‘What of your husband, the forester? Always the same
with you people. He cannot pay something?’
‘He has paid all, Monseigneur. He is dead.’
‘Well! He is quiet. Can I restore him to you?’
‘Alas, no, Monseigneur! But he lies yonder, under a
little heap of poor grass.’
‘Well?’
‘Monseigneur, there are so many little heaps of poor
grass?’
‘Again, well?’
She looked an old woman, but was young. Her manner
was one of passionate grief; by turns she clasped her
veinous and knotted hands together with wild energy, and
laid one of them on the carriage-door —tenderly,
caressingly, as if it had been a human breast, and could be
expected to feel the appealing touch.
‘Monseigneur, hear me! Monseigneur, hear my
petition! My husband died of want; so many die of want;
so many more will die of want.’
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‘Again, well? Can I feed them?’
‘Monseigneur, the good God knows; but I don’t ask it.
My petition is, that a morsel of stone or wood, with my
husband’s name, may be placed over him to show where
he lies. Otherwise, the place will be quickly forgotten, it
will never be found when I am dead of the same malady, I
shall be laid under some other heap of poor grass.
Monseigneur, they are so many, they increase so fast, there
is so much want. Monseigneur! Monseigneur!’
The valet had put her away from the door, the carriage
had broken into a brisk trot, the postilions had quickened
the pace, she was left far behind, and Monseigneur, again
escorted by the Furies, was rapidly diminishing the league
or two of distance that remained between him and his
chateau.
The sweet scents of the summer night rose all around
him, and rose, as the rain falls, impartially, on the dusty,
ragged, and toil-worn group at the fountain not far away;
to whom the mender of roads, with the aid of the blue cap
without which he was nothing, still enlarged upon his
man like a spectre, as long as they could bear it. By
degrees, as they could bear no more, they dropped off one
by one, and lights twinkled in little casements; which
lights, as the casements darkened, and more stars came out,
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seemed to have shot up into the sky instead of having
been extinguished.
The shadow of a large high-roofed house, and of many
over-hanging trees, was upon Monsieur the Marquis by
that time; and the shadow was exchanged for the light of a
flambeau, as his carriage stopped, and the great door of his
chateau was opened to him.
‘Monsieur Charles, whom I expect; is he arrived from
England?’
‘Monseigneur, not yet.’
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IX
The Gorgon’s Head
It was a heavy mass of building, that chateau of
Monsieur the Marquis, with a large stone courtyard before
it, and two stone sweeps of staircase meeting in a stone
terrace before the principal door. A stony business
altogether, with heavy stone balustrades, and stone urns,
and stone flowers, and stone faces of men, and stone heads
of lions, in all directions. As if the Gorgon’s head had
surveyed it, when it was finished, two centuries ago.
Up the broad flight of shallow steps, Monsieur the
Marquis, flambeau preceded, went from his carriage,
sufficiently disturbing the darkness to elicit loud
remonstrance from an owl in the roof of the great pile of
stable building away among the trees. All else was so quiet,
that the flambeau carried up the steps, and the other
flambeau held at the great door, burnt as if they were in a
close room of state, instead of being in the open night-air.
Other sound than the owl’s voice there was none, save the
failing of a fountain into its stone basin; for, it was one of
those dark nights that hold their breath by the hour
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together, and then heave a long low sigh, and hold their
breath again.
The great door clanged behind him, and Monsieur the
Marquis crossed a hall grim with certain old boar-spears,
swords, and knives of the chase; grimmer with certain
heavy riding-rods and riding-whips, of which many a
peasant, gone to his benefactor Death, had felt the weight
when his lord was angry.
Avoiding the larger rooms, which were dark and made
fast for the night, Monsieur the Marquis, with his
flambeau-bearer going on before, went up the staircase to
a door in a corridor. This thrown open, admitted him to
his own private apartment of three rooms: his bedchamber
and two others. High vaulted rooms with cool
uncarpeted floors, great dogs upon the hearths for the
burning of wood in winter time, and all luxuries befitting
the state of a marquis in a luxurious age and country. The
fashion of the last Louis but one, of the line that was never
to break —the fourteenth Louis—was conspicuous in their
rich furniture; but, it was diversified by many objects that
were illustrations of old pages in the history of France.
