against me. I say nothing more of my stake in this; this is
what I ask. The condition on which I ask it, and which
you have an undoubted right to require, I will observe
immediately.’
‘I give the promise,’ said the Doctor, ‘without any
condition. I believe your object to be, purely and
truthfully, as you have stated it. I believe your intention is
to perpetuate, and not to weaken, the ties between me
and my other and far dearer self. If she should ever tell me
that you are essential to her perfect happiness, I will give
her to you. If there were—Charles Darnay, if there
were—‘
The young man had taken his hand gratefully; their
hands were joined as the Doctor spoke:
‘—any fancies, any reasons, any apprehensions,
anything whatsoever, new or old, against the man she
really loved—the direct responsibility thereof not lying on
his head—they should all be obliterated for her sake. She is
everything to me; more to me than suffering, more to me
than wrong, more to me—Well! This is idle talk.’
So strange was the way in which he faded into silence,
and so strange his fixed look when he had ceased to speak,
that Darnay felt his own hand turn cold in the hand that
slowly released and dropped it.
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‘You said something to me,’ said Doctor Manette,
breaking into a smile. ‘What was it you said to me?’
He was at a loss how to answer, until he remembered
having spoken of a condition. Relieved as his mind
reverted to that, he answered:
‘Your confidence in me ought to be returned with full
confidence on my part. My present name, though but
slightly changed from my mother’s, is not, as you will
remember, my own. I wish to tell you what that is, and
why I am in England.’
‘Stop!’ said the Doctor of Beauvais.
‘I wish it, that I may the better deserve your
confidence, and have no secret from you.’
‘Stop!’
For an instant, the Doctor even had his two hands at
his ears; for another instant, even had his two hands laid
on Darnay’s lips.
‘Tell me when I ask you, not now. If your suit should
prosper, if Lucie should love you, you shall tell me on
your marriage morning. Do you promise?’
‘Willingly.
‘Give me your hand. She will be home directly, and it
is better she should not see us together to-night. Go! God
bless you!’
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It was dark when Charles Darnay left him, and it was
an hour later and darker when Lucie came home; she
hurried into the room alone— for Miss Pross had gone
straight up-stairs—and was surprised to find his readingchair
empty.
‘My father!’ she called to him. ‘Father dear!’
Nothing was said in answer, but she heard a low
hammering sound in his bedroom. Passing lightly across
the intermediate room, she looked in at his door and came
running back frightened, crying to herself, with her blood
all chilled, ‘What shall I do! What shall I do!’
Her uncertainty lasted but a moment; she hurried back,
and tapped at his door, and softly called to him. The noise
ceased at the sound of her voice, and he presently came
out to her, and they walked up and down together for a
long time.
She came down from her bed, to look at him in his
sleep that night. He slept heavily, and his tray of
shoemaking tools, and his old unfinished work, were all as
usual.
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XI
A Companion Picture
‘Sydney,’ said Mr. Stryver, on that self-same night, or
morning, to his jackal; ‘mix another bowl of punch; I have
something to say to you.’
Sydney had been working double tides that night, and
the night before, and the night before that, and a good
many nights in succession, making a grand clearance
among Mr. Stryver’s papers before the setting in of the
long vacation. The clearance was effected at last; the
Stryver arrears were handsomely fetched up; everything
was got rid of until November should come with its fogs
atmospheric, and fogs legal, and bring grist to the mill
again.
Sydney was none the livelier and none the soberer for
so much application. It had taken a deal of extra wettowelling
to pull him through the night; a correspondingly
extra quantity of wine had preceded the towelling; and he
was in a very damaged condition, as he now pulled his
turban off and threw it into the basin in which he had
steeped it at intervals for the last six hours.
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‘Are you mixing that other bowl of punch?’ said
Stryver the portly, with his hands in his waistband,
glancing round from the sofa where he lay on his back.
‘I am.’
‘Now, look here! I am going to tell you something that
will rather surprise you, and that perhaps will make you
think me not quite as shrewd as you usually do think me. I
intend to marry.’
‘DO you?’
‘Yes. And not for money. What do you say now?’
‘I don’t feel disposed to say much. Who is she?’
‘Guess.’
‘Do I know her?’
‘Guess.’
‘I am not going to guess, at five o’clock in the
morning, with my brains frying and sputtering in my head.
if you want me to guess, you must ask me to dinner.’
