A Tale of Two Cities

usual?"

"I remember a certain famous occasion when you forced me to confess
that you had been drinking."

"I remember it too.  The curse of those occasions is heavy upon me,
for I always remember them.  I hope it may be taken into account one
day, when all days are at an end for me!  Don't be alarmed;
I am not going to preach."

"I am not at all alarmed.  Earnestness in you, is anything but
alarming to me."

"Ah!" said Carton, with a careless wave of his hand, as if he waved
that away.  "On the drunken occasion in question (one of a large number,
as you know), I was insufferable about liking you, and not liking you.
I wish you would forget it."

"I forgot it long ago."

"Fashion of speech again!  But, Mr. Darnay, oblivion is not so easy to
me, as you represent it to be to you.  I have by no means forgotten it,
and a light answer does not help me to forget it."

"If it was a light answer," returned Darnay, "I beg your forgiveness
for it.  I had no other object than to turn a slight thing, which,
to my surprise, seems to trouble you too much, aside.  I declare to you,
on the faith of a gentleman, that I have long dismissed it from my mind.
Good Heaven, what was there to dismiss!  Have I had nothing more
important to remember, in the great service you rendered me that day?"

"As to the great service," said Carton, "I am bound to avow to you,
when you speak of it in that way, that it was mere professional
claptrap, I don't know that I cared what became of you, when I
rendered it.--Mind!  I say when I rendered it; I am speaking of the past."

"You make light of the obligation," returned Darnay, "but I will not
quarrel with _your_ light answer."

"Genuine truth, Mr. Darnay, trust me!  I have gone aside from my
purpose; I was speaking about our being friends.  Now, you know me;
you know I am incapable of all the higher and better flights of men.
If you doubt it, ask Stryver, and he'll tell you so."

"I prefer to form my own opinion, without the aid of his."

"Well!  At any rate you know me as a dissolute dog, who has never
done any good, and never will."

"I don't know that you `never will.'"

"But I do, and you must take my word for it.  Well!  If you could
endure to have such a worthless fellow, and a fellow of such indifferent
reputation, coming and going at odd times, I should ask that I might be
permitted to come and go as a privileged person here; that I might be
regarded as an useless (and I would add, if it were not for the
resemblance I detected between you and me, an unornamental) piece of
furniture, tolerated for its old service, and taken no notice of.
I doubt if I should abuse the permission.  It is a hundred to one
if I should avail myself of it four times in a year.  It would satisfy me,
I dare say, to know that I had it."

"Will you try?"

"That is another way of saying that I am placed on the footing I have
indicated.  I thank you, Darnay.  I may use that freedom with your name?"

"I think so, Carton, by this time."

They shook hands upon it, and Sydney turned away.  Within a minute
afterwards, he was, to all outward appearance, as unsubstantial as ever.

When he was gone, and in the course of an evening passed with Miss Pross,
the Doctor, and Mr. Lorry, Charles Darnay made some mention of this
conversation in general terms, and spoke of Sydney Carton as a problem
of carelessness and recklessness.  He spoke of him, in short, not
bitterly or meaning to bear hard upon him, but as anybody might who
saw him as he showed himself.

He had no idea that this could dwell in the thoughts of his fair young
wife; but, when he afterwards joined her in their own rooms, he found
her waiting for him with the old pretty lifting of the forehead
strongly marked.

"We are thoughtful to-night!" said Darnay, drawing his arm about her.

"Yes, dearest Charles," with her hands on his breast, and the
inquiring and attentive expression fixed upon him; "we are rather
thoughtful to-night, for we have something on our mind to-night."

"What is it, my Lucie?"

"Will you promise not to press one question on me, if I beg you
not to ask it?"

"Will I promise?  What will I not promise to my Love?"

What, indeed, with his hand putting aside the golden hair from the
cheek, and his other hand against the heart that beat for him!