A supper-table was laid for two, in the third of the
rooms; a round room, in one of the chateau’s four
extinguisher-topped towers. A small lofty room, with its
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window wide open, and the wooden jalousie-blinds
closed, so that the dark night only showed in slight
horizontal lines of black, alternating with their broad lines
of stone colour.
‘My nephew,’ said the Marquis, glancing at the supper
preparation; ‘they said he was not arrived.’
Nor was he; but, he had been expected with
Monseigneur.
‘Ah! It is not probable he will arrive to-night;
nevertheless, leave the table as it is. I shall be ready in a
quarter of an hour.’
In a quarter of an hour Monseigneur was ready, and sat
down alone to his sumptuous and choice supper. His chair
was opposite to the window, and he had taken his soup,
and was raising his glass of Bordeaux to his lips, when he
put it down.
‘What is that?’ he calmly asked, looking with attention
at the horizontal lines of black and stone colour.
‘Monseigneur? That?’
‘Outside the blinds. Open the blinds.’
It was done.
‘Well?’
‘Monseigneur, it is nothing. The trees and the night are
all that are here.’
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The servant who spoke, had thrown the blinds wide,
had looked out into the vacant darkness, and stood with
that blank behind him, looking round for instructions.
‘Good,’ said the imperturbable master. ‘Close them
again.’
That was done too, and the Marquis went on with his
supper. He was half way through it, when he again
stopped with his glass in his hand, hearing the sound of
wheels. It came on briskly, and came up to the front of the
chateau.
‘Ask who is arrived.’
It was the nephew of Monseigneur. He had been some
few leagues behind Monseigneur, early in the afternoon.
He had diminished the distance rapidly, but not so rapidly
as to come up with Monseigneur on the road. He had
heard of Monseigneur, at the posting-houses, as being
before him.
He was to be told (said Monseigneur) that supper
awaited him then and there, and that he was prayed to
come to it. In a little while he came. He had been known
in England as Charles Darnay.
Monseigneur received him in a courtly manner, but
they did not shake hands.
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‘You left Paris yesterday, sir?’ he said to Monseigneur,
as he took his seat at table.
‘Yesterday. And you?’
‘I come direct.’
‘From London?’
‘Yes.’
‘You have been a long time coming,’ said the Marquis,
with a smile.
‘On the contrary; I come direct.’
‘Pardon me! I mean, not a long time on the journey; a
long time intending the journey.’
‘I have been detained by’—the nephew stopped a
moment in his answer—‘various business.’
‘Without doubt,’ said the polished uncle.
So long as a servant was present, no other words passed
between them. When coffee had been served and they
were alone together, the nephew, looking at the uncle and
meeting the eyes of the face that was like a fine mask,
opened a conversation.
‘I have come back, sir, as you anticipate, pursuing the
object that took me away. It carried me into great and
unexpected peril; but it is a sacred object, and if it had
carried me to death I hope it would have sustained me.’
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‘Not to death,’ said the uncle; ‘it is not necessary to say,
to death.’
‘I doubt, sir,’ returned the nephew, ‘whether, if it had
carried me to the utmost brink of death, you would have
cared to stop me there.’
The deepened marks in the nose, and the lengthening
of the fine straight lines in the cruel face, looked ominous
as to that; the uncle made a graceful gesture of protest,
which was so clearly a slight form of good breeding that it
was not reassuring.
‘Indeed, sir,’ pursued the nephew, ‘for anything I
know, you may have expressly worked to give a more
suspicious appearance to the suspicious circumstances that
surrounded me.’
‘No, no, no,’ said the uncle, pleasantly.
‘But, however that may be,’ resumed the nephew,
glancing at him with deep distrust, ‘I know that your
diplomacy would stop me by any means, and would know
no scruple as to means.’
‘My friend, I told you so,’ said the uncle, with a fine
pulsation in the two marks. ‘Do me the favour to recall
that I told you so, long ago.’
‘I recall it.’
‘Thank you,’ said the Marquise—very sweetly indeed.
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His tone lingered in the air, almost like the tone of a
musical instrument.
‘In effect, sir,’ pursued the nephew, ‘I believe it to be at
once your bad fortune, and my good fortune, that has kept
me out of a prison in France here.’
