IV
Calm
in Storm
Doctor
Manette did not return until the morning of the fourth day of his absence. So much
of what had happened in that dreadful time as could be kept from the knowledge
of Lucie was so well concealed from her, that not until long afterwards, when
France and she were far apart, did she know that eleven hundred defenceless
prisoners of both sexes and all ages had been killed by the populace; that four
days and nights had been darkened by this deed of horror; and that the air
around her had been tainted by the slain. She only knew that there had been an
attack upon the prisons, that all political prisoners had been in danger, and
that some had been dragged out by the crowd and murdered.
To
Mr. Lorry, the Doctor communicated under an injunction of secrecy on which he
had no need to dwell, that the crowd had taken him through a scene of carnage to
the prison of La Force. That, in the prison he had found a self-appointed
Tribunal sitting, before which the prisoners were brought singly, and by which
they were rapidly ordered to be put forth to be massacred, or to be released,
or (in a few cases) to be sent back to their cells. That, presented by his
conductors to this Tribunal, he had announced himself by name and profession as
having been for eighteen years a secret and unaccused prisoner in the Bastille;
that, one of the body so sitting in judgment had risen and identified him, and
that this man was Defarge.
That,
hereupon he had ascertained, through the registers on the table, that his
son-in-law was among the living prisoners, and had pleaded hard to the
Tribunal--of whom some members were asleep and some awake, some dirty with
murder and some clean, some sober and some not--for his life and liberty. That,
in the first frantic greetings lavished on himself as a notable sufferer under
the overthrown system, it had been accorded to him to have Charles Darnay
brought before the lawless Court, and examined. That, he seemed on the point of
being at once released, when the tide in his favour met with some unexplained
check (not intelligible to the Doctor), which led to a few words of secret
conference. That, the man sitting as President had then informed Doctor Manette
that the prisoner must remain in custody, but should, for his sake, be held
inviolate in safe custody. That, immediately, on a signal, the prisoner was
removed to the interior of the prison again; but, that he, the Doctor, had then
so strongly pleaded for permission to remain and assure himself that his
son-in-law was, through no malice or mischance, delivered to the concourse
whose murderous yells outside the gate had often drowned the proceedings, that
he had obtained the permission, and had remained in that Hall of Blood until
the danger was over.
The
sights he had seen there, with brief snatches of food and sleep by intervals,
shall remain untold. The mad joy over the prisoners who were saved, had
astounded him scarcely less than the mad ferocity against those who were cut to
pieces. One prisoner there was, he said, who had been discharged into the
street free, but at whom a mistaken savage had thrust a pike as he passed out.
Being besought to go to him and dress the wound, the Doctor had passed out at
the same gate, and had found him in the arms of a company of Samaritans, who
were seated on the bodies of their victims. With an inconsistency as monstrous
as anything in this awful nightmare, they had helped the healer, and tended the
wounded man with the gentlest solicitude-- had made a litter for him and
escorted him carefully from the spot-- had then caught up their weapons and
plunged anew into a butchery so dreadful, that the Doctor had covered his eyes
with his hands, and swooned away in the midst of it.
As
Mr. Lorry received these confidences, and as he watched the face of his friend
now sixty-two years of age, a misgiving arose within him that such dread
experiences would revive the old danger.
But,
he had never seen his friend in his present aspect: he had never at all known
him in his present character. For the first time the Doctor felt, now, that his
suffering was strength and power. For the first time he felt that in that sharp
fire, he had slowly forged the iron which could break the prison door of his
daughter's husband, and deliver him. "It all tended to a good end, my
friend; it was not mere waste and ruin. As my beloved child was helpful in
restoring me to myself, I will be helpful now in restoring the dearest part of
herself to her; by the aid of Heaven I will do it!" Thus, Doctor Manette.
And when Jarvis Lorry saw the kindled eyes, the resolute face, the calm strong
look and bearing of the man whose life always seemed to him to have been
stopped, like a clock, for so many years, and then set going again with an
energy which had lain dormant during the cessation of its usefulness, he
believed.
Greater
things than the Doctor had at that time to contend with, would have yielded
before his persevering purpose. While he kept himself in his place, as a
physician, whose business was with all degrees of mankind, bond and free, rich
and poor, bad and good, he used his personal influence so wisely, that he was
soon the inspecting physician of three prisons, and among them of La Force. He
could now assure Lucie that her husband was no longer confined alone, but was
mixed with the general body of prisoners; he saw her husband weekly, and
brought sweet messages to her, straight from his lips; sometimes her husband
himself sent a letter to her (though never by the Doctor's hand), but she was
not permitted to write to him: for, among the many wild suspicions of plots in
the prisons, the wildest of all pointed at emigrants who were known to have
made friends or permanent connections abroad.
