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

in the way you have seen, to a few people whom I choose."

"Is it right to do that?"

"I think it is right."

"Who are the few people, and how do you choose them?"

"I choose them as real men, men with the same name as me... Jack. I choose men who I think will be better off for seeing. That is enough reason for me. You're English; you would not understand. Wait here for a minute."

With a hand out to hold them back, he leaned over to look through a hole in the wall himself. Soon he lifted his head and knocked two or three times on the door, for no other reason than to say that he was there. Then he pulled the key across the door three or four times for the same reason, before putting it in the lock and turning it as loudly as he could.

The door opened slowly into the room. Defarge looked in and said something. A weak voice answered something. Little more than a word could have been said by either.

Mr. Defarge looked back over his shoulder and made a movement to call them in. Mr. Lorry put his arm strongly around the daughter, to help her, because he had the feeling that she was about to faint.

"A... a... a business!" he said, with a tear on his cheek that was not of business. "Come in. Come in."

"I am not afraid of it," she answered, shaking.

"Of it? Of what?"

"I mean of him. Of my father."

Between Defarge calling them in and Miss Manette being so worried, Mr. Lorry did not know what to do. So he pulled the arm that was shaking on his shoulder, over his neck, and half lifted the girl into the room. He put her down just inside the door, where she stood holding onto him in fear.

Defarge pulled the key out of the lock, closed the door, and then locked the door again from the inside. He did it all with as much noise as he could make of it. Then he walked across the room to where the window was and turned around to face the others.

The room had been a place for firewood in the past, and the window was more of a door in the roof than a window, with a rope and timbers to be used for lifting things from the street below. There was no glass in it, and it opened in two halves. To keep out the cold, one half was locked at all times. The other was only open a very little. So little light was coming through that opening that it was difficult, on first coming into the room, to see anything. Only after living there for a long time would anyone be able to do any work that needed good eyes. Yet work of that kind was being done in that room even now; for, with his back toward the door and his face toward the window, where the wine shop owner stood looking at him, a white-haired man sat on a low bench, leaning forward and was very busily making shoes.

6. The Shoemaker

"Good day!" said Mr. Defarge, looking down at the white head that was bending over his shoemaking.

The head lifted for a second and answered with a quiet voice, like he was far away, "Good day!"

"I see you are still hard at work."

After some time, the head lifted again, and the voice said, "Yes. I am working.” This time two tired eyes looked at Defarge before the face dropped again.

The weakness of the voice was both sad and awful. Having worked hard in prison for many years had not helped the man physically, but it was not a physical weakness that was so sad about his voice. The awful truth was that the weakness of his voice had come from being alone for so long. At some point, he had just stopped using it. When words came out, it was like they had been said long ago, and the people in that room were just hearing the last dying sounds of them. There was so little life in those words that they were like a once beautiful colour that has been washed away, leaving only a very weak mark where it had been. It was so low that it was like it was coming from under the ground. And the feeling carried across in those words was of one who had lost all hope. They were like the last words of a lost traveller, dying from hunger away from all friends and family.

A few minutes passed without a sound, as the man went on working. Then the tired eyes looked up again, but not with any interest. It was like he had forgotten that anyone was there, and then he saw again that someone was in front of him.

"I want," said Defarge, who had not stopped looking at the shoemaker, "to let in a little more light. Can you take a little more?"

The shoemaker stopped working, looked at the floor on each side of him, like he was listening for something, and then looked up at the speaker.

"What did you say?"

"Can you take a little more light?"

"I must take it if you choose to let it in.” He said the second word with only the smallest difference to the other words.

The half-door was opened a little more, bringing in a wider line of light, and showing a half-finished shoe on the shoemaker's knees. A few tools and some pieces of leather were at his feet and on the bench. He had a white beard, roughly cut but not very long, a thin, empty face, and surprisingly bright eyes. Any eyes would look big in such an empty face, but this man's eyes were big to start with, and so they looked even bigger now. His yellow shirt was open at the throat, showing his body to be old and thin. He and the rags he was wearing, from his long loose socks to his long, open robe, were all of the same colour now, which is the weak yellow of a dried goat's skin when it is used for paper.

He had put a hand up between his eyes and the light, and one could almost see the light coming through it. He sat for a time like that, with an empty look in his eyes. Each time he looked at the man in front of him, he would first look down at the floor on each side of himself, like he was trying to find where the voice was coming from. And his talking was the same. He would look around and forget what it was that he was going to say.

"Will you finish those shoes today?” asked Defarge, moving his arm to call Mr. Lorry forward.

"What did you say?"

"Do you plan to finish those shoes today?"

