Chapter: XVII. One Night


Never did the sun go down with a brighter glory on the quiet corner in
Soho, than one memorable evening when the Doctor and his daughter sat
under the plane-tree together. Never did the moon rise with a milder
radiance over great London, than on that night when it found them still
seated under the tree, and shone upon their faces through its leaves.

Lucie was to be married to-morrow. She had reserved this last evening
for her father, and they sat alone under the plane-tree.

"You are happy, my dear father?"

"Quite, my child."

They had said little, though they had been there a long time. When it
was yet light enough to work and read, she had neither engaged herself
in her usual work, nor had she read to him. She had employed herself in
both ways, at his side under the tree, many and many a time; but, this
time was not quite like any other, and nothing could make it so.

"And I am very happy to-night, dear father. I am deeply happy in the
love that Heaven has so blessed--my love for Charles, and Charles's love
for me. But, if my life were not to be still consecrated to you, or
if my marriage were so arranged as that it would part us, even by
the length of a few of these streets, I should be more unhappy and
self-reproachful now than I can tell you. Even as it is--"

Even as it was, she could not command her voice.

In the sad moonlight, she clasped him by the neck, and laid her face
upon his breast. In the moonlight which is always sad, as the light of
the sun itself is--as the light called human life is--at its coming and
its going.

"Dearest dear! Can you tell me, this last time, that you feel quite,
quite sure, no new affections of mine, and no new duties of mine, will
ever interpose between us? _I_ know it well, but do you know it? In your
own heart, do you feel quite certain?"

Her father answered, with a cheerful firmness of conviction he could
scarcely have assumed, "Quite sure, my darling! More than that," he
added, as he tenderly kissed her: "my future is far brighter, Lucie,
seen through your marriage, than it could have been--nay, than it ever
was--without it."

"If I could hope _that_, my father!--"

"Believe it, love! Indeed it is so. Consider how natural and how plain
it is, my dear, that it should be so. You, devoted and young, cannot
fully appreciate the anxiety I have felt that your life should not be
wasted--"

She moved her hand towards his lips, but he took it in his, and repeated
the word.

"--wasted, my child--should not be wasted, struck aside from the
natural order of things--for my sake. Your unselfishness cannot entirely
comprehend how much my mind has gone on this; but, only ask yourself,
how could my happiness be perfect, while yours was incomplete?"

"If I had never seen Charles, my father, I should have been quite happy
with you."

He smiled at her unconscious admission that she would have been unhappy
without Charles, having seen him; and replied:

"My child, you did see him, and it is Charles. If it had not been
Charles, it would have been another. Or, if it had been no other, I
should have been the cause, and then the dark part of my life would have
cast its shadow beyond myself, and would have fallen on you."

It was the first time, except at the trial, of her ever hearing him
refer to the period of his suffering. It gave her a strange and new
sensation while his words were in her ears; and she remembered it long
afterwards.

"See!" said the Doctor of Beauvais, raising his hand towards the moon.
"I have looked at her from my prison-window, when I could not bear her
light. I have looked at her when it has been such torture to me to think
of her shining upon what I had lost, that I have beaten my head against
my prison-walls. I have looked at her, in a state so dull and lethargic,
that I have thought of nothing but the number of horizontal lines I
could draw across her at the full, and the number of perpendicular lines
with which I could intersect them." He added in his inward and pondering
manner, as he looked at the moon, "It was twenty either way, I remember,
and the twentieth was difficult to squeeze in."

The strange thrill with which she heard him go back to that time,
deepened as he dwelt upon it; but, there was nothing to shock her in
the manner of his reference. He only seemed to contrast his present
cheerfulness and felicity with the dire endurance that was over.

"I have looked at her, speculating thousands of times upon the unborn
child from whom I had been rent. Whether it was alive. Whether it had
been born alive, or the poor mother's shock had killed it. Whether it
was a son who would some day avenge his father. (There was a time in my
imprisonment, when my desire for vengeance was unbearable.) Whether it
was a son who would never know his father's story; who might even live
to weigh the possibility of his father's having disappeared of his own
will and act. Whether it was a daughter who would grow to be a woman."

She drew closer to him, and kissed his cheek and his hand.

"I have pictured my daughter, to myself, as perfectly forgetful of
me--rather, altogether ignorant of me, and unconscious of me. I have
cast up the years of her age, year after year. I have seen her married
to a man who knew nothing of my fate. I have altogether perished from
the remembrance of the living, and in the next generation my place was a
blank."

"My father! Even to hear that you had such thoughts of a daughter who
never existed, strikes to my heart as if I had been that child."

"You, Lucie? It is out of the Consolation and restoration you have
brought to me, that these remembrances arise, and pass between us and
the moon on this last night.--What did I say just now?"

"She knew nothing of you. She cared nothing for you."

"So! But on other moonlight nights, when the sadness and the silence
have touched me in a different way--have affected me with something as
like a sorrowful sense of peace, as any emotion that had pain for its
foundations could--I have imagined her as coming to me in my cell, and
leading me out into the freedom beyond the fortress. I have seen her
image in the moonlight often, as I now see you; except that I never held
her in my arms; it stood between the little grated window and the door.
But, you understand that that was not the child I am speaking of?"

"The figure was not; the--the--image; the fancy?"

