Повесть о двух городах / A Tale of Two Cities

The jackal removed the towels from his head, which had been steaming again, shook himself, yawned, shivered, and complied.

‘You were very sound, Sydney, in the matter of those crown witnesses to-day. Every question told.’

‘I always am sound; am I not?’

‘I don’t gainsay it. What has roughened your temper? Put some punch to it and smooth it again.’

With a deprecatory grunt, the jackal again complied.

‘The old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School,[69 - Shrewsbury School – учебное заведение в Шрузбери в графстве Шропшир, основано в XVI веке.]’ said Stryver, nodding his head over him as he reviewed him in the present and the past, ‘the old seesaw Sydney. Up one minute and down the next; now in spirits and now in despondency!’

‘Ah!’ returned the other, sighing: ‘yes! The same Sydney, with the same luck. Even then, I did exercises for other boys, and seldom did my own.’

‘And why not?’

‘God knows. It was my way, I suppose.’

He sat, with his hands in his pockets and his legs stretched out before him, looking at the fire.

‘Carton,’ said his friend, squaring himself at him with a bullying air, as if the fire-grate had been the furnace in which sustained endeavour was forged, and the one delicate thing to be done for the old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School was to shoulder him into it, ‘your way is, and always was, a lame way. You summon no energy and purpose. Look at me.’

‘Oh, botheration!’ returned Sydney, with a lighter and more good – humoured laugh, ‘don’t you be moral!’

‘How have I done what I have done?’ said Stryver; ‘how do I do what I do?’

‘Partly through paying me to help you, I suppose. But it’s not worth your while to apostrophise me, or the air, about it; what you want to do, you do. You were always in the front rank, and I was always behind.’

‘I had to get into the front rank; I was not born there, was I?’

‘I was not present at the ceremony; but my opinion is you were,’ said Carton. At this, he laughed again, and they both laughed.

‘Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury, and ever since Shrewsbury,’ pursued Carton, ‘you have fallen into your rank, and I have fallen into mine. Even when we were fellow-students in the Student-Quarter of Paris,[70 - Student’s Quarter in Paris – Латинский квартал в Париже на левом берегу Сены, где расположены многие учебные заведения, включая Сорбонну.] picking up French, and French law, and other French crumbs that we didn’t get much good of, you were always somewhere, and I was always nowhere.’

‘And whose fault was that?’

‘Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours. You were always driving and riving and shouldering and passing, to that restless degree that I had no chance for my life but in rust and repose. It’s a gloomy thing, however, to talk about one’s own past, with the day breaking. Turn me in some other direction before I go.’

‘Well then! Pledge me to the pretty witness,’ said Stryver, holding up his glass. ‘Are you turned in a pleasant direction?’

Apparently not, for he became gloomy again.

‘Pretty witness,’ he muttered, looking down into his glass. ‘I have had enough of witnesses to-day and to-night; who’s your pretty witness?’

‘The picturesque doctor’s daughter, Miss Manette.’

‘She pretty?’

‘Is she not?’

‘No.’

‘Why, man alive, she was the admiration of the whole Court!’

‘Rot the admiration of the whole Court! Who made the Old Bailey a judge of beauty? She was a golden-haired doll!’

‘Do you know, Sydney,’ said Mr. Stryver, looking at him with sharp eyes, and slowly drawing a hand across his florid face: ‘do you know, I rather thought, at the time, that you sympathised with the golden-haired doll, and were quick to see what happened to the golden-haired doll?’

‘Quick to see what happened! If a girl, doll or no doll, swoons within a yard or two of a man’s nose, he can see it without a perspective-glass. I pledge you, but I deny the beauty. And now I’ll have no more drink; I’ll get to bed.’

When his host followed him out on the staircase with a candle, to light him down the stairs, the day was coldly looking in through its grimy windows. When he got out of the house, the air was cold and sad, the dull sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole scene like a lifeless desert. And wreaths of dust were spinning round and round before the morning blast, as if the desert-sand had risen far away, and the first spray of it in its advance had begun to overwhelm the city.

Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment, and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears.

Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning himself to let it eat him away.

