CHAPTER III
The Shadow
ONE of the first considerations which arose in the business mind of Mr. Lorry when business hours came round, was this:--that he had no right to imperil Tellson's by sheltering the wife of an emigrant prisoner under the Bank roof. His own possessions, safety, life, he would have hazarded for Lucie and her child, without a moment's demur; but the great trust he held was not his own, and as to that business charge he was a strict man of business.
At first, his mind reverted to Defarge, and he thought of finding out the wine-shop again and taking counsel with its master in reference to the safest dwelling-place in the distracted state of the city. But, the same consideration that suggested him, repudiated him; he lived in the most violent Quarter, and doubtless was influential there, and deep in its dangerous workings.
Noon coming, and the Doctor not returning, and every minute's delay tending to compromise, Tellson's, Mr. Lorry advised with Lucie. She said that her father had spoken of hiring a lodging for a short term, in that Quarter, near the Banking-house. As there was no business objection to this, and as he foresaw that even if it were all well with Charles, and he were to be released, he could not hope to leave the city, Mr. Lorry went out in quest of such a lodging, and found a suitable one, high up in a removed by-street where the closed blinds in all the other windows of a high melancholy square of buildings marked deserted homes.
To this lodging he at once removed Lucie and her child, and Miss Pross: giving them what comfort he could, and much more than he had himself. He left Jerry with them, as a figure to fill a doorway that would bear considerable knocking on the head, and returned to his own occupations. A disturbed and doleful mind he brought to bear upon them, and slowly and heavily the day lagged on with him.
It wore itself out, and wore him out with it, until the Bank closed. He was again alone in his room of the previous night, considering what to do next, when he heard a foot upon the stair. In a few moments, a man stood in his presence, who, with a keenly observant look at him, addressed him by his name.
`Your servant,' said Mr. Lorry. `Do you know me?'
He was a strongly made man with dark curling hair, from forty-five to fifty years of a e. For answer he repeated, without any change of emphasis, the words:
`Do you know me?'
`I have seen you somewhere.'
`Perhaps at my wine-shop?'
Much interested and agitated, Mr. Lorry said: `You come from Doctor Manette?'
`Yes. I come from Doctor Manette.'
`And what says he? What does he send me?'
Defarge gave into his anxious hand, an open scrap of paper. It bore the words in the Doctor's writing:
`Charles is safe, but I cannot safely leave this place yet. I have obtained the favour that the bearer has a short note from Charles to his wife. Let the bearer see his wife.'
It was dated from La Force, within an hour.
`Will you accompany me,' said Mr. Lorry, joyfully relieved after reading this note aloud, `to where his wife resides?'
`Yes,' returned Defarge.
Scarcely noticing as yet, in what a curiously reserved and mechanical way Defarge spoke, Mr. Lorry put on his hat and they went down into the court-yard. There, they found two women; one, knitting.
`Madame Defarge, surely!' said Mr. Lorry, who had left her in exactly the same attitude some seventeen years ago.
`It is she,' observed her husband.
