A Tale of Two Cities
ostentatious friendliness for the disclosure he was about to make,
“because I know you don’t mean half you say; and if you meant it
all, it would be of no importance. I make this little preface, because
you once mentioned the young lady to me in slighting terms.”
“I did?”
“Certainly; and in these chambers.”
Sydney Carton looked at his punch and looked at his
complacent friend; drank his punch and looked at his complacent
friend.
“You made mention of the young lady as a golden haired doll.
The young lady is Miss Manette. If you had been a fellow of any
sensitiveness or delicacy of feeling that kind of way, Sydney, I
might have been a little resentful of your employing such a
designation; but you are not. You want that sense altogether;
therefore I am no more annoyed when I think of the expression,
than I should be annoyed by a man’s opinion of a picture of mine,
who had no eye for pictures: or of a piece of music of mine, who
had no ear for music.”
Sydney Carton drank the punch at a great rate; drank it by
bumpers, looking at his friend.
“Now you know all about it, Syd,” said Mr. Stryver. “I don’t
care about fortune: she is a charming creature, and I have made
up my mind to please myself: on the whole, I think I can afford to
please myself. She will have in me a man already pretty well off,
and a rapidly rising man, and a man of some distinction: it is a
piece of good fortune for her, but she is worthy of good fortune.
Are you astonished?”
Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, “Why should I be
astonished?”
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“You approve?”
Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined, “Why should I not
approve?”
“Well!” said his friend Stryver, “you take it more easily than I
fancied you would, and are less mercenary on my behalf than I
thought you would be; though, to be sure, you know well enough
by this time that your ancient chum is a man of a pretty strong
will. Yes, Sydney, I have had enough of this style of life, with no
other as a change from it; I feel that it is a pleasant thing for a man
to have a home when he feels inclined to go to it (when he doesn’t,
he can stay away), and I feel that Miss Manette will tell well in any
station, and will always do me credit. So I have made up my mind.
And now, Sydney, old boy, I want to say a word to you about your
prospects. You are in a bad way, you know; you really are in a bad
way. You don’t know the value of money, you live hard, you’ll
knock up one of these days, and be ill and poor; you really ought to
think about a nurse.”
The prosperous patronage with which he said it, made him look
twice as big as he was, and four times as offensive.
“Now let me recommend you,” pursued Stryver, “to look it in
the face. I have looked it in the face, in my different way; look it in
the face, you, in your different way. Marry. Provide somebody to
take care of you. Never mind your having no enjoyment of
woman’s society, nor understanding of it, nor tact for it. Find out
somebody. Find out some respectable woman with a little
property—somebody in the landlady way, or lodging-letting way—
and marry her, against a rainy day. That’s the kind of thing for
you. Now think of it, Sydney.”
“I’ll think of it,” said Sydney.
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Chapter XVIII
THE FELLOW OF DELICACY
Mr. Stryver having made up his mind to that
magnanimous bestowal of good fortune on the Doctor’s
daughter, resolved to make her happiness known to her
before he left town for the Long Vacation. After some mental
debating of the point, he came to the conclusion that it would be as
well to get all the preliminaries done with, and they could then
arrange at their leisure whether he should give her his hand a
week or two before Michaelmas Term, or in the little Christmas
vacation between it and Hilary.
As to the strength of his case, he had not a doubt about it, but
clearly saw his way to the verdict. Argued with the jury on
substantial worldly grounds—the only grounds ever worth taking
into account—it was a plain case, and had not a weak spot in it. He
called himself for the plaintiff, there was no getting over his
evidence, the counsel for the defendant threw up his brief, and the
jury did not even turn to consider. After trying it, Stryver, C.J.,
was satisfied that no plainer case could be.
Accordingly, Mr. Stryver inaugurated the Long Vacation with a
formal proposal to take Miss Manette to Vauxhall Gardens; that
failing, to Ranelagh; that unaccountably failing too, it behoved him
to present himself in Soho, and there declare his noble mind.
Towards Soho, therefore, Mr. Stryver shouldered his way from
the Temple, while the bloom of the Long Vacation’s infancy was
still upon it. Anybody who had seen him projecting himself into
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Soho while he was yet on St. Dunstan’s side of Temple Bar,
bursting in his full-blown way along the pavement, to the
jostlement of all weaker people, might have seen how safe and
strong he was.
His way taking him past Tellson’s, and he both banking at
Tellson’s and knowing Mr. Lorry as the intimate friend of the
Manettes, it entered Mr. Stryver’s mind to enter the bank, and
reveal to Mr. Lorry the brightness of the Soho horizon. So, he
pushed open the door with the weak rattle in its throat, stumbled
down the two steps, got past the two ancient cashiers, and
shouldered himself into the musty back closet where Mr. Lorry sat
at great books ruled for figures, with perpendicular iron bars to
his window as if that was ruled for figures too, and everything
under the clouds were a sum.
