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

the happiness, Doctor Manette, of being here so much over the past year and a half," he started at length, "that I hope what I am going to say will not be..."

He was held there by the Doctor putting out his hand to stop him. After holding it like this for a little while, Doctor Manette said, as he pulled his hand back:

"Is it Lucie you want to talk about?"

"She is."

"It is difficult for me to speak of her at any time. It is even more difficult for me to hear one speak of her as I think you are going to speak, Charles Darnay."

"I want only to talk of my love, Doctor Manette!" he said humbly.

"I believe it. To be fair to you, I believe it."

It was easy to see that the Doctor was holding back. It was also so easy to see that he was doing it because he did not want to hear what Darnay was going to say, that the younger man waited before saying:

"Should I go on, sir?” Another long wait.

"Yes, go on."

"You know what I want to say, but you cannot know how sincerely I say it, or how deeply I feel it, without knowing the secrets of my heart, or the hopes and fears and worries that I have been carrying for some time. Doctor Manette, I love your daughter sincerely, deeply, without selfish interest. If ever there was love in the world, it is my love for her. You have loved in the past; let your old love speak for what I feel!"

The Doctor sat with his face turned away, and his eyes on the ground. At the last words, he reached out his hand again, hurriedly, and cried:

"Not that, sir! Let it be! I beg you, do not make me remember that!"

His cry was so much like the cry of one in real pain that it stayed in Charles Darnay's ears long after he had stopped crying. A movement in his hand seemed to be asking Darnay to wait, and so he stayed there saying nothing.

"Please forgive me," said the Doctor in a quiet voice after some time. "I do believe you love Lucie; you can be sure of that."

He turned toward the younger man in his chair, but did not look at him or lift his eyes. His chin dropped onto his hand, and his white hair dropped over his face.

"Have you talked to Lucie about it?”

"No."

"Written to her?"

"Never."

"It would not be fair of me to hide my understanding that you have held back out of kindness for her father. And her father thanks you."

He held out his hand, but his eyes did not go with it.

"I know," said Darnay humbly. "How can I not know, Doctor Manette, after seeing the two of you together day after day, that between you and Miss Manette there is a love so special, so sweet, so much a part of the things you have each been through, that there could be few with such strong love, even when one talks of fathers and their children. I know, Doctor Manette -- How can I not know? -- that together with the love of a daughter who is now a woman, there is in her heart all the love and desire for you of a little child. I know that, as she had no parents when she was very young, the strength in her adult love for you now is mixed with the need for you and the faith in you that she would have had if she had known you when she was a young child. I know perfectly well that if you had returned from the dead she would not think of you any more as a holy gift from God than what she does now. I know that when she hugs you, the hands of a baby, a girl, and a young woman are, all three, around your neck. I know that when she loves you she is loving her mother and all that she went through, and she is loving you as you were when you were my age, and all that you went through. I have known this, day and night, ever since I started coming here."

Her father sat without saying a word, with his face bent down. He was able to hide all other signs of his feelings apart from that he was breathing more quickly.

"Good Doctor Manette, it was because I knew this and because I have always been able to see this holy light around the two of you, that I have waited and waited for as long as it was possible for me to wait. I have always felt, and I feel it now too, that if I bring my love into the picture, it will touch your history with something that is not quite as good as what you now have. But I love her. Heaven is my witness that I love her!"

"I believe it," her father answered sadly. "I have thought so before now. I believe it."

"But do not believe," said Darnay, on hearing the sadness in the old man's voice and the meaning that had for him, "that even if my luck were such that she should one day become my wife because of what I am now saying, that I would breathe even one word of this now if I knew that at any time it would separate her from you. It would never work, and it would never be right. If I had even one such thought in my heart, or if I should ever have such a thought in my heart, I would not now be able to touch your great hand."

With this, he put his hand on the Doctor's hand.

"No, good Doctor Manette. Like you, I freely chose to leave France. Like you, I was forced to make that choice by the awful things that are happening there. Like you, I am trying, by my work here, to build a happier future. I want only to share your life, your home, and your good luck, being faithful to you to the point of dying for you. I am not asking to come between you and Lucie. I am asking to be able to help her in her place as your child and friend and to tie her even closer to you if that is possible."

His touch was still there on her father's hand. Answering it for a second or two, but not coldly, her father now rested his hands on the arms of his chair, and looked up for the first time since their talk had started. One could see in his face that a fight was going on. It was a fight with that look that he had so often shown in the past, a look of dark and deep fear.

