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VIII
Monseigneur in the Country
A beautiful landscape, with the corn bright in it, but not abundant. Patches of poor rye where corn should have been, patches of poor peas and beans, patches of most coarse vegetable substitutes for wheat. On inanimate nature, as on the men and women who cultivated it, a prevalent tendency towards an appearance of vegetating unwillingly-a dejected disposition to give up, and wither away.
Monsieur the Marquis in his travelling carriage (which might have been lighter), conducted by four post-horses and two postilions, fagged up a steep hill. A blush on the countenance of Monsieur the Marquis was no impeachment of his high breeding; it was not from within; it was occasioned by an external circumstance beyond his control-the setting sun.
The sunset struck so brilliantly into the travelling carriage when it gained the hill-top, that its occupant was steeped in crimson. «It will die out,» said Monsieur the Marquis, glancing at his hands, «directly.»
In effect, the sun was so low that it dipped at the moment. When the heavy drag had been adjusted to the wheel, and the carriage slid down hill, with a cinderous smell, in a cloud of dust, the red glow departed quickly; the sun and the Marquis going down together, there was no glow left when the drag was taken off.
But, there remained a broken country, bold and open, a little village at the bottom of the hill, a broad sweep and rise beyond it, a church– tower, a windmill, a forest for the chase, and a crag with a fortress on it used as a prison. Round upon all these darkening objects as the night drew on, the Marquis looked, with the air of one who was coming near home.
The village had its one poor street, with its poor brewery, poor tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relays of post-horses, poor fountain, all usual poor appointments. It had its poor people too. All its people were poor, and many of them were sitting at their doors, shredding spare onions and the like for supper, while many were at the fountain, washing leaves, and grasses, and any such small yieldings of the earth that could be eaten. Expressive sips of what made them poor, were not wanting; the tax for the state, the tax for the church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to be paid here and to be paid there, according to solemn inscription in the little village, until the wonder was, that there was any village left unswallowed.
Few children were to be seen, and no dogs. As to the men and women, their choice on earth was stated in the prospect-Life on the lowest terms that could sustain it, down in the little village under the mill; or captivity and Death in the dominant prison on the crag.
Heralded by a courier in advance, and by the cracking of his postilions' whips, which twined snake-like about their heads in the evening air, as if he came attended by the Furies, Monsieur the Marquis drew up in his travelling carriage at the posting-house gate. It was hard by the fountain, and the peasants suspended their operations to look at him. He looked at them, and saw in them, without knowing it, the slow sure filing down of misery-worn face and figure, that was to make the meagreness of Frenchmen an English superstition which should survive the truth through the best part of a hundred years.
Monsieur the Marquis cast his eyes over the submissive faces that drooped before him, as the like of himself had drooped before Monseigneur of the Court-only the difference was, that these faces drooped merely to suffer and not to propitiate-when a grizzled mender of the roads joined the group.
«Bring me hither that fellow!» said the Marquis to the courier.
The fellow was brought, cap in hand, and the other fellows closed round to look and listen, in the manner of the people at the Paris fountain.
«I passed you on the road?»«Monseigneur, it is true. I had the honour of being passed on the road.»«Coming up the hill, and at the top of the hill, both?»«Monseigneur, it is true.»«What did you look at, so fixedly?»«Monseigneur, I looked at the man.»He stooped a little, and with his tattered blue cap pointed under the carriage. All his fellows stooped to look under the carriage.«What man, pig? And why look there?»«Pardon, Monseigneur; he swung by the chain of the shoe-the drag.»«Who?» demanded the traveller.«Monseigneur, the man.»«May the Devil carry away these idiots! How do you call the man? You know all the men of this part of the country. Who was he?»«Your clemency, Monseigneur! He was not of this part of the country. Of all the days of my life, I never saw him.»«Swinging by the chain? To be suffocated?»«With your gracious permission, that was the wonder of it, Monseigneur. His head hanging over-like this!»He turned himself sideways to the carriage, and leaned back, with his face thrown up to the sky, and his head hanging down; then recovered himself, fumbled with his cap, and made a bow.«What was he like?»«Monseigneur, he was whiter than the miller. All covered with dust, white as a spectre, tall as a spectre!»The picture produced an immense sensation in the little crowd; but all eyes, without comparing notes with other eyes, looked at Monsieur the Marquis. Perhaps, to observe whether he had any spectre on his conscience.«Truly, you did well,» said the Marquis, felicitously sensible that such vermin were not to ruffle him, «to see a thief accompanying my carriage, and not open that great mouth of yours. Bah! Put him aside, Monsieur Gabelle!»Monsieur Gabelle was the Postmaster, and some other taxing functionary united; he had come out with great obsequiousness to assist at this examination, and had held the examined by the drapery of his arm in an official manner.«Bah! Go aside!» said Monsieur Gabelle.«Lay hands on this stranger if he seeks to lodge in your village to-night, and be sure that his business is honest, Gabelle.»«Monseigneur, I am flattered to devote myself to your orders.»