Doctor Manette's quiet rooms were on a quiet street corner not far from Soho Square. On a clear Sunday afternoon, four months after Mr. Darnay had been found innocent of treason, Mr. Jarvis Lorry was walking along the sunny streets from where he lived toward the Doctor's house, to have dinner with him. Over and above all of his interest in business, Mr. Lorry had found time to become the Doctor's friend, and the quiet street corner had become the sunny part of his life.
On this beautiful afternoon there were three reasons for Mr. Lorry to be walking over to the Doctor's house. The first was that he often went for walks with the Doctor and Lucie before dinner on clear Sundays. The second was that on cloudy or rainy Sundays he often stayed inside with them as a friend of the family, talking, reading, or looking out the window. And the third was that today he had his own little questions that needed answers, and from what he knew of the Manettes, this would be a good time to get his answers.
There was not a nicer corner to be found in London, than the one where the Doctor lived. The windows of the Doctor's rooms looked out on the corner, and in those days there were few buildings around it. One could see trees and wild flowers, and there were peaches growing not far from there. The clean air of the country was free to move about, instead of slowly dying out like a lost beggar in a jungle of buildings.
In the early part of the day, the summer sun was quite bright there on the corner. But later in the day, when it was becoming hot, the corner would be in shadows; not dark shadows but a cool, quiet, and friendly place where one could listen to the sounds of busy streets not far away.
It was the perfect place for a ship to come and hide from the storms of life; and the two floors of a very big house where the Doctor had his rooms had become that ship. There were signs to say that other businesses were going on in the same building, but there was very little sound from them by day, and even less by night. In a building at the back, on the other side of a closed in yard where a tree with big green leaves grew, it was said that church pianos were made. And a sign, projecting like a giant golden arm from the front wall said that gold and silver could be made into jewelry there, as if the man doing it had changed himself into gold and was promising to do the same to others who came to visit him. Very little was ever seen or heard of these businesses, or of the man who was said to live alone at the top of the building, or of a half-blind man who made parts for coaches who was said to have an office below. At times one would see a worker walking through the building while putting his coat on, or a stranger looking for someone, or the sound of a tool hitting something in the distance, either from across the yard or from the golden giant. But these were only little happenings that proved the bigger rule, which was that the sparrows in the big tree in the yard and the quiet sounds of movement off in the distance had their way on that corner from Sunday morning until Saturday night.
Doctor Manette received patients here who heard of his ability in whispers from others who had been there. His education, hard work, and ability were enough to bring all the people he needed to make as much as he wanted.
Mr. Jarvis Lorry knew these things, and was thinking about them when he pushed the door bell of the quiet house on the corner on that beautiful Sunday afternoon.
"Is Doctor Manette at home?”
"He will be soon."
"Is Miss Lucie at home?” "She will be soon."
"Is Miss Pross at home?"
Maybe, but she was not sure, because the servant did not yet know if Miss Pross wanted to make that known.
"As I am at home myself, I will go up," said Mr. Lorry.
The Doctor's daughter would not have remembered anything from the country where she was born, but she still had the French ability to make much of very little. As simple as the furniture was, she had added a few cheap but nice little things that had the effect of making the whole scene quite beautiful. Her good taste could be seen in everything in the room. As Mr. Lorry looked around, it was like even the chairs and tables were asking if he liked the place.
Each floor had three rooms, and the doors between them had been left open to let the air move freely between them. Mr. Lorry, smiling to himself, walked from room to room. The first room was the best one. In it were Lucie's flowers, and birds, and books, and desk, and work table, and box of paints. The second was the Doctor's office, also used for meals. The third, made alive by light coming in through the movement of the big tree outside the window, was the Doctor's bedroom, and there in the corner was the Doctor's old shoemaking bench and box of tools, much as they had been in the room on the fifth floor of the dark house by the wine shop in the Saint Antoine part of Paris.
"Now why would he keep that?” Mr. Lorry asked himself quietly as he stopped in front of the bench. "It must only make him think of that awful time in his past."
"And why should you ask a question like that?” came a voice behind him, making him jump. It had come from Miss Pross, the wild woman in red, the one with the strong hand, whom he had first met at the King George Hotel in Dover. They had since become much better friends.
"I would have thought...” Mr. Lorry started.
"Really? You would have thought?” said Miss Pross, and Mr. Lorry left it at that.
Then she said sharply, yet in a in a way that was to show she was not angry at him, "How do you do?"
"I'm well, thank you," Mr. Lorry answered kindly. "How are you?"
"Nothing to be proud of," said Miss Pross.
"Is that true?"
"Yes, it is.” said Miss Pross. "I am very worried about Ladybird."
"Is that true?"
