XVI
Still
Knitting
Madame
Defarge and monsieur her husband returned amicably to the bosom of Saint Antoine,
while a speck in a blue cap toiled through the darkness, and through the dust,
and down the weary miles of avenue by the wayside, slowly tending towards that
point of the compass where the chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his
grave, listened to the whispering trees. Such ample leisure had the stone
faces, now, for listening to the trees and to the fountain, that the few
village scarecrows who, in their quest for herbs to eat and fragments of dead
stick to burn, strayed within sight of the great stone courtyard and terrace
staircase, had it borne in upon their starved fancy that the expression of the
faces was altered. A rumour just lived in the village--had a faint and bare
existence there, as its people had--that when the knife struck home, the faces
changed, from faces of pride to faces of anger and pain; also, that when that
dangling figure was hauled up forty feet above the fountain, they changed
again, and bore a cruel look of being avenged, which they would henceforth bear
for ever. In the stone face over the great window of the bed-chamber where the
murder was done, two fine dints were pointed out in the sculptured nose, which
everybody recognised, and which nobody had seen of old; and on the scarce
occasions when two or three ragged peasants emerged from the crowd to take a
hurried peep at Monsieur the Marquis petrified, a skinny finger would not have
pointed to it for a minute, before they all started away among the moss and
leaves, like the more fortunate hares who could find a living there.
Chateau
and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor, and
the pure water in the village well--thousands of acres of land--a whole
The
Defarges, husband and wife, came lumbering under the starlight, in their public
vehicle, to that gate of
When
Saint Antoine had again enfolded the Defarges in his dusky wings, and they,
having finally alighted near the Saint's boundaries, were picking their way on
foot through the black mud and offal of his streets, Madame Defarge spoke to
her husband:
"Say
then, my friend; what did Jacques of the police tell thee?"
"Very
little to-night, but all he knows. There is another spy commissioned for our
quarter. There may be many more, for all that he can say, but he knows of
one."
"Eh
well!" said Madame Defarge, raising her eyebrows with a cool business air.
"It is necessary to register him. How do they call that man?"
"He
is English."
"So
much the better. His name?"
"Barsad,"
said Defarge, making it French by pronunciation. But, he had been so careful to
get it accurately, that he then spelt it with perfect correctness.
"Barsad,"
repeated madame. "Good. Christian name?"
"John."
"John
Barsad," repeated madame, after murmuring it once to herself. "Good.
His appearance; is it known?"
"Age,
about forty years; height, about five feet nine; black hair; complexion dark;
generally, rather handsome visage; eyes dark, face thin, long, and sallow; nose
aquiline, but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left
cheek; expression, therefore, sinister."
"Eh
my faith. It is a portrait!" said madame, laughing. "He shall be
registered to-morrow."
They
turned into the wine-shop, which was closed (for it was midnight), and where
Madame Defarge immediately took her post at her desk, counted the small moneys
that had been taken during her absence, examined the stock, went through the
entries in the book, made other entries of her own, checked the serving man in
every possible way, and finally dismissed him to bed. Then she turned out the
contents of the bowl of money for the second time, and began knotting them up
in her handkerchief, in a chain of separate knots, for safe keeping through the
night. All this while, Defarge, with his pipe in his mouth, walked up and down,
complacently admiring, but never interfering; in which condition, indeed, as to
the business and his domestic affairs, he walked up and down through life.
The
night was hot, and the shop, close shut and surrounded by so foul a
neighbourhood, was ill-smelling. Monsieur Defarge's olfactory sense was by no
means delicate, but the stock of wine smelt much stronger than it ever tasted,
and so did the stock of rum and brandy and aniseed. He whiffed the compound of
scents away, as he put down his smoked-out pipe.
"You
are fatigued," said madame, raising her glance as she knotted the money.
"There are only the usual odours."
"I
am a little tired," her husband acknowledged.
"You
are a little depressed, too," said madame, whose quick eyes had never been
so intent on the accounts, but they had had a ray or two for him. "Oh, the
men, the men!"
"But
my dear!" began Defarge.
"But
my dear!" repeated madame, nodding firmly; "but my dear! You are
faint of heart to-night, my dear!"
"Well,
then," said Defarge, as if a thought were wrung out of his breast,
"it IS a long time."
"It
is a long time," repeated his wife; "and when is it not a long time?
Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule."
"It
does not take a long time to strike a man with Lightning," said Defarge.
"How
long," demanded madame, composedly, "does it take to make and store
the lightning? Tell me."
Defarge
raised his head thoughtfully, as if there were something in that too.
