The Golden Thread is Snapped
"Whatever happened to Sydney Carton?" Lucie Darnay pondered to her husband one afternoon as the couple strolled through their garden. Charles Darnay glanced at her wearily, the crinkles in his eyes amplifying the startling acceleration of his aging that had sparked from a nasty experience in Paris, France seven years before. Lucie reiterated, "he hasn't called on us in ages."
Charles emitted a queer sort of grunt and meandered away from her, began pacing about a little flower bed: five steps, heel-toe; right angle turn; four steps; repeat. "I haven't a clue," Charles replied after three or so circumambulations of the flower bed.
"I think you're hiding something from me, darling," Lucie embraced her husband. He stiffined and attempted once again to sidle out of her graps, but Lucie held fast. Crossly, he said, "It's nothing my dear, nothing to worry yourself over."
"Charles, darling, my father (rest his soul), used to spend hours winding circles around his bedroom when his memories disturbed him. You cannot fool me. What happened to Cartoon that disturbs you?"
"He drugged me in the prison and took my place at the guillotine!" Carton ejaculated, wrenching himself from Lucie's clutches. He suddenly felt very heady.
"He never left France?" Lucie's voice lilted as she struggled to keep disbelieving.
"If he did, only his everlasting spirit."
Lucie wilted and fluttered to the ground, and, as her eyes blurred, saw once again the face of the man whom she could never love, but who had sworn to die for the one she could. "How could I have so frivolously abandoned poor Carton to be killed?" she lamented.
"Has grief driven you mad? It was me who let him die!" Charles moaned, dropping to the grass beside Lucie. "Your hands are clean."
Lucie uttered an English Cough. "Carton despised you. He d-" she choked up "He died because he knew I Couldn't live without you. He loved me, and he wanted me to be happy." Lucie turned her back haughtily to Charles and gazed off into the distance. Grey clouds rolled overhead.
Charles chuckled bitterly. "Sydney Carton chose to sacrifice himself so I would survive, so I could have a life with you! He did it for me, and you dare call my life a frivolity!" A crackle of thunder from above.
"I don't believe Carton didn't die for you, but if you would listen without judging, you would understand that in dying for you, he was, in fact, dying for me," Lucie asserted between sobs.
Charles lept to his feet and glared down at Lucie with what he deemed to be the wrath of Heaven. "You behave like you were treated as God, when in truth your one influence over Sydney Carton was that his love for you only served to taunt him and remind him he could never have a good life. Don't pretend that you alone are responsible for the noble thing he did!"
With that, Charles stormed angrily back into the house, leaving Lucie by herself to contemplated her vanity as the rain began to fall.