"Mercy me! Do say something besides 'Is that true?' or you will worry me to death," said Miss Pross, whose way (so opposite to her size) was to be short with those around her.
"Really, then?” Mr. Lorry said, as a way of changing his answer.
"Really is bad enough," returned Miss Pross, "but better. Yes, I am very much put out."
"May I ask why?"
"I don't want dozens of people who are not at all good enough for Ladybird to come here looking after her," said Miss Pross.
"Do dozens of people come for that reason?"
"Hundreds," said Miss Pross.
'It was the way of this woman (as has been for others both before and since) when questioned about saying more than what was true to make it worse, and by doing it, adding to the sin.
"My, my!" said Mr. Lorry, as the safest thing he could think of to say.
"I have lived with my sweet one -- or my sweet one has lived with me, and never paid me for it -- which she surely should never have done.-- since she was ten years old. But it's really very hard now."
Not seeing clearly what was so hard about it, Mr. Lorry just shook his head, using that important part of himself to hide from having to give a clear answer.
"So many people who are not in the least measure good enough for Ladybird, are always turning up," said Miss Pross. "When you started it..."
"I started it, Miss Pross?"
"Didn't you? Who brought her father back to life?”
"Oh, if that was starting it...” said Mr. Lorry.
"Well, it wasn't ending it, was it? I say, when you started it, it was hard enough, not that I have any argument with Doctor Manette, apart from him not being good enough for such a daughter, which he cannot help, for there is no one who could be good enough for her. But it really is two or three times harder to have crowds of people turning up after him to take Ladybird's love away from me."
Mr. Lorry knew Miss Pross to be very jealous of Lucie, but he also knew by this time that, under her rough covering, she was one of those kind people -- and they are always women -- who will, for love alone, make themselves willing slaves to qualities in others that are not really there. He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart. It is so free from any thought of making money, that his own feeling about Miss Pross was that she was much nearer to being an angel than many women who were much more beautiful and who had wealth at Tellson's.
"There never was, and there never will be but one man good enough for Ladybird," said Miss Pross, "and that was my brother Solomon, if only he had not made one wrong choice."
Mr. Lorry had learned enough from Miss Pross' history to know that her brother Solomon was a hard-hearted man who had robbed her of all that she owned, only to waste it on a plan to get rich that did not work, and then he had left her, without any feeling of guilt about what he had done. Miss Pross' belief in him (taking off very little for his 'one wrong choice') was a serious part of why Mr. Lorry thought so highly of Miss Pross.
"As we happen to be alone for a while, and are both busy people," he said when they were back in the sitting room and seated, "let me ask you -- does the Doctor, in talking with Lucie, ever, even now, talk about the time when he made shoes?"
"Never."
"And yet he keeps that bench and those tools beside him?"
"Ah!" returned Miss Pross, shaking her head. "But I didn't say that he does not talk about it to himself."
"Do you think he thinks about it much?"
"I do," said Miss Pross.
"Do you picture...?” Mr. Lorry had started when Miss Pross cut him short with:
"Never picture anything. Stay with what is real."
"You are right. Do you think... you do go so far as to think at times, do you not?"
"Now and then," said Miss Pross.
"Do you think," Mr. Lorry went on with a laughing smile in his bright eye, as it looked kindly at her, "that Doctor Manette has any understanding after all these years, of what the reason was for him being put in prison, or maybe even who was behind it?"
"I don't think anything about it but what Ladybird tells me.”
"And that is...?"
"That she thinks he does."
"Now don't be angry at me asking all these questions; because I am a slow man of business, and you too are a woman of business."
"A slow woman?” Miss Pross asked quietly.
Wishing he had not said slow, Mr. Lorry answered, "No, no, no. Surely not. But to return to business... Is it not strange that Doctor Manette, who is clearly innocent of any crime, should never touch on that question? He and I have done business for many years, and we have now become close friends, yet I am not saying that he should talk of it with me. But what about his daughter, whom he loves so much, and who loves him so much? Believe me, Miss Pross, I am not asking about this without a reason. I have a very strong interest in this."
"Well, to the best of my understanding and my best is still bad," said Miss Pross, who was softer now, "he's afraid to talk about it."
"Afraid?"
"It's easy to see why he should be. It's an awful thing to remember. His mind was changed by it, and there is so much he cannot remember. He can never be sure it will not happen again. I should think that alone would make him not want to talk about it."
It was a wiser answer than Mr. Lorry had been looking for. "True," he said, "and awful to think about. Yet I fear that it may not be good for Doctor Manette to close everything up inside his head. The truth is that it is this worry that has brought me to talk alone with you now."
