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

call the older brother, coming into the room from having been out riding his horse.

"Not dead," said I, "but close to it."

"What strength there is in their low class bodies!" he said, looking down at her with some interest.

"There is strength enough.” I answered him, "to make us afraid when one is so very sad and so without hope."

First he laughed at my words, and then he made an angry face. He moved a chair with his foot near to mine, told the servant woman to leave, and said in a quiet voice:

"Doctor, finding my brother in this trouble with the country people, I said that your help should be asked for. Many people think well of you, and, as a young man with a good future ahead of you, you must know what is best for you. The things that you see here are things to be seen, but not spoken of."

I listened to the woman's breathing and tried not to answer.

"Will you be so kind as to answer me, Doctor?"

"Sir," said I, "in my job what people say to me when I am helping them should always be between only me and them.” I was careful with my answer, because I was worried about what I had seen and heard.

Her breathing was so difficult to see that I carefully felt for movement in her heart. She was only just alive. Turning around as I returned to my chair, I found both of the brothers looking at me.

****

It is difficult for me to write, because it is so cold and because I'm afraid they'll find me and lock me in a room under the ground where there is no light at all. I must finish this quickly. There is no confusion in what I am saying. I clearly remember every little thing and every word that was spoken between me and those brothers.

She stayed alive for a week. Toward the end, I could understand a few words that she said to me, by putting my ear close to her lips. She asked me where she was, and I told her; who I was, and I told her. It was a waste of time that I asked her for her family name. She weakly shook her head on the pillow, and kept her secret, as the boy had done.

I had not been able to question her before I told the brothers she was dying and would not live another day. Before that, she never saw anyone but the servant woman and myself, and one or the other of them was always sitting behind the curtain at the head of the bed when I was there. But when it was time for her to die, they stopped worrying about me talking to her, as if -- as I gave some thought to it at the time -- I was going to die with her.

I always knew that it deeply hurt their pride that the younger brother (as I call him) had taken the trouble to fight with a servant, and with one who was little more than a child at that. Their only worry was that it would make them look weak in the eyes of others. Each time the younger brother looked at me, I could see in his eyes that he did not like me at all, because I knew what I had learned from the boy. He was smoother with his words than the older brother; and I could see this too. But I was a problem in the mind of the older brother too.

The young woman died two hours before midnight, at a time (by my watch) almost to the minute, of when I had first seen her. I was alone with her when her sad young head fell slowly to the side, and all the things that had hurt her could hurt her no more.

The brothers were waiting in a room below us, wanting to hurry off on a ride. I had heard them when only I was at the side of the bed, hitting their heavy shoes with their riding whips, and walking up and down.

"Is she dead at last?” asked the older one when I went in.

"She is dead," said I.

"Good for you, my brother," he said as he turned around.

He had earlier tried to give me money, but I had put off taking it. He now gave me a roll of gold coins. I took it from his hand, and put it on the table. I had been thinking about this and planned not to take anything from them.

"Please forgive me," I said. "But, because of what has happened, no."

They looked at each other, but dropped their heads to me as I dropped mine to them, and we separated without another word

****

I am tired, tired, tired from all that I am going through. I cannot even read what I have written with this thin hand.

Early in the morning, the roll of gold coins was left at my door in a little box, with my name on it. From the start I had worried about what I should do. I now planned to write to the government, telling about the two people I had been asked to care for, and where they were found -- in effect, telling the whole story. I knew how much control the high class people had with the government, and so I believed no action would be taken; but I wanted to be clear in my own mind that I had done what I could. I told no one, not even my wife, about what had happened. I planned to make this clear in my letter. I was not afraid of the danger that I was facing, but I knew that others could be in danger if they knew what I knew.

I was very busy that day, and did not finish my letter that night. I was up very early the next morning to finish it. It was the last day of the year. The letter was there on the table when I was told that a woman had come to see me.

****

It is getting harder and harder to finish this letter. It is so cold and dark, my mind is so slow, and the dark feelings around me are so awful.

