Chapter-24
“As long as you don’t know whether they are in that room or not, you are uncertain what to do,” said Miss Pross to herself, “and you shall not know that, if I can prevent your knowing it. I know that, or not know that, you shall not leave here while I can hold you.”
“I have been in the streets from the first, nothing has stopped me. I will tear you to pieces, but I will have you from that door,” said Madame Defarge.
“We are alone at the top of a high house in a solitary courtyard. We are not likely to be heard, and I pray for bodily strength to keep you here. While every minute you are here is worth a hundred thousand guineas to my darling,” said Miss Pross.
Madame Defarge made at the door. Miss Pross, on the instinct of the moment, seized her round the waist in both her arms, and held her tight. It was in vain for Madame Defarge to struggle and to strike. Miss Pross, with the vigorous tenacity of love, always so much stronger than hate, clasped her tight, and even lifted her from the floor in the struggle that they had. The two hands of Madame Defarge buffeted and tore her face. But Miss Pross, with her head down, held her round the waist, and clung to her with more than the hold of a drowning woman.
Soon, Madame Defarge’s hands ceased to strike, and felt at her encircled waist. “It is under my arm,” said Miss Pross, in smothered tones, “you shall not draw it. I am stronger than you. I bless Heaven for it. I hold you till one or other of us faints or dies!”
Madame Defarge’s hands were at her bosom. Miss Pross looked up, saw what it was, struck at it, struck out a flash and a crash, and stood alone—blinded with smoke.
All this was in a second. As the smoke cleared, leaving an awful stillness, it passed out on the air, like the soul of the furious woman whose body lay lifeless on the ground.
In the first fright and horror of her situation, Miss Pross passed the body as far from it as she could. She ran down the stairs to call for fruitless help. Happily, she bethought herself of the consequences of what she did, in time to check herself and go back. It was dreadful to go in at the door again. But, she did go in, and even went near it, to get the bonnet and other things that she must wear. These she put on, out on the staircase, first shutting and locking the door and taking away the key. She then sat down on the stairs a few moments to breathe and to cry, and then got up and hurried away.
By good fortune, she had a veil on her bonnet, or she could hardly have gone along the streets without being stopped. By good fortune, too, she was naturally so peculiar in appearance as not to show disfigurement like any other woman. She needed both advantages, for the marks of griping fingers were deep in her face, and her hair was torn, and her dress (hastily composed with unsteady hands) was clutched and dragged a hundred ways.
In crossing the bridge, she dropped the door key in the river. Arriving at the cathedral some few minutes before her escort, and waiting there, she thought, “What if the key were already taken in a net, what if it were identified, what if the door were opened and the remains discovered, what if she were stopped at the gate, sent to prison, and charged with murder!” In the midst of these fluttering thoughts, the escort appeared, took her in and took her away.
“Is there any noise in the streets?” she asked him.
“The usual noises,” Mr. Cruncher replied; and looked surprised by the question and by her aspect.
“I don’t hear you,” said Miss Pross, “What do you say?”
It was in vain for Mr. Cruncher to repeat what he said; Miss Pross could not hear him. “So I’ll nod my head,” thought Mr. Cruncher, amazed, “at all events she’ll see that.” And she did.
“Is there any noise in the streets now?” asked Miss Pross again, presently.
Again, Mr. Cruncher nodded his head.
“I don’t hear it.”
“Gone deaf in an hour?” said Mr. Cruncher, ruminating, with his mind much disturbed, “What has happened to her?”
“I feel,” said Miss Pross, “as if there had been a flash and a crash, and that crash was the last thing I should ever hear in this life.”
“Would that if she weren’t in a queer condition!” said Mr. Cruncher, more and more disturbed. “What can she have been taking to keep her courage up? Hark! There’s the roll of dreadful carts! You can hear that, miss?”
“I can hear,” said Miss Pross, seeing that he spoke to her, “nothing. O my good man, there was first a great crash, and then a great stillness, and that stillness seems to be fixed and unchangeable, never to be broken any more as long as my life lasts.”
