She then placed herself before the door of the chamber which
Lucie had occupied.
Madame Defarge’s dark eyes followed her through this rapid
movement, and rested on her when it was finished. Miss Pross had
nothing beautiful about her; years had not tamed the wildness, or
softened the grimness, of her appearance; but, she too was a
determined woman in her different way, and she measured
Madame Defarge with her eyes, every inch.
“You might, from your appearance, be the wife of Lucifer,” said
Miss Pross, in her breathing. “Nevertheless, you shall not get the
better of me. I am an Englishwoman.”
Madame Defarge looked at her scornfully, but still with
something of Miss Pross’s own perception that they two were at
bay. She saw a tight, hard, wiry woman before her, as Mr. Lorry
had seen in the same figure a woman with a strong hand, in the
years gone by. She knew full well that Miss Pross was the family’s
devoted friend; Miss Pross knew full well that Madame Defarge
was the family’s malevolent enemy.
“On my way yonder,” said Madame Defarge, with a slight
movement of her hand towards the fatal spot, “where they reserve
my chair and my knitting for me, I am come to make my
compliments to her in passing. I wish to see her.”
“I know that your intentions are evil,” said Miss Pross, “and
you may depend upon it, I’ll hold my own against them.”
Each spoke in her own language; neither understood the
other’s words; both were very watchful, and intent to deduce from
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look and manner, what the unintelligible words meant.
“It will do her no good to keep herself concealed from me at this
moment,” said Madame Defarge. “Good patriots will know what
that means. Let me see her. Go tell her that I wish to see her. Do
you hear?”
“If those eyes of yours were bed-winches,” returned Miss Pross,
“and I was an English four-poster, they shouldn’t loose a splinter
of me. No, you wicked foreign woman; I am your match.”
Madame Defarge was not likely to follow these idiomatic
remarks in detail; but, she so far understood them as to perceive
that she was set at naught.
“Woman imbecile and pig-like!” said Madame Defarge,
frowning. “I take no answer from you. I demand to see her. Either
tell her that I demand to see her, or stand out of the way of the
door and let me go to her!” This, with an angry explanatory wave
of her right arm.
“I little thought,” said Miss Pross, “that I should ever want to
understand your nonsensical language; but I would give all I have,
except the clothes I wear, to know whether you suspect the truth,
or any part of it.”
Neither of them for a single moment released the other’s eyes.
Madame Defarge had not moved from the spot where she stood
when Miss Pross first became aware of her; but, she now advanced
one step.
“I am a Briton,” said Miss Pross. “I am desperate. I don’t care
an English Twopence for myself. I know that the longer I keep you
here, the greater hope there is for my Ladybird. I’ll not leave a
handful of that dark hair upon your head, if you lay a finger on
me!”
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Thus Miss Pross, with a shake of her head and a flash of her
eyes between every rapid sentence, and every rapid sentence a
whole breath. Thus Miss Pross, who had never struck a blow in
her life.
But, her courage was of that emotional nature that it brought
the irrepressible tears into her eyes. This was a courage that
Madame Defarge so little comprehended as to mistake for
weakness. “Ha, ha!” she laughed, “you poor wretch! What are you
worth! I address myself to that Doctor.” Then she raised her voice
and called out, “Citizen Doctor! Wife of Evremonde! Child of
Evremonde! Any person but this miserable fool, answer the
Citizeness Defarge?”
Perhaps the following silence, perhaps some latent disclosure
in the expression on Miss Pross’s face, perhaps a sudden
misgiving apart from either suggestion, whispered to Madame
Defarge that they were gone. Three of the doors she opened
swiftly, and looked in.
“Those rooms are all in disorder, there has been hurried
packing, there are odds and ends upon the ground. There is no
one in that room behind you! Let me look.”
“Never!” said Miss Pross, who understood the request as
perfectly as Madame Defarge understood the answer.
“If they are not in that room, they are gone, and can be pursued
and brought back,” said Madame Defarge to herself.
