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Table of contents
Book the First
Recalled to Life
I. The Period
II. The Mail
III. The Night Shadows
IV. The Preparation
V. The Wine-shop
VI. The Shoemaker
Book the Second
the Golden Thread
I. Five Years Later
II. A Sight
III. A Disappointment
IV. Congratulatory
V. The Jackal
VI. Hundreds of People
VII. Monseigneur in Town
VIII. Monseigneur in the Country
IX. The Gorgon’s Head
X. Two Promises
XI. A Companion Picture
XII. The Fellow of Delicacy
XIII. The Fellow of No Delicacy
XIV. The Honest Tradesman
XV. Knitting
XVI. Still Knitting
XVII. One Night
XVIII. Nine Days
XIX. An Opinion
XX. A Plea
XXI. Echoing Footsteps
XXII. The Sea Still Rises
XXIII. Fire Rises
XXIV. Drawn to the Loadstone Rock
Book the Third
the Track of a Storm
I. In Secret
II. The Grindstone
III. The Shadow
IV. Calm in Storm
V. The Wood-Sawyer
VI. Triumph
VII. A Knock at the Door
VIII. A Hand at Cards
IX. The Game Made
X. The Substance of the Shadow
XI. Dusk
XII. Darkness
XIII. Fifty-two
XIV. The Knitting Done
XV. The Footsteps Die Out For Ever
Colophon
Book the First
Recalled to Life
I. The Period
It
was the best of times,it
was the worst of times,it
was the age of wisdom,it
was the age of foolishness,it
was the epoch of belief,it
was the epoch of incredulity,it
was the season of Light,it
was the season of Darkness,it
was the spring of hope,it
was the winter of despair,we
had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all
going
direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way— in short,
the period was so far like the present period, that some of its
noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or
for
evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.There
were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the
throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen
with a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was
clearer than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves
and fishes, that things in general were settled for ever.It
was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and
seventy-five.
Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured
period, as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her
five-and-twentieth blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in
the Life Guards had heralded the sublime appearance by announcing
that arrangements were made for the swallowing up of London and
Westminster. Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid only a round
dozen of years, after rapping out its messages, as the spirits of
this very year last past (supernaturally deficient in originality)
rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events had
lately come to the English Crown and People, from a congress of
British subjects in America: which, strange to relate, have proved
more important to the human race than any communications yet
received
through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood.France,
less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual than her sister
of
the shield and trident, rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill,
making paper money and spending it. Under the guidance of her
Christian pastors, she entertained herself, besides, with such
humane
achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his
tongue torn out with pincers, and his body burned alive, because he
had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession
of monks which passed within his view, at a distance of some fifty
or
sixty yards. It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods of
France
and Norway, there were growing trees, when that sufferer was put to
death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate, to come down and be
sawn
into boards, to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a
knife in it, terrible in history. It is likely enough that in the
rough outhouses of some tillers of the heavy lands adjacent to
Paris,
there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts,
bespattered with rustic mire, snuffed about by pigs, and roosted in
by poultry, which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart to be
his
tumbrils of the Revolution. But that Woodman and that Farmer,
though
they work unceasingly, work silently, and no one heard them as they
went about with muffled tread: the rather, forasmuch as to
entertain
any suspicion that they were awake, was to be atheistical and
traitorous.In
England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to
justify much national boasting. Daring burglaries by armed men, and
highway robberies, took place in the capital itself every night;
families were publicly cautioned not to go out of town without
removing their furniture to upholsterers’ warehouses for security;
the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light, and,
being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman whom he
stopped in his character of “the Captain,” gallantly shot him
through the head and rode away; the mail was waylaid by seven
robbers, and the guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead
himself by the other four, “in consequence of the failure of his
ammunition:” after which the mail was robbed in peace; that
magnificent potentate, the Lord Mayor of London, was made to stand
and deliver on Turnham Green, by one highwayman, who despoiled the
illustrious creature in sight of all his retinue; prisoners in
London
gaols fought battles with their turnkeys, and the majesty of the
law
fired blunderbusses in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and
ball; thieves snipped off diamond crosses from the necks of noble
lords at Court drawing-rooms; musketeers went into St. Giles’s, to
search for contraband goods, and the mob fired on the musketeers,
and
the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these
occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, the
hangman, ever busy and ever worse than useless, was in constant
requisition; now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous
criminals;
now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday who had been taken on
Tuesday; now, burning people in the hand at Newgate by the dozen,
and
now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall; to-day,
taking
the life of an atrocious murderer, and to-morrow of a wretched
pilferer who had robbed a farmer’s boy of sixpence.All
these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close
upon the dear old year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five.
