A Tale of Two Cities

"Shall I go on, sir?"

Another blank.

"Yes, go on."

"You anticipate what I would say, though you cannot know how earnestly
I say it, how earnestly I feel it, without knowing my secret heart,
and the hopes and fears and anxieties with which it has long been
laden.  Dear Doctor Manette, I love your daughter fondly, dearly,
disinterestedly, devotedly.  If ever there were love in the world,
I love her.  You have loved yourself; let your old love speak for me!"

The Doctor sat with his face turned away, and his eyes bent on the
ground.  At the last words, he stretched out his hand again, hurriedly,
and cried:

"Not that, sir!  Let that be!  I adjure you, do not recall that!"

His cry was so like a cry of actual pain, that it rang in Charles
Darnay's ears long after he had ceased.  He motioned with the hand he
had extended, and it seemed to be an appeal to Darnay to pause.
The latter so received it, and remained silent.

"I ask your pardon," said the Doctor, in a subdued tone, after some
moments.  "I do not doubt your loving Lucie; you may be satisfied of it."

He turned towards him in his chair, but did not look at him, or raise
his eyes.  His chin dropped upon his hand, and his white hair
overshadowed his face:

"Have you spoken to Lucie?"

"No."

"Nor written?"

"Never."

"It would be ungenerous to affect not to know that your self-denial
is to be referred to your consideration for her father.  Her father
thanks you."

He offered his hand; but his eyes did not go with it.

"I know," said Darnay, respectfully, "how can I fail to know,
Doctor Manette, I who have seen you together from day to day,
that between you and Miss Manette there is an affection so unusual,
so touching, so belonging to the circumstances in which it has been
nurtured, that it can have few parallels, even in the tenderness
between a father and child.  I know, Doctor Manette--how can I fail
to know--that, mingled with the affection and duty of a daughter who
has become a woman, there is, in her heart, towards you, all the love
and reliance of infancy itself.  I know that, as in her childhood she
had no parent, so she is now devoted to you with all the constancy
and fervour of her present years and character, united to the
trustfulness and attachment of the early days in which you were lost
to her.  I know perfectly well that if you had been restored to her
from the world beyond this life, you could hardly be invested, in her
sight, with a more sacred character than that in which you are always
with her.  I know that when she is clinging to you, the hands of baby,
girl, and woman, all in one, are round your neck.  I know that in
loving you she sees and loves her mother at her own age, sees and
loves you at my age, loves her mother broken-hearted, loves you
through your dreadful trial and in your blessed restoration.  I have
known this, night and day, since I have known you in your home."

Her father sat silent, with his face bent down.  His breathing was a
little quickened; but he repressed all other signs of agitation.

"Dear Doctor Manette, always knowing this, always seeing her and you
with this hallowed light about you, I have forborne, and forborne,
as long as it was in the nature of man to do it.  I have felt, and do
even now feel, that to bring my love--even mine--between you, is to
touch your history with something not quite so good as itself.
But I love her.  Heaven is my witness that I love her!"

"I believe it," answered her father, mournfully.  "I have thought so
before now.  I believe it."

"But, do not believe," said Darnay, upon whose ear the mournful voice
struck with a reproachful sound, "that if my fortune were so cast as
that, being one day so happy as to make her my wife, I must at any
time put any separation between her and you, I could or would breathe
a word of what I now say.  Besides that I should know it to be
hopeless, I should know it to be a baseness.  If I had any such
possibility, even at a remote distance of years, harboured in my
thoughts, and hidden in my heart--if it ever had been there--if it
ever could be there--I could not now touch this honoured hand."

He laid his own upon it as he spoke.

"No, dear Doctor Manette.  Like you, a voluntary exile from France;
like you, driven from it by its distractions, oppressions, and
miseries; like you, striving to live away from it by my own exertions,
and trusting in a happier future; I look only to sharing your fortunes,
sharing your life and home, and being faithful to you to the death.
Not to divide with Lucie her privilege as your child, companion, and
friend; but to come in aid of it, and bind her closer to you, if such
a thing can be."