"No. That was another thing. It stood before my disturbed sense of
sight, but it never moved. The phantom that my mind pursued, was another
and more real child. Of her outward appearance I know no more than
that she was like her mother. The other had that likeness too--as you
have--but was not the same. Can you follow me, Lucie? Hardly, I think?
I doubt you must have been a solitary prisoner to understand these
perplexed distinctions."

His collected and calm manner could not prevent her blood from running
cold, as he thus tried to anatomise his old condition.

"In that more peaceful state, I have imagined her, in the moonlight,
coming to me and taking me out to show me that the home of her married
life was full of her loving remembrance of her lost father. My picture
was in her room, and I was in her prayers. Her life was active,
cheerful, useful; but my poor history pervaded it all."

"I was that child, my father, I was not half so good, but in my love
that was I."

"And she showed me her children," said the Doctor of Beauvais, "and
they had heard of me, and had been taught to pity me. When they passed
a prison of the State, they kept far from its frowning walls, and looked
up at its bars, and spoke in whispers. She could never deliver me; I
imagined that she always brought me back after showing me such things.
But then, blessed with the relief of tears, I fell upon my knees, and
blessed her."

"I am that child, I hope, my father. O my dear, my dear, will you bless
me as fervently to-morrow?"

"Lucie, I recall these old troubles in the reason that I have to-night
for loving you better than words can tell, and thanking God for my great
happiness. My thoughts, when they were wildest, never rose near the
happiness that I have known with you, and that we have before us."

He embraced her, solemnly commended her to Heaven, and humbly thanked
Heaven for having bestowed her on him. By-and-bye, they went into the
house.

There was no one bidden to the marriage but Mr. Lorry; there was even to
be no bridesmaid but the gaunt Miss Pross. The marriage was to make no
change in their place of residence; they had been able to extend it,
by taking to themselves the upper rooms formerly belonging to the
apocryphal invisible lodger, and they desired nothing more.

Doctor Manette was very cheerful at the little supper. They were only
three at table, and Miss Pross made the third. He regretted that Charles
was not there; was more than half disposed to object to the loving
little plot that kept him away; and drank to him affectionately.

So, the time came for him to bid Lucie good night, and they separated.
But, in the stillness of the third hour of the morning, Lucie came
downstairs again, and stole into his room; not free from unshaped fears,
beforehand.

All things, however, were in their places; all was quiet; and he lay
asleep, his white hair picturesque on the untroubled pillow, and his
hands lying quiet on the coverlet. She put her needless candle in the
shadow at a distance, crept up to his bed, and put her lips to his;
then, leaned over him, and looked at him.

Into his handsome face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn; but, he
covered up their tracks with a determination so strong, that he held the
mastery of them even in his sleep. A more remarkable face in its quiet,
resolute, and guarded struggle with an unseen assailant, was not to be
beheld in all the wide dominions of sleep, that night.

She timidly laid her hand on his dear breast, and put up a prayer that
she might ever be as true to him as her love aspired to be, and as his
sorrows deserved. Then, she withdrew her hand, and kissed his lips once
more, and went away. So, the sunrise came, and the shadows of the leaves
of the plane-tree moved upon his face, as softly as her lips had moved
in praying for him.





XVIII. Nine Days


The marriage-day was shining brightly, and they were ready outside the
closed door of the Doctor's room, where he was speaking with Charles
Darnay. They were ready to go to church; the beautiful bride, Mr.
Lorry, and Miss Pross--to whom the event, through a gradual process of
reconcilement to the inevitable, would have been one of absolute bliss,
but for the yet lingering consideration that her brother Solomon should
have been the bridegroom.

"And so," said Mr. Lorry, who could not sufficiently admire the bride,
and who had been moving round her to take in every point of her quiet,
pretty dress; "and so it was for this, my sweet Lucie, that I brought
you across the Channel, such a baby! Lord bless me! How little I thought
what I was doing! How lightly I valued the obligation I was conferring
on my friend Mr. Charles!"

"You didn't mean it," remarked the matter-of-fact Miss Pross, "and
therefore how could you know it? Nonsense!"

"Really? Well; but don't cry," said the gentle Mr. Lorry.

"I am not crying," said Miss Pross; "_you_ are."

"I, my Pross?" (By this time, Mr. Lorry dared to be pleasant with her,
on occasion.)

"You were, just now; I saw you do it, and I don't wonder at it. Such
a present of plate as you have made 'em, is enough to bring tears into
anybody's eyes. There's not a fork or a spoon in the collection," said
Miss Pross, "that I didn't cry over, last night after the box came, till
I couldn't see it."

"I am highly gratified," said Mr. Lorry, "though, upon my honour, I
had no intention of rendering those trifling articles of remembrance
invisible to any one. Dear me! This is an occasion that makes a man
speculate on all he has lost. Dear, dear, dear! To think that there
might have been a Mrs. Lorry, any time these fifty years almost!"

"Not at all!" From Miss Pross.

"You think there never might have been a Mrs. Lorry?" asked the
gentleman of that name.

"Pooh!" rejoined Miss Pross; "you were a bachelor in your cradle."

"Well!" observed Mr. Lorry, beamingly adjusting his little wig, "that
seems probable, too."

"And you were cut out for a bachelor," pursued Miss Pross, "before you
were put in your cradle."

