While Sydney Carton and the prison Sheep were in the next room, speaking so softly in the darkness that not a sound was heard, Mr. Lorry was looking at Jerry in a way that showed he did not trust him; and the way Jerry acted on seeing the look made him seem more guilty than ever. He moved from one leg to the other as often as if he had fifty legs and was trying each one of them. He looked at his fingernails too closely. And whenever Mr. Lorry's eyes crossed with his, he would do that strange little cough of his and put his hand over his mouth, which is not an action that makes one think a person is being perfectly open.
"Jerry," said Mr. Lorry. "Come here."
Mr. Cruncher moved forward, but did it with one side of his body leading the other side.
"What work have you been doing, apart from your work for Tellson's?"
After some thinking, that came with a serious look at his boss, Mr. Cruncher came up with the smart answer, "Farm work, sir. Digging."
"Something tells me," said Mr. Lorry, angrily shaking a finger at him, "that you have used the great name of Tellson's as a cover, and that you have been doing work that is against the law. If you have, then know that I will not help you when you get back to England. If you have, don't count on me keeping your secret. Tellson's will not be used in this way."
"I hope, sir," begged the worried Mr. Cruncher, "that a good man like yourself who I have been happy to work for until I am now grey at it, would think twice about hurting me, even if it was true... and I don't say it is, but even if it was. And it is to be took into your thinking that if it was, it wouldn't, even then, be all on one side. There'd be two sides to it. There might be a doctor even now, picking up their pounds where an honest worker don't pick up cents... cents? No, not even his half cents. But they goes banking away like smoke at Tellson's, and a pointing their doctor eyes at that worker on the street, while they's going in and going out of their own coaches, and equally doing that like smoke too, if not more so. Now that'd be using Tellson's too, for you cannot put sauce on the female goose and not put it on the male goose too. And here's Mrs. Crunch, at least she was back when we was in England, and would be again tomorrow, if she had reason to, prayin' against the business so much that she was destroying it... fully destroying it! But the doctor wives, they don't pray... you won't never catch them at it! Or, if they do, their prayers go to getting more sick people for their husbands. So how can you rightly turn on one without the other? Then what with giving something to the men who bury the body, and the man who watches over the church, and all of them greedy, a man wouldn't get much by it, even if it was so. And what little a man did get, would not make him rich, Mr. Lorry. He'd never have no good of it, and he'd want all along to be out of it if he could see his way to, but being once in... even if it was so."
"Stop it!" cried Mr. Lorry, giving in some, all the same. "I am surprised just to look at you."
"Now what I would like to humbly give you, sir," went on Mr. Cruncher, "even if it was so, which I don't say it is..."
"Don't kick around the bush," said Mr. Lorry.
"No, I will not, sir," returned Mr. Cruncher, as if nothing was farther from his thoughts or actions. "I'm not saying that it is... but what I would humbly want to give you, sir, if it was, would be this. On that chair there at the bank, sits that boy of mine, growed up to be a good worker for you, taking letters here and there and doing every little job for you until your heels are where your head is, if you would like him to do that. If it was so, which I still don't say it is (for I will not kick around the bush to you, sir), then, if it was, let that there boy keep his father's place, so he can take care of his mother; don't blow on that boy's father... do not do it, sir... but let that father go into the line of honest digging, and make up for what he should not have been digging... if it was so... by digging for them with a will and in a faith that would keep them safe for the future. That, Mr. Lorry," said Mr. Cruncher, rubbing his forehead with his arm to show that he had come to the finishing point of what he was trying to say, "is what I would humbly want to give to you, sir. A man don't see all the awful happenings that are going on round him here, in the way of people without heads, and happening to so many that the price of a life is no more than the cost of carrying it away, without having his serious thoughts of such things. And these here would be my thoughts if it was so kind of you to think that what I said just now, I up and said for a good reason when I might have kept it back."
"At least that much is true," said Mr. Lorry. "Say no more now. It may be that I will yet be your friend, if I think you have repented... in action, and not just in words. I want no more words."
Mr. Cruncher rubbed his fist on his forehead, as Sydney Carton and the spy returned from the dark room.
"Goodbye, Mr. Barsad," said Carton. "If you stick to this agreement, you have nothing to fear from me."
