VI
Hundreds
of People
The
quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a quiet street-corner not far from Soho-square.
On the afternoon of a certain fine Sunday when the waves of four months had
roiled over the trial for treason, and carried it, as to the public interest
and memory, far out to sea, Mr. Jarvis Lorry walked along the sunny streets
from Clerkenwell where he lived, on his way to dine with the Doctor. After
several relapses into business-absorption, Mr. Lorry had become the Doctor's
friend, and the quiet street-corner was the sunny part of his life.
On
this certain fine Sunday, Mr. Lorry walked towards
A
quainter corner than the corner where the Doctor lived, was not to be found in
The
summer light struck into the corner brilliantly in the earlier part of the day;
but, when the streets grew hot, the corner was in shadow, though not in shadow
so remote but that you could see beyond it into a glare of brightness. It was a
cool spot, staid but cheerful, a wonderful place for echoes, and a very harbour
from the raging streets.
There
ought to have been a tranquil bark in such an anchorage, and there was. The
Doctor occupied two floors of a large stiff house, where several callings
purported to be pursued by day, but whereof little was audible any day, and
which was shunned by all of them at night. In a building at the back,
attainable by a courtyard where a plane-tree rustled its green leaves,
church-organs claimed to be made, and silver to be chased, and likewise gold to
be beaten by some mysterious giant who had a golden arm starting out of the
wall of the front hall--as if he had beaten himself precious, and menaced a
similar conversion of all visitors. Very little of these trades, or of a lonely
lodger rumoured to live up-stairs, or of a dim coach-trimming maker asserted to
have a counting-house below, was ever heard or seen. Occasionally, a stray
workman putting his coat on, traversed the hall, or a stranger peered about
there, or a distant clink was heard across the courtyard, or a thump from the
golden giant. These, however, were only the exceptions required to prove the
rule that the sparrows in the plane-tree behind the house, and the echoes in
the corner before it, had their own way from Sunday morning unto Saturday
night.
Doctor
Manette received such patients here as his old reputation, and its revival in
the floating whispers of his story, brought him. His scientific knowledge, and
his vigilance and skill in conducting ingenious experiments, brought him
otherwise into moderate request, and he earned as much as he wanted.
These
things were within Mr. Jarvis Lorry's knowledge, thoughts, and notice, when he
rang the door-bell of the tranquil house in the corner, on the fine Sunday
afternoon.
"Doctor
Manette at home?"
Expected
home.
"Miss
Lucie at home?"
Expected
home.
"Miss
Pross at home?"
Possibly
at home, but of a certainty impossible for handmaid to anticipate intentions of
Miss Pross, as to admission or denial of the fact.
"As
I am at home myself," said Mr. Lorry, "I'll go upstairs."
Although
the Doctor's daughter had known nothing of the country of her birth, she
appeared to have innately derived from it that ability to make much of little
means, which is one of its most useful and most agreeable characteristics.
Simple as the furniture was, it was set off by so many little adornments, of no
value but for their taste and fancy, that its effect was delightful. The
disposition of everything in the rooms, from the largest object to the least;
the arrangement of colours, the elegant variety and contrast obtained by thrift
in trifles, by delicate hands, clear eyes, and good sense; were at once so
pleasant in themselves, and so expressive of their originator, that, as Mr.
Lorry stood looking about him, the very chairs and tables seemed to ask him, with
something of that peculiar expression which he knew so well by this time,
whether he approved?
There
were three rooms on a floor, and, the doors by which they communicated being
put open that the air might pass freely through them all, Mr. Lorry, smilingly
observant of that fanciful resemblance which he detected all around him, walked
from one to another. The first was the best room, and in it were Lucie's birds,
and flowers, and books, and desk, and work-table, and box of water-colours; the
second was the Doctor's consulting-room, used also as the dining-room; the
third, changingly speckled by the rustle of the plane-tree in the yard, was the
Doctor's bedroom, and there, in a corner, stood the disused shoemaker's bench
and tray of tools, much as it had stood on the fifth floor of the dismal house
by the wine-shop, in the suburb of Saint Antoine in Paris.
"I
wonder," said Mr. Lorry, pausing in his looking about, "that he keeps
that reminder of his sufferings about him!"
