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Book the Second: The Golden Thread
Chapter XVII.
One Night
Never did the sun go down with a brighter
glory on the quiet corner in Soho, than one
memorable evening when the Doctor and his
daughter sat under the plane-tree together.
Never did the moon rise with a milder
radiance over great London, than on that
night when it found them still seated under
the tree, and shone upon their faces
through its leaves.
Lucie was to be married to-morrow.
She had reserved this last evening for her
father, and they sat alone under the plane-
tree.
"You are happy, my dear father?"
"Quite, my child."
They had said little, though they had been
there a long time.
When it was yet light enough to work and
read, she had neither engaged herself in
her usual work, nor had she read to him.
She had employed herself in both ways, at
his side under the tree, many and many a
time; but, this time was not quite like any
other, and nothing could make it so.
"And I am very happy to-night, dear father.
I am deeply happy in the love that Heaven
has so blessed--my love for Charles, and
Charles's love for me.
But, if my life were not to be still
consecrated to you, or if my marriage were
so arranged as that it would part us, even
by the length of a few of these streets, I
should be more unhappy and self-reproachful
now than I can tell you.
Even as it is--"
Even as it was, she could not command her
voice.
In the sad moonlight, she clasped him by
the neck, and laid her face upon his
breast.
In the moonlight which is always sad, as
the light of the sun itself is--as the
light called human life is--at its coming
and its going.
"Dearest dear!
Can you tell me, this last time, that you
feel quite, quite sure, no new affections
of mine, and no new duties of mine, will
ever interpose between us?
_I_ know it well, but do you know it?
In your own heart, do you feel quite
certain?"
Her father answered, with a cheerful
firmness of conviction he could scarcely
have assumed, "Quite sure, my darling!
More than that," he added, as he tenderly
kissed her: "my future is far brighter,
Lucie, seen through your marriage, than it
could have been--nay, than it ever was--
without it."
"If I could hope _that_, my father!--"
"Believe it, love!
Indeed it is so.
Consider how natural and how plain it is,
my dear, that it should be so.
You, devoted and young, cannot fully
appreciate the anxiety I have felt that
your life should not be wasted--"
She moved her hand towards his lips, but he
took it in his, and repeated the word.
"--wasted, my child--should not be wasted,
struck aside from the natural order of
things--for my sake.
Your unselfishness cannot entirely
comprehend how much my mind has gone on
this; but, only ask yourself, how could my
happiness be perfect, while yours was
incomplete?"
"If I had never seen Charles, my father, I
should have been quite happy with you."
He smiled at her unconscious admission that
she would have been unhappy without
Charles, having seen him; and replied:
"My child, you did see him, and it is
Charles.
If it had not been Charles, it would have
been another.
Or, if it had been no other, I should have
been the cause, and then the dark part of
my life would have cast its shadow beyond
myself, and would have fallen on you."
It was the first time, except at the trial,
of her ever hearing him refer to the period
of his suffering.
It gave her a strange and new sensation
while his words were in her ears; and she
remembered it long afterwards.
"See!" said the Doctor of Beauvais, raising
his hand towards the moon.
"I have looked at her from my prison-
window, when I could not bear her light.
I have looked at her when it has been such
torture to me to think of her shining upon
what I had lost, that I have beaten my head
against my prison-walls.
I have looked at her, in a state so dull
and lethargic, that I have thought of
nothing but the number of horizontal lines
I could draw across her at the full, and
the number of perpendicular lines with
which I could intersect them."
He added in his inward and pondering
manner, as he looked at the moon, "It was
twenty either way, I remember, and the
twentieth was difficult to squeeze in."
The strange thrill with which she heard him
go back to that time, deepened as he dwelt
upon it; but, there was nothing to shock
her in the manner of his reference.
He only seemed to contrast his present
cheerfulness and felicity with the dire
endurance that was over.
"I have looked at her, speculating
thousands of times upon the unborn child
from whom I had been rent.
Whether it was alive.
Whether it had been born alive, or the poor
mother's shock had killed it.
Whether it was a son who would some day
avenge his father.
(There was a time in my imprisonment, when
my desire for vengeance was unbearable.)
Whether it was a son who would never know
his father's story; who might even live to
weigh the possibility of his father's
having disappeared of his own will and act.
Whether it was a daughter who would grow to
be a woman."
She drew closer to him, and kissed his
cheek and his hand.
