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

of the man who had opened the door earlier), more or less hiding in a corner of the room. The house was wet and run down, with poor furniture. Someone had been staying there, but not for very long. Thick old curtains had been nailed over the windows, to stop some of the sound from her shouting. She did not stop her shouting, or the cry, "My husband, my father, and my brother!" before counting up to twelve, and then "Quiet!" Her movements were so wild that I left on the cloths that were holding her arms; but I did look at them to be sure they were not hurting her. The only help I could give was that my hand on the woman's breast had the effect of stopping her movements for a few minutes at a time. It had no effect on the cries; no clock could be more measured than her cries.

Because I believed that my hand had a good effect, I stayed by the side of the bed for half an hour, with the two brothers looking on, before the older one said:

"There is another person you should see."

I was surprised, and I asked, "Is it serious?"

"You had better see," he answered, without much thought, and he picked up a light.

* * * *

The other person was lying in a back room, on the other side of an open room over the barn where the horses were kept. Straw was kept there, piles of sticks for making fires, and a pile of apples in some sand. I had to go through this room to reach the other. I remember it all clearly and fully. Writing this now, near the end of the tenth year that I have been in this prison, I can see it all now as I saw it that night.

On some straw on the floor, with a pillow thrown under his head, lay a good looking poor boy -- a boy of not more than seventeen. He was on his back, with his teeth biting hard against each other. His right hand was holding strongly to his chest, and his angry eyes looked at the roof. I could not see where he had been hurt, before I went down on one knee over him; but then I saw that he was dying from having been stabbed by something with a sharp point.

"I am a doctor, my poor man," I said. "Let me look at it."

"I do not want it looked at," he answered. "Don't touch it."

It was under his hand, and I helped him to relax enough to move his hand away. It came from a sword, received from twenty to twenty-four hours before, but even if I had been there when it first happened, I would not have been able to save him. He was dying quickly. But as I looked at the older brother, I saw him looking down at this good-looking boy whose life was leaving him, as if he was looking at a dying bird or rabbit, but not like he was looking at another person like himself.

"How did this happen, sir?” I asked.

"He's a crazy young dog! A servant of the lowest class! He forced my brother into a fight, and he has fallen by my brother's sword, like a man."

There was no touch of kindness, sadness, or feeling as from one person to another in this answer. The speaker seemed to feel bad that this animal was dying there and in that way, and he believed it would have been better if he had died more in the way that others of his low class died; but he could not feel anything kind for the boy or for his death.

The boy's eyes had slowly moved to the brother and they now slowly moved to me.

"Doctor, they are very proud, these rich men; but we dogs are proud too at times. They take from us; they use us; they hit us, and kill us; but we have a little pride left, at times. She... Have you seen her, Doctor?"

The shouts and crying could be heard there, but not as loudly, because of the distance. He talked about the cries as if she was there with him in the room.

I said, "I have seen her."

"She is my sister, Doctor. They have done for years the awful things they are free to do, these rich men, to the good and holy spirit of our sisters. But our women are good girls. I know it, and I have heard my father say so. She was a good girl. She was to marry a good young man too, another one of his workers. We are all his workers... for that man who stands there. The other one is his brother. They are the worst of a bad class."

It was very difficult for the boy to speak, but his spirit was very strong, and helped him to go on.

"We were robbed by that man who stands there, as all we poor dogs are by those who think they are better than us: taxed without mercy, forced to work without pay, forced to use his windmill if we want to make flour, forced to feed dozens of his birds from what little food we can grow (but never free to have birds of our own), robbed from in every way until even if we were lucky enough to have a little meat, we had to eat it in fear, with the door locked and the windows closed, so his people would not see it and take it from us. We were so robbed and hunted, and were made so poor that our father told us it was an awful thing to bring a child into the world, and that we should most pray that our women might not be able to have children, so that our class could die out!"

I had never before seen a poor person opening up with all that they felt, like this. It was like a fire exploding from inside him. I knew that the poor must not be happy with things, but I had never seen it come out so into the open until I saw it in that dying boy.