"Can't be helped," said Miss Pross, shaking her head. "Touch that nerve, and he quickly changes for the worse. Better to leave it alone. In short, we must leave it alone, like it or not. At times he gets up in the middle of the night and we can hear him from above there walking up and down, up and down in his room. Ladybird has learned that at those times he is, in his mind, back in prison. She comes down here quickly when that happens, and they go together, walking up and down, up and down until he is over it. But he never says a word of his real reason for being up, and she finds it best not to ask. They just walk together without talking, up and down, up and down, until her love and her being there brings him back to himself."
Miss Pross had said not to picture things that are not real, but in her saying "up and down" so many times, it was clear that she was picturing what Doctor Manette was going through.
It has been said that the corner was a place where sound travelled well, and it was interesting that, just as Miss Pross talked of walking up and down, the sound of steps could be heard from a distance.
"Here they are!" said Miss Pross, standing up to end their talk. "And now we will have hundreds of people coming soon!"
It was such an interesting corner in the way that sound travelled across it, that, as Mr. Lorry stood at the window waiting for the father and daughter to arrive, it seemed like they would never get there. The sound would die out, like they had gone away; and then other steps would come in their place before dying away too just when it seemed that they were there. All the same, father and daughter did at last arrive, and Miss Pross was ready at the street door to receive them.
Miss Pross was interesting to watch, taking off her love's hat for her as she was coming up the steps, touching it with the ends of a cloth, and blowing the dirt off it, then folding her coat and smoothing her rich hair with as much pride as she could possibly have taken in her own hair if she had been the proudest and most beautiful of women. It was nice to see Ladybird hugging Miss Pross and thanking her and asking her not to go to so much trouble for her. This last line she did not say very seriously, or Miss Pross would have been hurt, and surely would have gone to her room and cried. The Doctor, too, was nice to watch, as he looked on at the two of them, telling Miss Pross that she was being too kind to Lucie when his own eyes and words showed that he too was as kind to Lucie as Miss Pross, and would be kinder if it were possible. And last, there was Mr. Lorry himself in his little wig, who looked at it all with a big smile on his face, as he thanked his good luck that he had found such a nice family to be his friends in his old age.
But no, the hundreds of people that Miss Pross had promised would follow the others, were not there!
Time for dinner came, and still no hundreds of people. Miss Pross, whose job it was to care for the lower rooms, always did her job well. Her meals, made from simple food, were so well cooked and so well served, half French and half English, that nothing could be better. When Miss Pross made friends, she did so for practical reasons. She had looked around Soho to find some poor French people who, for a few coins, would tell her how to make the best French dishes. From these poor sons and daughters of France, she had learned to be such a good cook that the servants there at the house believed she was like a god, who could send out for a chicken, a rabbit, or a few vegetables from the garden and change them into anything she liked
On Sundays Miss Pross would eat at the Doctor's table, but on other days she would always eat alone, either in the lower rooms or in her own room on the second floor, a blue room where no one but her Ladybird ever went. On this day, probably as an effect of Ladybird's sweet spirit, Miss Pross was much softer than was her way most of the time, and so the meal, too, was much nicer for everyone.
It was a hot day, and so after dinner, Lucie asked if they could go out back, under the big tree, to drink their wine. Because everything moved around her anyway, the others agreed, and she carried the wine out as a special kindness to Mr. Lorry. She had, some time ago, given herself the job of keeping Mr. Lorry's wine glass filled, and she did that on this day too, as they sat talking under the big tree. The backs and ends of houses looked at them, and the tree itself whispered to them in its own way, above their heads, as they talked.
Still, the hundreds of people did not come. But Mr. Darnay did come, when they were out under the tree. And yet he was only one person.
Doctor Manette received him kindly, as did Lucie. But Miss Pross started shaking about in her head and body and left to go to her room. It often happened that she had this problem, which she called "a touch of the shakes".
The Doctor was at his best, and looked especially young. At times like this, it was easy to see how Lucie looked like him. As they sat side by side, with her leaning on his shoulder, and him resting his arm on the back of her chair, it was quite nice to see how much they looked the same.
They had been talking about the old buildings of London, and Doctor Manette had been speaking confidently, when Mr. Darnay asked, "Tell us, Doctor Manette, have you seen much of the Tower?"
"Lucie and I have been there, but only for a short time. We have seen enough of it to know that there must be much to see there; little more."
"I have been there, as you remember," said Darnay with a little smile, but also with a little red colour coming to his face to show his anger. "I was there for a different reason, and not for a reason that left me free to see much of the place. But they told me an interesting thing when I was there."
"What was that?” Lucie asked.
