A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (best free ebook reader for android .txt) ๐
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- Author: Charles Dickens
Read book online ยซA Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (best free ebook reader for android .txt) ๐ยป. Author - Charles Dickens
She repeated in the same tone, sunk to a whisper, โI have been free, I have been happy, yet his Ghost has never haunted me!โ
โOnly one thing more,โ said Mr. Lorry, laying stress upon it as a wholesome means of enforcing her attention: โhe has been found under another name; his own, long forgotten or long concealed. It would be worse than useless now to inquire which; worse than useless to seek to know whether he has been for years overlooked, or always designedly held prisoner. It would be worse than useless now to make any inquiries, because it would be dangerous. Better not to mention the subject, anywhere or in any way, and to remove himโfor a while at all eventsโout of France. Even I, safe as an Englishman, and even Tellsonโs, important as they are to French credit, avoid all naming of the matter. I carry about me, not a scrap of writing openly referring to it. This is a secret service altogether. My credentials, entries, and memoranda, are all comprehended in the one line, โRecalled to Life;โ which may mean anything. But what is the matter! She doesnโt notice a word! Miss Manette!โ
Perfectly still and silent, and not even fallen back in her chair, she sat under his hand, utterly insensible; with her eyes open and fixed upon him, and with that last expression looking as if it were carved or branded into her forehead. So close was her hold upon his arm, that he feared to detach himself lest he should hurt her; therefore he called out loudly for assistance without moving.
A wild-looking woman, whom even in his agitation, Mr. Lorry observed to be all of a red colour, and to have red hair, and to be dressed in some extraordinary tight-fitting fashion, and to have on her head a most wonderful bonnet like a Grenadier wooden measure, and good measure too, or a great Stilton cheese, came running into the room in advance of the inn servants, and soon settled the question of his detachment from the poor young lady, by laying a brawny hand upon his chest, and sending him flying back against the nearest wall.
(โI really think this must be a man!โ was Mr. Lorryโs breathless reflection, simultaneously with his coming against the wall.)
โWhy, look at you all!โ bawled this figure, addressing the inn servants. โWhy donโt you go and fetch things, instead of standing there staring at me? I am not so much to look at, am I? Why donโt you go and fetch things? Iโll let you know, if you donโt bring smelling-salts, cold water, and vinegar, quick, I will.โ
There was an immediate dispersal for these restoratives, and she softly laid the patient on a sofa, and tended her with great skill and gentleness: calling her โmy precious!โ and โmy bird!โ and spreading her golden hair aside over her shoulders with great pride and care.
โAnd you in brown!โ she said, indignantly turning to Mr. Lorry; โcouldnโt you tell her what you had to tell her, without frightening her to death? Look at her, with her pretty pale face and her cold hands. Do you call that being a Banker?โ
Mr. Lorry was so exceedingly disconcerted by a question so hard to answer, that he could only look on, at a distance, with much feebler sympathy and humility, while the strong woman, having banished the inn servants under the mysterious penalty of โletting them knowโ something not mentioned if they stayed there, staring, recovered her charge by a regular series of gradations, and coaxed her to lay her drooping head upon her shoulder.
โI hope she will do well now,โ said Mr. Lorry.
โNo thanks to you in brown, if she does. My darling pretty!โ
โI hope,โ said Mr. Lorry, after another pause of feeble sympathy and humility, โthat you accompany Miss Manette to France?โ
โA likely thing, too!โ replied the strong woman. โIf it was ever intended that I should go across salt water, do you suppose Providence would have cast my lot in an island?โ
This being another question hard to answer, Mr. Jarvis Lorry withdrew to consider it.
The Wine-shop
A large cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street. The accident had happened in getting it out of a cart; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the stones just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell.
All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might have thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them, had dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded, each by its own jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from womenโs heads, which were squeezed dry into infantsโ mouths; others made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others devoted themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish. There was no drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along with it, that there might have been a scavenger in the street, if anybody acquainted with it could have believed in such a miraculous presence.
A shrill sound of laughter and of amused voicesโvoices of men, women, and childrenโresounded in the street while this wine game lasted. There was little roughness in the sport, and much playfulness. There was a special companionship in it, an observable inclination on the part of every one to join some other one, which led, especially among the luckier or lighter-hearted, to frolicsome embraces, drinking of healths, shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and dancing, a dozen together. When the wine was gone, and the places where it had been most abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern by fingers, these demonstrations ceased, as suddenly as they had broken out. The man who had left his saw sticking in the firewood he was cutting, set it in motion again; the women who had left on a door-step the little pot of hot ashes, at which she had been trying to soften the pain in her own starved fingers and toes, or in those of her child, returned to it; men with bare arms, matted locks, and cadaverous faces, who had emerged into the winter light from cellars, moved away, to descend again; and a gloom gathered on the scene that appeared more natural to it than sunshine.
The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood,
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