The World's Greatest Books_ Volume 3 Part 39

A pair of haggard eyes looked at the questioner, and a very faint voice replied, "Yes, I am working."

"Here is a visitor. Show him that shoe and tell him the maker's name."

There was a long pause, and the shoemaker asked, "What did you say?"

Defarge repeated his words.

"It is a lady's shoe," answered the shoemaker.

"And the maker's name?"

"One Hundred and Five, North Tower."

"Dr. Manette," said Mr. Lorry, looking steadfastly at him, "do you remember nothing of me? Do you remember nothing of Defarge--your old servant?"

As the Bastille captive of many years gazed at them, marks of intelligence forced themselves through the mist that had fallen on him.

They were fainter; they were gone, but they had been there. The young lady moved forward, with tears streaming from her eyes, and kissed him.

He took up her golden hair, and looked at it; then drew from his breast a folded rag, and opened it carefully. It contained a little quant.i.ty of hair. He took the girl's hair into his hand again.

"It is the same! How can it be? She had a fear of my going that night.

_Was it you?_" He turned upon her with frightful suddenness. But his vigour swiftly died out, and he gloomily shook his head. "No, no, no! It can't be!"

She fell on her knees and clasped his neck.

"If you hear in my voice any resemblance to a voice that was once sweet music to your ears, weep for it--weep for it! Thank G.o.d!" she cried. "I feel his sacred tears upon my face! Leave us here," she said. And, as the darkness closed in, they left father and daughter together.

They came back at night. A coach stood outside the courtyard, and the lately released prisoner, in scared, blank wonder, began the journey that was to end in England and rest.

_II.--The Jackal_

In the dimly-lighted pa.s.sages of the Old Bailey, Dr. Manette, his daughter, and Mr. Lorry stood by Mr. Charles Darnay--just acquitted on a charge of high treason--congratulating him on his escape from death.

It was not difficult to recognise in Dr. Manette, intellectual of face and upright in bearing, the shoemaker of the garret in Paris. He and his daughter had been unwilling witnesses for the prosecution, called to give evidence that might be distorted into corroboration of a paid spy's falsehoods as to Darnay's dealings with the French king.

Darnay kissed Lucie Manette's hand fervently and gratefully, and warmly thanked his counsel, Mr. Stryver. As he watched them go, a person who had been leaning against the wall stepped up to him. It was Mr. Carton, a barrister, who had sat throughout the trial with his whole attention seemingly concentrated upon the ceiling of the court. Everybody had been struck with the extraordinary resemblance, cleverly used by the defending counsel to confound a witness, between Mr. Carton and Mr.

Darnay. Mr. Carton was shabbily dressed, and did not appear to be quite sober.

"This must be a strange sight to you," said Carton, with a laugh.

"I hardly seem yet," returned Darnay, "to belong to this world again."

"Then why the devil don't you dine?"

He led him to a tavern, where Darnay recruited his strength with a good, plain dinner. Carton drank, but ate nothing.

"Now your dinner is done," Carton presently said, "why don't you give your toast?"

"What toast?"

"Why, it's on the tip of your tongue."

"Miss Manette, then!"

Carton drank the toast, and flung his gla.s.s over his shoulder against the wall, where it shivered in pieces.

After Darnay had gone, Carton drank and slept till ten o'clock, and then walked to the chambers of Mr. Stryver. Mr. Stryver was a glib man, and an unscrupulous, and a bold, and was fast shouldering his way to a lucrative practice; but it had been noted that he had not the striking and necessary faculty of extracting evidence from a heap of statements.

A remarkable improvement, however, came upon him as to this. Sydney Carton, idlest and most unpromising of men, was his great ally. What the two drank together would have floated a king's ship.

Stryver never had a case in hand but what Carton was there, with his hands in his pockets, staring at the ceiling. At last it began to get about that, although Sydney Carton would never be a lion, he was an amazingly good jackal, and that he rendered service to Stryver in that humble capacity. Folding wet towels on his head in a manner hideous to behold, the jackal began the "boiling down" of cases, while Stryver reclined before the fire. Each had bottles and gla.s.ses ready to his hand. The work was not done until the clocks were striking three.

Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, Carton threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed. Sadly, sadly the sun rose. It rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight upon him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.

_III.--The Loadstone Rock_

"Dear Dr. Manette," said Charles Darnay, "I love your daughter fondly, devotedly. If ever there were love in the world, I love her!"

Dr. Manette turned towards him in his chair, but did not look at him or raise his eyes.

"Have you spoken to Lucie?" he asked.

"No."

The doctor looked up; a struggle was evidently in his face--a struggle with that look he still sometimes wore, with a tendency in it to dark doubt and dread.

"If Lucie should ever tell me," he said, "that you are essential to her perfect happiness, I will give her to you."

"Your confidence in me," answered Darnay, relieved, "ought to be returned with full confidence on my part. I am, as you know, like yourself, a voluntary exile from France. The name I bear at present is not my own. I wish to tell you what that is, and why I am in England."

"Stop!"

The doctor laid his two hands on Darnay's lips.

"Tell me when I ask you, not now. Go! G.o.d bless you!"

On a day shortly before the marriage, while Lucie was sitting at her work alone, Sydney Carton entered.

"I fear you are not well, Mr. Carton," she said, looking up at him.

"No; but the life I lead is not conducive to health."

"Is it not--forgive me--a pity to live no better life?"

"It is too late for that." He covered her eyes with his hand. "Will you hear me?" he continued. "Since I have known you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing; but let me carry through the rest of my misdirected life the remembrance that I opened my heart to you, last of all the world."