Environed by them, while the Woodman and the Farmer worked
unheeded,
those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and
the
fair faces, trod with stir enough, and carried their divine rights
with a high hand. Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred and
seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses, and myriads of small
creatures—the creatures of this chronicle among the rest—along
the roads that lay before them.
II. The Mail
It
was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in November,
before the first of the persons with whom this history has
business.
The Dover road lay, as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it
lumbered
up Shooter’s Hill. He walked up hill in the mire by the side of the
mail, as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the
least relish for walking exercise, under the circumstances, but
because the hill, and the harness, and the mud, and the mail, were
all so heavy, that the horses had three times already come to a
stop,
besides once drawing the coach across the road, with the mutinous
intent of taking it back to Blackheath. Reins and whip and coachman
and guard, however, in combination, had read that article of war
which forbade a purpose otherwise strongly in favour of the
argument,
that some brute animals are endued with Reason; and the team had
capitulated and returned to their duty.With
drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed their way through
the
thick mud, floundering and stumbling between whiles, as if they
were
falling to pieces at the larger joints. As often as the driver
rested
them and brought them to a stand, with a wary “Wo-ho! so-ho-then!”
the near leader violently shook his head and everything upon
it—like
an unusually emphatic horse, denying that the coach could be got up
the hill. Whenever the leader made this rattle, the passenger
started, as a nervous passenger might, and was disturbed in
mind.There
was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed in its
forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest and
finding none. A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its slow
way
through the air in ripples that visibly followed and overspread one
another, as the waves of an unwholesome sea might do. It was dense
enough to shut out everything from the light of the coach-lamps but
these its own workings, and a few yards of road; and the reek of
the
labouring horses steamed into it, as if they had made it
all.Two
other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill by the
side of the mail. All three were wrapped to the cheekbones and over
the ears, and wore jack-boots. Not one of the three could have
said,
from anything he saw, what either of the other two was like; and
each
was hidden under almost as many wrappers from the eyes of the mind,
as from the eyes of the body, of his two companions. In those days,
travellers were very shy of being confidential on a short notice,
for
anybody on the road might be a robber or in league with robbers. As
to the latter, when every posting-house and ale-house could produce
somebody in “the Captain’s” pay, ranging from the landlord to
the lowest stable non-descript, it was the likeliest thing upon the
cards. So the guard of the Dover mail thought to himself, that
Friday
night in November, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five,
lumbering up Shooter’s Hill, as he stood on his own particular
perch behind the mail, beating his feet, and keeping an eye and a
hand on the arm-chest before him, where a loaded blunderbuss lay at
the top of six or eight loaded horse-pistols, deposited on a
substratum of cutlass.The
Dover mail was in its usual genial position that the guard
suspected
the passengers, the passengers suspected one another and the guard,
they all suspected everybody else, and the coachman was sure of
nothing but the horses; as to which cattle he could with a clear
conscience have taken his oath on the two Testaments that they were
not fit for the journey.
“
Wo-ho!”
said the coachman. “So, then! One more pull and you’re at the top
and be damned to you, for I have had trouble enough to get you to
it!—Joe!”
“
Halloa!”
the guard replied.
“
What
o’clock do you make it, Joe?”
“
Ten
minutes, good, past eleven.”
“
My
blood!” ejaculated the vexed coachman, “and not atop of Shooter’s
yet! Tst! Yah! Get on with you!”The
emphatic horse, cut short by the whip in a most decided negative,
made a decided scramble for it, and the three other horses followed
suit. Once more, the Dover mail struggled on, with the jack-boots
of
its passengers squashing along by its side. They had stopped when
the
coach stopped, and they kept close company with it. If any one of
the
three had had the hardihood to propose to another to walk on a
little
ahead into the mist and darkness, he would have put himself in a
fair
way of getting shot instantly as a highwayman.The
last burst carried the mail to the summit of the hill. The horses
stopped to breathe again, and the guard got down to skid the wheel
for the descent, and open the coach-door to let the passengers
in.
“
Tst!
Joe!” cried the coachman in a warning voice, looking down from his
box.
“
What
do you say, Tom?”They
both listened.
“
I
say a horse at a canter coming up, Joe.”
“
I
say a horse at a gallop, Tom,” returned the guard, leaving his hold
of the door, and mounting nimbly to his place. “Gentlemen! In the
king’s name, all of you!”With
this hurried adjuration, he cocked his blunderbuss, and stood on
the
offensive.The
passenger booked by this history, was on the coach-step, getting
in;
the two other passengers were close behind him, and about to
follow.
