VI
The
Shoemaker
"Good
day!" said Monsieur Defarge, looking down at the white head that bent low
over the shoemaking.
It
was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice responded to the salutation, as
if it were at a distance:
"Good
day!"
"You
are still hard at work, I see?"
After
a long silence, the head was lifted for another moment, and the voice replied,
"Yes--I am working." This time, a pair of haggard eyes had looked at
the questioner, before the face had dropped again.
The
faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not the faintness of
physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare no doubt had their part in
it. Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it was the faintness of solitude and
disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of a sound made long and long ago. So
entirely had it lost the life and resonance of the human voice, that it
affected the senses like a once beautiful colour faded away into a poor weak
stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that it was like a voice underground.
So expressive it was, of a hopeless and lost creature, that a famished
traveller, wearied out by lonely wandering in a wilderness, would have
remembered home and friends in such a tone before lying down to die.
Some
minutes of silent work had passed: and the haggard eyes had looked up again:
not with any interest or curiosity, but with a dull mechanical perception,
beforehand, that the spot where the only visitor they were aware of had stood,
was not yet empty.
"I
want," said Defarge, who had not removed his gaze from the shoemaker,
"to let in a little more light here. You can bear a little more?"
The
shoemaker stopped his work; looked with a vacant air of listening, at the floor
on one side of him; then similarly, at the floor on the other side of him;
then, upward at the speaker.
"What
did you say?"
"You
can bear a little more light?"
"I
must bear it, if you let it in." (Laying the palest shadow of a stress
upon the second word.)
The
opened half-door was opened a little further, and secured at that angle for the
time. A broad ray of light fell into the garret, and showed the workman with an
unfinished shoe upon his lap, pausing in his labour. His few common tools and
various scraps of leather were at his feet and on his bench. He had a white
beard, raggedly cut, but not very long, a hollow face, and exceedingly bright
eyes. The hollowness and thinness of his face would have caused them to look
large, under his yet dark eyebrows and his confused white hair, though they had
been really otherwise; but, they were naturally large, and looked unnaturally
so. His yellow rags of shirt lay open at the throat, and showed his body to be
withered and worn. He, and his old canvas frock, and his loose stockings, and
all his poor tatters of clothes, had, in a long seclusion from direct light and
air, faded down to such a dull uniformity of parchment-yellow, that it would
have been hard to say which was which.
He
had put up a hand between his eyes and the light, and the very bones of it
seemed transparent. So he sat, with a steadfastly vacant gaze, pausing in his
work. He never looked at the figure before him, without first looking down on
this side of himself, then on that, as if he had lost the habit of associating
place with sound; he never spoke, without first wandering in this manner, and
forgetting to speak.
"Are
you going to finish that pair of shoes to-day?" asked Defarge, motioning
to Mr. Lorry to come forward.
"What
did you say?"
"Do
you mean to finish that pair of shoes to-day?"
"I
can't say that I mean to. I suppose so. I don't know."
But,
the question reminded him of his work, and he bent over it again.
Mr.
Lorry came silently forward, leaving the daughter by the door. When he had
stood, for a minute or two, by the side of Defarge, the shoemaker looked up. He
showed no surprise at seeing another figure, but the unsteady fingers of one of
his hands strayed to his lips as he looked at it (his lips and his nails were
of the same pale lead- colour), and then the hand dropped to his work, and he
once more bent over the shoe. The look and the action had occupied but an
instant.
"You
have a visitor, you see," said Monsieur Defarge.
"What
did you say?"
"Here
is a visitor."
The
shoemaker looked up as before, but without removing a hand from his work.
"Come!"
said Defarge. "Here is monsieur, who knows a well-made shoe when he sees
one. Show him that shoe you are working at. Take it, monsieur."
Mr.
Lorry took it in his hand.
"Tell
monsieur what kind of shoe it is, and the maker's name."
There
was a longer pause than usual, before the shoemaker replied:
"I
forget what it was you asked me. What did you say?"
"I
said, couldn't you describe the kind of shoe, for monsieur's information?"
"It
is a lady's shoe. It is a young lady's walking-shoe. It is in the present mode.
I never saw the mode. I have had a pattern in my hand." He glanced at the
shoe with some little passing touch of pride.
"And
the maker's name?" said Defarge.
Now
that he had no work to hold, he laid the knuckles of the right hand in the
hollow of the left, and then the knuckles of the left hand in the hollow of the
right, and then passed a hand across his bearded chin, and so on in regular
changes, without a moment's intermission. The task of recalling him from the
vagrancy into which he always sank when he had spoken, was like recalling some
very weak person from a swoon, or endeavouring, in the hope of some disclosure,
to stay the spirit of a fast-dying man.
