A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (Oprah's Book Club) (25 page)

Defarge closed the door carefully, and spoke in a subdued voice: ‘Jacques One, Jacques Two, Jacques Three! This is the witness encountered by appointment, by me, Jacques Four. He will tell you all. Speak, Jacques Five!’

The mender of roads, blue cap in hand, wiped his swarthy forehead with it, and said, ‘Where shall I commence, monsieur?’

‘Commence,’ was Monsieur Defarge’s not unreasonable reply, ‘at the commencement.’

‘I saw him then, messieurs,’ began the mender of roads, ‘a year ago this running summer, underneath the carriage of the Marquis, hanging by the chain. Behold the manner of it. I leaving my work on the road, the sun going to bed, the carriage of the Marquis slowly ascending the hill, he hanging by the chain – like this.’

Again, the mender of roads went through the old performance; in which he ought to have been perfect by that time, seeing that it had been the infallible resource and indispensable entertainment of his village during a whole year.

Jacques One struck in, and asked if he had ever seen the man before?

‘Never,’ answered the mender of roads, recovering his perpendicular.

Jacques Three demanded how he afterwards recognised him then?

‘By his tall figure,’ said the mender of roads, softly, and with his finger at his nose. ‘When Monsieur the Marquis demands that evening, “Say, what is he like?” I make response, “Tall as a spectre.”

‘You should have said, short as a dwarf,’ returned Jacques Two.

‘But what did I know! The deed was not then accomplished, neither did he confide in me. Observe! Under those circumstances even, I do not offer my testimony. Monsieur the Marquis indicates me with his finger, standing near our little fountain, and says, “To me! Bring that rascal!” My faith, messieurs, I offer nothing.’

‘He is right there, Jacques,’ murmured Defarge, to him who had interrupted. ‘Go on!’

‘Good!’ said the mender of roads, with an air of mystery. ‘The tall man is lost, and he is sought – how many months? Nine, ten, eleven?’

‘No matter, the number,’ said Defarge. ‘He is well hidden, but at last he is unluckily found. Go on!’

‘I am again at work upon the hill-side, and the sun is again about to go to bed. I am collecting my tools to descend to my cottage down in the village below, where it is already dark, when I raise my eyes, and see coming over the hill, six soldiers. In the midst of them is a tall man with his arms bound – tied to his sides, like this!’

With the aid of his indispensable cap, he represented a man with his elbows bound fast at his hips, with cords that were knotted behind him.

‘I stand aside, messieurs, by my heap of stones, to see the soldiers and their prisoner pass (for it is a solitary road, that, where any spectacle is well worth looking at), and at first, as they approach, I see no more than that they are six soldiers with a tall man bound, and that they are almost black, to my sight – except on the side of the sun going to bed, where they have a red edge, messieurs. Also, I see that their long shadows are on the hollow ridge on the opposite side of the road, and are on the hill above it, and are like the shadows of giants. Also, I see that they are covered with dust, and that the dust moves with them as they come, tramp, tramp! But when they advance quite near to me, I recognise the tall man, and he recognises me. Ah, but he would be well content to precipitate himself over the hill-side once again, as on the evening when he and I first encountered, close to the same spot!’

He described it as if he were there, and it was evident that he saw it vividly; perhaps he had not seen much in his life.

‘I do not show the soldiers that I recognise the tall man; he does not show the soldiers that he recognises me; we do it, and we know it, with our eyes. “Come on!” says the chief of that company, pointing to the village, “bring him fast to his tomb!” and they bring him faster. I follow. His arms are swelled because of being bound so tight, his wooden shoes are large and clumsy, and he is lame. Because he is lame, and consequently slow, they drive him with their guns – like this!’

He imitated the action of a man’s being impelled forward by the butt-ends of muskets.

‘As they descend the hill like madmen running a race, he falls. They laugh and pick him up again. His face is bleeding and covered with dust, but he cannot touch it; thereupon, they laugh again. They bring him into the village; all the village runs to look; they take him past the mill, and up to the prison; all the village sees the prison gate open in the darkness of the night, and swallow him – like this!’

He opened his mouth as wide as he could, and shut it with a sounding snap of his teeth. Observant of his unwillingness to mar the effect by opening it again, Defarge said, ‘Go on, Jacques.’

