A Tale of Two Cities | Page 8

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