He remained on the step, half in the coach and half out of; they
remained in the road below him. They all looked from the coachman
to
the guard, and from the guard to the coachman, and listened. The
coachman looked back and the guard looked back, and even the
emphatic
leader pricked up his ears and looked back, without
contradicting.The
stillness consequent on the cessation of the rumbling and labouring
of the coach, added to the stillness of the night, made it very
quiet
indeed. The panting of the horses communicated a tremulous motion
to
the coach, as if it were in a state of agitation. The hearts of the
passengers beat loud enough perhaps to be heard; but at any rate,
the
quiet pause was audibly expressive of people out of breath, and
holding the breath, and having the pulses quickened by
expectation.The
sound of a horse at a gallop came fast and furiously up the
hill.
“
So-ho!”
the guard sang out, as loud as he could roar. “Yo there! Stand! I
shall fire!”The
pace was suddenly checked, and, with much splashing and
floundering,
a man’s voice called from the mist, “Is that the Dover
mail?”
“
Never
you mind what it is!” the guard retorted. “What are
you?”
“
Is
that the Dover mail?”
“
Why
do you want to know?”
“
I
want a passenger, if it is.”
“
What
passenger?”
“
Mr.
Jarvis Lorry.”Our
booked passenger showed in a moment that it was his name. The
guard,
the coachman, and the two other passengers eyed him
distrustfully.
“
Keep
where you are,” the guard called to the voice in the mist,
“because, if I should make a mistake, it could never be set right
in your lifetime. Gentleman of the name of Lorry answer
straight.”
“
What
is the matter?” asked the passenger, then, with mildly quavering
speech. “Who wants me? Is it Jerry?”(“I
don’t like Jerry’s voice, if it is Jerry,” growled the guard to
himself. “He’s hoarser than suits me, is Jerry.”)
“
Yes,
Mr. Lorry.”
“
What
is the matter?”
“
A
despatch sent after you from over yonder. T. and Co.”
“
I
know this messenger, guard,” said Mr. Lorry, getting down into the
road—assisted from behind more swiftly than politely by the other
two passengers, who immediately scrambled into the coach, shut the
door, and pulled up the window. “He may come close; there’s
nothing wrong.”
“
I
hope there ain’t, but I can’t make so ‘Nation sure of that,”
said the guard, in gruff soliloquy. “Hallo you!”
“
Well!
And hallo you!” said Jerry, more hoarsely than before.
“
Come
on at a footpace! d’ye mind me? And if you’ve got holsters to
that saddle o’ yourn, don’t let me see your hand go nigh ‘em.
For I’m a devil at a quick mistake, and when I make one it takes
the form of Lead. So now let’s look at you.”The
figures of a horse and rider came slowly through the eddying mist,
and came to the side of the mail, where the passenger stood. The
rider stooped, and, casting up his eyes at the guard, handed the
passenger a small folded paper. The rider’s horse was blown, and
both horse and rider were covered with mud, from the hoofs of the
horse to the hat of the man.
“
Guard!”
said the passenger, in a tone of quiet business
confidence.The
watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock of his raised
blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye on the horseman,
answered curtly, “Sir.”
“
There
is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tellson’s Bank. You must know
Tellson’s Bank in London. I am going to Paris on business. A crown
to drink. I may read this?”
“
If
so be as you’re quick, sir.”He
opened it in the light of the coach-lamp on that side, and
read—first
to himself and then aloud: “‘Wait at Dover for Mam’selle.’
It’s not long, you see, guard. Jerry, say that my answer
was,
Recalled to life.”Jerry
started in his saddle. “That’s a Blazing strange answer, too,”
said he, at his hoarsest.
“
Take
that message back, and they will know that I received this, as well
as if I wrote. Make the best of your way. Good night.”With
those words the passenger opened the coach-door and got in; not at
all assisted by his fellow-passengers, who had expeditiously
secreted
their watches and purses in their boots, and were now making a
general pretence of being asleep. With no more definite purpose
than
to escape the hazard of originating any other kind of
action.The
coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths of mist closing round
it as it began the descent. The guard soon replaced his blunderbuss
in his arm-chest, and, having looked to the rest of its contents,
and
having looked to the supplementary pistols that he wore in his
belt,
looked to a smaller chest beneath his seat, in which there were a
few
smith’s tools, a couple of torches, and a tinder-box. For he was
furnished with that completeness that if the coach-lamps had been
blown and stormed out, which did occasionally happen, he had only
to
shut himself up inside, keep the flint and steel sparks well off
the
straw, and get a light with tolerable safety and ease (if he were
lucky) in five minutes.
