A Tale of Two Cities by Dave Mckay, Charles Dickens (easy readers .txt) 📖

yet he keeps that bench and those tools beside him?"

"Ah!" returned Miss Pross, shaking her head. "But I didn't say that he does not talk about it to himself."

"Do you think he thinks about it much?"

"I do," said Miss Pross.

"Do you picture...?” Mr. Lorry had started when Miss Pross cut him short with:

"Never picture anything. Stay with what is real."

"You are right. Do you think... you do go so far as to think at times, do you not?"

"Now and then," said Miss Pross.

"Do you think," Mr. Lorry went on with a laughing smile in his bright eye, as it looked kindly at her, "that Doctor Manette has any understanding after all these years, of what the reason was for him being put in prison, or maybe even who was behind it?"

"I don't think anything about it but what Ladybird tells me.”

"And that is...?"

"That she thinks he does."

"Now don't be angry at me asking all these questions; because I am a slow man of business, and you too are a woman of business."

"A slow woman?” Miss Pross asked quietly.

Wishing he had not said slow, Mr. Lorry answered, "No, no, no. Surely not. But to return to business... Is it not strange that Doctor Manette, who is clearly innocent of any crime, should never touch on that question? He and I have done business for many years, and we have now become close friends, yet I am not saying that he should talk of it with me. But what about his daughter, whom he loves so much, and who loves him so much? Believe me, Miss Pross, I am not asking about this without a reason. I have a very strong interest in this."

"Well, to the best of my understanding and my best is still bad," said Miss Pross, who was softer now, "he's afraid to talk about it."

"Afraid?"

"It's easy to see why he should be. It's an awful thing to remember. His mind was changed by it, and there is so much he cannot remember. He can never be sure it will not happen again. I should think that alone would make him not want to talk about it."

It was a wiser answer than Mr. Lorry had been looking for. "True," he said, "and awful to think about. Yet I fear that it may not be good for Doctor Manette to close everything up inside his head. The truth is that it is this worry that has brought me to talk alone with you now."

"Can't be helped," said Miss Pross, shaking her head. "Touch that nerve, and he quickly changes for the worse. Better to leave it alone. In short, we must leave it alone, like it or not. At times he gets up in the middle of the night and we can hear him from above there walking up and down, up and down in his room. Ladybird has learned that at those times he is, in his mind, back in prison. She comes down here quickly when that happens, and they go together, walking up and down, up and down until he is over it. But he never says a word of his real reason for being up, and she finds it best not to ask. They just walk together without talking, up and down, up and down, until her love and her being there brings him back to himself."

Miss Pross had said not to picture things that are not real, but in her saying "up and down" so many times, it was clear that she was picturing what Doctor Manette was going through.

It has been said that the corner was a place where sound travelled well, and it was interesting that, just as Miss Pross talked of walking up and down, the sound of steps could be heard from a distance.

"Here they are!" said Miss Pross, standing up to end their talk. "And now we will have hundreds of people coming soon!"

It was such an interesting corner in the way that sound travelled across it, that, as Mr. Lorry stood at the window waiting for the father and daughter to arrive, it seemed like they would never get there. The sound would die out, like they had gone away; and then other steps would come in their place before dying away too just when it seemed that they were there. All the same, father and daughter did at last arrive, and Miss Pross was ready at the street door to receive them.

Miss Pross was interesting to watch, taking off her love's hat for her as she was coming up the steps, touching it with the ends of a cloth, and blowing the dirt off it, then folding her coat and smoothing her rich hair with as much pride as she could possibly have taken in her own hair if she had been the proudest and most beautiful of women. It was nice to see Ladybird hugging Miss Pross and thanking her and asking her not to go to so much trouble for her. This last line she did not say very seriously, or Miss Pross would have been hurt, and surely would have gone to her room and cried. The Doctor, too, was nice to watch, as he looked on at the two of them, telling Miss Pross that she was being too kind to Lucie when his own eyes and words showed that he too was as kind to Lucie as Miss Pross, and would be kinder if it were possible. And last, there was Mr. Lorry himself in his little wig, who looked at it all with a big smile on his face, as he thanked his good luck that he had found such a nice family to be his friends in his old age.

But no, the hundreds of people that Miss Pross had promised would follow the others, were not there!