"Did
you ask me for my name?"
"Assuredly
I did."
"One
Hundred and Five,
"Is
that all?"
"One
Hundred and Five,
With
a weary sound that was not a sigh, nor a groan, he bent to work again, until
the silence was again broken.
"You
are not a shoemaker by trade?" said Mr. Lorry, looking steadfastly at him.
His
haggard eyes turned to Defarge as if he would have transferred the question to
him: but as no help came from that quarter, they turned back on the questioner
when they had sought the ground.
"I
am not a shoemaker by trade? No, I was not a shoemaker by trade. I-I learnt it
here. I taught myself. I asked leave to--"
He
lapsed away, even for minutes, ringing those measured changes on his hands the
whole time. His eyes came slowly back, at last, to the face from which they had
wandered; when they rested on it, he started, and resumed, in the manner of a
sleeper that moment awake, reverting to a subject of last night.
"I
asked leave to teach myself, and I got it with much difficulty after a long
while, and I have made shoes ever since."
As
he held out his hand for the shoe that had been taken from him, Mr. Lorry said,
still looking steadfastly in his face:
"Monsieur
Manette, do you remember nothing of me?"
The
shoe dropped to the ground, and he sat looking fixedly at the questioner.
"Monsieur
Manette"; Mr. Lorry laid his hand upon Defarge's arm; "do you
remember nothing of this man? Look at him. Look at me. Is there no old banker,
no old business, no old servant, no old time, rising in your mind, Monsieur
Manette?"
As
the captive of many years sat looking fixedly, by turns, at Mr. Lorry and at
Defarge, some long obliterated marks of an actively intent intelligence in the
middle of the forehead, gradually forced themselves through the black mist that
had fallen on him. They were overclouded again, they were fainter, they were
gone; but they had been there. And so exactly was the expression repeated on
the fair young face of her who had crept along the wall to a point where she could
see him, and where she now stood looking at him, with hands which at first had
been only raised in frightened compassion, if not even to keep him off and shut
out the sight of him, but which were now extending towards him, trembling with
eagerness to lay the spectral face upon her warm young breast, and love it back
to life and hope--so exactly was the expression repeated (though in stronger
characters) on her fair young face, that it looked as though it had passed like
a moving light, from him to her.
Darkness
had fallen on him in its place. He looked at the two, less and less
attentively, and his eyes in gloomy abstraction sought the ground and looked
about him in the old way. Finally, with a deep long sigh, he took the shoe up,
and resumed his work.
"Have
you recognised him, monsieur?" asked Defarge in a whisper.
"Yes;
for a moment. At first I thought it quite hopeless, but I have unquestionably
seen, for a single moment, the face that I once knew so well. Hush! Let us draw
further back. Hush!"
She
had moved from the wall of the garret, very near to the bench on which he sat.
There was something awful in his unconsciousness of the figure that could have
put out its hand and touched him as he stooped over his labour.
Not
a word was spoken, not a sound was made. She stood, like a spirit, beside him,
and he bent over his work.
It
happened, at length, that he had occasion to change the instrument in his hand,
for his shoemaker's knife. It lay on that side of him which was not the side on
which she stood. He had taken it up, and was stooping to work again, when his
eyes caught the skirt of her dress. He raised them, and saw her face. The two
spectators started forward, but she stayed them with a motion of her hand. She
had no fear of his striking at her with the knife, though they had.
He
stared at her with a fearful look, and after a while his lips began to form
some words, though no sound proceeded from them. By degrees, in the pauses of
his quick and laboured breathing, he was heard to say:
"What
is this?"
With
the tears streaming down her face, she put her two hands to her lips, and
kissed them to him; then clasped them on her breast, as if she laid his ruined
head there.
"You
are not the gaoler's daughter?"
She
sighed "No."
"Who
are you?"
Not
yet trusting the tones of her voice, she sat down on the bench beside him. He
recoiled, but she laid her hand upon his arm. A strange thrill struck him when
she did so, and visibly passed over his frame; he laid the knife down' softly,
as he sat staring at her.
Her
golden hair, which she wore in long curls, had been hurriedly pushed aside, and
fell down over her neck. Advancing his hand by little and little, he took it up
and looked at it. In the midst of the action he went astray, and, with another
deep sigh, fell to work at his shoemaking.
But
not for long. Releasing his arm, she laid her hand upon his shoulder. After
looking doubtfully at it, two or three times, as if to be sure that it was
really there, he laid down his work, put his hand to his neck, and took off a
blackened string with a scrap of folded rag attached to it. He opened this,
carefully, on his knee, and it contained a very little quantity of hair: not
more than one or two long golden hairs, which he had, in some old day, wound
off upon his finger.
