When his host followed him out on the staircase with a candle, to light him down the stairs, the day was coldly looking in through its grimy windows. When he got out of the house, the air was cold and sad, the dull sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole scene like a lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning round and round before the morning blast, as if the desert-sand had risen far away, and the first spray of it in its advance had begun the overwhelming of the city.
Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits 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 of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears.
Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; and it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.
[END OF INSTALMENT 7]
CHAPTER 6
Hundreds of People
The quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a quiet street-corner not far from Soho-square. On the afternoon of a certain fine Sunday when the waves of four months had rolled over the trial for treason, and carried it, as to the public interest and memory, far out to sea, Mr Jarvis Lorry walked along the sunny streets from Clerkenwell where he lived, on his way to dine with the Doctor. After several relapses into business-absorption, Mr Lorry had become the Doctor’s friend, and the quiet 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 the Doctor and Lucie; secondly, because, on unfavourable Sundays, he was accustomed to be with them as the family friend, talking, reading, looking out of the window, and generally getting through the day; thirdly, because he happened to have his own little shrewd doubts to solve, and knew how the ways of the Doctor’s household pointed to that time as a likely time for solving them.
A quainter corner than the corner where the Doctor lived, was not to be found in London. There was no way through it, and the front windows of the Doctor’s lodgings commanded a pleasant little vista of street that had a congenial air of retirement on it. There were few buildings then, north of the Oxford-road, and forest-trees flourished, and wild flowers grew, and the hawthorn blossomed, in the now vanished fields. As a consequence, country airs circulated in Soho with vigorous freedom, instead of languishing into the parish like stray paupers without a settlement; and there was many a good south wall, not far off, on which the peaches ripened in their season.
The summer light struck into the corner brilliantly in the earlier part of the day; but, when the streets grew hot, the corner was in shadow, though not in shadow so remote but that you could see beyond it into a glare of brightness. It was a cool spot, staid but cheerful, a wonderful place for echoes, and a very harbour from the 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 still house, where several callings purported to be pursued by day, but whereof little was audible any day, and which was shunned by all of them at night. In a building at the back, attainable by a court-yard where a plane-tree rustled its green leaves, church-organs claimed to be made, and silver to be chased, and likewise gold to be beaten by some mysterious giant who had a golden arm starting out of the wall of the front hall – as if he had beaten himself precious, and menaced a similar conversion of all visitors. Very little of these trades, or of a lonely lodger rumoured to live up stairs, or of a dim coach-trimming maker asserted to have a counting-house below, was ever heard or seen. Occasionally, a stray workman putting his coat on, traversed the hall, or a stranger peered about there, or a distant clink was heard across the court-yard, or a thump from the golden giant. These, however, were only the exceptions required to prove the rule that the sparrows in the plane-tree behind the house, and the echoes in the corner before it, had their own way from Sunday morning unto Saturday night.
Doctor Manette received such patients here as his old reputation, and its revival in the floating whispers of his story, brought him. His scientific knowledge, and his vigilance and skill in conducting ingenious experiments, brought him otherwise into moderate 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 tranquil house 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 to anticipate intentions of Miss Pross, as to admission or denial of the fact.
‘As I am at home myself,’ said Mr Lorry, ‘I’ll go up-stairs.’
Although the Doctor’s daughter had known nothing of the country of her birth, she appeared to have innately derived from it that ability to make much of little means, which is one of its most useful and most agreeable characteristics. Simple as the furniture was, it was set off by so many little adornments, of no value but for their taste and fancy, that its effect was delightful. The disposition of everything in the rooms, from the largest object to the least; the arrangement of colours, the elegant variety and contrast obtained by thrift in trifles, by delicate hands, clear eyes, and good sense; were at once so pleasant in themselves, and so expressive of their originator, that, as Mr Lorry stood looking about him, the very chairs and tables seemed to ask him, with something of that peculiar expression which he knew so well by this time, whether he approved?
There were three rooms on a floor, and, the doors by which they communicated being put open that the air might pass freely through them all, Mr Lorry, smilingly observant of that fanciful resemblance which he detected all around him, walked from one to another. The first was the best room, and in it were Lucie’s birds, and flowers, and books, and desk, and work-table, and box of water-colours; the second was the Doctor’s consulting-room, used also as the dining-room; the third, changingly speckled by the rustle of the plane-tree in the yard, was the Doctor’s bedroom – and there, in a corner, stood the disused shoemaker’s bench and tray of tools, much as it had stood on the fifth floor of the dismal house by the wine-shop, in the suburb of Saint Antoine in Paris.
‘I wonder,’ said Mr Lorry, pausing in his looking about, ‘that he keeps that reminder of his sufferings by him!’
‘And why wonder at that?’ was the abrupt inquiry that made him start.
It proceeded from Miss Pross, the wild red woman, strong of hand, whose acquaintance he had first made at the Royal George Hotel at Dover, and had since improved.
‘I should have thought—’ Mr Lorry began.