"Then, I think," said Mr. Lorry, "that I was very unhandsomely dealt
with, and that I ought to have had a voice in the selection of my
pattern. Enough! Now, my dear Lucie," drawing his arm soothingly round
her waist, "I hear them moving in the next room, and Miss Pross and
I, as two formal folks of business, are anxious not to lose the final
opportunity of saying something to you that you wish to hear. You leave
your good father, my dear, in hands as earnest and as loving as your
own; he shall be taken every conceivable care of; during the next
fortnight, while you are in Warwickshire and thereabouts, even Tellson's
shall go to the wall (comparatively speaking) before him. And when, at
the fortnight's end, he comes to join you and your beloved husband, on
your other fortnight's trip in Wales, you shall say that we have sent
him to you in the best health and in the happiest frame. Now, I hear
Somebody's step coming to the door. Let me kiss my dear girl with an
old-fashioned bachelor blessing, before Somebody comes to claim his
own."

For a moment, he held the fair face from him to look at the
well-remembered expression on the forehead, and then laid the bright
golden hair against his little brown wig, with a genuine tenderness and
delicacy which, if such things be old-fashioned, were as old as Adam.

The door of the Doctor's room opened, and he came out with Charles
Darnay. He was so deadly pale--which had not been the case when they
went in together--that no vestige of colour was to be seen in his face.
But, in the composure of his manner he was unaltered, except that to the
shrewd glance of Mr. Lorry it disclosed some shadowy indication that the
old air of avoidance and dread had lately passed over him, like a cold
wind.

He gave his arm to his daughter, and took her down-stairs to the chariot
which Mr. Lorry had hired in honour of the day. The rest followed in
another carriage, and soon, in a neighbouring church, where no strange
eyes looked on, Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette were happily married.

Besides the glancing tears that shone among the smiles of the little
group when it was done, some diamonds, very bright and sparkling,
glanced on the bride's hand, which were newly released from the
dark obscurity of one of Mr. Lorry's pockets. They returned home to
breakfast, and all went well, and in due course the golden hair that had
mingled with the poor shoemaker's white locks in the Paris garret, were
mingled with them again in the morning sunlight, on the threshold of the
door at parting.

It was a hard parting, though it was not for long. But her father
cheered her, and said at last, gently disengaging himself from her
enfolding arms, "Take her, Charles! She is yours!"

And her agitated hand waved to them from a chaise window, and she was
gone.

The corner being out of the way of the idle and curious, and the
preparations having been very simple and few, the Doctor, Mr. Lorry,
and Miss Pross, were left quite alone. It was when they turned into
the welcome shade of the cool old hall, that Mr. Lorry observed a great
change to have come over the Doctor; as if the golden arm uplifted
there, had struck him a poisoned blow.

He had naturally repressed much, and some revulsion might have been
expected in him when the occasion for repression was gone. But, it was
the old scared lost look that troubled Mr. Lorry; and through his absent
manner of clasping his head and drearily wandering away into his own
room when they got up-stairs, Mr. Lorry was reminded of Defarge the
wine-shop keeper, and the starlight ride.

"I think," he whispered to Miss Pross, after anxious consideration, "I
think we had best not speak to him just now, or at all disturb him.
I must look in at Tellson's; so I will go there at once and come back
presently. Then, we will take him a ride into the country, and dine
there, and all will be well."

It was easier for Mr. Lorry to look in at Tellson's, than to look out of
Tellson's. He was detained two hours. When he came back, he ascended the
old staircase alone, having asked no question of the servant; going thus
into the Doctor's rooms, he was stopped by a low sound of knocking.

"Good God!" he said, with a start. "What's that?"

Miss Pross, with a terrified face, was at his ear. "O me, O me! All is
lost!" cried she, wringing her hands. "What is to be told to Ladybird?
He doesn't know me, and is making shoes!"

Mr. Lorry said what he could to calm her, and went himself into the
Doctor's room. The bench was turned towards the light, as it had been
when he had seen the shoemaker at his work before, and his head was bent
down, and he was very busy.

"Doctor Manette. My dear friend, Doctor Manette!"

The Doctor looked at him for a moment--half inquiringly, half as if he
were angry at being spoken to--and bent over his work again.

He had laid aside his coat and waistcoat; his shirt was open at the
throat, as it used to be when he did that work; and even the old
haggard, faded surface of face had come back to him. He worked
hard--impatiently--as if in some sense of having been interrupted.

Mr. Lorry glanced at the work in his hand, and observed that it was a
shoe of the old size and shape. He took up another that was lying by
him, and asked what it was.

"A young lady's walking shoe," he muttered, without looking up. "It
ought to have been finished long ago. Let it be."

"But, Doctor Manette. Look at me!"

He obeyed, in the old mechanically submissive manner, without pausing in
his work.

"You know me, my dear friend? Think again. This is not your proper
occupation. Think, dear friend!"

Nothing would induce him to speak more. He looked up, for an instant at
a time, when he was requested to do so; but, no persuasion would extract
a word from him. He worked, and worked, and worked, in silence, and
words fell on him as they would have fallen on an echoless wall, or on
the air. The only ray of hope that Mr. Lorry could discover, was, that
he sometimes furtively looked up without being asked. In that, there
seemed a faint expression of curiosity or perplexity--as though he were
trying to reconcile some doubts in his mind.

