XXIV
Drawn
to the Loadstone Rock
In
such risings of fire and risings of sea--the firm earth shaken by the rushes of
an angry ocean which had now no ebb, but was always on the flow, higher and higher,
to the terror and wonder of the beholders on the shore--three years of tempest
were consumed. Three more birthdays of little Lucie had been woven by the
golden thread into the peaceful tissue of the life of her home.
Many
a night and many a day had its inmates listened to the echoes in the corner,
with hearts that failed them when they heard the thronging feet. For, the
footsteps had become to their minds as the footsteps of a people, tumultuous
under a red flag and with their country declared in danger, changed into wild
beasts, by terrible enchantment long persisted in.
Monseigneur,
as a class, had dissociated himself from the phenomenon of his not being
appreciated: of his being so little wanted in France, as to incur considerable
danger of receiving his dismissal from it, and this life together. Like the
fabled rustic who raised the Devil with infinite pains, and was so terrified at
the sight of him that he could ask the Enemy no question, but immediately fled;
so, Monseigneur, after boldly reading the Lord's Prayer backwards for a great
number of years, and performing many other potent spells for compelling the
Evil One, no sooner beheld him in his terrors than he took to his noble heels.
The
shining Bull's Eye of the Court was gone, or it would have been the mark for a
hurricane of national bullets. It had never been a good eye to see with--had
long had the mote in it of Lucifer's pride, Sardana--palus's luxury, and a
mole's blindness--but it had dropped out and was gone. The Court, from that exclusive
inner circle to its outermost rotten ring of intrigue, corruption, and
dissimulation, was all gone together. Royalty was gone; had been besieged in
its Palace and "suspended," when the last tidings came over.
The
August of the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two was come, and
Monseigneur was by this time scattered far and wide.
As
was natural, the head-quarters and great gathering-place of Monseigneur, in
On
a steaming, misty afternoon, Mr. Lorry sat at his desk, and Charles Darnay
stood leaning on it, talking with him in a low voice. The penitential den once
set apart for interviews with the House, was now the news-Exchange, and was filled
to overflowing. It was within half an hour or so of the time of closing.
"But,
although you are the youngest man that ever lived," said Charles Darnay,
rather hesitating, "I must still suggest to you--"
"I
understand. That I am too old?" said Mr. Lorry.
"Unsettled
weather, a long journey, uncertain means of travelling, a disorganised country,
a city that may not be even safe for you."
"My
dear Charles," said Mr. Lorry, with cheerful confidence, "you touch
some of the reasons for my going: not for my staying away. It is safe enough
for me; nobody will care to interfere with an old fellow of hard upon fourscore
when there are so many people there much better worth interfering with. As to
its being a disorganised city, if it were not a disorganised city there would
be no occasion to send somebody from our House here to our House there, who
knows the city and the business, of old, and is in Tellson's confidence. As to
the uncertain travelling, the long journey, and the winter weather, if I were
not prepared to submit myself to a few inconveniences for the sake of
Tellson's, after all these years, who ought to be?"
"I
wish I were going myself," said Charles Darnay, somewhat restlessly, and
like one thinking aloud.
"Indeed!
You are a pretty fellow to object and advise!" exclaimed Mr. Lorry.
"You wish you were going yourself? And you a Frenchman born? You are a
wise counsellor."
"My
dear Mr. Lorry, it is because I am a Frenchman born, that the thought (which I
did not mean to utter here, however) has passed through my mind often. One
cannot help thinking, having had some sympathy for the miserable people, and
having abandoned something to them," he spoke here in his former
thoughtful manner, "that one might be listened to, and might have the power
to persuade to some restraint. Only last night, after you had left us, when I
was talking to Lucie--"
"When
you were talking to Lucie," Mr. Lorry repeated. "Yes. I wonder you
are not ashamed to mention the name of Lucie! Wishing you were going to
"However,
I am not going," said Charles Darnay, with a smile. "It is more to
the purpose that you say you are."
"And
I am, in plain reality. The truth is, my dear Charles," Mr. Lorry glanced
at the distant House, and lowered his voice, "you can have no conception
of the difficulty with which our business is transacted, and of the peril in
which our books and papers over yonder are involved. The Lord above knows what
the compromising consequences would be to numbers of people, if some of our documents
were seized or destroyed; and they might be, at any time, you know, for who can
say that Paris is not set afire to-day, or sacked to-morrow! Now, a judicious
selection from 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!"
"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 to-night?"