«Did he run away, fellow?-where is that Accursed?»The accursed was already under the carriage with some half-dozen particular friends, pointing out the chain with his blue cap. Some half-dozen other particular friends promptly hauled him out, and presented him breathless to Monsieur the Marquis.«Did the man run away, Dolt, when we stopped for the drag?»«Monseigneur, he precipitated himself over the hill-side, head first, as a person plunges into the river.»«See to it, Gabelle. Go on!»The half-dozen who were peering at the chain were still among the wheels, like sheep; the wheels turned so suddenly that they were lucky to save their skins and bones; they had very little else to save, or they might not have been so fortunate.The burst with which the carriage started out of the village and up the rise beyond, was soon checked by the steepness of the hill. Gradually, it subsided to a foot pace, swinging and lumbering upward among the many sweet scents of a summer night. The postilions, with a thousand gossamer gnats circling about them in lieu of the Furies, quietly mended the points to the lashes of their whips; the valet walked by the horses; the courier was audible, trotting on ahead into the dun distance.At the steepest point of the hill there was a little burial-ground, with a Cross and a new large figure of Our Saviour on it; it was a poor figure in wood, done by some inexperienced rustic carver, but he had studied the figure from the life-his own life, maybe-for it was dreadfully spare and thin.To this distressful emblem of a great distress that had long been growing worse, and was not at its worst, a woman was kneeling. She turned her head as the carriage came up to her, rose quickly, and presented herself at the carriage-door.«It is you, Monseigneur! Monseigneur, a petition.»With an exclamation of impatience, but with his unchangeable face, Monseigneur looked out.«How, then! What is it? Always petitions!»«Monseigneur. For the love of the great God! My husband, the forester.»«What of your husband, the forester? Always the same with you people. He cannot pay something?»«He has paid all, Monseigneur. He is dead.»«Well! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you?»«Alas, no, Monseigneur! But he lies yonder, under a little heap of poor grass.»«Well?»«Monseigneur, there are so many little heaps of poor grass?»«Again, well?»She looked an old woman, but was young. Her manner was one of passionate grief; by turns she clasped her veinous and knotted hands together with wild energy, and laid one of them on the carriage-door-tenderly, caressingly, as if it had been a human breast, and could be expected to feel the appealing touch.
«Monseigneur, hear me! Monseigneur, hear my petition! My husband died of want; so many die of want; so many more will die of want.»
«Again, well? Can I feed them?»
«Monseigneur, the good God knows; but I don't ask it. My petition is, that a morsel of stone or wood, with my husband's name, may be placed over him to show where he lies. Otherwise, the place will be quickly forgotten, it will never be found when I am dead of the same malady, I shall be laid under some other heap of poor grass. Monseigneur, they are so many, they increase so fast, there is so much want. Monseigneur! Monseigneur!»
The valet had put her away from the door, the carriage had broken into a brisk trot, the postilions had quickened the pace, she was left far behind, and Monseigneur, again escorted by the Furies, was rapidly diminishing the league or two of distance that remained between him and his chateau.
The sweet scents of the summer night rose all around him, and rose, as the rain falls, impartially, on the dusty, ragged, and toil-worn group at the fountain not far away; to whom the mender of roads, with the aid of the blue cap without which he was nothing, still enlarged upon his man like a spectre, as long as they could bear it. By degrees, as they could bear no more, they dropped off one by one, and lights twinkled in little casements; which lights, as the casements darkened, and more stars came out, seemed to have shot up into the sky instead of having been extinguished.
The shadow of a large high-roofed house, and of many over-hanging trees, was upon Monsieur the Marquis by that time; and the shadow was exchanged for the light of a flambeau, as his carriage stopped, and the great door of his chateau was opened to him.
«Monsieur Charles, whom I expect; is he arrived from England?»
«Monseigneur, not yet.»
IX
The Gorgon's Head
It was a heavy mass of building, that chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, with a large stone courtyard before it, and two stone sweeps of staircase meeting in a stone terrace before the principal door. A stony business altogether, with heavy stone balustrades, and stone urns, and stone flowers, and stone faces of men, and stone heads of lions, in all directions. As if the Gorgon's head had surveyed it, when it was finished, two centuries ago.
Up the broad flight of shallow steps, Monsieur the Marquis, flambeau preceded, went from his carriage, sufficiently disturbing the darkness to elicit loud remonstrance from an owl in the roof of the great pile of stable building away among the trees. All else was so quiet, that the flambeau carried up the steps, and the other flambeau held at the great door, burnt as if they were in a close room of state, instead of being in the open night-air. Other sound than the owl's voice there was none, save the failing of a fountain into its stone basin; for, it was one of those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour together, and then heave a long low sigh, and hold their breath again.
The great door clanged behind him, and Monsieur the Marquis crossed a hall grim with certain old boar-spears, swords, and knives of the chase; grimmer with certain heavy riding-rods and riding-whips, of which many a peasant, gone to his benefactor Death, had felt the weight when his lord was angry.