"It
does not take a long time," said madame, "for an earthquake to
swallow a town. Eh well! Tell me how long it takes to prepare the
earthquake?"
"A
long time, I suppose," said Defarge.
"But
when it is ready, it takes place, and grinds to pieces everything before it. In
the meantime, it is always preparing, though it is not seen or heard. That is
your consolation. Keep it."
She
tied a knot with flashing eyes, as if it throttled a foe.
"I
tell thee," said madame, extending her right hand, for emphasis,
"that although it is a long time on the road, it is on the road and
coming. I tell thee it never retreats, and never stops. I tell thee it is
always advancing. Look around and consider the lives of all the world that we
know, consider the faces of all the world that we know, consider the rage and
discontent to which the Jacquerie addresses itself with more and more of
certainty every hour. Can such things last? Bah! I mock you."
"My
brave wife," returned Defarge, standing before her with his head a little
bent, and his hands clasped at his back, like a docile and attentive pupil
before his catechist, "I do not question all this. But it has lasted a
long time, and it is possible--you know well, my wife, it is possible--that it
may not come, during our lives."
"Eh
well! How then?" demanded madame, tying another knot, as if there were
another enemy strangled.
"Well!"
said Defarge, with a half complaining and half apologetic shrug. "We shall
not see the triumph."
"We
shall have helped it," returned madame, with her extended hand in strong
action. "Nothing that we do, is done in vain. I believe, with all my soul,
that we shall see the triumph. But even if not, even if I knew certainly not,
show me the neck of an aristocrat and tyrant, and still I would--"
Then
madame, with her teeth set, tied a very terrible knot indeed.
"Hold!"
cried Defarge, reddening a little as if he felt charged with cowardice; "I
too, my dear, will stop at nothing."
"Yes!
But it is your weakness that you sometimes need to see your victim and your
opportunity, to sustain you. Sustain yourself without that. When the time
comes, let loose a tiger and a devil; but wait for the time with the tiger and
the devil chained--not shown--yet always ready."
Madame
enforced the conclusion of this piece of advice by striking her little counter
with her chain of money as if she knocked its brains out, and then gathering
the heavy handkerchief under her arm in a serene manner, and observing that it
was time to go to bed.
Next
noontide saw the admirable woman in her usual place in the wine-shop, knitting
away assiduously. A rose lay beside her, and if she now and then glanced at the
flower, it was with no infraction of her usual preoccupied air. There were a
few customers, drinking or not drinking, standing or seated, sprinkled about.
The day was very hot, and heaps of flies, who were extending their inquisitive
and adventurous perquisitions into all the glutinous little glasses near
madame, fell dead at the bottom. Their decease made no impression on the other
flies out promenading, who looked at them in the coolest manner (as if they
themselves were elephants, or something as far removed), until they met the
same fate. Curious to consider how heedless flies are!--perhaps they thought as
much at Court that sunny summer day.
A
figure entering at the door threw a shadow on Madame Defarge which she felt to
be a new one. She laid down her knitting, and began to pin her rose in her
head-dress, before she looked at the figure.
It
was curious. The moment Madame Defarge took up the rose, the customers ceased
talking, and began gradually to drop out of the wine-shop.
"Good
day, madame," said the new-comer.
"Good
day, monsieur."
She
said it aloud, but added to herself, as she resumed her knitting: "Hah!
Good day, age about forty, height about five feet nine, black hair, generally
rather handsome visage, complexion dark, eyes dark, thin, long and sallow face,
aquiline nose but not straight, having a peculiar inclination towards the left
cheek which imparts a sinister expression! Good day, one and all!"
"Have
the goodness to give me a little glass of old cognac, and a mouthful of cool
fresh water, madame."
Madame
complied with a polite air.
"Marvellous
cognac this, madame!"
It
was the first time it had ever been so complemented, and Madame Defarge knew
enough of its antecedents to know better. She said, however, that the cognac
was flattered, and took up her knitting. The visitor watched her fingers for a
few moments, and took the opportunity of observing the place in general.
"You
knit with great skill, madame."
"I
am accustomed to it."
"A
pretty pattern too!"
"YOU
think so?" said madame, looking at him with a smile.
"Decidedly.
May one ask what it is for?"
"Pastime,"
said madame, still looking at him with a smile while her fingers moved nimbly.
"Not
for use?"
"That
depends. I may find a use for it one day. If I do--Well," said madame,
drawing a breath and nodding her head with a stern kind of coquetry, "I'll
use it!"