“Halloa!” said Mr. Stryver, “How do you do? I hope you are
well!”
It was Stryver’s grand peculiarity that he always seemed too big
for any place, or space. He was so much too big for Tellson’s, that
old clerks in distant corners looked up with looks of remonstrance,
as though he squeezed them against the wall. The House itself,
magnificently reading the paper quite in the far-off perspective,
lowered displeased, as if the Stryver head had been butted into its
responsible waistcoat.
The discreet Mr. Lorry said, in a sample tone of the voice he
would recommend under the circumstances, “How do you do, Mr.
Stryver? How do you do, sir?” and shook hands. There was a
peculiarity in his manner of shaking hands, always to be seen in
any clerk at Tellson’s who shook hands with a customer when the
House pervaded the air. He shook in a self-abnegating way, as one
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who shook for Tellson & Co.
“Can I do anything for you, Mr. Stryver?” asked Mr. Lorry, in
his business character.
“Why, no, thank you; this is a private visit to yourself, Mr.
Lorry; I have come for a private word.”
“Oh indeed!” said Mr. Lorry, bending down his ear, while his
eye strayed to the House afar off.
“I am going,” said Mr. Stryver, leaning his arms confidently on
the desk: whereupon, although it was a large double one, there
appeared to be not half desk enough for him: “I am going to make
an offer of myself in marriage to your agreeable little friend, Miss
Manette, Mr. Lorry.”
“Oh dear me!” cried Mr. Lorry, rubbing his chin, and looking at
his visitor dubiously.
“Oh dear me, sir?” repeated Stryver, drawing back. “Oh dear
you, sir? What may your meaning be, Mr. Lorry?”
“My meaning,” answered the man of business, “is, of course,
friendly and appreciative, and that it does you the greatest credit,
and—in short, my meaning is everything you could desire. But—
really you know, Mr. Stryver—” Mr. Lorry paused, and shook his
head at him in the oddest manner, as if he were compelled against
his will to add, internally, “You know there really is so much too
much of you!”
“Well!” said Stryver, slapping the desk with his contentious
hand, opening his eyes wider, and taking a long breath, “if I
understand you, Mr. Lorry, I’ll be hanged!”
Mr. Lorry adjusted his little wig at both ears as a means
towards that end, and bit the feather of a pen.
“D—n it all, sir!” said Stryver, staring at him, “am I not
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eligible?”
“Oh dear yes! Yes. Oh yes, you’re eligible!” said Mr. Lorry. “If
you say eligible, you are eligible.”
“Am I not prosperous?” asked Stryver.
“Oh! if you come to prosperous, you are prosperous,” said Mr.
Lorry.
“And advancing?”
“If you come to advancing, you know,” said Mr. Lorry,
delighted to be able to make another admission, “nobody can
doubt that.”
“Then what on earth is your meaning, Mr. Lorry?” demanded
Stryver, perceptibly crestfallen.
“Well! I—Were you going there now?” asked Mr. Lorry.
“Straight!” said Stryver, with a plump of his fist on the desk.
“Then I think I wouldn’t, if I was you.”
“Why,” said Stryver. “Now, I’ll put you in a corner,” forensically
shaking a forefinger at him. “You are a man of business and bound
to have a reason. State your reason. Why wouldn’t you go?”
“Because,” said Mr. Lorry, “I wouldn’t go on such an object
without having some cause to believe that I should succeed.”
“D—n ME!” cried Stryver, “but this beats everything.”
Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and glanced at the
angry Stryver.
“Here’s a man of business—a man of years—a man of
experience—in a bank,” said Stryver; “and having summed up
three leading reasons for complete success, he says there’s no
reason at all! Says it with his head on!” Mr. Stryver remarked
upon the peculiarity as if it would have been infinitely less
remarkable if he had said it with his head off.
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“When I speak of success, I speak of success with the young
lady; and when I speak of causes and reasons to make success
probable, I speak of causes and reasons that will tell as such with
the young lady. The young lady, my good sir,” said Mr. Lorry,
mildly tapping the Stryver arm, “the young lady. The young lady
goes before all.”
“Then you mean to tell me, Mr. Lorry,” said Stryver, squaring
his elbows, “that it is your deliberate opinion that the young lady
at present in question is a mincing Fool?”
“Not exactly so. I mean to tell you, Mr. Stryver,” said Mr. Lorry,
reddening, “that I will hear no disrespectful word of that young
lady from any lips; and that if I knew any man—which I hope I do
not—whose taste was so coarse, and whose temper was so
overbearing, that he could not restrain himself from speaking
disrespectfully of that young lady at this desk, not even Tellson’s
should prevent my giving him a piece of my mind.”
