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

was full of things to make her remember her lost father. My picture was in her room, and I was in her prayers. Her life was busy, happy, and of help to many. But my sad history was part of it all."

"I was that child, father! I am not half as good, but in my love, that was me."

"And she showed me her children" said the Doctor from Beauvais. "They had heard of me, and they had been taught to think sadly of me. When going by a prison, they would stay far away from its angry walls, look up at its bars, and speak in whispers. In my thoughts she was never able to keep me free. She would lead me back to the prison after showing me such things. But I would find peace in crying when it was over. I would fall on my knees and bless her."

"I hope that I am that child, Father. But will you bless me with as much emotion tomorrow?"

"Lucie, I have remembered those old thoughts in the way I have tonight as a way of loving you better than words can tell, and of thanking God for my great happiness. My thoughts, when they were the wildest, never gave me such happiness as I have now here with you."

He hugged her, giving her to God, and humbly thanking God for giving her to him. Not long after that, they went into the house.

No one had been asked to come to the wedding, apart from Mr. Lorry. There was not even another young woman to help Lucie on the day... only sad old Miss Pross. The wedding had made no change in where she lived, because they had been able to rent the rooms above, where they had always believed someone lived whom they never saw. And they wanted nothing more.

Doctor Manette was very happy as they sat down for something to eat with Miss Pross. He was sad that Charles was not there and half wanted to argue with the foolish belief that the man must not be there on the night before the wedding. He had a special drink for Charles instead.

It came time for Lucie to go to bed, and so they all separated. But in the middle of the night, Lucie came quietly down the steps to look into her father's room. She was still not fully over her fears for him.

But everything was in its place, and all was quiet. His white hair was like a picture of peace on the smooth pillow, and his hands were folded together on top of the blanket. She left her candle in a corner, moved over to him without making a sound, and kissed him softly on the lips. Then she leaned over and looked lovingly at him.

His time in prison had been like rivers cutting many lines in his face. But his strength was such that it had covered many of them, and the change was there even when he was asleep. A more wonderful face, in its quiet, strong, and often secret fight with an invisible enemy, was not to be found in any other sleeping person that night.

She shyly put her hand on his chest and said a prayer, asking God to help her stay as true to him as her love hoped for and as his pained past needed. Then she pulled back her hand and kissed his lips again before leaving the room. As the sun came up, the shadows of the leaves on the big tree in the yard moved across his face as quietly as her lips had moved in praying for him.

18. Nine Days

The wedding day was a very sunny one, and the wedding party were waiting outside the door of the Doctor's room, where he was having one last talk with Charles Darnay. The others were ready to leave for the church: Beautiful Lucie, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross. To Miss Pross the wedding had changed little by little in her mind from being a very sad happening to being one that filled her with happiness, apart from her one belief that her brother Solomon would have been a better husband for Lucie.

"And so," said Mr. Lorry, who could not get enough of looking at Lucie in her modest but beautiful wedding dress, and who had been moving around her to see it from every direction, "and so it was for this, sweet Lucie, that I brought you across the Channel as a baby! Lord bless me! How little I thought about it at the time! How lightly I thought about what it would mean for Mr. Charles!"

"You knew nothing about him then," said the down-to-earth Miss Pross, "so how can you even talk about such a thing? Don't be so foolish!"

"Really? Well, don't cry about it," said Mr. Lorry softly.

"I'm not the one crying," said Miss Pross. "You are!"

"I, Miss Pross?” By this time, Mr. Lorry was not afraid to play games with her at times.

"You were, just now. I saw you. And I'm not surprised. Such a gift as you have given them is enough to make anyone cry. There wasn't a fork or spoon in the box that I did not cry over when your gift arrived last night. I cried until I wasn't able to see them."

"I thank you very much," said Mr. Lorry. "But the truth is that I did not think such a little gift needed to be secret. Oh no! This is a time that makes a man think about all that he has lost. My, my, my! To think that any time over the past almost fifty years, there could have been a Mrs. Lorry."

"Not at all," came from Miss Pross.

"What? You think there never could have been a Mrs. Lorry?" asked the man of that same name.

"Rubbish!" answered Miss Pross. "From the time you were born you were never cut out to be married."

"Well," said Mr. Lorry, smiling as he moved his wig just a little, "that may be true."

"And even before you were born, you were not cut out to be married," said Miss Pross, pushing her point farther.