“If she doesn’t hear the roll of those dreadful carts, now very soon their journey’s end,” said Mr. Cruncher, glancing over his shoulder, “it’s my opinion that indeed she never will hear anything else in this world.”
And indeed she never.
Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumbled, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carried the day’s wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring and insatiate Monsters imagined, since imagination could record itself, were fused in the one realisation, Guillotine. And yet there was not in France, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which would grow to maturity under conditions more certain than those that had produced this horror. Crush humanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it would twist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious licence and oppression over again, and it would surely yield the same fruit according to its kind.
Six tumbrils rolled along the streets. These were back again to what they were. They were powerful enchanter, Time, and they would be seen to be the carriages of absolute monarchs, the equipment of feudal nobles, the toilettes of flaring Jezebels, the churches that were not my father’s house but dens of thieves, the huts of millions of starving peasants! No; the great magician who majestically works out the appointed order of the Creator, never reverses his transformations. “If you be changed into this shape by the will of God,” say the seers to the enchanted, in the wise Arabian stories, “then remain so! But, if you wear this form through mere passing conjuration, then resume your former aspect!” Changeless and hopeless, the tumbrils rolled along.
As the sombre wheels of the six carts went round, they seemed to plough up a long crooked furrow among the populace in the streets. Ridges of faces were thrown to this side and to that, and the ploughs went steadily onward. So used were the regular inhabitants of the houses to the spectacle, that in many windows there were no people, and in some the occupation of the hands was not so much as suspended, while the eyes surveyed the faces in the tumbrils. Here and there, the inmate had visitors to see the sight. Then he pointed his finger, with something of the complacency of a curator or authorised exponent, to this cart and to this, and seemed to tell who sat here yesterday, and who there the day before.
Of the riders in the tumbrils, some observed these things, and all things on their last roadside, with an impassive stare; others, with a lingering interest in the ways of life and men. Some, seated with drooping heads, were sunk in silent despair. Again, there were some so heedful of their looks that they cast upon the multitude such glances as they had seen in theatres, and in pictures. Several closed their eyes, and thought, or tried to get their straying thoughts together. Only one, and he a miserable creature, of a crazy aspect, was so shattered and made drunk by horror, that he sang, and tried to dance. Not one of the whole number appealed by look or gesture, to the pity of the people.
There was a guard of sundry horsemen riding abreast of the tumbrils, and faces were often turned up to some of them. They were asked some questions. It would seem to be always the same question, for it was always followed by a press of people towards the third cart. The horsemen abreast of that cart, frequently pointed out one man in it with their swords. The leading curiosity was, to know which he was he stood at the back of the tumbril with his head bent down, to converse with a mere girl who sat on the side of the cart, and held his hand. He had no curiosity or care for the scene about him, and always spoke to the girl. Here and there in the long street of St. Honore, cries were raised against him. If they moved him at all, it was only to a quiet smile, as he shook his hair a little more loosely about his face. He couldn’t easily touch his face, his arms being bound.
On the steps of a church, awaiting the coming up of the tumbrils, stood the Spy and prison-sheep. He looked into the first of them: not there. He looked into the second: not there. He asked himself, “Has he sacrificed me?” When his face clears, he looks into the third.
“Which is Evremonde?” says a man behind him.
“That. At the back there.”
“With his hand in the girl’s?”
“Yes.”
The man cries, “Down, Evremonde! To the Guillotine! Down, Evremonde!”
“Hush, hush!” the Spy entreats him, timidly.
“And why not, citizen?”
“He is going to pay the forfeit; it will be paid in five minutes more. Let him be at peace.”
But the man continuing to exclaim, “Down, Evremonde!” The face of Evremonde for a moment turned towards him. Evremonde then saw the Spy, and looked attentively at him, and went his way.
The clocks were on the stroke of three, and the furrow ploughed among the populace was turning round, to come on into the place of execution, and end. The ridges thrown to this side and to that, now crumbled in and closed behind the last plough as it passeed on, for all were following to the Guillotine. In front of it, seated in chairs, as in a garden of public diversion, were a number of women, busily knitting. On one of the fore-most chairs, stored The Vengeance, looking about for her friend.
