these, with the least possible delay, and the burying of them, or
otherwise getting of them out of harm’s way is within the power
(without loss of precious time) of scarcely any one but myself, if
any one. And shall I hang back, when Tellson’s knows this and
says this—Tellson’s, whose bread I have eaten these sixty years—
because I am a little stiff about the joints? Why, I am a boy, sir, to
half a dozen old codgers here!”
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“How I admire the gallantry of your youthful spirit, Mr. Lorry.”
“Tut! Nonsense, sir!—And my dear Charles,” said Mr. Lorry,
glancing at the House again, “you are to remember, that getting
things out of Paris at this present time, no matter what things, is
next to an impossibility. Papers and precious matters were this
very day brought to us here (I speak in strict confidence; it is not
business-like to whisper it, even to you), by the strangest bearers
you can imagine, every one of whom had his head hanging on by a
single hair as he passed the Barriers. At another time, our parcels
would come and go, as easily as in business-like Old England; but
now, everything is stopped.”
“And do you really go tonight?”
“I really go tonight, for the case has become too pressing to
admit of delay.”
“And do you take no one with you?”
“All sorts of people have been proposed to me, but I will have
nothing to say to any of them. I intend to take Jerry. Jerry has
been my bodyguard on Sunday nights for a long time past, and I
am used to him. No body will suspect Jerry of being anything but
an English bulldog, or of having any design in his head but to fly at
anybody who touches his master.”
“I must say again that I heartily admire your gallantry and
youthfulness.”
“I must say again, nonsense, nonsense! When I have executed
this little commission, I shall, perhaps, accept Tellson’s proposal to
retire and live at my ease. Time enough, then, to think about
growing old.”
This dialogue had taken place at Mr. Lorry’s usual desk, with
Monseigneur swarming within a yard or two of it, boastful of what
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he would do to avenge himself on the rascal-people before long. It
was too much the way of Monseigneur under his reverses as a
refugee, and it was much too much the way of native British
orthodoxy, to talk of this terrible Revolution as if it were the one
only harvest ever known under the skies that had not been sown—
as if nothing had ever been done, or omitted to be done, that had
led to it—as if observers of the wretched millions in France, and of
the misused and perverted resources that should have made them
prosperous, had not seen it inevitably coming, years before, and
had not in plain words recorded what they saw. Such vapouring,
combined with the extravagant plots of Monseigneur for the
restoration of a state of things that had utterly exhausted itself,
and worn out heaven and earth as well as itself, was hard to be
endured without some remonstrance by any sane man who knew
the truth. And it was such vapouring all about his ears, like a
troublesome confusion of blood in his own head, added to a latent
uneasiness in his mind, which had already made Charles Darnay
restless, and which still kept him so.
Among the talkers, was Stryver, of the King’s Bench Bar, far on
his way to state promotion, and, therefore, loud on the theme:
broaching to Monseigneur, his devices for blowing the people up
and exterminating them from the face of the earth, and doing
without them: and for accomplishing many similar objects akin in
their nature to the abolition of eagles by sprinkling salt on the tails
of the race. Him, Darnay heard, with a particular feeling of
objection; and Darnay stood divided between going away that he
might hear no more, and remaining to interpose his word, when
the thing that was to be, went on to shape itself out.
The House approached Mr. Lorry, and laying a soiled and
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unopened letter before him, asked if he had yet discovered any
traces of the person to whom it was addressed? The House laid
the letter down so close to Darnay that he saw the direction—the
more quickly because it was his own right name. The address,
turned into English, ran:
“Very pressing. To Monsieur heretofore the Marquis St.
Evremonde, of France. Confided to the cares of Messrs. Tellson
and Co., Bankers, London, England.”
On the marriage morning, Dr. Manette had made it his one
urgent and express request to Charles Darnay, that the secret of
his name should be—unless he, the Doctor, dissolved the
obligation—kept inviolate between them. Nobody else knew it to
be his name; his own wife had no suspicion of the fact; Mr. Lorry
could have none.
“No,” said Mr. Lorry, in reply to the House; “I have referred it, I
think, to everybody now here, and no one can tell me where this
gentleman is to be found.”
The hands of the clock verging upon the hour of closing the
Bank, there was a general set of the current of talkers past Mr.
Lorry’s desk. He held the letter out inquiringly; and Monseigneur
looked at it, in the person of this plotting and indignant refugee;
and This, That, and The Other, all had something disparaging to
say, in French or in English, concerning the Marquis who was not
to be found.
“Nephew, I believe—but in any case degenerate successor—of
the polished Marquis who was murdered,” said one. “Happy to say
I never knew him.”
“A craven who abandoned his post,” said another—this
Monseigneur had been got out of Paris, legs uppermost and half
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suffocated, in a load of hay—“some years ago.”
“Infected with the new doctrines,” said a third, eyeing the
direction through his glass in passing; “set himself in opposition to
the last Marquis, abandoned the estates when he inherited them,
and left them to the ruffian herd. They will recompense him now, I
hope, as he deserves.”
“Hey?” cried the blatant Stryver. “Did he though? Is that the
sort of fellow? Let us look at his infamous name. D—n the fellow!”
Darnay, unable to restrain himself any longer, touched Mr.
Stryver on the shoulder, and said:
“I know the fellow.”
“Do you, by Jupiter?” said Stryver. “I am sorry for it.”
“Why?”
“Why, Mr. Darnay? D’ye hear what he did? Don’t ask why, in
these times.”
“But I do ask why?”
