If there was ever a time when Sydney Carton looked good, it was not during times when he visited with Doctor Manette. During the past year he had visited many times, and he had always been the same sour, lazy, quiet person, with no interest in others. He could speak well if he had wanted to, but the cloud of selfish interest that travelled with him wherever he went was almost never cut through by the light to whatever was hiding inside of him.
And yet he did care for something, if nothing more than the stones that made up the streets and footpaths around the house in Soho. Many nights, when the wine stopped making him happy, he would walk around without clear direction on the streets of Soho. Many mornings, when the sun was close to coming up, he was out there all alone. And he was often still there when the first light of the sun was competing with the shapes and colours of the tallest buildings in the city. It may be that those quiet times helped him to remember better things, things he would forget and never find if he was not in that special part of the city. Of late, his bed in Temple Court was seeing less and less of him. Often after only a few minutes on the bed, he would get up and go like a ghost off to Soho.
One day in August, when Mr. Stryver (after telling his wild dog that he "had thought better of that marrying plan") had taken his high class ways to another town, and when the picture and smell of flowers in the city streets had in them the ability to help the worst of people (making the sick feel well again, and the old feel young again), Sydney's feet were still walking on those stones in Soho. From being one who could never stay with a thing long enough to finish it, his feet seemed to take on a new mind, a mind that took him to the Doctor's door.
He was taken up the steps to where Lucie was working alone on some papers. It was always difficult for her to relax around him, and so she was embarrassed to have him there sitting in a chair near her table. But when she looked up at his face as they were each saying hello, she could see a change in it.
"I'm afraid you are not well, Mr. Carton!"
"No, I'm not. But the way I live, Miss Manette, is not a healthy way. What more can you look for in one who has wasted his life as I have?"
"Is it not... Forgive me, for asking this without thinking. Is it not wrong to live such a life?"
"God knows it is!"
"They why not change it?"
Looking kindly at him again, she was surprised and hurt to see that there were tears in his eyes. They were in his voice too, as he answered:
"It is too late for that. I will never be better than I am. I will only sink lower and grow worse."
He leaned an elbow on the table and covered his eyes with his hands. They both said nothing, but the table was shaking.
She had never seen this soft side of him, and she did not know what to do or say. He understood this, without looking at her, and so he said:
"Please forgive me, Miss Manette. I am like this because of what I want to say to you. Will you hear me out?"
"If it will do you any good, Mr. Carton, if it will make you happier, it would make me very glad!"
"God bless you for your sweet spirit!"
He uncovered his face after a little while and spoke clearly.
"Don't be afraid to hear me. Don't pull back from anything I say. I am like one who died young. All my life has been wasted."
"No, Mr. Carton. I am sure that the best part of it is still to come. I am sure that you can be much much more than you are now."
"I hear what you are saying, Miss Manette. I know better. In the secret place of my awful heart, I know better. But I will never forget what you have just said."
"If it had been possible, Miss Manette, for you to return the love of the man who is in front of you now... a man who has wasted his life and destroyed his body through alcohol -- he would know, even now, that the happiness he would feel from that would not have stopped him from making you sad, embarrassing you, destroying you, and pulling you down with him. I know that there is no reason for you to feel that kind of love for me. I do not ask for that, and I even thank God that you cannot."
"But isn't there a way that I can help you without that, Mr. Carton? Can't I call you back -- Forgive me again! -- to a better way? Is there nothing I can do to thank you for being honest with me just now? I know that what you have said was said in confidence," she said humbly after waiting a short while before saying it, with sincere tears in her eyes. "I know you would not say this to anyone else. Can I turn it to something good for yourself, Mr. Carton?"
He shook his head.
"To nothing. No, Miss Manette, to nothing. If you will listen just for a little longer, you will have done for me all that you can do. I want you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul. I have not been so far gone that I could not see in you and your father and in this home that you have built up together, something that lifted my spirit from the darkness that I had thought I was buried in. Since meeting you, I have heard old voices that I thought I would never hear again, calling on me to remember the good times, and to not give up hope for better ones to come. There have been whispers encouraging me to feel sorry about my actions, and thoughts about starting over, shaking off the lazy and selfish ways of the past, returning to the fight for all that is good. But it is all a dream, a dream that ends in nothing and leaves the sleeper where he was. But I want you to know that you are the one who put these thoughts into my head."
"Will nothing at all come of it? Oh, Mr. Carton, please try again!"
"No, Miss Manette. Through it all, I have known that I am not able to live up to those dreams. On top of that, I have selfishly wanted you to know how much effect your spirit has had on me, cold ashes that I am. You have started a fire in me, a fire which will help no one, but a fire all the same."
"Since I have made you, Mr. Carton, sadder than you were before you knew me..."
"Don't say that, Miss Manette! If anyone could have saved me, it would have been you. You're not the reason I will grow worse."
"Since the feelings you have now are in some way the effect of knowing me -- That is what I mean, if I can make myself clear. -- can I not use my power to help you in some way? Do I have no power for good with you at all?"
"The most good that I could possibly do, Miss Manette, is what I have come here to do. Let me remember through what I have left of my awful life, that I opened up to you alone of all people with the truth about myself, and that you were able to feel sorry for me."
"Remember too that I begged you again and again with all my heart, to believe you are able to do better than this, Mr. Carton!"
"Do not beg me any more, Miss Manette. I know myself better than you, and I know what I am able to do and what I am not able to do. I am sorry to have made you feel sad. I will finish quickly. Will you let me believe, when I remember this day, that the last time I opened my heart to someone it was to someone with a perfect and innocent spirit, and that she would never share it with anyone?"
"If that is what you want, I will do it. Yes."
"Not even to the one you come to love most in this world?"
"Mr. Carton," she answered, after fighting with this thought for a few seconds, "the secret is yours, not mine. I promise to keep it."
"Thank you, and again, God bless you."
He put her hand to his lips and moved toward the door.
"Do not fear, Miss Manette, that I will ever tell anyone about this meeting. I will never say one word about it again. If I were dead, I could not be quieter about it. And in the hour of my death I will remember this one thing as holy -- and I will thank you and bless you for it -- that my last act of honesty was made to you, and that you carry kindly in your heart my name with all my wrongs and sadness. Apart from this, may your heart be filled with light and happiness!"
He was so different to how he had ever seemed, and it was so sad to think of how much he had thrown away, and how much he forced out of his mind each day, that Lucie Manette cried deeply for him as he stood looking back at her.
"Do not be sad!" he said. "I am not worth such feelings, Miss Manette. An hour or two from now, and the low friends and the low actions that I hate, but give in to, will make me of less worth than any poor soul that walks the streets. Do not be sad! But, inside myself I will always be toward you what I am now, even if on the outside I go back to acting like I did before. The second last thing I ask of you is that you believe what I have just said."
"I will, Mr. Carton."
"And the very last thing I ask is this, and with it I will take a visitor away from you who is so opposite to you, and who is separated from you by a space that can never be bridged. There is no point in saying it, I know, but it comes up out of my soul. For you, and for anyone whom you love, I would do anything. If my work was of a better kind that it could be used, at any cost, to help you, I would pay any price to help you or those you love. Try to remember me, at some quiet times, as deeply sincere in this one thing. The time will come, and it will not be long in coming, when new ropes will tie you even more closely to the home that you have made so beautiful. They will be the most loving ropes, and they will fill your heart with happiness. So, Miss Manette, when the picture of a happy father's face looks up at you, and you see yourself growing again in a little child at your feet, think from time to time that there is a man who would give his life to keep a life you love beside you!"
He said "Goodbye!" and a last "God bless you!" and he left.