A TALE OF TWO CITIES - 1 - 3 books and stories free download online pdf in English

A TALE OF TWO CITIES - 1 - 3

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

A STORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

By Charles Dickens

Recalled to Life

(3)

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 breasts 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 chink 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 opiate) 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!”

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