a tale of two cities(双城记)-12

or seeing him dine—it’s all one!”“That was a rare point, Sydney, that you brought to bear uponthe identification. How did you come by it? When did it strikeyou?”“I thought he was rather a handsome fellow, and I thought Ishould have been much the same sort of fellow, if I had had anyluck.”Mr. Stryver laughed till he shook his precocious paunch.“You and your luck, Sydney! Get to work, get to work.”Sullenly enough, the jackal loosened his dress, went into anadjoining room, and came back with a large jug of cold water, aCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesbasin, and a towel or two. Steeping the towels in the water, andpartially wringing them out, he folded them on his head in amanner hideous to behold, sat down at the table, and said, “Now Iam ready!”“Not much boiling down to be done tonight, Memory,” said Mr.Stryver, gaily, as he looked among his papers.“How much?”“Only two sets of them.”“Give me the worst first.”“There they are, Sydney. Fire away!”The lion then composed himself on his back on a sofa on oneside of the drinking table, while the jackal sat at his own paperbestrewn table proper, on the other side of it, with the bottles andglasses ready to his hand. Both resorted to the drinking-tablewithout stint, but each in a different way; the lion for the most partreclining with his hands in his waistband, looking at the fire, oroccasionally flirting with some lighter document; the jackal, withknitted brows and intent face, so deep in his task, that his eyes didnot even follow the hand he stretched out for his glass—whichoften groped about, for a minute or more, before it found the glassfor his lips. Two or three times, the matter in hand became soknotty, that the jackal found it imperative on him to get up, andsteep his towels anew. From these pilgrimages to the jug andbasin, he returned with such eccentricities of damp head-gear asno words can describe; which were made the more ludicrous byhis anxious gravity.At length the jackal had got together a compact repast for thelion, and proceeded to offer it to him. The lion took it with careand caution, made his selections from it, and his remarks upon it,Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesand the jackal assisted both. When the repast was fully discussed,the lion put his hands in his waistband again, and lay down tomeditate. The jackal then invigorated himself with a bumper forhis throttle, and a fresh application to his head, and appliedhimself to the collection of a second meal; this was administered tothe lion in the same manner, and was not disposed of until theclock struck three in the morning.“And now we have done, Sydney, fill a bumper of punch,” saidMr. Stryver.The jackal removed the towels from his head, which had beensteaming again, shook himself, yawned, shivered, and complied.“You were very sound, Sydney, in the matter of those crownwitnesses today. Every question told.”“I always am sound; am I not?”“I don’t gainsay it. What has roughened your temper? Put somepunch to it and smooth it again.”With a deprecatory grunt, the jackal again complied.“The old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School,” saidStryver, nodding his head over him as he reviewed him in thepresent and the past, “the old seesaw Sydney. Up one minute anddown the next; now in spirits and now in despondency!”“Ah!” returned the other sighing: “Yes! The same Sydney, withthe same luck. Even then, I did exercise for other boys, andseldom did my own.”“And why not?”“God knows. It was my way, I suppose.”He sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched outbefore him, looking at the fire. “Carton,” said his friend, squaringhimself at him with a bullying air, as if the fire-grate had been theCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesfurnace in which sustained endeavour was forged, and onedelicate thing to be done for the old Sydney Carton of oldShrewsbury School was to shoulder him into it, “your way is, andalways was, a lame way. You summon no energy and purpose.Look at me.”“Oh, botheration!” returned Sydney, with a lighter and moregood-humoured laugh, “don’t you be moral!”“How have I done what I have done?” said Stryver; “how do Ido what I do?”“Partly through paying me to help you, I suppose. But it’s notworth while to apostrophise me, or the air, about it; what you wantto do, you do. You were always in the front rank, and I was alwaysbehind.”“I had to get into the front rank; I was not born there, was I?”“I was not present at the ceremony; but my opinion is youwere,” said Carton. At this, he laughed again, and they bothlaughed.“Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury, and ever sinceShrewsbury,” pursued Carton, “you have fallen into your rank,and I have fallen into mine. Even when we were fellow-students inthe Student-Quarter of Paris, picking up French, and French law,and other French crumbs that we didn’t get much good of, youwere always somewhere and I was always—nowhere.”