"And
why wonder at that?" was the abrupt inquiry that made him start.
It
proceeded from Miss Pross, the wild red woman, strong of hand, whose
acquaintance he had first made at the
"I
should have thought--" Mr. Lorry began.
"Pooh!
You'd have thought!" said Miss Pross; and Mr. Lorry left off.
"How
do you do?" inquired that lady then--sharply, and yet as if to express
that she bore him no malice.
"I
am pretty well, I thank you," answered Mr. Lorry, with meekness; "how
are you?"
"Nothing
to boast of," said Miss Pross.
"Indeed?"
"Ah!
indeed!" said Miss Pross. "I am very much put out about my
Ladybird."
"Indeed?"
"For
gracious sake say something else besides `indeed,' or you'll fidget me to
death," said Miss Pross: whose character (dissociated from stature) was
shortness.
"Really,
then?" said Mr. Lorry, as an amendment.
"Really,
is bad enough," returned Miss Pross, "but better. Yes, I am very much
put out."
"May
I ask the cause?"
"I
don't want dozens of people who are not at all worthy of Ladybird, to come here
looking after her," said Miss Pross.
"DO
dozens come for that purpose?"
"Hundreds,"
said Miss Pross.
It
was characteristic of this lady (as of some other people before her time and
since) that whenever her original proposition was questioned, she exaggerated
it.
"Dear
me!" said Mr. Lorry, as the safest remark he could think of.
"I
have lived with the darling--or the darling has lived with me, and paid me for
it; which she certainly should never have done, you may take your affidavit, if
I could have afforded to keep either myself or her for nothing--since she was
ten years old. And it's really very hard," said Miss Pross.
Not
seeing with precision what was very hard, Mr. Lorry shook his head; using that
important part of himself as a sort of fairy cloak that would fit anything.
"All
sorts of people who are not in the least degree worthy of the pet, are always
turning up," said Miss Pross. "When you began it--"
"_I_
began it, Miss Pross?"
"Didn't
you? Who brought her father to life?"
"Oh!
If THAT was beginning it--" said Mr. Lorry.
"It
wasn't ending it, I suppose? I say, when you began it, it was hard enough; not that
I have any fault to find with Doctor Manette, except that he is not worthy of
such a daughter, which is no imputation on him, for it was not to be expected
that anybody should be, under any circumstances. But it really is doubly and
trebly hard to have crowds and multitudes of people turning up after him (I
could have forgiven him), to take Ladybird's affections away from me."
Mr.
Lorry knew Miss Pross to be very jealous, but he also knew her by this time to
be, beneath the service of her eccentricity, one of those unselfish
creatures--found only among women--who will, for pure love and admiration, bind
themselves willing slaves, to youth when they have lost it, to beauty that they
never had, to accomplishments that they were never fortunate enough to gain, to
bright hopes that never shone upon their own sombre lives. He knew enough of
the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service
of the heart; so rendered and so free from any mercenary taint, he had such an
exalted respect for it, that in the retributive arrangements made by his own
mind--we all make such arrangements, more or less-- he stationed Miss Pross
much nearer to the lower Angels than many ladies immeasurably better got up
both by Nature and Art, who had balances at Tellson's.
"There
never was, nor will be, but one man worthy of Ladybird," said Miss Pross;
"and that was my brother Solomon, if he hadn't made a mistake in
life."
Here
again: Mr. Lorry's inquiries into Miss Pross's personal history had established
the fact that her brother Solomon was a heartless scoundrel who had stripped
her of everything she possessed, as a stake to speculate with, and had
abandoned her in her poverty for evermore, with no touch of compunction. Miss
Pross's fidelity of belief in Solomon (deducting a mere trifle for this slight
mistake) was quite a serious matter with Mr. Lorry, and had its weight in his
good opinion of her.
"As
we happen to be alone for the moment, and are both people of business," he
said, when they had got back to the drawing-room and had sat down there in
friendly relations, "let me ask you--does the Doctor, in talking with
Lucie, never refer to the shoemaking time, yet?"
"Never."
"And
yet keeps that bench and those tools beside him?"
"Ah!"
returned Miss Pross, shaking her head. "But I don't say he don't refer to
it within himself."
