“Really, then?” said Mr. Lorry, as an amendment.
“Really, is bad enough,” 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
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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.
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“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
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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 all 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
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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
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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 upstairs, 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
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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.
It was an oppressive day, and, after dinner, Lucie proposed that
the wine should be carried out under the plane-tree, and they
should sit there in the air. As everything turned upon her, and
revolved about her, they went out under the plane-tree, and she
carried the wine down for the special benefit of Mr. Lorry. She
had installed herself, some time before, as Mr. Lorry’s cupbearer;
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and while they sat under the plane-tree, talking, she kept his glass
replenished. Mysterious backs and ends of houses peeped at them
as they talked, and the plane-tree whispered to them in its own
way above their heads.
Still, the Hundreds of people did not present themselves. Mr.
Darnay presented himself while they were sitting under the plane-
tree, but he was only One.
Doctor Manette received him kindly, and so did Lucie. But Miss
Pross suddenly became afflicted with a twitching in the head and
body, and retired into the house. She was not unfrequently the
victim of this disorder, and she called it, in familiar conversation,
“a fit of the jerks.”
The Doctor was in his best condition, and looked specially
young. The resemblance between him and Lucie was very strong
at such times, and as they sat side by side, she leaning on his
shoulder, and he resting his arm on the back of her chair, it was
very agreeable to trace the likeness.
He had been talking all day, on many subjects, and with
unusual vivacity. “Pray, Doctor Manette,” said Mr. Darnay, as they
sat under the plane-tree—and he said it in the natural pursuit of
the topic in hand, which happened to be the old buildings of
London—”have you seen much of the Tower?”
“Lucie and I have been there; but only casually. We have seen
enough of it, to know that it teems with interest; little more.”
“I have been there, as you remember,” said Darnay, with a
smile, though reddening a little angrily, “in another character, and
not in a character that gives facilities for seeing much of it. They
told me a curious thing when I was there.”
“What was that?” Lucie asked.
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“In making some alterations, the workmen came upon an old
dungeon, which had been, for many years, built up and forgotten.
Every stone of its inner wall was covered by inscriptions which
had been carved by prisoners—dates, names, complaints, and
prayers. Upon a corner stone in an angle of the wall, one prisoner,
who seemed to have gone to execution, had cut as his last work,
three letters. They were done with some very poor instrument,
and hurriedly, with an unsteady hand. At first, they were read as
D.I.C.; but, on being more carefully examined, the last letter was
found to be G. There was no record or legend of any prisoner with
those initials, and many fruitless guesses were made what the
name could have been. At length, it was suggested that the letters
were not initials, but the complete word, DIG. The floor was
examined very carefully under the inscription, and, in the earth
beneath a stone, or tile, or some fragment of paving, were found
the ashes of a paper, mingled with the ashes of a small leathern
case or bag. What the unknown prisoner had written will never be
read, but he had written something, and hidden it away to keep it
from the gaoler.”
“My father,” exclaimed Lucie, “you are ill!”
He had suddenly started up, with his hand to his head. His
manner and his look quite terrified them all.
“No, my dear, not ill. There are large drops of rain falling, and
they made me start. We had better go in.”
He recovered himself almost instantly. Rain was really falling in
large drops, and he showed the back of his hand with raindrops on
it. But, he said not a single word in reference to the discovery that
had been told of, and, as they went into the house, the business
eye of Mr. Lorry either detected, or fancied it detected, on his face,
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as it turned towards Charles Darnay, the same singular look that
had been upon it when it turned towards him in the passages of
the Court House.
He recovered himself so quickly, however, that Mr. Lorry had
doubts of his business eye. The arm of the golden giant in the hall
was not more steady than he was, when he stopped under it to
remark to them that he was not yet proof against slight surprises
(if he ever would be), and that the rain had startled him.
Tea-time, and Miss Pross making tea, with another fit of the
jerks upon her, and yet no Hundreds of people. Mr. Carton had
lounged in, but he made only Two.
The night was so very sultry, that although they sat with doors
and windows open, they were overpowered by heat. When the tea-
table was done with, they all moved to one of the windows, and
looked out into the heavy twilight. Lucie sat by her father; Darnay
sat beside her; Carton leaned against a window. The curtains were
long and white, and some of the thunder-gusts that whirled into
the corner, caught them up to the ceiling, and waved them like
spectral wings.
“The raindrops are still falling, large, heavy, and few,” said
Doctor Manette. “It comes slowly.”
“It comes surely,” said Carton.
They spoke low, as people watching and waiting mostly do; as
people in a dark room, watching and waiting for Lightning, always
do.
There was a great hurry in the streets, of people speeding away
to get shelter before the storm broke; the wonderful corner for
echoes resounded with the echoes of footsteps coming and going,
yet not a footstep was there.
