“I say!Might I ask the favour?As to whether your name is John Solomon, or Solomon John?”
The official turned towards him with sudden distrust. He had not previously uttered a word.
“Come!” said Mr. Cruncher. “Speak out, you know.” (Which, by the way,was more than he could do himself.) “John Solomon, or Solomon John?She calls you Solomon, and she must know, being your sister. And _I_ know you’re John, you know. Which of the two goes first?And regarding that name of Pross, likewise. That warn’t your name over the water.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I don’t know all I mean, for I can’t call to mind what your name was, over the water.”
“No?”
“No. But I’ll swear it was a name of two syllables.”
“Indeed?”
“Yes. T’other one’s was one syllable. I know you. You was a spy--witness at the Bailey. What,in the name of the Father of Lies, own father to yourself, was you called at that time?”
“Barsad,” said another voice, striking in.
“That’s the name for a thousand pound!” cried Jerry.
The speaker who struck in, was Sydney Carton.He had his hands behind him under the skirts of his riding-coat, and he stood at Mr.Cruncher’s elbow as negligently as he might have stood at the Old Bailey itself.
“Don’t be alarmed, my dear Miss Pross. I arrived at Mr. Lorry’s, to his surprise, yesterday evening;we agreed that I would not present myself elsewhere until all was well,or unless I could be useful; I present myself here, to beg a little talk with your brother.I wish you had a better employed brother than Mr. Barsad. I wish for your sake Mr. Barsad was not a Sheep of the Prisons.”
Sheep was a cant word of the time for a spy, under the gaolers. The spy, who was pale, turned paler, and asked him how he dared--
“I’ll tell you,” said Sydney. “I lighted on you, Mr. Barsad,coming out of the prison of the Conciergerie while I was contemplating the walls,an hour or more ago. You have a face to be remembered, and I remember faces well.Made curious by seeing you in that connection, and having a reason, to which you are no stranger,for associating you with the misfortunes of a friend now very unfortunate,I walked in your direction. I walked into the wine-shop here, close after you, and sat near you.I had no difficulty in deducing from your unreserved conversation,and the rumour openly going about among your admirers, the nature of your calling. And gradually,what I had done at random, seemed to shape itself into a purpose, Mr. Barsad.”
“What purpose?” the spy asked.
“It would be troublesome, and might be dangerous, to explain in the street. Could you favour me,in confidence, with some minutes of your company--at the office of Tellson’s Bank, for instance?”
“Under a threat?”
“Oh!Did I say that?”
“Then, why should I go there?”
“Really, Mr. Barsad, I can’t say, if you can’t.”
“Do you mean that you won’t say, sir?” the spy irresolutely asked.
“You apprehend me very clearly, Mr. Barsad. I won’t.”
Carton’s negligent recklessness of manner came powerfully in aid of his quickness and skill,in such a business as he had in his secret mind, and with such a man as he had to do with.His practised eye saw it, and made the most of it.
“Now, I told you so,” said the spy, casting a reproachful look at his sister;“if any trouble comes of this, it’s your doing.”
“Come, come, Mr. Barsad!” exclaimed Sydney. “Don’t be ungrateful. But for my great respect for your sister,I might not have led up so pleasantly to a little proposal that I wish to make for our mutual satisfaction. Do you go with me to the Bank?”
“I’ll hear what you have got to say. Yes, I’ll go with you.”
“I propose that we first conduct your sister safely to the corner of her own street.Let me take your arm, Miss Pross. This is not a good city, at this time, for you to be out in,unprotected; and as your escort knows Mr. Barsad, I will invite him to Mr. Lorry’s with us. Are we ready?Come then!”
Miss Pross recalled soon afterwards, and to the end of her life remembered,that as she pressed her hands on Sydney’s arm and looked up in his face,imploring him to do no hurt to Solomon,there was a braced purpose in the arm and a kind of inspiration in the eyes,which not only contradicted his light manner, but changed and raised the man.She was too much occupied then with fears for the brother who so little deserved her affection,and with Sydney’s friendly reassurances, adequately to heed what she observed.
They left her at the corner of the street, and Carton led the way to Mr. Lorry’s,which was within a few minutes’ walk. John Barsad, or Solomon Pross, walked at his side.
Mr. Lorry had just finished his dinner, and was sitting before a cheery little log or two of fire--perhaps looking into their blaze for the picture of that younger elderly gentleman from Tellson’s, who had looked into the red coals at the Royal George at Dover, now a good many years ago. He turned his head as they entered, and showed the surprise with which he saw a stranger.
