This is just a short chapter to follow the last one in the book. I felt like this scene was needed, so here it is. Happy reading and I don't own A Tale of Two Cities.
A Life You Love
His eyelids fluttered open. A fierce pain stabbed at his head. His vision cleared, and he saw a girl, a young girl, with golden locks of hair. So familiar was the girl that he was confused for a moment, he was dead, wasn't he? So why was this girl, ever so familiar to him, dead as well, why would the angelic looking girl have met such an untimely end? Why would the Republic do such a thing? Could they send a small child to the guillotine? Unless, of course, he wasn't dead at all, but that could never be true, so they must both be dead.
His vision became even clearer, and he saw a woman near the child. The two looked so much alike that they could only be mother and daughter. He knew the woman, it was his beloved wife, Lucie, but how could she have met such a fate as well? The young girl, he remembered now to be his daughter. How could he be seeing them other than in death, when he was not so long ago a prisoner condemned to die?
The two were not looking at him currently, but they quickly turned as he let out a moan of pain when he tried to sit up.
"Mamma, he is awake. Dear Carton is no longer ill," the girl cried in her sweet, melodious voice.
But, his name was not Carton. Carton was the name of the man who had come to his cell, the man who looked to be his twin. His name was not Carton, it was Evrémonde, but some knew him as Darnay. Why did his wife and child think he was another man? A memory flashed through his mind, Carton in his cell, switching clothes, writing a letter, a struggle, and then nothing. Had he been taken from the prison as Sydney Carton? It wasn't possible. Could he be alive? Was Carton's head where his should be?
He reached into his pocket where he knew the letter he had been told to write would be. A letter written for no one, on a date not meant to be remembered by even the one who wrote it. The paper was worn and dirty, but it still carried its message. The message he still failed to comprehend. His lovely wife came to rest beside him, but she was unaware that it was he that she sat next to. She had been weeping; he could see the red in her eyes as they scanned the note in his hands. Her face paled as she read, and understanding donned on her face.
"Lucie, would you go visit Miss Pross? Inquire about her hearing?" she said to the child.
"Of Course Mamma, keep good watch over Carton while I am gone." was her reply.
"I will," Lucie responded as her daughter left the room. She turned to face him in the dim light. "My, husband?" she asked tentatively.
"Yes," was his whispered reply.
A tear came to her eye as she moved to embrace her husband, the man she had thought to be dead, the man that her previous tears had been for. Her present tears were not for him though, they were for the man who had kept his promise, the man who had bravely given up his own life for that of her husband.
In that moment he knew he was not dead, he remained in the world of the living for now. He was in England once more, where the king still had a large jaw and the queen still a plain face, but it was not brutal, bloodthirsty France. He was a free man. He was far from the guillotine, all his family safe with the exception of one. For Charles Evrémonde, called Darnay, it was the best of times, but for a small part of him, and so many others in the bloodthirsty nation of France, it was the worst times had ever been.
Hope you liked it and thanks for reading! Please review!
-Pageturner96