雙城記 Book1-4c The Preparation
As the day declined into the afternoon, and the air, whichhad been at intervals clear enough to allow the French coastto be seen, became again charged with mist and vapour, Mr.
Lorry's thoughts seemed to cloud too. When dark, and he satbefore the coffee-room fire, awaiting his dinner as he hadawaited 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 redcoals no harm, otherwise than as it has a tendency to throwhim out of work. Mr. Lorry had been idle a lo and had justpoured out his last glassful of wine complete an appearance ofsatisfaction as is ever to be found in an elderly gentleman ofa fresh complexion who has got to the end of a bottle, when arattling of wheels came up the narrow street, and rumbled intothe inn-yard.
He set down his glass untouched. `This is Mam'selle!' saidhe.
In a very few minutes the waiter came in to announce thatMiss Manette had arrived from London, and", happy to see thegentleman from Tellson's.
`So soon?'
Miss Manette had taken some refreshment on the road, andrequired none then, and was extremely anxious to see thegentleman from Tellson's immediately, if it suited hispleasure and convenience.
The gentleman from Tellson's had nothing left for it but toempty his glass with an air of stolid desperation, settle hisodd little flaxen wig at the ears, and follow the waiter toMiss Manette's apartment. It was a large, dark room, furnishedin a funereal manner with black horsehair, and loaded withheavy dark tables. These had been oiled, until the two tallcandles on the table in the of the room were gloomilyreflected on every leaf; were buried, in deep graves of blackmahogany, and to speak of could be expected from them untilthe dug out.
The obscurity was so difficult to penetrate that Mr Lorry,picking his way over the well-worn Turkey carpet, supposedMiss Manette to be, for the moment, in some adjacent room,until, having got past the two tall candles, he saw to receivehim by the table between them and the young lady of not morethan seventeen, in a riding-cloak, and still holding her strawtravelling-hat by its ribbon in her hand. As his eyes restedon 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 youngand smooth it was of lifting and knitting itself into anexpression that was not quite one of perplexity, or wonder, oralarm or merely of a bright fixed attention, though isincluded all the four expressions--as his eyes rested on thesethings, a sudden vivid likeness passed before him, of a childwhom he had held in his arms on the passage across that veryChannel, one cold time, when the hail drifted heavily and thesea ran high.