“Miss Pross’s brother, sir,” said Sydney. “Mr. Barsad.”
“Barsad?” repeated the old gentleman, “Barsad?I have an association with the name--and with the face.”
“I told you you had a remarkable face, Mr. Barsad,” observed Carton, coolly. “Pray sit down.”
As he took a chair himself, he supplied the link that Mr. Lorry wanted,by saying to him with a frown, “Witness at that trial.” Mr. Lorry immediately remembered,and regarded his new visitor with an undisguised look of abhorrence.
“Mr. Barsad has been recognised by Miss Pross as the affectionate brother you have heard of,” said Sydney, “and has acknowledged the relationship. I pass to worse news. Darnay has been arrested again.”
Struck with consternation, the old gentleman exclaimed, “What do you tell me!I left him safe and free within these two hours, and am about to return to him!”
“Arrested for all that. When was it done, Mr. Barsad?”
“Just now, if at all.”
“Mr. Barsad is the best authority possible, sir,” said Sydney, “and I have it from Mr.Barsad’s communication to a friend and brother Sheep over a bottle of wine,that the arrest has taken place. He left the messengers at the gate,and saw them admitted by the porter. There is no earthly doubt that he is retaken.”
Mr. Lorry’s business eye read in the speaker’s face that it was loss of time to dwell upon the point.Confused, but sensible that something might depend on his presence of mind, he commanded himself, and was silently attentive.
“Now, I trust,” said Sydney to him, “that the name and influence of Doctor Manette may stand him in as good stead to-morrow--you said he would be before the Tribunal again to-morrow, Mr. Barsad?--”
“Yes; I believe so.”
“--In as good stead to-morrow as to-day. But it may not be so. I own to you, I am shaken, Mr. Lorry,by Doctor Manette’s not having had the power to prevent this arrest.”
“He may not have known of it beforehand,” said Mr. Lorry.
“But that very circumstance would be alarming,when we remember how identified he is with his son-in-law.”
“That’s true,” Mr. Lorry acknowledged, with his troubled hand at his chin, and his troubled eyes on Carton.
“In short,” said Sydney, “this is a desperate time,when desperate games are played for desperate stakes. Let the Doctor play the winning game;I will play the losing one. No man’s life here is worth purchase.Any one carried home by the people to-day, may be condemned tomorrow. Now,the stake I have resolved to play for, in case of the worst, is a friend in the Conciergerie.And the friend I purpose to myself to win, is Mr. Barsad.”
“You need have good cards, sir,” said the spy.
“I’ll run them over. I’ll see what I hold,--Mr. Lorry, you know what a brute I am; I wish you’d give me a little brandy.”
It was put before him, and he drank off a glassful--drank off another glassful--pushed the bottle thoughtfully away.
“Mr. Barsad,” he went on, in the tone of one who really was looking over a hand at cards:“Sheep of the prisons, emissary of Republican committees, now turnkey, now prisoner,always spy and secret informer, so much the more valuable here for being English that an Englishman is less open to suspicion of subornation in those characters than a Frenchman, represents himself to his employers under a false name. That’s a very good card. Mr. Barsad, now in the employ of the republican French government, was formerly in the employ of the aristocratic English government, the enemy of France and freedom. That’s an excellent card. Inference clear as day in this region of suspicion, that Mr. Barsad, still in the pay of the aristocratic English government, is the spy of Pitt, the treacherous foe of the Republic crouching in its bosom, the English traitor and agent of all mischief so much spoken of and so difficult to find. That’s a card not to be beaten. Have you followed my hand, Mr. Barsad?”
“Not to understand your play,” returned the spy, somewhat uneasily.
“I play my Ace, Denunciation of Mr. Barsad to the nearest Section Committee. Look over your hand,Mr. Barsad, and see what you have. Don’t hurry.”
He drew the bottle near, poured out another glassful of brandy, and drank it off.He saw that the spy was fearful of his drinking himself into a fit state for the immediate denunciation of him.Seeing it, he poured out and drank another glassful.
“Look over your hand carefully, Mr. Barsad. Take time.”
