A Tale of Two Cities - Dave Mckay, Charles Dickens (the kiss of deception read online .TXT) 📗

and read it, first to himself, and then out loud. "Wait for the woman at Dover.”

“You see, it's not long at all. Jerry, say that my answer is Called back to life."

Jerry moved in his saddle. "That's a strange answer."

"You tell them that; and they'll know that it's from me. Be careful as you go; and good night to you."

With that, the passenger climbed inside the coach. The other passengers did nothing to help him in. They had each secretly tried to hide their watches and money in their boots, and were now trying to make him think that they were asleep. There was no good reason for doing it, but it protected them from having to make a choice about what else to do.

The coach moved off, with the fog becoming thicker as they rolled down the hill. The guard returned his gun to the weapon box.

"Tom!" he called softly over the top of the coach. "Yes, Joe," answered the driver.

"Did you hear what he said?"

"Yes, I did, Joe."

"What do you make of it?"

"Nothing at all, Joe."

"Strange that," the guard said almost to himself. "Because that's just what I made of it too."

Left alone at the top of the hill, Jerry gave his horse a rest, and and cleaned some of the mud off his face.

"Called back to life. That's a strange thing to say," he whispered to himself. "Very strange, I'm sure."

3. Night Shadows

Think about this: Each person is in some way a secret from all others. We are made that way. When I come into a city at night, I know that each house holds a secret. Each room in each house holds a secret. And each person on earth hides in their heart at least one secret from everyone else, even to the one who is closest to them. People are not like books or bodies of water. You may read a page or two of a person, but they will close up long before you know all that is in them. The water that is a person will freeze over before you can see all that hides under it. It is like part of every person is dead to all others, and will never be known. My friend is dead; my neighbour is dead; the love of my life is dead, and in this I too am dead to them. Is there any body buried in this city that is harder for me to know now than are the people who are still alive in it?

In this, the rider on the horse was no different to the King, the head of government, or the richest businessman in London. And the same was true of the three passengers crowded together in the one old mail coach. They each knew as little about the others as they would know if they had been travelling in three different coaches, with many cities between each of them.

The rider on the horse did not hurry back to London. He stopped for drinks on the way; but he kept to himself, and he kept his hat pulled down over his eyes. His eyes were black, but shallow in colour and too close together, like they were each afraid to be alone. His eyes made a triangle with the hat above, and they looked down on a very long scarf that covered the man's throat and chin before dropping down almost to his knees. He would pull the scarf away from his mouth with his left hand, far enough to pour in his drink, and then move it back into place.

"No, Jerry, it would never do," the man said to himself as he was riding slowly toward London. "You cannot change the words when your job is to tell what you were told. He did say, 'Called back to...' But break my head if he wasn't drunk when he said it!"

Jerry was thinking so much about the words that he had been asked to carry, that he took off his hat from time to time to scratch his head.

The horse moved slowly along the road to Temple Bar, where Jerry would tell those words to the night watchman, waiting at the door to Tellson's Bank. Above and around him, the shadows of the night took shapes to him that grew out of what he was thinking. And the horse must have been seeing shapes that grew out of its thinking too, for it would jump to the side in fear from time to time.

At the same time the mail coach rolled roughly along the road in the opposite direction, with its three strangers sleeping inside. The shadows of the night took different shapes for each of them. Their dreams were built on the thoughts that had been going through their heads when they fell asleep.

Tellson's Bank was doing big business in the Dover Mail that night. The bank passenger had one arm through a leather loop on the wall of the coach, which did what it could to stop him from falling over onto the passenger next to him. His eyes were only half shut. Light from the coach lantern, coming through the window, and movements from the passenger opposite him became the lights and movements of a busy bank. The sound of the ropes on the horses were the sound of money. He did more business in five minutes than the whole bank had ever done in three times as long. Then the passenger would go into the strong rooms that were under the bank, carrying in one hand the big keys to the boxes there, and a candle in the other. He would find them safe and strong as they always were.

Part of him was in the bank, and part of him was in the coach. But another part of him was on his way to dig up a person who had been buried for many years. The faces would change in the shadows of the night, and the emotions of the buried man would change. At times the man would be proud, or angry, or sad or broken, and he would be very thin, with the colour of death in his skin.

The passenger knew that the man would be 45 years old, and in every picture, the man's hair had turned white from what he had been through.

"How long have you been buried?” he would ask.

And the answer was always the same: "Almost 18 years.” "Did you lose all hope of someone coming to dig you up?” "Yes, long ago."

"You know that you have been called back to life?"