"You speak with such feeling and strength, Charles Darnay, that I thank you with all my heart, and will open all my heart -- or almost all my heart -- to you. Do you have any reason to believe that Lucie loves you?"

"None. As yet, none."

"Is your reason for talking to me now so that you can find that out?"

"Not at all. I cannot even start to hope for such information just yet. But if our meeting goes well today, then maybe I can start to hope for an answer in a few weeks."

"Are you looking for me to help you in what you are planning to do?'

"I am not asking for that, sir. But I have thought it possible that you might be able to, if you think it is okay, to give some help."

"Are you asking me to promise you anything?”

"Yes, I am."

"What is it?"

"I understand well that, without you, I could have no hope. I understand well that, even if Miss Manette did feel for me as I feel for her -- Do not think that I believe that to be true. -- I could have no place in her heart if she had to go against her love for her father."

"If that is true, how do you see things going?"

"I know full well that a word from you would be enough to make her go against her own heart in choosing me or anyone else. Because of that," Darnay said, humbly but strongly, "I would not ask you to do that, not even to save my life."

"I can see that. Charles Darnay, you never know where love may grow. It can happen between people who are very much the same and it can happen between people who are very different. When they are close, the seeds of love can be very difficult to see. In this, my daughter Lucie, is so secret from me that I cannot even come close to knowing what she feels about you.

"May I ask, sir, if you think there is...” When he stopped, her father finished the question for him.

"Is there another man who is interested in her?"

"Yes, that is what I wanted to ask."

Her father thought for a little while before he answered:

"You have seen Mr. Carton here yourself. Mr. Stryver comes here too, at times. If there is anyone, it could only be one of these two."

"Or both," said Darnay.

"I was not thinking of both. I should not think it would be either. Do you want a promise from me? Tell me what it is."

"It is that, if Miss Manette should bring to you at any time, on her own, word of a secret interest in me, then you will tell her of my love for her, and tell her that you believe I am honest about it. I hope that you think well enough of me that you would not say anything against me. I ask nothing more than this. Whatever you ask from me in return, I will do it here and now."

"I give my promise," said the Doctor, "without asking anything from you in return. I believe that you are being very honest and very sincere in what you have said. I believe that you want to make the ties between me and my daughter stronger, and not to make them weaker. If she ever tells me that she thinks she can find happiness with you, I will give her to you. If there were... Charles Darnay, if there were..."

The young man had taken his hand with deep thanks. Their hands were joined as the Doctor went on:

"...any thoughts, any reasons, any fears, either new or old, that I had against the man she loved -- as long as they did not come from something that he freely chose to do -- they would all be rubbed out if it would make her happy. She is everything to me; more to me than any pain that I have felt, more to me than any wrong that I may receive, more to me... Enough! This is foolish talk."

So strange was the way that the Doctor stopped talking, and so strange was his way of looking when he had stopped, that Darnay felt his own hand go cold in the hand that slowly stopped holding his, and that let it drop.

"You said something to me," said Doctor Manette, breaking into a smile. "What was it you said to me?"

Darnay did not know how to answer, until he remembered having said something about giving the Doctor something in return for his promise to speak up for him if needed.

"Your faith in me should be returned with full honesty on my part. My present name, which is almost the same as my mother's name, is not, as you will remember from when I was in court, my real name. I want to tell you what my real name is, and why I am in England."

Stop!" said the Doctor from Beauvais.

"But I want to tell you, so that you will have more reason to trust me. I do not want to have any secrets from you."

"Stop!"

For a second the Doctor even put his two hands over his ears, and for another second he put them on Darnay's lips.

"Tell me when I ask you, not now. If you get what you want, if Lucie happens to love you, you can tell me on the morning of your wedding. Will you just promise me that?"

"Willingly."

"Then give me your hand on that. She will be home soon, and it is better that she not see us together tonight. Go! God bless you!"

It was dark when Charles Darnay left him, and it was an hour later and darker when Lucie came home; she hurried into the room alone -- for Miss Pross had gone straight up to her room -- and was surprised to see that he was not in his chair reading.

"Father!" she called. "Father, where are you?"

There was no answer, but she heard a soft hammering sound in the bedroom. Going to his door, she looked in and came running back in fear, crying to herself, with her blood running cold, "What can I do? What can I do?"

A short time later, she hurried back and knocked lightly