He sat down in a chair by the fireplace, next to Mr. Lorry. When they were alone, Mr. Lorry asked him what he had done.
"Not much. If it goes wrong with the prisoner, I will be able to have one visit with him."
The look on Mr. Lorry's face fell.
"It's all I could do," said Carton. "To ask too much would put this man's head under the axe, and, as he said himself, nothing worse could happen if I turned him in. It was the weakest part of our game. There is nothing we can do about that."
"But visiting him," said Mr. Lorry, "if it goes wrong before the court, will not save him."
"I never said it would."
Mr. Lorry's eyes slowly turned to the fire. His deep feeling for the one he loved, and the great sadness he felt on learning of his second arrest, slowly reached his eyes. He was an old man now, carrying too many worries at this time, and so his tears fell.
"You are a good man and a true friend," said Carton in a changed voice. "Forgive me for seeing the effect this is having on you. I could not see my father cry and sit by without doing anything. And I could not feel your sadness more if you were my father. At least you are lucky that you are not."
With those last words, he returned to his old way; but there was true feeling and love both in his voice and his touch that Mr. Lorry, who had never seen the better side of him, was not at all prepared for. He gave him his hand, and Carton squeezed it softly.
"To get back to poor Darnay," said Carton. "Don't tell her of this meeting, or of this agreement. It will not be possible for her to go see him. She might think that it is just a last minute plan to see him before he dies, and it will destroy her hope."
Mr. Lorry had not thought of that, and he looked quickly at Carton to see if that may have been what he was thinking. It seemed to be. Carton returned the look, showing that he understood what Mr. Lorry was thinking.
"She might think a thousand things," Carton said, "and any of them would only add to her trouble. Don't say anything to her about me. As I said when I first came, I had better not see her. I can reach my hand out to help in any little way that I can find, without her needing to know. You are going to her, I hope? She must be very sad tonight."
"I am going now, when we finish."
"I am glad of that. She has such a strong love for you, and faith in you. How does she look?"
"Worried and sad, but very beautiful."
"Ah!"
It was a long, sad sound, like a slow breathing out... almost like he was crying. It pulled Mr. Lorry's eyes to Carton's face, which was turned to the fire. A light, or a shadow (the old man could not have said which), came away from it as quickly as a change will move over the side of a hill on a clear windy day, and he lifted his foot to put back one of the little burning pieces of timber, which was falling forward. He was wearing the white riding coat and tall heavy boots that people often liked to wear then, and the light of the fire touching the light colour of his clothes made him look very white, with his long brown hair, not cut at all, hanging loose around him. He seemed to show so little interest in the fire that Mr. Lorry had to shout out to him. His foot was still on the burning piece of timber when it had broken under the weight of it.
"I had forgotten it," he said.
Mr. Lorry's eyes were again pulled to Sydney's face. He saw a finished empty look in what had always been a good-looking face, and it made him think of the look on the faces of prisoners that he had been seeing so much of at that time.
"And your work here is almost finished?” said Carton, turning to him.
"Yes, as I was telling you last night when Lucie came in by surprise, I have at last done all I can do here. I had been hoping that they would be perfectly safe before I left Paris. I have my papers to take me through the gates. I was ready to go."
They both said nothing.
"Yours is a long life to look back on, sir?” Carton said sadly.
"I am seventy-eight."
"You have used your whole life well; always busy; trusted; loved; and looked up to?"
"I have been a man of business for as long as I have been a man. In truth, I may say that I was a man of business when I was a boy."
"See what a place you fill at seventy eight. So many people will miss you when you leave it empty!"
"One man without a family," answered Mr. Lorry, shaking his head. "There is nobody to cry for me."
"How can you say that? Wouldn't she cry for you? Wouldn't her child?"
"Yes, yes, thank God. I didn't quite mean what I said.”
"It is something to thank God for, is it not?"
"Yes, surely."
"If you could say, with truth, to yourself alone tonight, 'I have not been able to win the love and trust of even one person; there is no one who has a soft place in their heart for me; I have done nothing good to be remembered by!' your seventy-eight years would be seventy-eight heavy curses, would they not?"
"You are right, Mr. Carton. I think they would be."