It was a poorer hand than he suspected. Mr.Barsad saw losing cards in it that Sydney Carton knew nothing of.Thrown out of his honourable employment in England,through too much unsuccessful hard swearing there--not because he was not wanted there;our English reasons for vaunting our superiority to secrecy and spies are of very modern date--he knew that he had crossed the Channel,and accepted service in France: first, as a tempter and an eavesdropper among his own countrymen there:gradually, as a tempter and an eavesdropper among the natives.He knew that under the overthrown government he had been a spy upon Saint Antoine and Defarge’s wine-shop;had received from the watchful police such heads of information concerning Doctor Manette’s imprisonment,release, and history, as should serve him for an introduction to familiar conversation with the Defarges;and tried them on Madame Defarge, and had broken down with them signally.He always remembered with fear and trembling,that that terrible woman had knitted when he talked with her,and had looked ominously at him as her fingers moved. He had since seen her,in the Section of Saint Antoine, over and over again produce her knitted registers,and denounce people whose lives the guillotine then surely swallowed up. He knew,as every one employed as he was did, that he was never safe; that flight was impossible;that he was tied fast under the shadow of the axe;and that in spite of his utmost tergiversation and treachery in furtherance of the reigning terror,a word might bring it down upon him. Once denounced,and on such grave grounds as had just now been suggested to his mind,he foresaw that the dreadful woman of whose unrelenting character he had seen many proofs,would produce against him that fatal register, and would quash his last chance of life.Besides that all secret men are men soon terrified,here were surely cards enough of one black suit,to justify the holder in growing rather livid as he turned them over.
“You scarcely seem to like your hand,” said Sydney, with the greatest composure. “Do you play?”
“I think, sir,” said the spy, in the meanest manner, as he turned to Mr. Lorry,“I may appeal to a gentleman of your years and benevolence, to put it to this other gentleman,so much your junior, whether he can under any circumstances reconcile it to his station to play that Ace of which he has spoken.I admit that _I_ am a spy, and that it is considered a discreditable station--though it must be filled by somebody;but this gentleman is no spy, and why should he so demean himself as to make himself one?”
“I play my Ace, Mr. Barsad,” said Carton, taking the answer on himself, and looking at his watch,“without any scruple, in a very few minutes.”
“I should have hoped, gentlemen both,” said the spy, always striving to hook Mr.Lorry into the discussion, “that your respect for my sister--”
“I could not better testify my respect for your sister than by finally relieving her of her brother, ” said Sydney Carton.
“You think not, sir?”
“I have thoroughly made up my mind about it.”
The smooth manner of the spy, curiously in dissonance with his ostentatiously rough dress,and probably with his usual demeanour, received such a check from the inscrutability of Carton,--who was a mystery to wiser and honester men than he,--that it faltered here and failed him.While he was at a loss, Carton said, resuming his former air of contemplating cards:
“And indeed, now I think again, I have a strong impression that I have another good card here,not yet enumerated. That friend and fellow-Sheep,who spoke of himself as pasturing in the country prisons; who was he?”
“French. You don’t know him,” said the spy, quickly.
“French, eh?” repeated Carton, musing, and not appearing to notice him at all, though he echoed his word. “Well; he may be.”
“Is, I assure you,” said the spy; “though it’s not important.”
“Though it’s not important,” repeated Carton,in the same mechanical way--“though it’s not important--No, it’s not important. No. Yet I know the face.”
“I think not. I am sure not. It can’t be,” said the spy.
“It-can’t-be,” muttered Sydney Carton, retrospectively,and idling his glass (which fortunately was a small one) again. “Can’t-be. Spoke good French. Yet like a foreigner, I thought?”
“Provincial,” said the spy.
“No. Foreign!” cried Carton, striking his open hand on the table, as a light broke clearly on his mind. “Cly!Disguised, but the same man. We had that man before us at the Old Bailey.”
“Now, there you are hasty, sir,” said Barsad,with a smile that gave his aquiline nose an extra inclination to one side;“there you really give me an advantage over you. Cly (who I will unreservedly admit,at this distance of time, was a partner of mine) has been dead several years.I attended him in his last illness. He was buried in London,at the church of Saint Pancras-in-the-Fields.His unpopularity with the blackguard multitude at the moment prevented my following his remains, but I helped to lay him in his coffin.”
Here, Mr. Lorry became aware, from where he sat, of a most remarkable goblin shadow on the wall.Tracing it to its source, he discovered it to be caused by a sudden extraordinary rising and stiffening of all the risen and stiff hair on Mr. Cruncher’s head.
“Let us be reasonable,” said the spy, “and let us be fair. To show you how mistaken you are,and what an unfounded assumption yours is, I will lay before you a certificate of Cly’s burial,which I happened to have carried in my pocket-book,” with a hurried hand he produced and opened it,“ever since. There it is. Oh, look at it, look at it!You may take it in your hand; it’s no forgery.”