Avoiding the larger rooms, which were dark and made fast for the night, Monsieur the Marquis, with his flambeau-bearer going on before, went up the staircase to a door in a corridor. This thrown open, admitted him to his own private apartment of three rooms: his bed-chamber and two others. High vaulted rooms with cool uncarpeted floors, great dogs upon the hearths for the burning of wood in winter time, and all luxuries befitting the state of a marquis in a luxurious age and country. The fashion of the last Louis but one, of the line that was never to break
-the fourteenth Louis-was conspicuous in their rich furniture; but, it was diversified by many objects that were illustrations of old pages in the history of France.
A supper-table was laid for two, in the third of the rooms; a round room, in one of the chateau's four extinguisher-topped towers. A small lofty room, with its window wide open, and the wooden jalousie-blinds closed, so that the dark night only showed in slight horizontal lines of black, alternating with their broad lines of stone colour.
«My nephew,» said the Marquis, glancing at the supper preparation; «they said he was not arrived.»
Nor was he; but, he had been expected with Monseigneur.
«Ah! It is not probable he will arrive to-night; nevertheless, leave the table as it is. I shall be ready in a quarter of an hour.»
In a quarter of an hour Monseigneur was ready, and sat down alone to his sumptuous and choice supper. His chair was opposite to the window, and he had taken his soup, and was raising his glass of Bordeaux to his lips, when he put it down.
«What is that?» he calmly asked, looking with attention at the horizontal lines of black and stone colour.
«Monseigneur? That?»
«Outside the blinds. Open the blinds.»
It was done.
«Well?»
«Monseigneur, it is nothing. The trees and the night are all that are here.»
The servant who spoke, had thrown the blinds wide, had looked out into the vacant darkness, and stood with that blank behind him, looking round for instructions.
«Good,» said the imperturbable master. «Close them again.»
That was done too, and the Marquis went on with his supper. He was half way through it, when he again stopped with his glass in his hand, hearing the sound of wheels. It came on briskly, and came up to the front of the chateau.
«Ask who is arrived.»
It was the nephew of Monseigneur. He had been some few leagues behind Monseigneur, early in the afternoon. He had diminished the distance rapidly, but not so rapidly as to come up with Monseigneur on the road. He had heard of Monseigneur, at the posting-houses, as being before him.
He was to be told (said Monseigneur) that supper awaited him then and there, and that he was prayed to come to it. In a little while he came. He had been known in England as Charles Darnay.
Monseigneur received him in a courtly manner, but they did not shake hands.
«You left Paris yesterday, sir?» he said to Monseigneur, as he took his seat at table.
«Yesterday. And you?»«I come direct.»«From London?»«Yes.»«You have been a long time coming,» said the Marquis, with a smile.«On the contrary; I come direct.»«Pardon me! I mean, not a long time on the journey; a long time intending the journey.»«I have been detained by»-the nephew stopped a moment in his answer-«various business.»«Without doubt,» said the polished uncle.So long as a servant was present, no other words passed between them. When coffee had been served and they were alone together, the nephew, looking at the uncle and meeting the eyes of the face that was like a fine mask, opened a conversation.«I have come back, sir, as you anticipate, pursuing the object that took me away. It carried me into great and unexpected peril; but it is a sacred object, and if it had carried me to death I hope it would have sustained me.»«Not to death,» said the uncle; «it is not necessary to say, to death.»«I doubt, sir,» returned the nephew, «whether, if it had carried me to the utmost brink of death, you would have cared to stop me there.»The deepened marks in the nose, and the lengthening of the fine straight lines in the cruel face, looked ominous as to that; the uncle made a graceful gesture of protest, which was so clearly a slight form of good breeding that it was not reassuring.«Indeed, sir,» pursued the nephew, «for anything I know, you may have expressly worked to give a more suspicious appearance to the suspicious circumstances that surrounded me.»«No, no, no,» said the uncle, pleasantly.«But, however that may be,» resumed the nephew, glancing at him with deep distrust, «I know that your diplomacy would stop me by any means, and would know no scruple as to means.»«My friend, I told you so,» said the uncle, with a fine pulsation in the two marks. «Do me the favour to recall that I told you so, long ago.»«I recall it.»«Thank you,» said the Marquise-very sweetly indeed.His tone lingered in the air, almost like the tone of a musical instrument.«In effect, sir,» pursued the nephew, «I believe it to be at once your bad fortune, and my good fortune, that has kept me out of a prison in France here.»«I do not quite understand,» returned the uncle, sipping his coffee. «Dare I ask you to explain?»«I believe that if you were not in disgrace with the Court, and had not been overshadowed by that cloud for years past, a letter de cachet would have sent me to some fortress indefinitely.»«It is possible,» said the uncle, with great calmness. «For the honour of the family, I could even resolve to incommode you to that extent. Pray excuse me!»«I perceive that, happily for me, the Reception of the day before yesterday was, as usual, a cold one,» observed the nephew.