‘I do not quite understand,’ returned the uncle, sipping
his coffee. ‘Dare I ask you to explain?’
‘I believe that if you were not in disgrace with the
Court, and had not been overshadowed by that cloud for
years past, a letter de cachet would have sent me to some
fortress indefinitely.’
‘It is possible,’ said the uncle, with great calmness. ‘For
the honour of the family, I could even resolve to
incommode you to that extent. Pray excuse me!’
‘I perceive that, happily for me, the Reception of the
day before yesterday was, as usual, a cold one,’ observed
the nephew.
‘I would not say happily, my friend,’ returned the
uncle, with refined politeness; ‘I would not be sure of that.
A good opportunity for consideration, surrounded by the
advantages of solitude, might influence your destiny to far
greater advantage than you influence it for yourself. But it
is useless to discuss the question. I am, as you say, at a
disadvantage. These little instruments of correction, these
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gentle aids to the power and honour of families, these
slight favours that might so incommode you, are only to
be obtained now by interest and importunity. They are
sought by so many, and they are granted (comparatively)
to so few! It used not to be so, but France in all such
things is changed for the worse. Our not remote ancestors
held the right of life and death over the surrounding
vulgar. From this room, many such dogs have been taken
out to be hanged; in the next room (my bedroom), one
fellow, to our knowledge, was poniarded on the spot for
professing some insolent delicacy respecting his
daughter—HIS daughter? We have lost many privileges; a
new philosophy has become the mode; and the assertion
of our station, in these days, might (I do not go so far as to
say would, but might) cause us real inconvenience. All
very bad, very bad!’
The Marquis took a gentle little pinch of snuff, and
shook his head; as elegantly despondent as he could
becomingly be of a country still containing himself, that
great means of regeneration.
‘We have so asserted our station, both in the old time
and in the modern time also,’ said the nephew, gloomily,
‘that I believe our name to be more detested than any
name in France.’
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‘Let us hope so,’ said the uncle. ‘Detestation of the high
is the involuntary homage of the low.’
‘There is not,’ pursued the nephew, in his former tone,
‘a face I can look at, in all this country round about us,
which looks at me with any deference on it but the dark
deference of fear and slavery.’
‘A compliment,’ said the Marquis, ‘to the grandeur of
the family, merited by the manner in which the family has
sustained its grandeur. Hah!’ And he took another gentle
little pinch of snuff, and lightly crossed his legs.
But, when his nephew, leaning an elbow on the table,
covered his eyes thoughtfully and dejectedly with his
hand, the fine mask looked at him sideways with a
stronger concentration of keenness, closeness, and dislike,
than was comportable with its wearer’s assumption of
indifference.
‘Repression is the only lasting philosophy. The dark
deference of fear and slavery, my friend,’ observed the
Marquis, ‘will keep the dogs obedient to the whip, as long
as this roof,’ looking up to it, ‘shuts out the sky.’
That might not be so long as the Marquis supposed. If a
picture of the chateau as it was to be a very few years
hence, and of fifty like it as they too were to be a very few
years hence, could have been shown to him that night, he
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might have been at a loss to claim his own from the
ghastly, fire-charred, plunder-wrecked rains. As for the
roof he vaunted, he might have found THAT shutting out
the sky in a new way—to wit, for ever, from the eyes of
the bodies into which its lead was fired, out of the barrels
of a hundred thousand muskets.
‘Meanwhile,’ said the Marquis, ‘I will preserve the
honour and repose of the family, if you will not. But you
must be fatigued. Shall we terminate our conference for
the night?’
‘A moment more.’
‘An hour, if you please.’
‘Sir,’ said the nephew, ‘we have done wrong, and are
reaping the fruits of wrong.’
‘WE have done wrong?’ repeated the Marquis, with an
inquiring smile, and delicately pointing, first to his
nephew, then to himself.
‘Our family; our honourable family, whose honour is
of so much account to both of us, in such different ways.
Even in my father’s time, we did a world of wrong,
injuring every human creature who came between us and
our pleasure, whatever it was. Why need I speak of my
father’s time, when it is equally yours? Can I separate my
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father’s twin-brother, joint inheritor, and next successor,
from himself?’
‘Death has done that!’ said the Marquis.
