XV. The Footsteps Die Out For Ever
Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Sixtumbrils carry the day's wine to La Guillotine. All the devouring andinsatiate Monsters imagined since imagination could record itself,are fused in the one realisation, Guillotine. And yet there is not inFrance, with its rich variety of soil and climate, a blade, a leaf,a root, a sprig, a peppercorn, which will grow to maturity underconditions more certain than those that have produced this horror. Crushhumanity out of shape once more, under similar hammers, and it willtwist itself into the same tortured forms. Sow the same seed ofrapacious license and oppression over again, and it will surely yieldthe same fruit according to its kind.
Six tumbrils roll along the streets. Change these back again to whatthey were, thou powerful enchanter, Time, and they shall be seen to bethe carriages of absolute monarchs, the equipages of feudal nobles, thetoilettes of flaring Jezebels, the churches that are not my father'shouse but dens of thieves, the huts of millions of starving peasants!No; the great magician who majestically works out the appointed orderof the Creator, never reverses his transformations. ”If thou be changedinto this shape by the will of God,” say the seers to the enchanted, inthe wise Arabian stories, ”then remain so! But, if thou wear thisform through mere passing conjuration, then resume thy former aspect!”Changeless and hopeless, the tumbrils roll along.
As the sombre wheels of the six carts go round, they seem to plough upa long crooked furrow among the populace in the streets. Ridges of facesare thrown to this side and to that, and the ploughs go steadily onward.So used are the regular inhabitants of the houses to the spectacle, thatin many windows there are no people, and in some the occupation of thehands is not so much as suspended, while the eyes survey the faces inthe tumbrils. Here and there, the inmate has visitors to see the sight;then he points his finger, with something of the complacency of acurator or authorised exponent, to this cart and to this, and seems totell who sat here yesterday, and who there the day before.
Of the riders in the tumbrils, some observe these things, and allthings on their last roadside, with an impassive stare; others, witha lingering interest in the ways of life and men. Some, seated withdrooping heads, are sunk in silent despair; again, there are some soheedful of their looks that they cast upon the multitude such glances asthey have seen in theatres, and in pictures. Several close their eyes,and think, or try to get their straying thoughts together. Only one, andhe a miserable creature, of a crazed aspect, is so shattered and madedrunk by horror, that he sings, and tries to dance. Not one of the wholenumber 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 somequestion. It would seem to be always the same question, for, it isalways followed by a press of people towards the third cart. Thehorsemen abreast of that cart, frequently point out one man in it withtheir swords. The leading curiosity is, to know which is he; he standsat the back of the tumbril with his head bent down, to converse with amere girl who sits on the side of the cart, and holds his hand. He hasno curiosity or care for the scene about him, and always speaks to thegirl. Here and there in the long street of St. Honore, cries are raisedagainst him. If they move him at all, it is only to a quiet smile, as heshakes his hair a little more loosely about his face. He cannot easilytouch his face, his arms being bound.
On the steps of a church, awaiting the coming-up of the tumbrils, standsthe 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 hesacrificed me?” when his face clears, as he looks into the third.
”Which is Evremonde?” says a man behind him.
”That. At the back there.”
”With his hand in the girl's?”
”Yes.”
The man cries, ”Down, Evremonde! To the Guillotine all aristocrats!Down, Evremonde!”
”Hush, hush!” the Spy entreats him, timidly.
”And why not, citizen?”
”He is going to pay the forfeit: it will be paid in five minutes more.Let him be at peace.”
But the man continuing to exclaim, ”Down, Evremonde!” the face ofEvremonde is for a moment turned towards him. Evremonde then sees theSpy, and looks attentively at him, and goes his way.
The clocks are on the stroke of three, and the furrow ploughed among thepopulace is turning round, to come on into the place of execution, andend. The ridges thrown to this side and to that, now crumble in andclose behind the last plough as it passes on, for all are followingto the Guillotine. In front of it, seated in chairs, as in a garden ofpublic diversion, are a number of women, busily knitting. On one of thefore-most chairs, stands The Vengeance, looking about for her friend.
”Therese!” she cries, in her shrill tones. ”Who has seen her? ThereseDefarge!”
”She never missed before,” says a knitting-woman of the sisterhood.
”No; nor will she miss now,” cries The Vengeance, petulantly. ”Therese.”
”Louder,” the woman recommends.
Ay! Louder, Vengeance, much louder, and still she will scarcely hearthee. Louder yet, Vengeance, with a little oath or so added, and yetit will hardly bring her. Send other women up and down to seek her,lingering somewhere; and yet, although the messengers have done dreaddeeds, it is questionable whether of their own wills they will go farenough to find her!
”Bad Fortune!” cries The Vengeance, stamping her foot in the chair, ”andhere are the tumbrils! And Evremonde will be despatched in a wink, andshe not here! See her knitting in my hand, and her empty chair ready forher. I cry with vexation and disappointment!”
