Dinner-time, and still no Hundreds of people.In the arrangements of the little household,Miss Pross took charge of the lower regions,and always acquitted herself marvellously. Her dinners,of a very modest quality,were so well cooked and so well served,and so neat in their contrivances,half English and half French,that nothing could be better.Miss Pross’s friendship being of the thoroughly practical kind,she had ravaged Soho and the adjacent provinces,in search of impoverished French, who,tempted by shillings and half-crowns,would impart culinary mysteries to her.From these decayed sons and daughters of Gaul,she had acquired such wonderful arts,that the woman and girl who formed the staff of domestics regarded her as quite a Sorceress, or Cinderella’s Godmother: who would send out for a fowl, a rabbit, a vegetable or two from the garden, and change them into anything she pleased.
On Sundays, Miss Pross dined at the Doctor’s table,but on other days persisted in taking her meals at unknown periods,either in the lower regions,or in her own room on the second floor--a blue chamber,to which no one but her Ladybird ever gained admittance.On this occasion, Miss Pross,responding to Ladybird’s pleasant face and pleasant efforts to please her,unbent exceedingly; so the dinner was very pleasant, too.
It was an oppressive day, and, after dinner,Lucie proposed that the wine should be carried out under the plane-tree,and they should sit there in the air.As everything turned upon her, and revolved about her,they went out under the plane-tree,and she carried the wine down for the special benefit of Mr.Lorry. She had installed herself, some time before,as Mr. Lorry’s cup-bearer;and while they sat under the plane-tree, talking,she kept his glass replenished.Mysterious backs and ends of houses peeped at them as they talked,and the plane-tree whispered to them in its own way above their heads.
Still, the Hundreds of people did not present themselves.Mr. Darnay presented himself while they were sitting under the plane-tree,but he was only One.
Doctor Manette received him kindly, and so did Lucie.But, Miss Pross suddenly became afflicted with a twitching in the head and body, and retired into the house. She was not unfrequently the victim of this disorder, and she called it, in familiar conversation, “a fit of the jerks.”
The Doctor was in his best condition,and looked specially young.The resemblance between him and Lucie was very strong at such times,and as they sat side by side,she leaning on his shoulder,and he resting his arm on the back of her chair,it was very agreeable to trace the likeness.
He had been talking all day, on many subjects,and with unusual vivacity. “Pray, Doctor Manette,” said Mr. Darnay, as they sat under the plane-tree--and he said it in the natural pursuit of the topic in hand, which happened to be the old buildings of London--“have you seen much of the Tower?”
“Lucie and I have been there; but only casually.We have seen enough of it,to know that it teems with interest; little more.”
“_I_ have been there, as you remember,” said Darnay,with a smile, though reddening a little angrily,“in another character,and not in a character that gives facilities for seeing much of it.They told me a curious thing when I was there.”
“What was that?” Lucie asked.
“In making some alterations,the workmen came upon an old dungeon, which had been,for many years, built up and forgotten.Every stone of its inner wall was covered by inscriptions which had been carved by prisoners--dates, names, complaints, and prayers. Upon a corner stone in an angle of the wall, one prisoner, who seemed to have gone to execution, had cut as his last work, three letters. They were done with some very poor instrument, and hurriedly, with an unsteady hand. At first, they were read as D. I. C.; but, on being more carefully examined, the last letter was found to be G. There was no record or legend of any prisoner with those initials, and many fruitless guesses were made what the name could have been. At length, it was suggested that the letters were not initials, but the complete word, DIG. The floor was examined very carefully under the inscription, and, in the earth beneath a stone, or tile, or some fragment of paving, were found the ashes of a paper, mingled with the ashes of a small leathern case or bag. What the unknown prisoner had written will never be read, but he had written something, and hidden it away to keep it from the gaoler.”
“My father,” exclaimed Lucie, “you are ill!”
He had suddenly started up, with his hand to his head.His manner and his look quite terrified them all.
“No, my dear, not ill.There are large drops of rain falling,and they made me start. We had better go in.”
He recovered himself almost instantly.Rain was really falling in large drops,and he showed the back of his hand with rain-drops on it.But, he said not a single word in reference to the discovery that had been told of, and, as they went into the house, the business eye of Mr. Lorry either detected, or fancied it detected, on his face, as it turned towards Charles Darnay, the same singular look that had been upon it when it turned towards him in the passages of the Court House.
He recovered himself so quickly, however, that Mr.Lorry had doubts of his business eye.The arm of the golden giant in the hall was not more steady than he was,when he stopped under it to remark to them that he was not yet proof against slight surprises (if he ever would be), and that the rain had startled him.
Tea-time, and Miss Pross making tea,with another fit of the jerks upon her,and yet no Hundreds of people. Mr.Carton had lounged in, but he made only Two.
The night was so very sultry,that although they sat with doors and windows open,they were overpowered by heat.When the tea-table was done with,they all moved to one of the windows,and looked out into the heavy twilight.Lucie sat by her father; Darnay sat beside her;Carton leaned against a window.The curtains were long and white,and some of the thunder-gusts that whirled into the corner,caught them up to the ceiling,and waved them like spectral wings.
“The rain-drops are still falling, large, heavy,and few,” said Doctor Manette. “It comes slowly.”
“It comes surely,” said Carton.
They spoke low, as people watching and waiting mostly do;as people in a dark room,watching and waiting for Lightning, always do.
There was a great hurry in the streets of people speeding away to get shelter before the storm broke; the wonderful corner for echoes resounded with the echoes of footsteps coming and going, yet not a footstep was there.
“A multitude of people, and yet a solitude!” said Darnay, when they had listened for a while.
“Is it not impressive, Mr. Darnay?” asked Lucie. “Sometimes,I have sat here of an evening,until I have fancied--but even the shade of a foolish fancy makes me shudder to-night, when all is so black and solemn--”
“Let us shudder too. We may know what it is.”
“It will seem nothing to you.Such whims are only impressive as we originate them,I think; they are not to be communicated.I have sometimes sat alone here of an evening,listening, until I have made the echoes out to be the echoes of all the footsteps that are coming by-and-bye into our lives.”
“There is a great crowd coming one day into our lives,if that be so,” Sydney Carton struck in, in his moody way.
The footsteps were incessant,and the hurry of them became more and more rapid.The corner echoed and re-echoed with the tread of feet;some, as it seemed, under the windows; some,as it seemed, in the room; some coming, some going,some breaking off, some stopping altogether;all in the distant streets, and not one within sight.
“Are all these footsteps destined to come to all of us,Miss Manette, or are we to divide them among us?”