有声名著之双城记 Chapter03
CHAPTER IIIThe Night Shadows
Wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature isconstituted to be that profound secret and mystery to everyother. A solemn consideration, when enter a great city bynight, that every one of those darkly clustered housesencloses its own secret; that every room in every one of themencloses its own secret; that every beating heart in thehundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, if some of itsimaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of theawfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No morecan I turn the leaves of this dear book that loved, and vainlyhope in time to read it all. No more can I look into thedepths of this unfathomable water, wherein as momentary lightsglanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure andother things submerged. It was appointed that the book shouldshut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read buta page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in aneternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, andI stood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, myneighbour is dead, my love the darling of my soul, is dead; itis the inexorable consolidation and perpetuation of the secretthat was always in that individuality, and which I shall carryin mine to my life's end. In any of the burial-places of thiscity through which I pass, is there a sleeper more inscrutablethan it 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 inheritancethe messenger on horseback had exactly the same possession asthe King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchantin London. So with the three passengers shut up i' the narrowcompass of one lumbering old mail-coach; the were mysteries toone another, as complete as if each ha been in his own coachand six, or his own coach and sixty, with the breadth of acounty between him and the next.
The messenger rode back at an easy trot, stopping prettyoften at ale-houses by the way to drink, but evincing tendencyto keep his own counsel, and to keep his hat cocked over hiseyes. He had eyes that assorted very well with thatdecoration, being of a surface black, with no depth in thecolour or form, and much too near together--as if they wereafraid of being found out in something, singly, if they kepttoo far apart. They had a sinister expression, under an oldcocked-hat like a three-cornered spittoon, and over a greatmuffler for the chin and throat, which descended nearly to thewearer's knees. When he stopped for drink, he moved thismuffler with his left hand, only while he poured his liquor inwith his right; as soon as that was done, he muffled again.
No, Jerry, no!' said the messenger, harping on one theme ashe rode. `It wouldn't do for you, Jerry. Jerry, you honesttradesman, 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 wasfain, several times, to take off his hat to scratch his head.
Except on the crown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiffblack hair, standing jaggedly all over it, and growing downhill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It was so like smith'swork, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall thana head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog mighthave declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world togo over.
While he trotted back with the message he was to deliver tothe night watchman in his box at the door of Tellson's Bank,by Temple Bar, who was to deliver it to greater authoritieswithin, the shadows of the night took such shapes to him asarose out of the message, and took such shapes to the mare asarose out of her private topics of uneasiness. They seemed tobe numerous, for she shied at every shadow on the road.
What time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted, rattled, andbumped upon its tedious way, with its three fellow-inscrutables inside. To whom, likewise, the shadows of thenight revealed themselves, in the forms their dozing eyes andwandering thoughts suggested.
Tellson's Bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the bankpassenger--with an arm drawn through the leathern strap, whichdid what lay in it to keep him from pounding against the nextpassenger, and driving him into his comer, whenever the coachgot a special jolt--nodded in his place, with half-shut eyes,the little coach-windows, and the coach-lamp dimly gleamingthrough them, and the bulky bundle of opposite passenger,became the bank, and did a great stroke of business. Therattle of the harness was the chink of money, and more draftswere honoured in five minutes than even Tellson's, with allits foreign and home connexion, ever paid in thrice the time.
Then the strong-rooms underground, at Tellson's, with such oftheir valuable stores and secrets as were known to thepassenger (and it was not a little that he knew about them),opened before him, and he went in among them with the greatkeys and the feebly-burning candle, and found them safe, andstrong, and sound, and still, just as he had last seen them.
But, though the bank was almost always with him, and thoughthe coach (in a confused way, like the presence of pain underan opiate) was always with him, there was another current ofimpression that never ceased to run, all through the night. Hewas on his way to dig some one out of a grave.
Now, which of the multitude of faces that showed themselvesbefore him was the true face of the buried person, the shadowsof the night did not indicate; but they were all the faces ofa man of five-and-forty by years, and they differedprincipally in the passions they expressed, and in theghastliness of their worn and wasted state. Pride, contempt,defiance, stubbornness, submission, lamentation, succeeded oneanother; so did varieties of sunken cheek, cadaverous colour,emaciated hands and figures. But the face was in the main oneface, and every head was prematurely white. A hundred timesthe 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 he''
The answers to this question were various and contradictory.
Sometimes the broken reply was, `Wait! It would kill me if Isaw her too soon.' Sometimes, it was given in a tender rain oftears, and then it was `Take me to her.' Sometimes it wasstaring and bewildered, and then it was, `I don't know her. Idon't understand.'
After such imaginary discourse, the passenger in his fancywould dig, and dig, dig--now, with a spade, now with a greatkey, 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 fall away to dust. The passenger would thenstart to himself and lower the window, to get the reality ofmist and rain on his cheek.
Yet even when his eyes were opened on the mist and rain, onthe moving patch of light from the lamps, and the hedge at theroadside retreating by jerks, the night shadow's outside thecoach would fall into the train of the night shadows within.
The real Banking-house by Temple Bar, the real business of thepast day, the real strong-rooms, the real express sent afterhim, and the real message returned, would all be there. Out ofthe midst of them, the ghostly face would rise, and he wouldaccost 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 thetwo passengers would admonish him to pull up the window, drawhis arm securely through the leathern strap, and speculateupon the two slumbering forms, until his mind lost its hold ofthem, 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 hislife--when the weary passenger started to the consciousness ofdaylight, 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 itwhere it had been left last night when the horses wereunyoked; beyond, a quiet coppice-wood, in which many leaves ofburning red and golden yellow still remained upon the trees.
Though the earth was cold and wet, the sky was clear, and thesun rose bright, placid, and beautiful.
`Eighteen years!' said the passenger, looking at the sun.
`Gracious Creator of day! To be buried alive for eighteenyears!' |