Two things at once impressed themselves on Mr. Lorry, as important above
all others; the first, that this must be kept secret from Lucie;
the second, that it must be kept secret from all who knew him. In
conjunction with Miss Pross, he took immediate steps towards the latter
precaution, by giving out that the Doctor was not well, and required a
few days of complete rest. In aid of the kind deception to be practised
on his daughter, Miss Pross was to write, describing his having been
called away professionally, and referring to an imaginary letter of
two or three hurried lines in his own hand, represented to have been
addressed to her by the same post.

These measures, advisable to be taken in any case, Mr. Lorry took in
the hope of his coming to himself. If that should happen soon, he kept
another course in reserve; which was, to have a certain opinion that he
thought the best, on the Doctor's case.

In the hope of his recovery, and of resort to this third course
being thereby rendered practicable, Mr. Lorry resolved to watch him
attentively, with as little appearance as possible of doing so. He
therefore made arrangements to absent himself from Tellson's for the
first time in his life, and took his post by the window in the same
room.

He was not long in discovering that it was worse than useless to speak
to him, since, on being pressed, he became worried. He abandoned that
attempt on the first day, and resolved merely to keep himself always
before him, as a silent protest against the delusion into which he had
fallen, or was falling. He remained, therefore, in his seat near the
window, reading and writing, and expressing in as many pleasant and
natural ways as he could think of, that it was a free place.

Doctor Manette took what was given him to eat and drink, and worked on,
that first day, until it was too dark to see--worked on, half an hour
after Mr. Lorry could not have seen, for his life, to read or write.
When he put his tools aside as useless, until morning, Mr. Lorry rose
and said to him:

"Will you go out?"

He looked down at the floor on either side of him in the old manner,
looked up in the old manner, and repeated in the old low voice:

"Out?"

"Yes; for a walk with me. Why not?"

He made no effort to say why not, and said not a word more. But, Mr.
Lorry thought he saw, as he leaned forward on his bench in the dusk,
with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, that he was in
some misty way asking himself, "Why not?" The sagacity of the man of
business perceived an advantage here, and determined to hold it.

Miss Pross and he divided the night into two watches, and observed him
at intervals from the adjoining room. He paced up and down for a long
time before he lay down; but, when he did finally lay himself down, he
fell asleep. In the morning, he was up betimes, and went straight to his
bench and to work.

On this second day, Mr. Lorry saluted him cheerfully by his name,
and spoke to him on topics that had been of late familiar to them. He
returned no reply, but it was evident that he heard what was said, and
that he thought about it, however confusedly. This encouraged Mr. Lorry
to have Miss Pross in with her work, several times during the day;
at those times, they quietly spoke of Lucie, and of her father then
present, precisely in the usual manner, and as if there were nothing
amiss. This was done without any demonstrative accompaniment, not long
enough, or often enough to harass him; and it lightened Mr. Lorry's
friendly heart to believe that he looked up oftener, and that he
appeared to be stirred by some perception of inconsistencies surrounding
him.

When it fell dark again, Mr. Lorry asked him as before:

"Dear Doctor, will you go out?"

As before, he repeated, "Out?"

"Yes; for a walk with me. Why not?"

This time, Mr. Lorry feigned to go out when he could extract no answer
from him, and, after remaining absent for an hour, returned. In the
meanwhile, the Doctor had removed to the seat in the window, and had
sat there looking down at the plane-tree; but, on Mr. Lorry's return, he
slipped away to his bench.

The time went very slowly on, and Mr. Lorry's hope darkened, and his
heart grew heavier again, and grew yet heavier and heavier every day.
The third day came and went, the fourth, the fifth. Five days, six days,
seven days, eight days, nine days.

With a hope ever darkening, and with a heart always growing heavier and
heavier, Mr. Lorry passed through this anxious time. The secret was
well kept, and Lucie was unconscious and happy; but he could not fail to
observe that the shoemaker, whose hand had been a little out at first,
was growing dreadfully skilful, and that he had never been so intent on
his work, and that his hands had never been so nimble and expert, as in
the dusk of the ninth evening.





XIX. An Opinion

Worn out by anxious watching, Mr. Lorry fell asleep at his post. On the
tenth morning of his suspense, he was startled by the shining of the sun
into the room where a heavy slumber had overtaken him when it was dark
night.

He rubbed his eyes and roused himself; but he doubted, when he had
done so, whether he was not still asleep. For, going to the door of the
Doctor's room and looking in, he perceived that the shoemaker's bench
and tools were put aside again, and that the Doctor himself sat reading
at the window. He was in his usual morning dress, and his face (which
Mr. Lorry could distinctly see), though still very pale, was calmly
studious and attentive.

Even when he had satisfied himself that he was awake, Mr. Lorry felt
giddily uncertain for some few moments whether the late shoemaking might
not be a disturbed dream of his own; for, did not his eyes show him his
friend before him in his accustomed clothing and aspect, and employed
as usual; and was there any sign within their range, that the change of
which he had so strong an impression had actually happened?

It was but the inquiry of his first confusion and astonishment, the
answer being obvious. If the impression were not produced by a real
corresponding and sufficient cause, how came he, Jarvis Lorry, there?
How came he to have fallen asleep, in his clothes, on the sofa in Doctor
Manette's consulting-room, and to be debating these points outside the
Doctor's bedroom door in the early morning?