‘And has left me,’ answered the nephew, ‘bound to a
system that is frightful to me, responsible for it, but
powerless in it; seeking to execute the last request of my
dear mother’s lips, and obey the last look of my dear
mother’s eyes, which implored me to have mercy and to
redress; and tortured by seeking assistance and power in
vain.’
‘Seeking them from me, my nephew,’ said the Marquis,
touching him on the breast with his forefinger—they were
now standing by the hearth—‘you will for ever seek them
in vain, be assured.’
Every fine straight line in the clear whiteness of his
face, was cruelly, craftily, and closely compressed, while he
stood looking quietly at his nephew, with his snuff-box in
his hand. Once again he touched him on the breast, as
though his finger were the fine point of a small sword,
with which, in delicate finesse, he ran him through the
body, and said,
‘My friend, I will die, perpetuating the system under
which I have lived.’
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When he had said it, he took a culminating pinch of
snuff, and put his box in his pocket.
‘Better to be a rational creature,’ he added then, after
ringing a small bell on the table, ‘and accept your natural
destiny. But you are lost, Monsieur Charles, I see.’
‘This property and France are lost to me,’ said the
nephew, sadly; ‘I renounce them.’
‘Are they both yours to renounce? France may be, but
is the property? It is scarcely worth mentioning; but, is it
yet?’
‘I had no intention, in the words I used, to claim it yet.
If it passed to me from you, to-morrow—‘
‘Which I have the vanity to hope is not probable.’
‘—or twenty years hence—‘
‘You do me too much honour,’ said the Marquis; ‘still,
I prefer that supposition.’
‘—I would abandon it, and live otherwise and
elsewhere. It is little to relinquish. What is it but a
wilderness of misery and ruin!’
‘Hah!’ said the Marquis, glancing round the luxurious
room.
‘To the eye it is fair enough, here; but seen in its
integrity, under the sky, and by the daylight, it is a
crumbling tower of waste, mismanagement, extortion,
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debt, mortgage, oppression, hunger, nakedness, and
suffering.’
‘Hah!’ said the Marquis again, in a well-satisfied
manner.
‘If it ever becomes mine, it shall be put into some
hands better qualified to free it slowly (if such a thing is
possible) from the weight that drags it down, so that the
miserable people who cannot leave it and who have been
long wrung to the last point of endurance, may, in another
generation, suffer less; but it is not for me. There is a curse
on it, and on all this land.’
‘And you?’ said the uncle. ‘Forgive my curiosity; do
you, under your new philosophy, graciously intend to
live?’
‘I must do, to live, what others of my countrymen,
even with nobility at their backs, may have to do some
day-work.’
‘In England, for example?’
‘Yes. The family honour, sir, is safe from me in this
country. The family name can suffer from me in no other,
for I bear it in no other.’
The ringing of the bell had caused the adjoining bedchamber
to be lighted. It now shone brightly, through the
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door of communication. The Marquis looked that way,
and listened for the retreating step of his valet.
‘England is very attractive to you, seeing how
indifferently you have prospered there,’ he observed then,
turning his calm face to his nephew with a smile.
‘I have already said, that for my prospering there, I am
sensible I may be indebted to you, sir. For the rest, it is my
Refuge.’
‘They say, those boastful English, that it is the Refuge
of many. You know a compatriot who has found a
Refuge there? A Doctor?’
‘Yes.’
‘With a daughter?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes,’ said the Marquis. ‘You are fatigued. Good night!’
As he bent his head in his most courtly manner, there
was a secrecy in his smiling face, and he conveyed an air of
mystery to those words, which struck the eyes and ears of
his nephew forcibly. At the same time, the thin straight
lines of the setting of the eyes, and the thin straight lips,
and the markings in the nose, curved with a sarcasm that
looked handsomely diabolic.
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‘Yes,’ repeated the Marquis. ‘A Doctor with a
daughter. Yes. So commences the new philosophy! You
are fatigued. Good night!’
It would have been of as much avail to interrogate any
stone face outside the chateau as to interrogate that face of
his. The nephew looked at him, in vain, in passing on to
the door.
‘Good night!’ said the uncle. ‘I look to the pleasure of
seeing you again in the morning. Good repose! Light
Monsieur my nephew to his chamber there!—And burn
Monsieur my nephew in his bed, if you will,’ he added to
himself, before he rang his little bell again, and summoned
his valet to his own bedroom.
