《A Tale of Two Cities》 Book3 CHAPTER
III The Shadow
by Charles Dickens
ONE of the first
considerations which arose in the business mind of Mr. Lorry when business hours came
round, was this:--that he had no right to imperil Tellson's by sheltering the wife of an
emigrant prisoner under the Bank roof. His own possessions, safety, life, he would have
hazarded for Lucie and her child, without a moment's demur; but the great trust he held
was not his own, and as to that business charge he was a strict man of business.
At first, his mind reverted to Defarge, and he thought of finding out the wine-shop again
and taking counsel with its master in reference to the safest dwelling-place in the
distracted state of the city. But, the same consideration that suggested him, repudiated
him; he lived in the most violent Quarter, and doubtless was influential there, and deep
in its dangerous workings.
Noon coming, and the Doctor not returning, and every minute's delay tending to compromise,
Tellson's, Mr. Lorry advised with Lucie. She said that her father had spoken of hiring a
lodging for a short term, in that Quarter, near the Banking-house. As there was no
business objection to this, and as he foresaw that even if it were all well with Charles,
and he were to be released, he could not hope to leave the city, Mr. Lorry went out in
quest of such a lodging, and found a suitable one, high up in a removed by-street where
the closed blinds in all the other windows of a high melancholy square of buildings marked
deserted homes.
To this lodging he at once removed Lucie and her child, and Miss Pross: giving them what
comfort he could, and much more than he had himself. He left Jerry with them, as a figure
to fill a doorway that would bear considerable knocking on the head, and returned to his
own occupations. A disturbed and doleful mind he brought to bear upon them, and slowly and
heavily the day lagged on with him.
It wore itself out, and wore him out with it, until the Bank closed. He was again alone in
his room of the previous night, considering what to do next, when he heard a foot upon the
stair. In a few moments, a man stood in his presence, who, with a keenly observant look at
him, addressed him by his name.
`Your servant,' said Mr. Lorry. `Do you know me?'
He was a strongly made man with dark curling hair, from forty-five to fifty years of a e.
For answer he repeated, without any change of emphasis, the words:
`Do you know me?'
`I have seen you somewhere.'
`Perhaps at my wine-shop?'
Much interested and agitated, Mr. Lorry said: `You come from Doctor Manette?'
`Yes. I come from Doctor Manette.'
`And what says he? What does he send me?'
Defarge gave into his anxious hand, an open scrap of paper. It bore the words in the
Doctor's writing:
`Charles is safe, but I cannot safely leave this place yet. I have obtained the favour
that the bearer has a short note from Charles to his wife. Let the bearer see his wife.'
It was dated from La Force, within an hour.
`Will you accompany me,' said Mr. Lorry, joyfully relieved after reading this note aloud,
`to where his wife resides?'
`Yes,' returned Defarge.
Scarcely noticing as yet, in what a curiously reserved and mechanical way Defarge spoke,
Mr. Lorry put on his hat and they went down into the court-yard. There, they found two
women; one, knitting.
`Madame Defarge, surely!' said Mr. Lorry, who had left her in exactly the same attitude
some seventeen years ago.
`It is she,' observed her husband.
`Does madame go with us?' inquired Mr. Lorry, seeing that she moved as they moved.
`Yes. That she may be able to recognise the faces and know the persons. It is for their
safety.'
Beginning to be struck by Defarge's manner, Mr. Lorry looked dubiously at him, and led the
way. Both the women followed; the second woman being The Vengeance.
They passed through the intervening streets as quickly as they might, ascended the
staircase of the new domicile, were admitted by Jerry, and found Lucie weeping, alone. She
was thrown into a transport by the tidings Mr. Lorry gave her of her husband, and clasped
the hand that delivered his note---little thinking what it had been doing near him in the
night, and might, but for a chance, have done to him.
`DEAREST,--Take courage. I am well, and your father has influence around me. You cannot
answer this. Kiss
our child for me.'
That was all the writing. It was so much, however, to her who received it, that she turned
from Defarge to his wife, and kissed one of the hands that knitted. It was a passionate,
loving, thankful, womanly action, but the hand made no response--dropped cold and heavy,
and took to its knitting again.
There was something in its touch that gave Lucie a check. She stopped in the act of
putting the note in her bosom, and, with her hands yet at her neck, looked terrified at
Madame Defarge. Madame Defarge met the lifted eyebrows and forehead with a cold, impassive
stare.
