III
The
Shadow
One
of the first considerations which arose in the business mind of Mr. Lorry when
business hours came round, was this:--that he had no right to imperil Tellson's
by sheltering the wife of an emigrant prisoner under the Bank roof, His own
possessions, safety, life, he would have hazarded for Lucie and her child,
without a moment's demur; but the great trust he held was not his own, and as
to that business charge he was a strict man of business.
At
first, his mind reverted to Defarge, and he thought of finding out the
wine-shop again and taking counsel with its master in reference to the safest
dwelling-place in the distracted state of the city. But, the same consideration
that suggested him, repudiated him; he lived in the most violent Quarter, and doubtless
was influential there, and deep in its dangerous workings.
Noon
coming, and the Doctor not returning, and every minute's delay tending to
compromise Tellson's, Mr. Lorry advised with Lucie. She said that her father
had spoken of hiring a lodging for a short term, in that Quarter, near the
Banking-house. As there was no business objection to this, and as he foresaw
that even if it were all well with Charles, and he were to be released, he
could not hope to leave the city, Mr. Lorry went out in quest of such a
lodging, and found a suitable one, high up in a removed by-street where the
closed blinds in all the other windows of a high melancholy square of buildings
marked deserted homes.
To
this lodging he at once removed Lucie and her child, and Miss Pross: giving
them what comfort he could, and much more than he had himself. He left Jerry
with them, as a figure to fill a doorway that would bear considerable knocking
on the head, and retained to his own occupations. A disturbed and doleful mind
he brought to bear upon them, and slowly and heavily the day lagged on with
him.
It
wore itself out, and wore him out with it, until the Bank closed. He was again
alone in his room of the previous night, considering what to do next, when he
heard a foot upon the stair. In a few moments, a man stood in his presence,
who, with a keenly observant look at him, addressed him by his name.
"Your
servant," said Mr. Lorry. "Do you know me?"
He
was a strongly made man with dark curling hair, from forty-five to fifty years
of age. For answer he repeated, without any change of emphasis, the words:
"Do
you know me?"
"I
have seen you somewhere."
"Perhaps
at my wine-shop?"
Much
interested and agitated, Mr. Lorry said: "You come from Doctor
Manette?"
"Yes.
I come from Doctor Manette."
"And
what says he? What does he send me?"
Defarge
gave into his anxious hand, an open scrap of paper. It bore the words in the
Doctor's writing:
"Charles is safe, but I cannot safely
leave this place yet. I have obtained the favour that the bearer has a short
note from Charles to his wife. Let the bearer see his wife."
It
was dated from La Force, within an hour.
"Will
you accompany me," said Mr. Lorry, joyfully relieved after reading this
note aloud, "to where his wife resides?"
"Yes,"
returned Defarge.
Scarcely
noticing as yet, in what a curiously reserved and mechanical way Defarge spoke,
Mr. Lorry put on his hat and they went down into the courtyard. There, they
found two women; one, knitting.
"Madame
Defarge, surely!" said Mr. Lorry, who had left her in exactly the same
attitude some seventeen years ago.
"It
is she," observed her husband.
"Does
Madame go with us?" inquired Mr. Lorry, seeing that she moved as they
moved.
"Yes.
That she may be able to recognise the faces and know the persons. It is for
their safety."
Beginning
to be struck by Defarge's manner, Mr. Lorry looked dubiously at him, and led
the way. Both the women followed; the second woman being The Vengeance.
They
passed through the intervening streets as quickly as they might, ascended the
staircase of the new domicile, were admitted by Jerry, and found Lucie weeping,
alone. She was thrown into a transport by the tidings Mr. Lorry gave her of her
husband, and clasped the hand that delivered his note--little thinking what it
had been doing near him in the night, and might, but for a chance, have done to
him.
"DEAREST,--Take courage. I am well, and
your father has influence around me. You cannot answer this. Kiss our child for
me."
That
was all the writing. It was so much, however, to her who received it, that she
turned from Defarge to his wife, and kissed one of the hands that knitted. It
was a passionate, loving, thankful, womanly action, but the hand made no
response--dropped cold and heavy, and took to its knitting again.
There
was something in its touch that gave Lucie a check. She stopped in the act of
putting the note in her bosom, and, with her hands yet at her neck, looked
terrified at Madame Defarge. Madame Defarge met the lifted eyebrows and
forehead with a cold, impassive stare.
