Book I - Chapter III. The Night Shadows

by Charles Dickens

　　A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature isconstituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.A solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, thatevery one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret;that every room in every one of them encloses its own secret; thatevery 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 tothis. 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 thedepths of this unfathomable water, wherein, as momentary lightsglanced into it, I have had glimpses of buried treasure and otherthings submerged. It was appointed that the book should shut witha spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read but a page. It wasappointed that the water should be locked in an eternal frost, whenthe light was playing on its surface, and I stood in ignorance on theshore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead, my love, the darlingof my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable consolidation andperpetuation of the secret that was always in that individuality,and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end. In any of theburial-places of this city through which I pass, is there a sleepermore inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their innermostpersonality, 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 asthe King, the first Minister of State, or the richest merchantin London. 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 often atale-houses by the way to drink, but evincing a tendency to keep hisown counsel, and to keep his hat cocked over his eyes. He had eyesthat assorted very well with that decoration, being of a surfaceblack, with no depth in the colour or form, and much too neartogether--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 agreat muffler for the chin and throat, which descended nearly to thewearer's knees. When he stopped for drink, he moved this mufflerwith his left hand, only while he poured his liquor in with hisright; 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, itwouldn't suit your line of business! Recalled--! Bust me if Idon'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 onthe crown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair,standing jaggedly all over it, and growing down hill almost to hisbroad, blunt nose. It was so like Smith's work, so much more likethe top of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the bestof players 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 the nightwatchman in his box at the door of Tellson's Bank, by Temple Bar, whowas to deliver it to greater authorities within, the shadows of thenight took such shapes to him as arose out of the message, and tooksuch shapes to the mare as arose out of her private topics ofuneasiness. They seemed to be numerous, for she shied at everyshadow on the road.

　　What time, the mail-coach lumbered, jolted, rattled, and bumped uponits tedious way, with its three fellow-inscrutables inside. To whom,likewise, the shadows of the night revealed themselves, in the formstheir 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 init to keep him from pounding against the next passenger, and drivinghim into his corner, whenever the coach got a special jolt--nodded inhis place, with half-shut eyes, the little coach-windows, and thecoach-lamp dimly gleaming through them, and the bulky bundle ofopposite passenger, became the bank, and did a great stroke of business.The rattle of the harness was the chink of money, and more draftswere honoured in five minutes than even Tellson's, with all itsforeign and home connection, ever paid in thrice the time. Then thestrong-rooms underground, at Tellson's, with such of their valuablestores and secrets as were known to the passenger (and it was not alittle that he knew about them), opened before him, and he went inamong them with the great keys and the feebly-burning candle, andfound them safe, and strong, and sound, and still, just as he hadlast 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) wasalways with him, there was another current of impression that neverceased to run, all through the night. He was on his way to dig someone out of a grave.

　　Now, which of the multitude of faces that showed themselves beforehim was the true face of the buried person, the shadows of the nightdid not indicate; but they were all the faces of a man of five-and-forty by years, and they differed principally in the passions theyexpressed, 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, cadaverouscolour, emaciated hands and figures. But the face was in the mainone face, and every head was prematurely white. A hundred times thedozing 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 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'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 hishands--to dig this wretched creature out. Got out at last, withearth hanging about his face and hair, he would suddenly fan away todust. The passenger would then start to himself, and lower thewindow, to get the reality of mist and rain on his cheek.

　　Yet even when his eyes were opened on the mist and rain, on themoving patch of light from the lamps, and the hedge at the roadsideretreating by jerks, the night shadows outside the coach would fallinto the train of the night shadows within. The real Banking-houseby Temple Bar, the real business of the past day, the real strongrooms, the real express sent after him, and the real message returned,would all be there. Out of the midst of them, the ghostly face wouldrise, 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 twopassengers would admonish him to pull up the window, draw his armsecurely through the leathern strap, and speculate upon the twoslumbering forms, until his mind lost its hold of them, and theyagain 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 hishearing as ever spoken words had been in his life--when the wearypassenger started to the consciousness of daylight, and found thatthe shadows of the night were gone.

　　He lowered the window, and looked out at the rising sun. There was aridge of ploughed land, with a plough upon it where it had been leftlast night when the horses were unyoked; beyond, a quiet coppice-wood,in which many leaves of burning red and golden yellow still remainedupon the trees. Though the earth was cold and wet, the sky wasclear, 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!"