A Tale of Two Cities - Dave Mckay, Charles Dickens (the kiss of deception read online .TXT) 📗

other witness was talking about, and on the same trip."

"You are the young woman he said he was travelling with?"

"Oh, most sadly, I am!"

The sad sound of her kind spirit hit strongly against the less musical sound of the judge's voice, as he said angrily, "Answer the question, and do not add to it with your own thoughts."

"Miss Manette, did you talk to the prisoner on that trip across the Channel?"

"Yes, sir."

"Remember it?"

The court was very quiet as she started.

"When the man came onto the ship..."

"Do you mean the prisoner?” asked the judge, knitting his forehead into many parallel lines.

"Yes, my lord."

"Then say the prisoner."

"When the prisoner came on the ship, he could see that my father," turning her eyes lovingly toward her father as he stood beside her, "was very tired and not at all well. He was so weak that I was afraid to take him out of the open air. I had made him a bed out in the open, near the steps leading to the rooms, and I sat at his side to take care of him. We four were the only passengers that night. The prisoner was so good as to ask if he could show me how to better protect my father from the wind and the weather. I had not done a very good job of it, because I did not understand how the wind would change after we were out on the open water. He made the changes for me, and showed great kindness for my father. I am sure that he felt this kindness from his heart. That is how we started to talk together."

"Let me stop you for a minute. Had he come onto the ship alone?"

"No."

"How many were with him?"

"Two French men."

"Did they talk together?"

"They did, until the last minute before the ship was to leave, when the others were taken back to the beach in their boat."

"Were any papers like these lists handed between them?"

"Some papers were passed around between them, but I cannot say what kind of papers."

"Like these in shape and size?"

"Maybe, but I really cannot say, because they were standing at the top of the steps, where the light from the lantern was. It was a weak lantern, and they spoke very softly, so I did not hear what they said, and saw only that they were looking at papers.

"Now what did the prisoner say to you, Miss Manette?"

"The prisoner was as open with me -- seeing that I needed help -- as he was kind and good in helping my father. I hope," starting to cry, "that I do not return his help by hurting him here today."

Buzzing from the flies.

"Miss Manette, if the prisoner does not perfectly understand that you are only doing what you have been forced to do here today, he is the only person in this room who does not understand that. Please go on."

"He told me that he was travelling on important secret business that could bring trouble for some people, and because of that, he was using a false name. He said that this business had taken him to France for a few days, and that it might, at times, take him backward and forward between France and England for a long time to come."

"Did he say anything about America, Miss Manette? Tell us clearly what he said."

"He tried to tell me how that war had started, and he said that as far as he could see, it was wrong and foolish for England to be fighting there. He added, in a joking way, that George Washington could end up with a better name in history than King George the Third. But there was no anger in his words. He said it laughingly, and to pass the time."

In a scene of deep emotion, when an actor makes a special face, the people watching will often, without thinking, make the same face. Her forehead showed how seriously worried she was, and each time she stopped for the judge to write down what she was saying, she would see her own look on the faces of the lawyers both for and against the prisoner. In every corner of the court, the people watching had the same serious look, making them little mirrors of the woman herself. The judge looked up from his writing with a very angry look at the woman when she said those awful words about George Washington.

Mr. Attorney-General then let the judge know that he needed to ask some questions of the young woman's father, Doctor Manette, and the judge agreed.

"Doctor Manette, look at the prisoner. Have you ever seen him before?"

"Once. When he came to my place in London, some three or three and a half years ago.

"Can you tell us if he is the man who travelled on a ship with you and your daughter, and if you can remember what he said to your daughter?"

"No, sir, I cannot."

"Is there any special reason why you cannot tell us either of these things?"

He answered in a low voice, "There is."

"Has it happened that you were in prison for a long time, without even so much as a hearing in court, in the country where you were born, Doctor Manette?"

He answered with a sadness that went to every heart. "It was a very long time."

"At the time of the boat trip that we are talking about, was that a short while after you were let out of prison?"

"They tell me it was."

"Are you not able to remember the trip?"

"I remember nothing... nothing from a time -- and I cannot say what time it was -- when I was making shoes in the prison, to a time when I found myself living with my kind daughter here. I knew her to be my daughter when God gave me my mind back, but I cannot even remember how I learned who she was."

Mr. Attorney-General sat down, and the father and daughter sat down.

