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X
Book the Second: The Golden Thread
Chapter XI.
A Companion Picture
"Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, on that self-
same night, or morning, to his jackal; "mix
another bowl of punch; I have something to
say to you."
Sydney had been working double tides that
night, and the night before, and the night
before that, and a good many nights in
succession, making a grand clearance among
Mr. Stryver's papers before the setting in
of the long vacation.
The clearance was effected at last; the
Stryver arrears were handsomely fetched up;
everything was got rid of until November
should come with its fogs atmospheric, and
fogs legal, and bring grist to the mill
again.
Sydney was none the livelier and none the
soberer for so much application.
It had taken a deal of extra wet-towelling
to pull him through the night; a
correspondingly extra quantity of wine had
preceded the towelling; and he was in a
very damaged condition, as he now pulled
his turban off and threw it into the basin
in which he had steeped it at intervals for
the last six hours.
"Are you mixing that other bowl of punch?"
said Stryver the portly, with his hands in
his waistband, glancing round from the sofa
where he lay on his back.
"I am."
"Now, look here!
I am going to tell you something that will
rather surprise you, and that perhaps will
make you think me not quite as shrewd as
you usually do think me.
I intend to marry."
"_Do_ you?"
"Yes.
And not for money.
What do you say now?"
"I don't feel disposed to say much.
Who is she?"
"Guess."
"Do I know her?"
"Guess."
"I am not going to guess, at five o'clock
in the morning, with my brains frying and
sputtering in my head.
If you want me to guess, you must ask me to
dinner."
"Well then, I'll tell you," said Stryver,
coming slowly into a sitting posture.
"Sydney, I rather despair of making myself
intelligible to you, because you are such
an insensible dog."
"And you," returned Sydney, busy concocting
the punch, "are such a sensitive and
poetical spirit--"
"Come!" rejoined Stryver, laughing
boastfully, "though I don't prefer any
claim to being the soul of Romance (for I
hope I know better), still I am a tenderer
sort of fellow than _you_."
"You are a luckier, if you mean that."
"I don't mean that.
I mean I am a man of more--more--"
"Say gallantry, while you are about it,"
suggested Carton.
"Well!
I'll say gallantry.
My meaning is that I am a man," said
Stryver, inflating himself at his friend as
he made the punch, "who cares more to be
agreeable, who takes more pains to be
agreeable, who knows better how to be
agreeable, in a woman's society, than you
do."
"Go on," said Sydney Carton.
"No; but before I go on," said Stryver,
shaking his head in his bullying way, "I'll
have this out with you.
You've been at Doctor Manette's house as
much as I have, or more than I have.
Why, I have been ashamed of your moroseness
there!
Your manners have been of that silent and
sullen and hangdog kind, that, upon my life
and soul, I have been ashamed of you,
Sydney!"
"It should be very beneficial to a man in
your practice at the bar, to be ashamed of
anything," returned Sydney; "you ought to
be much obliged to me."
"You shall not get off in that way,"
rejoined Stryver, shouldering the rejoinder
at him; "no, Sydney, it's my duty to tell
you--and I tell you to your face to do you
good--that you are a devilish ill-
conditioned fellow in that sort of society.
You are a disagreeable fellow."
Sydney drank a bumper of the punch he had
made, and laughed.
"Look at me!" said Stryver, squaring
himself; "I have less need to make myself
agreeable than you have, being more
independent in circumstances.
Why do I do it?"
"I never saw you do it yet," muttered
Carton.
"I do it because it's politic; I do it on
principle.
And look at me!
I get on."
"You don't get on with your account of your
matrimonial intentions," answered Carton,
with a careless air; "I wish you would keep
to that.
As to me--will you never understand that I
am incorrigible?"
He asked the question with some appearance
of scorn.
"You have no business to be incorrigible,"
was his friend's answer, delivered in no
very soothing tone.
"I have no business to be, at all, that I
know of," said Sydney Carton.
"Who is the lady?"
"Now, don't let my announcement of the name
make you uncomfortable, Sydney," said Mr.
Stryver, preparing him with ostentatious
friendliness for the disclosure he was
about to make, "because I know you don't
mean half you say; and if you meant it all,
it would be of no importance.
I make this little preface, because you
once mentioned the young lady to me in
slighting terms."
"I did?"
"Certainly; and in these chambers."
Sydney Carton looked at his punch and
looked at his complacent friend; drank his
punch and looked at his complacent friend.
"You made mention of the young lady as a
golden-haired doll.
The young lady is Miss Manette.
If you had been a fellow of any
sensitiveness or delicacy of feeling in
that kind of way, Sydney, I might have been
a little resentful of your employing such a
designation; but you are not.
You want that sense altogether; therefore I
am no more annoyed when I think of the
expression, than I should be annoyed by a
man's opinion of a picture of mine, who had
no eye for pictures: or of a piece of music
of mine, who had no ear for music."
Sydney Carton drank the punch at a great
rate; drank it by bumpers, looking at his
friend.
"Now you know all about it, Syd," said Mr.
Stryver.
"I don't care about fortune: she is a
charming creature, and I have made up my
mind to please myself: on the whole, I
think I can afford to please myself.
She will have in me a man already pretty
well off, and a rapidly rising man, and a
man of some distinction: it is a piece of
good fortune for her, but she is worthy of
good fortune.
Are you astonished?"
Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined,
"Why should I be astonished?"
"You approve?"
Carton, still drinking the punch, rejoined,
"Why should I not approve?"
"Well!" said his friend Stryver, "you take
it more easily than I fancied you would,
and are less mercenary on my behalf than I
thought you would be; though, to be sure,
you know well enough by this time that your
ancient chum is a man of a pretty strong
will.
Yes, Sydney, I have had enough of this
style of life, with no other as a change
from it; I feel that it is a pleasant thing
for a man to have a home when he feels
inclined to go to it (when he doesn't, he
can stay away), and I feel that Miss
Manette will tell well in any station, and
will always do me credit.
So I have made up my mind.
And now, Sydney, old boy, I want to say a
word to _you_ about _your_ prospects.
You are in a bad way, you know; you really
are in a bad way.
You don't know the value of money, you live
hard, you'll knock up one of these days,
and be ill and poor; you really ought to
think about a nurse."
The prosperous patronage with which he said
it, made him look twice as big as he was,
and four times as offensive.
"Now, let me recommend you," pursued
Stryver, "to look it in the face.
I have looked it in the face, in my
different way; look it in the face, you, in
your different way.
Marry.
Provide somebody to take care of you.
Never mind your having no enjoyment of
women's society, nor understanding of it,
nor tact for it.
Find out somebody.
Find out some respectable woman with a
little property--somebody in the landlady
way, or lodging-letting way--and marry her,
against a rainy day.
That's the kind of thing for _you_.
Now think of it, Sydney."
"I'll think of it," said Sydney.