Section 16

With this, he put his hand on the Doctor's hand.
"No, good Doctor Manette. Like you, I freely chose to leave France. Like you, I was forced to make that choice by the awful things that are happening there. Like you, I am trying, by my work here, to build a happier future. I want only to share your life, your home, and your good luck, being faithful to you to the point of dying for you. I am not asking to come between you and Lucie. I am asking to be able to help her in her place as your child and friend and to tie her even closer to you if that is possible."
His touch was still there on her father's hand. Answering it for a second or two, but not coldly, her father now rested his hands on the arms of his chair, and looked up for the first time since their talk had started. One could see in his face that a fight was going on. It was a fight with that look that he had so often shown in the past, a look of dark and deep fear.
"You speak with such feeling and strength, Charles Darnay, that I thank you with all my heart, and will open all my heart — or almost all my heart — to you. Do you have any reason to believe that Lucie loves you?"
"None. As yet, none."
"Is your reason for talking to me now so that you can find that out?"
"Not at all. I cannot even start to hope for such information just yet. But if our meeting goes well today, then maybe I can start to hope for an answer in a few weeks."
"Are you looking for me to help you in what you are planning to do?'
"I am not asking for that, sir. But I have thought it possible that you might be able to, if you think it is okay, to give some help."
"Are you asking me to promise you anything?"
"Yes, I am."
"What is it?"
"I understand well that, without you, I could have no hope. I understand well that, even if Miss Manette did feel for me as I feel for her — Do not think that I believe that to be true. — I could have no place in her heart if she had to go against her love for her father."
"If that is true, how do you see things going?"
"I know full well that a word from you would be enough to make her go against her own heart in choosing me or anyone else. Because of that," Darnay said, humbly but strongly, "I would not ask you to do that, not even to save my life."
"I can see that. Charles Darnay, you never know where love may grow. It can happen between people who are very much the same and it can happen between people who are very different. When they are close, the seeds of love can be very difficult to see. In this, my daughter Lucie, is so secret from me that I cannot even come close to knowing what she feels about you.
"May I ask, sir, if you think there is..." When he stopped, her father finished the question for him.
"Is there another man who is interested in her?"
"Yes, that is what I wanted to ask."
Her father thought for a little while before he answered:
"You have seen Mr. Carton here yourself. Mr. Stryver comes here too, at times. If there is anyone, it could only be one of these two."
"Or both," said Darnay.
"I was not thinking of both. I should not think it would be either. Do you want a promise from me? Tell me what it is."
"It is that, if Miss Manette should bring to you at any time, on her own, word of a secret interest in me, then you will tell her of my love for her, and tell her that you believe I am honest about it. I hope that you think well enough of me that you would not say anything against me. I ask nothing more than this. Whatever you ask from me in return, I will do it here and now."
"I give my promise," said the Doctor, "without asking anything from you in return. I believe that you are being very honest and very sincere in what you have said. I believe that you want to make the ties between me and my daughter stronger, and not to make them weaker. If she ever tells me that she thinks she can find happiness with you, I will give her to you. If there were... Charles Darnay, if there were..."
The young man had taken his hand with deep thanks. Their hands were joined as the Doctor went on:
"...any thoughts, any reasons, any fears, either new or old, that I had against the man she loved — as long as they did not come from something that he freely chose to do — they would all be rubbed out if it would make her happy. She is everything to me; more to me than any pain that I have felt, more to me than any wrong that I may receive, more to me... Enough! This is foolish talk."
So strange was the way that the Doctor stopped talking, and so strange was his way of looking when he had stopped, that Darnay felt his own hand go cold in the hand that slowly stopped holding his, and that let it drop.
"You said something to me," said Doctor Manette, breaking into a smile. "What was it you said to me?"
Darnay did not know how to answer, until he remembered having said something about giving the Doctor something in return for his promise to speak up for him if needed.
"Your faith in me should be returned with full honesty on my part. My present name, which is almost the same as my mother's name, is not, as you will remember from when I was in court, my real name. I want to tell you what my real name is, and why I am in England."
Stop!" said the Doctor from Beauvais.