Time for dinner came, and still no hundreds of people. Miss Pross, whose job it was to care for the lower rooms, always did her job well. Her meals, made from simple food, were so well cooked and so well served, half French and half English, that nothing could be better. When Miss Pross made friends, she did so for practical reasons. She had looked around Soho to find some poor French people who, for a few coins, would tell her how to make the best French dishes. From these poor sons and daughters of France, she had learned to be such a good cook that the servants there at the house believed she was like a god, who could send out for a chicken, a rabbit, or a few vegetables from the garden and change them into anything she liked

On Sundays Miss Pross would eat at the Doctor's table, but on other days she would always eat alone, either in the lower rooms or in her own room on the second floor, a blue room where no one but her Ladybird ever went. On this day, probably as an effect of Ladybird's sweet spirit, Miss Pross was much softer than was her way most of the time, and so the meal, too, was much nicer for everyone.

It was a hot day, and so after dinner, Lucie asked if they could go out back, under the big tree, to drink their wine. Because everything moved around her anyway, the others agreed, and she carried the wine out as a special kindness to Mr. Lorry. She had, some time ago, given herself the job of keeping Mr. Lorry's wine glass filled, and she did that on this day too, as they sat talking under the big tree. The backs and ends of houses looked at them, and the tree itself whispered to them in its own way, above their heads, as they talked.

Still, the hundreds of people did not come. But Mr. Darnay did come, when they were out under the tree. And yet he was only one person.

Doctor Manette received him kindly, as did Lucie. But Miss Pross started shaking about in her head and body and left to go to her room. It often happened that she had this problem, which she called "a touch of the shakes".

The Doctor was at his best, and looked especially young. At times like this, it was easy to see how Lucie looked like him. As they sat side by side, with her leaning on his shoulder, and him resting his arm on the back of her chair, it was quite nice to see how much they looked the same.

They had been talking about the old buildings of London, and Doctor Manette had been speaking confidently, when Mr. Darnay asked, "Tell us, Doctor Manette, have you seen much of the Tower?"

"Lucie and I have been there, but only for a short time. We have seen enough of it to know that there must be much to see there; little more."

"I have been there, as you remember," said Darnay with a little smile, but also with a little red colour coming to his face to show his anger. "I was there for a different reason, and not for a reason that left me free to see much of the place. But they told me an interesting thing when I was there."

"What was that?” Lucie asked.

"When they were making some changes to the building, the workers opened up a part of the prison that had been covered over for many years. Every stone on the inside wall was covered with writing, cut into it by the prisoners -- names, years, prayers, and things they were angry about. On a stone in one corner of the wall, one prisoner, who must have been killed, had cut his last work, just three letters. They were done with some very poor instrument, and done quickly, with a weak hand. At first, they believed them to be D.I.C.; but, on looking more closely, they found the last letter to be G. There was no history of a prisoner with three names starting with those letters, and many people tried to say who the prisoner might be. At length, someone said that the letters might be a word in themselves: DIG. They looked closely at the floor under it, and in the dirt under a stone, they found what was left of a piece of paper and a small leather bag that had been burned. It was not possible to read what he said, but it was clear that a prisoner had written a secret on the paper before hiding it there."

"Father!" Lucie shouted. "You look sick!"

He had quickly put his hands to his head and there was a look of fear on his face. It was so strong that it scared them all.

"No, my sweet, not sick. There are big drops of rain falling and they made me jump. It would be best if we were to go in."

He returned quickly to a good spirit, and rain really was falling in big drops now. He showed the back of his hand with rain on it. But he said nothing about Darnay's story, and as they went into the house, Mr. Lorry's business eye either saw or thought he saw on the Doctor's face, as the Doctor turned toward Mr. Darnay, the same special look that had been on it when he had turned toward him in the court house.

He was so quickly back to his old ways that Mr. Lorry started to question his business eye. When he stopped under the golden arm on the way back to their rooms, Doctor Manette was as solid as the arm itself as he said that he was still not able (and maybe would never be able) to stop from jumping when he was surprised, as the rain had just surprised him.

It came time for some tea, and Miss Pross brought it in, with another touch of the shakes when Mr. Carton came by. There were yet no hundreds of people, but Mr. Carton did make two.

The night was so warm that even with the rain and with the doors and windows open, they were not comfortable because of the heat. When they had finished their tea, they all moved to one of the windows and looked out at the night. Lucie sat by her father; Darnay sat beside her; and Carton leaned against a window.

When wind from the coming storm came into the room, the white curtains flew up in the air like wings on a ghost.

"The rain drops are still falling, big, heavy, and few," said Doctor Manette. "It comes slowly."

"But it comes surely," said Carton.

They spoke quietly, as people watching and waiting often do; and especially as people in a dark room watching and waiting for lightning always do.

Out in the streets, people were running to find cover before the storm broke. On that corner, where sound travelled so well, one could hear many steps of people running, but there was not one person there.

"So many people, and yet not one out there," said Darnay, when they had listened for a while.

"Isn't it interesting, Mr. Darnay?” asked Lucie. "At times I have sat here in the