Mr. Lorry said it; perhaps not quite disinterestedly, but with theinterested object of squeezing himself back again.“You think so?” said Mr. Stryver. “Well! you have been presentall day, and you ought to know. You are a man of business, too.”“And as such,” quoth Mr. Lorry, whom the counsel learned inthe law had now shouldered back into the group, just as he hadpreviously shouldered him out of it—“as such I will appeal toDoctor Manette, to break up this conference and order us all toCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesour homes. Miss Lucie looks ill, Mr. Darnay has had a terrible day,we are worn out.”“Speak for yourself, Mr. Lorry,” said Stryver; “I have a night’swork to do yet. Speak for yourself.”“I speak for myself,” answered Mr. Lorry, “and for Mr. Darnay,and for Miss Lucie, and—Miss Lucie, do you not think I may speakfor us all?” He asked her the question pointedly, and with a glanceat her father.His face had become frozen, as it were, in a very curious look atDarnay: an intent look, deepening into a frown of dislike anddistrust, not even unmixed with fear. With this strange expressionon him his thoughts had wandered away.“My father,” said Lucie, softly laying her hand on his.He slowly shook the shadow off, and turned to her.“Shall we go home, my father?”With a long breath, he answered “Yes.”The friends of the acquitted prisoner had dispersed, under theimpression—which he himself had originated—that he would notbe released that night. The lights were nearly all extinguished inthe passages, the iron gates were being closed with a jar and arattle, and the dismal place was deserted until tomorrowmorning’s interest of gallows, pillory, whipping-post, andbranding-iron, should re-people it. Walking between her fatherand Mr. Darnay, Lucie Manette passed into the open air. Ahackney-coach was called, and the father and daughter departedin it.Mr. Stryver had left them in the passages, to shoulder his wayback to the robing-room. Another person, who had not joined thegroup, or interchanged a word with any one of them, but who hadCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesbeen leaning against the wall where its shadow was darkest, hadsilently strolled out after the rest, and had looked on until thecoach drove away. He now stepped up to where Mr. Lorry and Mr.Darnay stood upon the pavement.“So, Mr. Lorry! Men of business may speak to Mr. Darnaynow?”Nobody had made any acknowledgement of Mr. Carton’s partin the day’s proceedings; nobody had known of it. He wasunrobed, and was none the better for it in appearance.“If you knew what a conflict goes on in the business mind,when the business mind is divided between good-natured impulseand business appearances, you would be amused, Mr. Darnay.”Mr. Lorry reddened, and said, warmly, “You have mentionedthat before, sir. We men of business, who serve a House, are notour own masters. We have to think of the House more thanourselves.”“I know, I know,” rejoined Mr. Carton, carelessly. “Don’t benettled, Mr. Lorry. You are as good as another, I have no doubt:better, I daresay.”“And indeed, sir,” pursued Mr. Lorry, not minding him, “Ireally don’t know what you have to do with the matter. If you’llexcuse me, as very much your elder, for saying so, I really don’tknow that it is your business.”“Business! Bless you, I have no business,” said Mr. Carton.“It is a pity you have not, sir.”“I think so, too.”“If you had,” pursued Mr. Lorry, “perhaps you would attend toit.”“Lord love you, no!—I shouldn’t,” said Mr. Carton.Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Cities“Well, sir!” cried Mr. Lorry, thoroughly heated by hisindifference, “business is a very good thing, and a very respectablething. And, sir, if business imposes its restraints and its silencesand impediments, Mr. Darnay as a young gentleman of generosityknows how to make allowance for that circumstance. Mr. Darnay,good night, God bless you, sir! I hope you have been this daypreserved for a prosperous and happy life.—Chair there!”Perhaps a little angry with himself, as well as with the barrister,Mr. Lorry bustled into the chair, and was carried off to Tellson’s.Carton, who smelt of port wine, and did not appear to be quitesober, laughed then, and turned to Darnay:“This is a strange chance that throws you and me together. Thismust be a strange night to you, standing alone here with yourcounterpart on these street stones?”“I hardly seem yet,” returned Charles Darnay, “to belong to thisworld again.”“I don’t wonder at it; it’s not so long since you were pretty faradvanced on your way to another. You speak faintly.”“I begin to think I am faint.”