‘All the village,’ pursued the mender of roads, on tiptoe and in a low voice, ‘withdraws; all the village whispers by the fountain; all the village sleeps; all the village dreams of that unhappy one, within the locks and bars of the prison on the crag, and never to come out of it, except to perish. In the morning, with my tools upon my shoulder, eating my morsel of black bread as I go, I make a circuit by the prison, on my way to my work. There, I see him, high up, behind the bars of a lofty iron cage, bloody and dusty as last night, looking through. He has no hand free, to wave to me; I dare not call to him; he regards me like a dead man.’

Defarge and the three glanced darkly at one another. The looks of all of them were dark, repressed, and revengeful, as they listened to the countryman’s story; the manner of all of them, while it was secret was authoritative too. They had the air of a rough tribunal; Jacques One and Two sitting on the old pallet-bed, each with his chin resting on his hand, and his eyes intent on the road mender; Jacques Three, equally intent, on one knee behind them, with his agitated hand always gliding over the network of fine nerves about his mouth and nose; Defarge standing between them and the narrator whom he had stationed in the light of the window, by turns looking from him to them and from them to him.

‘Go on Jacques,’ said Defarge.

‘He remains up there in his iron cage, some days. The village looks at him by stealth, for it is afraid. But it always looks up, from a distance, at the prison on the crag; and in the evening when the work of the day is achieved and it assembles to gossip at the fountain, all faces are turned towards the prison. Formerly, they were turned towards the posting-house; now, they are turned towards the prison. They whisper at the fountain, that although condemned to death he will not be executed; they say that petitions have been presented in Paris, showing that he was enraged and made mad by the death of his child; they say that a petition has been presented to the King himself. What do I know? It is possible. Perhaps yes, perhaps no.’

‘Listen then, Jacques,’ Number One of that name sternly interposed. ‘Know that a petition was presented to the King and Queen. All here, yourself excepted, saw the King take it, in his carriage in the street, sitting beside the Queen. It is Defarge whom you see here, who, at the hazard of his life, darted out before the horses, with the petition in his hand.’

‘And once again listen, Jacques!’ said the kneeling Number Three: his fingers ever wandering over and over those fine nerves, with a strikingly greedy air, as if he hungered for something – that was neither food nor drink; ‘the guard, horse and foot, surrounded the petitioner, and struck him blows. You hear?’

‘I hear, messieurs.’

‘Go on then,’ said Defarge.

‘Again; on the other hand, they whisper at the fountain,’ resumed the countryman, ‘that he is brought down into our country to be executed on the spot, and that he will very certainly be executed. They even whisper that because he has slain Monseigneur, and because Monseigneur was the father of his tenants – serfs – what you will – he will be executed as a parricide. One old man says at the fountain, that his right hand, armed with the knife, will be burnt off before his face; that, into wounds which will be made in his arms, his breast, and his legs, there will be poured boiling oil, melted lead, hot resin, wax, and sulphur; finally, that he will be torn limb from limb by four strong horses. That old man says, all this was actually done to a prisoner who made an attempt on the life of the last King, Louis Fifteen. But how do I know if he lies? I am not a scholar.’

‘Listen once again then, Jacques!’ said the man with the restless hand and the craving air. ‘The name of that prisoner was Damiens, and it was all done in open day, in the open streets of this city of Paris; and nothing was more noticed in the vast concourse that saw it done, than the crowd of ladies of quality and fashion, who were full of eager attention to the last – to the last, Jacques, prolonged until nightfall, when he had lost two legs and an arm, and still breathed! And it was done – why, how old are you?’

‘Thirty-five,’ said the mender of roads, who looked sixty.

‘It was done when you were more than ten years old; you might have seen it.’

‘Enough!’ said Defarge, with grim impatience. ‘Long live the Devil! Go on.’

‘Well! Some whisper this, some whisper that; they speak of nothing else; even the fountain appears to fall to that tune. At length, on Sunday night when all the village is asleep, come soldiers, winding down from the prison, and their guns ring on the stones of the little street. Workmen dig, workmen hammer, soldiers laugh and sing; in the morning, by the fountain, there is raised a gallows forty feet high, poisoning the water.’

The mender of roads looked
through
rather than
at
the low ceiling, and pointed as if he saw the gallows somewhere in the sky.