“And whose fault was that?”“Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours. You werealways driving and riving and shouldering and pressing, to thatrestless degree that I had no chance for my life but in rust andrepose. It’s a gloomy thing, however, to talk about one’s own past,with the day breaking. Turn me in some other direction before ICharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesgo.”“Well then! Pledge me to the pretty witness,” said Stryver,holding up his glass. “Are you turned in a pleasant direction?”Apparently not, for he became gloomy again.“Pretty witness,” he muttered, looking down into his glass. “Ihave had enough of witnesses today and tonight: who’s your prettywitness?”“The picturesque doctor’s daughter, Miss Manette.”“She pretty?”“Is she not?”“No.”“Why, man alive, she was the admiration of the whole court?”“Rot the admiration of the whole court! Who made the OldBailey a judge of beauty? She was a golden-haired doll!”“Do you know, Sydney,” said Mr. Stryver, looking at him withsharp eyes, and slowly drawing a hand across his florid face; “doyou know, I rather thought, at the time, that you sympathised withthe golden-haired doll, and were quick to see what happened tothe golden-haired doll?”“Quick to see what happened! If a girl, doll or no doll, swoonswithin a yard or two of a man’s nose, he can see it without aperspective-glass. I pledge you, but I deny the beauty. And now I’llhave no more drink; I’ll get to bed.”When his host followed him out on the staircase with a candle,to light him down the stairs, the day was coldly looking in throughits grimy windows. When he got out of the house, the air was coldand sad, the dull sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the wholescene like a lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spinninground and round before the morning blast, as if the desert-sandCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citieshad risen far away, and the fine spray of it in its advance hadbegun to overwhelm the city.Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this manstood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for amoment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage ofhonourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair cityof this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves andgraces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hungripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, andit was gone. Climbing to a high chamber, in a well of houses, hethrew himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and itspillow was wet with wasted tears.Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than theman of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of theirdirected exercise, incapable of his own help and his ownhappiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself tolet it eat him away.Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two CitiesChapter XIIHUNDREDS OF PEOPLET he quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a street-corner not far from Soho-square. On the afternoon of acertain fine Sunday when the waves of four months hadrolled over the trial for treason, and carried it, as to the publicinterest and memory, far out to sea, Mr. Jarvis Lorry walked alongthe sunny streets from Clerkenwell where he lived, on his way todine with the Doctor. After several relapses into the business-absorption, Mr. Lorry had become the Doctor’s friend, and thequiet street-corner was the sunny part of his life.On this certain fine Sunday, Mr. Lorry walked towards Soho,early in the afternoon, for three reasons of habit. Firstly, because,on fine Sundays, he often walked out, before dinner, with theDoctor and Lucie; secondly, because, on unfavourable Sundays,he was accustomed to be with them as the family friend, talking,reading, looking out of window, and generally getting through theday; thirdly, because he happened to have his own little shrewddoubts to solve, and knew how the ways of the Doctor’s householdpointed to that time as a likely time for solving them.A quainter corner than the corner where the Doctor lived, wasnot to be found in London. There was no way through it, and thefront windows of the Doctor’s lodgings commanded a pleasantlittle vista of street that had a congenial air of retirement on it.There were few buildings then, north of the Oxford-road, andforest-trees flourished, and wild flowers grew, and the hawthornCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesblossomed, in the now vanished fields. As a consequence, countryairs circulated in Soho with vigorous freedom, instead oflanguishing