“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
hillside on a wild bright **d 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
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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 of prisoners’ faces fresh in his mind, he
was strongly reminded of that .
“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.”
“You have been useful all your life; steadily and constantly
occupied; trusted, respected, and looked up to?”
“I have been a man of business, ever since I have been a man.
Indeed, I may say that I was a man of business when a boy.”
“See what a place you fill at seventy-eight. How many people
will miss you when you leave it empty!”
“A solitary old bachelor,” answered Mr. Lorry, shaking his
head. “There is nobody to weep for me.”
“How can you say that! Wouldn’t She weep for you? Wouldn’t
her child?”
“Yes, yes, thank God. I didn’t quite mean what I said.”
“It is a thing to thank God for; is it not?”
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“Surely, surely.”
“If you could say, with truth, to your own solitary heart, tonight,
‘I have secured to myself the love and attachment, the gratitude or
respect, of no human creature; I have won myself a tender place in
no regard; I have done nothing good or serviceable to be
remembered by!’ your seventy-eight years would be seventy-eight
heavy curses; would they not?”
“You say truly, Mr. Carton; I think they would be.”
Sydney turned his eyes again upon the fire, and, after a silence
of a few moments, said:
“I should like to ask you:—Does your childhood seem far off?
Do the days when you sat at your mother’s knee, seem days of very
long ago?”
Responding to his softened manner, Mr. Lorry answered:
“Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life, no. For, as I
draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and
nearer to the beginning. It seems to be one of the kind smoothings
and preparings of the way. My heart is touched now, by many
remembrances that have long fallen asleep, of my pretty young
mother (and I so old!), and by many associations of the days when
what we call the World was not so real with me, and my faults
were not confirmed in me.”
“I understand the feeling!” exclaimed Carton, with a bright
flush. “And you are the better for it?”
“I hope so.”
Carton terminated the conversation here, by rising to help him
on with his outer coat. “But you,” said Mr. Lorry, reverting to the
theme, “you are young.”
“Yes,” said Carton. “I am not old, but my young way was never
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the way to age. Enough o