“As long as you don’t know whether they are in that room or
not, you are uncertain what to do,” said Miss Pross to herself; “and
you shall not know that, if I can prevent your knowing it; and
know that, or not know that, you shall not leave here while I can
hold you.”
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“I have been in the streets from the first, nothing has stopped
me, I will tear you to pieces, but I will have you from that door,”
said Madame Defarge.
“We are alone at the top of a high house in a solitary court-yard,
we are not likely to be heard, and I pray for bodily strength to
keep you here, while every minute you are here is worth a
hundred thousand guineas to my darling,” said Miss Pross.
Madame Defarge made at the door. Miss Pross, on the instinct
of the moment, seized her round the waist in both her arms, and
held her tight. It was in vain for Madame Defarge to struggle and
to strike; Miss Pross, with the vigorous tenacity of love, always so
much stronger than hate, clasped her tight, and even lifted her
from the floor in the struggle that they had. The two hands of
Madame Defarge buffeted and tore her face; but, Miss Pross, with
her head down, held her round the waist, and clung to her with
more than the hold of a drowning woman.
Soon, Madame Defarge’s hands ceased to strike, and felt at her
encircled waist. “It is under my arm,” said Miss Pross, in
smothered tones, “you shall not draw it. I am stronger than you, I
bless Heaven for it. I’ll hold you till one or other of us faints or
dies!”
Madame Defarge’s hands were at her bosom. Miss Pross looked
up, saw what it was, struck at it, struck out a flash and a crash, and
stood alone—blinded with smoke.
All this was in a second. As the smoke cleared. leaving an awful
stillness, it passed out on the air, like the soul of the furious
woman whose body lay lifeless on the ground. In the first fright
and horror of her situation, Miss Pross passed the body as far from
it as she could, and ran down the stairs to call for fruitless help.
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Happily, she bethought herself of the consequences of what she
did, in time to check herself and go back. It was dreadful to go in
at the door again; but she did go in, and even went near it, to get
the bonnet and other things that she must wear. These she put on,
out on the staircase, first shutting and locking the door and taking
away the key. She then sat down on the stairs a few moments to
breathe and to cry, and then got up and hurried away.
By good fortune she had a veil on her bonnet, or she could
hardly have gone along the streets without being stopped. By good
fortune, too, she was naturally so peculiar in appearance as not to
show disfigurement like any other woman. She needed both
advantages, for the marks of gripping fingers were deep in her
face, and her hair was torn, and her dress (hastily composed with
unsteady hands) was clutched and dragged a hundred ways.
In crossing the bridge, she dropped the door key in the river.
Arriving at the cathedral some few minutes before her escort, and
waiting there, she thought, what if the key were already taken in a
net, and if it were identified, what if the door were opened and the
remains discovered, what if she were stopped at the gate, sent to
prison, and charged with murder! In the midst of these fluttering
thoughts, the escort appeared, took her in, and took her away.
“Is there any noise in the streets?” she asked him.
“The usual noises,” Mr. Cruncher replied; and looked surprised
by the question and by her aspect.
“I don’t hear you,” said Miss Pross. “What do you say?”
It was in vain for Mr. Cruncher to repeat what he said; Miss
Pross could not hear him. “So I’ll nod my head,” thought Mr.
Cruncher, amazed, “at all events she’ll see that.” And she did.
“Is there any noise in the streets now?” asked Miss Pross again,
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presently.
Again Mr. Cruncher nodded his head.
“I don’t hear it.”
“Gone deaf in a hour?” said Mr. Cruncher, ruminating, with his
mind much disturbed; “wot’s come to her?”
“I feel,” said Miss Pross, “as if there had been a flash and a
crash, and that crash was the last thing I should ever hear in this
life.”
“Blest if she ain’t in a queer condition!” said Mr. Cruncher,
more and more disturbed. “Wot can she have been a takin’, to
keep her courage up? Hark! There’s the roll of them dreadful
carts! You can hear that, Miss?”
