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

it down, and came to where young Jerry could see it. He knew what it would be, but when he saw his loved parent about to force it open, he became so filled with fear about what he would see that he ran off again and never stopped until he had run a mile or more.

Even then he would not have stopped for anything less important than breathing, it being a race with a ghost that he was running, and a race he wanted badly to finish in one piece. He could picture in his mind the box with the body in it standing up on its narrow end and jumping along after him as he ran. Always he could see it moving close behind him, and at times going by beside him, maybe reaching out to take hold of his arm. It was not a runner to let get near him. It was a devil that could be in many places at the same time too, so that at the same time that he believed it was running behind him, he also stayed out of the dark side roads for fear it would be hiding in them and would drop quickly on him like a wild kite without a tail. It was hiding in the openings for doors at the side of the road too. And in any shadows on the road, where it would lie on its back trying to make him fall over it. All this time it was still running after him, and getting closer and closer, so that when the boy reached his own door he had reason for being half dead. Even then it would not leave him, but followed him up to his room, jumping from step to step. It moved into the bed beside him, and was lying heavily on his chest when he fell asleep.

Sometime between the first sign of light and the sun coming up, young Jerry was pulled from his troubled sleep by the sound of his father in the family room. Something had gone wrong, or so that is what young Jerry was thinking from seeing his father holding Mrs. Cruncher by the ears and hitting her head against the board at the head of their bed.

"I told you I would," said Mr. Cruncher, "and I did."

"Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!" his wife begged.

"You put yourself against me making anything from my business," said Jerry, "and when you do that, me and the men I work with lose out. You was to love and obey; why the Devil don't you?"

"I try to be a good wife, Jerry," the poor woman argued with tears.

"Is it being a good wife to fight against his business? Is it loving your husband to hate his business? Is it obeying your husband to not obey him on things to do with his business?"

"You hadn't taken to that awful business back then, Jerry."

"It's enough for you," answered back Mr. Cruncher, "to be the wife of an honest worker, and not fill your female mind with thoughts about when he started his business or when he didn't. A loving and obeying wife would let his business alone. Call yourself a religious woman do you? If you're a religious woman, then give me one who isn't religious. You have no more feeling for what a wife should do than the bottom of this Thames River has for a building. In both cases, such a thing has to be knocked into place."

The argument was all done in a quiet voice, and ended with the honest worker kicking off his clay covered boots, and lying down on the floor. After taking a secret look at him lying on his back with his rust covered hands under his head for a pillow, his son lay himself back down too, and fell asleep again.

There was no fish for breakfast and not much of anything else either. Mr. Cruncher was angry, and kept the cover of an iron pot beside him to throw if he needed to stop Mrs. Cruncher from praying over the food. He was clean and dressed in time to head off with his son for what most people believed was his "honest work".

Young Jerry, walking with the seat under his arm at his father's side along sunny crowded Fleet Street, was a very different Young Jerry from the boy who ran home through the darkness the night before, in fear of the awful ghost that was running after him. His mind was sharp with the new day, and his fears from the night before were gone, two things that made him much like others walking down Fleet Street in London on that beautiful morning.

"Father," said young Jerry as they walked along, being careful to keep distance between himself and his father, with the chair between them, "What is a Dig it Up Man?"

Mr. Cruncher came to a stop before he answered. "How should I know?"

"I thought you knowed everything, father," said his rough son.

"Hmm, well!" returned Mr. Cruncher, moving on again, and lifting his hat to let his rough hair fall out. "He's a worker."

"What's he make, father?” asked the sharp young Jerry.

"What he makes," said Mr. Cruncher, after turning it over in his mind, "is things to be used by scientists."

"Persons' bodies, isn't it, father?” asked the bright boy.

"I believe it is something like that," said Mr. Cruncher.

"Oh father, I would so like to be a Dig it Up Man when I'm quite growed up!"

Mr. Cruncher relaxed. But he shook his head like someone preaching about right and wrong. "It will rest on what you do with your abilities. Learn to never say no more than what you can help to nobody. Do this and there is no telling now what you may come to be then.” As young Jerry raced ahead to put the chair in place for his father, Mr. Cruncher added to himself, "Jerry, you honest worker, there's hope that the boy may one day be a blessing to you, and make up for the troubles his mother has brought."

15. Knitting

The drinking had started earlier than most days at Mr. Defarge's wine shop. As early as six in the morning sickly yellow faces had looked in through the windows and been able to see other faces inside bending over glasses of wine. Mr. Defarge sold a watered down wine at the best of times, but there was even more water in the glasses at this time. From the look on the faces of the people drinking there, it was a sour wine too, because they were not smiling. An air of laughing and singing was not jumping out of Mr. Defarge's grape juice on this morning; instead, only a slow burning fire could be seen hiding behind the drinks.

