Hunted Down | Page 3

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Hunted Down
by Charles Dickens

I.
Most of us see some romances in life. In my capacity as Chief Manager
of a Life Assurance Office, I think I have within the last thirty years
seen more romances than the generality of men, however unpromising
the opportunity may, at first sight, seem.
As I have retired, and live at my ease, I possess the means that I used to
want, of considering what I have seen, at leisure. My experiences have
a more remarkable aspect, so reviewed, than they had when they were

in progress. I have come home from the Play now, and can recall the
scenes of the Drama upon which the curtain has fallen, free from the
glare, bewilderment, and bustle of the Theatre.
Let me recall one of these Romances of the real world.
There is nothing truer than physiognomy, taken in connection with
manner. The art of reading that book of which Eternal Wisdom obliges
every human creature to present his or her own page with the individual
character written on it, is a difficult one, perhaps, and is little studied. It
may require some natural aptitude, and it must require (for everything
does) some patience and some pains. That these are not usually given
to it, - that numbers of people accept a few stock commonplace
expressions of the face as the whole list of characteristics, and neither
seek nor know the refinements that are truest, - that You, for instance,
give a great deal of time and attention to the reading of music, Greek,
Latin, French, Italian, Hebrew, if you please, and do not qualify
yourself to read the face of the master or mistress looking over your
shoulder teaching it to you, - I assume to be five hundred times more
probable than improbable. Perhaps a little self-sufficiency may be at the
bottom of this; facial expression requires no study from you, you think;
it comes by nature to you to know enough about it, and you are not to
be taken in.
I confess, for my part, that I HAVE been taken in, over and over again.
I have been taken in by acquaintances, and I have been taken in (of
course) by friends; far oftener by friends than by any other class of
persons. How came I to be so deceived? Had I quite misread their
faces?
No. Believe me, my first impression of those people, founded on face
and manner alone, was invariably true. My mistake was in suffering
them to come nearer to me and explain themselves away.

II.

The partition which separated my own office from our general outer
office in the City was of thick plate-glass. I could see through it what
passed in the outer office, without hearing a word. I had it put up in
place of a wall that had been there for years, - ever since the house was
built. It is no matter whether I did or did not make the change in order
that I might derive my first impression of strangers, who came to us on
business, from their faces alone, without being influenced by anything
they said. Enough to mention that I turned my glass partition to that
account, and that a Life Assurance Office is at all times exposed to be
practised upon by the most crafty and cruel of the human race.
It was through my glass partition that I first saw the gentleman whose
story I am going to tell.
He had come in without my observing it, and had put his hat and
umbrella on the broad counter, and was bending over it to take some
papers from one of the clerks. He was about forty or so, dark,
exceedingly well dressed in black, - being in mourning, - and the hand
he extended with a polite air, had a particularly well-fitting black-kid
glove upon it. His