The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0067/00670.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 15KB | 311 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00670}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Tale Of Two Cities
Chapter XII}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{stryver
lorry
am
say
young
lady
way
now
oh
sir}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       (A) Tale Of Two Cities
Book:        Book The Second: The Golden Thread
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter XII

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 Soho while he was yet on Saint
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 were 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 who shook for Tellson and 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 confidentially 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 means towards that
end, and bit the feather of a pen.

     "D - n it all, sir!" said Stryver, staring at him, "am I not 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 is 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.

     "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, an