8. A Hand of Cards
Not knowing about what had happened at home, Miss Pross walked happily along the narrow streets and crossed the river, going over in her mind the number of things that she needed to get. Mr. Cruncher, with the basket, walked at her side. They both looked to the right and to the left into most of the shops they passed on the way, with a careful eye for all friendly groups of people, and moving out of their way so they would not be a part of their talk. It was a cold night, and the cloud coming up off the river made both the lights and the noise softer. On the river were big flat boats where workers were making guns for the new army. God help the man who played tricks with that army, or the soldier found breaking the rules to get ahead! It would be better that they never had a beard than to have the government 'razor' shave them so closely.
Having picked up a little food here and there, and some oil for the lantern, Miss Pross moved on to thinking about the wine. After looking into a few wine shops, she stopped at the sign outside the Good Old Brutus pub, not far from where the king used to live. She liked it better than the other places that they had passed. It still had a lot of red hats, but not as many as in the others. Asking Mr. Cruncher what he thought, and seeing that he agreed to it, Miss Pross went into the Good Old Brutus, joined by her protecter.
They showed little interest in the smoky lights; in the people, some with pipes in their mouths, playing with old cards and yellow dominoes; in the man without a shirt, covered with black dust, who was reading a newspaper out for others to hear; in the weapons that people were wearing, or that they had put on tables; or in the two or three people who were sleeping in coats covered with long rough hair that so many people liked to wear at that time, which made them look like sleeping bears or dogs. Instead, these two people from a different country walked up to the counter and made movements to show what they wanted.
As their wine was being measured out, a man got up to leave another man in the corner. As he left, he turned toward Miss Pross. No sooner did he face her than Miss Pross let out a loud cry and hit her hands together.
A second later, everyone in the room was on their feet. What they most expected to see was that someone had been killed because of an argument. But all they saw were a man and a woman looking at each other. The man looked to be a true French countryman, and the woman was clearly English.
What the people of Good Old Brutus had to say quite loudly on seeing this, would have been like Greek to Miss Pross and her protecter even if they had been all ears. But in their surprise they had no ears at all for what the others were saying. It must be said that not only was Miss Pross surprised and confused, but Mr. Cruncher was also very surprised, but in his case it was for what seemed to be a different reason.
"What is your problem?” asked the man who had made Miss Pross cry out. He sounded angry, but was talking softly, and in English.
"Oh Solomon! My sweet Solomon!" cried Miss Pross, hitting her hands together again. "After not seeing you or hearing from you for so long, to think I should find you here!"
"Don't call me Solomon. Do you want to have me killed?” asked the man, who was clearly afraid.
"My brother, my brother!" cried Miss Pross, with tears running down her face. "Have I ever been so hard with you that you could ask me such a cruel question?"
"Then hold your tongue," said Solomon, "and come outside if you want to speak to me. Pay for your wine and come out. And who is this man?"
Miss Pross, shaking her loving and sad head at her brother, who was not loving in any way, said through her tears, "Mr. Cruncher."
"Let him come out too," said Solomon. "Does he think I am a ghost?"
To judge by Mr. Cruncher's looks, he did. But he said not a word, and Miss Pross found it difficult to see through her tears to fish in her handbag for money to pay for her wine. As she did this, Solomon turned to the people in Good Old Brutus to tell them in French what was happening. Whatever it was, it was enough to send them all back to what they had been doing before.
"Now," said Solomon, stopping at a dark street corner, "what do you want?"
"How cruel of a brother that I have always loved," cried Miss Pross, "to talk like that to me, and to show no love toward me."
"There. Stop it! There," said Solomon, touching Miss Pross's lips with his own. "Now are you happy?"
Miss Pross only shook her head and cried quietly.
"If you expected me to be surprised," said her brother, "I am not surprised. I knew you were here. I know about most people who are here. If you really do not want to put me in danger -- which I half believe you do -- go your way as quickly as you can, and let me go mine. I am busy. I have a government job here.
"My English brother Solomon," said Miss Pross sadly, lifting her tear-filled eyes, "who could have been a great leader in his own country, is working for a foreign country, and for a foreign country such as this one. I would almost have been happier to see the sweet boy lying in his..."