"When they were making some changes to the building, the workers opened up a part of the prison that had been covered over for many years. Every stone on the inside wall was covered with writing, cut into it by the prisoners -- names, years, prayers, and things they were angry about. On a stone in one corner of the wall, one prisoner, who must have been killed, had cut his last work, just three letters. They were done with some very poor instrument, and done quickly, with a weak hand. At first, they believed them to be D.I.C.; but, on looking more closely, they found the last letter to be G. There was no history of a prisoner with three names starting with those letters, and many people tried to say who the prisoner might be. At length, someone said that the letters might be a word in themselves: DIG. They looked closely at the floor under it, and in the dirt under a stone, they found what was left of a piece of paper and a small leather bag that had been burned. It was not possible to read what he said, but it was clear that a prisoner had written a secret on the paper before hiding it there."
"Father!" Lucie shouted. "You look sick!"
He had quickly put his hands to his head and there was a look of fear on his face. It was so strong that it scared them all.
"No, my sweet, not sick. There are big drops of rain falling and they made me jump. It would be best if we were to go in."
He returned quickly to a good spirit, and rain really was falling in big drops now. He showed the back of his hand with rain on it. But he said nothing about Darnay's story, and as they went into the house, Mr. Lorry's business eye either saw or thought he saw on the Doctor's face, as the Doctor turned toward Mr. Darnay, the same special look that had been on it when he had turned toward him in the court house.
He was so quickly back to his old ways that Mr. Lorry started to question his business eye. When he stopped under the golden arm on the way back to their rooms, Doctor Manette was as solid as the arm itself as he said that he was still not able (and maybe would never be able) to stop from jumping when he was surprised, as the rain had just surprised him.
It came time for some tea, and Miss Pross brought it in, with another touch of the shakes when Mr. Carton came by. There were yet no hundreds of people, but Mr. Carton did make two.
The night was so warm that even with the rain and with the doors and windows open, they were not comfortable because of the heat. When they had finished their tea, they all moved to one of the windows and looked out at the night. Lucie sat by her father; Darnay sat beside her; and Carton leaned against a window.
When wind from the coming storm came into the room, the white curtains flew up in the air like wings on a ghost.
"The rain drops are still falling, big, heavy, and few," said Doctor Manette. "It comes slowly."
"But it comes surely," said Carton.
They spoke quietly, as people watching and waiting often do; and especially as people in a dark room watching and waiting for lightning always do.
Out in the streets, people were running to find cover before the storm broke. On that corner, where sound travelled so well, one could hear many steps of people running, but there was not one person there.
"So many people, and yet not one out there," said Darnay, when they had listened for a while.
"Isn't it interesting, Mr. Darnay?” asked Lucie. "At times I have sat here in the evening listening, until I have started to think... but even remembering my foolish thoughts makes me shake tonight, when all is so black and serious..."
"Let us shake too. Tell us what you have thought."
"It will seem nothing to you. Such thoughts are only real to the people who have them, I think. Words cannot make them real for others; but I have at times sat here alone at night, listening, until I started to believe that the steps I was hearing were the steps of all the people who will come into our lives."
"If that is so, then there is a great crowd coming our way one day," Sydney Carton added in his sad way.
The steps did not stop, and they moved more and more quickly. The sound came over and over there at the corner; some, as it seemed, under the window, some, as it seemed, in the room, some coming, some going, some turning away, some stopping; all far off in the street, and not one that they could see.
"Are all of these coming to all of us, Miss Manette, or will some be for one and some for another?"
"I don't know, Mr. Darnay. I told you it was a foolish thought, but you asked for it. When the thought has come to me, I have been alone, so I believed the steps were coming only into my life and into the life of my father."
"I take them into mine too!" said Carton. "I ask no question, and agree with all that you have said. There is a great crowd coming toward us, Miss Manette, and I see them... by the lightning.” He added the last words after there was a bright explosion of lightning that showed him leaning back in the window.
"And I hear them!" he added again, after the noise that followed the lightning. "Here they come, fast, dangerous, and angry!"
It was the sound of the rain that these last words marked, and it stopped him, because no voice could be heard in it. A great lightning storm followed, and there was not a minute's break in the noise and light and rain until the moon came up at midnight
The great bell of the church was hitting one in the morning when Mr. Lorry, helped by Jerry, who was carrying a lantern in the now clear night air, left to walk back toward his home. There were some dark streets on the way, and because Mr. Lorry was always afraid of robbers, he always had Jerry come for him. But this time, Jerry had been two hours late in getting there.
"What a night this has been! Almost a night, Jerry, to bring the dead back to life," said Mr. Lorry.
"I never see the night myself, sir -- and don't think I ever will -- that would do that," answered Jerry.
"Good night, Mr. Carton," said the businessman. "Good night, Mr. Darnay. Shall we ever see such a night together again?"
Maybe. And maybe see the great crowd of people with all its noise and anger coming toward them too.