‘Well then, I’ll tell you, said Stryver, coming slowly
into a sitting posture. ‘Sydney, I rather despair of making
myself intelligible to you, because you are such an
insensible dog.
‘And you,’ returned Sydney, busy concocting the
punch, ‘are such a sensitive and poetical spirit—‘
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‘Come!’ rejoined Stryver, laughing boastfully, ‘though I
don’t prefer any claim to being the soul of Romance (for I
hope I know better), still I am a tenderer sort of fellow
than YOU.’
‘You are a luckier, if you mean that.’
‘I don’t mean that. I mean I am a man of more—
more—‘
‘Say gallantry, while you are about it,’ suggested
Carton.
‘Well! I’ll say gallantry. My meaning is that I am a
man,’ said Stryver, inflating himself at his friend as he
made the punch, ‘who cares more to be agreeable, who
takes more pains to be agreeable, who knows better how
to be agreeable, in a woman’s society, than you do.’
‘Go on,’ said Sydney Carton.
‘No; but before I go on,’ said Stryver, shaking his head
in his bullying way, I’ll have this out with you. You’ve
been at Doctor Manette’s house as much as I have, or
more than I have. Why, I have been ashamed of your
moroseness there! Your manners have been of that silent
and sullen and hangdog kind, that, upon my life and soul,
I have been ashamed of you, Sydney!’
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‘It should be very beneficial to a man in your practice
at the bar, to be ashamed of anything,’ returned Sydney;
‘you ought to be much obliged to me.’
‘You shall not get off in that way,’ rejoined Stryver,
shouldering the rejoinder at him; ‘no, Sydney, it’s my duty
to tell you—and I tell you to your face to do you good—
that you are a devilish ill-conditioned fellow in that sort of
society. You are a disagreeable fellow.’
Sydney drank a bumper of the punch he had made, and
laughed.
‘Look at me!’ said Stryver, squaring himself; ‘I have less
need to make myself agreeable than you have, being more
independent in circumstances. Why do I do it?’
‘I never saw you do it yet,’ muttered Carton.
‘I do it because it’s politic; I do it on principle. And
look at me! I get on.’
‘You don’t get on with your account of your
matrimonial intentions,’ answered Carton, with a careless
air; ‘I wish you would keep to that. As to me—will you
never understand that I am incorrigible?’
He asked the question with some appearance of scorn.
‘You have no business to be incorrigible,’ was his
friend’s answer, delivered in no very soothing tone.
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‘I have no business to be, at all, that I know of,’ said
Sydney Carton. ‘Who is the lady?’
‘Now, don’t let my announcement of the name make
you uncomfortable, Sydney,’ said Mr. Stryver, preparing
him with ostentatious friendliness for the disclosure he was
about to make, ‘because I know you don’t mean half you
say; and if you meant it all, it would be of no importance.
I make this little preface, because you once mentioned the
young lady to me in slighting terms.’
‘I did?’
‘Certainly; and in these chambers.’
Sydney Carton looked at his punch and looked at his
complacent friend; drank his punch and looked at his
complacent friend.
‘You made mention of the young lady as a goldenhaired
doll. The young lady is Miss Manette. If you had
been a fellow of any sensitiveness or delicacy of feeling in
that kind of way, Sydney, I might have been a little
resentful of your employing such a designation; but you
are not. You want that sense altogether; therefore I am no
more annoyed when I think of the expression, than I
should be annoyed by a man’s opinion of a picture of
mine, who had no eye for pictures: or of a piece of music
of mine, who had no ear for music.’
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Sydney Carton drank the punch at a great rate; drank it
by bumpers, looking at his friend.
‘Now you know all about it, Syd,’ said Mr. Stryver. ‘I
don’t care about fortune: she is a charming creature, and I
have made up my mind to please myself: on the whole, I
think I can afford to please myself. She will have in me a
man already pretty well off, and a rapidly rising man, and a
man of some distinction: it is a piece of good fortune for
her, but she is worthy of good fortune. Are you
astonished?’
Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, ‘Why should
I be astonished?’
‘You approve?’
Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, ‘Why should
I not approve?’