Sydney turned his eyes again on the fire, and after another quiet wait, he said:
"I would like to ask you: Does it seem a long time ago that you were a child? Do the days when you sat at your mother's knee seem to be very far away?"
Answering to this soft side of Sydney Carton, Mr. Lorry said:
"Twenty years back, I would have said yes. But at this time of my life, no. For, as I come closer and closer to the end, I travel in a circle, nearer and nearer to the start. It seems to be one of the kind things that prepares me and smooths the way for me. My heart is touched now by many things that I remember, which had been buried in my mind before now. Things about my beautiful young mother (as old as I am!), and about thoughts and feelings I had before what we call 'the World' was so real to me, and before others knew how many things were wrong with me."
"I understand the feeling!" said Carton with some enthusiasm. "And are you better for it?"
"I hope so."
Carton ended his talk there, by standing to help Mr. Lorry on with his over coat. "But you," said Mr. Lorry, returning to what they had been talking about, "you are young."
"Yes," said Carton. "I am not old, but my young way was never the way to become old either. But enough about me."
"And about me, too, I'm sure," said Mr. Lorry. "Are you going out?"
"I'll walk with you to her gate. You know my strange ways. If I should be out walking the streets for a long time, don't worry. I'll be back in the morning. Are you going to the court tomorrow?"
"Yes, sadly."
"I'll be there, but only as one of the crowd. My spy friend will find a place for me. Take my arm, sir."
Mr. Lorry did so, and they went down the steps and out in the streets. In a few minutes Mr. Lorry reached where he had been planning to go. Carton left him there, but waited around near there, and turned back to the gate again after it was closed, to touch it. He had heard about her going to the prison every day. "She came out here," he said, looking around him, "turned this way, must have stepped on these stones often. I will follow in her steps."
It was ten o'clock at night when he stood before La Force, where she had stood hundreds of times. A little woodcutter, having closed for the night, was smoking his pipe at the door of his shop.
"Good evening, countryman," said Sydney Carton, stopping as he was going by, because the man looked like he wanted to know why he was there.
"Good evening, countryman."
"And how is the country going?"
"You mean Guillotine. Not badly. Sixty-three today. We will jump to a hundred soon. Samson and his men say at times that they are too tired from all the work. Ha, ha, ha! He is so funny. And the way he shaves!"
"Do you often go to see him..."
"See him shave? Always. Every day. What a man! Have you seen him at work?”
"Never."
"Go and see him when he has a good group to work on. Work this out, countryman: He shaved the sixty-three today in less than two pipes! Less than two pipes. I give you my word!"
As the happy little man held out the pipe he was smoking, to show how he timed the killings, Carton was so full of a growing wish to knock the life out of him, that he turned away.
"But are you not English," said the woodcutter, "for you wear English clothes."
"Yes," said Carton, stopping again and answering over his shoulder.
"You speak like a Frenchman."
"I was a student here in the past."
"Ah, a perfect Frenchman! Good night, Englishman."
"Good night, countryman."
"But do go and see that funny dog," the little man went on, calling after him. "And take a pipe with you!"
Sydney had not gone far past where the man could see him when he stopped in the middle of the street under a lantern, and wrote with his pencil on a piece of paper. Then, covering with the confident steps of one who knew the way well, quite a few dark and dirty streets... much dirtier than in the past, because even the best roads were not cleaned in those times of killing and fear... he stopped at a shop where he could buy medicines and chemicals, where the owner was just closing up for the night. It was a small dark bent shop kept on a steep hill by a small dark bent man.
Giving this countryman, too, a good evening, as he met him at his counter, he put the piece of paper in front of him. "Well!" the owner whistled softly as he read it. "Hello, hello, hello!"
Sydney Carton showed no interest, and the man said: "For you, countryman?"
"For me."
"You will be careful to keep them separate, countryman? You know what will happen if you mix them?"
"Perfectly."
Some small containers were made and given to him. He put them, one by one, in the top pocket of his under coat, counted out the money for them, and confidently left the shop. "There is nothing more to do," he said to himself, looking up toward the moon, “until tomorrow. But I can't sleep."