"You see!" cried her brother, stopping her. "I knew it. You want to see me dead. I will be arrested by my own sister, just when I was doing so well!"
"No, may God stop that from happening!" cried Miss Pross. "I would be happier never to see you again, Solomon, but I have always loved you and I always will. Just say one kind word to me, and tell me you're not angry with me, and I won't keep you any longer."
Good Miss Pross! As if their being separate had come from any wrong action on her part. As if Mr. Lorry had not known it to be true years ago, on that quiet corner in Soho, that this loved brother had used up her money and then left her!
He was saying a kind word now, but with less feeling than if he had been the innocent one and she the guilty (which is how it so often happens all over the world), when Mr. Cruncher, touching him on the shoulder, without warning cut in with the following question:
"I say! Can I ask you one thing? Is your name John Solomon or Solomon John?"
This worker for the French government turned toward him with a quickly growing worry. He had not said a word before this.
"Out with it!" said Mr. Cruncher. "Tell us what you know.” (Which, by the way, is more than he could do himself.) "Is it John Solomon, or Solomon John? She calls you Solomon, and she must know, being your sister. But I know you're John. So which of the two goes first? And the same with that name Pross. That wasn't your name over the water."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I don't know all that I mean, because I can't call to mind what your name was, over the water."
"No?"
"No. But I know it was longer than Pross.” "Is that right?"
"Yes. T'other one's name was short like that. But I know you. You was a secret government witness at the Bailey. What, in the name of the Father of Lies, own father to yourself, was you called at that time?"
"Barsad," said another voice, cutting in.
"That's the name, for a thousand pounds!" cried Jerry.
The speaker who cut in was Sydney Carton. He had his hands in his pockets, and he stood at Mr. Cruncher's elbow as lazily as he would have stood at the Old Bailey itself.
"Don't be surprised, my good Miss Pross. I arrived at Mr. Lorry's, to his surprise, last night. We agreed that I would not show myself until all was well or until I was needed. I am showing myself here now because I want to have a little talk with your brother. I wish your brother, Mr. Barsad, had a better job than working as a Sheep in the prisons."
Sheep was a special word used at that time for a spy who worked with the prison guards. The spy, in question whose skin was white, turned whiter, and asked Sydney how he had the confidence to...
"I'll tell you," said Sydney. "I saw you coming out of the court prison when I was studying the walls around it an hour or so ago. You have a face that is easily remembered, and I remember faces very well. I wanted to know why you had been there, and I had good reason, as you would know, for thinking that you could be partly to blame for something very bad which has just happened to a friend of mine. So I followed you into the wine shop, and I sat near you. It was easy to pick up from your proud talk, and what others were saying, just what your job was. Little by little, what I had learned by accident started to shape into a plan, Mr. Barsad."
"What plan?” the spy asked.
"It would be difficult, and could be dangerous to talk about it here. Could you help me by spending a few quiet minutes at the office of Tellson's Bank, for starters?"
"Are you going to try to hurt me if I don't?”
"Oh, did I say that?"
"What other reason would I have to go there?"
"Really, Mr. Barsad, if you don't know yourself, then I cannot tell you."
"Do you mean that you won't say, sir?” the spy asked, not knowing which way to go with this.
"You understand me very clearly, Mr. Barsad. No, I won't."
Carton's wildly confident way of talking worked well with his ability to see through a person, and would help him with what he was secretly planning, with such a man as he had to work with. He could see it, and he made the most of it.
"I told you so," said the spy, with an angry look at his sister. "If any trouble comes of this, it's your doing."
"Come, come, Mr. Barsad!" said Sydney confidently. "You should be thanking me. If it was not for my feelings for your sister, I would not be talking so nicely to you now about the plan I have which could help us both. Do you want to go with me to the bank?"
"Just to hear what you have to say. Yes, I'll go with you."
"I think we should first take your sister safely to the corner of her own street. Let me take your arm, Miss Pross. This is not a good city, at this time, for you to be out in on your own; and because your protector knows Mr. Barsad, I will be asking him to come to Mr. Lorry's with us. Are we ready? Come then!"
