a tale of two cities(双城记)-2

there! Stand! I shall fire!”The pace was suddenly checked, and, with much splashing andfloundering, a man’s voice called from the mist, “Is that the DoverCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesmail?”“Never you mind what it is,” the guard retorted. “What areyou?”“Is that the Dover mail?”“Why do you want to know?”“I want a passenger, if it is.”“What passenger?”“Mr. Jarvis Lorry.”Our booked passenger showed in a moment that it was hisname. The guard, the coachman, and the two other passengerseyed him distrustfully.“Keep where you are,” the guard called to the voice in the mist,“because, if I should make a mistake, it could never be set right inyour lifetime. Gentleman of the name of Lorry answer straight.”“What is the matter?” asked the passenger, then, with mildlyquavering speech. “Who wants me? Is it Jerry?”(“I don’t like Jerry’s voice, if it is Jerry,” growled the guard tohimself. “He’s hoarser than suits me, is Jerry.”)“Yes, Mr. Lorry.”“What is the matter?”“A despatch sent after you from over yonder. T. and Co.”“I know this messenger, guard,” said Mr. Lorry, getting downinto the road, assisted from behind more swiftly than politely bythe other two passengers, who immediately scrambled into thecoach, shut the door, and pulled up the window. “He may comeclose; there’s nothing wrong.”“I hope there ain’t, but can’t make so ’Nation sure of that,” saidthe guard, in gruff soliloquy. “Hallo you!”“Well! And hallo you!” said Jerry, more hoarsely than before.Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Cities“Come on at a footpace! d’ye mind me? And if you’ve gotholsters to that saddle o’ yourn, don’t let me see your hands gonigh ’em. For I’m a devil at a quick mistake, and when I make oneit takes the form of Lead. So now let’s look at you.”The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through theeddying mist, and came to the side of the mail, where thepassenger stood. The rider stopped, and, casting up his eyes at theguard, handed the passenger a small folded paper. The rider’shorse was blown, and both horse and rider were covered withmud, from the hoofs of the horse to the hat of the man.“Guard!” said the passenger, in a tone of quiet businessconfidence.The watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock of hisraised blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye on thehorseman, answered curtly, “Sir.”“There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tellson’s Bank.You must know Tellson’s Bank in London. I am going to Paris onbusiness. A crown to drink. I may read this?”“If so be as you’re quick, sir.”He opened it in the light of the coach-lamp on that side, andread—first to himself and then aloud: “‘Wait at Dover forMam’selle.’ It’s not long, you see, guard. Jerry, say that my answerwas, RECALLED TO LIFE.”Jerry started in his saddle. “That’s a Blazing strange answer,too,” said he, at his hoarsest.“Take that message back, and they will know that I receivedthis, as well as if I wrote. Make the best of your way. Good night.”With those words the passenger opened the coach-door and gotin; not at all assisted by his fellow-passengers, who hadCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesexpeditiously secreted their watches and purses in their boots, andwere now making a general pretence of being asleep. With nomore definite purpose than to escape the hazard of originating anyother kind of action.The coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths of mistclosing round it as it began the descent. The guard soon replacedhis blunderbuss in his arm-chest, and, having looked to the rest ofits contents, and having looked to the supplementary pistols thathe wore in his belt, looked to a smaller chest beneath his seat, inwhich there were a few smith’s tools, a couple of torches, and atinderbox. For he was furnished with that completeness that if thecoach-lamps had been blown and stormed out, which didoccasionally happen, he had only to shut himself up inside, keepthe flint and steel sparks well off the straw, and get a light withtolerable 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 thesame of it myself.”Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismountedmeanwhile, not only to ease his spent horse, but to wipe the mudfrom his face, and shake the wet out of his hat-brim, which mightbe capable of holding about half a gallon. After standing with thebridle over his heavily-splashed arm, until the wheels of the mailwere no longer within hearing and the night was quite still again,Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citieshe turned to walk down the hill.“After that there gallop from Temple Bar, old lady, I won’t trustyour forelegs till I get you on the level,” said this hoarsemessenger, glancing at his mare. “‘Recalled to life.’ That’s aBlazing 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 wasto come into fashion, Jerry!”Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two CitiesChapter IIITHE NIGHT SHADOWSAwonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creatureis constituted to be that profound secret and mystery toevery other. A solemn consideration, when I enter a greatcity by night, that every one of those darkly clustered housesencloses its own secret; that every room in every one of themencloses its own secret; that every breathing heart in the hundredsof thousands of breasts there, is, in some of its imaginings, a secretto the heart nearest it! Something of the awfulness, even of Deathitself, is referable to this. No more can I turn the leaves of this dearbook that I loved, and vainly hope in time to read it all. No morecan I look into the depths of this unfathomable water, wherein, asmomentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses of buriedtreasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that thebook should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I hadread but a page. It was appointed that the water should be lockedin an eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and Istood in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbouris dead, my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorableconsolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always inthat individuality, and which I shall carry in mind to my life’s end.In any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, isthere a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, intheir innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?As to this, his natural and not to be alienated inheritance, theCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesmessenger on horseback had exactly the same possessions