Tales from Dickens by Charles Dickens (mobi reader .txt) 📖
- Author: Charles Dickens
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Next, Carton bought a quantity of a drug whose fumes would render a man insensible, and with this in his pocket early next morning he went to the spy, Barsad, and bade him redeem his promise and take him to the cell where Darnay waited for the signal of death.
Darnay was seated, writing a last letter to Lucie, when Carton entered. Pretending that he wished him to write something that he dictated, Carton stood over him and held the phial of the drug to his face. In a moment the other was unconscious. Then Carton changed clothes with him and called in the spy, directing him to take the unconscious man, who now seemed to be Sydney Carton instead of Charles Darnay, to Mr. Lorry's house. He himself was to take the prisoner's place and suffer the penalty.
The plan worked well. Darnay, who would not have allowed this sacrifice if he had known, was carried safely and without discovery, past the guards. Mr. Lorry, guessing what had happened when he saw the unconscious figure, took coach at once with him, Doctor Manette and Lucie, and started for England that very hour. Miss Pross was left to follow them in another carriage.
While Miss Pross sat waiting in the empty house, who should come in but the terrible Madame Defarge! The latter had made up her mind, as Carton had suspected, to denounce Lucie also. It was against the law to mourn for any one who had been condemned as an enemy to France, and the woman was sure, of course, that Lucie would be mourning for her husband, who was to die within the hour. So she stopped on her way to the execution to see Lucie and thus have evidence against her.
When Madame Defarge entered, Miss Pross read the hatred and evil purpose in her face. The grim old nurse knew if it were known that Lucie had gone, the coach would be pursued and brought back. So she planted herself in front of the door of Lucie's room, and would not let Madame Defarge open it.
The savage Frenchwoman tried to tear her away, but Miss Pross seized her around the waist, and held her back. The other drew a loaded pistol from her breast to shoot her, but in the struggle it went off and killed Madame Defarge herself.
Then Miss Pross, all of a tremble, locked the door, threw the key into the river, took a carriage and followed after the coach.
Not long after the unconscious Darnay, with Lucie and Doctor Manette, passed the gates of Paris, the jailer came to the cell where Sydney Carton sat and called him. It was the summons to die. And with his thoughts on Lucie, whom he had always hopelessly loved, and on her husband, whom he had thus saved to her, he went almost gladly.
A poor little seamstress rode in the death cart beside him. She was so small and weak that she feared to die, and Carton held her cold hand all the way and comforted her to the end. Cruel women of the people sat about the guillotine knitting and counting with their stitches, as each poor victim died. And when Carton's turn came, thinking he was Darnay, the hated Marquis de St. Evrémonde, they cursed him and laughed.
Men said of him about the city that night that it was the peacefullest man's face ever beheld there. If they could have read his thought, if he could have spoken it in words it would have been these:
"I see the lives, for which I lay down mine, peaceful and happy in that England I shall see no more. I see Lucie and Darnay with a child that bears my name, and I see that I shall hold a place in their hearts for ever. I see her weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see the blot I threw upon my name faded away, and I know that till they die neither shall be more honored in the soul of the other than I am honored in the souls of both. It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known!"
BLEAK HOUSEPublished 1852–1853
in London, known as "Nemo" Esther Summerson Mr. Jarndyce's ward In reality a daughter of Captain Hawdon and Lady Dedlock Ada Clare
Richard Carstone Wards of Mr. Jarndyce Vholes Richard's lawyer Mrs. Rouncewell Sir Leicester's housekeeper "Mr. George" Proprietor of a London shooting-gallery Her son Hortense Lady Dedlock's French maid Miss Flite A little, old, demented woman Mrs. Jellyby A lady greatly interested in the welfare
of the heathen Caddy Jellyby Her daughter Harold Skimpole A trifler with life, preferring to
live at other people's expense Allan Woodcourt A young surgeon Grandfather Smallweed A money-lender Mrs. Smallweed His crazy wife Mr. Turveydrop The proprietor of a dancing school
and a model of deportment Prince Turveydrop His son. Later, Caddy's husband Joe A crossing sweeper Krook A dealer in rags and old bottles "Lady Jane" His cat BLEAK HOUSE I
THE COURT OF CHANCERY
An Englishman named Jarndyce, once upon a time having made a great fortune, died and left a great will. The persons appointed to carry out its provisions could not agree; they fell to disputing among themselves and went to law over it.
