The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0067/00676.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 14KB | 288 lines

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$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Tale Of Two Cities
Chapter XVIII}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{lorry
pross
miss
dear
old
doctor
time
work
day
days}
$Date{}
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Title:       (A) Tale Of Two Cities
Book:        Book The Second: The Golden Thread
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter XVIII

Nine Days

     The marriage-day was shining brightly, and they were ready outside the
closed door of the Doctor's room, where he was speaking with Charles Darnay.
They were ready to go to church; the beautiful bride, Mr. Lorry, and Miss
Pross - to whom the event, through a gradual process of reconcilement to the
inevitable, would have been one of absolute bliss, but for the yet lingering
consideration that her brother Solomon should have been the bridegroom.

     "And so," said Mr. Lorry, who could not sufficiently admire the bride,
and who had been moving round her to take in every point of her quiet, pretty
dress; "and so it was for this, my sweet Lucie, that I brought you across the
Channel, such a baby!  Lord bless me!  How little I thought what I was doing!
How lightly I valued the obligation I was conferring on my friend Mr.
Charles!"

     "You didn't mean it," remarked the matter-of-fact Miss Pross, "and
therefore how could you know it?  Nonsense!"

     "Really?  Well; but don't cry," said the gentle Mr. Lorry.

     "I am not crying," said Miss Pross; "you are."

     "I, my Pross?"  (By this time, Mr. Lorry dared to be pleasant with her,
on occasion.)

     "You were, just now; I saw you do it, and I don't wonder at it.  Such a
present of plate as you have made 'em, is enough to bring tears into
anybody's eyes.  There's not a fork or a spoon in the collection," said Miss
Pross, "that I didn't cry over, last night after the box came, till I
couldn't see it."

     "I am highly gratified," said Mr. Lorry, "though, upon my honour, I had
no intention of rendering those trifling articles of remembrance invisible to
any one.  Dear me!  This is an occasion that makes a man speculate on all he
has lost.  Dear, dear, dear!  To think that there might have been a Mrs.
Lorry, any time these fifty years almost!"

     "Not at all!"  From Miss Pross.

     "You think there never might have been a Mrs. Lorry?" asked the
gentleman of that name.

     "Pooh!" rejoined Miss Pross; "you were a bachelor in your cradle."

     "Well!" observed Mr. Lorry, beamingly adjusting his little wig, "that
seems probable, too."

     "And you were cut out for a bachelor," pursued Miss Pross, "before you
were put in your cradle."

     "Then, I think," said Mr. Lorry, "that I was very unhandsomely dealt
with, and that I ought to have had a voice in the selection of my pattern.
Enough!  Now, my dear Lucie," drawing his arm soothingly round her waist, "I
hear them moving in the next room, and Miss Pross and I, as two formal folks
of business, are anxious not to lose the final opportunity of saying
something to you that you wish to hear.  You leave your good father, my dear,
in hands as earnest and as loving as your own; he shall be taken every
conceivable care of; during the next fortnight, while you are in Warwickshire
and thereabout, even Tellson's shall go to the wall (comparatively speaking)
before him.  And when, at the fortnight's end, he comes to join you and your
beloved husband, on your other fortnight's trip in Wales, you shall say that
we have sent him to you in the best health and in the happiest frame.  Now I
hear Somebody's step coming to the door.  Let me kiss my dear girl with an
old-fashioned bachelor blessing, before Somebody comes to claim his own."

     For a moment, he held the fair face from him to look at the
well-remembered expression on the forehead, and then laid the bright golden
hair against his little brown wig, with a genuine tenderness and delicacy
which, if such things be old-fashioned, were as old as Adam.

     The door of the Doctor's room opened, and he came out with Charles
Darnay.  He was so deadly pale - which had not been the case when they went
in together - that no vestige of colour was to be seen in his face.  But, in
the composure of his manner he was unaltered, except that to the shrewd
glance of Mr. Lorry it disclosed some shadowy indication that the old air of
avoidance and dread had lately passed over him, like a cold wind.

     He gave his arm to his daughter, and took her downstairs to the chariot
which Mr. Lorry had hired in honour of the day.  The rest followed in another
carriage, and soon, in a neighbouring church, where no strange eyes looked
on, Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette were happily married.

     Besides the glancing tears that shone among the smiles of the little
group when it was done, some diamonds, very bright and sparkling, glanced on
the bride's hand, which were newly released from the dark obscurity of one of
Mr. Lorry's pockets.  They returned home to breakfast, and all went well, and
in due course the golden hair that had mingled with the poor shoemaker's
white locks in the Paris garret, were mingled with them again in the morning
sunlight, on the threshold of the door at parting.

     It was a hard parting, though it was not for long.  But her father
cheered her, and said at last, gently disengaging himself from her enfolding
arms, "Take her, Charles!  She is yours!"

     And her agitated hand waved to them from a chaise window, and she was
gone.

     The corner being out of the way of the idle and curious, and the
preparations having been very simple and few, the Doctor, Mr. Lorry, and Miss
Pross, were left quite alone.  It was when they turned into the welcome shade
of the cool old hall, that Mr. Lorry observed a great change to have come
over the Doctor; as if the golden arm uplifted there, had struck him a
poisoned blow.

     He had naturally repressed much, and some revulsion might have been
expected in him when the occasion for repression was gone.  But, it was the
old scared lost look that troubled Mr. Lorry; and through his absent manner
of clasping his head and drearily wandering away into his own room when they
got up-stairs, Mr. Lorry was reminded of Defarge the wine-shop keeper, and
the starlight ride.

     "I think," he whispered to Miss Pross, after anxious consideration, "I
think we had best no speak to him just now, or at all disturb him.  I must
look in at Tellson's; so I will go there at once and come back presently.
Then, we will take him a ride into the country, and dine there, and all will
be well."

     It was easier for Mr. Lorry to look in at Tellson's, than to look out of
Tellson's.  He was detained two hours.  When he came back, he ascended the
old staircase alone, having asked no question of the servant; going thus into
the Doctor's rooms, he was stopped by a low sound of knocking.

     "Good God!" he said, with a start.  "What's that?"

     Miss Pross, with a terrified face, was at his ear.  "O me, O me!  All is
lost!" cried she, wringing her hands.  "What is to be told to Ladybird?  He
doesn't know me, and is making shoes!"

     Mr. Lorry said what he could to calm her, and went himself into the
Doctor's room.  The bench was turned towards the light, as it had been when
he had seen the shoemaker at his work before, and his head was bent down, and
he was very busy.

     "Doctor Manette.  My dear friend, Doctor Manette!"

     The Doctor looked at him for a moment - half inquiringly, half as if he
were angry at being spoken to - and bent over his work again.

     He had laid aside his coat and waistcoat; his shirt was open at the
throat, as it used to be when he did that work; and even the old haggard,
faded surface of face had come back to him.  He worked hard - impatiently -
as if in some sense of having been interrupted.

     Mr. Lorry glanced at the work in his hand, and observed that it was a
shoe of the old size and shape.  He took up another that was lying by him,
and asked what it was?

     "A young lady's walking shoe," he muttered,