The valet come and gone, Monsieur the Marquis
walked to and fro in his loose chamber-robe, to prepare
himself gently for sleep, that hot still night. Rustling about
the room, his softly-slippered feet making no noise on the
floor, he moved like a refined tiger:—looked like some
enchanted marquis of the impenitently wicked sort, in
story, whose periodical change into tiger form was either
just going off, or just coming on.
He moved from end to end of his voluptuous
bedroom, looking again at the scraps of the day’s journey
that came unbidden into his mind; the slow toil up the hill
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at sunset, the setting sun, the descent, the mill, the prison
on the crag, the little village in the hollow, the peasants at
the fountain, and the mender of roads with his blue cap
pointing out the chain under the carriage. That fountain
suggested the Paris fountain, the little bundle lying on the
step, the women bending over it, and the tall man with his
arms up, crying, ‘Dead!’
‘I am cool now,’ said Monsieur the Marquis, ‘and may
go to bed.’
So, leaving only one light burning on the large hearth,
he let his thin gauze curtains fall around him, and heard
the night break its silence with a long sigh as he composed
himself to sleep.
The stone faces on the outer walls stared blindly at the
black night for three heavy hours; for three heavy hours,
the horses in the stables rattled at their racks, the dogs
barked, and the owl made a noise with very little
resemblance in it to the noise conventionally assigned to
the owl by men-poets. But it is the obstinate custom of
such creatures hardly ever to say what is set down for
them.
For three heavy hours, the stone faces of the chateau,
lion and human, stared blindly at the night. Dead darkness
lay on all the landscape, dead darkness added its own hush
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to the hushing dust on all the roads. The burial-place had
got to the pass that its little heaps of poor grass were
undistinguishable from one another; the figure on the
Cross might have come down, for anything that could be
seen of it. In the village, taxers and taxed were fast asleep.
Dreaming, perhaps, of banquets, as the starved usually do,
and of ease and rest, as the driven slave and the yoked ox
may, its lean inhabitants slept soundly, and were fed and
freed.
The fountain in the village flowed unseen and unheard,
and the fountain at the chateau dropped unseen and
unheard—both melting away, like the minutes that were
falling from the spring of Time— through three dark
hours. Then, the grey water of both began to be ghostly in
the light, and the eyes of the stone faces of the chateau
were opened.
Lighter and lighter, until at last the sun touched the
tops of the still trees, and poured its radiance over the hill.
In the glow, the water of the chateau fountain seemed to
turn to blood, and the stone faces crimsoned. The carol of
the birds was loud and high, and, on the weather-beaten
sill of the great window of the bed- chamber of Monsieur
the Marquis, one little bird sang its sweetest song with all
its might. At this, the nearest stone face seemed to stare
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amazed, and, with open mouth and dropped under-jaw,
looked awe-stricken.
Now, the sun was full up, and movement began in the
village. Casement windows opened, crazy doors were
unbarred, and people came forth shivering—chilled, as
yet, by the new sweet air. Then began the rarely lightened
toil of the day among the village population. Some, to the
fountain; some, to the fields; men and women here, to dig
and delve; men and women there, to see to the poor live
stock, and lead the bony cows out, to such pasture as
could be found by the roadside. In the church and at the
Cross, a kneeling figure or two; attendant on the latter
prayers, the led cow, trying for a breakfast among the
weeds at its foot.
The chateau awoke later, as became its quality, but
awoke gradually and surely. First, the lonely boar-spears
and knives of the chase had been reddened as of old; then,
had gleamed trenchant in the morning sunshine; now,
doors and windows were thrown open, horses in their
stables looked round over their shoulders at the light and
freshness pouring in at doorways, leaves sparkled and
rustled at iron-grated windows, dogs pulled hard at their
chains, and reared impatient to be loosed.
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All these trivial incidents belonged to the routine of
life, and the return of morning. Surely, not so the ringing
of the great bell of the chateau, nor the running up and
down the stairs; nor the hurried figures on the terrace; nor
the booting and tramping here and there and everywhere,
nor the quick saddling of horses and riding away?
