A Tale of Two Cities

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 London.  So with the three passengers shut up in the narrow
compass of one lumbering old mail coach; they were mysteries to
one another, as complete as if each had been in his own coach and
six, or his own coach and sixty, with the breadth of a county
between him and the next.

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."