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

happen until after tomorrow, not until at least two or three days after, and I think it would be more like a week. You know that people can be killed just for crying over someone who is being killed by the guillotine. She and her father will surely be guilty of that, and this woman (whose evil words against others have been so strong for so long that there are not enough words for telling of it) would wait to add that to her case against them, so she can be twice as sure of having them killed. Do you follow me?"

"So closely and with so much confidence in the truth of what you are saying that for now I see it as even more important than this other problem," he said, touching the back of the Doctor's chair.

"You have money, and you can pay for travel to the border as quickly as the trip can be made. Plans for your own trip back to England have been made for some days now. Early tomorrow, get your horses together, so that they will be ready to leave at two in the afternoon."

"It'll be done!"

Sydney Carton's way was so strong and full of spirit, that enthusiasm for it moved from him to Mr. Lorry, making the older man think and act like he was young again.

"You have a good heart. Did I tell you that there is no better person for this job? Tell her tonight about the danger to herself, her child, and her father. Don't forget the child and father, because she would gladly lay her own head down beside her husband's.” His voice shook a little as he said this, but then he went on. "For her child and her father, make it clear to her that she must leave Paris with them at that time. Tell her that it was her husband's last act to set it up for them. Tell her that there is more resting on this than she has the confidence to hope for or believe. Do you think that her father, even in his sad spirit at the present, will go along with what she says?"

"I am sure of it."

"I thought so. Quietly and slowly bring everyone together here in the yard, even to the point of you taking your own seat in the coach. Then, the second I come to you, take me in and drive away."

"Do I understand that I should wait for you at all costs?"

"You have my pass in your hand with the others, you know, so please do save my place. Do not wait for anything else, only for me to be in my seat, and then off to England!"

"So," said Mr. Lorry, grabbing his confident, strong hand, "it does not all rest on one old man. I will have a young enthusiastic man at my side."

"With God's help you will! Promise me seriously that nothing will make you change the plans that we have now agreed on with one another."

"Nothing, Carton."

"Remember these words tomorrow: If you change the plan, or if you are too slow in following it -- for any reason -- no lives can be saved, and many lives will be lost."

"I will remember them. I hope to do my part faithfully."

"And I hope to do mine. Now, goodbye!"

He said it with a serious smile, and he even put the old man's hand to his lips, but he did not leave just then. Instead, he helped to lift the man who was sitting in front of the dying fire enough to get a coat and hat on him, and to tempt him to leave the house by saying that they would go together to find where the bench and his work were hiding, as he was still begging to find them. He walked on one side of the old man, protecting him on the way to the yard of the house where that other sad heart was waiting through the awful night. He was, himself, very happy at that time as he thought about the time when he had opened his own empty heart to her. He went into the yard and stayed there alone for a few minutes, looking up at the light in the window of her room. Before he went away, he breathed a blessing toward it, and a last goodbye.

13. Fifty-Two

In the black prison by the court, those who were to be killed were waiting for their death. Their number was the same as the number of weeks in a year. Fifty-two were to roll that afternoon on the waves of the city to the eternal ocean. Even before they had left their rooms, new people were being lined up to take their places; before their blood ran into the blood that was poured out yesterday, the blood that was to mix with theirs tomorrow was already being set apart.

Fifty-two people were being counted out. From the seventy-year-old land owner, whose wealth could not buy his life, to the twenty-year-old dressmaker who had not been protected by being poor either. Sicknesses, growing out of things that people do or that they don't do, will come to people of all classes; and the awful confusion about what is right that came from living for many years under a cruel and selfish government of hate, had the effect of hurting people from all classes too.

Charles Darnay, alone in his prison room, had kept himself going without trying to hide from the truth that he had seen in the court. In every line of the letter they had read out at the court, he could hear how his life was going to end. He knew quite well that no action from a person here or a person there was going to change what was the will of millions of people.

But it was not easy, with the face of his loved wife still clear in his mind, to think about what was ahead for him. It was very difficult to let loose of the strong hold that he had on life. Little by little he could open one fist, but then the other one would squeeze even more tightly; and when he would work on opening that hand, then the first hand would close again. His mind was also working hard against letting go, because it seemed selfish for him to stop thinking about his wife and child, who would have to live after him.

