A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (Oprah's Book Club) (4 page)

Completing his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his portrait, Mr Lorry dropped off asleep. The arrival of his breakfast roused him, and he said to the drawer, as he moved his chair to it:

‘I wish accommodation prepared for a young lady who may come here at any time to-day. She may ask for Mr Jarvis Lorry, or she may only ask for a gentleman from Tellson’s Bank. Please to let me know.’

‘Yes, sir. Tellson’s Bank in London, sir.’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes, sir. We have oftentimes the honour to entertain your gentlemen in their travelling backwards and forwards betwixt London and Paris, sir. A vast deal of travelling, sir, in Tellson and Company’s House.’

‘Yes. We are quite a French house, as well as an English one.’

‘Yes, sir. Not much in the habit of such travelling yourself, I think, sir?’

‘Not of late years. It is fifteen years since we – since I – came last from France.’

‘Indeed, sir? That was before my time here, sir. Before our people’s time here, sir. The George was in other hands at that time, sir.’

‘I believe so.’

‘But I would hold a pretty wager, sir, that a House like Tellson and Company was flourishing, a matter of fifty, not to speak of fifteen years ago?’

‘You might treble that, and say a hundred and fifty, yet not be far from the truth.’

‘Indeed, sir!’

Rounding his mouth and both his eyes, as he stepped backward from the table, the waiter shifted his napkin from his right arm to his left, dropped into a comfortable attitude, and stood surveying the guest while he ate and drank, as from an observatory or watchtower. According to the immemorial usage of waiters in all ages.

When Mr Lorry had finished his breakfast, he went out for a stroll on the beach. The little narrow, crooked town of Dover hid itself away from the beach, and ran its head into the chalk-cliffs, like a marine ostrich. The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumbling wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction. It thundered at the town, and thundered at the cliffs, and brought the coast down, madly. The air among the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavour that one might have supposed sick fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick people went down to be dipped in the sea. A little fishing was done in the port, and a quantity of strolling about by night, and looking seaward: particularly at those times when the tide made, and was near flood. Small tradesmen, who did no business whatever, sometimes unaccountably realised large fortunes, and it was remarkable that nobody in the neighbourhood could endure a lamplighter.

As the day declined into the afternoon, and the air, which had been at intervals clear enough to allow the French coast to be seen, became again charged with mist and vapour, Mr Lorry’s thoughts seemed to cloud too. When it was dark, and he sat before the coffee-room fire, awaiting his dinner as he had awaited his breakfast, his mind was busily digging, digging, digging, in the live red coals.

A bottle of good claret after dinner does a digger in the red coals no harm, otherwise than as it has a tendency to throw him out of work. Mr Lorry had been idle a long time, and had just poured out his last glassful of wine with as complete an appearance of satisfaction as is ever to be found in an elderly gentleman of a fresh complexion who has got to the end of a bottle, when a rattling of wheels came up the narrow street, and rumbled into the inn-yard.

He set down his glass untouched. ‘This is Mam’selle!’ said he.

In a very few minutes the waiter came in, to announce that Miss Manette had arrived from London, and would be happy to see the gentleman from Tellson’s.

‘So soon?’

Miss Manette had taken some refreshment on the road, and required none then, and was extremely anxious to see the gentleman from Tellson’s immediately, if it suited his pleasure and convenience.

The gentleman from Tellson’s had nothing left for it but to empty his glass with an air of stolid desperation, settle his odd little flaxen wig at the ears, and follow the waiter to Miss Manette’s apartment. It was a large, dark room, furnished in a funereal manner with black horsehair, and loaded with heavy dark tables. These had been oiled and oiled, until the two tall candles on the table in the middle of the room were gloomily reflected on every leaf; as if
they
were buried, in deep graves of black mahogany, and no light to speak of could be expected from them until they were dug out.

