A Tale of Two Cities, Page 2

  II. The Mail

  It was the Dover road that lay, on a Friday night late in November,before the first of the persons with whom this history has business.The Dover road lay, as to him, beyond the Dover mail, as it lumbered upShooter's Hill. He walked up hill in the mire by the side of the mail,as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the least relishfor walking exercise, under the circumstances, but because the hill,and the harness, and the mud, and the mail, were all so heavy, that thehorses had three times already come to a stop, besides once drawing thecoach across the road, with the mutinous intent of taking it backto Blackheath. Reins and whip and coachman and guard, however, incombination, had read that article of war which forbade a purposeotherwise strongly in favour of the argument, that some brute animalsare endued with Reason; and the team had capitulated and returned totheir duty.

  With drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed their way throughthe thick mud, floundering and stumbling between whiles, as if they werefalling to pieces at the larger joints. As often as the driver restedthem and brought them to a stand, with a wary "Wo-ho! so-ho-then!" thenear leader violently shook his head and everything upon it--like anunusually emphatic horse, denying that the coach could be got up thehill. Whenever the leader made this rattle, the passenger started, as anervous passenger might, and was disturbed in mind.

  There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed in itsforlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest and findingnone. A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way through theair in ripples that visibly followed and overspread one another, as thewaves of an unwholesome sea might do. It was dense enough to shut outeverything from the light of the coach-lamps but these its own workings,and a few yards of road; and the reek of the labouring horses steamedinto it, as if they had made it all.

  Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill by theside of the mail. All three were wrapped to the cheekbones and over theears, and wore jack-boots. Not one of the three could have said, fromanything he saw, what either of the other two was like; and each washidden under almost as many wrappers from the eyes of the mind, as fromthe eyes of the body, of his two companions. In those days, travellerswere very shy of being confidential on a short notice, for anybody onthe road might be a robber or in league with robbers. As to the latter,when every posting-house and ale-house could produce somebody in"the Captain's" pay, ranging from the landlord to the lowest stablenon-descript, it was the likeliest thing upon the cards. So the guardof the Dover mail thought to himself, that Friday night in November, onethousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lumbering up Shooter's Hill, ashe stood on his own particular perch behind the mail, beating his feet,and keeping an eye and a hand on the arm-chest before him, where aloaded blunderbuss lay at the top of six or eight loaded horse-pistols,deposited on a substratum of cutlass.

  The Dover mail was in its usual genial position that the guard suspectedthe passengers, the passengers suspected one another and the guard, theyall suspected everybody else, and the coachman was sure of nothing butthe horses; as to which cattle he could with a clear conscience havetaken his oath on the two Testaments that they were not fit for thejourney.

  "Wo-ho!" said the coachman. "So, then! One more pull and you're at thetop and be damned to you, for I have had trouble enough to get you toit!--Joe!"

  "Halloa!" the guard replied.

  "What o'clock do you make it, Joe?"

  "Ten minutes, good, past eleven."

  "My blood!" ejaculated the vexed coachman, "and not atop of Shooter'syet! Tst! Yah! Get on with you!"

  The emphatic horse, cut short by the whip in a most decided negative,made a decided scramble for it, and the three other horses followedsuit. Once more, the Dover mail struggled on, with the jack-boots of itspassengers squashing along by its side. They had stopped when the coachstopped, and they kept close company with it. If any one of the threehad had the hardihood to propose to another to walk on a little aheadinto the mist and darkness, he would have put himself in a fair way ofgetting shot instantly as a highwayman.

  The last burst carried the mail to the summit of the hill. The horsesstopped to breathe again, and the guard got down to skid the wheel forthe descent, and open the coach-door to let the passengers in.

  "Tst! Joe!" cried the coachman in a warning voice, looking down from hisbox.

  "What do you say, Tom?"

  They both listened.

  "I say a horse at a canter coming up, Joe."

  "_I_ say a horse at a gallop, Tom," returned the guard, leaving his holdof the door, and mounting nimbly to his place. "Gentlemen! In the king'sname, all of you!"

  With this hurried adjuration, he cocked his blunderbuss, and stood onthe offensive.

