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.
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Chapter XXIV
NINE DAYS
T he 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
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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
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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 downstairs 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.
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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 upstairs, 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 in 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?”
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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
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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
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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
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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 hands
had been a little out at first, was growing dreadfully skilful, and
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