They went up slowly and softly. The staircase was short, and they were soon at the top. There, as it had an abrupt turn in it, they came all at once in sight of three men, whose heads were bent down close together at the side of a door, and who were intently looking into the room to which the door belonged, through some chinks of holes in the wall. On hearing footsteps close at hand, these three turned, and rose, and showed themselves to be the three of one name who had been drinking in the wine-shop.
“I forgot them in the surprise of your visit,” explained Monsieur Defarge. “Leave us, good boys; we have business here.”
The three glided by, and went silently down.
There appearing to be no other door on that floor, and the keeper of the wine-shop going straight to this one when they were left alone, Mr. Lorry asked him in a whisper, with a little anger:
“Do you make a show of Monsieur Manette?”
“I show him, in the way you have seen, to a chosen few.”
“Is that well?”
“I think it is well.”
“Who are the few? How do you choose them?”
“I choose them as real men, of my name—Jacques is my name—to whom the sight is likely to do good. Enough: you are English; that is another thing. Stay there, if you please, a little moment.”
With an admonitory gesture to keep them back, he stooped, and looked in through the crevice in the wall. Soon raising his head again, he struck twice or thrice upon the door—evidently with no other object than to make a noise there. With the same intention, he drew the key across it, three or four times, before he put it clumsily into the lock, and turned it as heavily as he could.
The door slowly opened inward under his hand, and he looked into the room and said something. A faint voice answered something. Little more than a single syllable could have been spoken on either side.
He looked back over his shoulder, and beckoned them to enter. Mr. Lorry got his arm securely round the daughter’s waist, and held her; for he felt that she was sinking.
“A—a—a—business, business!” he urged, with a moisture that was not of business shining on his cheek. “Come in, come in!”
“I am afraid of it,” she answered, shuddering.
“Of it? What?”
“I mean of him. Of my father.”
Rendered in a manner desperate, by her state and by the beckoning of their conductor, he drew over his neck the arm that shook upon his shoulder, lifted her a little, and hurried her into the room. He set her down just within the door, and held her, clinging to him.
Defarge drew out the key, closed the door, locked it on the inside, took out the key again, and held it in his hand. All this he did, methodically, and with as loud and harsh an accompaniment of noise as he could make. Finally, he walked across the room with a measured tread to where the window was. He stopped there, and faced around.
The garret, built to be a depository for firewood and the like, was dim and dark: for the window of dormer shape was in truth a door in the roof, with a little crane over it for the hoisting up of stores from the street: unglazed, and closing up the middle in two pieces, like any other door of French construction. To exclude the cold, one half of this door was fast closed, and the other was opened but a very little way. Such a scanty portion of light was admitted through these means, that it was difficult, on first coming in, to see anything; and long habit alone could have slowly formed in any one, the ability to do any work requiring nicety in such obscurity. Yet, work of that kind was being done in the garret; for, with his back towards the door, and his face towards the w
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Chapter VI
The Shoemaker
“GOOD day!” said Monsieur Defarge, looking down at the white head that bent low over the shoemaking.