He
took her hair into his hand again, and looked closely at it. "It is the
same. How can it be! When was it! How was it!"
As
the concentrated expression returned to his forehead, he seemed to become conscious
that it was in hers too. He turned her full to the light, and looked at her.
"She
had laid her head upon my shoulder, that night when I was summoned out--she had
a fear of my going, though I had none--and when I was brought to the North
Tower they found these upon my sleeve. 'You will leave me them? They can never
help me to escape in the body, though they may in the spirit.' Those were the
words I said. I remember them very well."
He
formed this speech with his lips many times before he could utter it. But when
he did find spoken words for it, they came to him coherently, though slowly.
"How
was this?--WAS IT YOU?"
Once
more, the two spectators started, as he turned upon her with a frightful
suddenness. But she sat perfectly still in his grasp, and only said, in a low
voice, "I entreat you, good gentlemen, do not come near us, do not speak,
do not move!"
"Hark!"
he exclaimed. "Whose voice was that?"
His
hands released her as he uttered this cry, and went up to his white hair, which
they tore in a frenzy. It died out, as everything but his shoemaking did die
out of him, and he refolded his little packet and tried to secure it in his
breast; but he still looked at her, and gloomily shook his head.
"No,
no, no; you are too young, too blooming. It can't be. See what the prisoner is.
These are not the hands she knew, this is not the face she knew, this is not a
voice she ever heard. No, no. She was--and He was--before the slow years of the
Hailing
his softened tone and manner, his daughter fell upon her knees before him, with
her appealing hands upon his breast.
"O,
sir, at another time you shall know my name, and who my mother was, and who my
father, and how I never knew their hard, hard history. But I cannot tell you at
this time, and I cannot tell you here. All that I may tell you, here and now,
is, that I pray to you to touch me and to bless me. Kiss me, kiss me! O my
dear, my dear!"
His
cold white head mingled with her radiant hair, which warmed and lighted it as
though it were the light of Freedom shining on him.
"If
you hear in my voice--I don't know that it is so, but I hope it is--if you hear
in my voice any resemblance to a voice that once was sweet music in your ears,
weep for it, weep for it! If you touch, in touching my hair, anything that
recalls a beloved head that lay on your breast when you were young and free,
weep for it, weep for it! If, when I hint to you of a Home that is before us,
where I will be true to you with all my duty and with all my faithful service,
I bring back the remembrance of a Home long desolate, while your poor heart
pined away, weep for it, weep for it!"
She
held him closer round the neck, and rocked him on her breast like a child.
"If,
when I tell you, dearest dear, that your agony is over, and that I have come
here to take you from it, and that we go to England to be at peace and at rest,
I cause you to think of your useful life laid waste, and of our native France
so wicked to you, weep for it, weep for it! And if, when I shall tell you of my
name, and of my father who is living, and of my mother who is dead, you learn
that I have to kneel to my honoured father, and implore his pardon for having
never for his sake striven all day and lain awake and wept all night, because
the love of my poor mother hid his torture from me, weep for it, weep for it!
Weep for her, then, and for me! Good gentlemen, thank God! I feel his sacred
tears upon my face, and his sobs strike against my heart. O, see! Thank God for
us, thank God!"
He
had sunk in her arms, and his face dropped on her breast: a sight so touching,
yet so terrible in the tremendous wrong and suffering which had gone before it,
that the two beholders covered their faces.
When
the quiet of the garret had been long undisturbed, and his heaving breast and
shaken form had long yielded to the calm that must follow all storms--emblem to
humanity, of the rest and silence into which the storm called Life must hush at
last--they came forward to raise the father and daughter from the ground. He
had gradually dropped to the floor, and lay there in a lethargy, worn out. She
had nestled down with him, that his head might lie upon her arm; and her hair
drooping over him curtained him from the light.
"If,
without disturbing him," she said, raising her hand to Mr. Lorry as he
stooped over them, after repeated blowings of his nose, "all could be
arranged for our leaving Paris at once, so that, from the, very door, he could
be taken away--"
"But,
consider. Is he fit for the journey?" asked Mr. Lorry.
"More
fit for that, I think, than to remain in this city, so dreadful to him."
"It
is true," said Defarge, who was kneeling to look on and hear. "More
than that; Monsieur Manette is, for all reasons, best out of
"That's
business," said Mr. Lorry, resuming on the shortest notice his methodical
manners; "and if business is to be done, I had better do it."