Here, Mr. Lorry perceived the reflection on the wall to elongate, and Mr.Cruncher rose and stepped forward. His hair could not have been more violently on end,if it had been that moment dressed by the Cow with the crumpled horn in the house that Jack built.
Unseen by the spy, Mr. Cruncher stood at his side,and touched him on the shoulder like a ghostly bailiff.
“That there Roger Cly, master,” said Mr. Cruncher, with a taciturn and iron-bound visage. “So _you_ put him in his coffin?”
“I did.”
“Who took him out of it?”
Barsad leaned back in his chair, and stammered, “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” said Mr. Cruncher, “that he warn’t never in it. No!Not he!I’ll have my head took off, if he was ever in it.”
The spy looked round at the two gentlemen; they both looked in unspeakable astonishment at Jerry.
“I tell you,” said Jerry, “that you buried paving-stones and earth in that there coffin.Don’t go and tell me that you buried Cly. It was a take in. Me and two more knows it.”
“How do you know it?”
“What’s that to you?Ecod!” growled Mr. Cruncher, “it’s you I have got a old grudge again, is it,with your shameful impositions upon tradesmen!I’d catch hold of your throat and choke you for half a guinea.”
Sydney Carton, who, with Mr. Lorry, had been lost in amazement at this turn of the business,here requested Mr. Cruncher to moderate and explain himself.
“At another time, sir,” he returned, evasively, “the present time is ill-conwenient for explainin’.What I stand to, is, that he knows well wot that there Cly was never in that there coffin.Let him say he was, in so much as a word of one syllable,and I’ll either catch hold of his throat and choke him for half a guinea;” Mr.Cruncher dwelt upon this as quite a liberal offer; “or I’ll out and announce him.”
“Humph!I see one thing,” said Carton. “I hold another card, Mr. Barsad. Impossible, here in raging Paris,with Suspicion filling the air, for you to outlive denunciation,when you are in communication with another aristocratic spy of the same antecedents as yourself,who, moreover, has the mystery about him of having feigned death and come to life again!A plot in the prisons, of the foreigner against the Republic.A strong card--a certain Guillotine card!Do you play?”
“No!” returned the spy. “I throw up. I confess that we were so unpopular with the outrageous mob,that I only got away from England at the risk of being ducked to death,and that Cly was so ferreted up and down,that he never would have got away at all but for that sham.Though how this man knows it was a sham, is a wonder of wonders to me.”
“Never you trouble your head about this man,” retorted the contentious Mr. Cruncher;“you’ll have trouble enough with giving your attention to that gentleman. And look here!Once more!”--Mr. Cruncher could not be restrained from making rather an ostentatious parade of his liberality--“I’d catch hold of your throat and choke you for half a guinea.”
The Sheep of the prisons turned from him to Sydney Carton, and said, with more decision,“It has come to a point. I go on duty soon, and can’t overstay my time.You told me you had a proposal; what is it?Now, it is of no use asking too much of me. Ask me to do anything in my office,putting my head in great extra danger, and I had better trust my life to the chances of a refusal than the chances of consent.In short, I should make that choice. You talk of desperation. We are all desperate here. Remember!I may denounce you if I think proper, and I can swear my way through stone walls, and so can others. Now, what do you want with me?”
“Not very much. You are a turnkey at the Conciergerie?”
“I tell you once for all, there is no such thing as an escape possible,” said the spy, firmly.
“Why need you tell me what I have not asked?You are a turnkey at the Conciergerie?”
“I am sometimes.”
“You can be when you choose?”
“I can pass in and out when I choose.”
Sydney Carton filled another glass with brandy, poured it slowly out upon the hearth,and watched it as it dropped. It being all spent, he said, rising:
“So far, we have spoken before these two,because it was as well that the merits of the cards should not rest solely between you and me.Come into the dark room here, and let us have one final word alone.”
CHAPTER IX. The Game Made
While Sydney Carton and the Sheep of the prisons were in the adjoining dark room,speaking so low that not a sound was heard, Mr.Lorry looked at Jerry in considerable doubt and mistrust.That honest tradesman’s manner of receiving the look, did not inspire confidence;he changed the leg on which he rested, as often as if he had fifty of those limbs,and were trying them all; he examined his finger-nails with a very questionable closeness of attention;and whenever Mr. Lorry’s eye caught his,he was taken with that peculiar kind of short cough requiring the hollow of a hand before it,which is seldom, if ever, known to be an infirmity attendant on perfect openness of character.