‘All work is stopped, all assemble there, nobody leads the cows out, the cows are there with the rest. At mid-day, the roll of drums. Soldiers have marched into the prison in the night, and he is in the midst of many soldiers. He is bound as before, and in his mouth there is a gag – tied so, with a tight string, making him look almost as if he laughed.’ He suggested it, by creasing his face with his two thumbs, from the corners of his mouth to his ears. ‘On the top of the gallows is fixed the knife, blade upwards, with its point in the air. He is hanged there forty feet high – and is left hanging, poisoning the water.’

They looked at one another, as he used his blue cap to wipe his face, on which the perspiration had started afresh while he recalled the spectacle.

‘It is frightful, messieurs. How can the women and the children draw water! Who can gossip of an evening, under that shadow! Under it, have I said? When I left the village, Monday evening as the sun was going to bed, and looked back from the hill, the shadow struck across the church, across the mill, across the prison – seemed to strike across the earth, messieurs, to where the sky rests upon it!’

The hungry man gnawed one of his fingers as he looked at the other three, and his finger quivered with the craving that was on him.

‘That’s all, messieurs. I left at sunset (as I had been warned to do), and I walked on, that night and half next day, until I met (as I was warned I should) this comrade. With him, I came on, now riding and now walking, through the rest of yesterday and through last night. And here you see me!’

After a gloomy silence, the first Jacques said, ‘Good! You have acted and recounted, faithfully. Will you wait for us a little, outside the door?’

‘Very willingly,’ said the mender of roads. Whom Defarge escorted to the top of the stairs, and, leaving seated there, returned.

The three had risen, and their heads were together when he came back to the garret.

‘How say you, Jacques?’ demanded Number One. ‘To be registered? ’

‘To be registered, as doomed to destruction,’ returned Defarge.

‘Magnificent!’ croaked the man with the craving.

‘The château, and all the race?’ inquired the first.

‘The château and all the race,’ returned Defarge. ‘Extermination. ’

The hungry man repeated, in a rapturous croak, ‘Magnificent!’ and began gnawing another finger.

‘Are you sure,’ asked Jacques Two, of Defarge, ‘that no embarrassment can arise from our manner of keeping the register. Without doubt it is safe, for no one beyond ourselves can decipher it; but shall we always be able to decipher it – or, I ought to say, will she?’

‘Jacques,’ returned Defarge, drawing himself up, ‘if madame my wife undertook to keep the register in her memory alone, she would not lose a word of it – not a syllable of it. Knitted, in her own stitches and her own symbols, it will always be as plain to her as the sun. Confide in Madame Defarge. It would be easier for the weakest poltroon that lives, to erase himself from existence, than to erase one letter of his name or crimes from the knitted register of Madame Defarge.’

There was a murmur of confidence and approval, and then the man who hungered, asked: ‘Is this rustic to be sent back soon? I hope so. He is very simple; is he not a little dangerous?’

‘He knows nothing,’ said Defarge; ‘at least nothing more than would easily elevate himself to a gallows of the same height. I charge myself with him; let him remain with me; I will take care of him, and set him on his road. He wishes to see the fine world – the King, the Queen, and Court; let him see them on Sunday.’

‘What?’ exclaimed the hungry man, staring. ‘Is it a good sign, that he wishes to see Royalty and Nobility?’

‘Jacques,’ said Defarge; ‘judiciously show a cat, milk, if you wish her to thirst for it. Judiciously show a dog his natural prey, if you wish him to bring it down one day.’

Nothing more was said, and the mender of roads, being found already dozing on the topmost stair, was advised to lay himself down on the pallet-bed and take some rest. He needed no persuasion, and was soon asleep.

Worse quarters than Defarge’s wine-shop, could easily have been found in Paris for a provincial slave of that degree. Saving for a mysterious dread of madame by which he was constantly haunted, his life was very new and agreeable. But, madame sat all day at her counter, so expressly unconscious of him, and so particularly determined not to perceive that his being there had any connexion with anything below the surface, that he shook in his wooden shoes whenever his eye lighted on her. For, he contended with himself that it was impossible to foresee what that lady might pretend next; and he felt assured that if she should take it into her brightly ornamented head to pretend that she had seen him do a murder and afterwards flay the victim, she would infallibly go through with it until the play was played out.