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

am confused? Let us think clearly. If you could, shall we say, tell me how much nine times nine is, or how many shillings are in a pound, it would encourage me to go on. I would be much more confident about how much you are in control of your emotions."

She did not do as he asked, but when he had softly lifted her to the chair, she sat so quietly, and her hands, which were still holding his wrists, were so much more relaxed, that Mr. Jarvis Lorry felt better about going on.

"That's good. Very good. Be brave. Business. You have business before you. Business that will help you. Miss Manette, this is what your mother did with you. When she died -- I believe from a broken heart -- never having stopped in her looking for your father, she left you, at two years of age, to grow up beautiful and happy, without the dark cloud of not knowing how your father was, or if he was dead or alive."

As he said this, Mr. Lorry looked down with loving sadness on her long golden hair, as if he was thinking that it might already be turning grey.

"You know that your parents were not rich, and that what they had has been given to you. We have not found more money or land for you. But..."

He felt her squeezing his wrist, and he stopped. The rough lines on her forehead that so interested him before, became even deeper as they showed her pain and fear.

"But he has been... been found. He is alive. I am sure that he will have been deeply changed. It is possible that his mind has been destroyed by what he has been through, but we'll hope for the best. Yet, he is alive. Your father has been taken to the house of an old servant in Paris. That is where we're going. I will go with you to know if it is truly him, and you will go to bring him back to life, to show him love and help him return to the world.

There was a little shaking that moved through her body, and he could feel it. She said, in a low, clear, but surprised voice, as if she were saying it in a dream, "I am going to see his ghost. It will not be him. It will be his ghost."

Mr. Lorry quietly rubbed the hands that were holding his arm.

"There, there, there! See now? See? You now know the best and the worst. You are now well on your way to see your poor wronged father, and with a good trip over the ocean and a good trip over the land, you will soon be by his sweet side."

In the same low voice, but whispering now, she said again, "I have been free and happy, never thinking about his ghost."

"Only one thing more," said Mr. Lorry quite strongly, hoping that it would bring her back to thinking clearly. "He has been found under another name. We do not know if he is hiding his old name or if he has forgotten it. There is no need to even ask now. There is also no need to know if he has been free and hiding for long, or if he has been a prisoner all this time. There is no need to ask questions of important people now, because it could be dangerous. It would be best not to talk about his past anywhere or in any way, but to take him -- at least for a while -- out of France. Even I, protected by being from England, and Tellson's, which is important to the wealth of that country, try not to say anything about what happened. I do not have any paper on me with writing about this business. What we are doing must be kept secret. Who I am and what I am doing is covered only in four secret words: Called back to life. It could mean anything. But what is happening? You are not listening to a word that I'm saying! Miss Manette!"

Perfectly still and quiet, without even falling back in her chair, she now sat under his hand without any feeling. Her eyes were open and looking at him, with that same strange look on her face, like it was shaped in stone now. She was holding so strongly to his arm that he feared he would hurt her if he tried to pull her hands away. So he did not move, but called out loudly for help.

A wild-looking woman with red hair, dressed in a tight red dress, and wearing a big cylinder-shaped hat, came running into the room, followed closely by some hotel workers. The woman quickly fixed the problem by putting a big strong hand on Mr. Lorry's chest and sending him flying back against the nearest wall.

Mr. Lorry's first thought, as he hit the wall, was that this must be a man, and not a woman.

"Why, look at you all!" shouted the woman, turning to the servants. "Why don't you get something to help, instead of standing there looking at me? Am I really so interesting? Go and get something. You'll hear from me if you don't bring smelling-salts and cold water, and bring it quickly. Do it or you'll hear from me!"

They all left at once, and she softly carried the young woman over to the couch, calling her "Ladybird" and "my little one" and smoothing her golden hair to the side and over her shoulders, with great pride and care.

"And you in brown!" she said, turning angrily to Mr. Lorry, "couldn't you have said what you needed to say without scaring her to death? Look at her, with her beautiful white face and her cold hands. Do you call that being a banker?"

Mr. Lorry was so baffled by a question that he had no answer for, that he could only look on, at a distance, feeling humbled and sorry for Miss Manette, while the strong woman, having scared the workers away with a promise that they would "hear from her" something too awful to name, was able, just by looking at her, to slowly bring the young woman back to life.

"I do hope she'll be okay now," said Mr. Lorry.

"No thanks to you in brown, if she is. My poor sweet thing!"

