“Well, well! That’s good comfort. I am thankful!” said Mr. Lorry.
“I am thankful!” repeated the Doctor, bending his head with reverence.
“There are two other points,” said Mr. Lorry, “on which I am anxious to be instructed. I may go on?”
“You cannot do your friend a better service.” The Doctor gave him his hand.
“To the first, then. He is of a studious habit, and unusually energetic; he applies himself with great ardour to the acquisition of professional knowledge, to the conducting of experiments, to many things. Now, does he do too much?”
“I think not. It may be the character of his mind, to be always in singular need of occupation. That may be, in part, natural to it; in part, the result of affliction. The less it was occupied with healthy things, the more it would be in danger of turning in the unhealthy direction. He may have observed himself, and made the discovery.”
“You are sure that he is not under too great a strain?”
“I think I am quite sure of it.”
“My dear Manette, if he were overworked now—”
“My dear Lorry, I doubt if that could easily be. There has been a violent stress in one direction, and it needs a counter-weight.”
“Excuse me, as a persistent man of business. Assuming for a moment that he was overworked; it would show itself in some renewal of this disorder?”
“I do not think so. I do not think,” said Doctor Manette with the firmness of self-conviction, “that anything but the one train of association would renew it. I think that, henceforth, nothing but some extraordinary jarring of that chord could renew it. After what has happened, and after his recovery, I find it difficult to imagine any such violent sounding of that string again. I trust, and I almost believe, that the circumstances likely to renew it are exhausted.”
He spoke with the diffidence of a man who knew how slight a thing would overset the delicate organisation of the mind, and yet with the confidence of a man who had slowly won his assurance out of personal endurance and distress. It was not for his friend to abate that confidence. He professed himself more relieved and encouraged than he really was, and approached his second and last point. He felt it to be the most difficult of all; but, remembering his old Sunday morning conversation with Miss Pross, and remembering what he had seen in the last nine days, he knew that he must face it.
“The occupation resumed under the influence of this passing affliction so happily recovered from,” said Mr. Lorry, clearing his throat, “we will call—Blacksmith’s work, Blacksmith’s work. We will say, to put a case and for the sake of illustration, that he had been used, in his bad time, to work at a little forge. We will say that he was unexpectedly found at his forge again. Is it not a pity that he should keep it by him?”
The Doctor shaded his forehead with his hand, and beat his foot nervously on the ground.
“He has always kept it by him,” said Mr. Lorry, with an anxious look at his friend. “Now, would it not be better that he should let it go?”
Still, the Doctor, with shaded forehead, beat his foot nervously on the ground.
“You do not find it easy to advise me?” said Mr. Lorry. “I quite understand it to be a nice question. And yet I think—” And there he shook his head, and stopped.
“You see,” said Doctor Manette, turning to him after an uneasy pause, “it is very hard to explain, consistently, the innermost workings of this poor man’s mind. He once yearned so frightfully for that occupation, and it was so welcome when it came; no doubt it relieved his pain so much, by substituting the perplexity of the fingers for the perplexity of the brain, and by substituting, as he became more practised, the ingenuity of the hands for the ingenuity of the mental torture; that he has never been able to bear the thought of putting it quite out of his reach. Even now, when I believe he is more hopeful of himself than he has ever been, and even speaks of himself with a kind of confidence, the idea that he might need that old employment, and not find it, gives him a sudden sense of terror, like that which one may fancy strikes to the heart of a lost child.”