“Jerry,” said Mr. Lorry. “Come here.”
Mr. Cruncher came forward sideways, with one of his shoulders in advance of him.
“What have you been, besides a messenger?”
After some cogitation, accompanied with an intent look at his patron, Mr.Cruncher conceived the luminous idea of replying, “Agicultooral character.”
“My mind misgives me much,” said Mr. Lorry, angrily shaking a forefinger at him,“that you have used the respectable and great house of Tellson’s as a blind,and that you have had an unlawful occupation of an infamous description. If you have,don’t expect me to befriend you when you get back to England. If you have,don’t expect me to keep your secret. Tellson’s shall not be imposed upon.”
“I hope, sir,” pleaded the abashed Mr. Cruncher,“that a gentleman like yourself wot I’ve had the honour of odd jobbing till I’m grey at it,would think twice about harming of me, even if it wos so--I don’t say it is, but even if it wos.And which it is to be took into account that if it wos, it wouldn’t, even then, be all o’ one side.There’d be two sides to it. There might be medical doctors at the present hour,a picking up their guineas where a honest tradesman don’t pick up his fardens--fardens!no, nor yet his half fardens--half fardens!no, nor yet his quarter--a banking away like smoke at Tellson’s,and a cocking their medical eyes at that tradesman on the sly,a going in and going out to their own carriages--ah!equally like smoke, if not more so. Well, that ’ud be imposing, too, on Tellson’s.For you cannot sarse the goose and not the gander. And here’s Mrs. Cruncher,or leastways wos in the Old England times, and would be to-morrow, if cause given,a floppin’ again the business to that degree as is ruinating--stark ruinating!Whereas them medical doctors’ wives don’t flop--catch ’em at it!Or, if they flop, their floppings goes in favour of more patients,and how can you rightly have one without t’other?Then, wot with undertakers, and wot with parish clerks, and wot with sextons,and wot with private watchmen (all awaricious and all in it), a man wouldn’t get much by it,even if it wos so. And wot little a man did get, would never prosper with him, Mr. Lorry.He’d never have no good of it; he’d want all along to be out of the line, if he,could see his way out, being once in--even if it wos so.”
“Ugh!” cried Mr. Lorry, rather relenting, nevertheless, “I am shocked at the sight of you.”
“Now, what I would humbly offer to you, sir,” pursued Mr. Cruncher, “even if it wos so, which I don’t say it is--”
“Don’t prevaricate,” said Mr. Lorry.
“No, I will _not_, sir,” returned Mr. Crunches as if nothing were further from his thoughts or practice--“which I don’t say it is--wot I would humbly offer to you, sir, would be this. Upon that there stool, at that there Bar, sets that there boy of mine, brought up and growed up to be a man, wot will errand you, message you, general-light-job you, till your heels is where your head is, if such should be your wishes. If it wos so, which I still don’t say it is (for I will not prewaricate to you, sir), let that there boy keep his father’s place, and take care of his mother; don’t blow upon that boy’s father--do not do it, sir--and let that father go into the line of the reg’lar diggin’, and make amends for what he would have undug--if it wos so--by diggin’ of ’em in with a will, and with conwictions respectin’ the futur’ keepin’ of ’em safe. That, Mr. Lorry,” said Mr. Cruncher, wiping his forehead with his arm, as an announcement that he had arrived at the peroration of his discourse, “is wot I would respectfully offer to you, sir. A man don’t see all this here a goin’ on dreadful round him, in the way of Subjects without heads, dear me, plentiful enough fur to bring the price down to porterage and hardly that, without havin’ his serious thoughts of things. And these here would be mine, if it wos so, entreatin’ of you fur to bear in mind that wot I said just now, I up and said in the good cause when I might have kep’ it back.”
“That at least is true,” said Mr. Lorry. “Say no more now.It may be that I shall yet stand your friend, if you deserve it,and repent in action--not in words. I want no more words.”
Mr. Cruncher knuckled his forehead, as Sydney Carton and the spy returned from the dark room.“Adieu, Mr. Barsad,” said the former; “our arrangement thus made, you have nothing to fear from me. ”
He sat down in a chair on the hearth, over against Mr. Lorry. When they were alone, Mr. Lorry asked him what he had done?
“Not much. If it should go ill with the prisoner, I have ensured access to him, once.”