A short time after that, and to the end of her life, Miss Pross remembered that, as she put her hand on Sydney's arm and looked up in his face, wanting him to do no hurt to Solomon, there was a look in his eye and something in how he held his arm which was very different to his old foolish spirit, and which changed and lifted the man. At the time she was too busy fearing for her brother, who gave little reason for her loving him, and too busy listening to Sydney's friendly promises, to think about those changes in Sydney.
They left her at the corner of her street, and then Carton showed the way to Mr. Lorry's, which was only a few minutes' walk away. John Barsad, or should we say Solomon Pross, walked at his side.
Mr. Lorry had just finished his dinner, and was sitting in front of a friendly fire in the fireplace... maybe looking into it to find a picture of that younger man from Tellsons, who had looked into the red coals at the King George at Dover, now a good many years in the past. He turned his head as they came in, and showed surprise on seeing the stranger.
"Miss Pross' brother, sir," said Sydney. "Mr. Barsad."
"Barsad?” repeated the old man. "Barsad? I've heard the name before... and seen the face."
"I told you that your face is easy to remember, Mr. Barsad," said Carton coolly. "Please sit down."
As he took a seat himself, Carton gave Mr. Lorry the piece of information he needed, by saying to him with an angry look, "Witness at my court case.” Mr. Lorry remembered at once, and showed an angry and almost sick look toward his new visitor.
"Miss Pross has told us that Mr. Barsad is the loving brother you have heard so much about," said Sydney. "And he doesn't argue with that. But I have worse news. Darnay has been arrested again."
The old man could not believe him. "What are you telling me? I left him safe and free just two hours ago. I was just about to return to him!"
"Arrested all the same. When did it happen, Mr. Barsad?"
"Just now, if it has happened."
"Mr. Barsad is the best one to tell us, sir," said Sydney. "I have it from his talk with a brother Sheep over a bottle of wine, that the arrest has taken place. His friend left the people who made the arrest at the prison gate, and he saw the gate open for them. There's no reason on earth to think he has not been taken."
Mr. Lorry's business eye could read by Sydney's face that it would be a waste of time to argue the point. He was confused, but he knew that he needed to control himself and just listen.
"Now I am hoping," said Carton to him, "that the name and effect of Doctor Manette may save him tomorrow... you did say he would be before the court again tomorrow, didn't you, Mr. Barsad?"
"Yes, I believe he will."
"...as it saved him today. But it may not happen. I must say that I am surprised and worried, Mr. Lorry, that Doctor Manette did not have the power to stop this arrest."
"He may not have known about it before it happened," said Mr. Lorry.
"And the surprise would be awful for him, when we remember how close he is to his daughter's husband."
"That's true," agreed Mr. Lorry, with his worried hand at his chin and his worried eyes on Carton.
"In short," said Sydney, "this is a serious time, when serious games must be played with serious effects. The Doctor may play a winning game, but I am working on a losing one. You can't buy a life here. Anyone carried home by the people today may be returned tomorrow. So the reward that I hope to play for is a friend in the court prison, and the friend I plan to win is Mr. Barsad."
"You would need good cards for that, sir," said the spy.
"Let's look at them. Let's look at mine first... Mr. Lorry, you know what an animal I am; could I have a little drink?"
It was put before him, and he finished it quickly... that one and another, before he pushed the bottle away.
"Mr. Barsad," he went on, in the voice of one who really was looking over a hand of cards. "Prison sheep, working for the Freedom Fighters, one day holding the keys to the prison, the next acting as one of the prisoners, always a spy, giving secret information. So much better for being English, because the French would not think that an Englishman would lie to hurt another Englishman. But he has used a false name in getting his job with the French government. That is a very good card. Mr. Barsad, today working for the French government, but in the past working for the rich English government, the enemy of France and the enemy of freedom. That's a really good card. What they will think is that Mr. Barsad, still working for the rich English government, is a spy for the head of government over there, the enemy of the new France hiding in his heart, the secret English enemy that everyone talks about, but that no one can find. Now that is the best card of all. Have you followed my hand, Mr. Barsad?"
"Not well enough to understand how you are going to use them," returned the spy with a worried look on his face.