‘Well!’ said his friend Stryver, ‘you take it more easily
than I fancied you would, and are less mercenary on my
behalf than I thought you would be; though, to be sure,
you know well enough by this time that your ancient
chum is a man of a pretty strong will. Yes, Sydney, I have
had enough of this style of life, with no other as a change
from it; I feel that it is a pleasant thing for a man to have a
home when he feels inclined to go to it (when he doesn’t,
he can stay away), and I feel that Miss Manette will tell
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well in any station, and will always do me credit. So I have
made up my mind. And now, Sydney, old boy, I want to
say a word to YOU about YOUR prospects. You are in a
bad way, you know; you really are in a bad way. You
don’t know the value of money, you live hard, you’ll
knock up one of these days, and be ill and poor; you really
ought to think about a nurse.’
The prosperous patronage with which he said it, made
him look twice as big as he was, and four times as
offensive.
‘Now, let me recommend you,’ pursued Stryver, ‘to
look it in the face. I have looked it in the face, in my
different way; look it in the face, you, in your different
way. Marry. Provide somebody to take care of you. Never
mind your having no enjoyment of women’s society, nor
understanding of it, nor tact for it. Find out somebody.
Find out some respectable woman with a little property—
somebody in the landlady way, or lodging-letting way—
and marry her, against a rainy day. That’s the kind of thing
for YOU. Now think of it, Sydney.’
‘I’ll think of it,’ said Sydney.
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XII
The Fellow of Delicacy
Mr. Stryver having made up his mind to that
magnanimous bestowal of good fortune on the Doctor’s
daughter, resolved to make her happiness known to her
before he left town for the Long Vacation. After some
mental debating of the point, he came to the conclusion
that it would be as well to get all the preliminaries done
with, and they could then arrange at their leisure whether
he should give her his hand a week or two before
Michaelmas Term, or in the little Christmas vacation
between it and Hilary.
As to the strength of his case, he had not a doubt about
it, but clearly saw his way to the verdict. Argued with the
jury on substantial worldly grounds—the only grounds
ever worth taking into account— it was a plain case, and
had not a weak spot in it. He called himself for the
plaintiff, there was no getting over his evidence, the
counsel for the defendant threw up his brief, and the jury
did not even turn to consider. After trying it, Stryver, C.
J., was satisfied that no plainer case could be.
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Accordingly, Mr. Stryver inaugurated the Long
Vacation with a formal proposal to take Miss Manette to
Vauxhall Gardens; that failing, to Ranelagh; that
unaccountably failing too, it behoved him to present
himself in Soho, and there declare his noble mind.
Towards Soho, therefore, Mr. Stryver shouldered his
way from the Temple, while the bloom of the Long
Vacation’s infancy was still upon it. Anybody who had
seen him projecting himself into Soho while he was yet on
Saint Dunstan’s side of Temple Bar, bursting in his fullblown
way along the pavement, to the jostlement of all
weaker people, might have seen how safe and strong he
was.
His way taking him past Tellson’s, and he both banking
at Tellson’s and knowing Mr. Lorry as the intimate friend
of the Manettes, it entered Mr. Stryver’s mind to enter the
bank, and reveal to Mr. Lorry the brightness of the Soho
horizon. So, he pushed open the door with the weak rattle
in its throat, stumbled down the two steps, got past the
two ancient cashiers, and shouldered himself into the
musty back closet where Mr. Lorry sat at great books ruled
for figures, with perpendicular iron bars to his window as
if that were ruled for figures too, and everything under the
clouds were a sum.
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‘Halloa!’ said Mr. Stryver. ‘How do you do? I hope
you are well!’
It was Stryver’s grand peculiarity that he always seemed
too big for any place, or space. He was so much too big
for Tellson’s, that old clerks in distant corners looked up
with looks of remonstrance, as though he squeezed them
against the wall. The House itself, magnificently reading
the paper quite in the far-off perspective, lowered
displeased, as if the Stryver head had been butted into its
responsible waistcoat.
The discreet Mr. Lorry said, in a sample tone of the
voice he would recommend under the circumstances,
‘How do you do, Mr. Stryver? How do you do, sir?’ and
shook hands. There was a peculiarity in his manner of
shaking hands, always to be seen in any clerk at Tellson’s
who shook hands with a customer when the House
pervaded the air. He shook in a self-abnegating way, as
one who shook for Tellson and Co.
‘Can I do anything for you, Mr. Stryver?’ asked Mr.
Lorry, in his business character.