"I have pictured my daughter, to myself, as
perfectly forgetful of me--rather,
altogether ignorant of me, and unconscious
of me.
I have cast up the years of her age, year
after year.
I have seen her married to a man who knew
nothing of my fate.
I have altogether perished from the
remembrance of the living, and in the next
generation my place was a blank."
"My father!
Even to hear that you had such thoughts of
a daughter who never existed, strikes to my
heart as if I had been that child."
"You, Lucie?
It is out of the Consolation and
restoration you have brought to me, that
these remembrances arise, and pass between
us and the moon on this last night.--What
did I say just now?"
"She knew nothing of you.
She cared nothing for you."
"So! But on other moonlight nights, when
the sadness and the silence have touched me
in a different way--have affected me with
something as like a sorrowful sense of
peace, as any emotion that had pain for its
foundations could--I have imagined her as
coming to me in my cell, and leading me out
into the freedom beyond the fortress.
I have seen her image in the moonlight
often, as I now see you; except that I
never held her in my arms; it stood between
the little grated window and the door.
But, you understand that that was not the
child I am speaking of?"
"The figure was not; the--the--image; the
fancy?"
"No. That was another thing.
It stood before my disturbed sense of
sight, but it never moved.
The phantom that my mind pursued, was
another and more real child.
Of her outward appearance I know no more
than that she was like her mother.
The other had that likeness too--as you
have--but was not the same.
Can you follow me, Lucie?
Hardly, I think?
I doubt you must have been a solitary
prisoner to understand these perplexed
distinctions."
His collected and calm manner could not
prevent her blood from running cold, as he
thus tried to anatomise his old condition.
"In that more peaceful state, I have
imagined her, in the moonlight, coming to
me and taking me out to show me that the
home of her married life was full of her
loving remembrance of her lost father.
My picture was in her room, and I was in
her prayers.
Her life was active, cheerful, useful; but
my poor history pervaded it all."
"I was that child, my father, I was not
half so good, but in my love that was I."
"And she showed me her children," said the
Doctor of Beauvais, "and they had heard of
me, and had been taught to pity me.
When they passed a prison of the State,
they kept far from its frowning walls, and
looked up at its bars, and spoke in
whispers.
She could never deliver me; I imagined that
she always brought me back after showing me
such things.
But then, blessed with the relief of tears,
I fell upon my knees, and blessed her."
"I am that child, I hope, my father.
O my dear, my dear, will you bless me as
fervently to-morrow?"
"Lucie, I recall these old troubles in the
reason that I have to-night for loving you
better than words can tell, and thanking
God for my great happiness.
My thoughts, when they were wildest, never
rose near the happiness that I have known
with you, and that we have before us."
He embraced her, solemnly commended her to
Heaven, and humbly thanked Heaven for
having bestowed her on him.
By-and-bye, they went into the house.
There was no one bidden to the marriage but
Mr. Lorry; there was even to be no
bridesmaid but the gaunt Miss Pross.
The marriage was to make no change in their
place of residence; they had been able to
extend it, by taking to themselves the
upper rooms formerly belonging to the
apocryphal invisible lodger, and they
desired nothing more.
Doctor Manette was very cheerful at the
little supper.
They were only three at table, and Miss
Pross made the third.
He regretted that Charles was not there;
was more than half disposed to object to
the loving little plot that kept him away;
and drank to him affectionately.
So, the time came for him to bid Lucie good
night, and they separated.
But, in the stillness of the third hour of
the morning, Lucie came downstairs again,
and stole into his room; not free from
unshaped fears, beforehand.
All things, however, were in their places;
all was quiet; and he lay asleep, his white
hair picturesque on the untroubled pillow,
and his hands lying quiet on the coverlet.
She put her needless candle in the shadow
at a distance, crept up to his bed, and put
her lips to his; then, leaned over him, and
looked at him.
Into his handsome face, the bitter waters
of captivity had worn; but, he covered up
their tracks with a determination so
strong, that he held the mastery of them
even in his sleep.
A more remarkable face in its quiet,
resolute, and guarded struggle with an
unseen assailant, was not to be beheld in
all the wide dominions of sleep, that
night.
She timidly laid her hand on his dear
breast, and put up a prayer that she might
ever be as true to him as her love aspired
to be, and as his sorrows deserved.
Then, she withdrew her hand, and kissed his
lips once more, and went away.
So, the sunrise came, and the shadows of
the leaves of the plane-tree moved upon his
face, as softly as her lips had moved in
praying for him.