"I play my best card, by telling the nearest local court about you. And what do you do? Look over your hand, Mr. Barsad, and see what you have. Don't hurry."
He pulled the bottle closer, poured another glass and finished it off. He could see that the spy was afraid he would drink too much and run off to tell the local leaders. Seeing that, he poured himself another glass and finished that off too.
"Look over your hand carefully, Mr. Barsad. Take your time."
It was a worse hand than he had believed. Mr. Barsad could see losing cards that Sydney Carton knew nothing of. He had been forced out of England because his lies had not worked there... not that he was not wanted there, because it was only later that we started acting like we do not have secrets and do not use spies. He knew that he had crossed the Channel and started working for France: first to test and listen in to people from his own country, and then to do the same with the French. He knew that under the old government he had spied on Saint Antoine and on Defarge's wine shop. He had received enough information from the police about Doctor Manette's life, that he was able to talk to the Defarges like an old friend. He had tried them on Madam Defarge, but they did not work at all. He always remembered with fear and shaking that the awful woman had knitted when he talked with her, and had looked dangerously at him as her fingers moved.
He had seen her in Saint Antoine, over and over, bring out her knitted squares and use them against people whose lives were then taken from them by the guillotine. Like anyone doing his kind of work, he knew that he was never safe, that there was nowhere to run, that he was locked under the shadow of the axe, and that no measure of help for the government that was paying him could stop that axe from falling if someone pointed a finger at him, and on the serious grounds that Sydney Carton had just listed, he knew that awful woman that he had seen hurt so many other people, would bring out the knitting square that would take away his life. Apart from the truth that all who have secrets have reason to fear, here were enough cards of one black shape as to make the one holding them turn them over on the table.
"You don't seem to like your hand," said Sydney, fully relaxed. "Will you play?"
"I think, sir," said the spy in the humblest way, as he turned to Mr. Lorry, "I can ask a man of your years and kindness, to ask this other man, so much younger than you, how he could ever play that top card that he talks of. It's true that I am a spy, and people think poorly of me because of it... but someone has to do it. Yet this man is not a spy, so why should he bring himself so low as to do this to me?"
"I will be playing my card, Mr. Barsad," said Carton, taking it on himself to answer for Mr. Lorry, and looking at his watch, "without any fear, in a very few minutes."
"I should have hoped, with you both being good men," said the spy, still trying to pull Mr. Lorry into the talk, "that your kind feelings for my sister..."
"I could not think of a better way to help your sister than to take her brother out of the way," said Sydney Carton.
"You think there is no better way, sir?”
"I have made up my mind about it."
The smooth way of the spy, strangely opposite to his very rough way of dressing, and probably with the way he did much of his business, was so well covered by Carton's ability to hide his true thoughts... for he was a secret to men who were much smarter and more honest than Barsad... that it fell apart at this point. Seeing that Barsad was losing, Carton said, returning to his earlier game of looking at cards:
"Now that I think about it, I believe I have another good card here, one I haven't yet talked about. That other Sheep, who talked of making a living for himself in the prisons. Who was he?"
"He's French. You wouldn't know him," said the spy quickly.
"French, eh?” repeated Carton, thinking to himself, and not showing any interest in Barsad at all, even as he repeated the same word. "Well, he may be."
"He is. I promise you," said the spy. "But it's not important."
"But it's not important," repeated Carton in the same empty way. "But it's not important... No, it's not important. No. Yet I know the face."
"I don't think so. I am sure you do not. It can't be," said the spy.
"It... can't... be," Sydney Carton said to himself as he played with his glass (which, luckily, was a small one) again. "Can't... be. He spoke good French. But I still thought it sounded like his second language."
"He's from another part of France," said the spy.
"No, from another country!" cried Carton, hitting his open hand on the table, as a light broke through to his mind. "Cly! Changed a little, but the same man. We had that man before us at the Old Bailey."
"Now you have jumped too soon, sir," said Barsad with a smile that made his eagle-like nose move a little to one side. "You have really helped me by accident. You see, Cly (who, at this distance in time, I can freely say had been working with me) has been dead now for a few years. I was with him just before he died. He was buried in London at the church of Saint Pancras in the Fields. The dirty-talking crowds at the time did not like him, and they stopped me from going with him to the burying; but I helped to put him in the box."
