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

enough to know that she was not having the effect that she wanted to have.

"Stupid pig-like woman!" said Madam Defarge with an angry look on her face. "I take no answer from you. I will see her. You tell her that, or move out of the way of the door and let me go to her!" She said this with an angry movement of her right arm.

"I never thought," said Miss Pross, "that I would ever want to understand your stupid language; but I would give all that I have, apart from the clothes I'm wearing, to know if you know any part of the truth about what has happened here."

They both kept their eyes fixed on the other. Madam Defarge had not moved from where she stood when Miss Pross first saw her; but now she came forward one step.

"I am from England," said Miss Pross. "I have no other hope. I don't care two cents for myself. I know that the longer I keep you here, the greater hope there is for my Ladybird. I will not leave enough dark hair on your head to grab if you put a finger on me!"

So Miss Pross said, with a shake of her head and a sharp look in her eye after every line, breathing only at the end of the line. So said Miss Pross, who had never hit anyone in her life.

Her deep emotions made her brave, but tears came with them. This was a kind of confidence that Madam Defarge knew so little of that she understood the tears to mean she was weak. "Ha, ha!" she laughed. "You poor animal! What are you worth! I'll talk to the Doctor.” She lifted her voice and called out, "Countryman Doctor! Wife of Evremonde! Child of Evremonde! Anyone but this crazy woman, give an answer to Countrywoman Defarge!"

It may have been because there was no answer, or something in the look on Miss Pross's face, or just a thought in her own head apart from the other two, but something whispered to Madam Defarge that they were gone. She opened three of the doors quickly and looked in.

"Those rooms are all in a mess. Things have been put away quickly. There are things on the floor. There is no one in that room behind you! Let me look."

"Never!" said Miss Pross, who understood the shout as perfectly as Madam Defarge understood the answer.

"If they are not in that room, they are gone, and can be followed and brought back," said Madam Defarge to herself.

"As long as you don't know for sure if they're in that room, you won't know what to do," said Miss Pross to herself. "And you won't know it if I can stop you from knowing it. But knowing or not knowing, you won't leave here while I can hold you."

"I've lived on the streets from the start, and nothing has stopped me. I'll tear you to pieces, if need be, to move you away from that door," said Madam Defarge.

"We are alone at the top of a high house in a yard that is away from other houses. No one will hear us. And I pray for strength to keep you here, for every minute you are here is worth a hundred thousand pounds to my love," said Miss Pross.

Madam Defarge moved toward the door. Miss Pross, without thinking at the time, grabbed her around the waist with both her arms and held her tight. Hitting and kicking was not going to help Madam Defarge. Miss Pross, using the powerful hold of love, always so much stronger than hate, held her tight, and even lifted her from the floor in the fight that they had. The two hands of Madam Defarge hit and cut her face, but Miss Pross, with her head down, still held her around the waist, hanging on with more strength than a drowning woman.

Soon Madam Defarge's hands stopped hitting and reached for her waist. "It's under my arm," said Miss Pross from her buried face. "You will not be able to pull it out. I am stronger than you, and I thank heaven for it. I will hold you until one or the other of us faints or dies!"

Madam Defarge's hands were at her breasts. Miss Pross looked up, saw what it was, and hit at it. There was a loud bang and an explosion of light, and then she was standing alone, not able to see from the smoke.

All this happened in a second. The smoke cleared, leaving an awful quiet. The smoke left the room like the soul of the angry woman whose body was lying dead on the floor.

The first effect of what had happened was for Miss Pross to go around the body, as far as she was able, run down the steps, and call out for help, which never came. Luckily, she came to herself about what would have happened if someone had come, and went back to the room in better control of herself. It was awful to go in through the door again, but she did, and she even went near the body to get her hat and other things that she needed to wear. She put these on out on the steps, first closing and locking the door and taking out the key. She then sat down on the steps for a few minutes to breathe and cry before getting up and hurrying away.

She was lucky to have a cloth at the front of the hat to hide her face, for she could not have walked down the street without someone stopping her to ask if she was okay. She was also lucky that she often looked strange in the way she dressed, and so the way she was now did not seem so very different. She needed both of these things to help her, because the marks from Madam Defarge's fingers were deep on her face, some of her hair was pulled out, and her dress (quickly smoothed with shaking hands) had been pulled in a hundred different ways.

As she crossed the bridge, she dropped the door key in the river. Arriving at the big church a few minutes before the coach, and waiting there, she started thinking what if the key was already taken in a net, what if someone could tell what house it was from, what if the door was opened and the body found, what if she was stopped at the city gate, sent to prison, and punished for killing someone! In the middle of these worried thoughts, the coach arrived, took her in, and took her away.