"Do
you believe that he thinks of it much?"
"I
do," said Miss Pross.
"Do
you imagine--" Mr. Lorry had begun, when Miss Pross took him up short
with:
"Never
imagine anything. Have no imagination at all."
"I
stand corrected; do you suppose--you go so far as to suppose, sometimes?"
"Now
and then," said Miss Pross.
"Do
you suppose," Mr. Lorry went on, with a laughing twinkle in his bright
eye, as it looked kindly at her, "that Doctor Manette has any theory of
his own, preserved through all those years, relative to the cause of his being
so oppressed; perhaps, even to the name of his oppressor?"
"I
don't suppose anything about it but what Ladybird tells me."
"And
that is--?"
"That
she thinks he has."
"Now
don't be angry at my asking all these questions; because I am a mere dull man
of business, and you are a woman of business."
"Dull?"
Miss Pross inquired, with placidity.
Rather
wishing his modest adjective away, Mr. Lorry replied, "No, no, no. Surely
not. To return to business:--Is it not remarkable that Doctor Manette,
unquestionably innocent of any crime as we are all well assured he is, should
never touch upon that question? I will not say with me, though he had business
relations with me many years ago, and we are now intimate; I will say with the
fair daughter to whom he is so devotedly attached, and who is so devotedly
attached to him? Believe me, Miss Pross, I don't approach the topic with you,
out of curiosity, but out of zealous interest."
"Well!
To the best of my understanding, and bad's the best, you'll tell me," said
Miss Pross, softened by the tone of the apology, "he is afraid of the
whole subject."
"Afraid?"
"It's
plain enough, I should think, why he may be. It's a dreadful remembrance.
Besides that, his loss of himself grew out of it. Not knowing how he lost
himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing
himself again. That alone wouldn't make the subject pleasant, I should
think."
It
was a profounder remark than Mr. Lorry had looked for. "True," said
he, "and fearful to reflect upon. Yet, a doubt lurks in my mind, Miss
Pross, whether it is good for Doctor Manette to have that suppression always
shut up within him. Indeed, it is this doubt and the uneasiness it sometimes
causes me that has led me to our present confidence."
"Can't
be helped," said Miss Pross, shaking her head. "Touch that string,
and he instantly changes for the worse. Better leave it alone. In short, must leave
it alone, like or no like. Sometimes, he gets up in the dead of the night, and
will be heard, by us overhead there, walking up and down, walking up and down,
in his room. Ladybird has learnt to know then that his mind is walking up and
down, walking up and down, in his old prison. She hurries to him, and they go
on together, walking up and down, walking up and down, until he is composed.
But he never says a word of the true reason of his restlessness, to her, and
she finds it best not to hint at it to him. In silence they go walking up and
down together, walking up and down together, till her love and company have
brought him to himself."
Notwithstanding
Miss Pross's denial of her own imagination, there was a perception of the pain
of being monotonously haunted by one sad idea, in her repetition of the phrase,
walking up and down, which testified to her possessing such a thing.
The
corner has been mentioned as a wonderful corner for echoes; it had begun to
echo so resoundingly to the tread of coming feet, that it seemed as though the
very mention of that weary pacing to and fro had set it going.
"Here
they are!" said Miss Pross, rising to break up the conference; "and
now we shall have hundreds of people pretty soon!"
It
was such a curious corner in its acoustical properties, such a peculiar Ear of
a place, that as Mr. Lorry stood at the open window, looking for the father and
daughter whose steps he heard, he fancied they would never approach. Not only
would the echoes die away, as though the steps had gone; but, echoes of other
steps that never came would be heard in their stead, and would die away for
good when they seemed close at hand. However, father and daughter did at last
appear, and Miss Pross was ready at the street door to receive them.
Miss
Pross was a pleasant sight, albeit wild, and red, and grim, taking off her
darling's bonnet when she came up-stairs, and touching it up with the ends of
her handkerchief, and blowing the dust off it, and folding her mantle ready for
laying by, and smoothing her rich hair with as much pride as she could possibly
have taken in her own hair if she had been the vainest and handsomest of women.