"Then I think," said Mr. Lorry, "that it was not fair, and that someone should have asked me before making the pattern for my life. But enough of this! Now, sweet Lucie," he said, putting his arm around her, "I hear them moving in the next room, and Miss Pross and I, as two thinking people, have only a few seconds to say something that you should be happy to hear. We want you to know that you are leaving your father in hands that are as sincere and loving as your own; we will do all we can think of to care for him. Over the next two weeks, while you are in and near Warwickshire, even Tellsons will be of second interest to me. And when, after two weeks, he comes to join you for another two weeks together in Wales, you will be able to say that we have sent him to you in the best health and the happiest spirit. I hear them coming to the door, so let me kiss you as an old man who will never be married, and bless you before he comes and takes you away from me."

For a second he looked at her beautiful face and the lines on her forehead that had so interested him when he first met her, and then he touched her golden hair with his brown wig as he kissed her with such true, soft love that if it was old, it was only because it was as old as Adam.

The door of the Doctor's room opened, and he came out with Charles Darnay. He was so deadly white -- which he had not been when they went in together -- that there was no colour at all in his face. But the way he acted had not changed, and it was only Mr. Lorry's wisdom that could see some of the old shadows of fear that had passed over him once again, like a cold wind.

He gave his arm to his daughter and took her down the steps to the waiting coach, which Mr. Lorry had rented for the day. The others followed in another coach, and soon, in a church near there, with no strangers looking on, Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette were happily married.

On top of the diamond-like tears that each of the people in that little group brushed away with happy smiles after the wedding, there were real diamonds, very bright and giving off much light, on Lucie's hand. The diamonds had just been freed from a dark corner in one of Mr. Lorry's pockets. They all returned home for breakfast, which went well. Then the golden hair of the daughter and the white hair of the shoemaker, that had met in the little room in Paris, came together again in the light of the morning sun at the door of the house as they were about to separate.

It was not easy for them to separate, but it was over quickly. Her father made it easier as he softly pulled away from her hug, by saying in a friendly way, "Take her, Charles! She's yours!"

She waved to him from the window of the coach, and with that, she was gone.

Because the house was on a quiet corner, and because the wedding was such a small one, there were only the three -- the Doctor, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross -- left alone. When they moved out of the sun and into the cool bottom rooms of the house, Mr. Lorry saw that a serious change had come over the Doctor, as if the golden arm outside the jewelry shop had fallen on him.

It was the Doctor's way to hide his feelings, and so it would be easy to understand some sadness showing now that Lucie was gone, But it was the old look of fear that worried Mr. Lorry, and when Doctor Manette put his hands to his head and walked off into his bedroom with a lost, sad look, after they had climbed the steps to his rooms, it made Mr. Lorry remember the night they had left Mr. Defarge's wine shop with him so many years before.

"I think," Mr. Lorry whispered to Miss Pross, "that we should not speak to him now, or do anything to stop him. I need to drop in at Tellson's and when I return, we can take him for an outing in the country, eat there, and after that, he should feel better."

It was easier for Mr. Lorry to drop in at Tellson's than it was to drop out, so he was two hours getting away. When he returned, he climbed the old steps on his own, without the servant leading him. On reaching the Doctor's rooms, he could hear a soft knocking.

"Good God!" he said in surprise. "What is that?"

Miss Pross, with a look of fear on her face, whispered in his ear. "Oh me! Oh me! All is lost!" she cried, squeezing her hands together. "What will we say to Ladybird? He doesn't know me, and he's making shoes again!"

Mr. Lorry said what he could to encourage her, and then he himself went into the bedroom. The bench was turned toward the light, as it had been when he had seen the shoemaker at work before. His head was bent down and he was very busy.

"Doctor Manette, my good friend! Doctor Manette!"

The Doctor looked up for a second, half like he was asking a question and half like he was angry at being pulled away from his work. And then he bent over his work again.

He had taken off his coat, and opened his shirt at the throat, as it used to be when he worked in the prison. Even the old worried look of his face had returned. He worked hard, as if he was in a hurry to finish something that he had been pulled away from.

Mr. Lorry looked at the work that was in his hand, and saw that it was a woman's shoe of the size and shape that he had been working on when he was in Paris. He picked up another one that had been lying beside him, and asked what it was.

"A young woman's walking shoe," he said without feeling or even a look. "It should have been finished long ago. Put it down."

"But, Doctor Manette, look at me."

He obeyed in the old way of a slave, but did not stop working as he looked up.

"You know me, my good friend. Think again. This is not what you do for a living. Think, my good friend!"

Nothing would make him say anything more. He would look up, just for a second or two at a time, when he was asked to do so; but nothing would pull even one word out of him. He worked and worked and worked, without saying a word; and words fell on him like words on a