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

to letting Darnay go free when, for some unexplained reason, things changed. There were a few secret words between the leaders and then the man acting as president told Doctor Manette that Darnay must stay in the prison, but that he would be held in a safe place because of the court's good feelings toward the Doctor. The prisoner had then been quickly taken away; but the Doctor himself begged the court to let him stay there in that Room of Blood until the danger was over, and they agreed to it.

What he saw over those next four days, with only short breaks for food or sleep, will not be told here. The wild happiness over prisoners who were saved surprised him almost as much as the crazy hate for those who were cut to pieces. One prisoner had been freed, but when he went into the street, a freedom fighter threw a spear at him by accident, and the Doctor was asked to go out to help him. In the street, the Doctor had found a group of people lovingly caring for the man. They made a bed to be used in carrying him away, before picking up their weapons and returning to such killing that the Doctor had covered his eyes and then fainted from what he had seen.

As Mr. Lorry listened to all of this, and as he watched the face of his friend, now sixty-two years of age, he started to fear that what he was seeing would bring back his old problems.

But he saw a side of Doctor Manette now that he had never seen before. Now, for the first time, the Doctor felt that what he had been through gave him strength. He felt that in the fire of his past a tool had been made that could break the prison door for his daughter's husband, and free him. "It has all been leading to a good end, my friend; it was not wasted. As my lovely daughter helped to save me, now I may be able to bring back the most loved part of her life. With God's help, I will do it!"

That is how Doctor Manette saw things now. And when Jarvis Lorry saw the burning eyes, the solid face, the strong look of peace in the man whose life had seemed to be stopped, like a clock, for so many years, and then started going again with enthusiasm that had not been seen for many years, he believed what the Doctor had said.

The Doctor had more than enough enthusiasm to handle all that came his way over the next few months. As a doctor, he believed that his job was to help people in pain or sickness from all walks of life, rich and poor, bad and good, in prison or out. But he used his abilities so wisely that he was soon acting as doctor for three prisons, and one of them was La Force. He could now tell Lucie that her husband was no longer alone. He was with the other prisoners. Doctor Manette was able to see him once a week, and to take words from him to Lucie. At times her husband would send a letter to her (but not through the Doctor), yet she was not free to write to him. One of the stories that went through the prisons was that people who had left France earlier were making plans to change the government through friends they knew from other countries.

The Doctor's new life had its worries, but wise Mr. Lorry could see that it was helping him too. There was a good spirit of pride in him. Up to that time, he had known that his time in prison worried his daughter and his friend because of the effect it had had on him. Now that things had changed, and his past was seen as a way to help Charles, they both looked to him for strength. The one who had been helped so much in the past was now the helper, and he used his power in love.

"All very interesting," thought Mr. Lorry in his friendly, wise way, "but all very right too. So take the lead, my good friend, and keep it; it could not be in better hands."

But even with Doctor Manette trying his best to get Charles Darnay freed, or at least brought to court, the feeling of the people at the time was too strong and too fast for him. The new age was on them. The king had been brought to the court and his head cut off. The government of free equal brothers or death was going to win against the whole world, or die trying. The black flag waved night and day from the great towers of Notre Dame. Three hundred thousand men, called to fight the evil leaders of the earth, came from all the different parts of France, as if the dragon's teeth had been planted like seeds, growing into new dragons on hills and flat lands, on rocks and in mud, under clear skies in the South and under clouds in the North, in open lands and forests, in places where grapes, corn, grass or any other plant grows, on the sides of wide rivers and in the sand at the ocean beach. What fear or action from any one person could stop the great flood that came with the first year of freedom? The flood came from below and not from above, for the windows of heaven were closed to it all!

There was no break, no mercy, no peace, no rest, and no measure of time. Days and nights were the same as ever, but there was no way to fit them in with a bigger history. The whole country was like a very sick person, with no interest in time, only in their own pain. Now, ending a strange time of quiet in the city, the people were shown the head of the king... and not long after, the head of his beautiful wife, whose hair had turned grey from eight sad and tiring months in prison after he had been killed.