“I can hear,” said Miss Pross, seeing that he spoke to her,
“nothing. O, my good man, there was first a great crash, and then
a great stillness, and that stillness seems to be fixed and
unchangeable, never to be broken any more as long as my life
lasts.”
“If she don’t hear the roll of those dreadful carts, now very nigh
their journey’s end,” said Mr. Cruncher, glancing over his
shoulder, “it’s my opinion that indeed she never will hear anything
else in this world.”
And indeed she never did.
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
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Chapter XLV
THE FOOTSTEPS DIE OUT FOR EVER
Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and
harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day’s wine to La Guillotine.
All the devouring and insatiate Monsters imagined since
imagination could record itself, are fused in the one realisation,
Guillotine. And yet there is not in France, with its rich variety of
soil and climate, a blade, a leaf, a root, a sprig, a peppercorn,
which will grow to maturity under conditions more certain than
those that have produced this horror. Crush humanity out of
shape once more, under similar hammers, and it will twist itself
into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed of rapacious
license and oppression over again, and it will surely yield the same
fruit according to its kind.
Six tumbrils roll along the streets. Change these back again to
what they were, thou powerful enchanter, Time, and they shall be
seen to be the carriages of absolute monarchs, the equipages of
feudal nobles, the toilettes of flaring Jezebels, the churches that
are not my Father’s house but dens of thieves, the huts of millions
of starving peasants! No; the great magician who majestically
works out the appointed order of the Creator, never reverses his
transformations. “If thou be changed into this shape by the will of
God,” say the seers to the enchanted, in the wise Arabian stories,
“then remain so! But, if thou wear this form through mere passing
conjuration, then resume thy former aspect!” Changeless and
hopeless, the tumbrils roll along.
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As the sombre wheels of the six carts go round, they seem to
plough up a long crooked furrow among the populace in the
streets. Ridges of faces are thrown to this side and to that, the
ploughs go steadily onward. So used are the regular inhabitants of
the houses to the spectacle, that in many windows there are no
people, and in some occupation of the hands is not so much as
suspended, while the eyes survey the faces in the tumbrils. Here
and there, the inmate has visitors to see the sight; then he points
his finger, with something of the complacency of a curator or
authorised exponent, to this cart and to this, and seems to tell who
sat here yesterday, and who there the day before.
Of the riders in the tumbrils, some observe these things, and all
things on their last roadside, with an impassive stare; others, with
a lingering interest in the ways of life and men. Some, seated with
drooping heads, are sunk in silent despair; again, there are some
so heedful of their looks that they cast upon the multitude such
glances as they have seen in theatres, and in pictures. Several
close their eyes, and think, or try to get their straying thoughts
together. Only one, and he a miserable creature, of a crazed
aspect, is so shattered and made drunk by horror, that he sings,
and tries to dance. Not one of the whole number appeals by look
or gesture, to the pity of the people.
There is a guard of sundry horsemen riding abreast of the
tumbrils, and faces are often turned up to some of them, and they
are asked some question. It would seem to be always the same
question, for it is always followed by a press of people towards the
third cart. The horsemen abreast of that cart, frequently point out
one man in it with their swords. The leading curiosity is, to know
which is he; he stands at the back of the tumbril with his head
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bent down, to converse with a mere girI who sits on the side of the
cart, and holds his hand. He has no curiosity or care for the scene
about him, and always speaks to the girl. Here and there in the
long street of St. Honore, cries are raised against him. If they move
him at all, it is only to a quiet smile, as he shakes his hair a little
more loosely about his face. He cannot easily touch his face, his
arms being bound.
On the steps of a church, awaiting the coming-up of the
tumbrils, stands the Spy and prison-sheep. He looks into the first
of them: not there. He looks into the second: not there. He already
asks himself, “Has he sacrificed me?” when his face clears, as he