The obscurity was so difficult to penetrate that Mr Lorry, picking his way over the well-worn Turkey carpet, supposed Miss Manette to be, for the moment, in some adjacent room, until, having got past the two tall candles, he saw standing to receive him by the table between them and the fire, a young lady of not more than seventeen, in a riding-cloak, and still holding her straw travelling-hat by its ribbon, in her hand. As his eyes rested on a short, slight-pretty figure, a quantity of golden hair, a pair of blue eyes that met his own with an inquiring look, and a forehead with a singular capacity (remembering how young and smooth it was), of lifting and knitting itself into an expression that was not quite one of perplexity, or wonder, or alarm, or merely of a bright fixed attention, though it included all the four expressions – as his eyes rested on these things, a sudden vivid likeness passed before him, of a child whom he had held in his arms on the passage across that very Channel, one cold time, when the hail drifted heavily and the sea ran high. The likeness passed away, say, like a breath along the surface of the gaunt pier-glass behind her, on the frame of which, a hospital procession of negro cupids, several headless and all cripples, were offering black baskets of Dead-Sea fruit to black divinities of the feminine gender – and he made his formal bow to Miss Manette. ‘Pray take a seat, sir.’ In a very clear and pleasant young voice: a little foreign in its accent, but a very little indeed. ‘I kiss your hand, miss,’ said Mr Lorry, with the manners of an earlier date, as he made his formal bow again, and took his seat. ‘I received a letter from the Bank, sir, yesterday, informing me that some new intelligence – or discovery—’

‘The word is not material, miss; either word will do.’

‘ – respecting the small property of my poor father whom I never saw – so long dead—’

Mr Lorry moved in his chair, and cast a troubled look towards the hospital procession of negro cupids. As if
they
had any help for anybody in their absurd baskets!

‘ – rendered it necessary that I should go to Paris there to communicate with a gentleman of the Bank, so good as to be despatched to Paris for the purpose.’

‘Myself.’

‘As I was prepared to hear, sir.’

She curtseyed to him (young ladies made curtseys in those days), with a pretty desire to convey to him that she felt how much older and wiser he was than she. He made her another bow.

‘I replied to the Bank, sir, that as it was considered necessary, by those who know, and who are so kind as to advise me, that I should go to France, and that as I am an orphan and have no friend who could go with me, I should esteem it highly if I might be permitted to place myself, during the journey, under that worthy gentleman’s protection. The gentleman had left London, but I think a messenger was sent after him to beg the favour of his waiting for me here.’

‘I was happy,’ said Mr Lorry, ‘to be entrusted with the charge. I shall be more happy to execute it.’

‘Sir, I thank you indeed. I thank you very gratefully. It was told me by the Bank that the gentleman would explain to me the details of the business, and that I must prepare myself to find them of a surprising nature. I have done my best to prepare myself, and I naturally have a strong and eager interest to know what they are.’

‘Naturally,’ said Mr Lorry. ‘Yes – I—’

After a pause, he added, again settling the crisp flaxen wig at the ears:

‘It is very difficult to begin.’

He did not begin, but, in his indecision, met her glance. The young forehead lifted itself into that singular expression – but it was pretty and characteristic, besides being singular – and she raised her hand, as if with an involuntary action she caught at, or stayed, some passing shadow.

‘Are you quite a stranger to me, sir?’

‘Am I not?’ Mr Lorry opened his hands, and extended them outward with an argumentative smile.

Between the eyebrows and just over the little feminine nose, the line of which was as delicate and fine as it was possible to be, the expression deepened itself as she took her seat thoughtfully in the chair by which she had hitherto remained standing. He watched her as she mused, and, the moment she raised her eyes again, went on:

‘In your adopted country, I presume, I cannot do better than address you as a young English lady, Miss Manette?’

‘If you please, sir.’

‘Miss Manette, I am a man of business. I have a business charge to acquit myself of. In your reception of it, don’t heed me any more than if I was a speaking machine – truly, I am not much else. I will, with your leave, relate to you, miss, the story of one of our customers.’

‘Story!’

He seemed wilfully to mistake the word she had repeated, when he added, in a hurry, ‘Yes, customers; in the banking business we usually call our connexion our customers. He was a French gentleman; a scientific gentleman; a man of great acquirements – a Doctor.’

