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Book the Third: The Track of a Storm
Chapter III.
The Shadow
One of the first considerations which arose
in the business mind of Mr. Lorry when
business hours came round, was this:--that
he had no right to imperil Tellson's by
sheltering the wife of an emigrant prisoner
under the Bank roof.
His own possessions, safety, life, he would
have hazarded for Lucie and her child,
without a moment's demur; but the great
trust he held was not his own, and as to
that business charge he was a strict man of
business.
At first, his mind reverted to Defarge, and
he thought of finding out the wine-shop
again and taking counsel with its master in
reference to the safest dwelling-place in
the distracted state of the city.
But, the same consideration that suggested
him, repudiated him; he lived in the most
violent Quarter, and doubtless was
influential there, and deep in its
dangerous workings.
Noon coming, and the Doctor not returning,
and every minute's delay tending to
compromise Tellson's, Mr. Lorry advised
with Lucie.
She said that her father had spoken of
hiring a lodging for a short term, in that
Quarter, near the Banking-house.
As there was no business objection to this,
and as he foresaw that even if it were all
well with Charles, and he were to be
released, he could not hope to leave the
city, Mr. Lorry went out in quest of such a
lodging, and found a suitable one, high up
in a removed by-street where the closed
blinds in all the other windows of a high
melancholy square of buildings marked
deserted homes.
To this lodging he at once removed Lucie
and her child, and Miss Pross: giving them
what comfort he could, and much more than
he had himself.
He left Jerry with them, as a figure to
fill a doorway that would bear considerable
knocking on the head, and retained to his
own occupations.
A disturbed and doleful mind he brought to
bear upon them, and slowly and heavily the
day lagged on with him.
It wore itself out, and wore him out with
it, until the Bank closed.
He was again alone in his room of the
previous night, considering what to do
next, when he heard a foot upon the stair.
In a few moments, a man stood in his
presence, who, with a keenly observant look
at him, addressed him by his name.
"Your servant," said Mr. Lorry.
"Do you know me?"
He was a strongly made man with dark
curling hair, from forty-five to fifty
years of age.
For answer he repeated, without any change
of emphasis, the words:
"Do you know me?"
"I have seen you somewhere."
"Perhaps at my wine-shop?"
Much interested and agitated, Mr. Lorry
said: "You come from Doctor Manette?"
"Yes. I come from Doctor Manette."
"And what says he?
What does he send me?"
Defarge gave into his anxious hand, an open
scrap of paper.
It bore the words in the Doctor's writing:
"Charles is safe, but I cannot safely leave
this place yet.
I have obtained the favour that the bearer
has a short note from Charles to his wife.
Let the bearer see his wife."
It was dated from La Force, within an hour.
"Will you accompany me," said Mr. Lorry,
joyfully relieved after reading this note
aloud, "to where his wife resides?"
"Yes," returned Defarge.
Scarcely noticing as yet, in what a
curiously reserved and mechanical way
Defarge spoke, Mr. Lorry put on his hat and
they went down into the courtyard.
There, they found two women; one, knitting.
"Madame Defarge, surely!" said Mr. Lorry,
who had left her in exactly the same
attitude some seventeen years ago.
"It is she," observed her husband.
"Does Madame go with us?" inquired Mr.
Lorry, seeing that she moved as they moved.
"Yes. That she may be able to recognise the
faces and know the persons.
It is for their safety."
Beginning to be struck by Defarge's manner,
Mr. Lorry looked dubiously at him, and led
the way.
Both the women followed; the second woman
being The Vengeance.
They passed through the intervening streets
as quickly as they might, ascended the
staircase of the new domicile, were
admitted by Jerry, and found Lucie weeping,
alone.
She was thrown into a transport by the
tidings Mr. Lorry gave her of her husband,
and clasped the hand that delivered his
note--little thinking what it had been
doing near him in the night, and might, but
for a chance, have done to him.
"DEAREST,--Take courage.
I am well, and your father has influence
around me.
You cannot answer this.
Kiss our child for me."
That was all the writing.
It was so much, however, to her who
received it, that she turned from Defarge
to his wife, and kissed one of the hands
that knitted.
It was a passionate, loving, thankful,
womanly action, but the hand made no
response--dropped cold and heavy, and took
to its knitting again.
There was something in its touch that gave
Lucie a check.
She stopped in the act of putting the note
in her ***, and, with her hands yet at
her neck, looked terrified at Madame
Madame Defarge met the lifted eyebrows and
forehead with a cold, impassive stare.