"Is there any noise in the streets?” she asked Mr. Cruncher.

"The same noises that there always are," he answered, looking surprised by the question and by how she looked.

"I don't hear you," said Miss Pross. "What are you saying?"

There was no good in Mr. Cruncher repeating what he had said; Miss Pross could not hear him. "So I'll just shake my head," thought Mr. Cruncher, who was surprised. "She can at least see that.” And she did.

"Is there any noise in the streets now?” asked Miss Pross again a short while later.

Again Mr. Cruncher shook his head to show there was.

"I don't hear it."

"You lost your hearing in just one hour?” said Mr. Cruncher, chewing this over in his mind. "What's happened to her?"

"I feel," said Miss Pross, "as if there was a loud bang and an explosion, and that explosion was the last thing I should ever hear in this life."

"Blessed if she isn't in a strange shape!" said Mr. Cruncher, who was becoming more and more confused. "What can she have been taking to keep herself going? Listen! There's the sound of them awful carts! Surely you can hear that, Miss?"

"I can hear," said Miss Pross, seeing that he was talking to her, "nothing. Oh, my good man, there was first a great bang, and then all was quiet, and that quiet does not seem to be going away, like it will never be broken again as long as I live."

"If she don't hear the sound of those awful carts, now very close to the end of their trip," said Mr. Cruncher, looking over his shoulder, "I think that she really won't ever hear anything else in this world."

And the truth is that she never did.

15. The Footsteps Die Out Forever

Along the streets of Paris the death carts roll with a hard empty sound. Six of them, carrying the day's wine for Guillotine. All the hungry evil animals that man could think of from the time when he first recorded his thoughts had come together in this one, the guillotine. And yet there in France, with its good weather and good earth, there is no leaf, root, branch, or seed that could be more sure of growing into a full plant than it was that this awful machine would grow there. Squeeze people out of shape again, using hammers like those used there, and the same effects will come of it. Plant the same seeds of greedy freedom and cruel force again, and it will surely bring the same fruit again.

Six carts roll along the streets. If Time could change these carts back to what they would have been before, they could be seen as the coaches of kings with full control over everyone, the furniture of marquis, the clothes of their fat evil wives, the churches that are not my father's house but a hiding place for robbers, the rough little homes of millions of hungry poor people! But the great magician who makes things under God's rules never changes them back to what they were before. "If your shape is changed by the will of God," say the prophets to those who have been changed by other forces, in the wise stories of Arabia, "then you must stay that way! But if you have only been changed by magic tricks, then you can go back to how you were in the past!" Without change and without hope, the carts roll along.

As the serious wheels of the six carts go around, they seem to be like ploughs, cutting a long line through the crowds on the streets. Lines of faces are thrown to this side and to that, and the ploughs move by them all. People in the houses have seen so many of these carts that the windows of many of them are empty, and in others, what the people are doing with their hands does not stop while their eyes look out at the faces in the carts. Here and there, someone in a house may have a visitor who has come to see the show.

Then they point their fingers with the spirit of an expert, to this cart and to that, and seem to be saying something about who sat there yesterday, and who was there the day before.

For the riders in the carts, some see this, and everything else on their last ride, with a look that shows no emotion. Others show some interest in the ways of life and people. Some, seated with their heads hanging down are lost for words and hope. Again, there are some who are so much thinking about the people watching them that they look back at them like actors on a stage. A few close their eyes and think, trying to bring their thoughts together. Only one, and he is a sad one who seems to be crazy, is so broken and drunk by what has happened that he sings, and tries to dance. Not one of the whole number does anything by look or action to ask for mercy from the people.

There is a guard of a few men riding on horses beside the carts, and faces are often turned up to some of them. They are asked questions, and it always seems to be the same question, for it is always followed by people pushing toward the third cart. The men on horses beside that cart often point out one man in it with their swords. They all want to know which one he is. He stands at the back of the cart with his head bent down to talk with a very young woman who sits on the side of the cart and holds his hand. He has no interest in those looking on, as he is just talking to the girl. Here and there in the long street shouts are lifted against him. If they have any effect on him at all, it is only to bring a quiet smile, as he shakes his hair a little more losely around his face. He cannot easily touch his face because his arms are tied.

On the steps of a church, waiting for the carts to arrive, stands the prison sheep... the spy. He looks into the first of them: not there. He looks into the second: not there. He is already asking himself, "Has he turned me in?” when his face clears as he looks into the third.

"Which one