Jarvis Lorry and the Ghost

Chapter-1

It was the year 1775. Both France and England were on the brink of revolution. King George III of England was too busy handling his country’s problems with the American colonies to worry about his own people’s poverty. King Louis XVI of France and the noblemen of his court were more concerned with their own pleasures and wealth to worry about the poor, hungry lower classes, who had begun to make plans to overthrow their rulers. So it was that London and Paris, the capitals of the two countries, were uneasy as their revolutions drew near.

There was much crime in England during this period. Thus it was not surprising that the passengers in the mail coach travelling out of London one Friday night late in November feared for their safety when the sound of a galloping horse came from behind the coach.

The guard cocked his pistol. “Stop or I shall fire!” he shouted.

The rider slowed down and stopped. “I must speak to one of the passengers heading for Dover,” he called out, “Mr. Jarvis Lorry.”

The guard turned to the passengers. “Which one of you is Mr. Lorry?” he asked.

“Here I am,” replied a trembling gentle­man of about sixty, “Who wants me?”

“It’s Jerry Cruncher,” answered the rider, “I have a message from Tellson’s.”

“It’s O.K.,” Mr. Lorry told the guard, “I know this messenger. I work for Tellson’s Bank in London, and so does he.”

Mr. Lorry took the paper the rider handed into the coach. He unfolded it and read to himself, “Wait at Dover for Mam’selle.” Then he turned to the rider. “Jerry, you can say that my answer is ‘RECALLED TO LIFE’.”

“That’s a mighty strange answer,” muttered the messenger as he climbed back onto his horse.

Mr. Lorry, meanwhile, began to doze, as did the other passengers. But his sleep was not a restful one, for his dreams were filled with scenes of him digging a man out of a grave.

Over and over Jarvis Lorry asked the ghost, “How long have you been buried?”

“Almost eighteen years,” was the ghost’s repeated reply.

“Do you know that you are being recalled to life?”
“They tell me so.”

When these conversations became loud enough to waken the other passengers, they nudged Mr. Lorry awake. It was during one of these waking moments, in the black of night, that Mr. Lorry saw the other two passengers leave the coach and walk off down the road.

By mid-morning, the mail coach arrived in Dover, the departure point for boats crossing the English Channel to Calais, France. Mr. Lorry arranged for a room at the Royal George Inn in Dover, since the boat would not be leav­ing until the following afternoon.

Then he told the innkeeper, “Please prepare another room for a young lady who will arrive today. She will ask for Mr. Lorry of Tellson’s Bank.”

“You gentlemen from Tellson’s do quite a bit of travelling, don’t you?” commented the innkeeper.

“Yes, we have offices in both England and France,” explained Mr. Lorry, “but I have not done any travelling in fifteen years.”

It was that evening, as Jarvis Lorry was finishing his dinner, that a waiter informed him that a Miss Manette had arrived.

Leaving his dessert unfinished, Mr. Lorry hurried upstairs. Entering Lucie Manette’s sitting-room, he saw a young lady of no more than seventeen. She was a short, slim, pretty girl with long golden hair and deep-set blue eyes that met Mr. Lorry’s with a questioning look. That look made him recall a child whom he had held in his arms during a passage across the English Channel from France to England fifteen years before. He knew that she had been that child. but Lucie Manette, of course, did not recognize him.

“I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Manette,” said Mr. Lorry, making a formal bow.

The young lady motioned Mr. Lorry to a chair and got right down to business. “I received a letter yesterday from Tellson’s Bank, sir, informing me about a discovery regarding some property of my poor father who has been dead for so long. The property, I believe. is in France.”

Her voice trailed off. She wiped away a tear, then struggled to continue. “The letter said I was to go to Paris to meet with a gentle­man the bank was sending there.”

“That gentleman is myself.”

“Since the gentleman had already left London, a messenger was sent after him to ask him to wait for me here in Dover. The bank also told me that the gentleman would give me all the details of the property, some of which would be rather surprising. Naturally, I am eager to know what they are.”

“Naturally,” agreed Mr. Lorry as he adjusted his wig nervously. Finally, he looked directly at the young lady and began his story.

“I will tell you first about one of our bank’s customers, a French gentleman of great talents, a scientist cum doctor whom I had the pleasure of serving at Tellson’s Bank in Paris at the time of his marriage to an English lady about twenty years ago.”

“Then, sir, what you are telling me is my own father’s story” she stopped, her fore­head wrinkling in bewilderment. Then a faint smile crossed her face as she went on. “It is a story you know because it was you who brought me to England when my mother died, just two years after my father’s death.”

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