"I
really go to-night, 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. Nobody will suspect Jerry of being
anything but an English bull-dog, 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 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 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 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
On
the marriage morning, Doctor Manette had made it his one urgent and express
request to Charles Darnay, that the secret of this 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 Monseigneur looked at it in the person of that
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
"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 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
those 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
"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
"Prison
of the Abbaye, Paris.
"June
21, 1792. "MONSIEUR HERETOFORE THE MARQUIS.
"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 brought a long journey on foot
to
"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 had
remitted the imposts they had 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
"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."
The
latent uneasiness in Darnay's mind was roused to vigourous 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 passersby.
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 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
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 bloodshed, and
assert the claims of mercy and humanity. With this uneasiness half stifled, and
half reproaching him, he had been brought to the pointed comparison of himself
with the brave old gentleman in whom duty was so strong; upon that comparison
(injurious to himself) had instantly followed the sneers of Monseigneur, which
had stung him bitterly, and those of Stryver, which above all were coarse and
galling, for old reasons. Upon those, had followed Gabelle's letter: the appeal
of an innocent prisoner, in danger of death, to his justice, honour, and good
name.
His
resolution was made. He must go to
Yes.
The Loadstone Rock was drawing him, and he must sail on, until he struck. He
knew of no rock; he saw hardly any danger. The intention with which he had done
what he had done, even although he had left it incomplete, presented it before
him in an aspect that would be gratefully acknowledged in France on his
presenting himself to assert it. Then, that glorious vision of doing good,
which is so often the sanguine mirage of so many good minds, arose before him,
and he even saw himself in the illusion with some influence to guide this raging
Revolution that was running so fearfully wild.
As
he walked to and fro with his resolution made, he considered that neither Lucie
nor her father must know of it until he was gone. Lucie should be spared the
pain of separation; and her father, always reluctant to turn his thoughts
towards the dangerous ground of old, should come to the knowledge of the step,
as a step taken, and not in the balance of suspense and doubt. How much of the
incompleteness of his situation was referable to her father, through the
painful anxiety to avoid reviving old associations of
He
walked to and fro, with thoughts very busy, until it was time to return to
Tellson's and take leave of Mr. Lorry. As soon as he arrived in
A
carriage with post-horses was ready at the Bank door, and Jerry was booted and
equipped.
"I
have delivered that letter," said Charles Darnay to Mr. Lorry. "I
would not consent to your being charged with any written answer, but perhaps
you will take a verbal one?"
"That
I will, and readily," said Mr. Lorry, "if it is not dangerous."
"Not
at all. Though it is to a prisoner in the Abbaye."
"What
is his name?" said Mr. Lorry, with his open pocket-book in his hand.
"Gabelle."
"Gabelle.
And what is the message to the unfortunate Gabelle in prison?"
"Simply,
`that he has received the letter, and will come.'"
"Any
time mentioned?"
"He
will start upon his journey to-morrow night."
"Any
person mentioned?"
"No."
He
helped Mr. Lorry to wrap himself in a number of coats and cloaks, and went out
with him from the warm atmosphere of the old Bank, into the misty air of
Fleet-street. "My love to Lucie, and to little Lucie," said Mr. Lorry
at parting, "and take precious care of them till I come back."
Charles Darnay shook his head and doubtfully smiled, as the carriage rolled
away.
That
night--it was the fourteenth of August--he sat up late, and wrote two fervent
letters; one was to Lucie, explaining the strong obligation he was under to go
to Paris, and showing her, at length, the reasons that he had, for feeling confident
that he could become involved in no personal danger there; the other was to the
Doctor, confiding Lucie and their dear child to his care, and dwelling on the
same topics with the strongest assurances. To both, he wrote that he would
despatch letters in proof of his safety, immediately after his arrival.
It
was a hard day, that day of being among them, with the first reservation of
their joint lives on his mind. It was a hard matter to preserve the innocent
deceit of which they were profoundly unsuspicious. But, an affectionate glance
at his wife, so happy and busy, made him resolute not to tell her what impended
(he had been half moved to do it, so strange it was to him to act in anything
without her quiet aid), and the day passed quickly. Early in the evening he
embraced her, and her scarcely less dear namesake, pretending that he would
return by-and-bye (an imaginary engagement took him out, and he had secreted a
valise of clothes ready), and so he emerged into the heavy mist of the heavy
streets, with a heavier heart.
The
unseen force was drawing him fast to itself, now, and all the tides and winds
were setting straight and strong towards it. He left his two letters with a
trusty porter, to be delivered half an hour before midnight, and no sooner;
took horse for