"Yes, that is what I have heard."

"Do you want to live again?"

"I don't know."

"Should I bring her in? Or do you want to go and see her?"

The answers to this question were many, and often they were quite different. At times they were, "Wait! It would kill me if I saw her too soon.” At times there were quiet tears, and then it was, "Take me to her.” And at other times it was wide open eyes, and a confused look, followed by, "I don't know. I don't understand."

After such talk, the passenger, in his mind, would start digging, first with a shovel, and then with a big key, and then with his hands, trying to dig this poor man out. And when the man was out, with dirt on his face and hair, he would turn to dust, and the passenger would come awake and open the coach window to let the fog and rain touch his cheek and bring him back to what was real.

But even when he was awake, looking out on the fog and rain, seeing the light of the coach on the bushes and trees that moved past the window in jumps and shakes, the night shadows outside would join with the night shadows inside. The real bank, the real business of the past day, the real strong rooms, the real news, and the real words that he sent back with the rider all returned to him. And from the middle of all that, would rise the ghost-like face and he would be talking to it again.

"How long have you been buried?”

"Almost 18 years."

"Do you want to live again?"

"I don't know."

Dig, dig, dig, until an angry movement from one of the other two passengers would lead him to close the window, put his arm back through the leather loop, and watch the other two passengers while his mind returned to the bank and to the place where the man was buried.

"How long have you been buried?"

"Almost 18 years."

"Did you lose all hope of someone coming to dig you up?” "Yes, long ago."

The words were still sounding in his head-- as strongly as any words he had ever heard -- when the sleepy passenger opened his eyes to see that there was light outside, and the shadows of the night were gone.

Dropping the window, he looked out at the sun as it came up. He could see a plough lying in a high field, where its owner had left it the night before, when the horses pulling it had finished for the day. Behind that were trees with leaves of burning red and golden yellow to mark the time of year. The ground was cold and wet, but the sky was clear and the sun was beautiful, bright, and full of peace.

"Eighteen years!" the passenger said to himself. "Good God! To be buried alive for 18 years!"

4. Preparing

Later that morning, when the Mail reached Dover, the head doorman at the King George Hotel opened the door with some special words of welcome. A coach arriving from London in winter was special, and the travellers in it would have been brave to have made the trip.

By that time, there was only one passenger left in the coach to receive the words of welcome; for the two others had left earlier, at other places on the way. The smell inside the coach was not very nice, because of the straw that had been put on the floor... straw that was no longer dry, and that was dirty with mud from the boots of the passengers. The darkness inside the coach and the smell of the dry grass made it seem more like a big house for dogs than a place for people. And Mr. Lorry himself seemed more like a big dog as he shook the straw off his mud covered legs and stepped out in his heavy coat and hat.

"Will there be a ship to France tomorrow, doorman?"

"Yes, sir, if the weather stays clear and the wind does not become any worse. The water level will be best around two in the afternoon. Would you like a bed, sir?"

"I will not go to bed until this evening. But I would like a room, and a barber."

"And then breakfast, sir? Yes, sir. That way, sir, if you please. Show him the Concord room! Take his bag and some hot water there! Take his boots off when he gets there. (You will find a nice fire of coals there, sir.) Send the barber to Concord. Get moving, now, everyone!"

The Concord room was always saved for a passenger on the mail coach, and because passengers on the mail were always covered with coats and scarves from head to foot, workers at the King George Hotel always found it interesting to see what they were like when they came out of the room. They all went in looking the same, but each one was different when they came out.

Because of this, another doorman, two male workers, a few female workers and the woman who owned the hotel were all spaced, by accident you must understand, over the way between the Concord room and the coffee room, when a sixty-year-old man in a very nice brown business suit left the room on his way to breakfast.

The man in brown was the only one in the coffee room that morning. His table was set by the fire, and as he waited for his meal, he was as still as he would be if he was being painted.

His look was one of perfect control, with one hand on each knee, and a loud watch ticking in his pocket like it was competing with the sound of the fire, to see which one was more important. The man had good legs, and he was proud of it, having covered them in top quality, long brown socks. His shoes were clean and neat. He had on a strange little white wig that was clearly not made from real hair. His shirt was not of such good quality as his socks, but it was as white as the tops of the waves that broke on the beach near there, or as the little white sails that one could see on the boats far out in the water. In his perfectly controlled face were two bright eyes that must have been difficult for him to teach, over the years, to hide their feelings, in keeping with the rules of Tellson's Bank. There was a healthy colour in his cheeks, and his face, apart from a