‘Not of Beauvais?’

‘Why, yes, of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father, the gentleman was of Beauvais. Like Monsieur Manette, your father, the gentleman was of repute in Paris. I had the honour of knowing him there. Our relations were business relations, but confidential. I was at that time in our French House, and, had been – oh! twenty years.’

‘At that time – I may ask, at what time, sir?’

‘I speak, miss, of twenty years ago. He married – an English lady – and I was one of the trustees. His affairs, like the affairs of many other French gentlemen and French families, were entirely in Tellson’s hands. In a similar way, I am, or I have been, trustee of one kind or other for scores of our customers. These are mere business relations, miss; there is no friendship in them, no particular interest, nothing like sentiment. I have passed from one to another, in the course of my business life, just as I pass from one of our customers to another in the course of my business day; in short, I have no feelings; I am a mere machine. To go on—’

‘But this is my father’s story, sir; and I begin to think’ – the curiously roughened forehead was very intent upon him – ‘that when I was left an orphan, through my mother’s surviving my father only two years, it was you who brought me to England. I am almost sure it was you.’

Mr Lorry took the hesitating little hand that confidingly advanced to take his, and he put it with some ceremony to his lips. He then conducted the young lady straightway to her chair again, and, holding the chair-back with his left hand, and using his right by turns to rub his chin, pull his wig at the ears, or point what he said, stood looking down into her face while she sat looking up into his.

‘Miss Manette, it
was
I. And you will see how truly I spoke of myself just now, in saying I had no feelings, and that all the relations I hold with my fellow-creatures are mere business relations, when you reflect that I have never seen you since. No; you have been the ward of Tellson’s House since, and I have been busy with the other business of Tellson’s House since. Feelings! I have no time for them, no chance of them. I pass my whole life, miss, in turning an immense pecuniary Mangle.’

After this odd description of his daily routine of employment, Mr Lorry flattened his flaxen wig upon his head with both hands (which was most unnecessary, for nothing could be flatter than its shining surface was before), and resumed his former attitude.

‘So far, miss (as you have remarked), this is the story of your regretted father. Now comes the difference. If your father had not died when he did—Don’t be frightened! How you start!’

She did, indeed, start. And she caught his wrist with both her hands.

‘Pray,’ said Mr Lorry, in a soothing tone, bringing his left hand from the back of the chair to lay it on the supplicatory fingers that clasped him in so violent a tremble: ‘pray control your agitation – a matter of business. As I was saying—’

Her look so discomposed him that he stopped, wandered, and began anew:

‘As I was saying; if Monsieur Manette had not died; if he had suddenly and silently disappeared; if he had been spirited away; if it had not been difficult to guess to what dreadful place, though no art could trace him; if he had an enemy in some compatriot who could exercise a privilege that I in my own time have known the boldest people afraid to speak of in a whisper, across the water, there; for instance, the privilege of filling up blank forms for the consignment of any one to the oblivion of a prison for any length of time; if his wife had implored the king, the queen, the court, the clergy, for any tidings of him, and all quite in vain; – then the history of your father would have been the history of this unfortunate gentleman, the Doctor of Beauvais.’

‘I entreat you to tell me more, sir.’

‘I will. I am going to. You can bear it?’

‘I can bear anything but the uncertainty you leave me in at this moment.’

‘You speak collectedly, and you –
are
collected. That’s good!’ (Though his manner was less satisfied than his words.) ‘A matter of business. Regard it as a matter of business – business that must be done. Now, if this Doctor’s wife, though a lady of great courage and spirit, had suffered so intensely from this cause before her little child was born—’

‘The little child was a daughter, sir.’

‘A daughter. A – a – matter of business – don’t be distressed. Miss, if the poor lady had suffered so intensely before her little child was born, that she came to the determination of sparing the poor child the inheritance of any part of the agony she had known the pains of, by rearing her in the belief that her father was dead—No, don’t kneel! In Heaven’s name why should you kneel to me!’