What winds conveyed this hurry to the grizzled
mender of roads, already at work on the hill-top beyond
the village, with his day’s dinner (not much to carry) lying
in a bundle that it was worth no crow’s while to peck at,
on a heap of stones? Had the birds, carrying some grains of
it to a distance, dropped one over him as they sow chance
seeds? Whether or no, the mender of roads ran, on the
sultry morning, as if for his life, down the hill, knee-high
in dust, and never stopped till he got to the fountain.
All the people of the village were at the fountain,
standing about in their depressed manner, and whispering
low, but showing no other emotions than grim curiosity
and surprise. The led cows, hastily brought in and tethered
to anything that would hold them, were looking stupidly
on, or lying down chewing the cud of nothing particularly
repaying their trouble, which they had picked up in their
interrupted saunter. Some of the people of the chateau,
and some of those of the posting-house, and all the taxing
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authorities, were armed more or less, and were crowded
on the other side of the little street in a purposeless way,
that was highly fraught with nothing. Already, the mender
of roads had penetrated into the midst of a group of fifty
particular friends, and was smiting himself in the breast
with his blue cap. What did all this portend, and what
portended the swift hoisting-up of Monsieur Gabelle
behind a servant on horseback, and the conveying away of
the said Gabelle (double-laden though the horse was), at a
gallop, like a new version of the German ballad of
Leonora?
It portended that there was one stone face too many,
up at the chateau.
The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the
night, and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone
face for which it had waited through about two hundred
years.
It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis. It
was like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and
petrified. Driven home into the heart of the stone figure
attached to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of
paper, on which was scrawled:
‘Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from Jacques.’
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X
Two Promises
More months, to the number of twelve, had come and
gone, and Mr. Charles Darnay was established in England
as a higher teacher of the French language who was
conversant with French literature. In this age, he would
have been a Professor; in that age, he was a Tutor. He
read with young men who could find any leisure and
interest for the study of a living tongue spoken all over the
world, and he cultivated a taste for its stores of knowledge
and fancy. He could write of them, besides, in sound
English, and render them into sound English. Such masters
were not at that time easily found; Princes that had been,
and Kings that were to be, were not yet of the Teacher
class, and no ruined nobility had dropped out of Tellson’s
ledgers, to turn cooks and carpenters. As a tutor, whose
attainments made the student’s way unusually pleasant and
profitable, and as an elegant translator who brought
something to his work besides mere dictionary knowledge,
young Mr. Darnay soon became known and encouraged.
He was well acquainted, more-over, with the
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growing interest. So, with great perseverance and untiring
industry, he prospered.
In London, he had expected neither to walk on
pavements of gold, nor to lie on beds of roses; if he had
had any such exalted expectation, he would not have
prospered. He had expected labour, and he found it, and
did it and made the best of it. In this, his prosperity
consisted.
A certain portion of his time was passed at Cambridge,
where he read with undergraduates as a sort of tolerated
smuggler who drove a contraband trade in European
languages, instead of conveying Greek and Latin through
the Custom-house. The rest of his time he passed in
London.
Now, from the days when it was always summer in
Eden, to these days when it is mostly winter in fallen
latitudes, the world of a man has invariably gone one
way—Charles Darnay’s way—the way of the love of a
woman.
He had loved Lucie Manette from the hour of his
danger. He had never heard a sound so sweet and dear as
the sound of her compassionate voice; he had never seen a
face so tenderly beautiful, as hers when it was confronted
with his own on the edge of the grave that had been dug
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for him. But, he had not yet spoken to her on the subject;
the assassination at the deserted chateau far away beyond
the heaving water and the long, tong, dusty roads—the
solid stone chateau which had itself become the mere mist
of a dream—had been done a year, and he had never yet,
by so much as a single spoken word, disclosed to her the
state of his heart.
That he had his reasons for this, he knew full well. It
was again a summer day when, lately arrived in London
from his college occupation, he turned into the quiet
corner in Soho, bent on seeking an opportunity of
opening his mind to Doctor Manette. It was the close of
the summer day, and he knew Lucie to be out with Miss
Pross.
He found the Doctor reading in his arm-chair at a
window. The energy which had at once supported him
under his old sufferings and aggravated their sharpness, had
been gradually restored to him. He was now a very
energetic man indeed, with great firmness of purpose,
strength of resolution, and vigour of action. In his
recovered energy he was sometimes a little fitful and
sudden, as he had at first been in the exercise of his other
recovered faculties; but, this had never been frequently
observable, and had grown more and more rare.