‘Why, no, thank you; this is a private visit to yourself,
Mr. Lorry; I have come for a private word.’
‘Oh indeed!’ said Mr. Lorry, bending down his ear,
while his eye strayed to the House afar off.
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‘I am going,’ said Mr. Stryver, leaning his arms
confidentially on the desk: whereupon, although it was a
large double one, there appeared to be not half desk
enough for him: ‘I am going to make an offer of myself in
marriage to your agreeable little friend, Miss Manette, Mr.
Lorry.’
‘Oh dear me!’ cried Mr. Lorry, rubbing his chin, and
looking at his visitor dubiously.
‘Oh dear me, sir?’ repeated Stryver, drawing back. ‘Oh
dear you, sir? What may your meaning be, Mr. Lorry?’
‘My meaning,’ answered the man of business, ‘is, of
course, friendly and appreciative, and that it does you the
greatest credit, and— in short, my meaning is everything
you could desire. But—really, you know, Mr. Stryver—’
Mr. Lorry paused, and shook his head at him in the oddest
manner, as if he were compelled against his will to add,
internally, ‘you know there really is so much too much of
you!’
‘Well!’ said Stryver, slapping the desk with his
contentious hand, opening his eyes wider, and taking a
long breath, ‘if I understand you, Mr. Lorry, I’ll be
hanged!’
Mr. Lorry adjusted his little wig at both ears as a means
towards that end, and bit the feather of a pen.
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‘D—n it all, sir!’ said Stryver, staring at him, ‘am I not
eligible?’
‘Oh dear yes! Yes. Oh yes, you’re eligible!’ said Mr.
Lorry. ‘If you say eligible, you are eligible.’
‘Am I not prosperous?’ asked Stryver.
‘Oh! if you come to prosperous, you are prosperous,’
said Mr. Lorry.
‘And advancing?’
‘If you come to advancing you know,’ said Mr. Lorry,
delighted to be able to make another admission, ‘nobody
can doubt that.’
‘Then what on earth is your meaning, Mr. Lorry?’
demanded Stryver, perceptibly crestfallen.
‘Well! I—Were you going there now?’ asked Mr.
Lorry.
‘Straight!’ said Stryver, with a plump of his fist on the
desk.
‘Then I think I wouldn’t, if I was you.’
‘Why?’ said Stryver. ‘Now, I’ll put you in a corner,’
forensically shaking a forefinger at him. ‘You are a man of
business and bound to have a reason. State your reason.
Why wouldn’t you go?’
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‘Because,’ said Mr. Lorry, ‘I wouldn’t go on such an
object without having some cause to believe that I should
succeed.’
‘D—n ME!’ cried Stryver, ‘but this beats everything.’
Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and glanced at
the angry Stryver.
‘Here’s a man of business—a man of years—a man of
experience— IN a Bank,’ said Stryver; ‘and having
summed up three leading reasons for complete success, he
says there’s no reason at all! Says it with his head on!’ Mr.
Stryver remarked upon the peculiarity as if it would have
been infinitely less remarkable if he had said it with his
head off.
‘When I speak of success, I speak of success with the
young lady; and when I speak of causes and reasons to
make success probable, I speak of causes and reasons that
will tell as such with the young lady. The young lady, my
good sir,’ said Mr. Lorry, mildly tapping the Stryver arm,
‘the young lady. The young lady goes before all.’
‘Then you mean to tell me, Mr. Lorry,’ said Stryver,
squaring his elbows, ‘that it is your deliberate opinion that
the young lady at present in question is a mincing Fool?’
‘Not exactly so. I mean to tell you, Mr. Stryver,’ said
Mr. Lorry, reddening, ‘that I will hear no disrespectful
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word of that young lady from any lips; and that if I knew
any man—which I hope I do not— whose taste was so
coarse, and whose temper was so overbearing, that he
could not restrain himself from speaking disrespectfully of
that young lady at this desk, not even Tellson’s should
prevent my giving him a piece of my mind.’
The necessity of being angry in a suppressed tone had
put Mr. Stryver’s blood-vessels into a dangerous state
when it was his turn to be angry; Mr. Lorry’s veins,
methodical as their courses could usually be, were in no
better state now it was his turn.
‘That is what I mean to tell you, sir,’ said Mr. Lorry.
‘Pray let there be no mistake about it.’