It
was remarkable; but, the taste of Saint Antoine seemed to be decidedly opposed
to a rose on the head-dress of Madame Defarge. Two men had entered separately,
and had been about to order drink, when, catching sight of that novelty, they
faltered, made a pretence of looking about as if for some friend who was not
there, and went away. Nor, of those who had been there when this visitor
entered, was there one left. They had all dropped off. The spy had kept his
eyes open, but had been able to detect no sign. They had lounged away in a
poverty-stricken, purposeless, accidental manner, quite natural and
unimpeachable.
"JOHN,"
thought madame, checking off her work as her fingers knitted, and her eyes
looked at the stranger. "Stay long enough, and I shall knit `BARSAD'
before you go."
"You
have a husband, madame?"
"I
have."
"Children?"
"No
children."
"Business
seems bad?"
"Business
is very bad; the people are so poor."
"Ah,
the unfortunate, miserable people! So oppressed, too--as you say."
"As
YOU say," madame retorted, correcting him, and deftly knitting an extra
something into his name that boded him no good.
"Pardon
me; certainly it was I who said so, but you naturally think so. Of
course."
"_I_
think?" returned madame, in a high voice. "I and my husband have
enough to do to keep this wine-shop open, without thinking. All we think, here,
is how to live. That is the subject WE think of, and it gives us, from morning
to night, enough to think about, without embarrassing our heads concerning
others. _I_ think for others? No, no."
The
spy, who was there to pick up any crumbs he could find or make, did not allow
his baffled state to express itself in his sinister face; but, stood with an
air of gossiping gallantry, leaning his elbow on Madame Defarge's little
counter, and occasionally sipping his cognac.
"A
bad business this, madame, of Gaspard's execution. Ah! the poor Gaspard!"
With a sigh of great compassion.
"My
faith!" returned madame, coolly and lightly, "if people use knives
for such purposes, they have to pay for it. He knew beforehand what the price
of his luxury was; he has paid the price."
"I
believe," said the spy, dropping his soft voice to a tone that invited
confidence, and expressing an injured revolutionary susceptibility in every
muscle of his wicked face: "I believe there is much compassion and anger
in this neighbourhood, touching the poor fellow? Between ourselves."
"Is
there?" asked madame, vacantly.
"Is
there not?"
"--Here
is my husband!" said Madame Defarge.
As
the keeper of the wine-shop entered at the door, the spy saluted him by
touching his hat, and saying, with an engaging smile, "Good day,
Jacques!" Defarge stopped short, and stared at him.
"Good
day, Jacques!" the spy repeated; with not quite so much confidence, or
quite so easy a smile under the stare.
"You
deceive yourself, monsieur," returned the keeper of the wine-shop.
"You mistake me for another. That is not my name. I am Ernest
Defarge."
"It
is all the same," said the spy, airily, but discomfited too: "good
day!"
"Good
day!" answered Defarge, drily.
"I
was saying to madame, with whom I had the pleasure of chatting when you
entered, that they tell me there is--and no wonder!--much sympathy and anger in
Saint Antoine, touching the unhappy fate of poor Gaspard."
"No
one has told me so," said Defarge, shaking his head. "I know nothing
of it."
Having
said it, he passed behind the little counter, and stood with his hand on the
back of his wife's chair, looking over that barrier at the person to whom they
were both opposed, and whom either of them would have shot with the greatest
satisfaction.
The
spy, well used to his business, did not change his unconscious attitude, but
drained his little glass of cognac, took a sip of fresh water, and asked for
another glass of cognac. Madame Defarge poured it out for him, took to her
knitting again, and hummed a little song over it.
"You
seem to know this quarter well; that is to say, better than I do?"
observed Defarge.
"Not
at all, but I hope to know it better. I am so profoundly interested in its
miserable inhabitants."
"Hah!"
muttered Defarge.
"The
pleasure of conversing with you, Monsieur Defarge, recalls to me," pursued
the spy, "that I have the honour of cherishing some interesting
associations with your name."
"Indeed!"
said Defarge, with much indifference.
"Yes,
indeed. When Doctor Manette was released, you, his old domestic, had the charge
of him, I know. He was delivered to you. You see I am informed of the
circumstances?"
"Such
is the fact, certainly," said Defarge. He had had it conveyed to him, in
an accidental touch of his wife's elbow as she knitted and warbled, that he
would do best to answer, but always with brevity.
"It
was to you," said the spy, "that his daughter came; and it was from
your care that his daughter took him, accompanied by a neat brown monsieur; how
is he called?--in a little wig--Lorry--of the bank of Tellson and Company--over
to England."
"Such
is the fact," repeated Defarge.
"Very
interesting remembrances!" said the spy. "I have known Doctor Manette
and his daughter, in
"Yes?"
said Defarge.
"You
don't hear much about them now?" said the spy.
"No,"
said Defarge.