“
Tom!”
softly over the coach roof.
“
Hallo,
Joe.”
“
Did
you hear the message?”
“
I
did, Joe.”
“
What
did you make of it, Tom?”
“
Nothing
at all, Joe.”
“
That’s
a coincidence, too,” the guard mused, “for I made the same of it
myself.”Jerry,
left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted meanwhile, not only
to ease his spent horse, but to wipe the mud from his face, and
shake
the wet out of his hat-brim, which might be capable of holding
about
half a gallon. After standing with the bridle over his
heavily-splashed arm, until the wheels of the mail were no longer
within hearing and the night was quite still again, he turned to
walk
down the hill.
“
After
that there gallop from Temple Bar, old lady, I won’t trust your
fore-legs till I get you on the level,” said this hoarse messenger,
glancing at his mare. “‘Recalled to life.’ That’s a Blazing
strange message. Much of that wouldn’t do for you, Jerry! I say,
Jerry! You’d be in a Blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to
come into fashion, Jerry!”
III. The Night Shadows
A
wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is
constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.
A
solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that
every
one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that
every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every
beating heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in
some of its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something
of the awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No
more
can I turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly
hope
in time to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this
unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I
have had glimpses of buried treasure and other things submerged. It
was appointed that the book should shut with a spring, for ever and
for ever, when I had read but a page. It was appointed that the
water
should be locked in an eternal frost, when the light was playing on
its surface, and I stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is
dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is
dead;
it is the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secret
that was always in that individuality, and which I shall carry in
mine to my life’s end. In any of the burial-places of this city
through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutable than its
busy inhabitants are, in their innermost personality, to me, or
than
I am to them?As
to this, his natural and not to be alienated inheritance, the
messenger on horseback had exactly the same possessions as the
King,
the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London. So
with the three passengers shut up in the narrow compass of one
lumbering old mail coach; they were mysteries to one another, as
complete as if each had been in his own coach and six, or his own
coach and sixty, with the breadth of a county between him and the
next.The
messenger rode back at an easy trot, stopping pretty often at
ale-houses by the way to drink, but evincing a tendency to keep his
own counsel, and to keep his hat cocked over his eyes. He had eyes
that assorted very well with that decoration, being of a surface
black, with no depth in the colour or form, and much too near
together—as if they were afraid of being found out in something,
singly, if they kept too far apart. They had a sinister expression,
under an old cocked-hat like a three-cornered spittoon, and over a
great muffler for the chin and throat, which descended nearly to
the
wearer’s knees. When he stopped for drink, he moved this muffler
with his left hand, only while he poured his liquor in with his
right; as soon as that was done, he muffled again.
“
No,
Jerry, no!” said the messenger, harping on one theme as he rode.
“It wouldn’t do for you, Jerry. Jerry, you honest tradesman, it
wouldn’t suit your
line of business! Recalled—! Bust me if I don’t think he’d been
a drinking!”His
message perplexed his mind to that degree that he was fain, several
times, to take off his hat to scratch his head. Except on the
crown,
which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing
jaggedly
all over it, and growing down hill almost to his broad, blunt nose.
It was so like Smith’s work, so much more like the top of a
strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of players
at
leap-frog might have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the
world to go over.While
he trotted back with the message he was to deliver to the night
watchman in his box at the door of Tellson’s Bank, by Temple Bar,
who was to deliver it to greater authorities within, the shadows of
the night took such shapes to him as arose out of the message, and
took such shapes to the mare as arose out of
her private topics
of uneasiness. They seemed to be numerous, for she shied at every
shadow on the road.What
time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted, rattled, and bumped upon its
tedious way, with its three fellow-inscrutables inside. To whom,
likewise, the shadows of the night revealed themselves, in the
forms
their dozing eyes and wandering thoughts suggested.Tellson’s
Bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the bank passenger—with an
arm drawn through the leathern strap, which did what lay in it to
keep him from pounding against the next passenger, and driving him
into his corner, whenever the coach got a special jolt—nodded in
his place, with half-shut eyes, the little coach-windows, and the
coach-lamp dimly gleaming through them, and the bulky bundle of
opposite passenger, became the bank, and did a great stroke of
business. The rattle of the harness was the chink of money, and
more
drafts were honoured in five minutes than even Tellson’s, with all
its foreign and home connection, ever paid in thrice the time. Then
the strong-rooms underground, at Tellson’s, with such of their
valuable stores and secrets as were known to the passenger (and it
was not a little that he knew about them), opened before him, and
he
went in among them with the great keys and the feebly-burning
candle,
and found them safe, and strong, and sound, and still, just as he
had
last seen them.But,
though the bank was almost always with him, and though the coach
(in
a confused way, like the presence of pain under an opiate) was
always
with him, there was another current of impression that never ceased
to run, all through the night. He was on his way to dig some one
out
of a grave.Now,
which of the multitude of faces that showed themselves before him
was
the true face of the buried person, the shadows of the night did
not
indicate; but they were all the faces of a man of five-and-forty by
years, and they differed principally in the passions they
expressed,
and in the ghastliness of their worn and wasted state. Pride,
contempt, defiance, stubbornness, submission, lamentation,
succeeded
one another; so did varieties of sunken cheek, cadaverous colour,
emaciated hands and figures. But the face was in the main one face,
and every head was prematurely white. A hundred times the dozing
passenger inquired of this spectre:
“
Buried
how long?”The
answer was always the same: “Almost eighteen years.”