"Still, Doctor, my sister married. The poor man was sick when she married him, but she married him so that he could come and live in our little house... our dog house, as that man would call it. She had not been married many weeks when that man's brother saw her and wanted her. He asked that man there to let him use her for a while, for her husband was nothing in their eyes. He was happy to help his brother, but my sister was a good and clean woman, and she hated his brother as much as I do. So what do you think they did to make her husband agree to their plan?"

The boy's eyes, which were looking into mine, slowly turned to the one looking at us, and I saw in the two faces that everything he said was true. I can see those opposite kinds of pride facing each other, even now, here in this prison: the rich man's pride, without feeling or interest; and the poor man's deep emotion, in wanting to punish those who had walked on him and his family.

"You know, Doctor, these high class people can, by law, tie us dogs to wagons and force us to pull them. They did that to him. You know they can keep us in their yards all night, quieting the frogs, so their high class sleep will not be troubled by the noise. They kept him out in the cold at night, and forced him back into the wagon ropes in the day. But he did not give in. No! Taken out of the wagon ropes one day at noon, to eat -- if he could find food -- he sobbed twelve times, once for every hit of the bell, and he died on her breast."

The only thing keeping the boy alive was how much he wanted to tell his story. He forced back the shadows of death, and he squeezed his right hand tighter over the hole in his chest.

"Then with agreement, and even help, from that man, his brother took her away to be used for his cruel games. They agreed to it even after learning what I know she must have told his brother, and what you will soon learn if you have not already learned it. I saw her pass me on the road. When I took the news home, our father's heart broke before he had time to speak even one of the words that filled it. I took my young sister (for I have another) to a place where this man could not reach her, and where she will, at least, never be his slave. Then I followed the brother here. Last night I climbed in. I may be a poor dog, but I had a sword in my hand. Where is the window? It was somewhere here."

The room was growing dark in his eyes; the world was closing in around him. I looked around and could see from the hat on the floor that there had been a fight.

"She heard me and ran in. I told her not to come near us until he was dead. He came in and first threw some pieces of money to me; then he hit me with a whip. I may be a poor dog, but I hit at him well enough to make him pull out his sword. Let him break into as many pieces as he likes, the sword that he dirtied with my low class blood. He pulled out his sword, and used it to the best of his ability to keep from being killed by me."

A short time before I had seen the broken pieces of a sword, lying in the straw. It was the weapon of a rich man. In another place was an old sword that seemed to have been a soldier's.

"Now, lift me up, Doctor. Lift me up. Where is he?"

"He is not here," I said, holding the boy up and thinking that he was talking about the brother.

"He! Proud as these rich people are, he is afraid to see me. Where is the man who was here? Turn my face toward him."

I did so, lifting the boy's head against my knee. But filled, for a while, with surprising strength, he lifted himself all the way up, forcing me to stand up too, if I was to still help him.

"Marquis," said the boy, who was turned toward him, with his eyes opened wide and his right hand lifted, "in the days when all these things are to be answered for, I call on you and your family, to the last of your bad class, to answer for them. I mark this cross of blood on you, as a sign that I do it. In the days when all these things are to be answered for, I call your brother, the worst of the bad class, to answer for them apart from you. I mark this cross of blood on him, as a sign that I do it."

Twice he put his hand to the hole in his chest. With a finger he made a cross in the air, then stopped for a second, his finger still lifted. As it dropped he dropped with it, and I put him down, dead.

***

When I returned to the young woman, I found her acting crazily in the same pattern of cries that she had been following before. I knew that this could go on for many hours, and that it could easily end in her dying.

I repeated the medicines that I had given her, and I sat by the side of the bed until well into the night. She never changed the high loud shouts, never changed the pattern of her words or stopped saying them clearly. They were always, "My husband, my father, and my brother! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Quiet!"

This went on for twenty-six hours from the time when I first saw her. I had come and left twice, and was again sitting by her when she started to show signs of stopping. I did what I could to help her, and soon she fainted and lay like she was dead.

It was like the wind and rain had stopped at last, after a long and awful storm. I took the cloths off her arms and called the servant woman to help me make her body comfortable, and to smooth out the dress that she was wearing, for it had a tear in it. It was then that I learned that a baby had started to grow in her, and it was then that I lost what little hope I had had of her pulling through.

"Is she dead?” asked the Marquis whom I will still