A Tale of Two Cities-CHAPTER 21 ECHOING FOOTSTEPS

ECHOING FOOTSTEPS,A wonderful corner for echoes, it has been remarked, that corner where the Doctor lived. Ever busily winding ¹ the golden thread which bound her husband, and her father, and herself, and her old directress and companion, in a life of quiet bliss ², Lucie sat in the still house on the tranquilly ³ resounding ⁵ corner, listening to the echoing footsteps of years.,At first, there were times, though she was a perfectly ⁶ happy young wife, when her work would slowly fall from her hands, and her eyes would be dimmed. For, there was something coming in the echoes, something light, afar off, and scarcely audible yet, that stirred her heart too much. Fluttering hopes and doubts—hopes, of a love as yet unknown to her: doubts, of her remaining upon earth, to enjoy that new delight—divided her breast. Among the echoes then, there would arise the sound of footsteps at her own early grave; and thoughts of the husband who would be left so desolate ⁷, and who would mourn for her so much, swelled ⁸ to her eyes, and broke like waves.,That time passed, and her little Lucie lay on her bosom ⁹. Then, among the advancing echoes, there was the tread of her tiny feet and the sound of her prattling ¹⁰ words. Let greater echoes resound ⁴ as they would, the young mother at the cradle side could always hear those coming. They came, and the shady house was sunny with a child’s laugh, and the Divine friend of children, to whom in her trouble she had confided ¹² hers, seemed to take her child in his arms, as He took the child of old, and made it a sacred joy to her.,Ever busily winding the golden thread that bound them all together, weaving the service of her happy influence through the tissue of all their lives, and making it predominate nowhere, Lucie heard in the echoes of years none but friendly and soothing ¹³ sounds. Her husband’s step was strong and prosperous among them; her father’s firm and equal. Lo, Miss Pross, in harness of string, awakening ¹⁴ the echoes, as an unruly charger, whip- corrected, snorting and pawing the earth under the plane-tree in the garden!,Even when there were sounds of sorrow among the rest, they were not harsh nor cruel. Even when golden hair, like her own, lay in a halo on a pillow round the worn face of a little boy, and he said, with a radiant smile, “Dear papa and mamma, I am very sorry to leave you both, and to leave my pretty sister; but I am called, and I must go!
” those were not tears all of agony that wetted his young mother’s cheek as the spirit departed from her embrace that had been entrusted ¹⁵ to it. Suffer them and forbid them not. They see my Father’s face. O Father, blessed words!,The echoes rarely answered to the actual tread of Sydney Carton. Some half-dozen times a year, at most, he claimed his privilege of coming in uninvited, and would sit among them through the evening, as he had once done often. He never came there heated with wine. And one other thing regarding him was whispered in the echoes, which has been whispered by all true echoes for ages and ages.,No man ever really loved a woman, lost her, and knew her with a blameless though an unchanged mind, when she was a wife and a mother, but her children had a strange sympathy with him—an instinctive ²¹ delicacy ²² of pity for him. What fine hidden sensibilities are touched in such a case, no echoes tell; but it is so, and it was so here. Carton was the first stranger to whom little Lucie held out her chubby ²³ arms, and he kept his place with her as she grew. The little boy had spoken of him, almost at the last. “Poor Carton! Kiss him for me!”,Mr. Stryver shouldered his way through the law, like some great engine forcing itself through turbid ²⁴ water, and dragged his useful friend in his wake, like a boat towed astern. As the boat so favoured is usually in a rough plight ²⁵, and mostly under water, so, Sydney had a swamped life of it. But, easy and strong custom, unhappily so much easier and stronger in him than any stimulating ²⁶ sense of desert or disgrace, made it the life he was to lead; and he no more thought of emerging from his state of lion’s jackal, than any real jackal may be supposed to think of rising to be a lion. Stryver was rich; had married a florid widow with property and three boys, who had nothing particularly shining about them but the straight hair of their dumpling heads.,These three young gentlemen, Mr. Stryver, exuding ²⁷ patronage ²⁸ of the most offensive quality from every pore, had walked before him like three sheep to the quiet corner in Soho, and had offered as pupils to Lucie’s husband: delicately saying, “Halloa! Here are three lumps of bread-and-cheese towards your matrimonial picnic, Darnay! ” The polite rejection ²⁹ of the three lumps of bread-andcheese had quite bloated Mr. Stryver with indignation, which he afterwards turned to account in the training of the young gentlemen, by directing them to beware of the pride of Beggars, like that tutor-fellow. He was also in the habit of declaiming to Mrs. Stryver, over his full-bodied wine, on the arts Mrs. Darnay had once put in practice to ‘catch’ him, and on the diamond-cutdiamond arts in himself, madam, which had rendered him ‘not to be caught.’ Some of his King’s Bench familiars, who were occasionally parties to the full-bodied wine, and the lie, excused him for the latter by saying that he had told it so often, that he believed it himself—which is surely such an incorrigible ³⁰ aggravation ³¹ of an originally bad offence, as to justify ³² any such offender’s being carried off to some suitably retired ³³ spot, and there hanged out of the way.,These were among the echoes to which Lucie, sometimes pensive ³⁴, sometimes amused and laughing, listened in the echoing corner, until her little daughter was six years old. How near to her heart the echoes of her child’s tread came, and those of her own dear father’s, always active and self-possessed, and those of her dear husband’s, need not be told. Nor, how the lightest echo of their united home, directed by herself with such a wise and elegant thrift ³⁵ that it was more abundant than any waste, was music to her. Nor, how there were echoes all about her, sweet in her ears, of the many times her father had told her that he found her more devoted ³⁶ to him married (if that could be) than single, and of the many times her husband had said to her that no cares and duties seemed to divide her love for him or her help to him, and asked her “What is the magic secret, my darling, of your being everything to all of us, as if there were only one of us, yet never seeming to be hurried, or to have too much to do?
”,The winding trail caused us to lose our orientation.迂回曲折的小道使我们迷失了方向
。,It's sheer bliss to be able to spend the day in bed.整天都可以躺在床上真是幸福。