Within a few minutes, Miss Pross stood whispering at his side. If he
had had any particle of doubt left, her talk would of necessity have
resolved it; but he was by that time clear-headed, and had none.
He advised that they should let the time go by until the regular
breakfast-hour, and should then meet the Doctor as if nothing unusual
had occurred. If he appeared to be in his customary state of mind, Mr.
Lorry would then cautiously proceed to seek direction and guidance from
the opinion he had been, in his anxiety, so anxious to obtain.

Miss Pross, submitting herself to his judgment, the scheme was worked
out with care. Having abundance of time for his usual methodical
toilette, Mr. Lorry presented himself at the breakfast-hour in his usual
white linen, and with his usual neat leg. The Doctor was summoned in the
usual way, and came to breakfast.

So far as it was possible to comprehend him without overstepping those
delicate and gradual approaches which Mr. Lorry felt to be the only safe
advance, he at first supposed that his daughter's marriage had taken
place yesterday. An incidental allusion, purposely thrown out, to
the day of the week, and the day of the month, set him thinking and
counting, and evidently made him uneasy. In all other respects, however,
he was so composedly himself, that Mr. Lorry determined to have the aid
he sought. And that aid was his own.

Therefore, when the breakfast was done and cleared away, and he and the
Doctor were left together, Mr. Lorry said, feelingly:

"My dear Manette, I am anxious to have your opinion, in confidence, on a
very curious case in which I am deeply interested; that is to say, it is
very curious to me; perhaps, to your better information it may be less
so."

Glancing at his hands, which were discoloured by his late work, the
Doctor looked troubled, and listened attentively. He had already glanced
at his hands more than once.

"Doctor Manette," said Mr. Lorry, touching him affectionately on the
arm, "the case is the case of a particularly dear friend of mine. Pray
give your mind to it, and advise me well for his sake--and above all,
for his daughter's--his daughter's, my dear Manette."

"If I understand," said the Doctor, in a subdued tone, "some mental
shock--?"

"Yes!"

"Be explicit," said the Doctor. "Spare no detail."

Mr. Lorry saw that they understood one another, and proceeded.

"My dear Manette, it is the case of an old and a prolonged shock,
of great acuteness and severity to the affections, the feelings,
the--the--as you express it--the mind. The mind. It is the case of a
shock under which the sufferer was borne down, one cannot say for how
long, because I believe he cannot calculate the time himself, and there
are no other means of getting at it. It is the case of a shock from
which the sufferer recovered, by a process that he cannot trace
himself--as I once heard him publicly relate in a striking manner. It is
the case of a shock from which he has recovered, so completely, as to
be a highly intelligent man, capable of close application of mind, and
great exertion of body, and of constantly making fresh additions to his
stock of knowledge, which was already very large. But, unfortunately,
there has been," he paused and took a deep breath--"a slight relapse."

The Doctor, in a low voice, asked, "Of how long duration?"

"Nine days and nights."

"How did it show itself? I infer," glancing at his hands again, "in the
resumption of some old pursuit connected with the shock?"

"That is the fact."

"Now, did you ever see him," asked the Doctor, distinctly and
collectedly, though in the same low voice, "engaged in that pursuit
originally?"

"Once."

"And when the relapse fell on him, was he in most respects--or in all
respects--as he was then?"

"I think in all respects."

"You spoke of his daughter. Does his daughter know of the relapse?"

"No. It has been kept from her, and I hope will always be kept from her.
It is known only to myself, and to one other who may be trusted."

The Doctor grasped his hand, and murmured, "That was very kind. That was
very thoughtful!" Mr. Lorry grasped his hand in return, and neither of
the two spoke for a little while.

"Now, my dear Manette," said Mr. Lorry, at length, in his most
considerate and most affectionate way, "I am a mere man of business,
and unfit to cope with such intricate and difficult matters. I do not
possess the kind of information necessary; I do not possess the kind of
intelligence; I want guiding. There is no man in this world on whom
I could so rely for right guidance, as on you. Tell me, how does this
relapse come about? Is there danger of another? Could a repetition of it
be prevented? How should a repetition of it be treated? How does it come
about at all? What can I do for my friend? No man ever can have been
more desirous in his heart to serve a friend, than I am to serve mine,
if I knew how.

"But I don't know how to originate, in such a case. If your sagacity,
knowledge, and experience, could put me on the right track, I might be
able to do so much; unenlightened and undirected, I can do so little.
Pray discuss it with me; pray enable me to see it a little more clearly,
and teach me how to be a little more useful."

Doctor Manette sat meditating after these earnest words were spoken, and
Mr. Lorry did not press him.

"I think it probable," said the Doctor, breaking silence with an effort,
"that the relapse you have described, my dear friend, was not quite
unforeseen by its subject."

"Was it dreaded by him?" Mr. Lorry ventured to ask.

"Very much." He said it with an involuntary shudder.

"You have no idea how such an apprehension weighs on the sufferer's
mind, and how difficult--how almost impossible--it is, for him to force
himself to utter a word upon the topic that oppresses him."

"Would he," asked Mr. Lorry, "be sensibly relieved if he could prevail
upon himself to impart that secret brooding to any one, when it is on
him?"

"I think so. But it is, as I have told you, next to impossible. I even
believe it--in some cases--to be quite impossible."

"Now," said Mr. Lorry, gently laying his hand on the Doctor's arm again,
after a short silence on both sides, "to what would you refer this
attack?"