Mr. Stryver sucked the end of a ruler for a little while,
and then stood hitting a tune out of his teeth with it,
which probably gave him the toothache. He broke the
awkward silence by saying:
‘This is something new to me, Mr. Lorry. You
deliberately advise me not to go up to Soho and offer
myself—MYself, Stryver of the King’s Bench bar?’
‘Do you ask me for my advice, Mr. Stryver?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Very good. Then I give it, and you have repeated it
correctly.’
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‘And all I can say of it is,’ laughed Stryver with a vexed
laugh, ‘that this—ha, ha!—beats everything past, present,
and to come.’
‘Now understand me,’ pursued Mr. Lorry. ‘As a man of
business, I am not justified in saying anything about this
matter, for, as a man of business, I know nothing of it.
But, as an old fellow, who has carried Miss Manette in his
arms, who is the trusted friend of Miss Manette and of her
father too, and who has a great affection for them both, I
have spoken. The confidence is not of my seeking,
recollect. Now, you think I may not be right?’
‘Not I!’ said Stryver, whistling. ‘I can’t undertake to
find third parties in common sense; I can only find it for
myself. I suppose sense in certain quarters; you suppose
mincing bread-and-butter nonsense. It’s new to me, but
you are right, I dare say.’
‘What I suppose, Mr. Stryver, I claim to characterise
for myself—And understand me, sir,’ said Mr. Lorry,
quickly flushing again, ‘I will not—not even at Tellson’s—
have it characterised for me by any gentleman breathing.’
‘There! I beg your pardon!’ said Stryver.
‘Granted. Thank you. Well, Mr. Stryver, I was about
to say:—it might be painful to you to find yourself
mistaken, it might be painful to Doctor Manette to have
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the task of being explicit with you, it might be very
painful to Miss Manette to have the task of being explicit
with you. You know the terms upon which I have the
honour and happiness to stand with the family. If you
please, committing you in no way, representing you in no
way, I will undertake to correct my advice by the exercise
of a little new observation and judgment expressly brought
to bear upon it. If you should then be dissatisfied with it,
you can but test its soundness for yourself; if, on the other
hand, you should be satisfied with it, and it should be
what it now is, it may spare all sides what is best spared.
What do you say?’
‘How long would you keep me in town?’
‘Oh! It is only a question of a few hours. I could go to
Soho in the evening, and come to your chambers
afterwards.’
‘Then I say yes,’ said Stryver: ‘I won’t go up there
now, I am not so hot upon it as that comes to; I say yes,
and I shall expect you to look in to-night. Good
morning.’
Then Mr. Stryver turned and burst out of the Bank,
causing such a concussion of air on his passage through,
that to stand up against it bowing behind the two
counters, required the utmost remaining strength of the
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two ancient clerks. Those venerable and feeble persons
were always seen by the public in the act of bowing, and
were popularly believed, when they had bowed a
customer out, still to keep on bowing in the empty office
until they bowed another customer in.
The barrister was keen enough to divine that the
banker would not have gone so far in his expression of
opinion on any less solid ground than moral certainty.
Unprepared as he was for the large pill he had to swallow,
he got it down. ‘And now,’ said Mr. Stryver, shaking his
forensic forefinger at the Temple in general, when it was
down, ‘my way out of this, is, to put you all in the
wrong.’
It was a bit of the art of an Old Bailey tactician, in
which he found great relief. ‘You shall not put me in the
wrong, young lady,’ said Mr. Stryver; ‘I’ll do that for you.’
Accordingly, when Mr. Lorry called that night as late as
ten o’clock, Mr. Stryver, among a quantity of books and
papers littered out for the purpose, seemed to have
nothing less on his mind than the subject of the morning.
He even showed surprise when he saw Mr. Lorry, and was
altogether in an absent and preoccupied state.
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‘Well!’ said that good-natured emissary, after a full halfhour
of bootless attempts to bring him round to the
question. ‘I have been to Soho.’
‘To Soho?’ repeated Mr. Stryver, coldly. ‘Oh, to be
sure! What am I thinking of!’
‘And I have no doubt,’ said Mr. Lorry, ‘that I was right
in the conversation we had. My opinion is confirmed, and
I reiterate my advice.’
‘I assure you,’ returned Mr. Stryver, in the friendliest
way, ‘that I am sorry for it on your account, and sorry for
it on the poor father’s account. I know this must always be
a sore subject with the family; let us say no more about it.’