“Then I tell you again, Mr. Darnay, I am sorry for it. I am sorry
to hear you putting any such extraordinary questions. Here is a
fellow who, infected by the most pestilent and blasphemous code
of devilry that ever was known, abandoned his property to the
vilest scum of the earth that ever did murder by wholesale, and
you ask me why I am sorry that a man who instructs youth knows
him? Well, but I’ll answer you. I am sorry because I believe there
is contamination in such a scoundrel. That’s why.”
Mindful of the secret, Darnay with great difficulty checked
himself, and said: “You may not understand the gentleman.”
“I understand how to put you in a corner, Mr. Darnay,” said
Bully Stryver, “and I’ll do it. If this fellow is a gentleman, I don’t
understand him. You may tell him so, with my compliments. You
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may also tell him, from me, that after abandoning his worldly
goods and position to this butcherly mob, I wonder he is not at the
head of them. But, no, gentlemen,” said Stryver, looking all round,
and snapping his fingers, “I know something of human nature,
and I tell you that you’ll never find a fellow like this fellow,
trusting himself to the mercies of such precious proteges. No,
gentlemen; he’ll always show ’em a clean pair of heels very early in
the scuffle, and sneak away.”
With these words and a final snap of his fingers, Mr. Stryver
shouldered himself into Fleet Street, amidst the general
approbation of his hearers. Mr. Lorry and Charles Darnay were
left alone at the desk in the general departure from the Bank.
“Will you take charge of the letter?” said Mr. Lorry. “You know
where to deliver it?”
“I do.”
“Will you undertake to explain, that we suppose it to have been
addressed here, on the chance of our knowing where to forward it,
and that it has been here some time?”
“I will do so. Do you start for Paris from here?”
“From here, at eight.”
“I will come back to see you off.”
Very ill at ease with himself, and with Stryver and most other
men, Darnay made the best of his way into the quiet of the
Temple, opened the letter and read it. These were its contents:
“Prison of the Abbaye, Paris.
“June 21, 1792.
“After having long been in danger of my life at the hands of the
village, I have been seized, with great violence and indignity, and
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brought a long journey on foot to Paris. On the road I have
suffered a great deal. Nor is that all; my house has been
destroyed—razed to the ground.
“The crime for which I am imprisoned, Monsieur heretofore the
Marquis, and for which I shall be summoned before the tribunal,
and shall lose my life (without your so generous help), is, they tell
me, treason against the majesty of the people, in that I have acted
against them for an emigrant. It is in vain I represent that I have
acted for them, and not against, according to your commands. It is
in vain I represent that, before the sequestration of emigrant
property, I have remitted the imposts they have ceased to pay; that
I had collected no rent; that I had had recourse to no process. The
only response is, that I have acted for an emigrant, and where is
that emigrant?
“Ah! most gracious Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, where is
that emigrant? I cry in my sleep where is he? I demand of Heaven,
will he not come to deliver me? No answer. Ah Monsieur
heretofore the Marquis, I send my desolate cry across the sea,
hoping it may perhaps reach your ears through the great bank of
Tilson known at Paris!
“For the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the honour
of your noble name, I supplicate you, Monsieur heretofore the
Marquis, to succour and release me. My fault is, that I have been
true to you. Oh Monsieur heretofore the Marquis, I pray you be
you true to me!
“From this prison here of horror, whence I every hour tend
nearer and nearer to destruction, I send you, Monsieur heretofore
the Marquis, the assurance of my dolorous and unhappy service.
“Your afflicted, “GABELLE”
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The latent uneasiness in Darnay’s mind was roused to vigorous
life by this letter. The peril of an old servant and a good one,
whose only crime was fidelity to himself and his family, stared him
so reproachfully in the face, that, as he walked to and fro in the
Temple considering what to do, he almost hid his face from the
passers-by.
He knew very well, that in his horror of the deed which had
culminated the bad deeds and bad reputation of the old family
house, in his resentful suspicions of his uncle, and in the aversion
with which his conscience regarded the crumbling fabric that he
was supposed to uphold, he had acted imperfectly. He knew very
well, that in his love for Lucie, his renunciation of his social place,
though by no means new to his own mind, had been hurried and
incomplete. He knew that he ought to have systematically worked
it out and supervised it, and that he had meant to do it, and that it
had never been done.
The happiness of his own chosen English home, the necessity of
being always actively employed, the swift changes and troubles of
the time which had followed on one another so fast, that the events
of this week annihilated the immature plans of last week, and the
events of the week following made all new again; he knew very
well, that to the force of these circumstances he had yielded:—not
without disquiet, but still without continuous and accumulating
resistance. That he had watched the times for a time of action, and
that they had shifted and struggled until the time had gone by, and
the nobility were trooping from France by every highway and
byway, and their property was in course of confiscation and
destruction, and their very names were blotting out, was as well
known to himself as it could be to any new authority in France
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that might impeach him for it.
But, he had oppressed no man, he had imprisoned no man; he
was so far from having harshly exacted payment of his dues, that
he had relinquished them of his own will, thrown himself on a
world with no favour in it, won his own private place there, and
earned his own bread. Monsieur Gabelle had held the
impoverished and involved estate on written instructions, to spare
the people, to give them what little there was to give—such fuel as
the heavy creditors would let them have in the winter, and such
produce as could be saved from the same grip in the summer—
and no doubt he had put the fact in plea and proof, for his own
safety, so that it could not but appear now.
This favoured the desperate resolution Charles Darnay had
begun to make, that he would go to Paris.
Yes. Like the mariner in the old story, the winds and streams
had driven him within the influence of the Loadstone Rock, and it
was drawing him to itself, and he must go. Everything that arose
before his mind drifted him on, faster and faster, more and more
steadily, to the terrible attraction. His latent uneasiness had been,
that bad aims were being worked out in his own unhappy land by
bad instruments, and that he who could not fail to know that he
was better than they, was not there, trying to do something to stay