  The passenger booked by this history, was on the coach-step, getting in;the two other passengers were close behind him, and about to follow. Heremained on the step, half in the coach and half out of; they remainedin the road below him. They all looked from the coachman to the guard,and from the guard to the coachman, and listened. The coachman lookedback and the guard looked back, and even the emphatic leader pricked uphis ears and looked back, without contradicting.

  The stillness consequent on the cessation of the rumbling and labouringof the coach, added to the stillness of the night, made it very quietindeed. The panting of the horses communicated a tremulous motion tothe coach, as if it were in a state of agitation. The hearts of thepassengers beat loud enough perhaps to be heard; but at any rate, thequiet pause was audibly expressive of people out of breath, and holdingthe breath, and having the pulses quickened by expectation.

  The sound of a horse at a gallop came fast and furiously up the hill.

  "So-ho!" the guard sang out, as loud as he could roar. "Yo there! Stand!I shall fire!"

  The pace was suddenly checked, and, with much splashing and floundering,a man's voice called from the mist, "Is that the Dover mail?"

  "Never you mind what it is!" the guard retorted. "What are you?"

  "_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 his name. The guard,the coachman, and the two other passengers eyed 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 mildly quaveringspeech. "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 down into theroad--assisted from behind more swiftly than politely by the other twopassengers, who immediately scrambled into the coach, shut the door, andpulled up the window. "He may come close; there's nothing wrong."

  "I hope there ain't, but I can't make so 'Nation sure of that," said theguard, in gruff soliloquy. "Hallo you!"

  "Well! And hallo you!" said Jerry, more hoarsely than before.

  "Come on at a footpace! d'ye mind me? And if you've got holsters to thatsaddle o' yourn, don't let me see your hand go nigh 'em. For I'm a devilat a quick mistake, and when I make one it takes the form of Lead. Sonow let's look at you."

  The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through the eddying mist,and came to the side of the mail, where the passenger stood. The riderstooped, and, casting up his eyes at the guard, handed the passengera small folded paper. The rider's horse was blown, and both horse andrider were covered with mud, from the hoofs of the horse to the hat ofthe man.

  "Guard!" said the passenger, in a tone of quiet business confidence.<
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  The watchful guard, with his right hand at the stock of his raisedblunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye on the horseman,answered curtly, "Sir."

  "There is nothing to apprehend. I belong to Tellson's Bank. You mustknow Tellson's Bank in London. I am going to Paris on business. A crownto 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 for Mam'selle.'It's not long, you see, guard. Jerry, say that my answer was, RECALLEDTO 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 received this, aswell as if I wrote. Make the best of your way. Good night."

  With those words the passenger opened the coach-door and got in; not atall assisted by his fellow-passengers, who had expeditiously secretedtheir watches and purses in their boots, and were now making a generalpretence of being asleep. With no more definite purpose than to escapethe hazard of originating any other kind of action.

  The coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths of mist closing roundit as it began the descent. The guard soon replaced his blunderbussin his arm-chest, and, having looked to the rest of its contents, andhaving looked to the supplementary pistols that he wore in his belt,looked to a smaller chest beneath his seat, in which there were afew smith's tools, a couple of torches, and a tinder-box. For he wasfurnished with that completeness that if the coach-lamps had been blownand stormed out, which did occasionally happen, he had only to shuthimself up inside, keep the flint and steel sparks well off the straw,and get a light with tolerable safety and ease (if he were lucky) infive 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 the same of itmyself."

  Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted meanwhile, notonly to ease his spent horse, but to wipe the mud from his face, andshake the wet out of his hat-brim, which might be capable ofholding about half a gallon. After standing with the bridle over hisheavily-splashed arm, until the wheels of the mail were no longer withinhearing and the night was quite still again, he turned to walk down thehill.

  "After that there gallop from Temple Bar, old lady, I won't trust yourfore-legs till I get you on the level," said this hoarse messenger,glancing at his mare. "'Recalled to life.' That's a Blazing strangemessage. Much of that wouldn't do for you, Jerry! I say, Jerry! You'dbe in a Blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion,Jerry!"