He was not saying those words in anger, as he said them out loud under the fast-sailing clouds. They were not said in a lazy way either. They were said by a tired man who had gone the wrong way, became lost, and then, at last, found his way again and could see where it was leading.
Long ago, when other students saw him as one with great ability, he had buried his father. His mother had died years before that. The words that were read as his father was being buried came to him now as he went down the dark streets with their heavy shadows, and with the moon and the clouds sailing by high above him. "I am life and the giver of life, says the Lord. He that believes in me, even when he dies, he will still live. And anyone who lives and believes in me will never die."
In a city with an axe hanging over it, alone at night, feeling sadness for the 63 people who had been killed that day, and for those in the prisons waiting to die tomorrow and in other tomorrows after that, it was easy to see how one thought would lead to the other like each circle in a chain, pulling a rusty old ship's anchor up from the deep. He did not go looking for those words, but still, they went through his head before he walked on.
Sydney Carton had a serious interest in the whole life and death of the city this night, from the lights in windows, where people were about to take a few hours of rest from the cruel and awful actions that were happening all around them, to the church towers where no prayers were being said because the people had lost faith in a Christianity where the priests were false, evil robbers. He thought of the burying grounds, where signs on the gates said they were for people who were in "eternal sleep", of the crowded prisons, and of so many sixties of prisoners rolling to their deaths on those streets that people never even thought of sad stories about the guilt the guillotine workers might feel now. Sydney Carton then crossed the river to the lighter streets.
There were few coaches these days, because those who had enough money to ride in them were afraid that it would give them away as being part of the rich class. The rich were now hiding their heads under red hats, and wearing heavy shoes that were made for long walks. But the theatres were all filled, and the people poured happily out of them as he walked by, and they walked home talking to each other. At one of the theatre doors there was a little girl with her mother, looking for a way to cross the street through the mud. He carried the child over, and before the shy arm was loosed from around his neck, he asked her for a kiss.
"I am life and the giver of life, says the Lord. He that believes in me, even when he dies, he will still live. And anyone who lives and believes in me will never die."
Now that the streets were quiet and the night was wearing on, the words came back to him at the sound of his own steps and through the night air. Perfectly relaxed and clear, he sometimes repeated the words to himself as he walked; but even when he was not saying them, he was hearing them.
The night was coming to an end, and, as he stood on the bridge listening to the water hitting against the sides of the island that is Paris, where the picture-like confusion of houses and churches could be seen clearly in the light of the moon, the day came coldly, looking like a dead face out of the sky. Then the night, with the moon and the stars, turned white and died, and for a little while it seemed as if those things that God had made had died with it.
But the wonderful sun, as it came up, seemed to write those words, the ones he had carried through the night, straight and warm on his heart. Looking along the lines of sunlight, with his hand half covering his eyes, it seemed like a bridge of light between him and the sun, with the river looking beautiful below it.
The strong movement of the river, so fast, so deep, and so sure, was like a welcome friend in the quiet early morning hours. He walked by the water, far from the houses, and in the light and heat of the sun, he fell asleep on the side of it. When he was awake and on his feet again, he stayed there for a short time, watching a round movement in the water that turned and turned without any clear direction, until the river swallowed it up and carried it on to the ocean. "Like me!" he thought.
A boat with a sail that was the same soft colour of a dead leaf moved quietly by him and died away. As the line behind the boat was swallowed up as well, a prayer that had come up out of his heart, asking forgiveness for all of his blind and selfish actions, ended in the words, "I am life, and the giver of life."
Mr. Lorry was already out when he returned, and it was easy to say where he had gone. Sydney Carton had nothing but a little coffee and some bread, and, having washed and changed clothes, went to the court.
The court room was already full when the black sheep (whom many fell away from in fear) squeezed him into a back corner. Mr. Lorry was there, and Doctor Manette. She was there, sitting beside her father.
When her husband was brought in, she turned a look toward him that was so strong, so encouraging, so full of love and kindness, yet so brave for him, that it brought healthy blood to her husband's face, lighting up his eyes, and moving his heart. If there had been any eyes looking to see the effect of her look on Sydney Carton, they would have seen the same thing there.
Before that awful court there was little or no plan that would give any prisoner brought there the feeling that they would be heard fairly. But there would never have been a change of government in the first place if all the laws and rules had not first been awfully broken. And now the winds of war had confused things even more.
