A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens [popular books of all time TXT] 📗

“And why wonder at that?” was the abrupt inquiry that made him start.

It proceeded from Miss Pross, the wild red woman, strong of hand, whose acquaintance he had first made at the Royal George Hotel at Dover, and had since improved.

“I should have thought⁠—” Mr. Lorry began.

“Pooh! You’d have thought!” said Miss Pross; and Mr. Lorry left off.

“How do you do?” inquired that lady then⁠—sharply, and yet as if to express that she bore him no malice.

“I am pretty well, I thank you,” answered Mr. Lorry, with meekness; “how are you?”

“Nothing to boast of,” said Miss Pross.

“Indeed?”

“Ah! indeed!” said Miss Pross. “I am very much put out about my Ladybird.”

“Indeed?”

“For gracious sake say something else besides ‘indeed,’ or you’ll fidget me to death,” said Miss Pross: whose character (dissociated from stature) was shortness.

“Really, then?” said Mr. Lorry, as an amendment.

“Really, is bad enough,” returned Miss Pross, “but better. Yes, I am very much put out.”

“May I ask the cause?”

“I don’t want dozens of people who are not at all worthy of Ladybird, to come here looking after her,” said Miss Pross.

“Do dozens come for that purpose?”

“Hundreds,” said Miss Pross.

It was characteristic of this lady (as of some other people before her time and since) that whenever her original proposition was questioned, she exaggerated it.

“Dear me!” said Mr. Lorry, as the safest remark he could think of.

“I have lived with the darling⁠—or the darling has lived with me, and paid me for it; which she certainly should never have done, you may take your affidavit, if I could have afforded to keep either myself or her for nothing⁠—since she was ten years old. And it’s really very hard,” said Miss Pross.

Not seeing with precision what was very hard, Mr. Lorry shook his head; using that important part of himself as a sort of fairy cloak that would fit anything.

“All sorts of people who are not in the least degree worthy of the pet, are always turning up,” said Miss Pross. “When you began it⁠—”

“I began it, Miss Pross?”

“Didn’t you? Who brought her father to life?”

“Oh! If that was beginning it⁠—” said Mr. Lorry.

“It wasn’t ending it, I suppose? I say, when you began it, it was hard enough; not that I have any fault to find with Doctor Manette, except that he is not worthy of such a daughter, which is no imputation on him, for it was not to be expected that anybody should be, under any circumstances. But it really is doubly and trebly hard to have crowds and multitudes of people turning up after him (I could have forgiven him), to take Ladybird’s affections away from me.”

Mr. Lorry knew Miss Pross to be very jealous, but he also knew her by this time to be, beneath the service of her eccentricity, one of those unselfish creatures⁠—found only among women⁠—who will, for pure love and admiration, bind themselves willing slaves, to youth when they have lost it, to beauty that they never had, to accomplishments that they were never fortunate enough to gain, to bright hopes that never shone upon their own sombre lives. He knew enough of the world to know that there is nothing in it better than the faithful service of the heart; so rendered and so free from any mercenary taint, he had such an exalted respect for it, that in the retributive arrangements made by his own mind⁠—we all make such arrangements, more or less⁠—he stationed Miss Pross much nearer to the lower Angels than many ladies immeasurably better got up both by Nature and Art, who had balances at Tellson’s.

“There never was, nor will be, but one man worthy of Ladybird,” said Miss Pross; “and that was my brother Solomon, if he hadn’t made a mistake in life.”

Here again: Mr. Lorry’s inquiries into Miss Pross’s personal history had established the fact that her brother Solomon was a heartless scoundrel who had stripped her of everything she possessed, as a stake to speculate with, and had abandoned her in her poverty for evermore, with no touch of compunction. Miss Pross’s fidelity of belief in Solomon (deducting a mere trifle for this slight mistake) was quite a serious matter with Mr. Lorry, and had its weight in his good opinion of her.

“As we happen to be alone for the moment, and are both people of business,” he said, when they had got back to the drawing-room and had sat down there in friendly relations, “let me ask you⁠—does the Doctor, in talking with Lucie, never refer to the shoemaking time, yet?”

“Never.”

“And yet keeps that bench and those tools beside him?”

“Ah!” returned Miss Pross, shaking her head. “But I don’t say he don’t refer to it within himself.”

“Do you believe that he thinks of it much?”

“I do,” said Miss Pross.

“Do you imagine⁠—” Mr. Lorry had begun, when Miss Pross took him up short with:

“Never imagine anything. Have no imagination at all.”

“I stand corrected; do you suppose⁠—you go so far as to suppose, sometimes?”

“Now and then,” said Miss Pross.

“Do you suppose,” Mr. Lorry went on, with a laughing twinkle in his bright eye, as it looked kindly at her, “that Doctor Manette has any theory of his own, preserved through all those years, relative to the cause of his being so oppressed; perhaps, even to the name of his oppressor?”

“I don’t suppose anything about it but what Ladybird tells me.”

“And that is⁠—?”

“That she thinks he has.”

“Now don’t be angry at my asking all these questions; because I am a mere dull man of business, and you are a woman of business.”

“Dull?” Miss Pross inquired, with placidity.

Rather wishing his modest adjective away, Mr. Lorry replied, “No, no, no. Surely not. To return to business:⁠—Is it not remarkable that Doctor Manette, unquestionably innocent of any crime as we are all well assured he is, should never touch upon that question? I will not say with me, though he had business relations with me many years ago, and we are now intimate; I will say with the fair daughter to whom he is so devotedly attached, and who is so