«I would not say happily, my friend,» returned the uncle, with refined politeness; «I would not be sure of that. A good opportunity for consideration, surrounded by the advantages of solitude, might influence your destiny to far greater advantage than you influence it for yourself. But it is useless to discuss the question. I am, as you say, at a disadvantage. These little instruments of correction, these gentle aids to the power and honour of families, these slight favours that might so incommode you, are only to be obtained now by interest and importunity. They are sought by so many, and they are granted (comparatively) to so few! It used not to be so, but France in all such things is changed for the worse. Our not remote ancestors held the right of life and death over the surrounding vulgar. From this room, many such dogs have been taken out to be hanged; in the next room (my bedroom), one fellow, to our knowledge, was poniarded on the spot for professing some insolent delicacy respecting his daughter--his daughter? We have lost many privileges; a new philosophy has become the mode; and the assertion of our station, in these days, might (I do not go so far as to say would, but might) cause us real inconvenience. All very bad, very bad!»The Marquis took a gentle little pinch of snuff, and shook his head; as elegantly despondent as he could becomingly be of a country still containing himself, that great means of regeneration.«We have so asserted our station, both in the old time and in the modern time also,» said the nephew, gloomily, «that I believe our name to be more detested than any name in France.»«Let us hope so,» said the uncle. «Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.»«There is not,» pursued the nephew, in his former tone, «a face I can look at, in all this country round about us, which looks at me with any deference on it but the dark deference of fear and slavery.»«A compliment,» said the Marquis, «to the grandeur of the family, merited by the manner in which the family has sustained its grandeur. Hah!» And he took another gentle little pinch of snuff, and lightly crossed his legs.But, when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table, covered his eyes thoughtfully and dejectedly with his hand, the fine mask looked at him sideways with a stronger concentration of keenness, closeness, and dislike, than was comportable with its wearer's assumption of indifference.«Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark deference of fear and slavery, my friend,» observed the Marquis, «will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long as this roof,» looking up to it, «shuts out the sky.»That might not be so long as the Marquis supposed. If a picture of the chateau as it was to be a very few years hence, and of fifty like it as they too were to be a very few years hence, could have been shown to him that night, he might have been at a loss to claim his own from the ghastly, fire-charred, plunder-wrecked rains. As for the roof he vaunted, he might have found that shutting out the sky in a new way-to wit, for ever, from the eyes of the bodies into which its lead was fired, out of the barrels of a hundred thousand muskets.«Meanwhile,» said the Marquis, «I will preserve the honour and repose of the family, if you will not. But you must be fatigued. Shall we terminate our conference for the night?»«A moment more.»«An hour, if you please.»«Sir,» said the nephew, «we have done wrong, and are reaping the fruits of wrong.»«We have done wrong?» repeated the Marquis, with an inquiring smile, and delicately pointing, first to his nephew, then to himself.«Our family; our honourable family, whose honour is of so much account to both of us, in such different ways. Even in my father's time, we did a world of wrong, injuring every human creature who came between us and our pleasure, whatever it was. Why need I speak of my father's time, when it is equally yours? Can I separate my father's twin-brother, joint inheritor, and next successor, from himself?»«Death has done that!» said the Marquis.«And has left me,» answered the nephew, «bound to a system that is frightful to me, responsible for it, but powerless in it; seeking to execute the last request of my dear mother's lips, and obey the last look of my dear mother's eyes, which implored me to have mercy and to redress; and tortured by seeking assistance and power in vain.»«Seeking them from me, my nephew,» said the Marquis, touching him on the breast with his forefinger-they were now standing by the hearth-«you will for ever seek them in vain, be assured.»Every fine straight line in the clear whiteness of his face, was cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he stood looking quietly at his nephew, with his snuff-box in his hand. Once again he touched him on the breast, as though his finger were the fine point of a small sword, with which, in delicate finesse, he ran him through the body, and said,«My friend, I will die, perpetuating the system under which I have lived.»When he had said it, he took a culminating pinch of snuff, and put his box in his pocket.«Better to be a rational creature,» he added then, after ringing a small bell on the table, «and accept your natural destiny. But you are lost, Monsieur Charles, I see.»«This property and France are lost to me,» said the nephew, sadly; «I renounce them.»«Are they both yours to renounce? France may be, but is the property? It is scarcely worth mentioning; but, is it yet?»«I had no intention, in the words I used, to claim it yet. If it passed to me from you, to-morrow-««Which I have the vanity to hope is not probable.»»-or twenty years hence-««You do me too much honour,» said the Marquis; «still, I prefer that supposition.»»-I would abandon it, and live otherwise and elsewhere. It is little to relinquish. What is it but a wilderness of misery and ruin!»«Hah!» said the Marquis, glancing round the luxurious room.«To the eye it is fair enough, here; but seen in its integrity, under the sky, and by the daylight, it is a crumbling tower of waste, mismanagement, extortion, debt, mortgage, oppression, hunger, nakedness, and suffering.»«Hah!» said the Marquis again, in a well-satisfied manner.«If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put into some hands better qualified to free it slowly (if such a thing is possible) from the weight that drags it down, so that the miserable people who cannot leave it and who have been long wrung to the last point of endurance, may, in another generation, suffer less; but it is not for me. There is a curse on it, and on all this land.»«And you?» said the uncle. «Forgive my curiosity; do you, under your new philosophy, graciously intend to live?»