At this point, something strange happened. The plan was to show that the prisoner went down with a friend in the Dover mail that night five years earlier, but that they left the coach in the middle of the night at a place where they did not stay. The prisoner had then travelled back some twelve miles or more to a place where many soldiers and ships were staying, to get the papers that he was in the court for now. A witness was called up to say that he saw the prisoner drinking coffee in a hotel in that town on the day in question, and to say that he had been waiting there for someone. The lawyer working for the prisoner was questioning the witness without getting anywhere, when the other lawyer, the one who had been looking up at the roof, wrote one or two words on a piece of paper, squeezed it into a little ball, and threw it to the lawyer who was questioning the witness. When there was time to do it, the lawyer opened the piece of paper, looked at it, and then looked at the prisoner with great interest.

"You say again that you are quite sure that it was the prisoner?"

The witness was quite sure.

"Did you ever see anyone who looked very much like the prisoner?"

Not enough like him (said the witness) to make it difficult to tell the difference.

"Look closely at that man, my lawyer friend over there," pointing to the one who had thrown the paper. "And then look at the prisoner. What do you think? Are they not very much the same?"

Apart from the lawyer's hair being rough and his clothes being messy, their looks were so much the same that they not only surprised the witness, but they surprised everyone in the court when the two men were made to stand side by side. The judge being asked to let the lawyer take off his wig, and the judge agreeing after some argument, the two men looked even more surprisingly equal. The judge asked the prisoner's lawyer (Mr. Stryver) if he should not think about having his lawyer friend (Mr. Carton) arrested for the same crime.

Mr. Stryver said no, but he said that he would ask the witness again: If this could happen in the court, could it not have also happened in that hotel he was talking about? Could he really be so confident about who he saw that night? The effect of it all was that the witness lost his confidence, and the Attorney-General lost that part of his proof that the prisoner was guilty.

Mr. Cruncher, by this time, had chewed his fingers enough to make a full lunch of rust as he had followed what was happening. He now watched as Mr. Stryver spoke to the jury, telling them that the man who was believed to have acted out of love for his country was himself a seller of secrets, prepared to see an innocent person die if he could make money from it. He was one of the worst people on earth since the time of Judas, and he even looked a little like Judas himself. The servant who was believed to have been an honest man was in truth a secret friend of the seller of secrets; and together they had learned that the prisoner travelled between France and England on some serious business for his family -- business that was so serious that he was prepared to die before he would put his family in danger by telling it. He said that the words of the young woman had been so bent as to show that it came to nothing more than the kind of foolish talk that would pass between a young man and a young woman on meeting. The only bad thing said, that awful joke about George Washington one day being greater than King George, was so wrong as to be seen as nothing but empty foolish talk. It was a weakness in the government to give in to arguments like what the Attorney-General was using in this case, because it played on the hates and fears of the people for other countries; and the man being used to argue for the government, like so many men who are being used in courts these days, was an evil man who wanted only to make money by helping to get an innocent man hanged. At that point, the judge spoke up and, with a face that was so serious that one could think he was telling the truth, said that he could not sit there and let such things be said about the courts of England.

Mr. Stryver then called for a few witnesses, and Mr. Cruncher had to listen while Mr. Attorney-General turned the clothes that Mr. Stryver had made for the jury inside out, showing how Barsad and Cly were a hundred times better than he had thought them, and the prisoner a hundred times worse. And then came the judge himself, turning the clothes now inside out, now outside in, but on the whole cutting and shaping them into clothes for the prisoner to be buried in.

And then the jury turned to think about all of this, and the great flies returned to buzzing.

Even in all that was happening, Mr. Carton, who had sat so long looking at the roof of the court, did not change his place or the direction in which he looked. His good friend, Mr. Stryver pulled his papers together, whispered to those who sat near him, and from time to time looked worriedly at the jury. The people watching moved together in little groups to whisper. Even the judge stood up and walked up and down on his stage, giving many people to think that he was sick. As all of this was happening, this one man sat, leaning back in his chair, his robe, hanging half off him, with a very big tear in it, his wig put back on roughly, his hands in his pockets, and his eyes on the roof as they had been all day. His spirit was so wild and lazy that now (when he was not being serious as he had been when he stood beside the prisoner) people were starting to say that it was hard to think of the two as being at all the same. Mr. Cruncher said to his neighbour, "I would put money on it, that he don't get no law work to do. Don't look the kind to get any, do he?"

Yet this Mr. Carton knew what was happening around him better than most people believed. When Miss Manette's head dropped onto her father's chest, he was the first to see it and to say, "Officer! Look to that young woman. Help her father take her out. Can't you see that she is about to faint?"

There were many people feeling sorry for her and for her father as they were leaving. The crowd had seen by the look on Doctor Manette's face when he had talked of his time in prison that it was not easy for him. And that look, which made him