip of fresh water, and asked for another glass of cognac. Madame Defarge poured it out for him, took to her knitting again, and hummed a little song over it. "You seem to know this quarter well; that is to say, better than I do?" observed Defarge. "Not at all, but I hope to know it better. I am so profoundly interested in its miserable inhabitants." "Hah!" muttered Defarge. "The pleasure of conversing with you, Monsieur Defarge, recalls to me," pursued the spy, "that I have the honour of cherishing some interesting associations with your name." "Indeed!" said Defarge, with much indifference. "Yes, indeed. When Doctor Manette was released, you, his old domestic, had the charge of him, I know. He was delivered to you. You see I am informed of the circumstances?" "Such is the fact, certainly," said Defarge. He had had it conveyed to him, in an accidental touch of his wife's elbow as she knitted and warbled, that he would do best to answer, but always with brevity. "It was to you," said the spy, "that his daughter came; and it was from your care that his daughter took him, accompanied by a neat brown monsieur; how is he called?--in a little wig--Lorry--of the bank of Tellson and Company--over to England." "Such is the fact," repeated Defarge. "Very interesting remembrances!" said the spy. "I have known Doctor Manette and his daughter, in England." "Yes?" said Defarge. "You don't hear much about them now?" said the spy. "No," said Defarge. "In effect," madame struck in, looking up from her work and her little song, "we never hear about them. We received the news of their safe arrival, and perhaps another letter, or perhaps two; but, since then, they have gradually taken their road in life--we, ours--and we have held no correspondence." "Perfectly so, madame," replied the spy. "She is going to be married." "Going?" echoed madame. "She was pretty enough to have been married long ago. You English are cold, it seems to me." "Oh! You know I am English." "I perceive your tongue is," returned madame; "and what the tongue is, I suppose the man is." He did not take the identification as a compliment; but he made the best of it, and turned it off with a laugh. After sipping his cognac to the end, he added: "Yes, Miss Manette is going to be married. But not to an Englishman; to one who, like herself, is French by birth. And speaking of Gaspard (ah, poor Gaspard! It was cruel, cruel!), it is a curious thing that she is going to marry the nephew of Monsieur the Marquis, for whom Gaspard was exalted to that height of so many feet; in other words, the present Marquis. But he lives unknown in England, he is no Marquis there; he is Mr. Charles Darnay. D'Aulnais is the name of his mother's family." Madame Defarge knitted steadily, but the intelligence had a palpable effect upon her husband. Do what he would, behind the little counter, as to the striking of a light and the lighting of his pipe, he was troubled, and his hand was not trustworthy. The spy would have been no spy if he had failed to see it, or to record it in his mind. Having made, at least, this one hit, whatever it might prove to be worth, and no customers coming in to help him to any other, Mr. Barsad paid for what he had drunk, and took his leave: taking occasion to say, in a genteel manner, before he departed, that he looked forward to the pleasure of seeing Monsieur and Madame Defarge again. For some minutes after he had emerged into the outer presence of Saint Antoine, the husband and wife remained exactly as he had left them, lest he should come back. "Can it be true," said Defarge, in a low voice, looking down at his wife as he stood smoking with his hand on the back of her chair: "what he has said of Ma'amselle Manette?" "As he has said it," returned madame, lifting her eyebrows a little, "it is probably false. But it may be true." "If it is--" Defarge began, and stopped. "If it is?" repeated his wife. "--And if it does come, while we live to see it triumph--I hope, for her sake, Destiny will keep her husband out of France." "Her husband's destiny," said Madame Defarge, with her usual composure, "will take him where he is to go, and will lead him to the end that is to end him. That is all I know." "But it is very strange--now, at least, is it not very strange"--said Defarge, rather pleading with his wife to induce her to admit it, |
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