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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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165 The corner being out of the way of the idle and curious, and the preparations having been very simple and few, the Doctor, Mr. Lorry, and Miss Pross, were left quite alone. It was when they turned into the welcome shade of the cool old hall, that Mr. Lorry observed a great change to have come over the Doctor; as if the golden arm uplifted there, had struck him a poisoned blow. He had naturally repressed much, and some revulsion might have been expected in him when the occasion for repression was gone. But, it was the old scared lost look that troubled Mr. Lorry; and through his absent manner of clasping his head and drearily wandering away into his own room when they got upstairs, Mr. Lorry was reminded of Defarge the wine-shop keeper, and the starlight ride. “I think,” he whispered to Miss Pross, after anxious consideration, “I think we had best not speak to him just now, or at all disturb him. I must look in at Tellson’s; so I will go there at once and come back presently. Then, we will take him a ride into the country, and dine there, and all will be well.” It was easier for Mr. Lorry to look in at Tellson’s, than to look out of Tellson’s. He was detained two hours. When he came back, he ascended the old staircase alone, having asked no question of the servant; going thus into the Doctor’s rooms, he was stopped by a low sound of knocking. “Good God!” he said, with a start. “What’s that?” Miss Pross, with a terrified face, was at his ear. “O me, O me! All is lost!” cried she, wringing her hands. “What is to be told to Ladybird? He doesn’t know me, and is making shoes!” Mr. Lorry said what he could to calm her, and went himself into the Doctor’s room. The bench was turned towards the light, as it had been when he had seen the shoemaker at his work before, and his head was bent down, and he was very busy. “Doctor Manette. My dear friend, Doctor Manette!” The Doctor looked at him for a moment-half inquiringly, half as if he were angry at being spoken to-and bent over his work again. He had laid aside his coat and waistcoat; his shirt was open at the throat, as it used to be when he did that work; and even the old haggard, faded surface of face had come back to him. He worked hard-impatiently-as if in some sense of having been interrupted. Mr. Lorry glanced at the work in his hand, and observed that it was a shoe of the old size and shape. He took up another that was lying by him, and asked what it was. “A young lady’s walking shoe,” he muttered, without looking up. “It ought to have been finished long ago. Let it be.” “But, Doctor Manette. Look at me!” He obeyed, in the old mechanically submissive manner, without pausing in his work. |