‘I don’t understand you,’ said Mr. Lorry.
‘I dare say not,’ rejoined Stryver, nodding his head in a
smoothing and final way; ‘no matter, no matter.’
‘But it does matter,’ Mr. Lorry urged.
‘No it doesn’t; I assure you it doesn’t. Having supposed
that there was sense where there is no sense, and a
laudable ambition where there is not a laudable ambition,
I am well out of my mistake, and no harm is done. Young
women have committed similar follies often before, and
have repented them in poverty and obscurity often before.
In an unselfish aspect, I am sorry that the thing is dropped,
because it would have been a bad thing for me in a
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worldly point of view; in a selfish aspect, I am glad that
the thing has dropped, because it would have been a bad
thing for me in a worldly point of view— it is hardly
necessary to say I could have gained nothing by it. There
is no harm at all done. I have not proposed to the young
lady, and, between ourselves, I am by no means certain,
on reflection, that I ever should have committed myself to
that extent. Mr. Lorry, you cannot control the mincing
vanities and giddinesses of empty-headed girls; you must
not expect to do it, or you will always be disappointed.
Now, pray say no more about it. I tell you, I regret it on
account of others, but I am satisfied on my own account.
And I am really very much obliged to you for allowing me
to sound you, and for giving me your advice; you know
the young lady better than I do; you were right, it never
would have done.’
Mr. Lorry was so taken aback, that he looked quite
stupidly at Mr. Stryver shouldering him towards the door,
with an appearance of showering generosity, forbearance,
and goodwill, on his erring head. ‘Make the best of it, my
dear sir,’ said Stryver; ‘say no more about it; thank you
again for allowing me to sound you; good night!’
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Mr. Lorry was out in the night, before he knew where
he was. Mr. Stryver was lying back on his sofa, winking at
his ceiling.
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XIII
The Fellow of No Delicacy
If Sydney Carton ever shone anywhere, he certainly
never shone in the house of Doctor Manette. He had been
there often, during a whole year, and had always been the
same moody and morose lounger there. When he cared to
talk, he talked well; but, the cloud of caring for nothing,
which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was
very rarely pierced by the light within him.
And yet he did care something for the streets that
environed that house, and for the senseless stones that
made their pavements. Many a night he vaguely and
unhappily wandered there, when wine had brought no
transitory gladness to him; many a dreary daybreak
revealed his solitary figure lingering there, and still
lingering there when the first beams of the sun brought
into strong relief, removed beauties of architecture in
spires of churches and lofty buildings, as perhaps the quiet
time brought some sense of better things, else forgotten
and unattainable, into his mind. Of late, the neglected bed
in the Temple Court had known him more scantily than
ever; and often when he had thrown himself upon it no
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longer than a few minutes, he had got up again, and
haunted that neighbourhood.
On a day in August, when Mr. Stryver (after notifying
to his jackal that ‘he had thought better of that marrying
matter’) had carried his delicacy into Devonshire, and
when the sight and scent of flowers in the City streets had
some waifs of goodness in them for the worst, of health
for the sickliest, and of youth for the oldest, Sydney’s feet
still trod those stones. From being irresolute and
purposeless, his feet became animated by an intention,
and, in the working out of that intention, they took him
to the Doctor’s door.
He was shown up-stairs, and found Lucie at her work,
alone. She had never been quite at her ease with him, and
received him with some little embarrassment as he seated
himself near her table. But, looking up at his face in the
interchange of the first few common-places, she observed
a change in it.
‘I fear you are not well, Mr. Carton!’
‘No. But the life I lead, Miss Manette, is not conducive
to health. What is to be expected of, or by, such
profligates?’
‘Is it not—forgive me; I have begun the question on
my lips—a pity to live no better life?’
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‘God knows it is a shame!’
‘Then why not change it?’
Looking gently at him again, she was surprised and
saddened to see that there were tears in his eyes. There
were tears in his voice too, as he answered:
‘It is too late for that. I shall never be better than I am.
I shall sink lower, and be worse.’
He leaned an elbow on her table, and covered his eyes
with his hand. The table trembled in the silence that
followed.
She had never seen him softened, and was much
distressed. He knew her to be so, without looking at her,
and said:
‘Pray forgive me, Miss Manette. I break down before
the knowledge of what I want to say to you. Will you
hear me?’
