有声名著之双城记Book1 Chapter06

　　 有声名著之双城记

        Chapter06CHAPTER VI

       The Shoemaker

      `GOOD DAY!' said Monsieur Defarge, looking down at he white head that bentlow over the shoemaking.

　　It was raised for a moment, and a very faint voice responded to thesalutation, as if it were at a distance:

　　`Good day!'

　　`You are still hard at work, I see?'

　　After a long silence, the head was lifted for another moment, and the voicereplied, `Yes--I am working.' This time, a pair of haggard eyes had lookedat the questioner, before the face had dropped again.

　　The faintness of the voice was pitiable and dreadful. It was not thefaintness of physical weakness, though confinement and hard fare no doubthad their part in it. Its deplorable peculiarity was, that it was thefaintness of solitude and disuse. It was like the last feeble echo of asound made long and long ago. So entirely had it lost the life and resonanceof the human voice, that it affected the senses like a once beautiful colourfaded away into a poor weak stain. So sunken and suppressed it was, that itwas like a voice under-ground. So expressive it was, of a hopeless and lostcreature, that a famished traveller, wearied Out by lonely wandering in awilderness, would have remembered home and friends in such a tone beforelying down to die.

　　Some minutes of silent work had passed: and the haggard eyes had looked upagain: not with any interest or curiosity, but with a dull mechanicalperception, beforehand, that the spot where the only visitor they were awareof had stood, was not yet empty.

　　`I want,' said Defarge, who had not removed his gaze from the shoemaker,`to let in a little more light here. You can bear a little more?'

　　The shoemaker stopped his work; looked with a vacant air of listening, atthe floor on one side of him; then similarly, at the floor on the other sideof him; then, upward at the speaker.

　　`What did you say?'

　　`You can bear a little more light?'

　　`I must bear it, if you let it in.' (Laying the palest shadow of a stressupon the second word.)The opened half-door was opened a little further, and secured at that anglefor the time. A broad ray of light fell into the garret, and showed theworkman with an un-finished shoe upon his lap, pausing in his labour. Hisfew common tools and various scraps of leather were at his feet and on hisbench. He had a white beard, raggedly cut, but not very long, a hollow face,and exceedingly bright eyes. The hollowness and thinness of his face wouldhave caused them to look large, under his yet dark eyebrows and his confusedwhite hair, though they had been really otherwise; but, they were naturallylarge, and looked un-naturally so. His yellow rags of shirt lay open at thethroat, and showed his body to be withered and worn. He, and his old canvasfrock, and his loose stockings, and all his poor tatters of clothes, had, ina long seclusion from direct light and air, faded down to such a dulluniformity of parchment-yellow, that it would have been hard to say whichwas which.

　　He had put up a hand between his eyes and the light, and the very bones ofit seemed transparent. So he sat, with a steadfastly vacant gaze, pausing inhis work. He never looked at the figure before him, without first lookingdown on this side of himself, then on that, as if he had lost the habit ofassociating place with sound; he never spoke, without first pandering inthis manner, and forgetting to speak.

　　`Are you going to finish that pair of shoes to-day?' asked Defarge,motioning to Mr. Lorry to come forward.

　　`What did you say?'

　　`Do you mean to finish that pair of shoes to-day?' `I can't say that I meanto. I suppose so. I don't know.'

　　But, the question reminded him of his work, and he bent over it again.

　　Mr. Lorry came silently forward, leaving the daughter by the door. When hehad stood, for a minute or two, by the side of Defarge, the shoemaker lookedup. He showed no surprise at seeing another figure, but the unsteady fingersof one of his hands strayed to his lips as he looked at it (his lips and hisnails were of the same pale lead-colour), and then the hand dropped to hiswork, and he once more bent over the shoe. The look and the action hadoccupied but an instant.

　　`You have a visitor, you see,' said Monsieur Defarge.

　　`What did you say?'

　　`Here is a visitor.'

　　The shoemaker looked up as before, but without removing a hand from hiswork.

　　`Come!' said Defarge. `Here is monsieur, who knows a well-made shoe when hesees one. Show him that shoe you are working at. Take it, monsieur.'

　　Mr. Lorry took it in his hand.

　　`Tell monsieur what kind of shoe it is, and the maker's name.'

　　There was a longer pause than usual, before the shoe-maker replied:

　　`I forget what it was you asked me. What did you say?'

　　`I said, couldn't you describe the kind of shoe, for monsieur'sinformation?'

　　`It is a lady's shoe. It is a young lady's walking-shoe. It is in thepresent mode. I never saw the mode. I have had a pattern in my hand.' Heglanced at the shoe with some little passing touch of pride.

　　`And the maker's name?' said Defarge.

　　Now that he had no work to hold, he laid the knuckles of the right hand inthe hollow of the left, and then the knuckles of the left hand in the hollowof the right, and then passed a hand across his bearded chin, and so on inregular changes, without a moment's intermission. The task of recalling himfrom the vacancy into which he always sank when he had spoken, was likerecalling some very weak person from a swoon, or endeavouring, in the hopeof some disclosure, to stay the spirit of a fast-dying man.

　　`Did you ask me for my name?'

　　`Assuredly I did.'

　　`One Hundred and Five, North Tower.'

　　`Is that all?'

　　`One Hundred and Five, North Tower.'