V. The Jackal
Those were drinking days, and most men drank hard. So very great isthe improvement Time has brought about in such habits, that a moderatestatement of the quantity of wine and punch which one man would swallowin the course of a night, without any detriment to his reputation as aperfect gentleman, would seem, in these days, a ridiculous exaggeration.The learned profession of the law was certainly not behind any otherlearned profession in its Bacchanalian propensities; neither was Mr.Stryver, already fast shouldering his way to a large and lucrativepractice, behind his compeers in this particular, any more than in thedrier parts of the legal race.
A favourite at the Old Bailey, and eke at the Sessions, Mr. Stryver hadbegun cautiously to hew away the lower staves of the ladder on whichhe mounted. Sessions and Old Bailey had now to summon their favourite,specially, to their longing arms; and shouldering itself towards thevisage of the Lord Chief Justice in the Court of King's Bench, theflorid countenance of Mr. Stryver might be daily seen, bursting out ofthe bed of wigs, like a great sunflower pushing its way at the sun fromamong a rank garden-full of flaring companions.
It had once been noted at the Bar, that while Mr. Stryver was a glibman, and an unscrupulous, and a ready, and a bold, he had not thatfaculty of extracting the essence from a heap of statements, which isamong the most striking and necessary of the advocate's accomplishments.But, a remarkable improvement came upon him as to this. The morebusiness he got, the greater his power seemed to grow of getting at itspith and marrow; and however late at night he sat carousing with SydneyCarton, he always had his points at his fingers' ends in the morning.
Sydney Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men, was Stryver's greatally. What the two drank together, between Hilary Term and Michaelmas,might have floated a king's ship. Stryver never had a case in hand,anywhere, but Carton was there, with his hands in his pockets, staringat the ceiling of the court; they went the same Circuit, and even therethey prolonged their usual orgies late into the night, and Carton wasrumoured to be seen at broad day, going home stealthily and unsteadilyto his lodgings, like a dissipated cat. At last, it began to get about,among such as were interested in the matter, that although Sydney Cartonwould never 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 had charged towake 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 five minutes,he got up, tossed his hat on, and walked out. He turned into the Temple,and, having revived himself by twice pacing the pavements of King'sBench-walk and Paper-buildings, turned into the Stryver chambers.
The Stryver clerk, who never assisted at these conferences, had gonehome, and the Stryver principal opened the door. He had his slippers on,and a loose bed-gown, and his throat was bare for his greater ease. Hehad that rather wild, strained, seared marking about the eyes, whichmay be observed in all free livers of his class, from the portrait ofJeffries downward, and which can be traced, under various disguises ofArt, through the portraits of every Drinking 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 with papers,where there was a blazing fire. A kettle steamed upon the hob, and inthe midst of the wreck of papers a table shone, with plenty of wine uponit, and brandy, and rum, and sugar, and lemons.
"You have had your bottle, I perceive, Sydney."
"Two to-night, I think. I have been dining with the day's client; orseeing him dine--it's all one!"
"That was a rare point, Sydney, that you brought to bear upon theidentification. How did you come by it? When did it strike you?"
"I thought he was rather a handsome fellow, and I thought I should havebeen much the same sort of fellow, if I had had any luck."
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 an adjoiningroom, and came back with a large jug of cold water, a basin, and a towelor two. Steeping the towels in the water, and partially wringing themout, he folded them on his head in a manner hideous to behold, sat downat the table, and said, "Now I am ready!"
"Not much boiling down to be done to-night, 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 one side of thedrinking-table, while the jackal sat at his own paper-bestrewn tableproper, on the other side of it, with the bottles and glasses ready tohis hand. Both resorted to the drinking-table without stint, but each ina different way; the lion for the most part reclining with his hands inhis waistband, looking at the fire, or occasionally flirting with somelighter document; the jackal, with knitted brows and intent face,so deep in his task, that his eyes did not even follow the hand hestretched out for his glass--which often groped about, for a minute ormore, before it found the glass for his lips. Two or three times, thematter in hand became so knotty, that the jackal found it imperative onhim to get up, and steep his towels anew. From these pilgrimages to thejug and basin, he returned with such eccentricities of damp headgear asno words can describe; which were made the more ludicrous by his anxiousgravity.