‘If it will do you any good, Mr. Carton, if it would
make you happier, it would make me very glad!’
‘God bless you for your sweet compassion!’
He unshaded his face after a little while, and spoke
steadily.
‘Don’t be afraid to hear me. Don’t shrink from
anything I say. I am like one who died young. All my life
might have been.’
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‘No, Mr. Carton. I am sure that the best part of it
might still be; I am sure that you might be much, much
worthier of yourself.’
‘Say of you, Miss Manette, and although I know
better—although in the mystery of my own wretched
heart I know better—I shall never forget it!’
She was pale and trembling. He came to her relief with
a fixed despair of himself which made the interview unlike
any other that could have been holden.
‘If it had been possible, Miss Manette, that you could
have returned the love of the man you see before
yourself—flung away, wasted, drunken, poor creature of
misuse as you know him to be—he would have been
conscious this day and hour, in spite of his happiness, that
he would bring you to misery, bring you to sorrow and
repentance, blight you, disgrace you, pull you down with
him. I know very well that you can have no tenderness for
me; I ask for none; I am even thankful that it cannot be.’
‘Without it, can I not save you, Mr. Carton? Can I not
recall you— forgive me again!—to a better course? Can I
in no way repay your confidence? I know this is a
confidence,’ she modestly said, after a little hesitation, and
in earnest tears, ‘I know you would say this to no one else.
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Can I turn it to no good account for yourself, Mr.
Carton?’
He shook his head.
‘To none. No, Miss Manette, to none. If you will hear
me through a very little more, all you can ever do for me
is done. I wish you to know that you have been the last
dream of my soul. In my degradation I have not been so
degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of
this home made such a home by you, has stirred old
shadows that I thought had died out of me. Since I knew
you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought
would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers
from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were
silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving
afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality,
and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a
dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where
he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it.’
‘Will nothing of it remain? O Mr. Carton, think again!
Try again!’
‘No, Miss Manette; all through it, I have known myself
to be quite undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness,
and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with
what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that
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I am, into fire—a fire, however, inseparable in its nature
from myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing
no service, idly burning away.’
‘Since it is my misfortune, Mr. Carton, to have made
you more unhappy than you were before you knew me—
‘
‘Don’t say that, Miss Manette, for you would have
reclaimed me, if anything could. You will not be the cause
of my becoming worse.’
‘Since the state of your mind that you describe, is, at all
events, attributable to some influence of mine—this is
what I mean, if I can make it plain—can I use no
influence to serve you? Have I no power for good, with
you, at all?’
‘The utmost good that I am capable of now, Miss
Manette, I have come here to realise. Let me carry
through the rest of my misdirected life, the remembrance
that I opened my heart to you, last of all the world; and
that there was something left in me at this time which you
could deplore and pity.’
‘Which I entreated you to believe, again and again,
most fervently, with all my heart, was capable of better
things, Mr. Carton!’
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‘Entreat me to believe it no more, Miss Manette. I have
proved myself, and I know better. I distress you; I draw
fast to an end. Will you let me believe, when I recall this
day, that the last confidence of my life was reposed in your
pure and innocent breast, and that it lies there alone, and
will be shared by no one?’
‘If that will be a consolation to you, yes.’
‘Not even by the dearest one ever to be known to
you?’
‘Mr. Carton,’ she answered, after an agitated pause, ‘the
secret is yours, not mine; and I promise to respect it.’
‘Thank you. And again, God bless you.’
He put her hand to his lips, and moved towards the
door.
‘Be under no apprehension, Miss Manette, of my ever
resuming this conversation by so much as a passing word. I
will never refer to it again. If I were dead, that could not
be surer than it is henceforth. In the hour of my death, I
shall hold sacred the one good remembrance— and shall
thank and bless you for it—that my last avowal of myself
was made to you, and that my name, and faults, and
miseries were gently carried in your heart. May it
otherwise be light and happy!’
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He was so unlike what he had ever shown himself to
be, and it was so sad to think how much he had thrown
away, and how much he every day kept down and
perverted, that Lucie Manette wept mournfully for him as
he stood looking back at her.