Yet, as happens in times of great trouble, the days passed both slowly and quickly. A new court in Paris and forty or fifty thousand other courts all over the country, all used the law of fear. If people feared someone, then that person's life and freedom was in danger. Any good and innocent person could be handed over to the court. The prisons filled with such people, who had done no wrong, and who had no way of knowing what their rights were. This quickly became the way things were done all over the country, and before many weeks it was like it had always been done this way. Above it all, one ugly shape was seen so much that it was like it had been there from the start of time. It was the shape of the sharp female called Guillotine.

It became the target of many jokes. It was said to be the answer for head pains, a way to stop hair from turning grey, and the country's razor. To kiss Guillotine was to put your head in a little opening on it and sneeze into the bag that was used to catch it. It was the sign of a better class of people, better than the cross. Some people threw out their crosses, to wear a guillotine shape around their necks. People clearly worshipped it more than the cross.

It was used to cut off so many heads that the machine and the ground around it was an awful red. It could be taken to pieces and put back together again, like a toy for a young devil. It stopped the mouths of great speakers, cut down powerful leaders, and put an end to what had been beautiful and good. In one morning the heads of twenty-two government leaders (one of them already dead) were cut off in as many minutes. The name of Samson, the great strong man of the Old Testament, now went to whoever had the job of helping Guillotine do her work. Armed with that weapon he was stronger than Samson, and blinder too, as he destroyed the gates to God every day.

In with these awful happenings and the blood that was a part of them, Doctor Manette walked with a clear plan, confident of his power, and always moving wisely toward his target, never believing that he would not be able to save Lucie's husband at last. But the force of the ocean of time was so strong and deep that Charles stayed for one year and three months in prison while the Doctor worked on his plan. By that December month, the war had become so evil that the rivers of South France carried the bodies of people forced to die in them each night, and prisoners were lined up to be shot under the winter sun. But the Doctor still walked through it all in hope of finishing his plan. No man became better known in Paris at that time, and no man in a stranger job. He said nothing, but worked in hospitals and prisons, using his art equally to help the killers and the ones they tried to kill. He was a man apart from both sides. In exercising his abilities, the story of his eighteen years in the old prison put him above all those around him. No one thought to question him any more than they would a spirit brought back to life (as he had been eighteen years earlier) who was now working with people who had never been where he had been.

5. The Woodcutter

A year and three months. For all that time, Lucie was never sure, from hour to hour, that the guillotine would not cut off her husband's head the next day. Every day, through the stone streets, the carts, full of people being taken to be killed, bumped and shook. Lovely girls, beautiful women, with brown hair, black hair, and grey; young men; strong men and older men; rich and poor; all of them red wine for Guillotine, each day they were brought out into the light from the dark rooms under the ground in those awful prisons, and each day they were carried to her through the streets, to fill her thirst for blood. Free, equal brothers; or death. But the last is the easiest to give, oh Guillotine!

If the surprise of the awful action against her husband, and the turning wheels of time had made the Doctor's daughter stop what she was doing and wait sadly for her husband to return, she would have been no different from many others at that time. But from the time when she had taken the white head of her father to her heart in the little room where she first met him, she had always been true to what she believed to be her job, first to her father and then to her husband. And she was truest to her job when things were worst, as is always the case with quietly good people.

As soon as she was set up in her new rooms, and her father was busy doing his rounds as a doctor, she planned things in their little house just as she would have done if her husband had been there. There was a set time and place for everything. She taught little Lucie as she would have if they had been in their English home. About the only way one could know what she was going through were little actions she did when she believed he would be freed soon (like putting his chair and his books to the side), and a serious prayer at night for one special prisoner of the many sad souls in prison and living under the shadow of death at that time.

She did not change much in the way she looked. The dark dresses that she and her child were wearing to show their sadness were still as neat and clean as the lighter colours of happier days. She lost colour from her face, and the old serious look was with her at all times now; but apart from that, she was still beautiful and in control of herself. Some nights, after kissing her father, she would let out the tears she had been holding back all day, and would say that her only hope under heaven was in him. He always answered strongly: "Nothing can happen to Charles without me knowing about it, and I know that I can save him, Lucie."

They had not been waiting for many weeks when her father said to her, on coming home one night:

"My love, there is a window high up in the prison, that Charles can sometimes see out through at three in the afternoon. When he can get to it, which isn't often, he thinks he might be able to see you in