traveller upon.
By that time, there was only one adventurous traveller left to be
congratulated: for the two others had been set down at their
respective roadside destinations. The mildewy inside of the coach,
with its damp and dirty straw, its disagreeable smell, and its
obscurity, was rather like a larger dog-kennel. Mr. Lorry, the
passenger, shaking himself out of it in chains of straw, a tangle of
shaggy wrapper, flapping hat, and muddy legs, was rather like a
larger sort of dog.
“There will be a packet to Calais, tomorrow, drawer?”
“Yes, sir, if the weather holds and the wind sets tolerable fair.
The tide will serve pretty nicely at about two in the afternoon, sir.
Bed, sir?”
“I shall not go to bed till night; but I want a bedroom, and a
barber.”
“And then breakfast, sir? Yes, sir, That way, sir, if you please.
Show Concord! Gentleman’s valise and hot water to Concord. Pull
off gentleman’s boots in Concord. (You will find a fine sea-coal fire,
sir.) Fetch barber to Concord. Stir about there, now, for Concord!”
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
The Concord bed-chamber being always assigned to a
passenger by the mail, and passengers by the mail being always
heavily wrapped up from head to foot, the room had the odd
interest for the establishment of the Royal George, that although
but one kind of man was seen to go into it, all kinds and varieties
of men came out of it. Consequently, another drawer, and two
porters, and several maids and the landlady, were all loitering by
accident at various points of the road between the Concord and
the coffee-room, when a gentleman of sixty, formally dressed in a
brown suit of clothes, pretty well worn, but very well kept, with
large square cuffs and large flaps to the pockets, passed along on
his way to his breakfast.
The coffee-room had no other occupant, that forenoon, than the
gentleman in brown. His breakfast-table was drawn before the
fire, and as he sat, with its light shining on him, waiting for the
meal, he sat so still, that he might have been sitting for his portrait.
Very orderly and methodical he looked, with a hand on each
knee, and a loud watch ticking a sonorous sermon under his
flapped waistcoat, as though it pitted its gravity and longevity
against the levity and evanescence of the brisk fire. He had a good
leg, and was a little vain of it, for his brown stockings fitted sleek
and close, and were of a fine texture; his shoes and buckles, too,
though plain, were trim. He wore an odd little sleek crisp flaxen
wig, setting very close to his head: which wig, it is to be presumed,
was made of hair, but which looked far more as though it were
spun from filaments of silk or glass. His linen, though not of a
fineness in accordance with his stockings, was as white as the tops
of the waves that broke upon the neighbouring beach, or the
specks of sail that glinted in the sunlight far at sea. A face
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
habitually suppressed and quieted, was still lighted up under the
quaint wig by a pair of moist bright eyes that it must have cost
their owner, in years gone by, some pains to drill to the composed
and reserved expression of Tellson’s Bank. He had a healthy
colour in his cheeks, and his face, though lined, bore few traces of
anxiety. But, perhaps the confidential bachelor clerks in Tellson’s
Bank were principally occupied with the cares of other people;
and perhaps second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come
easily off and on, Completing his resemblance to a man who was
sitting for his portrait, Mr. Lorry dropped off to sleep. 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 today. 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
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
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, dropping 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 into 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.
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
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!” he said.
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.
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
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, 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.
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
“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 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 knew, 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
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
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
outwards 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
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
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
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
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
hand 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
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
A Tale of Two Cities