‘Be comforted!’ he said, ‘I am not worth such feeling,
Miss Manette. An hour or two hence, and the low
companions and low habits that I scorn but yield to, will
render me less worth such tears as those, than any wretch
who creeps along the streets. Be comforted! But, within
myself, I shall always be, towards you, what I am now,
though outwardly I shall be what you have heretofore
seen me. The last supplication but one I make to you, is,
that you will believe this of me.’
‘I will, Mr. Carton.’
‘My last supplication of all, is this; and with it, I will
relieve you of a visitor with whom I well know you have
nothing in unison, and between whom and you there is an
impassable space. It is useless to say it, I know, but it rises
out of my soul. For you, and for any dear to you, I would
do anything. If my career were of that better kind that
there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I
would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to
you. Try to hold me in your mind, at some quiet times, as
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ardent and sincere in this one thing. The time will come,
the time will not be long in coming, when new ties will
be formed about you—ties that will bind you yet more
tenderly and strongly to the home you so adorn—the
dearest ties that will ever grace and gladden you. O Miss
Manette, when the little picture of a happy father’s face
looks up in yours, when you see your own bright beauty
springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that
there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you
love beside you!’
He said, ‘Farewell!’ said a last ‘God bless you!’ and left
her.
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XIV
The Honest Tradesman
To the eyes of Mr. Jeremiah Cruncher, sitting on his
stool in Fleet-street with his grisly urchin beside him, a
vast number and variety of objects in movement were
every day presented. Who could sit upon anything in
Fleet-street during the busy hours of the day, and not be
dazed and deafened by two immense processions, one ever
tending westward with the sun, the other ever tending
eastward from the sun, both ever tending to the plains
beyond the range of red and purple where the sun goes
down!
With his straw in his mouth, Mr. Cruncher sat
watching the two streams, like the heathen rustic who has
for several centuries been on duty watching one stream—
saving that Jerry had no expectation of their ever running
dry. Nor would it have been an expectation of a hopeful
kind, since a small part of his income was derived from the
pilotage of timid women (mostly of a full habit and past
the middle term of life) from Tellson’s side of the tides to
the opposite shore. Brief as such companionship was in
every separate instance, Mr. Cruncher never failed to
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become so interested in the lady as to express a strong
desire to have the honour of drinking her very good
health. And it was from the gifts bestowed upon him
towards the execution of this benevolent purpose, that he
recruited his finances, as just now observed.
Time was, when a poet sat upon a stool in a public
place, and mused in the sight of men. Mr. Cruncher,
sitting on a stool in a public place, but not being a poet,
mused as little as possible, and looked about him.
It fell out that he was thus engaged in a season when
crowds were few, and belated women few, and when his
affairs in general were so unprosperous as to awaken a
strong suspicion in his breast that Mrs. Cruncher must
have been ‘flopping’ in some pointed manner, when an
unusual concourse pouring down Fleet-street westward,
attracted his attention. Looking that way, Mr. Cruncher
made out that some kind of funeral was coming along, and
that there was popular objection to this funeral, which
engendered uproar.
‘Young Jerry,’ said Mr. Cruncher, turning to his
offspring, ‘it’s a buryin’.’
‘Hooroar, father!’ cried Young Jerry.
The young gentleman uttered this exultant sound with
mysterious significance. The elder gentleman took the cry
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so ill, that he watched his opportunity, and smote the
young gentleman on the ear.
‘What d’ye mean? What are you hooroaring at? What
do you want to conwey to your own father, you young
Rip? This boy is a getting too many for ME!’ said Mr.
Cruncher, surveying him. ‘Him and his hooroars! Don’t
let me hear no more of you, or you shall feel some more
of me. D’ye hear?’
‘I warn’t doing no harm,’ Young Jerry protested,
rubbing his cheek.
‘Drop it then,’ said Mr. Cruncher; ‘I won’t have none
of YOUR no harms. Get a top of that there seat, and look
at the crowd.’
His son obeyed, and the crowd approached; they were
bawling and hissing round a dingy hearse and dingy
mourning coach, in which mourning coach there was
only one mourner, dressed in the dingy trappings that
were considered essential to the dignity of the position.
The position appeared by no means to please him,
however, with an increasing rabble surrounding the coach,
deriding him, making grimaces at him, and incessantly
groaning and calling out: ‘Yah! Spies! Tst! Yaha! Spies!’
with many compliments too numerous and forcible to
repeat.
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