Mr. Lorry’s countenance fell.
“It is all I could do,” said Carton. “To propose too much,would be to put this man’s head under the axe, and, as he himself said,nothing worse could happen to him if he were denounced.It was obviously the weakness of the position. There is no help for it.”
“But access to him,” said Mr. Lorry, “if it should go ill before the Tribunal, will not save him.”
“I never said it would.”
Mr. Lorry’s eyes gradually sought the fire; his sympathy with his darling,and the heavy disappointment of his second arrest, gradually weakened them; he was an old man now,overborne with anxiety of late, and his tears fell.
“You are a good man and a true friend,” said Carton, in an altered voice.“Forgive me if I notice that you are affected. I could not see my father weep, and sit by,careless. And I could not respect your sorrow more, if you were my father.You are free from that misfortune, however.”
Though he said the last words, with a slip into his usual manner,there was a true feeling and respect both in his tone and in his touch, that Mr. Lorry,who had never seen the better side of him, was wholly unprepared for. He gave him his hand, and Carton gently pressed it.
“To return to poor Darnay,” said Carton. “Don’t tell Her of this interview, or this arrangement.It would not enable Her to go to see him. She might think it was contrived, in case of the worse,to convey to him the means of anticipating the sentence.”
Mr. Lorry had not thought of that, and he looked quickly at Carton to see if it were in his mind.It seemed to be; he returned the look, and evidently understood it.
“She might think a thousand things,” Carton said, “and any of them would only add to her trouble.Don’t speak of me to her. As I said to you when I first came, I had better not see her.I can put my hand out, to do any little helpful work for her that my hand can find to do,without that. You are going to her, I hope?She must be very desolate to-night.”
“I am going now, directly.”
“I am glad of that. She has such a strong attachment to you and reliance on you. How does she look?”
“Anxious and unhappy, but very beautiful.”
“Ah!”
It was a long, grieving sound, like a sigh--almost like a sob. It attracted Mr.Lorry’s eyes to Carton’s face, which was turned to the fire. A light,or a shade (the old gentleman could not have said which),passed from it as swiftly as a change will sweep over a hill-side on a wild bright day,and he lifted his foot to put back one of the little flaming logs, which was tumbling forward.He wore the white riding-coat and top-boots, then in vogue,and the light of the fire touching their light surfaces made him look very pale,with his long brown hair, all untrimmed, hanging loose about him.His indifference to fire was sufficiently remarkable to elicit a word of remonstrance from Mr.Lorry; his boot was still upon the hot embers of the flaming log,when it had broken under the weight of his foot.
“I forgot it,” he said.
Mr. Lorry’s eyes were again attracted to his face.Taking note of the wasted air which clouded the naturally handsome features,and having the expression of prisoners’ faces fresh in his mind,he was strongly reminded of that expression.
“And your duties here have drawn to an end, sir?” said Carton, turning to him.
“Yes. As I was telling you last night when Lucie came in so unexpectedly,I have at length done all that I can do here. I hoped to have left them in perfect safety,and then to have quitted Paris. I have my Leave to Pass. I was ready to go.”
They were both silent.
“Yours is a long life to look back upon, sir?” said Carton, wistfully.
“I am in my seventy-eighth year.”
“You have been useful all your life; steadily and constantly occupied; trusted, respected, and looked up to?”
“I have been a man of business, ever since I have been a man. Indeed,I may say that I was a man of business when a boy.”
“See what a place you fill at seventy-eight. How many people will miss you when you leave it empty!”
“A solitary old bachelor,” answered Mr. Lorry, shaking his head. “There is nobody to weep for me.”
“How can you say that?Wouldn’t She weep for you?Wouldn’t her child?”
“Yes, yes, thank God. I didn’t quite mean what I said.”
“It _is_ a thing to thank God for; is it not?”
“Surely, surely.”
“If you could say, with truth, to your own solitary heart, to-night,‘I have secured to myself the love and attachment, the gratitude or respect, of no human creature;I have won myself a tender place in no regard;I have done nothing good or serviceable to be remembered by!’ your seventy-eight years would be seventy-eight heavy curses; would they not?”
“You say truly, Mr. Carton; I think they would be.”
Sydney turned his eyes again upon the fire, and, after a silence of a few moments, said:
“I should like to ask you:--Does your childhood seem far off?Do the days when you sat at your mother’s knee, seem days of very long ago?”
Responding to his softened manner, Mr. Lorry answered: