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
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 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 all be there. Out of the midst of them, the ghostly
face would rise, and he would accost 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 the two passengers would admonish him to pull
up the window, draw his arm securely through the leathern strap, and speculate
upon the two slumbering forms, until his mind lost its hold of them, 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 his life--when the weary passenger started to the
consciousness of daylight, 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 it where it had been left last night when the
horses were unyoked; beyond, a quiet coppice-wood, in which many leaves of
burning red and golden yellow still remained upon 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. "Gracious Creator of
day! To be buried alive for eighteen years!"