《A Tale of Two Cities》　Book1　CHAPTER IV The Preparation
　　　　by Charles Dickens

WHEN the mail got successfully to
Dover, in the course of the forenoon, the head drawer at the Royal George Hotel opened the
coach-door as his custom was. He did it with some flourish of ceremony, for a mail journey
from London in winter was an achievement to congratulate an adventurous traveller upon.



By that time, there was only one adventurous traveller left to be congratulated; for the
two others had been set down at their respectiveroadside destinations. The mildewy inside
of the coach, with its damp and dirty straw, its disagreeable smell, and its obscurity,
was rather like a larger dog-kennel. Mr. Lorry, the passenger, shaking himself out of it
in chains of straw, a tangle of shaggy wrapper, flapping hat, and muddy legs, was rather
like a larger sort of dog.



`There will be a packet to Calais, to-morrow, drawer'



`Yes, sir, if the weather holds and the wind sets tolerable fair. The tide will serve
pretty nicely at about two in the afternoon, sir.Bed, sir'



`I shall not go to bed till night; but I want a bedroom and a barber.'



`And then breakfast, sir? Yes, sir. That way, sir, if you please. Show Concord!
Gentleman's valise and hot water to Concord. Pull off gentleman's boots in Concord. (You
will find a fine sea-coal fire, sir.) Fetch barber to Concord. Stir about there, now,

for Concord!'



The Concord bed-chamber being always assigned to passenger by the mail, and passengers by
the mail being always heavily wrapped up from head to foot, the room ha' the odd interest
for the establishment of the Royal George that although but one kind of man was seen to go
into it, all kinds and varieties of men came out of it. Consequently another drawer, and
two porters, and several maids and the landlady, were all loitering by accident at various
points of the road between the Concord and the coffee-room, when a gentle-man of sixty,
formally dressed in a brown suit of clothes, pretty well worn, but very well kept, with
large square cuffs and large flaps to the pockets, passed along on his way to his
breakfast.



The coffee-room had no other occupant, that forenoon, than the gentleman in brown. His
breakfast-table was drawn before the fire, and as he sat, with its light shining on him,
waiting for the meal, he sat so still, that he might have been sitting for his portrait.



Very orderly and methodical he looked, with a hand on each knee, and a loud watch ticking
a sonorous sermon under his flapped waistcoat, as though it pitted its gravity and
longevity against the levity and evanescence of the brisk fire. He had a good leg, and was
a little vain of it, for his brown stockings fitted sleek and close, and were of a fine
texture; his shoes and buckles, too, though plain, were trim. He wore an odd little sleek
crisp flaxen wig, setting very close to his head: which wig, it is to be presumed, was
made of hair, but which looked far more as though it were spun from filaments of silk or
glass. His linen, though not of a fineness in accordance with his stockings, was as white
as the tops of the waves that broke upon the neighbouring beach, or the specks of sail
that glinted in the sunlight far at sea. A face habitually suppressed and quieted, was
still lighted up under the quaint wig by a pair of moist bright eyes that it must have
cost their owner, in years gone by, some pains to drill to the composed and reserved
expression of Tellson's Bank. He had a healthy colour in his cheeks, and his face, though
lined, bore few traces of anxiety. But, perhaps the confidentialbachelor clerks in
Tellson's Bank were principally occupied with the cares of other people; and perhaps
second-hand cares, like second-hand clothes, come easily off and on.



Completing his resemblance to a man who was sitting for his portrait, Mr. Lorry dropped
off to sleep. The arrival of his breakfast roused him, and he said to the drawer, as he
moved his chair to it:



`I wish accommodation prepared for a young lady who may come here at any time to-day. She
may ask for Mr. Jarvis Lorry, or she may only ask for a gentleman from Tellson's Bank.
Please to let me know.



`Yes, sir. Tellson's Bank in London, sir?'



`Yes.'



`Yes, sir. We have often times the honour to entertain your gentlemen in their travelling
backwards and forwards betwixt London and Paris, sir. A vast deal of travelling, sir, in
Tellson and Company's House.'



`Yes. We are quite a French House, as well as an English one.'



`Yes, sir. Not much in the habit of such travelling your-self, I think, sir?'



`Not of late years. It is fifteen years since we--since I--came last from France.'



`Indeed, sir? That was before my time here, sir. Before our people's time here, sir. The
George was in other hands at that time, sir.'



`I believe so.'



`But I would hold a pretty wager, sir, that a House like Tellson and Company was
flourishing, a matter of fifty, not to speak of fifteen years ago?'



`You might treble that, and say a hundred and fifty, yet not be far from the truth.'



`Indeed, sir!'



Rounding his mouth and both his eyes, as he stepped backward from the table, the waiter
shifted his napkin from his-right arm to his left, dropped into a comfortable attitude,
and stood surveying the guest while he ate and drank, as from an observatory or
watch-tower. According to the immemorial usage of waiters in all ages.



When Mr. Lorry had finished his breakfast, he went out for a stroll on the beach. The
little narrow, crooked town of Dover hid itself away from the beach, and ran its head into
the chalk cliffs, like a marineostrich. The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones
tumbling wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, and what it liked was destruction.
It thundered at the town, and thundered at the cliffs, and brought the coast down, madly.
The air among the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavour that one might have supposed
sick fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick people went down to be dipped in the sea. A
little fishing was done in the port, and a quantity of strolling about by night, and
looking seaward: particularly at those times when the tide made, and was near flood. Small
tradesmen, who did no business whatever, sometimes unaccountably realised large fortunes,
and it was remarkable that nobody in the neighbourhood could endure a lamplighter.