"My
dear," said Mr. Lorry, striking in to explain; "there are frequent
risings in the streets; and, although it is not likely they will ever trouble
you, Madame Defarge wishes to see those whom she has the power to protect at
such times, to the end that she may know them--that she may identify them. I
believe," said Mr. Lorry, rather halting in his reassuring words, as the
stony manner of all the three impressed itself upon him more and more, "I
state the case, Citizen Defarge?"
Defarge
looked gloomily at his wife, and gave no other answer than a gruff sound of
acquiescence.
"You
had better, Lucie," said Mr. Lorry, doing all he could to propitiate, by
tone and manner, "have the dear child here, and our good Pross. Our good
Pross, Defarge, is an English lady, and knows no French."
The
lady in question, whose rooted conviction that she was more than a match for
any foreigner, was not to be shaken by distress and, danger, appeared with
folded arms, and observed in English to The Vengeance, whom her eyes first
encountered, "Well, I am sure, Boldface! I hope YOU are pretty well!"
She also bestowed a British cough on Madame Defarge; but, neither of the two
took much heed of her.
"Is
that his child?" said Madame Defarge, stopping in her work for the first
time, and pointing her knitting-needle at little Lucie as if it were the finger
of Fate.
"Yes,
madame," answered Mr. Lorry; "this is our poor prisoner's darling
daughter, and only child."
The
shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her party seemed to fall so threatening
and dark on the child, that her mother instinctively kneeled on the ground beside
her, and held her to her breast. The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and her
party seemed then to fall, threatening and dark, on both the mother and the
child.
"It
is enough, my husband," said Madame Defarge. "I have seen them. We
may go."
But,
the suppressed manner had enough of menace in it--not visible and presented,
but indistinct and withheld--to alarm Lucie into saying, as she laid her
appealing hand on Madame Defarge's dress:
"You
will be good to my poor husband. You will do him no harm. You will help me to
see him if you can?"
"Your
husband is not my business here," returned Madame Defarge, looking down at
her with perfect composure. "It is the daughter of your father who is my
business here."
"For
my sake, then, be merciful to my husband. For my child's sake! She will put her
hands together and pray you to be merciful. We are more afraid of you than of
these others."
Madame
Defarge received it as a compliment, and looked at her husband. Defarge, who
had been uneasily biting his thumb-nail and looking at her, collected his face
into a sterner expression.
"What
is it that your husband says in that little letter?" asked Madame Defarge,
with a lowering smile. "Influence; he says something touching
influence?"
"That
my father," said Lucie, hurriedly taking the paper from her breast, but
with her alarmed eyes on her questioner and not on it, "has much influence
around him."
"Surely
it will release him!" said Madame Defarge. "Let it do so."
"As
a wife and mother," cried Lucie, most earnestly, "I implore you to
have pity on me and not to exercise any power that you possess, against my
innocent husband, but to use it in his behalf. O sister-woman, think of me. As
a wife and mother!"
Madame
Defarge looked, coldly as ever, at the suppliant, and said, turning to her
friend The Vengeance:
"The
wives and mothers we have been used to see, since we were as little as this
child, and much less, have not been greatly considered? We have known THEIR
husbands and fathers laid in prison and kept from them, often enough? All our
lives, we have seen our sister-women suffer, in themselves and in their
children, poverty, nakedness, hunger, thirst, sickness, misery, oppression and
neglect of all kinds?"
"We
have seen nothing else," returned The Vengeance.
"We
have borne this a long time," said Madame Defarge, turning her eyes again
upon Lucie. "Judge you! Is it likely that the trouble of one wife and
mother would be much to us now?"
She
resumed her knitting and went out. The Vengeance followed. Defarge went last,
and closed the door.
"Courage,
my dear Lucie," said Mr. Lorry, as he raised her. "Courage, courage!
So far all goes well with us--much, much better than it has of late gone with
many poor souls. Cheer up, and have a thankful heart."
"I
am not thankless, I hope, but that dreadful woman seems to throw a shadow on me
and on all my hopes."
"Tut,
tut!" said Mr. Lorry; "what is this despondency in the brave little
breast? A shadow indeed! No substance in it, Lucie."
But
the shadow of the manner of these Defarges was dark upon himself, for all that,
and in his secret mind it troubled him greatly.