“
You
had abandoned all hope of being dug out?”
“
Long
ago.”
“
You
know that you are recalled to life?”
“
They
tell me so.”
“
I
hope you care to live?”
“
I
can’t say.”
“
Shall
I show her to you? Will you come and see her?”The
answers to this question were various and contradictory. Sometimes
the broken reply was, “Wait! It would kill me if I saw her too
soon.” Sometimes, it was given in a tender rain of tears, and then
it was, “Take me to her.” Sometimes it was staring and
bewildered, and then it was, “I don’t know her. I don’t
understand.”After
such imaginary discourse, the passenger in his fancy would dig, and
dig, dig—now with a spade, now with a great key, now with his
hands—to dig this wretched creature out. Got out at last, with
earth hanging about his face and hair, he would suddenly fan away
to
dust. The passenger would then start to himself, and lower the
window, to get the reality of mist and rain on his cheek.Yet
even when his eyes were opened on the mist and rain, on the moving
patch of light from the lamps, and the hedge at the roadside
retreating by jerks, the night shadows outside the coach would fall
into the train of the night shadows within. The real Banking-house
by
Temple Bar, the real business of the past day, the real strong
rooms,
the real express sent after him, and the real message returned,
would
all be there. Out of the midst of them, the ghostly face would
rise,
and he would accost it again.
“
Buried
how long?”
“
Almost
eighteen years.”
“
I
hope you care to live?”
“
I
can’t say.”Dig—dig—dig—until
an impatient movement from one of the two passengers would admonish
him to pull up the window, draw his arm securely through the
leathern
strap, and speculate upon the two slumbering forms, until his mind
lost its hold of them, and they again slid away into the bank and
the
grave.
“
Buried
how long?”
“
Almost
eighteen years.”
“
You
had abandoned all hope of being dug out?”
“
Long
ago.”The
words were still in his hearing as just spoken—distinctly in his
hearing as ever spoken words had been in his life—when the weary
passenger started to the consciousness of daylight, and found that
the shadows of the night were gone.He
lowered the window, and looked out at the rising sun. There was a
ridge of ploughed land, with a plough upon it where it had been
left
last night when the horses were unyoked; beyond, a quiet
coppice-wood, in which many leaves of burning red and golden yellow
still remained upon the trees. Though the earth was cold and wet,
the
sky was clear, and the sun rose bright, placid, and
beautiful.
“
Eighteen
years!” said the passenger, looking at the sun. “Gracious Creator
of day! To be buried alive for eighteen years!”
IV. The Preparation
When
the mail got successfully to Dover, in the course of the forenoon,
the head drawer at the Royal George Hotel opened the coach-door as
his custom was. He did it with some flourish of ceremony, for a
mail
journey from London in winter was an achievement to congratulate an
adventurous traveller upon.By
that time, there was only one adventurous traveller left 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!”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 waist-coat,
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 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 to-day. 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 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,
dropped
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
in
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.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!” said he.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. 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 rifting 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.
“
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 know, 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 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 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 connection 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 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 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 discomposed him that he stopped, wandered, and began
anew:
“
As
I was saying; if Monsieur Manette had not died; if he had suddenly
and silently disappeared; if he had been spirited away; if it had
not
been difficult to guess to what dreadful place, though no art could
trace him; if he had an enemy in some compatriot who could exercise
a
privilege that I in my own time have known the boldest people
afraid
to speak of in a whisper, across the water there; for instance, the
privilege of filling up blank forms for the consignment of any one
to
the oblivion of a prison for any length of time; if his wife had
implored the king, the queen, the court, the clergy, for any
tidings
of him, and all quite in vain;—then the history of your father
would have been the history of this unfortunate gentleman, the
Doctor
of Beauvais.”