As the day declined into the afternoon, and the air, which had been at intervals clear
enough to allow the French coast to be seen, became again charged with mist and vapour,
Mr. Lorry's thoughts seemed to cloud too. When dark, and he sat before

the coffee-room fire, awaiting his dinner as he had awaited his breakfast, his mind was
digging, digging, digging, in the live red coals.



A bottle of good claret after dinner does a digger in the red coals no harm, otherwise
than as it has a tendency to throw him out of work. Mr. Lorry had been idle a lo and had
just poured out his last glassful of wine complete an appearance of satisfaction as is
ever to be found in an elderly gentleman of a fresh complexion who has got to the end of a
bottle, when a rattling of wheels came up the narrow street, and rumbled into the
inn-yard.



He set down his glass untouched. `This is Mam'selle!' said he.



In a very few minutes the waiter came in to announce that Miss Manette had arrived from
London, and", happy to see the gentleman from Tellson's.



`So soon?'



Miss Manette had taken some refreshment on the road, and required none then, and was
extremely anxious to see the gentleman from Tellson's immediately, if it suited his
pleasure and convenience.



The gentleman from Tellson's had nothing left for it but to empty his glass with an air of
stolid desperation, settle his odd little flaxen wig at the ears, and follow the waiter to
Miss Manette's apartment. It was a large, dark room, furnished in a funereal manner with
black horsehair, and loaded with heavy dark tables. These had been oiled, until the two
tall candles on the table in the of the room were gloomily reflected on every leaf; were
buried, in deep graves of black mahogany, and to speak of could be expected from them
until the dug out.



The obscurity was so difficult to penetrate that Mr Lorry, picking his way over the
well-worn Turkey carpet, supposed Miss Manette to be, for the moment, in some adjacent
room, until, having got past the two tall candles, he saw to receive him by the table
between them and the young lady of not more than seventeen, in a riding-cloak, and still
holding her straw travelling-hat by its ribbon in her hand. As his eyes rested on a short,
slight, pretty figure, a quantity of golden hair, a pair of blue eyes that met his own
with an inquiring look, and a forehead with a singular capacity (remembering how young and
smooth it was of

lifting and knitting itself into an expression that was not quite one of perplexity, or
wonder, or alarm or merely of a bright fixed attention, though is included all the four
expressions--as his eyes rested on these things, a sudden vivid likeness passed before
him, of a child whom he had held in his arms on the passage across that very Channel, one
cold time, when the hail drifted heavily and the sea ran high. The likeness passed away,
like a breath along the surface of the gaunt pier-glass behind her, on the frame of which,
a hospital procession of negro cupids, several head-less and all cripples, were offering
black baskets of Dead Sea fruit to black divinities of the feminine gender--and he made
his formal bow to Miss Manette.



`Pray take a seat, sir.' In a very clear and pleasant young voice; a little foreign in its
accent, but a very little indeed.



`I kiss your hand, miss,' said Mr. Lorry, with the manners of an earlier date, as he made
his formal bow again, and took his

seat.



`I received a letter from the Bank, sir, yesterday, informing me that some
intelligence--or discovery---



`The word is not material, miss; either word will do.'



`--respecting the small property of my poor father, whom I never saw--so long dead---'



Mr. Lorry moved in his chair, and cast a troubled look towards the hospital procession of
negro cupids. As if they had any help for anybody in their absurd baskets!



`--rendered it necessary that I should go to Paris, there to communicate with a gentleman
of the Bank, so good as to be despatched to Paris for the purpose.'



`Myself'



`As I was prepared to hear, sir.'



She curtseyed to him (young ladies made curtseys in those days), with a pretty desire to
convey to him that she felt how much older and wiser he was than she. He made her another
bow.



`I replied to the Bank, sir, that as it was considered necessary, by those who know, and
who are so kind as to advise me, that I should go to France, and that as I am an orphan
and have no friend who could go with me, I should esteem it highly if I might be permitted
to place myself, during the journey, under that worthy gentleman's protection. The
gentleman had left London, but I think a messenger was sent after him to beg the favour of
his waiting for me here.'



`I was happy,' said Mr. Lorry, `to be entrusted with the charge. I shall be more happy to
execute it.'



`Sir, I thank you indeed. I thank you very gratefully. It was told me by the Bank that the
gentleman would explain to me the details of the business, and that I must prepare myself
to find them of a surprising nature. I have done my best to prepare myself, and I
naturally have a strong and eager interest to know what they are.



`Naturally,' said Mr. Lorry. `Yes--I---'



Alter a pause, he added, again settling the crisp flaxen wig at the ears:



`It is very difficult to begin.'



He did not begin, but, in his indecision, met her glance.



The young forehead lifted itself into that singular expression--but it was pretty and
characteristic, besides being singular--and she raised her hand, as if with an involuntary
action she caught at, or stayed some passing shadow.



`Are you quite a stranger to me, sir?'



`Am I not?' Mr. Lorry opened his hands, and extended them outwards with an argumentative
smile.



Between the eyebrows and just over the little feminine nose, the line of which was as
delicate and fine as it was possible to be, the expression deepened itself as she took her
seat thoughtfully in the chair by which she had hitherto remained standing. He watched her
as she mused, and the moment she raised her eyes again, went on:



`In your adopted country, I presume, I cannot do better than address you as a young
English lady, Miss Manette?'



`If you please, sir.'



`Miss Manette, I am a man of business. I have a business charge to acquit myself of. In
your reception of it, don't heed me any more than if I was a speaking machine--truly, I am
not much else. I will, with your leave, relate to you, miss, the story of one of our
customers.'



`Story!'



He seemed wilfully to mistake the word she had repeated, when he added, in a hurry, `Yes,
customers; in the banking business we usually call our connexion our customers. He was a