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1Echoing Footsteps A wonderful corner for echoes, it has been remarked, that corner where the Doctor lived. Ever busily
2winding the golden thread which bound her husband, and her father, and herself, and her old directress and companion, in
3a life of quiet bliss, Lucie sat in the still house in the tranquilly resounding corner, listening to the echoing
4footsteps of years. At first, there were times, though she was a perfectly happy young wife, when her work would slowly
5fall from her hands, and her eyes would be dimmed. For, there was something coming in the echoes, something light, afar
6off, and scarcely audible yet, that stirred her heart too much. Fluttering hopes and doubts--hopes, of a love as yet
7unknown to her: doubts, of her remaining upon earth, to enjoy that new delight--divided her breast. Among the echoes
8then, there would arise the sound of footsteps at her own early grave; and thoughts of the husband who would be left so
9desolate, and who would mourn for her so much, swelled to her eyes, and broke like waves. That time passed, and her
10little Lucie lay on her bosom. Then, among the advancing echoes, there was the tread of her tiny feet and the sound of
11her prattling words. Let greater echoes resound as they would, the young mother at the cradle side could always hear
12those coming. They came, and the shady house was sunny with a child's laugh, and the Divine friend of children, to whom
13in her trouble she had confided hers, seemed to take her child in his arms, as He took the child of old, and made it a
14sacred joy to her. Ever busily winding the golden thread that bound them all together, weaving the service of her happy
15influence through the tissue of all their lives, and making it predominate nowhere, Lucie heard in the echoes of years
16none but friendly and soothing sounds. Her husband's step was strong and prosperous among them; her father's firm and
17equal. Lo, Miss Pross, in harness of string, awakening the echoes, as an unruly charger, whip-corrected, snorting and
18pawing the earth under the plane-tree in the garden! Even when there were sounds of sorrow among the rest, they were not
19harsh nor cruel. Even when golden hair, like her own, lay in a halo on a pillow round the worn face of a little boy, and
20he said, with a radiant smile, "Dear papa and mamma, I am very sorry to leave you both, and to leave my pretty sister;
21but I am called, and I must go!" those were not tears all of agony that wetted his young mother's cheek, as the spirit
22departed from her embrace that had been entrusted to it. Suffer them and forbid them not. They see my Father's face. O
23Father, blessed words! Thus, the rustling of an Angel's wings got blended with the other echoes, and they were not
24wholly of earth, but had in them that breath of Heaven. Sighs of the winds that blew over a little garden-tomb were
25mingled with them also, and both were audible to Lucie, in a hushed murmur--like the breathing of a summer sea asleep
26upon a sandy shore--as the little Lucie, comically studious at the task of the morning, or dressing a doll at her
27mother's footstool, chattered in the tongues of the Two Cities that were blended in her life. The Echoes rarely answered
28to the actual tread of Sydney Carton. Some half-dozen times a year, at most, he claimed his privilege of coming in
29uninvited, and would sit among them through the evening, as he had once done often. He never came there heated with
30wine. And one other thing regarding him was whispered in the echoes, which has been whispered by all true echoes for
31ages and ages. No man ever really loved a woman, lost her, and knew her with a blameless though an unchanged mind, when
32she was a wife and a mother, but her children had a strange sympathy with him--an instinctive delicacy of pity for him.
33What fine hidden sensibilities are touched in such a case, no echoes tell; but it is so, and it was so here. Carton was
34the first stranger to whom little Lucie held out her chubby arms, and he kept his place with her as she grew. The little
35boy had spoken of him, almost at the last. "Poor Carton! Kiss him for me!" Mr. Stryver shouldered his way through the
36law, like some great engine forcing itself through turbid water, and dragged his useful friend in his wake, like a boat
37towed astern. As the boat so favoured is usually in a rough plight, and mostly under water, so, Sydney had a swamped
38life of it. But, easy and strong custom, unhappily so much easier and stronger in him than any stimulating sense of
39desert or disgrace, made it the life he was to lead; and he no more thought of emerging from his state of lion's jackal,
40than any real jackal may be supposed to think of rising to be a lion. Stryver was rich; had married a florid widow with
41property and three boys, who had nothing particularly shining about them but the straight hair of their dumpling heads.
42These three young gentlemen, Mr. Stryver, exuding patronage of the most offensive quality from every pore, had walked
43before him like three sheep to the quiet corner in Soho, and had offered as pupils to Lucie's husband: delicately saying
44"Halloa! here are three lumps of bread-and-cheese towards your matrimonial picnic, Darnay!" The polite rejection of the
45three lumps of bread-and-cheese had quite bloated Mr. Stryver with indignation, which he afterwards turned to account in
46the training of the young gentlemen, by directing them to beware of the pride of Beggars, like that tutor-fellow. He was
47also in the habit of declaiming to Mrs. Stryver, over his full-bodied wine, on the arts Mrs. Darnay had once put in
48practice to "catch" him, and on the diamond-cut-diamond arts in himself, madam, which had rendered him "not to be
49caught." Some of his King's Bench familiars, who were occasionally parties to the full-bodied wine and the lie, excused
50him for the latter by saying that he had told it so often, that he believed it himself--which is surely such an
51incorrigible aggravation of an originally bad offence, as to justify any such offender's being carried off to some
52suitably retired spot, and there hanged out of the way. These were among the echoes to which Lucie, sometimes pensive,
53sometimes amused and laughing, listened in the echoing corner, until her little daughter was six years old. How near to
54her heart the echoes of her child's tread came, and those of her own dear father's, always active and self-possessed,
55and those of her dear husband's, need not be told. Nor, how the lightest echo of their united home, directed by herself
56with such a wise and elegant thrift that it was more abundant than any waste, was music to her. Nor, how there were
57echoes all about her, sweet in her ears, of the many times her father had told her that he found her more devoted to him
58married (if that could be) than single, and of the many times her husband had said to her that no cares and duties
59seemed to divide her love for him or her help to him, and asked her "What is the magic secret, my darling, of your being
60everything to all of us, as if there were only one of us, yet never seeming to be hurried, or to have too much to do?"
61But, there were other echoes, from a distance, that rumbled menacingly in the corner all through this space of time. And
62it was now, about little Lucie's sixth birthday, that they began to have an awful sound, as of a great storm in France
63with a dreadful sea rising. On a night in mid-July, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine, Mr. Lorry came in late,
64from Tellson's, and sat himself down by Lucie and her husband in the dark window. It was a hot, wild night, and they
65were all three reminded of the old Sunday night when they had looked at the lightning from the same place. "I began to
66think," said Mr. Lorry, pushing his brown wig back, "that I should have to pass the night at Tellson's. We have been so
67full of business all day, that we have not known what to do first, or which way to turn. There is such an uneasiness in
68Paris, that we have actually a run of confidence upon us! Our customers over there, seem not to be able to confide their
69property to us fast enough. There is positively a mania among some of them for sending it to England." "That has a bad
70look," said Darnay--
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