The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0065/00654.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 12KB | 269 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00654}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{(A) Tale Of Two Cities
Chapter II}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{guard
mail
passenger
horse
jerry
passengers
coachman
dover
hill
coach}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       (A) Tale Of Two Cities
Book:        Book The First: Recalled to Life
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter 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 up Shooter's
Hill.  He walked uphill in the mire by the side of the mail, as the rest of
the passengers did; not because they had the least relish for walking
exercise, under the circumstances, but because the hill, and the harness, and
the mud, and the mail, were all so heavy, that the horses had three times
already come to a stop, besides once drawing the coach across the road, with
the mutinous intent of taking it back to Blackheath.  Reins and whip and
coachman and guard, however, in combination, had read that article of war
which forbad a purpose otherwise strongly in favour of the argument, that
some brute animals are endued with Reason; and the team had capitulated and
returned to their duty.

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

     There was a steaming mist in all the hollows, and it had roamed in its
forlornness up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest and finding none.
A clammy and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way through the air in
ripples that visibly followed and overspread one another, as the waves of an
unwholesome sea might do.  It was dense enough to shut out everything 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 steamed into it, as if they had
made it all.

     Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding up the hill by the
side of the mail.  All three were wrapped to the cheekbones and over the
ears, and wore jack-boots.  Not one of the three could have said, from
anything he saw, what either of the other two was like; and each was hidden
under almost as many wrappers from the eyes of the mind, as from the eyes of
the body, of his two companions.  In those days, travellers were very shy of
being confidential on a short notice, for anybody on the 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 stable nondescript, it was the likeliest thing upon
the cards.  So the guard of the Dover mail thought to himself, that Friday
night in November, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five, lumbering up
Shooter's Hill, as he 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 a loaded 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 suspected
the passengers, the passengers suspected one another and the guard, they all
suspected everybody else, and the coachman was sure of nothing but the
horses; as to which cattle he could with a clear conscience have taken his
oath on the two Testaments that they were not fit for the journey.

     "Wo-ho!" said the coachman.  "So, then!  One more pull and you're at the
top and be damned to you, for I have had trouble enough to get you to
it! - 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's
yet!  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 followed suit.
Once more, the Dover mail struggled on, with the jack-boots of its passengers
squashing along by its side.  They had stopped when the coach stopped, and
they kept close company with it.  If any one of the three had had the
hardihood to propose to another to walk on a little ahead into the mist and
darkness, he would have put himself in a fair way of getting shot instantly
as a highwayman.

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

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

     "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 hold
of the door, and mounting nimbly to his place.  "Gentlemen! In the king's
name, all of you!"

     With this hurried adjuration, he cocked his blunderbuss, and stood on
the 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.  He
remained on the step, half in the coach and half out of it; they remained in
the road below him.  They all looked from the coachman to the guard, and from
the guard to the coachman, and listened.  The coachman looked back and the
guard looked back, and even the emphatic leader pricked up his ears and
looked back, without contradicting.

     The stillness consequent on the cessation of the rumbling and labouring
of the coach, added to the stillness of the night, made it very quiet indeed.
The panting of the horses communicated a tremulous motion to the coach, as if
it were in a state of agitation.  The hearts of the passengers beat loud
enough perhaps to be heard; but at any rate, the quiet pause was audibly
expressive of people out of breath, and holding the 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 in your
lifetime.  Gentleman of the name of Lorry answer straight."

     "What is the matter?" asked the passenger, then, with mildly quavering
speech.  "Who wants me?  Is it Jerry?"

     ("I don't like Jerry's voice, if it is Jerry," growled the guard to
himself.  "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 the
road - assisted from behind more swiftly than politely by the other two
passengers, who immediately scrambled into the coach, shut the door, and
pulled up the window.  "He may come close; th