“Therese!” she cries, in her shrill tones, “Who has seen her? Therese Defarge!”
“She never missed before,” says a knitting woman of the sisterhood.
“No; nor will she miss now,” cries The Vengeance, petulantly, “Therese.”
“Louder,” the woman recommended.
“Louder, Vengeance, much louder, and still she would scarcely hear you. Louder yet, Vengeance, with a little oath or so added, and yet it will hardly bring her. Send other women up and down to seek her, lingering somewhere. Although the messengers have done dread deeds yet it is questionable whether of their own wills they will go far enough to find her.”
“Bad fortune!” cried the Vengeance, stamping her foot in the chair, “and here are the tumbrils! And Evremonde will be despatched in a wink, and she will not be here! See her knitting in my hand, and her empty chair ready for her. I cry with vexation and disappointment!”
As The Vengeance descended from her elevation to do it, the tumbrils began to discharge their loads. The ministers of Sainte Guillotine were robed and ready. Crash!—A head was held up, and the knitting women who scarcely lifted their eyes to look at it a moment ago when it could think and speak, count One.
The second tumbril emptied and moved on; the third came up. Crash!—And the knitting women, never faltering or pausing in their work, count Two.
The was supposed Evremonde descended, and the seamstress is lifted out next after him. He had not relinquished her patient hand in getting out, but still held it as he promised. He gently placed her with her back to the crashing engine that constantly whirred up and fell. She looked into his face and thanked him.
“But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so composed, for I am naturally a poor little thing, faint of heart. Nor should I have been able to raise my thoughts to him who was put to death, that we might have hope and comfort here to-day. I think you were sent to me by Heaven.”
“Or you to me,” said Sidney Carton, “Keep your eyes upon me, dear child, and mind no other object.”
“I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall mind nothing when I let it go, if they are rapid.”
“They will be rapid. Fear not!”
The two stood in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they spoke as if they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart to heart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apart and differing, had come together on the dark highway to repair home together, and to rest in Her bosom.
“Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you one last question? I am very ignorant, and it troubles me—just a little.”
“Tell me what it is.”
I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself, whom I love very dearly. She is five years younger than I, and she lives in a farmer’s house in the south country. Poverty parted us, and she knows nothing of my fate—for I cannot write—and if I could, how should I tell her? It is better as it is.”
“Yes, yes; better as it is.”
“What I have been thinking as we came along, and what I am still thinking now, as I look into your kind strong face which gives me so much support, is this—if the Republic really does good to the poor, and they come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer less, she may live a long time. She may even live to be old.”
“What then, my gentle sister?”
“Do you think,” the uncomplaining eyes in which there was so much endurance, filled with tears, and the lips parted a little more and trembled, “that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better land where I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered.”
“It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and no trouble there.”
“You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant. Am I to kiss you now? Has the moment come?”
“Yes.”
She kissed his lips; he kissed hers. They solemnly blessed each other. The spare hand did not tremble as he released it; nothing worse than a sweet, bright constancy was in the patient face. She went next before him—was gone; the knitting women count Twenty-Two.
“I am the Resurrection and the Life,” said the Lord, He who believes in Me, though he were dead, shall he live. Whosoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.”
The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressing on of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, all swelled forward in a mass, like one great heave of water; all flashed away. Twenty-Three.
They said of him, about the city that night, that it was the most peaceful man’s face ever beheld there. Many added that he looked sublime and prophetic.
One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe—a woman had asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed to write down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given any utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these:
I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall cease out of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant people rising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, in their triumphs and defeats, through long years to come. I see the evil of this time and of the previous time of which this is the natural birth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.
“I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful, prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I see her with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father, aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in his healing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long their friend, in ten years’ time enriching them with all he has, and passing tranquilly to his reward.
“I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts of their descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weeping for me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, their course done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed. I know that each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other’s soul, than I was in the souls of both.
“I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a man winning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see him winning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by the light of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him, fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place—then fair to look upon, with not a trace of this day’s disfigurement—and I hear him tell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.
“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.”