Her darling was a pleasant sight too, embracing her and thanking her, and
protesting against her taking so much trouble for her--which last she only
dared to do playfully, or Miss Pross, sorely hurt, would have retired to her
own chamber and cried. The Doctor was a pleasant sight too, looking on at them,
and telling Miss Pross how she spoilt Lucie, in accents and with eyes that had
as much spoiling in them as Miss Pross had, and would have had more if it were
possible. Mr. Lorry was a pleasant sight too, beaming at all this in his little
wig, and thanking his bachelor stars for having lighted him in his declining
years to a Home. But, no Hundreds of people came to see the sights, and Mr.
Lorry looked in vain for the fulfilment of Miss Pross's prediction.
Dinner-time,
and still no Hundreds of people. In the arrangements of the little household,
Miss Pross took charge of the lower regions, and always acquitted herself
marvellously. Her dinners, of a very modest quality, were so well cooked and so
well served, and so neat in their contrivances, half English and half French,
that nothing could be better. Miss Pross's friendship being of the thoroughly
practical kind, she had ravaged Soho and the adjacent provinces, in search of
impoverished French, who, tempted by shillings and half- crowns, would impart
culinary mysteries to her. From these decayed sons and daughters of
On
Sundays, Miss Pross dined at the Doctor's table, but on other days persisted in
taking her meals at unknown periods, either in the lower regions, or in her own
room on the second floor--a blue chamber, to which no one but her Ladybird ever
gained admittance. On this occasion, Miss Pross, responding to Ladybird's
pleasant face and pleasant efforts to please her, unbent exceedingly; so the
dinner was very pleasant, too.
It
was an oppressive day, and, after dinner, Lucie proposed that the wine should
be carried out under the plane-tree, and they should sit there in the air. As
everything turned upon her, and revolved about her, they went out under the
plane-tree, and she carried the wine down for the special benefit of Mr. Lorry.
She had installed herself, some time before, as Mr. Lorry's cup-bearer; and
while they sat under the plane-tree, talking, she kept his glass replenished.
Mysterious backs and ends of houses peeped at them as they talked, and the plane-tree
whispered to them in its own way above their heads.
Still,
the Hundreds of people did not present themselves. Mr. Darnay presented himself
while they were sitting under the plane-tree, but he was only One.
Doctor
Manette received him kindly, and so did Lucie. But, Miss Pross suddenly became
afflicted with a twitching in the head and body, and retired into the house.
She was not unfrequently the victim of this disorder, and she called it, in
familiar conversation, "a fit of the jerks."
The
Doctor was in his best condition, and looked specially young. The resemblance
between him and Lucie was very strong at such times, and as they sat side by
side, she leaning on his shoulder, and he resting his arm on the back of her
chair, it was very agreeable to trace the likeness.
He
had been talking all day, on many subjects, and with unusual vivacity.
"Pray, Doctor Manette," said Mr. Darnay, as they sat under the
plane-tree--and he said it in the natural pursuit of the topic in hand, which
happened to be the old buildings of
"Lucie
and I have been there; but only casually. We have seen enough of it, to know
that it teems with interest; little more."
"_I_
have been there, as you remember," said Darnay, with a smile, though
reddening a little angrily, "in another character, and not in a character
that gives facilities for seeing much of it. They told me a curious thing when
I was there."
"What
was that?" Lucie asked.
"In
making some alterations, the workmen came upon an old dungeon, which had been,
for many years, built up and forgotten. Every stone of its inner wall was
covered by inscriptions which had been carved by prisoners--dates, names,
complaints, and prayers. Upon a corner stone in an angle of the wall, one
prisoner, who seemed to have gone to execution, had cut as his last work, three
letters. They were done with some very poor instrument, and hurriedly, with an
unsteady hand. At first, they were read as D. I. C.; but, on being more
carefully examined, the last letter was found to be G. There was no record or
legend of any prisoner with those initials, and many fruitless guesses were
made what the name could have been. At length, it was suggested that the
letters were not initials, but the complete word, DiG. The floor was examined
very carefully under the inscription, and, in the earth beneath a stone, or
tile, or some fragment of paving, were found the ashes of a paper, mingled with
the ashes of a small leathern case or bag. What the unknown prisoner had written
will never be read, but he had written something, and hidden it away to keep it
from the gaoler."
