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

"I did that a long time ago."

"Just words again! But, Mr. Darnay, forgetting is not so easy for me, as you make it sound. I have in no way forgotten it, and a light answer does not help me to forget it."

"If it was a light answer," returned Darnay, "I beg your forgiveness for it. I had no other reason for being light apart from pushing to the side something that I thought was light, and that seems to trouble you too much. I want you to know that on my honest word, I have long since dropped it from my mind. Good heavens, what was there to drop! Did I have nothing more important to remember in the great help that you gave me on that day?"

"As to the great help," said Carton, "I must tell you the truth, that it was just the empty words of what I do for a living. I don't know that I cared at all about what would happen to you when I said it. Understand that when I talk about having said it, it happened a long time ago."

"Now you are the one making light of what you did," returned Darnay, "but I will not argue with your light answer."

"It's the honest truth, Mr. Darnay, trust me! But that is not what I wanted to say. I was speaking about us being friends. Now, you know me. You know that I am not able to do all the higher and better things that others do. Ask Stryver, and he will tell you so."

"I think it is better for me to work such things out for myself, without his help."

"Well, all the same, you know me as a dog without much control, who has never done any good, and who never will."

"I don't know that you never will."

"But I know, and you can take my word for it. Still, if you could put up with such an awful person, one who has done nothing with his life, coming and going at different times, I would like to be able to visit from time to time. I would be happy if you could think of me as a piece of furniture that can do nothing of worth (and if it was not that we look so much the same, I would say an ugly piece of furniture too) that you keep only because it is an old one that you did not think to throw out. I don't think I would come too often. It is a hundred to one that I would come even four times in a year. But just knowing that I am free to come will make me happy."

"Please try to come."

"That is another way of saying that you have agreed to what I have asked. Thank you, Darnay. So can I say that you have asked me to come?"

"I think so, Carton, by this time."

They shook hands on it, and Sydney moved away from him. A minute later he was, to look at, no different to what he had been in the past.

When he had left, later that evening, Charles Darnay said something about what Sydney Carton had said when Miss Pross, the Doctor, and Mr. Lorry were there. He said something about Carton being a problem and wasting his life. In short, he was not angry or wanting to hurt him, but he was only saying what anyone could see for themselves if they knew Carton well.

Darnay never thought that these few words would stay in the mind of his beautiful young wife; but when he joined her later in their rooms, he found her waiting for him with the old lifting of the forehead that was so often her mark.

"We are in deep thoughts tonight!" he said, hugging her.

"Yes, Charles," with her hands on his chest, and her questioning eyes fixed on him, "we are thinking very deeply tonight, for we have something to think about."

"What is it, my Lucie?"

"Will you promise not to force one question on me if I beg you not to ask it?"

"Will I promise? What would I not promise to my Love?"

Yes, what would he not promise, as he pushed the golden hair away from her cheek with one hand and held his other hand against the heart that loved him so much!

"I think, Charles, that poor Mr. Carton is worth more than the words you used to show your feelings for him tonight."

"Is that true? The words I used? Why is that?"

"That is what you mustn't ask. But I think... I know... he is."

"If you know it, it is enough. What do you want me to do, my Love?"

"I would ask you, sweet, to be very generous with him always, and very soft on the things he does wrong, even when he is not around to hear what you are saying. I would ask you to believe that he has a heart that he almost never shows, and that there are deep sores in it. My love, I have seen it bleeding."

"It hurts to think about this," said Charles Darnay, quite surprised, "that I have done him any wrong. I never thought this of him."

"My husband, it's true. I fear he is not going to change; there is not much hope for him as a person or for him in life now. But I am sure that he could do good things, kind things, even great things."

She looked so beautiful in her child-like faith in this lost man, that her husband could have looked at her as she was for hours.

"And oh, my love!" she begged, hugging him closer, laying her head on his chest, and lifting her eyes to him, "remember how strong we are in our happiness, and how weak he is in his sadness!"

Her prayer touched his heart. "I will always remember it, sweet Heart! I will remember it as long as I live."

He bent over the golden head and put her red lips to his, and folded her in his arms. If one sad man walking the dark streets that night could have heard the innocent words she had just said, and seen the tears of love that her husband so lovingly kissed away from her soft blue eyes, he too may have cried. And the words he would have cried would not have been said for the first time:

"God bless her for her sweet love!"