«I must do, to live, what others of my countrymen, even with nobility at their backs, may have to do some day-work.»«In England, for example?»«Yes. The family honour, sir, is safe from me in this country. The family name can suffer from me in no other, for I bear it in no other.»The ringing of the bell had caused the adjoining bed-chamber to be lighted. It now shone brightly, through the door of communication. The Marquis looked that way, and listened for the retreating step of his valet.«England is very attractive to you, seeing how indifferently you have prospered there,» he observed then, turning his calm face to his nephew with a smile.«I have already said, that for my prospering there, I am sensible I may be indebted to you, sir. For the rest, it is my Refuge.»«They say, those boastful English, that it is the Refuge of many. You know a compatriot who has found a Refuge there? A Doctor?»«Yes.»«With a daughter?»«Yes.»«Yes,» said the Marquis. «You are fatigued. Good night!»As he bent his head in his most courtly manner, there was a secrecy in his smiling face, and he conveyed an air of mystery to those words, which struck the eyes and ears of his nephew forcibly. At the same time, the thin straight lines of the setting of the eyes, and the thin straight lips, and the markings in the nose, curved with a sarcasm that looked handsomely diabolic.«Yes,» repeated the Marquis. «A Doctor with a daughter. Yes. So commences the new philosophy! You are fatigued. Good night!»It would have been of as much avail to interrogate any stone face outside the chateau as to interrogate that face of his. The nephew looked at him, in vain, in passing on to the door.«Good night!» said the uncle. «I look to the pleasure of seeing you again in the morning. Good repose! Light Monsieur my nephew to his chamber there!-And burn Monsieur my nephew in his bed, if you will,» he added to himself, before he rang his little bell again, and summoned his valet to his own bedroom.The valet come and gone, Monsieur the Marquis walked to and fro in his loose chamber-robe, to prepare himself gently for sleep, that hot still night. Rustling about the room, his softly-slippered feet making no noise on the floor, he moved like a refined tiger:-looked like some enchanted marquis of the impenitently wicked sort, in story, whose periodical change into tiger form was either just going off, or just coming on.He moved from end to end of his voluptuous bedroom, looking again at the scraps of the day's journey that came unbidden into his mind; the slow toil up the hill at sunset, the setting sun, the descent, the mill, the prison on the crag, the little village in the hollow, the peasants at the fountain, and the mender of roads with his blue cap pointing out the chain under the carriage. That fountain suggested the Paris fountain, the little bundle lying on the step, the women bending over it, and the tall man with his arms up, crying, «Dead!»«I am cool now,» said Monsieur the Marquis, «and may go to bed.»So, leaving only one light burning on the large hearth, he let his thin gauze curtains fall around him, and heard the night break its silence with a long sigh as he composed himself to sleep.The stone faces on the outer walls stared blindly at the black night for three heavy hours; for three heavy hours, the horses in the stables rattled at their racks, the dogs barked, and the owl made a noise with very little resemblance in it to the noise conventionally assigned to the owl by men-poets. But it is the obstinate custom of such creatures hardly ever to say what is set down for them.For three heavy hours, the stone faces of the chateau, lion and human, stared blindly at the night. Dead darkness lay on all the landscape, dead darkness added its own hush to the hushing dust on all the roads. The burial-place had got to the pass that its little heaps of poor grass were undistinguishable from one another; the figure on the Cross might have come down, for anything that could be seen of it. In the village, taxers and taxed were fast asleep. Dreaming, perhaps, of banquets, as the starved usually do, and of ease and rest, as the driven slave and the yoked ox may, its lean inhabitants slept soundly, and were fed and freed.The fountain in the village flowed unseen and unheard, and the fountain at the chateau dropped unseen and unheard-both melting away, like the minutes that were falling from the spring of Time– through three dark hours. Then, the grey water of both began to be ghostly in the light, and the eyes of the stone faces of the chateau were opened.Lighter and lighter, until at last the sun touched the tops of the still trees, and poured its radiance over the hill. In the glow, the water of the chateau fountain seemed to turn to blood, and the stone faces crimsoned. The carol of the birds was loud and high, and, on the weather-beaten sill of the great window of the bed– chamber of Monsieur the Marquis, one little bird sang its sweetest song with all its might. At this, the nearest stone face seemed to stare amazed, and, with open mouth and dropped under-jaw, looked awe-stricken.Now, the sun was full up, and movement began in the village. Casement windows opened, crazy doors were unbarred, and people came forth shivering-chilled, as yet, by the new sweet air. Then began the rarely lightened toil of the day among the village population. Some, to the fountain; some, to the fields; men and women here, to dig and delve; men and women there, to see to the poor live stock, and lead the bony cows out, to such pasture as could be found by the roadside. In the church and at the Cross, a kneeling figure or two; attendant on the latter prayers, the led cow, trying for a breakfast among the weeds at its foot.The chateau awoke later, as became its quality, but awoke gradually and surely. First, the lonely boar-spears and knives of the chase had been reddened as of old; then, had gleamed trenchant in the morning sunshine; now, doors and windows were thrown open, horses in their stables looked round over their shoulders at the light and freshness pouring in at doorways, leaves sparkled and rustled at iron-grated