‘Pooh! You’d have thought!’ said Miss Pross; and Mr Lorry left off.
‘How do you do?’ inquired that lady then – sharply, and yet as if to express that she bore him no malice.
‘I am pretty well, I thank you,’ answered Mr Lorry, with meekness, ‘how are you?’
‘Nothing to boast of,’ said Miss Pross.
‘Indeed?’
‘Ah! indeed!’ said Miss Pross. ‘I am very much put out about my Ladybird.’
‘Indeed?’
‘For gracious sake say something else besides “indeed”, or you’ll fidget me to death,’ said Miss Pross: whose character (dissociated from stature) was shortness.
‘Really, then?’ said Mr Lorry as an amendment.
‘Really, is bad enou
gh,’ returned Miss Pross, ‘but better. Yes, I am very much put out.’
‘May I ask the cause?’
‘I don’t want dozens of people who are not at all worthy of Ladybird, to come here looking after her,’ said Miss Pross.
‘Do dozens come for that purpose?’
‘Hundreds,’ said Miss Pross.
It was characteristic of this lady (as of some other people before her time and since) that whenever her original proposition was questioned, she exaggerated it.
‘Dear me!’ said Mr Lorry, as the safest remark he could think of.
‘I have lived with the darling – or the darling has lived with me, and paid me for it; which she certainly should never have done, you may take your affidavit, if I could have afforded to keep either myself or her for nothing – since she was ten years old. And it’s really very hard,’ said Miss Pross.
Not seeing with precision what was very hard, Mr Lorry shook his head; using that important part of himself as a sort of fairy cloak that would fit anything.
‘All sorts of people who are not in the least degree worthy of the pet, are always turning up,’ said Miss Pross. ‘When you began it—’
‘I began it, Miss Pross?’
‘Didn’t you? Who brought her father to life?’
‘Oh! If that was beginning it—’ said Mr Lorry.
‘It wasn’t ending it, I suppose? I say, when you began it, it was hard enough; not that I have any fault to find with Doctor Manette, except that he is not worthy of such a daughter, which is no imputation on him, for it was not to be expected that anybody should be, under any circumstances. But it really is doubly and trebly hard to have crowds and multitudes of people turning up after him (I could have forgiven him), to take Ladybird’s affections away from me.’
Mr Lorry knew Miss Pross to be very jealous, but he also knew her by this time to be, beneath the surface of her eccentricity, one of those unselfish creatures – found only among women – who will, for pure love and admiration, bind themselves willing slaves, to youth when they have lost it, to beauty that they never had, to accomplishments that they were never fortunate enough to gain, to bright hopes that never shone upon their own sombre lives. He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart; so rendered and so free from any mercenary taint, he had such an exalted respect for it, that, in the retributive arrangements made by his own mind – we all make such arrangements, more or less – he stationed Miss Pross much nearer to the lower Angels than many ladies immeasurably better got up both by Nature and Art, who had balances at Tellson’s.
‘There never was, nor will be, but one man worthy of Ladybird, ’ said Miss Pross; ‘and that was my brother Solomon, if he hadn’t made a mistake in life.’
Here again: Mr Lorry’s inquiries into Miss Pross’s personal history, had established the fact that her brother Solomon was a heartless scoundrel who had stripped her of everything she possessed, as a stake to speculate with, and had abandoned her in her poverty for evermore, with no touch of compunction. Miss Pross’s fidelity of belief in Solomon (deducting a mere trifle for this slight mistake) was quite a serious matter with Mr Lorry, and had its weight in his good opinion of her.
‘As we happen to be alone for the moment, and are both people of business,’ he said, when they had got back to the drawing-room, and had sat down there in friendly relations, ‘let me ask you – does the Doctor, in talking with Lucie, never refer to the shoemaking time, yet?’
‘Never.’
‘And yet keeps that bench and those tools beside him?’
‘Ah!’ returned Miss Pross, shaking her head. ‘But I don’t say he don’t refer to it within himself.’
‘Do you believe that he thinks of it much?’
‘I do,’ said Miss Pross.
‘Do you imagine—’ Mr Lorry had begun, when Miss Pross took him up short with:
‘Never imagine anything. Have no imagination at all.’
‘I stand corrected; do you suppose – you go so far as to suppose, sometimes?’
‘Now and then,’ said Miss Pross.
‘Do you suppose,’ Mr Lorry went on, with a laughing twinkle in his bright eye, as it looked kindly at her, ‘that Doctor Manette has any theory of his own, preserved through all those years, relative to the cause of his being so oppressed; perhaps, even to the name of his oppressor?’
‘I don’t suppose anything about it but what Ladybird tells me.’
‘And that is—?’
‘That she thinks he has.’
‘Now don’t be angry at my asking all these questions; because I am a mere dull man of business, and you are a woman of business.’
‘Dull?’ Miss Pross inquired, with placidity.