“Then why the devil don’t you dine? I dined, myself, whilethose numskulls were deliberating which world you should belongto—this, or some other. Let me show you the nearest tavern todine well at.”Drawing his arm through his own, he took him down Ludgatehill to Fleet Street, and so, up a covered way, into a tavern. Here,they were shown into a little room, where Charles Darnay wassoon recruiting his strength with a good plain dinner and goodwine: while Carton sat opposite to him at the same table, with hisseparate bottle of port before him, and his fully half-insolentCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesmanner upon him.“Do you feel, yet, that you belong to this terrestrial schemeagain, Mr. Darnay?”“I am frightfully confused regarding time and place; but I am sofar mended as to feel that.”“It must be an immense satisfaction!”He said it bitterly, and filled up his glass again: which was alarge one.“As to me, the greatest desire I have, is to forget that I belong toit. It has no good in it for me—except wine like this—nor I for it.So we are not much alike in that particular. Indeed, I begin tothink we are not much alike in any particular, you and I.”Confused by the emotion of the day, and feeling his being therewith this Double of coarse deportment, to be like a dream, CharlesDarnay was at a loss how to answer; finally, answered not at all.“Now your dinner is done,” Carton presently said, “why don’tyou call a health, Mr. Darnay; why don’t you give your toast?”“What health? What toast?”“Why, it’s on the tip of your tongue. It ought to be, it must be,I’ll swear it’s there.”“Miss Manette, then!”“Miss Manette, then!”Looking his companion full in the face while he drank the toast,Carton flung his glass over his shoulder against the wall, where itshivered to pieces; then, rang the bell, and ordered in another.“That’s a fair young lady to hand to a coach in the dark, Mr.Darnay!” he said, filling his new goblet.A slight frown and a laconic, “Yes,” were the answer.“That’s a fair young lady to be pitied by and wept for by! HowCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesdoes it feel? Is it worth being tried for one’s life, to be the object ofsuch sympathy and compassion, Mr. Darnay?”Again Darnay answered not a word.“She was mightily pleased to have your message, when I gave itto her. Not that she showed she was pleased, but I suppose shewas.”The allusion served as a timely reminder to Darnay that thisdisagreeable companion had, of his own free will, assisted him inthe strait of the day. He turned the dialogue to that point, andthanked him for it.“I neither want any thanks, nor merit any,” was the carelessrejoinder. “It was nothing to do, in the first place; and I don’t knowwhy I did it, in the second. Mr. Darnay, let me ask you a question.”“Willingly, and a small return for your good offices.”“Do you think I particularly like you?”“Really, Mr. Carton,” returned the other, oddly disconcerted, “Ihave not asked myself the question.”“But ask yourself the question now.”“You have acted as if you do; but I don’t think you do.”“I don’t think I do,” said Carton. “I begin to have a very goodopinion of your understanding.”“Nevertheless,” pursued Darnay, rising to ring the bell, “thereis nothing in that, I hope, to prevent my calling the reckoning, andour parting without ill-blood on either side.”Carton rejoining, “Nothing in life!” Darnay rang. “Do you callthe whole reckoning?” said Carton. On his answering in theaffirmative, “Then bring me another pint of this same wine,drawer, and come and wake me at ten.”The bill being paid, Charles Darnay rose and wished him goodCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesnight. Without returning the wish, Carton rose too, withsomething of a threat of defiance in his manner, and said: “A lastword, Mr. Darnay: you think I am drunk?”“I think you have been drinking, Mr. Carton.”“Think? You know I have been drinking.”“Since I must say so, I know it.”“Then you shall likewise know why. I am a disappointeddrudge, sir. I care for no man on earth, and no man on earth caresfor me.”“Much to be regretted. You might have used your talentsbetter.”“May be so, Mr. Darnay; may be not. Don’t let your sober faceelate you, however; you don’t know what it may come to. Goodnight!”When he was left alone, this strange being took up a candle,went to a glass that hung against the wall, and surveyed himselfminutely in it.