"My
father," exclaimed Lucie, "you are ill!"
He
had suddenly started up, with his hand to his head. His manner and his look
quite terrified them all.
"No,
my dear, not ill. There are large drops of rain falling, and they made me
start. We had better go in."
He
recovered himself almost instantly. Rain was really falling in large drops, and
he showed the back of his hand with rain-drops on it. But, he said not a single
word in reference to the discovery that had been told of, and, as they went
into the house, the business eye of Mr. Lorry either detected, or fancied it
detected, on his face, as it turned towards Charles Darnay, the same singular
look that had been upon it when it turned towards him in the passages of the
Court House.
He
recovered himself so quickly, however, that Mr. Lorry had doubts of his
business eye. The arm of the golden giant in the hall was not more steady than
he was, when he stopped under it to remark to them that he was not yet proof
against slight surprises (if he ever would be), and that the rain had startled
him.
Tea-time,
and Miss Pross making tea, with another fit of the jerks upon her, and yet no
Hundreds of people. Mr. Carton had lounged in, but he made only Two.
The
night was so very sultry, that although they sat with doors and windows open,
they were overpowered by heat. When the tea-table was done with, they all moved
to one of the windows, and looked out into the heavy twilight. Lucie sat by her
father; Darnay sat beside her; Carton leaned against a window. The curtains
were long and white, and some of the thunder-gusts that whirled into the
corner, caught them up to the ceiling, and waved them like spectral wings.
"The
rain-drops are still falling, large, heavy, and few," said Doctor Manette.
"It comes slowly."
"It
comes surely," said Carton.
They
spoke low, as people watching and waiting mostly do; as people in a dark room,
watching and waiting for Lightning, always do.
There
was a great hurry in the streets of people speeding away to get shelter before
the storm broke; the wonderful corner for echoes resounded with the echoes of
footsteps coming and going, yet not a footstep was there.
"A
multitude of people, and yet a solitude!" said Darnay, when they had
listened for a while.
"Is
it not impressive, Mr. Darnay?" asked Lucie. "Sometimes, I have sat
here of an evening, until I have fancied--but even the shade of a foolish fancy
makes me shudder to-night, when all is so black and solemn--"
"Let
us shudder too. We may know what it is."
"It
will seem nothing to you. Such whims are only impressive as we originate them,
I think; they are not to be communicated. I have sometimes sat alone here of an
evening, listening, until I have made the echoes out to be the echoes of all
the footsteps that are coming by-and-bye into our lives."
"There
is a great crowd coming one day into our lives, if that be so," Sydney
Carton struck in, in his moody way.
The
footsteps were incessant, and the hurry of them became more and more rapid. The
corner echoed and re-echoed with the tread of feet; some, as it seemed, under
the windows; some, as it seemed, in the room; some coming, some going, some
breaking off, some stopping altogether; all in the distant streets, and not one
within sight.
"Are
all these footsteps destined to come to all of us, Miss Manette, or are we to
divide them among us?"
"I
don't know, Mr. Darnay; I told you it was a foolish fancy, but you asked for
it. When I have yielded myself to it, I have been alone, and then I have
imagined them the footsteps of the people who are to come into my life, and my
father's."
"I
take them into mine!" said Carton. "_I_ ask no questions and make no
stipulations. There is a great crowd bearing down upon us, Miss Manette, and I
see them--by the Lightning." He added the last words, after there had been
a vivid flash which had shown him lounging in the window.
"And
I hear them!" he added again, after a peal of thunder. "Here they
come, fast, fierce, and furious!"
It
was the rush and roar of rain that he typified, and it stopped him, for no
voice could be heard in it. A memorable storm of thunder and lightning broke
with that sweep of water, and there was not a moment's interval in crash, and
fire, and rain, until after the moon rose at midnight.
The
great bell of
"What
a night it has been! Almost a night, Jerry," said Mr. Lorry, "to
bring the dead out of their graves."
"I
never see the night myself, master--nor yet I don't expect to-- what would do
that," answered Jerry.
"Good
night, Mr. Carton," said the man of business. "Good night, Mr. Darnay.
Shall we ever see such a night again, together!"
Perhaps.
Perhaps, see the great crowd of people with its rush and roar, bearing down
upon them, too.