into the parish like stray paupers without asettlement; and there was many a good south wall, not far off, onwhich the peaches ripened in their season.The summer light struck into the corner brilliantly in theearlier part of the day; but, when the streets grew hot, the cornerwas in shadow, though not in shadow so remote but that you couldsee beyond it into a glare of brightness. It was a cool spot, staid butcheerful, a wonderful place for echoes, and a very harbour fromthe 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 stillhouse, where several callings purported to be pursued by day, butwhereof little was audible any day, and which was shunned by allof them at night. In a building at the back, attainable by acourtyard where a plane-tree rustled its green leaves, church-organs claimed to be made, and silver to be chased, and likewisegold to be beaten by some mysterious giant who had a golden armstarting out of the wall of the front hall—as if he had beatenhimself precious, and menaced a similar conversion of all visitors.Very little of these trades, or of a lonely lodger rumoured to liveupstairs, or of a dim coach-trimming maker asserted to have acounting-house below, was ever heard or seen. Occasionally, astray workman putting his coat on, traversed the hall, or astranger peered about there, or a distant clink was heard acrossthe courtyard, or a thump from the golden giant. These, however,were only the exceptions required to prove the rule that thesparrows in the plane-tree behind the house, and the echoes in theCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiescorner before it, had their own way from Sunday morning untoSaturday night.Doctor Manette received such patients here as his oldreputation, and its revival in the floating whispers of his story,brought him. His scientific knowledge and his vigilance and skillin conducting ingenious experiments, brought him otherwise intomoderate 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 tranquilhouse 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 toanticipate intentions of Miss Pross, as to admission or denial of thefact.“As I am at home myself,” said Mr. Lorry, “I’ll go upstairs.”Although the Doctor’s daughter had known nothing of thecountry of her birth, she appeared to have innately derived from itthat ability to make much of little means, which is one of its mostuseful and most agreeable characteristics. Simple as the furniturewas, it was set off by so many little adornments, of no value, butfor their taste and fancy, that its effect was delightful. Thedisposition of everything in the rooms, from the largest object tothe least; the arrangement of colours, the elegant variety andcontrast obtained by thrift in trifles, by delicate hands, clear eyes,and good sense; were at once so pleasant in themselves, and soCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesexpressive of their originator, that, as Mr. Lorry stood lookingabout him, the very chairs and tables seemed to ask him, withsomething of that peculiar expression which he knew so well bythis time, whether he approved?There were three rooms on a floor, and, the doors by whichthey communicated being put open that the air might pass freelythrough them all, Mr. Lorry, smilingly observant of that fancifulresemblance which he detected all around him, walked from oneto another. The first was the best room, and in it were Lucie’sbirds, and flowers, and books, and desk, and worktable, and box ofwater-colours; the second was the Doctor’s consulting-room, usedalso as the dining-room; the third, changingly speckled by therustle of the plane-tree in the yard, was the Doctor’s bedroom, andthere in a corner, stood the disused shoemaker’s bench and tray oftools, much as it had stood on the fifth floor of the dismal house bythe wine-shop, in the suburb of Saint Antoine in Paris.“I wonder,” said Mr. Lorry, pausing in his looking about, “thathe keeps that reminder of his sufferings about him!”“And why wonder at that?” was the abrupt inquiry that madehim start.It proceeded from Miss Pross, the wild red woman, strong ofhand, whose acquaintance he had first made at the Royal GeorgeHotel at Dover, and had since improved.“I should have thought—” Mr. Lorry began.“Pooh! You’d have thought!” said Miss Pross; and Mr. Lorryleft off.“How do you do?” inquired that lady then—sharply, and yet asif to express that she bore him no malice.“I am pretty well, I thank you,” answered Mr. Lorry, withCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesmeekness; “how are you?”“Nothing to boast of,” said Miss Pross.“Indeed?”“Ah! indeed!” said Miss Pross. “I am very much put out aboutmy Ladybird.”“Indeed?”“For gracious sake say something else besides ‘indeed,’ or you’llfidget me to death,” said Miss Pross: whose character (dissociatedfrom stature) was shortness.