"I believe," returned Doctor Manette, "that there had been a strong and
extraordinary revival of the train of thought and remembrance that
was the first cause of the malady. Some intense associations of a most
distressing nature were vividly recalled, I think. It is probable that
there had long been a dread lurking in his mind, that those associations
would be recalled--say, under certain circumstances--say, on a
particular occasion. He tried to prepare himself in vain; perhaps the
effort to prepare himself made him less able to bear it."

"Would he remember what took place in the relapse?" asked Mr. Lorry,
with natural hesitation.

The Doctor looked desolately round the room, shook his head, and
answered, in a low voice, "Not at all."

"Now, as to the future," hinted Mr. Lorry.

"As to the future," said the Doctor, recovering firmness, "I should have
great hope. As it pleased Heaven in its mercy to restore him so soon, I
should have great hope. He, yielding under the pressure of a complicated
something, long dreaded and long vaguely foreseen and contended against,
and recovering after the cloud had burst and passed, I should hope that
the worst was over."

"Well, well! That's good comfort. I am thankful!" said Mr. Lorry.

"I am thankful!" repeated the Doctor, bending his head with reverence.

"There are two other points," said Mr. Lorry, "on which I am anxious to
be instructed. I may go on?"

"You cannot do your friend a better service." The Doctor gave him his
hand.

"To the first, then. He is of a studious habit, and unusually energetic;
he applies himself with great ardour to the acquisition of professional
knowledge, to the conducting of experiments, to many things. Now, does
he do too much?"

"I think not. It may be the character of his mind, to be always in
singular need of occupation. That may be, in part, natural to it; in
part, the result of affliction. The less it was occupied with healthy
things, the more it would be in danger of turning in the unhealthy
direction. He may have observed himself, and made the discovery."

"You are sure that he is not under too great a strain?"

"I think I am quite sure of it."

"My dear Manette, if he were overworked now--"

"My dear Lorry, I doubt if that could easily be. There has been a
violent stress in one direction, and it needs a counterweight."

"Excuse me, as a persistent man of business. Assuming for a moment,
that he _was_ overworked; it would show itself in some renewal of this
disorder?"

"I do not think so. I do not think," said Doctor Manette with the
firmness of self-conviction, "that anything but the one train of
association would renew it. I think that, henceforth, nothing but some
extraordinary jarring of that chord could renew it. After what has
happened, and after his recovery, I find it difficult to imagine any
such violent sounding of that string again. I trust, and I almost
believe, that the circumstances likely to renew it are exhausted."

He spoke with the diffidence of a man who knew how slight a thing
would overset the delicate organisation of the mind, and yet with the
confidence of a man who had slowly won his assurance out of personal
endurance and distress. It was not for his friend to abate that
confidence. He professed himself more relieved and encouraged than he
really was, and approached his second and last point. He felt it to
be the most difficult of all; but, remembering his old Sunday morning
conversation with Miss Pross, and remembering what he had seen in the
last nine days, he knew that he must face it.

"The occupation resumed under the influence of this passing affliction
so happily recovered from," said Mr. Lorry, clearing his throat, "we
will call--Blacksmith's work, Blacksmith's work. We will say, to put a
case and for the sake of illustration, that he had been used, in his bad
time, to work at a little forge. We will say that he was unexpectedly
found at his forge again. Is it not a pity that he should keep it by
him?"

The Doctor shaded his forehead with his hand, and beat his foot
nervously on the ground.

"He has always kept it by him," said Mr. Lorry, with an anxious look at
his friend. "Now, would it not be better that he should let it go?"

Still, the Doctor, with shaded forehead, beat his foot nervously on the
ground.

"You do not find it easy to advise me?" said Mr. Lorry. "I quite
understand it to be a nice question. And yet I think--" And there he
shook his head, and stopped.

"You see," said Doctor Manette, turning to him after an uneasy pause,
"it is very hard to explain, consistently, the innermost workings
of this poor man's mind. He once yearned so frightfully for that
occupation, and it was so welcome when it came; no doubt it relieved
his pain so much, by substituting the perplexity of the fingers for
the perplexity of the brain, and by substituting, as he became more
practised, the ingenuity of the hands, for the ingenuity of the mental
torture; that he has never been able to bear the thought of putting it
quite out of his reach. Even now, when I believe he is more hopeful of
himself than he has ever been, and even speaks of himself with a kind
of confidence, the idea that he might need that old employment, and not
find it, gives him a sudden sense of terror, like that which one may
fancy strikes to the heart of a lost child."

He looked like his illustration, as he raised his eyes to Mr. Lorry's
face.

"But may not--mind! I ask for information, as a plodding man of business
who only deals with such material objects as guineas, shillings, and
bank-notes--may not the retention of the thing involve the retention of
the idea? If the thing were gone, my dear Manette, might not the fear go
with it? In short, is it not a concession to the misgiving, to keep the
forge?"

There was another silence.

"You see, too," said the Doctor, tremulously, "it is such an old
companion."

"I would not keep it," said Mr. Lorry, shaking his head; for he gained
in firmness as he saw the Doctor disquieted. "I would recommend him to
sacrifice it. I only want your authority. I am sure it does no good.
Come! Give me your authority, like a dear good man. For his daughter's
sake, my dear Manette!"

Very strange to see what a struggle there was within him!