But all of this was only how he thought at first. Before long, other thoughts came to make him stronger. He knew he had done nothing wrong, and he knew there were many other innocent people who were going through the same thing. Next followed the thought that it would be easier for those he loved if he could be strong and at peace about what he was going to face. So, by steps, he moved to a spirit that was more relaxed, that could think much higher thoughts, and that could find strength from above.

Before it was yet fully dark, on the night before he was to die, he had come this far in his thinking about death. He had been able to buy pen and paper and a light, so he sat down to write until the prisoners would be forced to put out their lights.

He wrote a long letter to Lucie, telling her that he had never heard of her father being in prison until she had told him of it, and he did not know about the awful things his father and uncle had done until that paper was read out in the court. He had already told her that he could not tell her his real last name because it was the one thing her father had asked him not to do if he wanted to marry her, and it was now clear to both of them why he had asked it. He asked her, for the good of her father, never to ask if he had remembered the secret papers in the prison that Sunday under the big tree in the yard when he heard the story about the prison tower in London. If he had remembered it, he would have surely believed that it had been destroyed along with the prison, because it was not listed with other things owned by prisoners of the past that had been found there; and that list had been made known to all the world. He begged her -- but added that he knew he did not need to -- to make her father's pain easier by using every kindness she could think of to show him that he had done nothing wrong, but had done everything he could for the two of them. Next to remembering his own love for her, and fighting to overcome the sadness she was feeling by loving their sweet child, he begged her, because they would all meet in heaven, to be kind to her father.

To her father himself he wrote much the same things, but he added that he was putting his wife and child into the old man's care. He said this very strongly, with the hope that it would pull him out of any dangerous feelings he might be having to return to the confusion that had been his in the past.

To Mr. Lorry he gave the job of helping all of them, and he talked of business needs for the family. When he finished with that, adding many words of thanks and warm love as a friend, he was finished. He never thought to write to Carton. His mind was so full of the others that he never once thought of him.

He had time to finish these letters before the lights were put out. When he lay down on his straw bed, he believed that he had finished with this world.

But it called him back in his sleep, and showed itself in beautiful ways. Free and happy (for no clear reason), he was back in the old house in Soho (but it was nothing like the real house), with Lucie again. She told him it was all a dream, and that he had never gone away. There was a break in the dream and then another one. In this one, he had died and come back to her, dead and at peace, yet there was no difference in him. Another break without any dream, and then he was awake in the early morning light, not knowing where he was or what had happened, until it came into his mind, "This is the day of my death!"

This is how he had passed the hours leading up to the day when the fifty-two heads were to fall. And now, while he was at peace, hoping that he could quietly and bravely meet the end, his mind started going over things again, and it was difficult to control his thoughts.

He had never seen the instrument that would be used to end his life. How high it was from the ground, how many steps it had, where he was to stand, how he would be touched, if the hands that touched him would be red with blood, which way his face would be turned, if he would be first, or maybe last: These and many questions like them -- in no way coming because he wanted to think about them -- forced their way into his mind over and over again. They were not coming from fear; he did not feel that he was afraid. They seemed to come from a strange interest in knowing what he should do when the time came... an interest that was far too big for the short time that it would take in the end. This interest was more like some strange spirit inside of him than it was like his own spirit.

The hours went on as he walked up and down in his little room, listening to the clock sound out the hours that he would never hear again. Nine gone forever, ten gone forever, eleven gone forever, twelve coming up. After a hard fight with the latest foolish thoughts that had come into his head, he found a way to stop them. He walked up and down, softly saying their names to himself. The worst part of the fight was over. He could walk up and down, free from thoughts that were not important, by praying for himself and for them.

Twelve gone forever.

He had been told that the last hour would be at three o'clock, and he knew they would call for him sometime before that, because the carts moved heavily and slowly through the streets. So he planned to keep two o'clock before his mind as the hour when he needed to be strong. That way he could use the last hour to help others to be strong.

Walking up and down with his arms folded on his chest, he was a very different man from the prisoner who had walked up and down at La Force.