This
new life of the Doctor's was an anxious life, no doubt; still, the sagacious
Mr. Lorry saw that there was a new sustaining pride in it. Nothing unbecoming
tinged the pride; it was a natural and worthy one; but he observed it as a
curiosity. The Doctor knew, that up to that time, his imprisonment had been
associated in the minds of his daughter and his friend, with his personal
affliction, deprivation, and weakness. Now that this was changed, and he knew
himself to be invested through that old trial with forces to which they both
looked for Charles's ultimate safety and deliverance, he became so far exalted
by the change, that he took the lead and direction, and required them as the
weak, to trust to him as the strong. The preceding relative positions of
himself and Lucie were reversed, yet only as the liveliest gratitude and
affection could reverse them, for he could have had no pride but in rendering
some service to her who had rendered so much to him. "All curious to
see," thought Mr. Lorry, in his amiably shrewd way, "but all natural
and right; so, take the lead, my dear friend, and keep it; it couldn't be in
better hands."
But,
though the Doctor tried hard, and never ceased trying, to get Charles Darnay
set at liberty, or at least to get him brought to trial, the public current of
the time set too strong and fast for him. The new era began; the king was
tried, doomed, and beheaded; the Republic of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or
Death, declared for victory or death against the world in arms; the black flag
waved night and day from the great towers of Notre Dame; three hundred thousand
men, summoned to rise against the tyrants of the earth, rose from all the
varying soils of France, as if the dragon's teeth had been sown broadcast, and
had yielded fruit equally on hill and plain, on rock, in gravel, and alluvial
mud, under the bright sky of the South and under the clouds of the North, in
fell and forest, in the vineyards and the olive-grounds and among the cropped
grass and the stubble of the corn, along the fruitful banks of the broad
rivers, and in the sand of the sea-shore. What private solicitude could rear
itself against the deluge of the Year One of Liberty--the deluge rising from
below, not falling from above, and with the windows of Heaven shut, not opened!
There
was no pause, no pity, no peace, no interval of relenting rest, no measurement
of time. Though days and nights circled as regularly as when time was young,
and the evening and morning were the first day, other count of time there was
none. Hold of it was lost in the raging fever of a nation, as it is in the
fever of one patient. Now, breaking the unnatural silence of a whole city, the
executioner showed the people the head of the king--and now, it seemed almost
in the same breath, the head of his fair wife which had had eight weary months
of imprisoned widowhood and misery, to turn it grey.
And
yet, observing the strange law of contradiction which obtains in all such
cases, the time was long, while it flamed by so fast. A revolutionary tribunal
in the capital, and forty or fifty thousand revolutionary committees all over
the land; a law of the Suspected, which struck away all security for liberty or
life, and delivered over any good and innocent person to any bad and guilty
one; prisons gorged with people who had committed no offence, and could obtain
no hearing; these things became the established order and nature of appointed
things, and seemed to be ancient usage before they were many weeks old. Above
all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general
gaze from the foundations of the world--the figure of the sharp female called
La Guillotine.
It
was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it
infallibly prevented the hair from turning grey, it imparted a peculiar
delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who
kissed La Guillotine, looked through the little window and sneezed into the
sack. It was the sign of the regeneration of the human race. It superseded the
Cross. Models of it were worn on breasts from which the Cross was discarded,
and it was bowed down to and believed in where the Cross was denied.
It
sheared off heads so many, that it, and the ground it most polluted, were a
rotten red. It was taken to pieces, like a toy-puzzle for a young Devil, and
was put together again when the occasion wanted it. It hushed the eloquent,
struck down the powerful, abolished the beautiful and good. Twenty-two friends
of high public mark, twenty-one living and one dead, it had lopped the heads
off, in one morning, in as many minutes. The name of the strong man of Old
Scripture had descended to the chief functionary who worked it; but, so armed,
he was stronger than his namesake, and blinder, and tore away the gates of
God's own
Among
these terrors, and the brood belonging to them, the Doctor walked with a steady
head: confident in his power, cautiously persistent in his end, never doubting
that he would save Lucie's husband at last. Yet the current of the time swept
by, so strong and deep, and carried the time away so fiercely, that Charles had
lain in prison one year and three months when the Doctor was thus steady and
confident. So much more wicked and distracted had the Revolution grown in that
December month, that the rivers of the South were encumbered with the bodies of
the violently drowned by night, and prisoners were shot in lines and squares
under the southern wintry sun. Still, the Doctor walked among the terrors with
a steady head. No man better known than he, in