Outside the Gate

(Disclaimer: Not my characters.)

A gentle spring rain was beginning to fall upon the quiet old churchyard, pattering on the leaves overhead and the grass below with a sound like soft footsteps. Sydney Carton, standing outside the wrought iron fence, appeared neither to hear nor to feel it. His eyes were fixed on a neglected grave inside, where the grass grew long and rank, and the lichen grew over the names on the stone, and he took no more notice of the rain than if it had been clear sunshine.

He came but seldom to this place, where his parents were buried in a single grave, and never came farther than this fence that he now gripped with both hands. That he was not fit to be here, he knew well. Had he been a different man, a better man, he would have had the right to go in, and care for their grave properly. But the embodied disappointment of all their hopes did not deserve to come even this close to them.

At last he turned away as he always did, to hurry to the nearest tavern and the only consolation he knew how to find, while the rain mingled with his tears.