"My dear," said Mr. Lorry, striking in to
explain; "there are frequent risings in the
streets; and, although it is not likely
they will ever trouble you, Madame Defarge
wishes to see those whom she has the power
to protect at such times, to the end that
she may know them--that she may identify
them.
I believe," said Mr. Lorry, rather halting
in his reassuring words, as the stony
manner of all the three impressed itself
upon him more and more, "I state the case,
Citizen Defarge?"
Defarge looked gloomily at his wife, and
gave no other answer than a gruff sound of
acquiescence.
"You had better, Lucie," said Mr. Lorry,
doing all he could to propitiate, by tone
and manner, "have the dear child here, and
our good Pross.
Our good Pross, Defarge, is an English
lady, and knows no French."
The lady in question, whose rooted
conviction that she was more than a match
for any foreigner, was not to be shaken by
distress and, danger, appeared with folded
arms, and observed in English to The
Vengeance, whom her eyes first encountered,
"Well, I am sure, Boldface!
I hope _you_ are pretty well!"
She also bestowed a British cough on Madame
Defarge; but, neither of the two took much
heed of her.
"Is that his child?" said Madame Defarge,
stopping in her work for the first time,
and pointing her knitting-needle at little
Lucie as if it were the finger of Fate.
"Yes, madame," answered Mr. Lorry; "this is
our poor prisoner's darling daughter, and
only child."
The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and
her party seemed to fall so threatening and
dark on the child, that her mother
instinctively kneeled on the ground beside
her, and held her to her breast.
The shadow attendant on Madame Defarge and
her party seemed then to fall, threatening
and dark, on both the mother and the child.
"It is enough, my husband," said Madame
Defarge.
"I have seen them.
We may go."
But, the suppressed manner had enough of
menace in it--not visible and presented,
but indistinct and withheld--to alarm Lucie
into saying, as she laid her appealing hand
on Madame Defarge's dress:
"You will be good to my poor husband.
You will do him no harm.
You will help me to see him if you can?"
"Your husband is not my business here,"
returned Madame Defarge, looking down at
her with perfect composure.
"It is the daughter of your father who is
my business here."
"For my sake, then, be merciful to my
husband.
For my child's sake!
She will put her hands together and pray
you to be merciful.
We are more afraid of you than of these
others."
Madame Defarge received it as a compliment,
and looked at her husband.
Defarge, who had been uneasily biting his
thumb-nail and looking at her, collected
his face into a sterner expression.
"What is it that your husband says in that
little letter?" asked Madame Defarge, with
a lowering smile.
"Influence; he says something touching
influence?"
"That my father," said Lucie, hurriedly
taking the paper from her breast, but with
her alarmed eyes on her questioner and not
on it, "has much influence around him."
"Surely it will release him!" said Madame
Defarge.
"Let it do so."
"As a wife and mother," cried Lucie, most
earnestly, "I implore you to have pity on
me and not to exercise any power that you
possess, against my innocent husband, but
to use it in his behalf.
O sister-woman, think of me.
As a wife and mother!"
Madame Defarge looked, coldly as ever, at
the suppliant, and said, turning to her
friend The Vengeance:
"The wives and mothers we have been used to
see, since we were as little as this child,
and much less, have not been greatly
considered?
We have known _their_ husbands and fathers
laid in prison and kept from them, often
enough?
All our lives, we have seen our sister-
women suffer, in themselves and in their
children, poverty, nakedness, hunger,
thirst, sickness, misery, oppression and
neglect of all kinds?"
"We have seen nothing else," returned The
Vengeance.
"We have borne this a long time," said
Madame Defarge, turning her eyes again upon
Lucie.
"Judge you!
Is it likely that the trouble of one wife
and mother would be much to us now?"
She resumed her knitting and went out.
The Vengeance followed.
Defarge went last, and closed the door.
"Courage, my dear Lucie," said Mr. Lorry,
as he raised her.
"Courage, courage!
So far all goes well with us--much, much
better than it has of late gone with many
poor souls.
Cheer up, and have a thankful heart."
"I am not thankless, I hope, but that
dreadful woman seems to throw a shadow on
me and on all my hopes."
"Tut, tut!" said Mr. Lorry; "what is this
despondency in the brave little breast?
A shadow indeed!
No substance in it, Lucie."
But the shadow of the manner of these
Defarges was dark upon himself, for all
that, and in his secret mind it troubled
him greatly.