The court which in England decides such suits is called the Court of Chancery. Its action is slow and its delays many, so that men generally consider it a huge misfortune to be obliged to have anything to do with it. Sometimes it has kept cases undecided for many years, till the heirs concerned were dead and gone; and often when the decision came at last there was no money left to be divided, because it had all been eaten up by the costs of the suit. Lawyers inherited some cases from their fathers, who themselves had made a living by them, and many suits had become so twisted that nobody alive could have told at last what they really meant.
Such came to be the case with the Jarndyce will. It had been tried for so many years that the very name had become a joke. Those who began it were long since dead and their heirs either knew nothing of it or had given up hope of its ever being ended.
The only one who seemed to be interested in it was a little old woman named Miss Flite, whom delay and despair in a suit of her own had made half crazy. For many years she had attended the Chancery Court every day and many thoughtless people made fun of her.
She was wretchedly poor and lived in a small room over a rag-and-bottle shop kept by a man named Krook. Here she had a great number of birds in little cages—larks and linnets and goldfinches. She had given them names to represent the different things which the cruel Chancery Court required to carry on these shameful suits, such as Hope, Youth, Rest, Ashes, Ruin, Despair, Madness, Folly, Words, Plunder and Jargon. She used to say that when the Jarndyce case was decided she would open the cages and let the birds all go.
The last Jarndyce that was left had given up in disgust all thought of the famous lawsuit and steadfastly refused to have anything to do with it. He lived quietly in the country in a big, bare building called Bleak House. He was past middle-age, and his hair was silver-gray, but he was straight and strong and merry.
He was rich, yet was so tender-hearted and benevolent that all who knew him loved him. Most of his good deeds he never told, for he had a great dislike to being thanked. It used to be said that once, after he had done an extremely generous thing for a relative of his, seeing her coming in the front gate to thank him, he escaped by the back door and was not seen again for three months. He never spoke ill of his neighbors, and whenever he was vexed he would pretend to look for a weather-cock and say, "Dear, dear! The wind must be coming from the east!"
It happened, finally, that all the other Jarndyce heirs had died except two, a young girl named Ada Clare and a young man named Richard Carstone. These two, who were cousins, were left orphans. The master of Bleak House, therefore, in the goodness of his heart, offered them a home with him, and this they thankfully accepted. Mr. Jarndyce now wished to find a companion for Ada Clare; and this is how Esther Summerson comes into this story.
Esther was a sweet girl who had been brought up by a stern, hard-hearted woman whom she had always called "godmother," in ignorance of her parentage. She had never known who were her mother or father, for from earliest babyhood her godmother had forbidden her to ask questions concerning them, and she would have had a sad and lonely youth but for her sunny disposition.
It was not till her godmother died suddenly that she found she had a guardian, and that he was Mr. Jarndyce of Bleak House. How he came to be her guardian was a mystery to her, but she was glad to find herself not altogether friendless. Although he had taken the pains to see her more than once, and had noticed with pleasure what a cheerful, loving nature she had, yet Esther had never, so far as she knew, seen him, so that she received his invitation to come and live at Bleak House with joyful surprise.
She went, on the day appointed, to London, and there she met Ada, whom she began to love at once, and Richard, a handsome, careless young fellow of nineteen. They spent the day together and got well acquainted before they took the morrow's coach to Bleak House.
At the Chancery Court they met poor, crazy little Miss Flite, who insisted on taking them to her room above the rag-and-bottle shop to show them her caged birds. And that night (as they had been directed) they stayed at the house of a Mrs. Jellyby, of whom Mr. Jarndyce had heard as a woman of great charity.
Mrs. Jellyby was a woman with a mission, which mission was the education of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, in Africa, and the cultivation there of the coffee-bean. She thought of nothing else, and was for ever sending out letters or pamphlets about it.
But she seemed unable to see or think of anything nearer home than Africa. The house was unswept, the children dirty and always under foot, and the meals half-cooked. She would sit all day in slipshod slippers and a dress that did not meet in the back, drinking coffee and dictating to her eldest daughter Caddy (who hated Africa and all its natives) letters about coffee cultivation and the uplifting of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha.
A very strange sort of philanthropist both Esther and Ada thought Mrs. Jellyby. Perhaps, however, Mr. Jarndyce sent them there for a useful lesson, for he afterward asked them what they
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