“That is what I mean to tell you, sir,” said Mr. Lorry. “Pray let there be no mistake about it.”
Mr. Stryver sucked the end of a ruler for a little while, and then stood hitting a tune out of his teeth with it, which probably gave him the toothache. He broke the awkward silence by saying:
“This is something new to me, Mr. Lorry. You deliberately advise me not to go up to Soho and offer myself—myself, Stryver of the King’s Bench bar?”
“Do you ask me for my advice, Mr. Stryver?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Very good. Then I give it, and you have repeated it correctly.”
“And all I can say of it is,” laughed Stryver with a vexed laugh, “that this—ha, ha!—beats everything past, present, and to come.”
“Now understand me,” pursued Mr. Lorry. “As a man of business, I am not justified in saying anything about this matter, for, as a man of business, I know nothing of it. But, as an old fellow, who has carried Miss Manette in his arms, who is the trusted friend of Miss Manette and of her father too, and who has a great affection for them both, I have spoken. The confidence is not of my seeking, recollect. Now, you think I may not be right?”
“Not I!” said Stryver, whistling. “I can’t undertake to find third parties in common sense; I can only find it for myself. I suppose sense in certain quarters; you suppose mincing bread-and-butter nonsense. It’s new to me, but you are right, I dare say.”
“What I suppose, Mr. Stryver, I claim to characterise for myself. And understand me, sir,” said Mr. Lorry quickly flushing again, “I will not—not even at Tellson’s—have it characterised for me by any gentleman breathing.”
“There! I beg your pardon!” said Stryver.
“Granted. Thank you. Well, Mr. Stryver, I was about to say: it might be painful to you to find yourself mistaken, it might be painful to Doctor Manette to have the task of being explicit with you, it might be very painful to Miss Manette to have the task of being explicit with you. You know the terms upon which I have the honour and happiness to stand with the family. If you please, committing you in no way, representing you in no way, I will undertake to correct my advice by the exercise of a little new observation and judgment expressly brought to bear upon it. If you should then be dissatisfied with it, you can but test its soundness for yourself; if, on the other hand, you should be satisfied with it, and it should be what it now is, it may spare all sides what is best spared. What do you say?”
“How long would you keep me in town?”
“Oh! It is only a question of a few hours. I could go to Soho in the evening, and come to your chambers afterwards.”
“Then I say yes,” said Stryver. “I won’t go up there now, I am not so hot upon it as that comes to; I say yes, and I shall expect you to look in to-night. Good-morning.”
Then Mr. Stryver turned and burst out of the Bank, causing such a concussion of air on his passage through, that to stand up against it bowing behind the two counters, required the utmost remaining strength of the two ancient clerks. Those venerable and feeble persons were always seen by the public in the act of bowing, and were popularly believed, when they had bowed a customer out, still to keep on bowing in the empty office until they bowed another customer in.
The barrister was keen enough to divine that the banker would not have gone so far in his expression of opinion on any less solid ground than moral certainty. Unprepared as he was for the large pill he had to swallow, he got it down. “And now,” said Mr. Stryver, shaking his forensic forefinger at the Temple in general, when it was down, “my way out of this is to put you all in the wrong.”
It was a bit of the art of an Old Bailey tactician, in which he found great relief. “You shall not put me in the wrong, young lady,” said Mr. Stryver; “I’ll do that for you.”