"In her name, then, let it be done; I sanction it. But, I would not take
it away while he was present. Let it be removed when he is not there;
let him miss his old companion after an absence."

Mr. Lorry readily engaged for that, and the conference was ended. They
passed the day in the country, and the Doctor was quite restored. On the
three following days he remained perfectly well, and on the fourteenth
day he went away to join Lucie and her husband. The precaution that
had been taken to account for his silence, Mr. Lorry had previously
explained to him, and he had written to Lucie in accordance with it, and
she had no suspicions.

On the night of the day on which he left the house, Mr. Lorry went into
his room with a chopper, saw, chisel, and hammer, attended by Miss Pross
carrying a light. There, with closed doors, and in a mysterious and
guilty manner, Mr. Lorry hacked the shoemaker's bench to pieces, while
Miss Pross held the candle as if she were assisting at a murder--for
which, indeed, in her grimness, she was no unsuitable figure. The
burning of the body (previously reduced to pieces convenient for the
purpose) was commenced without delay in the kitchen fire; and the tools,
shoes, and leather, were buried in the garden. So wicked do destruction
and secrecy appear to honest minds, that Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross,
while engaged in the commission of their deed and in the removal of its
traces, almost felt, and almost looked, like accomplices in a horrible
crime.





XX. A Plea


When the newly-married pair came home, the first person who appeared, to
offer his congratulations, was Sydney Carton. They had not been at home
many hours, when he presented himself. He was not improved in habits, or
in looks, or in manner; but there was a certain rugged air of fidelity
about him, which was new to the observation of Charles Darnay.

He watched his opportunity of taking Darnay aside into a window, and of
speaking to him when no one overheard.

"Mr. Darnay," said Carton, "I wish we might be friends."

"We are already friends, I hope."

"You are good enough to say so, as a fashion of speech; but, I don't
mean any fashion of speech. Indeed, when I say I wish we might be
friends, I scarcely mean quite that, either."

Charles Darnay--as was natural--asked him, in all good-humour and
good-fellowship, what he did mean?

"Upon my life," said Carton, smiling, "I find that easier to comprehend
in my own mind, than to convey to yours. However, let me try. You
remember a certain famous occasion when I was more drunk than--than
usual?"

"I remember a certain famous occasion when you forced me to confess that
you had been drinking."

"I remember it too. The curse of those occasions is heavy upon me, for I
always remember them. I hope it may be taken into account one day,
when all days are at an end for me! Don't be alarmed; I am not going to
preach."

"I am not at all alarmed. Earnestness in you, is anything but alarming
to me."

"Ah!" said Carton, with a careless wave of his hand, as if he waved that
away. "On the drunken occasion in question (one of a large number, as
you know), I was insufferable about liking you, and not liking you. I
wish you would forget it."

"I forgot it long ago."

"Fashion of speech again! But, Mr. Darnay, oblivion is not so easy to
me, as you represent it to be to you. I have by no means forgotten it,
and a light answer does not help me to forget it."

"If it was a light answer," returned Darnay, "I beg your forgiveness
for it. I had no other object than to turn a slight thing, which, to my
surprise, seems to trouble you too much, aside. I declare to you, on the
faith of a gentleman, that I have long dismissed it from my mind. Good
Heaven, what was there to dismiss! Have I had nothing more important to
remember, in the great service you rendered me that day?"

"As to the great service," said Carton, "I am bound to avow to you, when
you speak of it in that way, that it was mere professional claptrap, I
don't know that I cared what became of you, when I rendered it.--Mind! I
say when I rendered it; I am speaking of the past."

"You make light of the obligation," returned Darnay, "but I will not
quarrel with _your_ light answer."

"Genuine truth, Mr. Darnay, trust me! I have gone aside from my purpose;
I was speaking about our being friends. Now, you know me; you know I am
incapable of all the higher and better flights of men. If you doubt it,
ask Stryver, and he'll tell you so."

"I prefer to form my own opinion, without the aid of his."

"Well! At any rate you know me as a dissolute dog, who has never done
any good, and never will."

"I don't know that you 'never will.'"

"But I do, and you must take my word for it. Well! If you could endure
to have such a worthless fellow, and a fellow of such indifferent
reputation, coming and going at odd times, I should ask that I might be
permitted to come and go as a privileged person here; that I might
be regarded as an useless (and I would add, if it were not for the
resemblance I detected between you and me, an unornamental) piece of
furniture, tolerated for its old service, and taken no notice of. I
doubt if I should abuse the permission. It is a hundred to one if I
should avail myself of it four times in a year. It would satisfy me, I
dare say, to know that I had it."

"Will you try?"

"That is another way of saying that I am placed on the footing I have
indicated. I thank you, Darnay. I may use that freedom with your name?"

"I think so, Carton, by this time."

They shook hands upon it, and Sydney turned away. Within a minute
afterwards, he was, to all outward appearance, as unsubstantial as ever.

When he was gone, and in the course of an evening passed with Miss
Pross, the Doctor, and Mr. Lorry, Charles Darnay made some mention of
this conversation in general terms, and spoke of Sydney Carton as a
problem of carelessness and recklessness. He spoke of him, in short, not
bitterly or meaning to bear hard upon him, but as anybody might who saw
him as he showed himself.

He had no idea that this could dwell in the thoughts of his fair young
wife; but, when he afterwards joined her in their own rooms, he found
her waiting for him with the old pretty lifting of the forehead strongly
marked.