This had been the third morning in as many days that the drinkers had come there so early. It had started on Monday, and this was now Wednesday. There was more thinking than drinking happening, and many men had come to listen and whisper who could not have paid one coin for the drinks, not even to save their soul. But they had as much interest in what was happening as they would have had if they could buy whole barrels of wine. They moved from seat to seat and corner to corner, swallowing talk instead of drinks, with greedy looks on their faces.

For all the people there, the owner of the shop was nowhere to be seen. But the people there were not looking for him. No one asked about him, and no one was surprised to see only Madam Defarge in her seat, watching over the wine sales with a bowl of small coins in front of her, which were as rough and knocked about as the people from whose poor pockets they had come.

It may be that spies had visited the wine shop at that time. If they had, they would have seen that other interests had stopped. Such people were always looking for secrets, from the prisons to the home of the king himself. Card games had stopped. The people playing dominoes were now building little houses with them as they talked of other things. Drinkers would draw shapes on the table in the little wine that fell from their glasses. Madam Defarge herself picked at the pattern on her sleeve with a little stick, and saw and heard something far off in the distance that others could not see or hear.

It was like this, in Saint Antoine's wine shop, for the whole morning. It was noon when two men, covered with dust, walked through Saint Antoine's streets, under the saint's hanging lanterns. One was Mr. Defarge, and the other a road worker in a blue hat. Thirsty and dirty, the two men came into the wine shop. Their coming had started a fire inside Saint Antoine, a fire that moved from face to face at most doors and windows. Yet no one followed them, and no one said a word when they came into the shop. But they did all turn to look and listen.

"Good day, friends!" said Mr. Defarge.

Maybe it was a sign for them to talk, because he received many Good days in return.

"The weather's not good at all," said Defarge, shaking his head.

On hearing this, they all looked at one another and then down at the floor, without saying anything. All but one man, who stood up and walked out.

"My wife," said Defarge to Mrs. Defarge, but loudly enough for the others to hear: "I have travelled a few miles with this good road worker, called Jack. I met him, by accident, a day and a half's travel outside of Paris. He is a good boy, this road worker, called Jack. Give him a drink, wife!"

A second man stood up and left. Madam Defarge put wine before the road worker called Jack, who took off his blue hat to the crowd, and had a drink. Inside his shirt, he carried rough dark bread. He ate it between drinks, and sat there chewing and drinking near Madam Defarge's counter. A third man stood and went out.

Mr. Defarge poured himself some wine too, but not as much as he had given to the stranger, for whom the drink was very special. He stood waiting for the man from the village to finish his breakfast.

He looked at no one and no one looked at him, not even Madam Defarge, who was now hard at work knitting.

"Have you finished your meal?” he asked after some time.

"Yes, thank you."

"Come, then! You can see the room that I said you would stay in. You will be very happy with it."

Out of the wine shop, into the street; out of the street into the yard; out of the yard and up some steep steps. Out of the steps and into a little room under the roof -- a room where a white-haired man had sat in the past, on a low bench, leaning forward and busily making shoes.

No white-haired man was there now; but the three men were there, the ones who had left the wine shop one by one. Between them and the white-haired man far off in London, was that hole in the wall through which they had looked in at him in the past.

Defarge closed the door carefully and spoke in a quiet voice.

"Jack One, Jack Two, Jack Three! This is the witness I, Jack Four, went to meet. He'll tell you all you need to know. Speak, Jack Five!"

The road worker, blue hat in hand, rubbed it on his dark forehead and said, "Where should I start, sir?

"Start," was Mr. Defarge's wise answer, "at the start."

"I saw him then, sirs," started the road worker, "a year ago this summer, under the Marquis' coach, hanging by the chain. Here is how he looked. I was finished for the day, with the sun going to bed, and the Marquis' coach was going very slowly up the hill. He was hanging from the chain -- like this."

Again the road worker went through the story, which he should have known perfectly by now from having told it so many times over the past year in his village.

Jack One cut in and asked if he'd ever seen the man before.

"Never," answered the road worker, returning to the vertical.

Jack Three asked how he later knew who the man was.

"By how tall he was," said the road worker softly, and with his finger against his nose. "When Sir the Marquis asked later that night, 'Say, what is he like?' I answered 'Tall as a king'."

"You should have said short as a dwarf," returned Jack Two.

"But what did I know? He had not done anything yet, and he had never told me of his plan. Look! If I had known that, I would not have said anything. Sir the Marquis could point at me, standing near our little fountain, and say, 'To me! Bring that man!' And believe me, sirs, I would have said nothing."

"He's right there, Jack," Mr. Defarge said to the one who had questioned the road worker.

"Good!" said