A Tale of Two Cities | Page 7

been
blown and stormed out, which did occasionally happen, he had only to
shut himself up inside, keep the flint and steel sparks well off the straw,
and get a light with tolerable safety and ease (if he were lucky) in five
minutes.
"Tom!" softly over the coach roof.
"Hallo, Joe."
"Did you hear the message?"
"I did, Joe."
"What did you make of it, Tom?"
"Nothing at all, Joe."
"That's a coincidence, too," the guard mused, "for I made the same of it
myself."

Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted meanwhile, not
only to ease his spent horse, but to wipe the mud from his face, and
shake the wet out of his hat-brim, which might be capable of holding
about half a gallon. After standing with the bridle over his
heavily-splashed arm, until the wheels of the mail were no longer
within hearing and the night was quite still again, he turned to walk
down the hill.
"After that there gallop from Temple Bar, old lady, I won't trust your
fore-legs till I get you on the level," said this hoarse messenger,
glancing at his mare. "`Recalled to life.' That's a Blazing strange
message. Much of that wouldn't do for you, Jerry! I say, Jerry! You'd
be in a Blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion,
Jerry!"

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 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