"I hope," said Mr. Lorry after another time of feeling weak and humble, "that you are here to travel with Miss Manette to France?"

"I don't think so!" answered the strong woman. "If I was to go over the ocean, do you think that God would have put me on an island?"

This being another question that was too hard for Mr. Jarvis Lorry to answer, he left the room to think about it.

5. The Wine Shop

A big barrel of wine had been dropped and broken in the street. The accident had happened in getting it out of the wagon. It had landed with a bang, breaking the metal rings holding it together; and now the barrel was on the stones near the front door of the wine shop, like the shell of a big broken nut.

All who saw it dropped what they were doing and ran to drink what wine they could save. The rough stones in the road, made to cripple any who tried to walk over them, had places between them that were like little lakes, each catching some of the wine. And by each little lake was a group of people pushing to get to the wine. Some men were face down near the wine, getting what they could in their two hands. Some were giving some to women who leaned over their shoulders. Others would put a cup into the liquid, and a few women even put their head scarves into it before squeezing the wine into the mouths of their babies. A few made little walls of dirt to stop the wine from running away. And there were those who, following directions from people leaning out of high windows, ran here and there to where they believed the most wine could be found. Others were happy to pick up pieces of the broken barrel, drink what little was on them and then chew on them, to get the taste of the wine out of the wet timber.

Very little wine was lost, and not only was the wine itself picked up, but an equal measure of mud was picked up with it, making it look like a miracle-working street cleaner had been there.

There was a lot of laughing and many happy voices for as long as the job of cleaning up the wine lasted. The people were not rough with each other, but it was more like they were playing a game. Those who were able to win a good taste of the wine would shake hands, laugh, dance, and hug each other. When the wine was finished, people returned to what they were doing. The man who had left his saw in a piece of timber he was cutting for the fire, returned to his cutting. The woman who had been trying to warm herself and her hungry child by a container of hot coals, returned to the coals. Men without coats who had come into the winter light from the basements where they worked, returned to the basements. And a sadness returned to the street that was more a part of it than was light from the sun.

The wine had been red wine, and it had painted the ground red there in the Saint Antoine part of Paris. Red too were the hands and faces and cold feet of the people who had come. The hands of the man cutting timber left red marks on the branches that he was cutting now. The woman who had given wine to her baby now had a red mark on her head, where the head scarf had been returned. Those who had chewed on the timber pieces of the barrel had wide red marks on both sides of their mouths. And one tall man, rubbing his finger in the bitter seeds at the bottom of the barrel, used them to write BLOOD on a wall.

A time was coming when that red liquid would be poured out on the street too. And many of these same people would have blood on themselves like the red wine that marked their bodies now.

Now that the clouds were back over Saint Antoine, the darkness in that place was heavy. Cold, dirt, sickness, and hunger were the servants of the poor saint after whom the place was named. Antoine's servants were all strong, but hunger was the strongest. These people had been through many troubles, and they were not the kind of troubles that kept old people young. Everywhere you looked, you could see, instead, young people who had been turned into old people because of their troubles. The children had the faces and voices of adults, and adults had the deep lines of old age, all of it coming from that devil called hunger. You could see hunger in the broken clothes hanging on the lines outside the tall houses. Hunger was there in every little piece of firewood that the man was cutting. It looked down on them from the chimneys that had no smoke coming out, and it looked up at them from the street, where there was not the smallest piece of food thrown away. Hunger was there in the bread shop, where only a few very rough loaves of bread could be found, and in the butcher shop, where dead dogs were cooked and made into sausages. You could hear the dry bones of hunger in the chestnuts that were cooking in a turning cylinder, and in the little bowls of rough potato pieces, cooked in a few small drops of oil, that were to be sold for the smallest coin.

The place and its people were equal to the hunger that lived there. It was a narrow bending street with more narrow bending streets coming off of it. All of them were full of bad smells and of sick-looking people dressed in rags like so many scarecrows. But in these people there was also the hope that things could change. Sad and slow as they were, there were still eyes of fire, tight lips (from all that they were holding back) and serious faces. The lines on their faces were like the ropes that they knew could be used to hang them or could be used by them to hang their enemies.

The dangerous stones on the road, with room between them for mud and water, were not made for walking. Down the middle of the road was a channel for rain water, but in a storm, by the time the channel filled, water would already be working its way into many of the houses. Ropes across the road here and there each held one rough lantern, that the lantern-lighter would lower each night, put a light to,