"But I want to tell you, so that you will have more reason to trust me. I do not want to have any secrets from you."
"Stop!"
For a second the Doctor even put his two hands over his ears, and for another second he put them on Darnay's lips.
"Tell me when I ask you, not now. If you get what you want, if Lucie happens to love you, you can tell me on the morning of your wedding. Will you just promise me that?"
"Willingly."
"Then give me your hand on that. She will be home soon, and it is better that she not see us together tonight. Go! God bless you!"
It was dark when Charles Darnay left him, and it was an hour later and darker when Lucie came home; she hurried into the room alone — for Miss Pross had gone straight up to her room — and was surprised to see that he was not in his chair reading.
"Father!" she called. "Father, where are you?"
There was no answer, but she heard a soft hammering sound in the bedroom. Going to his door, she looked in and came running back in fear, crying to herself, with her blood running cold, "What can I do? What can I do?"
A short time later, she hurried back and knocked lightly on the door, calling to him softly. At the sound of her voice, the noise stopped. He soon came out, and they walked up and down together for a long time.
She came down from her room later that night, to look in on him when he was asleep. He was sleeping heavily, and his box of cobbler tools were all back in their place
1 1 . Someone to Live With
"Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, on that same night (Or should we say morning?) to his wild dog, "mix us another bowl of drink. I have something to say to you."
Sydney had been working extra hours that night and the night before, and the night before that, and a good many other nights, trying to finish off Mr. Stryver's cases before the long holidays came up. Now they were finished at last. Everything had been cleared away, freeing them until November, when fogs in the weather and fogs in the court would return, bringing them more business.
Sydney was as tired and drunk as ever for all of his hard work. It had taken extra wet cloths for his head to pull him through the night. And an equal measure of extra wine was needed before the cloths. He was in bad shape because of it, as he pulled the
cloth off his head and threw it into the bowl which he had been using to keep it wet for the past six hours.
"Are you mixing that other bowl of drink?" asked Stryver the fat one, with his hands in his belt, and looking around from where he was lying on his back on the couch.
"I am."
"Now, listen! I'm going to tell you something that will surprise you and that may make you think I'm not as smart as you thought. I am planning to get married."
"Are you?"
"Yes. And not for money. What do you think of that?" "I don't think anything. Who is she?" "See if you can say who it is."
"I am not even going to try, not at five o'clock in the morning, with my brains cooking in my head.
"Well, then I'll tell you," said Stryver, sitting up slowly. "Sydney I don't have much hope of making you understand, because you are such a selfish dog."
"And you," returned Sydney, who was busy adding alcohol to
the juice, "are such a sweet and musical spirit!"
"Come now!" answered Stryver, laughing proudly, "I don't say that I am an expert at love (for I hope I know better than to be), but I am a softer person than you."
"You are luckier than me, if that is what you mean."
"I don't mean that. I mean I am a man of more... more..."
"Well, say class, while you are at it," Carton helped him.
"I will say class. What I mean is that I am a man," said Stryver, pushing his chest out at his friend, who was making the drink, "who tries to be kind, who goes to more pain to be kind, who knows better how to be kind, to a woman, than you do."
"Keep going," said Sydney Carton.
"No, but I must say one thing." Stryver, shook his head in his pushy way. "I'll have this out with you. You have been at Doctor Manette's house as much as, or more than I have. I've been embarrassed at how selfish and angry you have been when there. Your actions are like those of a dog that hides out of guilt. On my life and soul, I have been embarrassed by you, Sydney!"
"It should be a big help to a man who works in the courts to be embarrassed about anything," returned Sydney. "You should thank me for that."
"You won't get away with it by being foolish," answered Stryver, pushing to the side the smart answer that Carton had given him. "No, Sydney, it is my job to tell you, and tell you to your face, for your own good, that you act like a devil around that class of people. You are not a nice person to be around."
Sydney finished off a tall glass of the drink he had made and laughed.
"Look at me!" said Stryver, standing up straight. "I have less need to be kind than you do, because I don't need anyone's money. So why do I do it?"
