Charles Dickens: Great Expectations & A Tale of Two Cities. Charles Dickens

greatest credit, and — in short, my meaning is everything you could desire. But — really, you know, Mr. Stryver — ” Mr. Lorry paused, and shook his head at him in the oddest manner, as if he were compelled against his will to add, internally, “you know there really is so much too much of you!”

      “Well!” said Stryver, slapping the desk with his contentious hand, opening his eyes wider, and taking a long breath, “if I understand you, Mr. Lorry, I’ll be hanged!”

      Mr. Lorry adjusted his little wig at both ears as a means towards that end, and bit the feather of a pen.

      “D — n it all, sir!” said Stryver, staring at him, “am I not eligible?”

      “Oh dear yes! Yes. Oh yes, you’re eligible!” said Mr. Lorry. “If you say eligible, you are eligible.”

      “Am I not prosperous?” asked Stryver.

      “Oh! if you come to prosperous, you are prosperous,” said Mr. Lorry.

      “And advancing?”

      “If you come to advancing you know,” said Mr. Lorry, delighted to be able to make another admission, “nobody can doubt that.”

      “Then what on earth is your meaning, Mr. Lorry?” demanded Stryver, perceptibly crestfallen.

      “Well! I — Were you going there now?” asked Mr. Lorry.

      “Straight!” said Stryver, with a plump of his fist on the desk.

      “Then I think I wouldn’t, if I was you.”

      “Why?” said Stryver. “Now, I’ll put you in a corner,” forensically shaking a forefinger at him. “You are a man of business and bound to have a reason. State your reason. Why wouldn’t you go?”

      “Because,” said Mr. Lorry, “I wouldn’t go on such an object without having some cause to believe that I should succeed.”

      “D — n me!” cried Stryver, “but this beats everything.”

      Mr. Lorry glanced at the distant House, and glanced at the angry Stryver.

      “Here’s a man of business — a man of years — a man of experience — in a Bank,” said Stryver; “and having summed up three leading reasons for complete success, he says there’s no reason at all! Says it with his head on!” Mr. Stryver remarked upon the peculiarity as if it would have been infinitely less remarkable if he had said it with his head off.

      “When I speak of success, I speak of success with the young lady; and when I speak of causes and reasons to make success probable, I speak of causes and reasons that will tell as such with the young lady. The young lady, my good sir,” said Mr. Lorry, mildly tapping the Stryver arm, “the young lady. The young lady goes before all.”

      “Then you mean to tell me, Mr. Lorry,” said Stryver, squaring his elbows, “that it is your deliberate opinion that the young lady at present in question is a mincing Fool?”

      “Not exactly so. I mean to tell you, Mr. Stryver,” said Mr. Lorry, reddening, “that I will hear no disrespectful word of that young lady from any lips; and that if I knew any man — which I hope I do not — whose taste was so coarse, and whose temper was so overbearing, that he could not restrain himself from speaking disrespectfully of that young lady at this desk, not even Tellson’s should prevent my giving him a piece of my mind.”

      The necessity of being angry in a suppressed tone had put Mr. Stryver’s blood-vessels into a dangerous state when it was his turn to be angry; Mr. Lorry’s veins, methodical as their courses could usually be, were in no better state now it was his turn.

      “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 tonight. 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.”

      Accordingly, when Mr. Lorry called that night as late as ten o’clock, Mr. Stryver, among a quantity of books and papers littered out for the purpose, seemed to have nothing less on his mind than the subject of the morning. He even showed surprise when he saw Mr. Lorry, and was altogether in an absent and preoccupied state.

      “Well!”