"Then
be so kind," urged Miss Manette, "as to leave us here. You see how
composed he has become, and you cannot be afraid to leave him with me now. Why
should you be? If you will lock the door to secure us from interruption, I do
not doubt that you will find him, when you come back, as quiet as you leave
him. In any case, I will take care of him until you return, and then we will
remove him straight."
Both
Mr. Lorry and Defarge were rather disinclined to this course, and in favour of
one of them remaining. But, as there were not only carriage and horses to be
seen to, but travelling papers; and as time pressed, for the day was drawing to
an end, it came at last to their hastily dividing the business that was
necessary to be done, and hurrying away to do it.
Then,
as the darkness closed in, the daughter laid her head down on the hard ground
close at the father's side, and watched him. The darkness deepened and
deepened, and they both lay quiet, until a light gleamed through the chinks in
the wall.
Mr.
Lorry and Monsieur Defarge had made all ready for the journey, and had brought
with them, besides travelling cloaks and wrappers, bread and meat, wine, and
hot coffee. Monsieur Defarge put this provender, and the lamp he carried, on
the shoemaker's bench (there was nothing else in the garret but a pallet bed),
and he and Mr. Lorry roused the captive, and assisted him to his feet.
No
human intelligence could have read the mysteries of his mind, in the scared
blank wonder of his face. Whether he knew what had happened, whether he
recollected what they had said to him, whether he knew that he was free, were
questions which no sagacity could have solved. They tried speaking to him; but,
he was so confused, and so very slow to answer, that they took fright at his
bewilderment, and agreed for the time to tamper with him no more. He had a
wild, lost manner of occasionally clasping his head in his hands, that had not
been seen in him before; yet, he had some pleasure in the mere sound of his
daughter's voice, and invariably turned to it when she spoke.
In
the submissive way of one long accustomed to obey under coercion, he ate and
drank what they gave him to eat and drink, and put on the cloak and other
wrappings, that they gave him to wear. He readily responded to his daughter's
drawing her arm through his, and took--and kept--her hand in both his own.
They
began to descend; Monsieur Defarge going first with the lamp, Mr. Lorry closing
the little procession. They had not traversed many steps of the long main
staircase when he stopped, and stared at the roof and round at the wails.
"You
remember the place, my father? You remember coming up here?"
"What
did you say?"
But,
before she could repeat the question, he murmured an answer as if she had
repeated it.
"Remember?
No, I don't remember. It was so very long ago."
That
he had no recollection whatever of his having been brought from his prison to
that house, was apparent to them. They heard him mutter, "One Hundred and
Five,
No
crowd was about the door; no people were discernible at any of the many
windows; not even a chance passerby was in the street. An unnatural silence and
desertion reigned there. Only one soul was to be seen, and that was Madame
Defarge--who leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing.
The
prisoner had got into a coach, and his daughter had followed him, when Mr.
Lorry's feet were arrested on the step by his asking, miserably, for his
shoemaking tools and the unfinished shoes. Madame Defarge immediately called to
her husband that she would get them, and went, knitting, out of the lamplight,
through the courtyard. She quickly brought them down and handed them in;--and immediately
afterwards leaned against the door-post, knitting, and saw nothing.
Defarge
got upon the box, and gave the word "To the Barrier!" The postilion
cracked his whip, and they clattered away under the feeble over-swinging lamps.
Under
the over-swinging lamps--swinging ever brighter in the better streets, and ever
dimmer in the worse--and by lighted shops, gay crowds, illuminated
coffee-houses, and theatre-doors, to one of the city gates. Soldiers with
lanterns, at the guard-house there. "Your papers, travellers!"
"See here then, Monsieur the Officer," said Defarge, getting down,
and taking him gravely apart, "these are the papers of monsieur inside,
with the white head. They were consigned to me, with him, at the--" He dropped
his voice, there was a flutter among the military lanterns, and one of them
being handed into the coach by an arm in uniform, the eyes connected with the
arm looked, not an every day or an every night look, at monsieur with the white
head. "It is well. Forward!" from the uniform. "Adieu!"
from Defarge. And so, under a short grove of feebler and feebler over-swinging
lamps, out under the great grove of stars.
Beneath
that arch of unmoved and eternal lights; some, so remote from this little earth
that the learned tell us it is doubtful whether their rays have even yet
discovered it, as a point in space where anything is suffered or done: the
shadows of the night were broad and black. All through the cold and restless
interval, until dawn, they once more whispered in the ears of Mr. Jarvis
Lorry--sitting opposite the buried man who had been dug out, and wondering what
subtle powers were for ever lost to him, and what were capable of
restoration--the old inquiry:
"I
hope you care to be recalled to life?"
And
the old answer:
"I
can't say."