disclosed some shadowy indication that the old air of avoidance
and dread had lately passed over him, like a cold wind.
He gave his arm to his daughter, and took her downstairs to the
chariot which Mr. Lorry had hired in honour of the day. The rest
followed in another carriage, and soon, in a neighbouring church,
where no strange eyes looked on, Charles Darnay and Lucie
Manette were happily married.
Besides the glancing tears that shone among the smiles of the
little group when it was done, some diamonds, very bright and
sparkling, glanced on the bride’s hand, which were newly released
from the dark obscurity of one of Mr. Lorry’s pockets. They
returned home to breakfast, and all went well, and in due course
the golden hair that had mingled with the poor shoemaker’s white
locks in the Paris garret, were mingled with them again in the
morning sunlight, on the threshold of the door at parting.
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A Tale of Two Cities
It was a hard parting, though it was not for long. But her father
cheered her, and said at last, gently disengaging himself from her
enfolding arms, “Take her, Charles! She is yours!”
And her agitated hand waved to them from a chaise window,
and she was gone.
The corner being out of the way of the idle and curious, and the
preparations having been very simple and few, the Doctor, Mr.
Lorry, and Miss Pross, were left quite alone. It was when they
turned into the welcome shade of the cool old hall, that Mr. Lorry
observed a great change to have come over the Doctor; as if the
golden arm uplifted there, had struck him a poisoned blow.
He had naturally repressed much, and some revulsion might
have been expected in him when the occasion for repression was
gone. But, it was the old scared lost look that troubled Mr. Lorry;
and through his absent manner of clasping his head and drearily
wandering away into his own room when they got upstairs, Mr.
Lorry was reminded of Defarge the wine-shop keeper, and the
starlight ride.
“I think,” he whispered to Miss Pross, after anxious
consideration, “I think we had best not speak to him just now, or
at all disturb him. I must look in at Tellson’s; so I will go there at
once and come back presently. Then, we will take him a ride in the
country, and dine there, and all will be well.”
It was easier for Mr. Lorry to look in at Tellson’s, than to look
out of Tellson’s. He was detained two hours. When he came back,
he ascended the old staircase alone, having asked no question of
the servant; going thus into the Doctor’s rooms, he was stopped by
a low sound of knocking. “Good God!” he said, with a start.
“What’s that?”
Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics
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A Tale of Two Cities
Miss Pross, with a terrified face, was at his ear. “O me, O me!
All is lost!” cried she, wringing her hands. “What is to be told to
Ladybird? He doesn’t know me, and is making shoes!”
Mr. Lorry said what he could to calm her, and went himself into
the Doctor’s room. The bench was turned towards the light, as it
had been when he had seen the shoemaker at his work before, and
his head was bent down, and he was very busy.
“Doctor Manette. My dear friend, Doctor Manette!”
The Doctor looked at him for a moment—half inquiringly, half
as if he were angry at being spoken to—and bent over his work
again.
He had laid aside his coat and waistcoat; his shirt was open at
the throat, as it used to be when he did that work; and even the old
haggard, faded surface of face had come back to him. He worked
hard—impatiently—as if in some sense of having been
interrupted.
Mr. Lorry glanced at the work in his hand, and observed that it
was a shoe of the old size and shape. He took up another that was
lying by him, and asked what it was?
“A young lady’s walking shoe,”"};