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He studied much, slept little, sustained a great deal of
fatigue with ease, and was equably cheerful. To him, now
entered Charles Darnay, at sight of whom he laid aside his
book and held out his hand.
‘Charles Darnay! I rejoice to see you. We have been
counting on your return these three or four days past. Mr.
Stryver and Sydney Carton were both here yesterday, and
both made you out to be more than due.’
‘I am obliged to them for their interest in the matter,’
he answered, a little coldly as to them, though very
warmly as to the Doctor. ‘Miss Manette—‘
‘Is well,’ said the Doctor, as he stopped short, ‘and your
return will delight us all. She has gone out on some
household matters, but will soon be home.’
‘Doctor Manette, I knew she was from home. I took
the opportunity of her being from home, to beg to speak
to you.’
There was a blank silence.
‘Yes?’ said the Doctor, with evident constraint. ‘Bring
your chair here, and speak on.’
He complied as to the chair, but appeared to find the
speaking on less easy.
‘I have had the happiness, Doctor Manette, of being so
intimate here,’ so he at length began, ‘for some year and a
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half, that I hope the topic on which I am about to touch
may not—‘
He was stayed by the Doctor’s putting out his hand to
stop him. When he had kept it so a little while, he said,
drawing it back:
‘Is Lucie the topic?’
‘She is.’
‘It is hard for me to speak of her at any time. It is very
hard for me to hear her spoken of in that tone of yours,
Charles Darnay.’
‘It is a tone of fervent admiration, true homage, and
deep love, Doctor Manette!’ he said deferentially.
There was another blank silence before her father
rejoined:
‘I believe it. I do you justice; I believe it.’
His constraint was so manifest, and it was so manifest,
too, that it originated in an unwillingness to approach the
subject, that Charles Darnay hesitated.
‘Shall I go on, sir?’
Another blank.
‘Yes, go on.’
‘You anticipate what I would say, though you cannot
know how earnestly I say it, how earnestly I feel it,
without knowing my secret heart, and the hopes and fears
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and anxieties with which it has long been laden. Dear
Doctor Manette, I love your daughter fondly, dearly,
disinterestedly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the
world, I love her. You have loved yourself; let your old
love speak for me!’
The Doctor sat with his face turned away, and his eyes
bent on the ground. At the last words, he stretched out his
hand again, hurriedly, and cried:
‘Not that, sir! Let that be! I adjure you, do not recall
that!’
His cry was so like a cry of actual pain, that it rang in
Charles Darnay’s ears long after he had ceased. He
motioned with the hand he had extended, and it seemed
to be an appeal to Darnay to pause. The latter so received
it, and remained silent.
‘I ask your pardon,’ said the Doctor, in a subdued tone,
after some moments. ‘I do not doubt your loving Lucie;
you may be satisfied of it.’
He turned towards him in his chair, but did not look at
him, or raise his eyes. His chin dropped upon his hand,
and his white hair overshadowed his face:
‘Have you spoken to Lucie?’
‘No.’
‘Nor written?’
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‘Never.’
‘It would be ungenerous to affect not to know that
your self-denial is to be referred to your consideration for
her father. Her father thanks you.
He offered his hand; but his eyes did not go with it.
‘I know,’ said Darnay, respectfully, ‘how can I fail to
know, Doctor Manette, I who have seen you together
from day to day, that between you and Miss Manette there
is an affection so unusual, so touching, so belonging to the
circumstances in which it has been nurtured, that it can
have few parallels, even in the tenderness between a father
and child. I know, Doctor Manette—how can I fail to
know—that, mingled with the affection and duty of a
daughter who has become a woman, there is, in her heart,
towards you, all the love and reliance of infancy itself. I
know that, as in her childhood she had no parent, so she is
now devoted to you with all the constancy and fervour of
her present years and character, united to the trustfulness
and attachment of the early days in which you were lost to
her. I know perfectly well that if you had been restored to
her from the world beyond this life, you could hardly be
invested, in her sight, with a more sacred character than
that in which you are always with her. I know that when
she is clinging to you, the hands of baby, girl, and woman,
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all in one, are round your neck. I know that in loving you
she sees and loves her mother at her own age, sees and
loves you at my age, loves her mother broken-hearted,
loves you through your dreadful trial and in your blessed
restoration. I have known this, night and day, since I have
known you in your home.’