`My dear,' said Mr. Lorry, striking in to explain; `there are frequent risings in the
streets; and, although it is not likely they will ever trouble you, Madame Defarge wishes
to see those whom she has the power to protect at such times, to the end that she may know
them--that she may identify them. I believe,' said Mr. Lorry, rather halting in his
reassuring words, as the stony manner of all the three impressed itself upon him more and
more, `I state the case, Citizen Defarge?'
Defarge looked gloomily at his wife, and gave no other answer than a gruff sound of
acquiescence.
`You had better, Lucie,' said Mr. Lorry, doing all he could to propitiate, by tone and
manner, `have the dear child here, and our good Pross. Our good Pross, Defarge, is an
English lady, and knows no French.'
The lady in question, whose rooted conviction that she was more than a match for any
foreigner, was not to be shaken by distress and danger, appeared wish folded arms, and
observed in English to The Vengeance, whom her eyes first encountered, `Well, I am sure,
Boldface! I hope you are pretty well!' She also bestowed a British cough on Madame
Defarge; but, neither of the two took much heed of her.
`Is that his child?' said Madame Defarge, stopping in her work for the first time, and
pointing her knitting-needle at little Lucie as if it were the finger of Fate.
`Yes, madame,' answered Mr. Lorry; `this is our poor prisoner's darling daughter, and only
child.'
The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed to fall so threatening and
dark on the child, that her mother instinctively kneeled on the ground beside her, and
held her to her breast. The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed then
to fall, threatening and dark, on both the mother and the child.
`It is enough, my husband,' said Madame Defarge. `I have seen them. We may go.
But, the suppressed manner had enough of menace in it--not visible and presented, but
indistinct and withheld--to alarm Lucie into saying, as she laid her appealing hand on
Madame Defarge's dress:
`You will be good to my poor husband. You will do him no harm. You will help me to see him
if you can?'
`Your husband is not my business here,' returned Madame Defarge, looking down at her with
perfect composure. `It is the daughter of your father who is my business here.'
`For my sake, then, be merciful to my husband. For my child's sake! She will put her hands
together and pray you to be merciful. We are more afraid of you than of these others.'
Madame Defarge received it as a compliment, and looked at her husband. Defarge, who had
been uneasily biting his thumb-nail and looking at her, collected his face into a sterner
expression.
`What is it that your husband says in that little letter?' asked Madame Defarge, with a
lowering smile. `Influence; he says something touching influence?'
`That my father,' said Lucie, hurriedly taking the paper from her breast, but with her
alarmed eyes on her questioner and not on it, `has much influence around him.'
`Surely it will release him!' said Madame Defarge. `Let it do so.'
`As a wife and mother,' cried Lucie, most earnestly, `I implore you to have pity on me and
not to exercise any power that you possess, against my innocent husband, but to use it in
his behalf. O sister-woman, think of me. As a wife and mother!'
Madame Defarge looked, coldly as ever, at the suppliant, and said, turning to her friend
The Vengeance:
`The wives and mothers we have been used to see, since we were as little as this child,
and much less, have not been greatly considered? We have known their husbands and fathers
laid in prison and kept from them, often enough? All our lives, we have seen our
sister-women suffer, in themselves and in their children, poverty, nakedness, hunger,
thirst. sickness, misery, oppression and neglect of all kinds?'
`We have seen nothing else,' returned The Vengeance.
`We have borne this a long time,' said Madame Defarge, turning her eyes again upon Lucie.
`Judge you! Is it likely that the trouble of one wife and mother would be much to us now?'
She resumed her knitting and went out. The Vengeance followed. Defarge went last, and
closed the door.
`Courage, my dear Lucie,' said Mr. Lorry, as he raised her. `Courage, courage! So far all
goes well with us--much, much better than it has of late gone with many poor souls. Cheer
up, and have a thankful heart.'
`I am not thankless, I hope, but that dreadful woman seems to throw a shadow on me and on
all my hopes.'
`Tut, tut!' said Mr. Lorry; `what is this despondency in the brave little breast? A shadow
indeed! No substance in it, Lucie.'
But the shadow of the manner of these Defarges was dark upon himself, for all that, and in
his secret mind it troubled him greatly. |
