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 up hill in the mire by the side of the mail, as the rest of the passengers did; not because they had the least relish (relish: eager enjoyment — the old sense here) 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 (rising against command; rebellious) intent of taking it back to Blackheath (a heath south of London, known for highwaymen). Reins and whip and coachman and guard, however, in combination, had read that article of war which forbade a purpose otherwise strongly in favour of the argument, that some brute animals are endued (endued: gifted with) with Reason; and the team had capitulated (capitulated: made terms for surrender) and returned to their duty.

With drooping (to hang down limply) heads and tremulous (trembling) tails, they mashed their way through the thick mud, floundering (struggling and stumbling) 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 (a call used to quiet a horse)!” the near leader violently shook his head and everything upon it--like an unusually emphatic (forceful and insistent) 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 (lonely misery) up the hill, like an evil spirit, seeking rest and finding none. A clammy (damp and cold) and intensely cold mist, it made its slow way through the air in ripples that visibly followed and overspread (spread over) one another, as the waves of an unwholesome (unhealthy) sea might do. It was dense enough to shut out everything from the light of the coach-lamps (lamps fixed to a coach) but these its own workings, and a few yards of road; and the reek (to be full of strong fumes) of the labouring horses steamed into it, as if they had made it all.

Two other passengers, besides the one, were plodding (to walk on slowly and heavily) up the hill by the side of the mail. All three were wrapped to the cheekbones and over the ears, and wore jack-boots (heavy boots reaching above the knee). 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 (an inn where fresh horses were kept for travellers) and ale-house (a house where beer is sold) could produce somebody in “the Captain’s” pay, ranging from the landlord to the lowest stable non-descript (of no particular kind), it was the likeliest (more likely; more promising) 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 (a chest for holding weapons) before him, where a loaded blunderbuss lay at the top of six or eight loaded horse-pistols (large pistols carried on horseback), deposited on a substratum (an underlying layer) of cutlass (a short curved sword used by sailors).

The Dover mail was in its usual genial (warm and kindly) 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 (to burst out suddenly in words) the vexed (annoyed) 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 (bold toughness) 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 (to ride at a horse's fastest pace), Tom,” returned the guard, leaving his hold of the door, and mounting nimbly (quickly and lightly) to his place. “Gentlemen! In the king’s name, all of you!”

With this hurried (rushed) adjuration (a solemn charge or appeal), 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; 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 (following as a result) 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 (troubled excitement). 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 (to grow faster) 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 (to answer back sharply). “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 (the first name of the man of business at Tellson's) Lorry (a man of business at Tellson's Bank).”

Our booked passenger showed in a moment that it was his name. The guard, the coachman, and the two other passengers eyed him distrustfully (with distrust).

“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 (a trembling of the voice) speech. “Who wants me? Is it Jerry (the first name of the odd job man at Tellson's)?”

(“I don’t like Jerry’s voice, if it is Jerry,” growled the guard to himself. “He’s hoarser (more hoarse) than suits me, is Jerry.”)

“Yes, Mr. Lorry (the man of business at Tellson's Bank).”

“What is the matter?”

“A despatch sent after you from over yonder (over there; the world beyond). 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; there’s nothing wrong.”

“I hope there ain’t, but I can’t make so ‘Nation sure of that,” said the guard, in gruff (rough and deep of voice) soliloquy (talking to oneself). “Hallo (hello) you!”

“Well! And hallo you!” said Jerry, more hoarsely (in a rough, husky voice) than before.

“Come on at a footpace (a walking pace)! d’ye mind me? And if you’ve got holsters (a leather case for a pistol) to that saddle o’ yourn (yours, said in dialect), don’t let me see your hand go nigh ’em. For I’m a devil at a quick mistake, and when I make one it takes the form of Lead (to go in front and guide). So now let’s look at you.”

The figures of a horse and rider came slowly through the eddying (swirling in circles) mist, and came to the side of the mail, where the passenger stood. The rider stooped (to bend down), and, casting up his eyes at the guard, handed the passenger a small folded paper. The rider’s horse was blown, and both horse and rider were covered with mud, from the hoofs (a horse's horny foot) of the horse to the hat of the man.

“Guard!” said the passenger, in a tone of quiet business confidence.

The watchful (keeping careful watch) guard, with his right hand at the stock of his raised blunderbuss, his left at the barrel, and his eye on the horseman, answered curtly (shortly and bluntly), “Sir.”

“There is nothing to apprehend (to grasp; understand). I belong to Tellson’s Bank (the old London bank at the heart of this story). You must know Tellson’s Bank in London. I am going to Paris on business. A crown to 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, and read--first to himself and then aloud: “‘Wait at Dover for Mam’selle (sellers of theater programs).’ It’s not long, you see, guard. Jerry, say that my answer was, RECALLED TO 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, as well 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 at all assisted by his fellow-passengers (those travelling with us), who had expeditiously (quickly and without waste) secreted their watches and purses in their boots, and were now making a general pretence (a false show) of being asleep. With no more definite purpose than to escape the hazard of originating any other kind of action.

The coach lumbered on again, with heavier wreaths of mist closing round it as it began the descent. The guard soon replaced his blunderbuss (a short gun with a wide mouth) in his arm-chest, and, having looked to the rest of its contents, and having looked to the supplementary pistols that he wore in his belt, looked to a smaller chest beneath his seat, in which there were a few smith’s tools, a couple of torches, and a tinder-box (a box holding what is needed to strike a light). For he was furnished with that completeness that if the coach-lamps had been blown and stormed out, which did occasionally happen, he had only to shut himself up inside, keep the flint and steel sparks well off the straw, and get a light with tolerable (bearable; fairly good) safety and ease (if he were lucky) in five 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 it myself.”

Jerry, left alone in the mist and darkness, dismounted meanwhile, not only to ease his spent horse, but to wipe the mud from his face, and shake the wet out of his hat-brim (the brim of a hat), which might be capable of holding about half a gallon. After standing with the bridle (a horse's head straps) over his heavily-splashed (much marked with splashes) arm, until the wheels of the mail were no longer within hearing and the night was quite still again, he turned to walk down the hill.

“After that there gallop from Temple Bar (the old gateway between the City of London and Westminster), old lady, I won’t trust your fore-legs (the front legs of an animal) till I get you on the level,” said this hoarse messenger, glancing at his mare. “‘Recalled to life.’ That’s a Blazing strange message. Much of that wouldn (would — wouldn't: would not)’t do for you, Jerry! I say, Jerry! You’d be in a Blazing bad way, if recalling to life was to come into fashion, Jerry!”