“
I
entreat you to tell me more, sir.”
“
I
will. I am going to. You can bear it?”
“
I
can bear anything but the uncertainty you leave me in at this
moment.”
“
You
speak collectedly, and you—are
collected. That’s good!” (Though his manner was less satisfied
than his words.) “A matter of business. Regard it as a matter of
business—business that must be done. Now if this doctor’s wife,
though a lady of great courage and spirit, had suffered so
intensely
from this cause before her little child was born—”
“
The
little child was a daughter, sir.”
“
A
daughter. A-a-matter of business—don’t be distressed. Miss, if
the poor lady had suffered so intensely before her little child was
born, that she came to the determination of sparing the poor child
the inheritance of any part of the agony she had known the pains
of,
by rearing her in the belief that her father was dead—No, don’t
kneel! In Heaven’s name why should you kneel to me!”
“
For
the truth. O dear, good, compassionate sir, for the
truth!”
“
A—a
matter of business. You confuse me, and how can I transact business
if I am confused? Let us be clear-headed. If you could kindly
mention
now, for instance, what nine times ninepence are, or how many
shillings in twenty guineas, it would be so encouraging. I should
be
so much more at my ease about your state of mind.”Without
directly answering to this appeal, she sat so still when he had
very
gently raised her, and the hands that had not ceased to clasp his
wrists were so much more steady than they had been, that she
communicated some reassurance to Mr. Jarvis Lorry.
“
That’s
right, that’s right. Courage! Business! You have business before
you; useful business. Miss Manette, your mother took this course
with
you. And when she died—I believe broken-hearted—having never
slackened her unavailing search for your father, she left you, at
two
years old, to grow to be blooming, beautiful, and happy, without
the
dark cloud upon you of living in uncertainty whether your father
soon
wore his heart out in prison, or wasted there through many
lingering
years.”As
he said the words he looked down, with an admiring pity, on the
flowing golden hair; as if he pictured to himself that it might
have
been already tinged with grey.
“
You
know that your parents had no great possession, and that what they
had was secured to your mother and to you. There has been no new
discovery, of money, or of any other property; but—”He
felt his wrist held closer, and he stopped. The expression in the
forehead, which had so particularly attracted his notice, and which
was now immovable, had deepened into one of pain and horror.
“
But
he has been—been found. He is alive. Greatly changed, it is too
probable; almost a wreck, it is possible; though we will hope the
best. Still, alive. Your father has been taken to the house of an
old
servant in Paris, and we are going there: I, to identify him if I
can: you, to restore him to life, love, duty, rest,
comfort.”A
shiver ran through her frame, and from it through his. She said, in
a
low, distinct, awe-stricken voice, as if she were saying it in a
dream,
“
I
am going to see his Ghost! It will be his Ghost—not
him!”Mr.
Lorry quietly chafed the hands that held his arm. “There, there,
there! See now, see now! The best and the worst are known to you,
now. You are well on your way to the poor wronged gentleman, and,
with a fair sea voyage, and a fair land journey, you will be soon
at
his dear side.”She
repeated in the same tone, sunk to a whisper, “I have been free, I
have been happy, yet his Ghost has never haunted me!”
“
Only
one thing more,” said Mr. Lorry, laying stress upon it as a
wholesome means of enforcing her attention: “he has been found
under another name; his own, long forgotten or long concealed. It
would be worse than useless now to inquire which; worse than
useless
to seek to know whether he has been for years overlooked, or always
designedly held prisoner. It would be worse than useless now to
make
any inquiries, because it would be dangerous. Better not to mention
the subject, anywhere or in any way, and to remove him—for a while
at all events—out of France. Even I, safe as an Englishman, and
even Tellson’s, important as they are to French credit, avoid all
naming of the matter. I carry about me, not a scrap of writing
openly
referring to it. This is a secret service altogether. My
credentials,
entries, and memoranda, are all comprehended in the one line,
‘Recalled to Life;’ which may mean anything. But what is the
matter! She doesn’t notice a word! Miss Manette!”Perfectly
still and silent, and not even fallen back in her chair, she sat
under his hand, utterly insensible; with her eyes open and fixed
upon
him, and with that last expression looking as if it were carved or
branded into her forehead. So close was her hold upon his arm, that
he feared to detach himself lest he should hurt her; therefore he
called out loudly for assistance without moving.A
wild-looking woman, whom even in his agitation, Mr. Lorry observed
to
be all of a red colour, and to have red hair, and to be dressed in
some extraordinary tight-fitting fashion, and to have on her head a
most wonderful bonnet like a Grenadier wooden measure, and good
measure too, or a great Stilton cheese, came running into the room
in
advance of the inn servants, and soon settled the question of his
detachment from the poor young lady, by laying a brawny hand upon
his
chest, and sending him flying back against the nearest wall.(“I
really think this must be a man!” was Mr. Lorry’s breathless
reflection, simultaneously with his coming against the
wall.)
