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

start in such a case. If your wisdom, and what you have learned from your work, can point me in the right direction, I might be able to do a lot; but without help, I can do very little. Please talk about it with me; please help me to see it a little more clearly, and teach me how I can help."

Doctor Manette sat thinking for some time after hearing these deeply moving words. Mr. Lorry did not push him.

"I think it may be," the Doctor said, forcing himself to say something, "that the return to the past that you have talked about, my good friend, was something that your friend saw coming."

"Was he afraid of it?” Mr. Lorry asked.

"Very much.” As he said it, his body shook a little.

"You cannot know how much such a person would be afraid of it happening again, and how difficult -- almost impossible -- it is for him to say even one word about the thing that troubles him so."

"Would he," asked Mr. Lorry, "be helped if he could force himself to talk about that secret fear to anyone, when it comes to him?"

"I think so. But it is, as I have told you, almost impossible. I even believe it, in some cases, to be quite impossible."

"Now," said Mr. Lorry, softly putting his hand on the Doctor's arm again, after a short time during which both of them were quiet, "what do you think started this return to the past?"

"I believe," returned Doctor Manette, "that there had been a strong and surprising return to the train of thoughts that were the reason for the problem in the first place. Something which was a part of that past pain was remembered in a very strong way, I think. He probably has been fearing this for some time, maybe knowing that a special time was coming when he would have to face it. He tried to prepare himself for it, but it was not enough. It may even be that what he went through trying to prepare himself made him less able to carry it when the time came."

"Would he remember what happened during the time when he returned to the past?” asked Mr. Lorry, feeling a little worried that this could be asking too much.

The Doctor looked around the room with an empty look, shook his head, and answered in a low voice, "Not at all."

"Now, let's talk about the future," said Mr. Lorry, pointing the way.

"As to the future," said the Doctor, who returned to his more confident spirit, "I would have great hope. As it pleased Heaven in its kindness to bring him out of this so quickly, I would have great hope. He, giving in to the weight of something he had been afraid of for so long, and then returning to his right mind after the cloud had emptied its storm on him, I would hope that the worst is over."

"Well, well! That is very encouraging. I am thankful for that!" said Mr. Lorry.

"I too am thankful!" repeated the Doctor, bending his head as if praying.

"There are two other points," said Mr. Lorry, "on which I need your help. Can I go on?"

"You cannot help your friend in any better way.” The Doctor gave him his hand.

"To the first, then. He studies a lot, and works very hard at it. He does it as part of his job. Do you think that he is doing too much?"

"I don't think so. It may be the way he is, just wanting to always be busy. Some of it may just be the way he is, and some of it may be because of his past. The less he is busy with healthy things, the more he may be in danger of turning in the other direction. He may have studied himself to see that he needs to be kept busy."

"Are you sure that he is not pushing himself too hard."

"I think I am quite sure of it."

"My good friend Manette, if he did push himself too much now..."

"My good friend Lorry, I don't think that could easily happen. There has been a strong effect on him in one direction, and he needs an equally strong pull in the other direction."

"Forgive me for pushing this, but let us say for a minute that he did push himself too hard. Would it lead to him breaking down in the same way again?"

"I don't think so," said Doctor Manette with strong confidence. "I do not think that anything apart from that one train of thought would bring it back again. I think that from now on, nothing but some very strong surprise along that same line could bring it on again. After what has happened, and after his coming through it, I find it difficult to believe there could be anything new that could happen which would have such an effect. I hope, and I almost believe, that there is nothing left which could do it."

In some ways he spoke shyly, as one who knew how easy it is for just one small thing to destroy the mind, but in other ways he spoke with confidence, as one who had won that confidence through a hard fight in his own life. Doctor Manette's friend did not want to do anything to destroy that confidence, and so he talked with more enthusiasm than he really felt about how happy he was to hear that. And then he came to his last and most important point. He believed it to be the most difficult of all, and yet, remembering the talk he had had with Miss Pross one Sunday morning, and remembering what he had seen over the last nine days, he knew that he must face it.

"The work this man was doing when the sickness was on him, and that we are so happy to see he has stopped doing," said Mr. Lorry, clearing his throat, "we can call... shaping metal. Yes, making things from metal. We will say, just as a way of showing what it is that I want to say, that in the past, when he was going through so much pain, he worked with the tools that one uses to make things from metal. Let's say that we were surprised to see him working with those tools again. Isn't it bad that he keeps those tools close to himself?"

The Doctor stopped the sun from getting in his eyes by putting his hand on his forehead, and he showed that his nerves were jumping by hitting his foot on the ground.