windows, dogs pulled hard at their chains, and reared impatient to be loosed.All these trivial incidents belonged to the routine of life, and the return of morning. Surely, not so the ringing of the great bell of the chateau, nor the running up and down the stairs; nor the hurried figures on the terrace; nor the booting and tramping here and there and everywhere, nor the quick saddling of horses and riding away?What winds conveyed this hurry to the grizzled mender of roads, already at work on the hill-top beyond the village, with his day's dinner (not much to carry) lying in a bundle that it was worth no crow's while to peck at, on a heap of stones? Had the birds, carrying some grains of it to a distance, dropped one over him as they sow chance seeds? Whether or no, the mender of roads ran, on the sultry morning, as if for his life, down the hill, knee-high in dust, and never stopped till he got to the fountain.All the people of the village were at the fountain, standing about in their depressed manner, and whispering low, but showing no other emotions than grim curiosity and surprise. The led cows, hastily brought in and tethered to anything that would hold them, were looking stupidly on, or lying down chewing the cud of nothing particularly repaying their trouble, which they had picked up in their interrupted saunter. Some of the people of the chateau, and some of those of the posting-house, and all the taxing authorities, were armed more or less, and were crowded on the other side of the little street in a purposeless way, that was highly fraught with nothing. Already, the mender of roads had penetrated into the midst of a group of fifty particular friends, and was smiting himself in the breast with his blue cap. What did all this portend, and what portended the swift hoisting-up of Monsieur Gabelle behind a servant on horseback, and the conveying away of the said Gabelle (double-laden though the horse was), at a gallop, like a new version of the German ballad of Leonora?It portended that there was one stone face too many, up at the chateau.
The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night, and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone face for which it had waited through about two hundred years.
It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis. It was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified. Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which was scrawled:
«Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques.»
X
Two Promises
More months, to the number of twelve, had come and gone, and Mr. Charles Darnay was established in England as a higher teacher of the French language who was conversant with French literature. In this age, he would have been a Professor; in that age, he was a Tutor. He read with young men who could find any leisure and interest for the study of a living tongue spoken all over the world, and he cultivated a taste for its stores of knowledge and fancy. He could write of them, besides, in sound English, and render them into sound English. Such masters were not at that time easily found; Princes that had been, and Kings that were to be, were not yet of the Teacher class, and no ruined nobility had dropped out of Tellson's ledgers, to turn cooks and carpenters. As a tutor, whose attainments made the student's way unusually pleasant and profitable, and as an elegant translator who brought something to his work besides mere dictionary knowledge, young Mr. Darnay soon became known and encouraged. He was well acquainted, more-over, with the circumstances of his country, and those were of ever-growing interest. So, with great perseverance and untiring industry, he prospered.
In London, he had expected neither to walk on pavements of gold, nor to lie on beds of roses; if he had had any such exalted expectation, he would not have prospered. He had expected labour, and he found it, and did it and made the best of it. In this, his prosperity consisted.
A certain portion of his time was passed at Cambridge, where he read with undergraduates as a sort of tolerated smuggler who drove a contraband trade in European languages, instead of conveying Greek and Latin through the Custom-house. The rest of his time he passed in London.
Now, from the days when it was always summer in Eden, to these days when it is mostly winter in fallen latitudes, the world of a man has invariably gone one way-Charles Darnay's way-the way of the love of a woman.
He had loved Lucie Manette from the hour of his danger. He had never heard a sound so sweet and dear as the sound of her compassionate voice; he had never seen a face so tenderly beautiful, as hers when it was confronted with his own on the edge of the grave that had been dug for him. But, he had not yet spoken to her on the subject; the assassination at the deserted chateau far away beyond the heaving water and the long, long, dusty roads-the solid stone chateau which had itself become the mere mist of a dream-had been done a year, and he had never yet, by so much as a single spoken word, disclosed to her the state of his heart.
That he had his reasons for this, he knew full well. It was again a summer day when, lately arrived in London from his college occupation, he turned into the quiet corner in Soho, bent on seeking an opportunity of opening his mind to Doctor Manette. It was the close of the summer day, and he knew Lucie to be out with Miss Pross.
He found the Doctor reading in his arm-chair at a window. The energy which had at once supported him under his old sufferings and aggravated their sharpness, had been gradually restored to him. He was now a very energetic man indeed, with great firmness of purpose, strength of resolution, and vigour of action. In his recovered energy he was sometimes a little fitful and sudden, as he had at first been in the exercise of his other recovered faculties; but, this had never been frequently observable, and had grown more and more rare.
He studied much, slept little, sustained a great deal of fatigue with ease, and was equably cheerful. To him, now entered Charles Darnay, at sight of whom he laid aside his book and held out his hand.