21. The Sound of Footsteps

It has already been said that the corner where the Doctor lived was a wonderful place for sound to travel a long way. Always busily pulling the golden thread around her husband, her father, herself, and her old motherly friend and teacher, in a life of quiet happiness, Lucie sat in the quiet house on the peaceful corner, listening to the footsteps of the years as they passed.

She was a perfectly happy young wife, but at first, there had been times when her work would fall slowly from her hands as her eyes closed. She heard something coming in the sounds, lightly and so far off that she almost could not hear it, and it affected her deeply. Hopes and fears took opposite sides in her... hopes of a love that she did not yet know, and fears that she would not live long enough to see through all the happiness that was to come with it. In with all the sounds was the sound of footsteps beside her body as it was being buried. The thought of her husband being left alone and crying for her came out as tears through her eyes.

That time passed and a little Lucie came to lay on her breast. Then, in with all the other sounds, there was the sound of baby Lucie's little feet and the sound of her first words. Let louder sounds come; still they did not stop the young mother at the side of her baby's bed from hearing those smaller and quieter sounds. With them came the sunlight of a child's laugh, and Christ, the friend of children. She trusted him with her troubles, and he seemed to take her child in his arms, as he had done in the past, bringing a holy happiness to her.

Still busily pulling the golden thread that tied them all together, putting her spirit into all of them without ever trying to control them, Lucie heard in the sound of the years nothing but friendly and relaxing sounds. Her husband's step was strong and rich, her father's strong and fair. Miss Pross's step was like that of a wild horse, making sounds with its nose and hitting the ground under the big tree in the garden!

Even where there were sad sounds in with the others, they were not deep or cruel. When golden hair like her own was lying like that of an angel around the tired face of a little boy, and he said, with a smile, "Daddy and mummy, I am sad to leave you both, and to leave my beautiful sister; but God is calling me and I must go!" they were not all tears of pain that made his young mother's cheeks wet, as the breath left the one she hugged, whom God had given to her for a time. "Let the children come to me, and do not stop them. They see my Father's face.” Oh Father, what blessed words!

The sound of an angel's wings mixed in with the others. They were not all of this world, but some had in them the touch of heaven. The soft sound of the wind blowing over a little place in the garden where he was buried was part of the sounds too, and Lucie could hear both these sounds in a soft whisper, like the breathing of a summer ocean sleeping on a sandy beach. Over it all little Lucie would look so funny working seriously at some little job, or dressing a doll at her mother's feet, always talking to herself in the languages of the two cities that had come together to make her.

It was not often that the footsteps of Sydney Carton were part of the sound. Unless asked, he came at most, half a dozen times in a year. He would sit with them through the evening as he had once done so often. He never came full of wine. And one other thing about him was whispered in the sounds, which has been whispered in all true sounds for all time.

No man ever really loved a woman, lost her, and still loved her with a good heart when she became a wife and a mother, without her children having a strange love for him... like they were feeling sad for him. What good secret feelings are touched in such a case, no sound can tell; but it happens, and it happened here. Carton was the first stranger to whom little Lucie held out her fat arms, and he kept that place with her as she grew. Almost at the last, the little boy had said of him, "Poor Carton! Kiss him for me!"

Mr. Stryver shouldered his way through the courts, like some great ship forcing itself through rough waters, and he pulled his friend, who was so much help, behind him, like a little boat. As a boat being pulled like that is often forced under the water, so Sydney had a rough time of it. But hard as it is to change, and so much harder for Sydney, who was not worried about what others thought of him, made this the life he was called to live. He gave no more thought to changing from the wild dog who feeds on what the lion leaves than what a real wild dog would think of becoming a lion instead. Stryver was rich. He had married a healthy woman whose husband had died and left her with wealth and three boys. The boys had nothing especially great coming out of them apart from the straight hair on each of their short fat heads.

Mr. Stryver, trying to show himself to be the best father in the world, had these three young men walk in front of him like three sheep, to the quiet corner in Soho, where he hoped to surprise Lucie's husband by letting him teach them. In his own special way, he said, "Hello! Here are three pieces of bread and cheese for your married needs, Darnay!" When Darnay quietly said he was not interested in the three pieces of bread and cheese, Mr. Stryver was so filled with anger that it came out later when he taught the young men to watch for the "pride of beggars", like that teacher man. He would often complain to Mrs. Stryver, over his glass of wine, about how Mrs. Darnay had once tried to "catch" him, and how it was only his great ability to see through her that kept him from being caught. Some of his law friends, who at times joined him in drinking his wine and listening to this lie, were