A Tale of Two Cities

"Her husband's destiny," said Madame Defarge, with her usual composure,
"will take him where he is to go, and will lead him to the end that is
to end him.  That is all I know."

"But it is very strange--now, at least, is it not very strange"--said
Defarge, rather pleading with his wife to induce her to admit it,
"that, after all our sympathy for Monsieur her father, and herself,
her husband's name should be proscribed under your hand at this moment,
by the side of that infernal dog's who has just left us?"

"Stranger things than that will happen when it does come," answered
madame.  "I have them both here, of a certainty; and they are both
here for their merits; that is enough."

She rolled up her knitting when she had said those words, and presently
took the rose out of the handkerchief that was wound about her head.
Either Saint Antoine had an instinctive sense that the objectionable
decoration was gone, or Saint Antoine was on the watch for its
disappearance; howbeit, the Saint took courage to lounge in, very
shortly afterwards, and the wine-shop recovered its habitual aspect.

In the evening, at which season of all others Saint Antoine turned
himself inside out, and sat on door-steps and window-ledges, and
came to the corners of vile streets and courts, for a breath of air,
Madame Defarge with her work in her hand was accustomed to pass from
place to place and from group to group:  a Missionary--there were
many like her--such as the world will do well never to breed again.
All the women knitted.  They knitted worthless things; but, the
mechanical work was a mechanical substitute for eating and drinking;
the hands moved for the jaws and the digestive apparatus:  if the bony
fingers had been still, the stomachs would have been more famine-pinched.

But, as the fingers went, the eyes went, and the thoughts.  And as
Madame Defarge moved on from group to group, all three went quicker
and fiercer among every little knot of women that she had spoken with,
and left behind.

Her husband smoked at his door, looking after her with admiration.
"A great woman," said he, "a strong woman, a grand woman, a frightfully
grand woman!"

Darkness closed around, and then came the ringing of church bells and
the distant beating of the military drums in the Palace Courtyard, as
the women sat knitting, knitting.  Darkness encompassed them.  Another
darkness was closing in as surely, when the church bells, then ringing
pleasantly in many an airy steeple over France, should be melted into
thundering cannon; when the military drums should be beating to drown
a wretched voice, that night all potent as the voice of Power and
Plenty, Freedom and Life.  So much was closing in about the women
who sat knitting, knitting, that they their very selves were closing
in around a structure yet unbuilt, where they were to sit knitting,
knitting, counting dropping heads.



XVII

One Night


Never did the sun go down with a brighter glory on the quiet corner
in Soho, than one memorable evening when the Doctor and his daughter
sat under the plane-tree together.  Never did the moon rise with a
milder radiance over great London, than on that night when it found
them still seated under the tree, and shone upon their faces
through its leaves.

Lucie was to be married to-morrow.  She had reserved this last
evening for her father, and they sat alone under the plane-tree.

"You are happy, my dear father?"

"Quite, my child."

They had said little, though they had been there a long time.  When
it was yet light enough to work and read, she had neither engaged
herself in her usual work, nor had she read to him.  She had employed
herself in both ways, at his side under the tree, many and many a time;
but, this time was not quite like any other, and nothing could make it so.

"And I am very happy to-night, dear father.  I am deeply happy in the
love that Heaven has so blessed--my love for Charles, and Charles's
love for me.  But, if my life were not to be still consecrated to you,
or if my marriage were so arranged as that it would part us, even by
the length of a few of these streets, I should be more unhappy and
self-reproachful now than I can tell you.  Even as it is--"

Even as it was, she could not command her voice.

In the sad moonlight, she clasped him by the neck, and laid her face
upon his breast.  In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light
of the sun itself is--as the light called human life is--at its
coming and its going.

"Dearest dear!  Can you tell me, this last time, that you feel quite,
quite sure, no new affections of mine, and no new duties of mine,
will ever interpose between us?  _I_ know it well, but do you know it?
In your own heart, do you feel quite certain?"