«Charles Darnay! I rejoice to see you. We have been counting on your return these three or four days past. Mr. Stryver and Sydney Carton were both here yesterday, and both made you out to be more than due.»
«I am obliged to them for their interest in the matter,» he answered, a little coldly as to them, though very warmly as to the Doctor. «Miss Manette-«
«Is well,» said the Doctor, as he stopped short, «and your return will delight us all. She has gone out on some household matters, but will soon be home.»
«Doctor Manette, I knew she was from home. I took the opportunity of her being from home, to beg to speak to you.»
There was a blank silence.
«Yes?» said the Doctor, with evident constraint. «Bring your chair here, and speak on.»
He complied as to the chair, but appeared to find the speaking on less easy.
«I have had the happiness, Doctor Manette, of being so intimate here,» so he at length began, «for some year and a half, that I hope the topic on which I am about to touch may not-«
He was stayed by the Doctor's putting out his hand to stop him. When he had kept it so a little while, he said, drawing it back:
«Is Lucie the topic?»
«She is.»
«It is hard for me to speak of her at any time. It is very hard for me to hear her spoken of in that tone of yours, Charles Darnay.»
«It is a tone of fervent admiration, true homage, and deep love, Doctor Manette!» he said deferentially.
There was another blank silence before her father rejoined:
«I believe it. I do you justice; I believe it.»
His constraint was so manifest, and it was so manifest, too, that it originated in an unwillingness to approach the subject, that Charles Darnay hesitated.
«Shall I go on, sir?»
Another blank.
«Yes, go on.»
«You anticipate what I would say, though you cannot know how earnestly I say it, how earnestly I feel it, without knowing my secret heart, and the hopes and fears and anxieties with which it has long been laden. Dear Doctor Manette, I love your daughter fondly, dearly, disinterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the world, I love her. You have loved yourself; let your old love speak for me!»
The Doctor sat with his face turned away, and his eyes bent on the ground. At the last words, he stretched out his hand again, hurriedly, and cried:
«Not that, sir! Let that be! I adjure you, do not recall that!»
His cry was so like a cry of actual pain, that it rang in Charles Darnay's ears long after he had ceased. He motioned with the hand he had extended, and it seemed to be an appeal to Darnay to pause. The latter so received it, and remained silent.
«I ask your pardon,» said the Doctor, in a subdued tone, after some moments. «I do not doubt your loving Lucie; you may be satisfied of it.»
He turned towards him in his chair, but did not look at him, or raise his eyes. His chin dropped upon his hand, and his white hair overshadowed his face:
«Have you spoken to Lucie?»«No.»«Nor written?»«Never.»«It would be ungenerous to affect not to know that your self-denial is to be referred to your consideration for her father. Her father thanks you.»He offered his hand; but his eyes did not go with it.«I know,» said Darnay, respectfully, «how can I fail to know, Doctor Manette, I who have seen you together from day to day, that between you and Miss Manette there is an affection so unusual, so touching, so belonging to the circumstances in which it has been nurtured, that it can have few parallels, even in the tenderness between a father and child. I know, Doctor Manette-how can I fail to know-that, mingled with the affection and duty of a daughter who has become a woman, there is, in her heart, towards you, all the love and reliance of infancy itself. I know that, as in her childhood she had no parent, so she is now devoted to you with all the constancy and fervour of her present years and character, united to the trustfulness and attachment of the early days in which you were lost to her. I know perfectly well that if you had been restored to her from the world beyond this life, you could hardly be invested, in her sight, with a more sacred character than that in which you are always with her. I know that when she is clinging to you, the hands of baby, girl, and woman, all in one, are round your neck. I know that in loving you she sees and loves her mother at her own age, sees and loves you at my age, loves her mother broken-hearted, loves you through your dreadful trial and in your blessed restoration. I have known this, night and day, since I have known you in your home.»Her father sat silent, with his face bent down. His breathing was a little quickened; but he repressed all other signs of agitation.«Dear Doctor Manette, always knowing this, always seeing her and you with this hallowed light about you, I have forborne, and forborne, as long as it was in the nature of man to do it. I have felt, and do even now feel, that to bring my love-even mine-between you, is to touch your history with something not quite so good as itself. But I love her. Heaven is my witness that I love her!»«I believe it,» answered her father, mournfully. «I have thought so before now. I believe it.»«But, do not believe,» said Darnay, upon whose ear the mournful voice struck with a reproachful sound, «that if my fortune were so cast as that, being one day so happy as to make her my wife, I must at any time put any separation between her and you, I could or would breathe a word of what I now say. Besides that I should know it to be hopeless, I should know it to be a baseness. If I had any such possibility, even at a remote distance of years, harboured in my thoughts, and hidden in my heart-if it ever had been there-if it ever could be there-I could not now touch this honoured hand.»He laid his own upon it as he spoke.