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 too you to find yourself mistaken, it might be
painful to Doctor Manette to have 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
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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 down 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 tonight. 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 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
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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.
“Well!” said that good-natured emissary, after a full half-hour 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 daresay 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 worldly point of view; in a selfish aspect, I am glad that the thing
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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!”
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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Chapter XIX
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 in 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 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
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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 upstairs, 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 had begun the question on my lips—a
pity to live no better life?”
“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!”
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“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.”
“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 now 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 inter view 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 you—self-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. 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
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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 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—that 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?”
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“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!”
“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!”
He was so unlike what he had ever shown himself to be, and it