"He always keeps those tools near him," said Mr. Lorry, with a worried look at his friend. "Now, wouldn't it be better if he let them go?"

Still the Doctor, with his hand on his forehead, hit his foot on the ground.

"You do not find it easy to tell me what to do on this point?” asked Mr. Lorry. "It seems to me to be an easy enough question. And yet I think...” And there he shook his head and stopped.

"You see," said Doctor Manette, turning to him after a short time during which both of them did not know what to say, "it is very difficult to give a clear answer about the secrets of this poor man's mind. He had at one time wished so strongly for that job, and it was so welcome when it came. I am sure that it took away some of his pain by letting him work on understanding his fingers in place of trying to understand the workings of his brain, and, as he became better at it, by letting him think about the abilities that were under his control in his hands in place of thinking about the ability that the pain in his mind had to control him. Because of this, I believe that he has never been able to think about putting those tools in a place where he could not reach them. Even now, when I think he has more hope than he has ever had, and he can talk about himself with some confidence, the thought of needing those tools and not being able to find them would quickly fill him with fear, much like a child would feel when lost."

He looked like such a child as he lifted his eyes to look at Mr. Lorry.

"But isn't it possible... Understand, I'm only asking for my own information, as a businessman who works only with coins and paper money all day... Isn't it possible that having those tools will encourage him to return to the past? If they were gone, my good friend, isn't it possible that the fear would go with them? In short, isn't it only encouraging the fear to keep the tools?"

There was another time without either of them talking.

"You see, too," said the Doctor, shaking a little, "those tools are so much like old friends."

"I would not hang onto them," said Mr. Lorry, shaking his head; for he grew in confidence about his plan when he saw that the Doctor was not so confident. "I would encourage him to let go of them. I just want you to back me up in this. I am sure that it does him no good to have them around. Please! Back me up on this, as an honest man... for the good of his daughter, my friend!"

It was very strange to see what a fight was going on inside him!

"For her, then, let it be done; I agree to it. But I would not take it away while he is there. Let it be taken when he is not there; let him find that his old friends are gone after he has been away from them for a while."

Mr. Lorry happily agreed to that, and the talk was ended. What was left of the day, they used to walk together in the country, and the Doctor was quite well through it all. On the three following days, he stayed perfectly well, and on the fourteenth day he left to join Lucie and her husband. Mr. Lorry told the Doctor what had been done earlier to stop Lucie from worrying about him not writing, and so he wrote a letter to cover for that story, and she did not think there had been anything wrong.

On the night of the day the Doctor left, Mr. Lorry went into his bedroom with an axe, saw, and hammer, helped by Miss Pross, who carried a light. There, with the doors closed, and in a strange and guilty way, Mr. Lorry broke the shoemaker's bench to pieces, while Miss Pross held the candle as if she was helping to kill someone, for which she, in her very serious way, very much looked the part. The burning of the 'body' (now broken in pieces to make the burning easier) was done in the kitchen fire; and the tools, shoes, and leather were buried in the garden. So evil does it seem to honest minds to destroy something secretly, that Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross, while doing all this, and while cleaning up after they were finished, almost felt and almost looked like they were doing some awful act that was against the law.

20. A Kindness Asked For

When the newly married couple returned, the first one to welcome them was Sydney Carton. They had not been home many hours when he came by. He was no better in how he acted or dressed, but there was about him a strange air of control, an air Charles Darnay had never seen in him before.

He watched and waited for a good time to take Darnay away, to a window seat, so they could talk without anyone hearing.

"Mr. Darnay," said Carton, "I wish that we could be friends."

"We already are, I hope."

"You're kind to say so, but it's just words. I don't mean just in words. To be honest, I don't quite mean real friends either."

Charles Darnay, as was natural for him, asked him in a joking and friendly way what he could mean by that.

"On my life," said Carton, smiling, "I find it easier to know in my own mind what I want, than I can say it to yours. But let me try. Do you remember a special night when I was more drunk than... than I am most nights?"

"I remember a special night when you forced me to say that you had been drinking."

"I remember it too. The pain of such times is heavy on me, because I can never forget how I acted. I hope at least that much will be remembered of me one day when my life is finished. Don't worry; I'm not going to start preaching!"

"I am not at all worried. Hearing you speak seriously about something is anything but worrying to me.

"Ah!" said Carton, with a light wave of his hand, as if he waved that thought away. "On the night in question (one of many nights when I have been too drunk), I was being impossible to get along with, I talked about liking you and not liking you. I