Every eye was turned toward the jury. It was the same freedom fighters and countrymen who had been there yesterday and the day before, and who would be there tomorrow and the day after. One enthusiastic member who seemed to be a leader to the others, with a hungry face, and his fingers always moving around his lips, was well liked by the people in the crowd. This blood thirsty man of the jury was Jack Three from St. Antoine. The whole jury was like a group of wild dogs being asked to say what they should do with a deer.
Every eye then turned to the five judges and the lawyer for the government. There was no one in that group who would help them today. Their business was to cut down and kill without mercy. Then every eye looked for some other eye in the crowd, and they smiled at each other and moved their heads in agreement, before bending forward with serious interest in what was going to happen.
Charles Evremonde, called Darnay. Freed yesterday. Arrested again yesterday. Papers listing his wrongs given to him last night. Believed to be an enemy of the new government, from the rich class, one of a family of evil leaders, one of a group named for the same thing, because they had used their past powers in awful acts against the people. Charles Evremonde, called Darnay, if the arguments are true, will be perfectly dead by the law.
This is, in as few or fewer words, what the lawyer for the government said.
The President asked if the arguments against the prisoner were given openly or secretly.
"Openly, President."
"By whom?"
"Three voices. Ernest Defarge, wine seller of St. Antoine.”
"Good."
"Therese Defarge, his wife."
"Good."
"Alexander Manette, doctor."
A great cry from the crowd broke out, and in the middle of it was Doctor Manette, turned white and shaking, who was now standing where he had been sitting.
"President, I angrily disagree. This argument is false, a counterfeit. You know the prisoner to be the husband of my daughter. My daughter and those she loves are far more important to me than my own life. Who and where is the person who falsely says that I have spoken against the husband of my child?"
"Countryman Manette, be quiet. If you do not follow the rules of the court, you will make yourself an enemy of the Law. As to what you love more than life, nothing can be more important to a good countryman than the government of his country."
Loud shouts were again heard in the court. Doctor Manette sat down, with his eyes looking around and his lips shaking. His daughter moved closer to him. The hungry faced man on the jury rubbed his hands together and then returned the hand to his mouth that was always there.
Defarge came forward, when the court was quiet enough to hear him, and quickly told the story of the Doctor going to prison (He said he was only a boy working for the Doctor when it happened.) and of him being freed from prison and how he was when he arrived at his wine shop. The court moved quickly, so only these few words followed what Defarge had to say:
"You served the country well when we took control of that prison, did you not, countryman?"
"I believe I did."
Here, an enthusiastic woman shouted from the crowd: "You were one of the best freedom fighters there. Why not say so? You were on one of the cannons that day there, and you were one of the first to go into that awful prison when it fell. Countrymen, I speak the truth!"
It was The Punisher who, warmly encouraged by the crowd, was helping the court in this way. The President shook his bell, but The Punisher, still being encouraged by the others, shouted in a high voice, "I will not stop for the bell!" with others encouraging her for that too.
"Tell us what you did that day in the prison, countryman."
"I knew...” said Defarge, looking at his wife, who was standing at the bottom of the steps to where he was standing, looking up at him. "I knew the Doctor had been held in a room known as One Hundred and Five, North Tower. I knew it from himself. He knew himself only as One Hundred and Five North Tower when he made shoes under my care. I'm out there using my gun, and I say to myself, 'I'm going to see that room for myself when the prison falls.' It falls. I climb up to the room with another countryman who is one of the jury. A guard leads us. I look over the room very closely. In a hole in the fireplace, where a stone had been worked out and then returned, I find a written paper. This is that paper. I have made it my business to study other papers with Doctor Manette's writing on them, and this is the Doctor's writing. I am giving this paper, in the writing of Doctor Manette, to the President."
"Let it be read."
The room was deathly quiet. The prisoner looked lovingly at his wife as she turned to look with worry and care at her father. Doctor Manette looked at the reader; Madam Defarge never took her eyes off the prisoner, Defarge never took his eyes from his wife who was feeling quite proud and happy about what was happening; and all of the other eyes there were on the Doctor, who saw none of them. The paper was then read out to them all, as follows.