As The Vengeance descends from her elevation to do it, the tumbrilsbegin to discharge their loads. The ministers of Sainte Guillotine arerobed and ready. Crash!--A head is held up, and the knitting-women whoscarcely lifted their eyes to look at it a moment ago when it couldthink and speak, count One.
The second tumbril empties and moves on; the third comes up. Crash!--Andthe knitting-women, never faltering or pausing in their Work, count Two.
The supposed Evremonde descends, and the seamstress is lifted out nextafter him. He has not relinquished her patient hand in getting out, butstill holds it as he promised. He gently places her with her back to thecrashing engine that constantly whirrs up and falls, and she looks intohis face and thanks him.
”But for you, dear stranger, I should not be so composed, for I amnaturally a poor little thing, faint of heart; nor should I have beenable to raise my thoughts to Him who was put to death, that we mighthave hope and comfort here to-day. I think you were sent to me byHeaven.”
”Or you to me,” says Sydney Carton. ”Keep your eyes upon me, dear child,and mind no other object.”
”I mind nothing while I hold your hand. I shall mind nothing when I letit go, if they are rapid.”
”They will be rapid. Fear not!”
The two stand in the fast-thinning throng of victims, but they speak asif they were alone. Eye to eye, voice to voice, hand to hand, heart toheart, these two children of the Universal Mother, else so wide apartand differing, have come together on the dark highway, to repair hometogether, and to rest in her bosom.
”Brave and generous friend, will you let me ask you one last question? Iam very ignorant, and it troubles me--just a little.”
”Tell me what it is.”
”I have a cousin, an only relative and an orphan, like myself, whom Ilove very dearly. She is five years younger than I, and she lives in afarmer's house in the south country. Poverty parted us, and she knowsnothing of my fate--for I cannot write--and if I could, how should Itell her! It is better as it is.”
”Yes, yes: better as it is.”
”What I have been thinking as we came along, and what I am stillthinking now, as I look into your kind strong face which gives me somuch support, is this:--If the Republic really does good to the poor,and they come to be less hungry, and in all ways to suffer less, she maylive a long time: she may even live to be old.”
”What then, my gentle sister?”
”Do you think:” the uncomplaining eyes in which there is so muchendurance, fill with tears, and the lips part a little more and tremble:”that it will seem long to me, while I wait for her in the better landwhere I trust both you and I will be mercifully sheltered?”
”It cannot be, my child; there is no Time there, and no trouble there.”
”You comfort me so much! I am so ignorant. Am I to kiss you now? Is themoment come?”
”Yes.”
She kisses his lips; he kisses hers; they solemnly bless each other.The spare hand does not tremble as he releases it; nothing worse thana sweet, bright constancy is in the patient face. She goes next beforehim--is gone; the knitting-women count Twenty-Two.
”I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believethin me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth andbelieveth in me shall never die.”
The murmuring of many voices, the upturning of many faces, the pressingon of many footsteps in the outskirts of the crowd, so that it swellsforward in a mass, like one great heave of water, all flashes away.Twenty-Three.
*****
They said of him, about the city that night, that it was thepeacefullest man's face ever beheld there. Many added that he lookedsublime and prophetic.
One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same axe--a woman--had askedat the foot of the same scaffold, not long before, to be allowed towrite down the thoughts that were inspiring her. If he had given anyutterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these:
”I see Barsad, and Cly, Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the Judge,long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the destruction ofthe old, perishing by this retributive instrument, before it shall ceaseout of its present use. I see a beautiful city and a brilliant peoplerising from this abyss, and, in their struggles to be truly free, intheir triumphs and defeats, through long years to come, I see the evilof this time and of the previous time of which this is the naturalbirth, gradually making expiation for itself and wearing out.
”I see the lives for which I lay down my life, peaceful, useful,prosperous and happy, in that England which I shall see no more. I seeHer with a child upon her bosom, who bears my name. I see her father,aged and bent, but otherwise restored, and faithful to all men in hishealing office, and at peace. I see the good old man, so long theirfriend, in ten years' time enriching them with all he has, and passingtranquilly to his reward.
”I see that I hold a sanctuary in their hearts, and in the hearts oftheir descendants, generations hence. I see her, an old woman, weepingfor me on the anniversary of this day. I see her and her husband, theircourse done, lying side by side in their last earthly bed, and I knowthat each was not more honoured and held sacred in the other's soul,than I was in the souls of both.
”I see that child who lay upon her bosom and who bore my name, a manwinning his way up in that path of life which once was mine. I see himwinning it so well, that my name is made illustrious there by thelight of his. I see the blots I threw upon it, faded away. I see him,fore-most of just judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name,with a forehead that I know and golden hair, to this place--then fair tolook upon, with not a trace of this day's disfigurement--and I hear himtell the child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.
”It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is afar, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”