“Do you particularly like the man?” he muttered, at his ownimage; “why should you particularly like a man who resemblesyou? There is nothing in you to like; you know that. Ah, confoundyou! What a change you have made in yourself! A good reason fortaking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen awayfrom, and what you might have been! Change places with him, andwould you have been looked at by those blue eyes as he was, andcommiserated by that agitated face as he was? Come on, and haveit out in plain words! You hate the fellow!”He resorted to his pint of wine for consolation, drank it all in afew minutes, and fell asleep on his arms, with his hair stragglingover the table, and a long winding-sheet in the candle drippingCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesdown upon him.Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two CitiesChapter XITHE JACKALT hose were drinking days, and most men drank hard. Sovery great is the improvement Time has brought about insuch habits, that a moderate statement of the quantity ofwine and punch which one man would swallow in the course of anight, without any detriment to his reputation as a perfectgentleman, would seem, in these days, a ridiculous exaggeration.The learned profession of the law was certainly not behind anyother learned profession in its Bacchanalian propensities; neitherwas Mr. Stryver, already fast shouldering his way to a large andlucrative practice, behind his compeers in this particular, anymore than in the drier parts of the legal race.A favourite at the Old Bailey, and eke at the Sessions, Mr.Stryver had begun cautiously to hew away the lower staves of theladder on which he mounted. Sessions and Old Bailey had now tosummon their favourite, specially, to their longing arms; andshouldering itself towards the visage of the Lord Chief Justice inthe Court of King’s Bench, the florid countenance of Mr. Stryvermight be daily seen, bursting out of the bed of wigs, like a greatsunflower pushing its way at the sun from among a rank gardenfulof flaring companions.It had once been noted at the Bar, that while Mr. Stryver was aglib man, and an unscrupulous, and a ready, and a bold, he hadnot that faculty of extracting the essence from a heap ofstatements, which is among the most striking and necessary of theCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesadvocate’s accomplishments. But, a remarkable improvementcame upon him as to this. The more business he got, the greaterhis power seemed to grow of getting at its pith and marrow; andhowever late at night he sat carousing with Sydney Carton, healways had his points at his fingers’ ends in the morning.Sydney Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men, wasStryver’s great ally. What the two drank together, between Hilaryterm and Michaelmas, might have floated a king’s ship. Stryvernever had a case in hand, anywhere, but Carton was there, withhis hands in his pockets, staring at the ceiling of the court; theywent the same Circuit, and even there they prolonged their usualorgies late into the night, and Carton was rumoured to be seen atbroad day, going home stealthily and unsteadily to his lodgings,like a dissipated cat. At last, it began to get about, among such aswere interested in the matter, that although Sydney Carton wouldnever be a lion, he was an amazingly good jackal, and that herendered suit and service to Stryver in that humble capacity.“Ten o’clock, sir,” said the man at the tavern, whom he hadcharged to wake him—“ten o’clock, sir.”“What’s the matter?”“Ten o’clock, sir.”“What do you mean? Ten o’clock at night?”“Yes, sir. Your honour told me to call you.”“Oh! I remember. Very well, very well.”After a few dull efforts to get to sleep again, which the mandexterously combated by stirring the fire continuously for fiveminutes, he got up, tossed his hat on, and walked out. He turnedinto the Temple, and, having revived himself by twice pacing thepavements of King’s Bench-walk and Paper-buildings, turned intoCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesthe Stryver chambers.The Stryver clerk, who never assisted at these conferences, hadgone home, and the Stryver principal opened the door. He had hisslippers on, and a loose bed-gown, and his throat was bare for hisgreater ease. He had that rather wild, strained, seared markingabout the eyes which may be observed in all free livers of his class,from the portrait of Jeffries downward, and which can be traced,under various disguises of Art, through the portraits of everyDrinking Age.“You are a little late, Memory,” said Stryver.“About the usual time; it may be a quarter of an hour later.”They went into a dingy room lined with books and littered withpapers, where there was a blazing fire. A kettle steamed upon thehob, and in the midst of the wreck of papers a table shone, withplenty of wine upon it, and brandy, and rum, and sugar, andlemons.“You have had your bottle, I perceive, Sydney.”“Two tonight I think. I have been dining with the day’s client;