“
Why,
look at you all!” bawled this figure, addressing the inn servants.
“Why don’t you go and fetch things, instead of standing there
staring at me? I am not so much to look at, am I? Why don’t you go
and fetch things? I’ll let you know, if you don’t bring
smelling-salts, cold water, and vinegar, quick, I will.”There
was an immediate dispersal for these restoratives, and she softly
laid the patient on a sofa, and tended her with great skill and
gentleness: calling her “my precious!” and “my bird!” and
spreading her golden hair aside over her shoulders with great pride
and care.
“
And
you in brown!” she said, indignantly turning to Mr. Lorry;
“couldn’t you tell her what you had to tell her, without
frightening her to death? Look at her, with her pretty pale face
and
her cold hands. Do you call
that being a
Banker?”Mr.
Lorry was so exceedingly disconcerted by a question so hard to
answer, that he could only look on, at a distance, with much
feebler
sympathy and humility, while the strong woman, having banished the
inn servants under the mysterious penalty of “letting them know”
something not mentioned if they stayed there, staring, recovered
her
charge by a regular series of gradations, and coaxed her to lay her
drooping head upon her shoulder.
“
I
hope she will do well now,” said Mr. Lorry.
“
No
thanks to you in brown, if she does. My darling pretty!”
“
I
hope,” said Mr. Lorry, after another pause of feeble sympathy and
humility, “that you accompany Miss Manette to France?”
“
A
likely thing, too!” replied the strong woman. “If it was ever
intended that I should go across salt water, do you suppose
Providence would have cast my lot in an island?”This
being another question hard to answer, Mr. Jarvis Lorry withdrew to
consider it.
V. The Wine-shop
A
large cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street. The
accident had happened in getting it out of a cart; the cask had
tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the
stones
just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a
walnut-shell.All
the people within reach had suspended their business, or their
idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough,
irregular
stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might
have thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that
approached
them, had dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded, each
by
its own jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men
kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or
tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before
the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and
women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated
earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women’s heads, which
were squeezed dry into infants’ mouths; others made small
mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran; others, directed by
lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and there, to cut off
little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others
devoted themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask,
licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with
eager relish. There was no drainage to carry off the wine, and not
only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along
with
it, that there might have been a scavenger in the street, if
anybody
acquainted with it could have believed in such a miraculous
presence.A
shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices—voices of men, women,
and children—resounded in the street while this wine game lasted.
There was little roughness in the sport, and much playfulness.
There
was a special companionship in it, an observable inclination on the
part of every one to join some other one, which led, especially
among
the luckier or lighter-hearted, to frolicsome embraces, drinking of
healths, shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and dancing, a
dozen together. When the wine was gone, and the places where it had
been most abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern by fingers,
these demonstrations ceased, as suddenly as they had broken out.
The
man who had left his saw sticking in the firewood he was cutting,
set
it in motion again; the women who had left on a door-step the
little
pot of hot ashes, at which she had been trying to soften the pain
in
her own starved fingers and toes, or in those of her child,
returned
to it; men with bare arms, matted locks, and cadaverous faces, who
had emerged into the winter light from cellars, moved away, to
descend again; and a gloom gathered on the scene that appeared more
natural to it than sunshine.The
wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street
in
the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had
stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and
many wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left
red
marks on the billets; and the forehead of the woman who nursed her
baby, was stained with the stain of the old rag she wound about her
head again. Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask,
had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker
so
besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap
than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy
wine-lees—blood.The
time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the
street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many
there.And
now that the cloud settled on Saint Antoine, which a momentary
gleam
had driven from his sacred countenance, the darkness of it was
heavy—cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance, and want, were the lords in
waiting on the saintly presence—nobles of great power all of them;
but, most especially the last. Samples of a people that had
undergone
a terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill, and certainly not
in
the fabulous mill which ground old people young, shivered at every
corner, passed in and out at every doorway, looked from every
window,
fluttered in every vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The
mill
which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people
old; the children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon
them,
and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and
coming up afresh, was the sigh, Hunger. It was prevalent
everywhere.
Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing
that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with
straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every
fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off;
Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and started up from
the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything
to
eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker’s shelves, written in
every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the
sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for
sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in
the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomics in every
farthing
porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops
of oil.Its
abiding place was in all things fitted to it. A narrow winding
street, full of offence and stench, with other narrow winding
streets
diverging, all peopled by rags and nightcaps, and all smelling of
rags and nightcaps, and all visible things with a brooding look
upon
them that looked ill. In the hunted air of the people there was yet
some wild-beast thought of the possibility of turning at bay.
Depressed and slinking though they were, eyes of fire were not
wanting among them; nor compressed lips, white with what they
suppressed; nor foreheads knitted into the likeness of the
gallows-rope they mused about enduring, or inflicting. The trade
signs (and they were almost as many as the shops) were, all, grim
illustrations of Want. The butcher and the porkman painted up, only
the leanest scrags of meat; the baker, the coarsest of meagre
loaves.
The people rudely pictured as drinking in the wine-shops, croaked
over their scanty measures of thin wine and beer, and were
gloweringly confidential together. Nothing was represented in a
flourishing condition, save tools and weapons; but, the cutler’s
knives and axes were sharp and bright, the smith’s hammers were
heavy, and the gunmaker’s stock was murderous. The crippling stones
of the pavement, with their many little reservoirs of mud and
water,
had no footways, but broke off abruptly at the doors. The kennel,
to
make amends, ran down the middle of the street—when it ran at all:
which was only after heavy rains, and then it ran, by many
eccentric
fits, into the houses. Across the streets, at wide intervals, one
clumsy lamp was slung by a rope and pulley; at night, when the
lamplighter had let these down, and lighted, and hoisted them
again,
a feeble grove of dim wicks swung in a sickly manner overhead, as
if
they were at sea. Indeed they were at sea, and the ship and crew
were
in peril of tempest.For,
the time was to come, when the gaunt scarecrows of that region
should
have watched the lamplighter, in their idleness and hunger, so
long,
as to conceive the idea of improving on his method, and hauling up
men by those ropes and pulleys, to flare upon the darkness of their
condition. But, the time was not come yet; and every wind that blew
over France shook the rags of the scarecrows in vain, for the
birds,
fine of song and feather, took no warning.The
wine-shop was a corner shop, better than most others in its
appearance and degree, and the master of the wine-shop had stood
outside it, in a yellow waistcoat and green breeches, looking on at
the struggle for the lost wine. “It’s not my affair,” said he,
with a final shrug of the shoulders. “The people from the market
did it. Let them bring another.”There,
his eyes happening to catch the tall joker writing up his joke, he
called to him across the way:
“
Say,
then, my Gaspard, what do you do there?”The
fellow pointed to his joke with immense significance, as is often
the
way with his tribe. It missed its mark, and completely failed, as
is
often the way with his tribe too.
“
What
now? Are you a subject for the mad hospital?” said the wine-shop
keeper, crossing the road, and obliterating the jest with a handful
of mud, picked up for the purpose, and smeared over it. “Why do you
write in the public streets? Is there—tell me thou—is there no
other place to write such words in?”In
his expostulation he dropped his cleaner hand (perhaps
accidentally,
perhaps not) upon the joker’s heart. The joker rapped it with his
own, took a nimble spring upward, and came down in a fantastic
dancing attitude, with one of his stained shoes jerked off his foot
into his hand, and held out. A joker of an extremely, not to say
wolfishly practical character, he looked, under those
circumstances.
“
Put
it on, put it on,” said the other. “Call wine, wine; and finish
there.” With that advice, he wiped his soiled hand upon the joker’s
dress, such as it was—quite deliberately, as having dirtied the
hand on his account; and then recrossed the road and entered the
wine-shop.This
wine-shop keeper was a bull-necked, martial-looking man of thirty,
and he should have been of a hot temperament, for, although it was
a
bitter day, he wore no coat, but carried one slung over his
shoulder.
His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, too, and his brown arms were bare
to the elbows. Neither did he wear anything more on his head than
his
own crisply-curling short dark hair. He was a dark man altogether,
with good eyes and a good bold breadth between them. Good-humoured
looking on the whole, but implacable-looking, too; evidently a man
of
a strong resolution and a set purpose; a man not desirable to be
met,
rushing down a narrow pass with a gulf on either side, for nothing
would turn the man.