"I can't say what I plan. I may, but I don't know."

The question made him remember his work, and return to it.

Mr. Lorry came quietly forward, leaving the daughter by the door. When he had been standing for a minute or two beside Defarge, the shoemaker looked up. He showed no surprise at seeing another person there, but the shaking fingers of one hand went to his lips as he looked (His lips and his nails were of the same grey colour.) and then his hand dropped back to working on the shoe.

"You see, you have a visitor," Mr. Defarge said.

"What did you say?"

"Here is a visitor."

Still holding the shoe, the shoemaker looked up.

"Come!" said Defarge. "Here is a man who knows a well-made shoe when he sees one. Show him that shoe you are working on. Take it, sir."

Mr. Lorry took the shoe in his hand.

"Tell him what kind of shoe it is, and the maker's name."

There was a long wait before the shoemaker answered.

"I cannot remember what it was you asked me. What did you say?"

"I said, could you tell this man something about the shoe?"

"It is a woman's shoe. A young woman's walking shoe. It is what they wear now, but I have not seen them wearing it. I was given a pattern for it.” He looked at the shoe with a touch of pride.

"And the maker's name?” asked Defarge.

Now that he had no work to hold, the old man put the fist of his right hand in the bowl of his left, and then the fist of the left in the bowl of the right, and then passed a hand across his beard. He repeated this over and over without a break. Trying to keep his interest in what was happening was like trying to wake a very weak person from a faint, or to get the last few words from a dying man.

"Did you ask me for my name?”

"Yes, I truly did."

"One hundred and five, North Tower.

"Is that all?"

"One hundred and five, North Tower."

With a tired sound, between a groan and a sad breathing out, he returned to work, until this time Mr. Lorry spoke, looking straight at him as he asked, "Was shoemaking always your job?"

His tired eyes turned to Defarge, like he was asking Defarge to answer for him. When Defarge did not help him, he looked at the ground and then back to the questioner.

"It was not always my job? No, it was not. I learned it here, teaching myself. I asked if I could..."

He fell away again, for quite some time, doing those same movements with his hands all the while. His eyes came slowly back, at last, to the face from which they had left. When they landed on it, he jumped a little and started talking again, like one waking from a sleep and starting to talk about what they did the night before.

"I asked them to let me teach myself. It was a long time coming, but I have been making shoes from that time to now."

As he held his hand out for the shoe that had been taken from him, Mr. Lorry said, still looking straight into his face, "Mr. Manette, do you remember nothing of me?"

The shoe dropped to the ground, and he sat looking at the questioner.

"Mr. Manette.” Mr. Lorry put his hand on Defarge's arm. "Do you remember nothing of this man? Look at him. Look at me. Can you not remember an old banker? Some old business? An old servant? Something from the past, Mr. Manette?"

As the man who had been a prisoner for so many years sat looking, from Mr. Lorry to Mr. Defarge, some long covered pieces of his mind slowly forced themselves through the black fog that covered him. The fog returned and the light soon left his face, but it had been there.

Something like this was also happening on the beautiful young face of the girl who had been moving along the wall to a place where she could see him. She was standing there now, reaching out with hands that before had been lifted only in fear. Now she reached out in love, wanting to hold that ghost-like face to her breast, and to love it back to life and hope.

Darkness took the place of the light that had touched Mr. Manette for a few seconds. He became less interested in the others and then his eyes went looking for the floor again, before picking up the shoe and returning to work.

"Could you see who he was?” Defarge asked in a whisper.

"Yes, for a second," Mr. Lorry answered. "At first I thought he was too far gone, but I have clearly seen for just one second, the face that I once knew so well. But say no more. Let us move back. Say no more."

His daughter had moved away from the wall, and was very near the bench on which he sat. There was something awful about him showing such interest in his work that he did not even know she was there. She was so close that she could have touched him.

Not a word was said. Not a sound was made. She stood there beside him like a ghost, and he leaned over his work.

It happened, after some time, that he needed to change the instrument in his hand for a shoemaker's knife. It was on the side of him that was opposite to where she stood, so he picked it up without seeing her. But when he turned back to his work, he saw the bottom of her dress out of the corner of his eye. He looked up and saw her face. The other men started to move forward, but she stopped them with a movement of her hand. She had no reason to be afraid of him hurting her with the knife, but that was what the others had feared.

He looked up in fear. His lips started to shape words, but no sound came out. Little by little he was able to say, "What is this?"

With tears running down her face, she put her hands to her lips and kissed them to him. Then she put them together over her heart, as she put his head there.

"You are not the prison guard's daughter?”

"No."

"Who are you?"

Not yet trusting her