«No, dear Doctor Manette. Like you, a voluntary exile from France; like you, driven from it by its distractions, oppressions, and miseries; like you, striving to live away from it by my own exertions, and trusting in a happier future; I look only to sharing your fortunes, sharing your life and home, and being faithful to you to the death. Not to divide with Lucie her privilege as your child, companion, and friend; but to come in aid of it, and bind her closer to you, if such a thing can be.»His touch still lingered on her father's hand. Answering the touch for a moment, but not coldly, her father rested his hands upon the arms of his chair, and looked up for the first time since the beginning of the conference. A struggle was evidently in his face; a struggle with that occasional look which had a tendency in it to dark doubt and dread.«You speak so feelingly and so manfully, Charles Darnay, that I thank you with all my heart, and will open all my heart-or nearly so. Have you any reason to believe that Lucie loves you?»«None. As yet, none.»«Is it the immediate object of this confidence, that you may at once ascertain that, with my knowledge?»«Not even so. I might not have the hopefulness to do it for weeks; I might (mistaken or not mistaken) have that hopefulness to-morrow.»«Do you seek any guidance from me?»«I ask none, sir. But I have thought it possible that you might have it in your power, if you should deem it right, to give me some.»«Do you seek any promise from me?»«I do seek that.»«What is it?»«I well understand that, without you, I could have no hope. I well understand that, even if Miss Manette held me at this moment in her innocent heart-do not think I have the presumption to assume so much– I could retain no place in it against her love for her father.»«If that be so, do you see what, on the other hand, is involved in it?»«I understand equally well, that a word from her father in any suitor's favour, would outweigh herself and all the world. For which reason, Doctor Manette,» said Darnay, modestly but firmly, «I would not ask that word, to save my life.»«I am sure of it. Charles Darnay, mysteries arise out of close love, as well as out of wide division; in the former case, they are subtle and delicate, and difficult to penetrate. My daughter Lucie is, in this one respect, such a mystery to me; I can make no guess at the state of her heart.»«May I ask, sir, if you think she is-« As he hesitated, her father supplied the rest.«Is sought by any other suitor?»«It is what I meant to say.»Her father considered a little before he answered:«You have seen Mr. Carton here, yourself. Mr. Stryver is here too, occasionally. If it be at all, it can only be by one of these.»«Or both,» said Darnay.«I had not thought of both; I should not think either, likely. You want a promise from me. Tell me what it is.»«It is, that if Miss Manette should bring to you at any time, on her own part, such a confidence as I have ventured to lay before you, you will bear testimony to what I have said, and to your belief in it. I hope you may be able to think so well of me, as to urge no influence against me. I say nothing more of my stake in this; this is what I ask. The condition on which I ask it, and which you have an undoubted right to require, I will observe immediately.»«I give the promise,» said the Doctor, «without any condition. I believe your object to be, purely and truthfully, as you have stated it. I believe your intention is to perpetuate, and not to weaken, the ties between me and my other and far dearer self. If she should ever tell me that you are essential to her perfect happiness, I will give her to you. If there were-Charles Darnay, if there were-«The young man had taken his hand gratefully; their hands were joined as the Doctor spoke:»-any fancies, any reasons, any apprehensions, anything whatsoever, new or old, against the man she really loved-the direct responsibility thereof not lying on his head-they should all be obliterated for her sake. She is everything to me; more to me than suffering, more to me than wrong, more to me-Well! This is idle talk.»So strange was the way in which he faded into silence, and so strange his fixed look when he had ceased to speak, that Darnay felt his own hand turn cold in the hand that slowly released and dropped it.«You said something to me,» said Doctor Manette, breaking into a smile. «What was it you said to me?»He was at a loss how to answer, until he remembered having spoken of a condition. Relieved as his mind reverted to that, he answered:«Your confidence in me ought to be returned with full confidence on my part. My present name, though but slightly changed from my mother's, is not, as you will remember, my own. I wish to tell you what that is, and why I am in England.»«Stop!» said the Doctor of Beauvais.«I wish it, that I may the better deserve your confidence, and have no secret from you.»«Stop!»For an instant, the Doctor even had his two hands at his ears; for another instant, even had his two hands laid on Darnay's lips.«Tell me when I ask you, not now. If your suit should prosper, if Lucie should love you, you shall tell me on your marriage morning. Do you promise?»«Willingly.«Give me your hand. She will be home directly, and it is better she should not see us together to-night. Go! God bless you!»It was dark when Charles Darnay left him, and it was an hour later and darker when Lucie came home; she hurried into the room alone– for Miss Pross had gone straight up-stairs-and was surprised to find his reading-chair empty.«My father!» she called to him. «Father dear!»Nothing was said in answer, but she heard a low hammering sound in his bedroom. Passing lightly across the intermediate room, she looked in at his door and came running back frightened, crying to herself, with her blood all chilled, «What shall I do! What shall I do!»Her uncertainty lasted but a moment; she hurried back, and tapped at his door, and softly called to him. The noise ceased at the sound of her voice, and he presently came out to her, and they walked up and down together for a long time.She came down from her bed, to look at him in his sleep that night. He slept heavily, and his tray of shoemaking tools, and his old unfinished work, were all as usual.