Rather wishing his modest adjective away, Mr Lorry replied, ‘No, no, no. Surely not. To return to business: – Is it not remarkable that Doctor Manette, unquestionably innocent of any crime as we are well assured he is, should never touch upon that question? I will not say with me, though he had business relations with me many years ago, and we are now intimate; I will say with the fair daughter to whom he is so devotedly attached, and who is so devotedly attached to him? Believe me, Miss Pross, I don’t approach the topic with you, out of curiosity, but out of zealous interest.’
‘Well! To the best of my understanding, and bad’s the best you’ll tell me,’ said Miss Pross, softened by the tone of the apology, ‘he is afraid of the whole subject.’
‘Afraid?’
‘It’s plain enough, I should think, why he may be. It’s a dreadful remembrance. Besides that, his loss of himself grew out of it. Not knowing how he lost himself, or how he recovered himself, he may never feel certain of not losing himself again. That alone wouldn’t make the subject pleasant, I should think.’
It was a profounder remark than Mr Lorry had looked for. ‘True,’ said he, ‘and fearful to reflect upon. Yet, a doubt lurks in my mind, Miss Pross, whether it is good for Doctor Manette to have that suppression always shut up within him. Indeed, it is this doubt and the uneasiness it sometimes causes me that has led me to our present confidence.’
‘Can’t be helped,’ said Miss Pross, shaking her head. ‘Touch that string, and he instantly changes for the worse. Better leave it alone. In short, must leave it alone, like or no like. Sometimes, he gets up in the dead of the night, and will be heard, by us overhead there, walking up and down, walking up and down, in his room. Ladybird has learnt to know then, that his mind is walking up and down, walking up and down, in his old prison. She hurries to him, and they go on together, walking up and down, walking up and down, until he is composed. But he never says a word of the true reason of his restlessness, to her, and she finds it best not to hint at it to him. In silence they go walking up and down together, walking up and down together, till her love and company have brought him to himself.’
Notwithstanding Miss Pross’s denial of her own imagination, there was a perception of the pain of being monotonously haunted by one sad idea, in her repetition of the phrase, walking up and down, which testified to her possessing such a thing.
The corner has been mentioned as a wonderful corner for echoes; it had begun to echo so resoundingly to the tread of coming feet, that it seemed as though the very mention of that weary pacing to and fro had set it going.
‘Here they are!’ said Miss Pross, rising to break up the conference; ‘and now we shall have hundreds of people pretty soon!’
It was such a curious corner in its acoustical properties, such a peculiar Ear of a place, that as Mr Lorry stood at the open window, looking for the father and daughter whose steps he heard, he fancied they would never approach. Not only would the echoes die away, as though the steps had gone; but, echoes of other steps that never came, would be heard in their stead, and would die away for good when they seemed close at hand. However, father and daughter did at last appear, and Miss Pross was ready at the street door to receive them.
Miss Pross was a
pleasant sight, albeit wild, and red, and grim, taking off her darling’s bonnet when she came up-stairs, and touching it up with the ends of her handkerchief, and blowing the dust off it, and folding her mantle ready for laying by, and smoothing her rich hair with as much pride as she could possibly have taken in her own hair if she had been the vainest and handsomest of women. Her darling was a pleasant sight too, embracing her and thanking her, and protesting against her taking so much trouble for her – which last she only dared to do playfully, or Miss Pross, sorely hurt, would have retired to her own chamber and cried. The Doctor was a pleasant sight too, looking on at them, and telling Miss Pross how she spoilt Lucie, in accents and with eyes that had as much spoiling in them as Miss Pross had, and would have had more if it were possible. Mr Lorry was a pleasant sight too, beaming at all this in his little wig, and thanking his bachelor stars for having lighted him in his declining years to a Home. But, no Hundreds of people came to see the sights, and Mr Lorry looked in vain for the fulfilment of Miss Pross’s prediction.
Dinner time, and still no Hundreds of people. In the arrangements of the little household, Miss Pross took charge of the lower regions, and always acquitted herself marvellously. Her dinners, of a very modest quality, were so well cooked and so well served, and so neat in their contrivances, half English and half French, that nothing could be better. Miss Pross’s friendship being of the thoroughly practical kind, she had ravaged Soho and the adjacent provinces, in search of impoverished French, who, tempted by shillings and half-crowns, would impart culinary mysteries to her. From these decayed sons and daughters of Gaul, she had acquired such wonderful arts, that the woman and girl who formed the staff of domestics regarded her as quite a Sorceress, or Cinderella’s Godmother: who would send out for a fowl, a rabbit, a vegetable or two from the garden, and change them into anything she pleased.
On Sundays, Miss Pross dined at the Doctor’s table, but on other days persisted in taking her meals, at unknown periods, either in the lower regions, or in her own room on the second floor – a blue chamber, to which no one but her Ladybird ever gained admittance. On this occasion Miss Pross, responding to Ladybird’s pleasant face and pleasant efforts to please her, unbent exceedingly; so the dinner was very pleasant, too.
A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (Oprah's Book Club) Page 11