At length the jackal had got together a compact repast for the lion, andproceeded to offer it to him. The lion took it with care and caution,made his selections from it, and his remarks upon it, and the jackalassisted both. When the repast was fully discussed, the lion put hishands in his waistband again, and lay down to meditate. The jackal theninvigorated himself with a bumper for his throttle, and a fresh applicationto his head, and applied himself to the collection of a second meal;this was administered to the lion in the same manner, and was notdisposed of until the clocks struck three in the morning.
"And now we have done, Sydney, fill a bumper of punch," said Mr.Stryver.
The jackal removed the towels from his head, which had been steamingagain, shook himself, yawned, shivered, and complied.
"You were very sound, Sydney, in the matter of those crown witnessesto-day. Every question told."
"I always am sound; am I not?"
"I don't gainsay it. What has roughened your temper? Put some punch toit and smooth it again."
With a deprecatory grunt, the jackal again complied.
"The old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School," said Stryver, noddinghis head over him as he reviewed him in the present and the past, "theold seesaw Sydney. Up one minute and down the next; now in spirits andnow in despondency!"
"Ah!" returned the other, sighing: "yes! The same Sydney, with the sameluck. Even then, I did exercises for other boys, and seldom 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 out beforehim, looking at the fire.
"Carton," said his friend, squaring himself at him with a bullying air,as if the fire-grate had been the furnace in which sustained endeavourwas forged, and the one delicate thing to be done for the old SydneyCarton of old Shrewsbury School was to shoulder him into it, "your wayis, and always was, a lame way. You summon no energy and purpose. Lookat 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 I do what Ido?"
"Part
ly through paying me to help you, I suppose. But it's not worthyour while to apostrophise me, or the air, about it; what you want todo, you do. You were always in the front rank, and I was always behind."
"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 you were," saidCarton. At this, he laughed again, and they both laughed.
"Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury, and ever since Shrewsbury,"pursued Carton, "you have fallen into your rank, and I have fallen intomine. Even when we were fellow-students in the Student-Quarter of Paris,picking up French, and French law, and other French crumbs that wedidn't get much good of, you were always somewhere, and I was alwaysnowhere."
"And whose fault was that?"
"Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours. You were alwaysdriving and riving and shouldering and passing, to that restless degreethat I had no chance for my life but in rust and repose. It's a gloomything, however, to talk about one's own past, with the day breaking.Turn me in some other direction before I go."
"Well then! Pledge me to the pretty witness," said Stryver, holding uphis glass. "Are you turned in a pleasant direction?"
Apparently not, for he became gloomy again.
"Pretty witness," he muttered, looking down into his glass. "I have hadenough of witnesses to-day and to-night; who's your pretty witness?"
"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 Old Bailey a judgeof beauty? She was a golden-haired doll!"
"Do you know, Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, looking at him with sharp eyes,and slowly drawing a hand across his florid face: "do you know, I ratherthought, at the time, that you sympathised with the golden-haired doll,and were quick to see what happened to the golden-haired doll?"
"Quick to see what happened! If a girl, doll or no doll, swoons within ayard or two of a man's nose, he can see it without a perspective-glass.I pledge you, but I deny the beauty. And now I'll have no more drink;I'll get to bed."
When his host followed him out on the staircase with a candle, to lighthim down the stairs, the day was coldly looking in through its grimywindows. When he got out of the house, the air was cold and sad, thedull sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole scene like alifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning round and roundbefore the morning blast, as if the desert-sand had risen far away, andthe first spray of it in its advance had begun to overwhelm the city.
Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood stillon his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in thewilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, andperseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleriesfrom which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which thefruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight.A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well ofhouses, he threw 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 the man ofgood abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise,incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blighton him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.
A Tale of Two Cities Page 11