The woman was young, interesting to talk to, and good looking, but she did not have long to live. She was very worried. She told me that she was the wife of the Marquis Evremonde. I put the name the boy used for the older brother and the letter on the expensive scarf together with this, and it was easy to see that she was talking about the same man that I had been with.

I can remember what we said, but I cannot write them here. I think I am being watched more closely now, and I never know when someone may come to the door.

She knew some of the information about the cruel story of the girl and her brother, and some of the information she had worked out for herself. She knew of her husband’s part in it, and about him sending for me. She did not know that the girl was dead. Her hope had been to secretly show her love as one woman to another. Her hope had been to stop God from being angry with a family that had been very cruel to others for a long time.

She believed that the girl had a younger sister who was still alive, and she wanted most to help that sister. I could tell her nothing but that there was such a sister; I knew nothing more than that. Her reason for coming and trusting me had been the hope that I could tell her the name of the girl and where she lives. But to this awful hour I do not know either.

****

I am running out of paper. One was taken from me yesterday with a warning. I must finish my letter today.

She was a good, kind woman, and she was not happy with her husband. How could she be! Her husband’s brother did not trust her and did not like her, and he did what he could to hurt her. She was afraid of him, and afraid of her husband too. When I walked her out the door, I found she had a child, a beautiful boy between two and three years old, in her coach.

“For him, Doctor,” she said, pointing to him in tears, “I want to make up for what has happened. He will never be happy with being part of this family if I do not. I have a feeling that if nothing can be done to pay for what has happened, one day he will have to pay for it. What I have left to call my own -- it is little more than the price of some jewelry -- I will make it the first job that he must do when he is able, in the name of his dead mother's love, to give this to the family of that girl, if the sister can be found."

She kissed the boy, and said, touching him softly, "It is for your own good. You will do it, won't you, Charles?” The child answered her bravely, "Yes!" I kissed her hand, and she took him in her arms and went away hugging him. I never saw her again.

Because she gave me her husband's name, believing that I already knew it, I did not give his name in my letter. I closed it, and not trusting anyone else to carry it for me, I took it to the government myself that day.

That night, the last night of the year, toward nine o'clock, a man dressed in black came to my gate, asking to see me, and he secretly followed my servant, a young boy named Ernest Defarge, up the steps when he came to tell me. When my servant came into the room where I was sitting with my wife -- Oh, my wife, the love of my life! My beautiful young English wife! -- we saw the man, who should have been out at the gate, standing quietly behind him.

He said there was a serious case that I needed to see. It would not take long, and he had a coach waiting for me.

It brought me here, to my death. When I was away from the house, a black scarf was tied tightly over my mouth from behind, and my arms were tied. The two brothers crossed the road from a dark corner, and showed that it was me with a movement of their hands. The Marquis took the letter I had written out of his pocket, showed it to me, and burned it in the flame from the lantern he was holding, then put out the last of the fire with his foot.

Not one word was said. I was brought here. I was brought to this living death.

If it had pleased God to put it in the hard heart of either of the brothers, in all these awful years, to send me any news from my sweet wife -- so much as to let me know if she was alive or dead -- I might have believed that he had not quite given up hope for them. But now, I believe that the mark of the red cross is death to them, and that they have no part in his mercy. Not to them, and not to any of their children, to the end of that family. I, Alexander Manette, sad prisoner, do this last night of the year 1767, in my great pain, mark them as evil until the time when they must give an answer for all these things. I mark them as evil before heaven and earth.

_______________

An awful noise came from the crowd after the reading of this letter. A sound of hunger and emotion that had no clear meaning apart from blood. The story called up the deepest feelings of hate at the time, and there was not a head in the country that they would not have dropped before it.

There was little need for that court and for that crowd to ask why the Defarges had not shown the papers before this. There was little need to show that this hated family name had long been marked by Saint Antoine and was knitted into their death list. No man has ever walked the earth whose good acts and emotions would have protected him in that place on that day against such a story.

And it was even worse for the man who was to die for it that the one who pointed him out was a countryman who everyone knew and loved; he was his own close friend; and he was the father of his wife. One of the crazy things that people from all countries and all times cry out for are great shows of service to the country, where one