as theKing, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchant inLondon. So with the three passengers shut up in the narrowcompass of one lumbering old mail-coach; they were mysteries toone another, as complete as if each had been in his own coach andsix, or his own coach and sixty, with the breadth of a countybetween him and the next.The messenger rode back at an easy trot, stopping pretty oftenat ale-houses by the way to drink, but evincing a tendency to keephis own counsel, and to keep his hat cocked over his eyes. He hadeyes that assorted very well with that decoration, being of asurface black, with no depth in the colour or form, and much toonear together—as if they were afraid of being found out insomething, singly, if they kept too far apart. They had a sinisterexpression, under an old cocked-hat like a three-corneredspittoon, and over a great muffler for the chin and throat, whichdescended nearly to the wearer’s knees. When he stopped fordrink, 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 ashe rode. “It wouldn’t do for you, Jerry. Jerry, you honesttradesman, it wouldn’t suit your line of business! Recalled—! Bustme 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 thecrown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standingjaggedly 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 topCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesof a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best ofplayers at leap-frog might have declined him, as the mostdangerous man in the world to go over.While he trotted back with the message he was to deliver to thenight watchman in his box at the door of Tellson’s Bank, byTemple Bar, who was to deliver it to greater authorities within, theshadows of the night took such shapes to him as arose out of themessage, and took such shapes to the mare as arose out of herprivate topics of uneasiness. They seemed to be numerous, for sheshied at every shadow on the road.What time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted, rattled, andbumped upon its tedious way, with its three fellow-inscrutablesinside. To whom, likewise, the shadows of the night revealedthemselves, in the forms their dozing eyes and wanderingthoughts suggested.Tellson’s Bank had a run upon it in the mail. As the bankpassenger—with an arm drawn through the leathern strap, whichdid what lay in it to keep him from pounding against the nextpassenger, and driving him into his corner, whenever the coachgot a special jolt—nodded in his place, with half-shut eyes, thelittle coach-windows, and the coach-lamp dimly gleaming throughthem, and the bulky bundle of opposite passenger, became thebank, and did a great stroke of business. The rattle of the harnesswas the chink of money, and more drafts were honoured in fiveminutes than even Tellson’s, with all its foreign and homeconnexion, ever paid in thrice the time. Then the strong-roomsunderground, at Tellson’s, with such of their valuable stores andsecrets as were known to the passenger (and it was not a little thathe knew about them), opened before him, and he went in amongCharles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Citiesthem with the great keys and the feebly-burning candle, and foundthem safe, and strong, and sound, and still, just as he had last seenthem.But, though the bank was almost always with him, and thoughthe coach (in a confused way, like the presence of pain under anopiate) was always with him, there was another current ofimpression that never ceased to run, all through the night. He wason his way to dig some one out of a grave.Now, which of the multitude of faces that showed themselvesbefore him was the true face of the buried person, the shadows ofthe night did not indicate; but they were all the faces of a man offive-and-forty by years, and they differed principally in thepassions they expressed, and in the ghastliness of their worn andwasted state. Pride, contempt, defiance, stubbornness,submission, lamentation, succeeded one another; so did varietiesof sunken cheek, cadaverous colour, emaciated hands and figures.But the face was in the main one face, and every head wasprematurely white. A hundred times the dozing passengerinquired 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.Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two CitiesSometimes the broken reply was. “Wait! It would kill me if I sawher too soon.” Sometimes, it was given in a tender rain of tears,and then it was, “Take me to her.” Sometimes it was staring andbewildered, and then it was, “I don’t know her. I don’tunderstand.”After such imaginary discourse, the passenger in his fancywould 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 atlast, with earth hanging about his face and hair, he wouldsuddenly fall away to dust. The passenger would then start tohimself, and lower the window, to get the reality of mist and rainon his cheek.Yet even when his eyes were opened on the mist and rain, onthe moving patch of light from the lamps, and the hedge at theroadside retreating by jerks, the night shadows outside the coachwould fall into the train of the night shadows within. The realBanking-house by Temple Bar, the real business of the past day,the real strong rooms, the real express sent after him, and the realmessage 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 thetwo passengers would admonish him to pull up the window, drawhis arm securely through the leathern strap, and speculate uponthe two slumbering forms, until his mind lost its hold of them, andthey again slid away into the bank and the grave.Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two Cities“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 theweary passenger started to the consciousness of daylight, andfound that the shadows of the night were gone.He lowered the window, and looked out at the rising sun. Therewas a ridge of ploughed land, with a plough upon it where it hadbeen left last night when the horses were unyoked; beyond, a quietcoppice-wood, in which many leaves of burning red and goldenyellow still remained upon the trees. Though the earth was coldand wet, the sky was clear, and the sun rose bright, placid, andbeautiful.“Eighteen years!” said the passenger, looking at the sun.“Gracious Creator of day! To be buried alive for eighteen years!”Charles Dickens ElecBook ClassicsA Tale of Two CitiesChapter IVTHE PREPARATIONW hen the mail got successfully to Dover, in the course ofthe forenoon, the head drawer at the Royal GeorgeHotel opened the coach-door as his custom was. He didit with some flourish of ceremony, for a mail journey from Londonin winter was an achievement to congratulate an adventurous