When the newly married couple returned, the first one to welcome them was Sydney Carton. They had not been home many hours when he came by. He was no better in how he acted or dressed, but there was about him a strange air of control, an air Charles Darnay had never seen in him before.
He watched and waited for a good time to take Darnay away, to a window seat, so they could talk without anyone hearing.
"Mr. Darnay," said Carton, "I wish that we could be friends."
"We already are, I hope."
"You're kind to say so, but it's just words. I don't mean just in words. To be honest, I don't quite mean real friends either."
Charles Darnay, as was natural for him, asked him in a joking and friendly way what he could mean by that.
"On my life," said Carton, smiling, "I find it easier to know in my own mind what I want, than I can say it to yours. But let me try. Do you remember a special night when I was more drunk than... than I am most nights?"
"I remember a special night when you forced me to say that you had been drinking."
"I remember it too. The pain of such times is heavy on me, because I can never forget how I acted. I hope at least that much will be remembered of me one day when my life is finished. Don't worry; I'm not going to start preaching!"
"I am not at all worried. Hearing you speak seriously about something is anything but worrying to me.
"Ah!" said Carton, with a light wave of his hand, as if he waved that thought away. "On the night in question (one of many nights when I have been too drunk), I was being impossible to get along with, I talked about liking you and not liking you. I wish that you would forget it."
"I did that a long time ago."
"Just words again! But, Mr. Darnay, forgetting is not so easy for me, as you make it sound. I have in no way forgotten it, and a light answer does not help me to forget it."
"If it was a light answer," returned Darnay, "I beg your forgiveness for it. I had no other reason for being light apart from pushing to the side something that I thought was light, and that seems to trouble you too much. I want you to know that on my honest word, I have long since dropped it from my mind. Good heavens, what was there to drop! Did I have nothing more important to remember in the great help that you gave me on that day?"
"As to the great help," said Carton, "I must tell you the truth, that it was just the empty words of what I do for a living. I don't know that I cared at all about what would happen to you when I said it. Understand that when I talk about having said it, it happened a long time ago."
"Now you are the one making light of what you did," returned Darnay, "but I will not argue with your light answer."
"It's the honest truth, Mr. Darnay, trust me! But that is not what I wanted to say. I was speaking about us being friends. Now, you know me. You know that I am not able to do all the higher and better things that others do. Ask Stryver, and he will tell you so."
"I think it is better for me to work such things out for myself, without his help."
"Well, all the same, you know me as a dog without much control, who has never done any good, and who never will."
"I don't know that you never will."
"But I know, and you can take my word for it. Still, if you could put up with such an awful person, one who has done nothing with his life, coming and going at different times, I would like to be able to visit from time to time. I would be happy if you could think of me as a piece of furniture that can do nothing of worth (and if it was not that we look so much the same, I would say an ugly piece of furniture too) that you keep only because it is an old one that you did not think to throw out. I don't think I would come too often. It is a hundred to one that I would come even four times in a year. But just knowing that I am free to come will make me happy."
"Please try to come."
"That is another way of saying that you have agreed to what I have asked. Thank you, Darnay. So can I say that you have asked me to come?"
"I think so, Carton, by this time."
They shook hands on it, and Sydney moved away from him. A minute later he was, to look at, no different to what he had been in the past.
When he had left, later that evening, Charles Darnay said something about what Sydney Carton had said when Miss Pross, the Doctor, and Mr. Lorry were there. He said something about Carton being a problem and wasting his life. In short, he was not angry or wanting to hurt him, but he was only saying what anyone could see for themselves if they knew Carton well.
Darnay never thought that these few words would stay in the mind of his beautiful young wife; but when he joined her later in their rooms, he found her waiting for him with the old lifting of the forehead that was so often her mark.
"We are in deep thoughts tonight!" he said, hugging her.
"Yes, Charles," with her hands on his chest, and her questioning eyes fixed on him, "we are thinking very deeply tonight, for we have something to think about."
"What is it, my Lucie?"
"Will you promise not to force one question on me if I beg you not to ask it?"
"Will I promise? What would I not promise to my Love?"
Yes, what would he not promise, as he pushed the golden hair away from her cheek with one hand and held his other hand against the heart that loved him so much!
"I think, Charles, that poor Mr. Carton is worth more than the words you used to show your feelings for him tonight."
"Is that true? The words I used? Why is that?"
"That is what you mustn't ask. But I think... I know... he is."
"If you know it, it is enough. What do you want me to do, my Love?"
"I would ask you, sweet, to be very generous with him always, and very soft on the things he does wrong, even when he is not around to hear what you are saying. I would ask you to believe that he has a heart that he almost never shows, and that there are deep sores in it. My love, I have seen it bleeding."
"It hurts to think about this," said Charles Darnay, quite surprised, "that I have done him any wrong. I never thought this of him."
"My husband, it's true. I fear he is not going to change; there is not much hope for him as a person or for him in life now. But I am sure that he could do good things, kind things, even great things."
She looked so beautiful in her child-like faith in this lost man, that her husband could have looked at her as she was for hours.
"And oh, my love!" she begged, hugging him closer, laying her head on his chest, and lifting her eyes to him, "remember how strong we are in our happiness, and how weak he is in his sadness!"
Her prayer touched his heart. "I will always remember it, sweet Heart! I will remember it as long as I live."
He bent over the golden head and put her red lips to his, and folded her in his arms. If one sad man walking the dark streets that night could have heard the innocent words she had just said, and seen the tears of love that her husband so lovingly kissed away from her soft blue eyes, he too may have cried. And the words he would have cried would not have been said for the first time:
"God bless her for her sweet love!"