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Book One: Recalled to Life
Chapter III.
The Night Shadows
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that
every human creature is constituted to be
that profound secret and mystery to every
other.
A solemn consideration, when I enter a
great city by night, that every one of
those darkly clustered houses encloses its
own secret; that every room in every one of
them encloses its own secret; that every
beating heart in the hundreds of thousands
of *** there, is, in some of its
imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest
it!
Something of the awfulness, even of Death
itself, is referable to this.
No more can I turn the leaves of this dear
book that I loved, and vainly hope in time
to read it all.
No more can I look into the depths of this
unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary
lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses
of buried treasure and other things
submerged.
It was appointed that the book should shut
with a spring, for ever and for ever, when
I had read but a page.
It was appointed that the water should be
locked in an eternal frost, when the light
was playing on its surface, and I stood in
ignorance on the shore.
My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my
love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it
is the inexorable consolidation and
perpetuation of the secret that was always
in that individuality, and which I shall
carry in mine to my life's end.
In any of the burial-places of this city
through which I pass, is there a sleeper
more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants
are, in their innermost personality, to me,
or than I am to them?
As to this, his natural and not to be
alienated inheritance, the messenger on
horseback had exactly the same possessions
as the King, the first Minister of State,
or the richest merchant in London.
So with the three passengers shut up in the
narrow compass of one lumbering old mail
coach; they were mysteries to one another,
as complete as if each had been in his own
coach and six, or his own coach and sixty,
with the breadth of a county between him
and the next.
The messenger rode back at an easy trot,
stopping pretty often at ale-houses by the
way to drink, but evincing a tendency to
keep his own counsel, and to keep his hat
cocked over his eyes.
He had eyes that assorted very well with
that decoration, being of a surface black,
with no depth in the colour or form, and
much too near together--as if they were
afraid of being found out in something,
singly, if they kept too far apart.
They had a sinister expression, under an
old cocked-hat like a three-cornered
spittoon, and over a great muffler for the
chin and throat, which descended nearly to
the wearer's knees.
When he stopped for drink, he moved this
muffler with his left hand, only while he
poured his liquor in with his right; as
soon as that was done, he muffled again.
"No, Jerry, no!" said the messenger,
harping on one theme as he rode.
"It wouldn't do for you, Jerry.
Jerry, you honest tradesman, it wouldn't
suit _your_ line of business!
Recalled--!
Bust me if I don't think he'd been a
drinking!"
His message perplexed his mind to that
degree that he was fain, several times, to
take off his hat to scratch his head.
Except on the crown, which was raggedly
bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing
jaggedly all over it, and growing down hill
almost to his broad, blunt nose.
It was so like Smith's work, so much more
like the top of a strongly spiked wall than
a head of hair, that the best of players at
leap-frog might have declined him, as the
most dangerous man in the world to go over.
While he trotted back with the message he
was to deliver to the night watchman in his
box at the door of Tellson's Bank, by
Temple Bar, who was to deliver it to
greater authorities within, the shadows of
the night took such shapes to him as arose
out of the message, and took such shapes to
the mare as arose out of _her_ private
topics of uneasiness.
They seemed to be numerous, for she shied
at every shadow on the road.
What time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted,
rattled, and bumped upon its tedious way,
with its three fellow-inscrutables inside.
To whom, likewise, the shadows of the night
revealed themselves, in the forms their
dozing eyes and wandering thoughts
suggested.
Tellson's Bank had a run upon it in the
mail.
As the bank passenger--with an arm drawn
through the leathern strap, which did what
lay in it to keep him from pounding against
the next passenger, and driving him into
his corner, whenever the coach got a
special jolt--nodded in his place, with
half-shut eyes, the little coach-windows,
and the coach-lamp dimly gleaming through
them, and the bulky bundle of opposite
passenger, became the bank, and did a great
stroke of business.
The rattle of the harness was the *** of
money, and more drafts were honoured in
five minutes than even Tellson's, with all
its foreign and home connection, ever paid
in thrice the time.
Then the strong-rooms underground, at
Tellson's, with such of their valuable
stores and secrets as were known to the
passenger (and it was not a little that he
knew about them), opened before him, and he
went in among them with the great keys and
the feebly-burning candle, and found them
safe, and strong, and sound, and still,
just as he had last seen them.
But, though the bank was almost always with
him, and though the coach (in a confused
way, like the presence of pain under an
***) was always with him, there was
another current of impression that never
ceased to run, all through the night.
He was on his way to dig some one out of a
grave.
Now, which of the multitude of faces that
showed themselves before him was the true
face of the buried person, the shadows of
the night did not indicate; but they were
all the faces of a man of five-and-forty by
years, and they differed principally in the
passions they expressed, and in the
ghastliness of their worn and wasted state.
Pride, contempt, defiance, stubbornness,
submission, lamentation, succeeded one
another; so did varieties of sunken cheek,
cadaverous colour, emaciated hands and
figures.
But the face was in the main one face, and
every head was prematurely white.
A hundred times the dozing passenger
inquired of this spectre:
"Buried how long?"
The answer was always the same: "Almost
eighteen years."
"You had abandoned all hope of being dug
out?"
"Long ago."
"You know that you are recalled to life?"
"They tell me so."
"I hope you care to live?"
"I can't say."
"Shall I show her to you?
Will you come and see her?"
The answers to this question were various
and contradictory.
Sometimes the broken reply was, "Wait!
It would kill me if I saw her too soon."
Sometimes, it was given in a tender rain of
tears, and then it was, "Take me to her."
Sometimes it was staring and bewildered,
and then it was, "I don't know her.
I don't understand."
After such imaginary discourse, the
passenger in his fancy would dig, and dig,
dig--now with a spade, now with a great
key, now with his hands--to dig this
wretched creature out.
Got out at last, with earth hanging about
his face and hair, he would suddenly fan
away to dust.
The passenger would then start to himself,
and lower the window, to get the reality of
mist and rain on his cheek.
Yet even when his eyes were opened on the
mist and rain, on the moving patch of light
from the lamps, and the hedge at the
roadside retreating by jerks, the night
shadows outside the coach would fall into
the train of the night shadows within.
The real Banking-house by Temple Bar, the
real business of the past day, the real
strong rooms, the real express sent after
him, and the real message returned, would
all be there.
Out of the midst of them, the ghostly face
would rise, and he would accost it again.
"Buried how long?"
"Almost eighteen years."
"I hope you care to live?"
"I can't say."
Dig--dig--dig--until an impatient movement
from one of the two passengers would
admonish him to pull up the window, draw
his arm securely through the leathern
strap, and speculate upon the two
slumbering forms, until his mind lost its
hold of them, and they again slid away into
the bank and the grave.
"Buried how long?"
"Almost eighteen years."
"You had abandoned all hope of being dug
out?"
"Long ago."
The words were still in his hearing as just
spoken--distinctly in his hearing as ever
spoken words had been in his life--when the
weary passenger started to the
consciousness of daylight, and found that
the shadows of the night were gone.
He lowered the window, and looked out at
the rising sun.
There was a ridge of ploughed land, with a
plough upon it where it had been left last
night when the horses were unyoked; beyond,
a quiet coppice-wood, in which many leaves
of burning red and golden yellow still
remained upon the trees.
Though the earth was cold and wet, the sky
was clear, and the sun rose bright, placid,
and beautiful.
"Eighteen years!" said the passenger,
looking at the sun.
"Gracious Creator of day!
To be buried alive for eighteen years!"