VI

Hundreds of People

The quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a quiet street-corner not far from Soho-square.[71 - Soho-square – площадь в районе Сохо в центре Лондона, населенный преимущественно иностранцами.] On the afternoon of a certain fine Sunday when the waves of four months had roiled over the trial for treason, and carried it, as to the public interest and memory, far out to sea, Mr. Jarvis Lorry walked along the sunny streets from Clerkenwell[72 - Clerkenwell – улица к северу от центральной части Лондона.] where he lived, on his way to dine with the Doctor. After several relapses into business-absorption, Mr. Lorry had become the Doctor’s friend, and the quiet street-corner was the sunny part of his life.

On this certain fine Sunday, Mr. Lorry walked towards Soho, early in the afternoon, for three reasons of habit. Firstly, because, on fine Sundays, he often walked out, before dinner, with the Doctor and Lucie; secondly, because, on unfavourable Sundays, he was accustomed to be with them as the family friend, talking, reading, looking out of window, and generally getting through the day; thirdly, because he happened to have his own little shrewd doubts to solve, and knew how the ways of the Doctor’s household pointed to that time as a likely time for solving them.

A quainter corner than the corner where the Doctor lived, was not to be found in London. There was no way through it, and the front windows of the Doctor’s lodgings commanded a pleasant little vista of street that had a congenial air of retirement on it. There were few buildings then, north of the Oxford-road,[73 - Oxford-road = Oxford Street – оживленная торговая улица в центре Лондона.] and forest-trees flourished, and wild flowers grew, and the hawthorn blossomed, in the now vanished fields. As a consequence, country airs circulated in Soho with vigorous freedom, instead of languishing into the parish like stray paupers without a settlement; and there was many a good south wall, not far off, on which the peaches ripened in their season.

The summer light struck into the corner brilliantly in the earlier part of the day; but, when the streets grew hot, the corner was in shadow, though not in shadow so remote but that you could see beyond it into a glare of brightness. It was a cool spot, staid but cheerful, a wonderful place for echoes, and a very harbour from the raging streets.

There ought to have been a tranquil bark in such an anchorage, and there was. The Doctor occupied two floors of a large stiff house, where several callings purported to be pursued by day, but whereof little was audible any day, and which was shunned by all of them at night. In a building at the back, attainable by a courtyard where a plane-tree rustled its green leaves, church-organs claimed to be made, and silver to be chased, and likewise gold to be beaten by some mysterious giant who had a golden arm starting out of the wall of the front hall – as if he had beaten himself precious, and menaced a similar conversion of all visitors. Very little of these trades, or of a lonely lodger rumoured to live up-stairs, or of a dim coach-trimming maker asserted to have a counting-house below, was ever heard or seen. Occasionally, a stray workman putting his coat on, traversed the hall, or a stranger peered about there, or a distant clink was heard across the courtyard, or a thump from the golden giant. These, however, were only the exceptions required to prove the rule that the sparrows in the plane-tree behind the house, and the echoes in the corner before it, had their own way from Sunday morning unto Saturday night.

Doctor Manette received such patients here as his old reputation, and its revival in the floating whispers of his story, brought him. His scientific knowledge, and his vigilance and skill in conducting ingenious experiments, brought him otherwise into moderate request, and he earned as much as he wanted.

These things were within Mr. Jarvis Lorry’s knowledge, thoughts, and notice, when he rang the door-bell of the tranquil house in the corner, on the fine Sunday afternoon.

‘Doctor Manette at home?’

Expected home.

‘Miss Lucie at home?’

Expected home.

‘Miss Pross at home?’

Possibly at home, but of a certainty impossible for handmaid to anticipate intentions of Miss Pross, as to admission or denial of the fact.

‘As I am at home myself,’ said Mr. Lorry, ‘I’ll go upstairs.’

Although the Doctor’s daughter had known nothing of the country of her birth, she appeared to have innately derived from it that ability to make much of little means, which is one of its most useful and most agreeable characteristics. Simple as the furniture was, it was set off by so many little adornments, of no value but for their taste and fancy, that its effect was delightful. The disposition of everything in the rooms, from the largest object to the least; the arrangement of colours, the elegant variety and contrast obtained by thrift in trifles, by delicate hands, clear eyes, and good sense; were at once so pleasant in themselves, and so expressive of their originator, that, as Mr. Lorry stood looking about him, the very chairs and tables seemed to ask him, with something of that peculiar expression which he knew so well by this time, whether he approved?