Here, Mr. Lorry could see, from where he was sitting, a strange movement in a shadow on the wall. Looking around the room, he could see that it was a movement in the wild hair on Mr. Cruncher's head.
"Let us talk about this," said the spy, "and let us be fair. To show you how wrong you are, I will show you a paper showing that Cly was buried, which I just happen to have carried here in my pocket-book ever since that day.” He quickly found it and opened it. "There! Look at it, look at it! You can pick it up. It's real."
Here, Mr. Lorry saw the shadow on the wall grow taller as Mr. Cruncher stood up and stepped forward. His hair could not have been more wildly on end if it had, at that time, been put in place by the cow with a broken horn in the house that Jack built.
Without the spy seeing him, Mr. Cruncher moved to his side and touched him on the shoulder like a ghost calling him to court.
"That there Roger Cly, master," said Mr. Cruncher, with a hard look that needed few words, "so you put him in his box?"
"I did."
"And who took him out of it?"
Barsad leaned back in his chair and said in stops and starts, "What do you mean?"
"I mean," said Mr. Cruncher, "that he weren't never in it. No! Not he! I'll have my head took off if he was ever in it."
The spy looked around at the other two men, and they looked at Jerry with such surprise that they could not speak.
"I tell you," said Jerry, "that you buried stones and dirt in that there box. Don't go and tell me that you buried Cly. It was a take in. Me and two more knows it."
"How do you know it?"
"What's that to you?” Mr. Cruncher said angrily. "So it's you I should of been angry against all this time, with your awful way of hurting honest workers! I'd catch hold of your throat and squeeze it to death for half a pound."
Sydney Carton, who, with Mr. Lorry, had been lost in surprise at this turn in their business, here asked Mr. Cruncher to back up and tell them what he was on about.
"At another time, sir," he returned, trying to get away from it. "The present time is not the best for talking. What I stand to is that we knows well enough that there Cly was never in that there box. Let him say he was, in so much as a word, and I'll either catch hold of his throat and squeeze him to death for half a pound...” Mr. Cruncher waited for a second, clearly believing that the next line was the kinder of two choices. "... or I'll out and tell what he did."
"Hmm! I see that I have another card, Mr. Barsad," said Carton. "It would be impossible, with fear filling the air here in Paris, for you to live if I tell, when they find you are working with another spy for the rich who comes from the same country as yourself, who, himself, has a secret past in which he made people believe he was dead, and then came to life again! A plan in the prisons by two English men against the new government. A strong card... a clear Guillotine card! Do you still want to play against me?"
"No!" returned the spy. "I give up. It's true that the crowds were against us in London. I was almost drowned, and Cly was so hunted that he would have never been able to get away at all without that burying trick. But I have no way of knowing how this man knows about it."
"Never you trouble your head about this man," argued Mr. Cruncher. "You'll have trouble enough with listening to that man. And look here! Again!" Mr. Cruncher could not be stopped from showing them all how kind he was. "I'd catch hold of your throat and squeeze it to death for half a pound."
The prison Sheep turned from him to Sydney Carton, and said more seriously this time, "It has come to a point. I should be starting work soon, and cannot stay here much longer. You said you had a plan you wanted me to help with. What is it? There is no good in asking too much from me. If you ask me to do something in my job that could get me killed, then I'll be happier to face the danger of saying no than the danger of saying yes. Remember that I can say things against you too, and I have ways to get through stone walls, and so can others who are my friends. So what do you want from me?"
"Not very much. You hold the keys at the court prison?"
"I'm telling you this once for all, it is not possible to run away from there," said the spy strongly.
"I don't need answers to questions I have not asked. Do you hold the keys?"
"I do, at times."
"You can choose when that will be?”
"I can come and go as I choose."
Sydney Carton filled another glass with wine, but poured it slowly on the fire, when no one was looking. When it was all gone, he said, standing:
"So far we have been talking in front of these other two, because it was good for the strength of the cards to be measured by others apart from you and me. But come into this dark room here, and we can say the last things alone."