"In
effect," madame struck in, looking up from her work and her little song,
"we never hear about them. We received the news of their safe arrival, and
perhaps another letter, or perhaps two; but, since then, they have gradually
taken their road in life--we, ours--and we have held no correspondence."
"Perfectly
so, madame," replied the spy. "She is going to be married."
"Going?"
echoed madame. "She was pretty enough to have been married long ago. You
English are cold, it seems to me."
"Oh!
You know I am English."
"I
perceive your tongue is," returned madame; "and what the tongue is, I
suppose the man is."
He
did not take the identification as a compliment; but he made the best of it,
and turned it off with a laugh. After sipping his cognac to the end, he added:
"Yes,
Miss Manette is going to be married. But not to an Englishman; to one who, like
herself, is French by birth. And speaking of Gaspard (ah, poor Gaspard! It was
cruel, cruel!), it is a curious thing that she is going to marry the nephew of
Monsieur the Marquis, for whom Gaspard was exalted to that height of so many
feet; in other words, the present Marquis. But he lives unknown in
Madame
Defarge knitted steadily, but the intelligence had a palpable effect upon her
husband. Do what he would, behind the little counter, as to the striking of a
light and the lighting of his pipe, he was troubled, and his hand was not
trustworthy. The spy would have been no spy if he had failed to see it, or to
record it in his mind.
Having
made, at least, this one hit, whatever it might prove to be worth, and no
customers coming in to help him to any other, Mr. Barsad paid for what he had
drunk, and took his leave: taking occasion to say, in a genteel manner, before
he departed, that he looked forward to the pleasure of seeing Monsieur and
Madame Defarge again. For some minutes after he had emerged into the outer
presence of Saint Antoine, the husband and wife remained exactly as he had left
them, lest he should come back.
"Can
it be true," said Defarge, in a low voice, looking down at his wife as he
stood smoking with his hand on the back of her chair: "what he has said of
Ma'amselle Manette?"
"As
he has said it," returned madame, lifting her eyebrows a little, "it
is probably false. But it may be true."
"If
it is--" Defarge began, and stopped.
"If
it is?" repeated his wife.
"--And
if it does come, while we live to see it triumph--I hope, for her sake, Destiny
will keep her husband out of France."
"Her
husband's destiny," said Madame Defarge, with her usual composure,
"will take him where he is to go, and will lead him to the end that is to
end him. That is all I know."
"But
it is very strange--now, at least, is it not very strange"--said Defarge,
rather pleading with his wife to induce her to admit it, "that, after all
our sympathy for Monsieur her father, and herself, her husband's name should be
proscribed under your hand at this moment, by the side of that infernal dog's
who has just left us?"
"Stranger
things than that will happen when it does come," answered madame. "I
have them both here, of a certainty; and they are both here for their merits;
that is enough."
She
roiled up her knitting when she had said those words, and presently took the
rose out of the handkerchief that was wound about her head. Either Saint
Antoine had an instinctive sense that the objectionable decoration was gone, or
Saint Antoine was on the watch for its disappearance; howbeit, the Saint took
courage to lounge in, very shortly afterwards, and the wine-shop recovered its
habitual aspect.
In
the evening, at which season of all others Saint Antoine turned himself inside
out, and sat on door-steps and window-ledges, and came to the corners of vile
streets and courts, for a breath of air, Madame Defarge with her work in her
hand was accustomed to pass from place to place and from group to group: a
Missionary--there were many like her--such as the world will do well never to
breed again. All the women knitted. They knitted worthless things; but, the
mechanical work was a mechanical substitute for eating and drinking; the hands
moved for the jaws and the digestive apparatus: if the bony fingers had been
still, the stomachs would have been more famine-pinched.
But,
as the fingers went, the eyes went, and the thoughts. And as Madame Defarge
moved on from group to group, all three went quicker and fiercer among every
little knot of women that she had spoken with, and left behind.
Her
husband smoked at his door, looking after her with admiration. "A great
woman," said he, "a strong woman, a grand woman, a frightfully grand
woman!"
Darkness
closed around, and then came the ringing of church bells and the distant
beating of the military drums in the Palace Courtyard, as the women sat
knitting, knitting. Darkness encompassed them. Another darkness was closing in
as surely, when the church bells, then ringing pleasantly in many an airy
steeple over France, should be melted into thundering cannon; when the military
drums should be beating to drown a wretched voice, that night all potent as the
voice of Power and Plenty, Freedom and Life. So much was closing in about the
women who sat knitting, knitting, that they their very selves were closing in
around a structure yet unbuilt, where they were to sit knitting, knitting,
counting dropping heads.