66 "I have delivered that letter," said Charles Darnay to Mr. Lorry. "I would not consent to your being charged with any written answer, but perhaps you will take a verbal one?" That I will, and readily," said Mr. Lorry, "if it is not dangerous. Not at all. Though it is to a prisoner in the Abbaye." "What is his name?" said Mr. Lorry, with his open pocket-book in his hand. Gabelle." Gabelle. And what is the message to the unfortunate Gabelle in prison ? Simply, that he has received the letter, and will come. "Any time mentioned ?" He will start upon his journey to-morrow night." No." 66 He helped Mr. Lorry to wrap himself in a number of coats and cloaks, and went out with him from the warm atmosphere of the old bank into the misty air of Fleet Street. My love to Lucie and to little Lucie," said Mr. Lorry at parting, "and take precious care of them till I come back." Charles Darnay shook his head and doubtfully smiled as the carriage rolled away. That night—it was the fourteenth of August—he sat up late and wrote two fervent letters; one was to Lucie, explaining the strong obligation he was under to go to Paris, and showing her, at length, the reasons that he had for feeling confident that he could become involved in no personal danger there; the other was to the Doctor, confiding Lucie and their dear child to his care, and dwelling on the same topics with the strongest assurances. To both he wrote that he would despatch letters in proof of his safety immediately after his arrival. It was a hard day, that day of being among them, with the first reservation of their joint lives on his mind. It was a hard matter to preserve the innocent deceit of which they were profoundly unsuspicious. But an affectionate glance at his wife, so happy and busy, made him resolute not to tell her what impended (he had been half moved to do it, so strange it was to him to act in anything without her quiet aid), and the day passed quickly. Early in the evening he embraced her, and her scarcely less dear namesake, pretending that he would return byand-by (an imaginary engagement took him out, and he had secreted a valise of clothes ready), and so he emerged into the heavy mist of the heavy streets with a heavier heart. The unseen force was drawing him fast to itself now, and all the tides and winds were setting straight and strong towards it. He left his two letters with a trusty porter, to be delivered half an hour before midnight, and no sooner; took horse for Dover, and began his journey. "For the love of Heaven, of justice, of generosity, of the honour of your noble name!" was the poor prisoner's cry with which he strengthened his sinking heart, as he left all that was dear on earth behind him, and floated away for the Loadstone Rock. CHAPTER I IN SECRET THE HE traveller fared slowly on his way who fared towards Paris from England in the autumn of the year one thousand seven hundred and ninety-two. More than enough of bad roads, bad equipages, and bad horses he would have encountered to delay him, though the fallen and unfortunate King of France had been upon his throne in all his glory; but the changed times were fraught with other obstacles than these. Every town-gate and village taxing-house had its band of citizen-patriots, with their national muskets in a most explosive state of readiness, who stopped all comers and goers, cross-questioned them, inspected their papers, looked for their names in lists of their own, turned them back, or sent them on, or stopped them and laid them in hold, as their capricious judgment or fancy deemed best for the dawning Republic one and indivisible, of liberty, equality, fraternity, or death. A very few French leagues of his journey were accomplished when Charles Darnay began to perceive that for him along these country roads there was no hope of return until he should have been declared a good citizen of Paris. Whatever might befall now, he must on to his journey's end. Not a mean village closed upon him, not a common barrier dropped across the road behind him, but he knew it to be another iron door in the series that was barred between him and England. The universal watchfulness so encompassed him, that if he had been 297 |