"So far I have never seen you do it," Carton said quietly.
"I do it because it works, and because it's right. And look at me. I'm doing well."
"You're not doing well with telling me who you're going to marry," answered Carton with a foolish air. "I wish you would. As for me, will you never understand that I'm never going to change?"
He asked the question with some show of anger.
"You have no business fighting change," was his friend's answer, which was not said in a very friendly way.
"As I understand it, I have no business to be on the earth at all," said Sydney Carton. "So who is the woman?"
"Now don't let my news make you feel bad, Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, preparing him for what he was about to say, with a great show of being friendly, "because I know that you don't mean half of what you say. And if you did, it would not be important. I'm saying this, because you once spoke of this woman in a rough way."
"I did?"
"Truly, and in these rooms."
Sydney Carton looked at his drink and looked at his stupidly happy friend, finished his drink and looked again at his stupidly happy friend.
"You called the young woman a golden-haired doll. The young woman is Miss Manette. If you had been a person with a little more feeling for such things, I would have been hurt by what you said, but I was not. You have no understanding of what you are talking about, and so I was no more hurt than I would be if someone with no eye for art said something bad about a picture I own, or if someone with no ear for music said something bad about some piece of music that was mine."
Sydney Carton was going through the drink very quickly now.
"Well, now I've said it, Syd," said Mr. Stryver. "I don't care about her wealth; she is a beautiful thing; and I have made up my mind to do what makes me happy. On the whole, I think I have enough wealth to do that. She will have in me a man with more than enough money, and a good future. It is very lucky for her, but she should be lucky, for she's a good person. Are you surprised?"
Carton, still drinking, answered, "Why should I be surprised?"
"So you think it's okay?"
Carton, still drinking, answered, "Why shouldn't I think it's okay?"
"Well!" said his friend Stryver. "You've taken it more easily than I'd expected. And you show less interest in her having no money than I had thought you would. But then you know well by now that I'm a difficult man to change. Yes, Sydney, I have had enough of this way of living, with no change from it. I feel it is a good thing for a man to have a home where he can go when he feels like it. (And if he doesn't, then he can stay away from it.) And I feel that Miss Manette will do herself well in any place where she finds herself. Everyone will think well of me for having her at my side. So I have made up my mind. And now, Sydney, old boy, I want to say a word about your life. You are in a bad way, you know, a really bad way! You don't know how
important money is. You live a rough life. You will break down one of these days and find yourself sick and poor. You really should be thinking about a nurse."
Looking down on Sydney because he was much richer, made Stryver look twice as big as Sydney, but four times as cruel.
"Now what I think you should do is look this problem in the face. I have looked my problem in the face in a different way, and you must do the same, in your different way. Marry! Find someone who can take care of you. Don't worry that you do not like being around women, or that you often misunderstand them or that you are too rough for them. Find someone. Someone whom you can trust, who has a little wealth. Find someone who has a house that they rent out, or who takes in people for meals and a room. Marry her, as a way of protecting yourself. That's what you need to do. Think about it, Sydney."
"I'll think about it," said Sydney.
12. A Man of Class
Mr. Stryver, having made up his mind to generously give himself to the lucky Doctor's daughter, wanted to tell her of his plan (and by doing so, fill her with happiness) before leaving town for his holiday. If he told her now, then they would have more time to work together on choosing a day for the wedding, either in September or in December.
He had not a fear in the world that he would lose this case. If he argued with the jury about what it would mean for her in wealth (and that is the only argument ever worth using) it was as good as won. There was not one weak line in his reasoning. He could see himself as a witness, with another lawyer trying to find a hole in his argument. The lawyer would have to give up trying in the end. The jury would not even need a minute to think about it. When the hearing was over, Stryver the Lion was sure that he never had a stronger case.
With this in mind, Stryver planned to start his holiday by taking Miss Manette to the Gardens, or some other nice place in London and there tell her the good news.
So he left his place in Temple to shoulder his way to Soho. Anyone watching him as he walked proudly and quickly down the road toward Soho, to the danger of all weaker people in the way, would have seen how safe and strong he was in his belief.