III. The Night Shadows
A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature isconstituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. Asolemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that everyone of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that everyroom in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beatingheart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some ofits imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of theawfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can Iturn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in timeto read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomablewater, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpsesof buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that thebook should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had readbut a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in aneternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stoodin ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead,my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorableconsolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in thatindividuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end. Inany of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is therea sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in theirinnermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?
As to this, his natural and not to be alienated inheritance, themessenger on horseback had exactly the same possessions as the King, thefirst Minister of State, or the richest merchant in London. So with thethree passengers shut up in the narrow compass of one lumbering old mailcoach; they were mysteries to one another, as complete as if each hadbeen in his own coach and six, or his own coach and sixty, with thebreadth of a county between him and the next.
The messenger rode back at an easy trot, stopping pretty often atale-houses by the way to drink, but evincing a tendency to keep hisown counsel, and to keep his hat cocked over his eyes. He had eyes thatassorted very well with that decoration, being of a surface black, withno depth in the colour or form, and much too near together--as if theywere afraid of being found out in something, singly, if they kept toofar apart. They had a sinister expression, under an old cocked-hat likea three-cornered spittoon, and over a great muffler for the chin andthroat, which descended nearly to the wearer's knees. When he stoppedfor drink, he moved this muffler with his left hand, only while hepoured his liquor in with his right; as soon as that was done, hemuffled 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'tsuit _your_ line of business! Recalled--! Bust me if I don't think he'dbeen a drinking!”
His message perplexed his mind to that degree that he was fain, severaltimes, to take off his hat to scratch his head. Except on the crown,which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing jaggedly allover it, and growing down hill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It wasso like Smith's work, so much more like the top of a strongly spikedwall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog mighthave 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 nightwatchman in his box at the door of Tellson's Bank, by Temple Bar, whowas to deliver it to greater authorities within, the shadows of thenight took such shapes to him as arose out of the message, and took suchshapes 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 uponits tedious way, with its three fellow-inscrutables inside. To whom,likewise, the shadows of the night revealed themselves, in the formstheir dozing eyes and wandering thoughts suggested.
Tellson's Bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the bankpassenger--with an arm drawn through the leathern strap, which did whatlay in it to keep him from pounding against the next passenger,and driving him into his corner, whenever the coach got a specialjolt--nodded in his place, with half-shut eyes, the littlecoach-windows, and the coach-lamp dimly gleaming through them, and thebulky bundle of opposite passenger, became the bank, and did a greatstroke of business. The rattle of the harness was the chink of money,and more drafts were honoured in five minutes than even Tellson's, withall its foreign and home connection, ever paid in thrice the time. Thenthe strong-rooms underground, at Tellson's, with such of their valuablestores and secrets as were known to the passenger (and it was not alittle that he knew about them), opened before him, and he went in amongthem with the great keys and the feebly-burning candle, and found themsafe, 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) wasalways with him, there was another current of impression that neverceased to run, all through the night. He was on his way to dig some oneout of a grave.
Now, which of the multitude of faces that showed themselves before himwas the true face of the buried person, the shadows of the night didnot indicate; but they were all the faces of a man of five-and-forty byyears, 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 handsand figures. But the face was in the main one face, and every head wasprematurely white. A hundred times the dozing passenger inquired of thisspectre:
”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. Sometimesthe 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 itwas, ”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 hishands--to dig this wretched creature out. Got out at last, with earthhanging about his face and hair, he would suddenly fan away to dust. Thepassenger would then start to himself, and lower the window, to get thereality of mist and rain on his cheek.
Yet even when his eyes were opened on the mist and rain, on the movingpatch of light from the lamps, and the hedge at the roadside retreatingby jerks, the night shadows outside the coach would fall into the trainof the night shadows within. The real Banking-house by Temple Bar, thereal business of the past day, the real strong rooms, the real expresssent after him, and the real message returned, would all be there. Outof the midst of them, the ghostly face would rise, and he would accostit 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 twopassengers would admonish him to pull up the window, draw his armsecurely through the leathern strap, and speculate upon the twoslumbering forms, until his mind lost its hold of them, and they againslid 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 inhis hearing as ever spoken words had been in his life--when the wearypassenger started to the consciousness of daylight, and found that theshadows of the night were gone.
He lowered the window, and looked out at the rising sun. There was aridge of ploughed land, with a plough upon it where it had been leftlast night when the horses were unyoked; beyond, a quiet coppice-wood,in which many leaves of burning red and golden yellow still remainedupon 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. ”GraciousCreator of day! To be buried alive for eighteen years!”