"We are thoughtful to-night!" said Darnay, drawing his arm about her.

"Yes, dearest Charles," with her hands on his breast, and the inquiring
and attentive expression fixed upon him; "we are rather thoughtful
to-night, for we have something on our mind to-night."

"What is it, my Lucie?"

"Will you promise not to press one question on me, if I beg you not to
ask it?"

"Will I promise? What will I not promise to my Love?"

What, indeed, with his hand putting aside the golden hair from the
cheek, and his other hand against the heart that beat for him!

"I think, Charles, poor Mr. Carton deserves more consideration and
respect than you expressed for him to-night."

"Indeed, my own? Why so?"

"That is what you are not to ask me. But I think--I know--he does."

"If you know it, it is enough. What would you have me do, my Life?"

"I would ask you, dearest, to be very generous with him always, and very
lenient on his faults when he is not by. I would ask you to believe that
he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that there are deep
wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding."

"It is a painful reflection to me," said Charles Darnay, quite
astounded, "that I should have done him any wrong. I never thought this
of him."

"My husband, it is so. I fear he is not to be reclaimed; there is
scarcely a hope that anything in his character or fortunes is reparable
now. But, I am sure that he is capable of good things, gentle things,
even magnanimous things."

She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man,
that her husband could have looked at her as she was for hours.

"And, O my dearest Love!" she urged, clinging nearer to him, laying her
head upon his breast, and raising her eyes to his, "remember how strong
we are in our happiness, and how weak he is in his misery!"

The supplication touched him home. "I will always remember it, dear
Heart! I will remember it as long as I live."

He bent over the golden head, and put the rosy lips to his, and folded
her in his arms. If one forlorn wanderer then pacing the dark streets,
could have heard her innocent disclosure, and could have seen the drops
of pity kissed away by her husband from the soft blue eyes so loving of
that husband, he might have cried to the night--and the words would not
have parted from his lips for the first time--

"God bless her for her sweet compassion!"

 Book II Chapter 17-20 The night before Lucie Manette is to marry Charles Darnay she and her father sit under the plane tree in their yard and she reassures him that he love for Charles and all the ties that marriage will bring will not intrude upon her feelings for her father. He assures her that he knows this to be true and that her marriage will only make him happier. He speaks of the time he spent in prison, something Lucie has only heard him mention once before, and describes how he imagined what his child might be, son or daughter, and worried that they would never know him. He explains that in his furthest flights of solitary imagining he never would have believed that he could be as happy as his present life has made him. Later that night Lucie sneaks into her father's bedroom and, placing her hand on his breast, she prays that she will always be true to him. The morning of the wedding Mr. Lorry and Miss Pross fuss over the beautiful bride while Dr. Manette and Charles Darnay confer in the adjoining room. When Mr. Lorry suggests that he should have married before he grew old, Miss Pross insists that he was born to be a bachelor. Mr. Lorry promises Lucie that he and Miss Pross will take good care of her father while she and Charles spend two weeks honeymooning in Warwickshire and will send him to Wales to join them in good health. When Darnay and the Doctor emerge from their conference Mr. Lorry notices that the Doctor is pale and seems cowed. The wedding, which is private at a small church, goes smoothly and after breakfast the newly married couple are on their way. Mr. Lorry again notices the doctor's changed demeanor and when he returns later in the evening he is alarmed to find Doctor Manette at his old occupation of making shoes. The doctor does not recognize either Mr. Lorry or Miss Pross. Mr. Lorry, for the first time in his life, takes a leave of absence from Tellson's in order to attend to his sick friend. For nine days he tries to bring the doctor to his senses by making small talk about ordinary affairs. On the morning of the tenth day Mr. Lorry awakes in the doctor's room where he had unintentionally fallen asleep. The doctor has returned to normal but is not aware that nine days have passed since Lucie's wedding. After breakfast Mr. Lorry engages his friend in a discussion regarding a hypothetical friend who recently experienced the recurrence of an old mental debility. The doctor understands that they are in fact discussing himself but continues with the conceit. When the doctor learns that Mr. Lorry's "friend's" daughter is unaware of the relapse he is very thankful. The doctor admits that the relapse was foreseen by its subject and dreaded. The doctor expresses his belief that the relapse might not return. Mr. Lorry asks if perhaps if his friend works too hard and the doctor denies that this is the cause. Mr. Lorry then suggests that the tools that accompany the relapse should be thrown away. The doctor argues that they were once so important to the subject's survival as to have become dear to him. He relents, however, that they should be disposed of in the subject's absence. Accordingly, as soon as the doctor has left for Wales to meet his daughter and son-in-law, Mr. Lorry with Miss Pross assisting utterly destroys the shoemaking implements. Soon after Charles and Lucie return their first visitor is Sydney Carton. He pulls Charles aside and asks him if they could be friends so he might have the privilege of calling upon the couple informally about four times a year. Charles asserts that they have always been friends, which Carton dismisses, but readily accepts Charles' offer to call upon them whenever he feels the need. Later that night Charles makes comments about Carton being reckless and careless. Later, in private, Lucie begs him to show more leniency in his opinion of Carton and expresses her belief that he is capable of great things. Charles is touched by the reminder that while they are happy Carton is miserable. He promises to remember her advice.