Her father sat silent, with his face bent down. His
breathing was a little quickened; but he repressed all other
signs of agitation.
‘Dear Doctor Manette, always knowing this, always
seeing her and you with this hallowed light about you, I
have forborne, and forborne, as long as it was in the nature
of man to do it. I have felt, and do even now feel, that to
bring my love—even mine—between you, is to touch
your history with something not quite so good as itself.
But I love her. Heaven is my witness that I love her!’
‘I believe it,’ answered her father, mournfully. ‘I have
thought so before now. I believe it.’
‘But, do not believe,’ said Darnay, upon whose ear the
mournful voice struck with a reproachful sound, ‘that if
my fortune were so cast as that, being one day so happy as
to make her my wife, I must at any time put any
separation between her and you, I could or would breathe
a word of what I now say. Besides that I should know it to
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be hopeless, I should know it to be a baseness. If I had any
such possibility, even at a remote distance of years,
harboured in my thoughts, and hidden in my heart—if it
ever had been there—if it ever could be there—I could
not now touch this honoured hand.’
He laid his own upon it as he spoke.
‘No, dear Doctor Manette. Like you, a voluntary exile
from France; like you, driven from it by its distractions,
oppressions, and miseries; like you, striving to live away
from it by my own exertions, and trusting in a happier
future; I look only to sharing your fortunes, sharing your
life and home, and being faithful to you to the death. Not
to divide with Lucie her privilege as your child,
companion, and friend; but to come in aid of it, and bind
her closer to you, if such a thing can be.’
His touch still lingered on her father’s hand. Answering
the touch for a moment, but not coldly, her father rested
his hands upon the arms of his chair, and looked up for
the first time since the beginning of the conference. A
struggle was evidently in his face; a struggle with that
occasional look which had a tendency in it to dark doubt
and dread.
‘You speak so feelingly and so manfully, Charles
Darnay, that I thank you with all my heart, and will open
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all my heart—or nearly so. Have you any reason to believe
that Lucie loves you?’
‘None. As yet, none.’
‘Is it the immediate object of this confidence, that you
may at once ascertain that, with my knowledge?’
‘Not even so. I might not have the hopefulness to do it
for weeks; I might (mistaken or not mistaken) have that
hopefulness to-morrow.’
‘Do you seek any guidance from me?’
‘I ask none, sir. But I have thought it possible that you
might have it in your power, if you should deem it right,
to give me some.’
‘Do you seek any promise from me?’
‘I do seek that.’
‘What is it?’
‘I well understand that, without you, I could have no
hope. I well understand that, even if Miss Manette held
me at this moment in her innocent heart-do not think I
have the presumption to assume so much— I could retain
no place in it against her love for her father.’
‘If that be so, do you see what, on the other hand, is
involved in it?’
‘I understand equally well, that a word from her father
in any suitor’s favour, would outweigh herself and all the
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world. For which reason, Doctor Manette,’ said Darnay,
modestly but firmly, ‘I would not ask that word, to save
my life.’
‘I am sure of it. Charles Darnay, mysteries arise out of
close love, as well as out of wide division; in the former
case, they are subtle and delicate, and difficult to penetrate.
My daughter Lucie is, in this one respect, such a mystery
to me; I can make no guess at the state of her heart.’
‘May I ask, sir, if you think she is—’ As he hesitated,
her father supplied the rest.
‘Is sought by any other suitor?’
‘It is what I meant to say.’
Her father considered a little before he answered:
‘You have seen Mr. Carton here, yourself. Mr. Stryver
is here too, occasionally. If it be at all, it can only be by
one of these.’
‘Or both,’ said Darnay.
‘I had not thought of both; I should not think either,
likely. You want a promise from me. Tell me what it is.’
‘It is, that if Miss Manette should bring to you at any
time, on her own part, such a confidence as I have
ventured to lay before you, you will bear testimony to
what I have said, and to your belief in it. I hope you may
be able to think so well of me, as to urge no influence
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