A Tale of Two Cities

that I shall yet stand your friend, if you deserve it, and repent in
action--not in words.  I want no more words."

Mr. Cruncher knuckled his forehead, as Sydney Carton and the spy
returned from the dark room.  "Adieu, Mr. Barsad," said the former;
"our arrangement thus made, you have nothing to fear from me."

He sat down in a chair on the hearth, over against Mr. Lorry.
When they were alone, Mr. Lorry asked him what he had done?

"Not much.  If it should go ill with the prisoner, I have ensured
access to him, once."

Mr. Lorry's countenance fell.

"It is all I could do," said Carton.  "To propose too much, would be
to put this man's head under the axe, and, as he himself said,
nothing worse could happen to him if he were denounced.  It was
obviously the weakness of the position.  There is no help for it."

"But access to him," said Mr. Lorry, "if it should go ill before the
Tribunal, will not save him."

"I never said it would."

Mr. Lorry's eyes gradually sought the fire; his sympathy with his
darling, and the heavy disappointment of his second arrest, gradually
weakened them; he was an old man now, overborne with anxiety of late,
and his tears fell.

"You are a good man and a true friend," said Carton, in an altered
voice.  "Forgive me if I notice that you are affected.  I could not
see my father weep, and sit by, careless.  And I could not respect
your sorrow more, if you were my father.  You are free from that
misfortune, however."

Though he said the last words, with a slip into his usual manner,
there was a true feeling and respect both in his tone and in his
touch, that Mr. Lorry, who had never seen the better side of him,
was wholly unprepared for.  He gave him his hand, and Carton gently
pressed it.

"To return to poor Darnay," said Carton.  "Don't tell Her of this
interview, or this arrangement.  It would not enable Her to go to see
him.  She might think it was contrived, in case of the worse, to
convey to him the means of anticipating the sentence."

Mr. Lorry had not thought of that, and he looked quickly at Carton to
see if it were in his mind.  It seemed to be; he returned the look,
and evidently understood it.

"She might think a thousand things," Carton said, "and any of them
would only add to her trouble.  Don't speak of me to her.  As I said
to you when I first came, I had better not see her.  I can put my
hand out, to do any little helpful work for her that my hand can find
to do, without that.  You are going to her, I hope?  She must be very
desolate to-night."

"I am going now, directly."

"I am glad of that.  She has such a strong attachment to you and
reliance on you.  How does she look?"

"Anxious and unhappy, but very beautiful."

"Ah!"

It was a long, grieving sound, like a sigh--almost like a sob.  It
attracted Mr. Lorry's eyes to Carton's face, which was turned to the
fire.  A light, or a shade (the old gentleman could not have said
which), passed from it as swiftly as a change will sweep over a
hill-side on a wild bright day, and he lifted his foot to put back
one of the little flaming logs, which was tumbling forward.  He wore
the white riding-coat and top-boots, then in vogue, and the light of
the fire touching their light surfaces made him look very pale, with
his long brown hair, all untrimmed, hanging loose about him.  His
indifference to fire was sufficiently remarkable to elicit a word of
remonstrance from Mr. Lorry; his boot was still upon the hot embers
of the flaming log, when it had broken under the weight of his foot.

"I forgot it," he said.

Mr. Lorry's eyes were again attracted to his face.  Taking note of
the wasted air which clouded the naturally handsome features, and
having the expression of prisoners' faces fresh in his mind, he was
strongly reminded of that expression.

"And your duties here have drawn to an end, sir?" said Carton,
turning to him.

"Yes.  As I was telling you last night when Lucie came in so
unexpectedly, I have at length done all that I can do here.  I hoped
to have left them in perfect safety, and then to have quitted Paris.
I have my Leave to Pass.  I was ready to go."

They were both silent.

"Yours is a long life to look back upon, sir?" said Carton, wistfully.

"I am in my seventy-eighth year."