The necessity of being angry in a suppressed tone had put Mr.
Stryver’s blood-vessels into a dangerous state when it was his turn
to be angry; Mr. Lorry’s veins, methodical as their courses could
usually be, were in no better state now it was his turn.
“That is what I mean to tell you, sir,” said Mr. Lorry. “Pray let
there be no mistake about it.”
Mr. Stryver sucked the end of a ruler for a little while, and then
stood hitting a tune out of his teeth with it, which probably gave
him the toothache. He broke the awkward silence by saying:
“This is something new to me. Mr. Lorry. You deliberately
advise me not to go up to Soho and offer myself—myself, Stryver
of the King’s Bench bar?”
“Do you ask me for my advice, Mr. Stryver?”
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“Yes, I do.”
“Very good. Then I give it, and you have repeated it correctly.”
“And all I can say of it is,” laughed Stryver with a vexed laugh,
“that this—ha, ha!—beats everything past, present, and to come.”
“Now understand me,” pursued Mr. Lorry. “As a man of
business, I am not justified in saying anything about this matter,
for, as a man of business, I know nothing of it. But, as an old
fellow, who has carried Miss Manette in his arms, who is the
trusted friend of Miss Manette and of her father too, and who has a
great affection for them both, I have spoken. The confidence is not
of my seeking, recollect. Now, you think I may not be right?”
“Not I!” said Stryver, whistling. “I can’t undertake to find third
parties in common sense; I can only find it for myself. I suppose
sense in certain quarters; you suppose mincing bread-and-butter
nonsense. It’s new to me, but you are right, I daresay.”
“What I suppose, Mr. Stryver, I claim to characterise for myself.
And understand me, sir,” said Mr. Lorry, quickly flushing again, “I
will not—not even at Tellson’s—have it characterised for me by
any gentleman breathing.
“There! I beg your pardon!” said Stryver.
“Granted. Thank you. Well, Mr. Stryver, I was about to say:—it
might be painful too you to find yourself mistaken, it might be
painful to Doctor Manette to have the task of being explicit with
you, it might be very painful to Miss Manette to have the task of
being explicit with you. You know the terms upon which I have
the honour and happiness to stand with the family. If you please,
committing you in no way, representing you in no way, I will
undertake to correct my advice by the exercise of a little new
observation and judgment expressly brought to bear upon it. If
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you should then be dissatisfied with it, you can but test its
soundness for yourself; if on the other hand, you should be
satisfied with it, and it should be what it now is, it may spare all
sides what is best spared. What do you say?”
“How long would you keep me in town?”
“Oh! It is only a question of a few hours. I could go down to
Soho in the evening, and come to your chambers afterwards.”
“Then I say yes,” said Stryver: “I won’t go up there now, I am
not so hot upon it as that comes to: I say yes, and I shall expect you
to look in tonight. Good morning.”
Then Mr. Stryver turned and burst out of the Bank, causing
such a concussion of air on his passage through, that to stand up
against it bowing behind the two counters, required the utmost
remaining strength of the two ancient clerks. Those venerable and
feeble persons were always seen by the public in the act of bowing,
and were popularly believed, when they had bowed a customer
out, still to keep on bowing in the empty office until they bowed
another customer in.
The barrister was keen enough to divine that the banker would
not have gone so far in his expression of opinion on any less solid
ground than moral certainty. Unprepared as he was for the large
pill he had to swallow, he got it down. “And now,” said Mr.
Stryver, shaking his forensic forefinger at the Temple in general,
when it was down, “my way out of this is to put you all in the
wrong.”
It was a bit of the art of an Old Bailey tactician, in which he
found great relief. “You shall not put me in the wrong, young
lady,” said Mr. Stryver; “I’ll do that for you.”
Accordingly, when Mr. Lorry called that night as late as ten
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o’clock, Mr. Stryver, among a quantity of books and papers,
littered out for the purpose, seemed to have nothing less on his
mind than the subject of the morning. He even showed surprise
when he saw Mr. Lorry, and was altogether in an absent and
preoccupied state.
“Well!” said that good-natured emissary, after a full half-hour of
bootless attempts to bring him round to the question. “I have been
to Soho.”
“To Soho?” repeated Mr. Stryver, coldly. “Oh, to be sure! What
am I thinking of!”
“And I have no doubt,” said Mr. Lorry, “that I was right in the
conversation we had. My opinion is confirmed, and I reiterate my
advice.”
“I assure you,” returned Mr. Stryver, in the friendliest way,
“that I am sorry for it on your account, and sorry for it on the poor
father’s account. I know this must always be a sore subject with
the family; let us say no more about it.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Mr. Lorry.
“I daresay not,” rejoined Stryver, nodding his head in a
smoothing and final way; “no matter, no matter.”
