A Tale of Two Cities
never existed, strikes to my heart as if I had been that child.”
“You, Lucie? It is out of the Consolation and restoration you have
brought to me, that these remembrances arise, and pass between us and
the moon on this last night.--What did I say just now?”
“She knew nothing of you. She cared nothing for you.”
“So! But on other moonlight nights, when the sadness and the silence
have touched me in a different way--have affected me with something as
like a sorrowful sense of peace, as any emotion that had pain for its
foundations could--I have imagined her as coming to me in my cell, and
leading me out into the freedom beyond the fortress. I have seen her
image in the moonlight often, as I now see you; except that I never held
her in my arms; it stood between the little grated window and the door.
But, you understand that that was not the child I am speaking of?”
“The figure was not; the--the--image; the fancy?”
“No. That was another thing. It stood before my disturbed sense of
sight, but it never moved. The phantom that my mind pursued, was another
and more real child. Of her outward appearance I know no more than
that she was like her mother. The other had that likeness too--as you
have--but was not the same. Can you follow me, Lucie? Hardly, I think?
I doubt you must have been a solitary prisoner to understand these
perplexed distinctions.”
His collected and calm manner could not prevent her blood from running
cold, as he thus tried to anatomise his old condition.
“In that more peaceful state, I have imagined her, in the moonlight,
coming to me and taking me out to show me that the home of her married
life was full of her loving remembrance of her lost father. My picture
was in her room, and I was in her prayers. Her life was active,
cheerful, useful; but my poor history pervaded it all.”
“I was that child, my father, I was not half so good, but in my love
that was I.”
“And she showed me her children,” said the Doctor of Beauvais, “and
they had heard of me, and had been taught to pity me. When they passed
a prison of the State, they kept far from its frowning walls, and looked
up at its bars, and spoke in whispers. She could never deliver me; I
imagined that she always brought me back after showing me such things.
But then, blessed with the relief of tears, I fell upon my knees, and
blessed her.”
“I am that child, I hope, my father. O my dear, my dear, will you bless
me as fervently to-morrow?”
“Lucie, I recall these old troubles in the reason that I have to-night
for loving you better than words can tell, and thanking God for my great
happiness. My thoughts, when they were wildest, never rose near the
happiness that I have known with you, and that we have before us.”
He embraced her, solemnly commended her to Heaven, and humbly thanked
Heaven for having bestowed her on him. By-and-bye, they went into the
house.
There was no one bidden to the marriage but Mr. Lorry; there was even to
be no bridesmaid but the gaunt Miss Pross. The marriage was to make no
change in their place of residence; they had been able to extend it,
by taking to themselves the upper rooms formerly belonging to the
apocryphal invisible lodger, and they desired nothing more.
Doctor Manette was very cheerful at the little supper. They were only
three at table, and Miss Pross made the third. He regretted that Charles
was not there; was more than half disposed to object to the loving
little plot that kept him away; and drank to him affectionately.
So, the time came for him to bid Lucie good night, and they separated.
But, in the stillness of the third hour of the morning, Lucie came
downstairs again, and stole into his room; not free from unshaped fears,
beforehand.
All things, however, were in their places; all was quiet; and he lay
asleep, his white hair picturesque on the untroubled pillow, and his
hands lying quiet on the coverlet. She put her needless candle in the
shadow at a distance, crept up to his bed, and put her lips to his;
then, leaned over him, and looked at him.
Into his handsome face, the bitter waters of captivity had worn; but, he
covered up their tracks with a determination so strong, that he held the
mastery of them even in his sleep. A more remarkable face in its quiet,
resolute, and guarded struggle with an unseen assailant, was not to be
beheld in all the wide dominions of sleep, that night.
She timidly laid her hand on his dear breast, and put up a prayer that
she might ever be as true to him as her love aspired to be, and as his
sorrows deserved. Then, she withdrew her hand, and kissed his lips once
more, and went away. So, the sunrise 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.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Nine Days
The 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 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 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 down-stairs 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.
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 up-stairs, 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 into 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?”
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