CHAPTER XVI

HUSBAND AND WIFE

MR. BOUNDERBY’S first disquietude on hearing of his happiness, was

occasioned by the necessity of imparting it to Mrs. Sparsit. He could

not make up his mind how to do that, or what the consequences of the step

might be. Whether she would instantly depart, bag and baggage, to Lady

Scadgers, or would positively refuse to budge from the premises; whether

she would be plaintive or abusive, tearful or tearing; whether she would

break her heart, or break the looking-glass; Mr. Bounderby could not all

foresee. However, as it must be done, he had no choice but to do it; so,

after attempting several letters, and failing in them all, he resolved to

do it by word of mouth.

On his way home, on the evening he set aside for this momentous purpose,

he took the precaution of stepping into a chemist’s shop and buying a

bottle of the very strongest smelling-salts. ‘By George!’ said Mr.

Bounderby, ‘if she takes it in the fainting way, I’ll have the skin off

her nose, at all events!’ But, in spite of being thus forearmed, he

entered his own house with anything but a courageous air; and appeared

before the object of his misgivings, like a dog who was conscious of

coming direct from the pantry.

‘Good evening, Mr. Bounderby!’

‘Good evening, ma’am, good evening.’ He drew up his chair, and Mrs.

Sparsit drew back hers, as who should say, ‘Your fireside, sir. I freely

admit it. It is for you to occupy it all, if you think proper.’

‘Don’t go to the North Pole, ma’am!’ said Mr. Bounderby.

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, and returned, though short of her

former position.

Mr. Bounderby sat looking at her, as, with the points of a stiff, sharp

pair of scissors, she picked out holes for some inscrutable ornamental

purpose, in a piece of cambric. An operation which, taken in connexion

with the bushy eyebrows and the Roman nose, suggested with some

liveliness the idea of a hawk engaged upon the eyes of a tough little

bird. She was so steadfastly occupied, that many minutes elapsed before

she looked up from her work; when she did so Mr. Bounderby bespoke her

attention with a hitch of his head.

‘Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am,’ said Mr. Bounderby, putting his hands in his

pockets, and assuring himself with his right hand that the cork of the

little bottle was ready for use, ‘I have no occasion to say to you, that

you are not only a lady born and bred, but a devilish sensible woman.’

‘Sir,’ returned the lady, ‘this is indeed not the first time that you

have honoured me with similar expressions of your good opinion.’

‘Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘I am going to astonish you.’

‘Yes, sir?’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, interrogatively, and in the most

tranquil manner possible. She generally wore mittens, and she now laid

down her work, and smoothed those mittens.

‘I am going, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘to marry Tom Gradgrind’s daughter.’

‘Yes, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit. ‘I hope you may be happy, Mr.

Bounderby. Oh, indeed I hope you may be happy, sir!’ And she said it

with such great condescension as well as with such great compassion for

him, that Bounderby,—far more disconcerted than if she had thrown her

workbox at the mirror, or swooned on the hearthrug,—corked up the

smelling-salts tight in his pocket, and thought, ‘Now confound this

woman, who could have even guessed that she would take it in this way!’

‘I wish with all my heart, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, in a highly superior

manner; somehow she seemed, in a moment, to have established a right to

pity him ever afterwards; ‘that you may be in all respects very happy.’

‘Well, ma’am,’ returned Bounderby, with some resentment in his tone:

which was clearly lowered, though in spite of himself, ‘I am obliged to

you. I hope I shall be.’

‘_Do_ you, sir!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with great affability. ‘But

naturally you do; of course you do.’

A very awkward pause on Mr. Bounderby’s part, succeeded. Mrs. Sparsit

sedately resumed her work and occasionally gave a small cough, which

sounded like the cough of conscious strength and forbearance.

‘Well, ma’am,’ resumed Bounderby, ‘under these circumstances, I imagine

it would not be agreeable to a character like yours to remain here,

though you would be very welcome here.’

‘Oh, dear no, sir, I could on no account think of that!’ Mrs. Sparsit

shook her head, still in her highly superior manner, and a little changed

the small cough—coughing now, as if the spirit of prophecy rose within

her, but had better be coughed down.

‘However, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘there are apartments at the Bank,

where a born and bred lady, as keeper of the place, would be rather a

catch than otherwise; and if the same terms—’

‘I beg your pardon, sir. You were so good as to promise that you would

always substitute the phrase, annual compliment.’

‘Well, ma’am, annual compliment. If the same annual compliment would be

acceptable there, why, I see nothing to part us, unless you do.’

‘Sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit. ‘The proposal is like yourself, and if the

position I shall assume at the Bank is one that I could occupy without

descending lower in the social scale—’

‘Why, of course it is,’ said Bounderby. ‘If it was not, ma’am, you don’t

suppose that I should offer it to a lady who has moved in the society you

have moved in. Not that _I_ care for such society, you know! But _you_

do.’

‘Mr. Bounderby, you are very considerate.’

‘You’ll have your own private apartments, and you’ll have your coals and

your candles, and all the rest of it, and you’ll have your maid to attend

upon you, and you’ll have your light porter to protect you, and you’ll be

what I take the liberty of considering precious comfortable,’ said

Bounderby.

‘Sir,’ rejoined Mrs. Sparsit, ‘say no more. In yielding up my trust

here, I shall not be freed from the necessity of eating the bread of

dependence:’ she might have said the sweetbread, for that delicate

article in a savoury brown sauce was her favourite supper: ‘and I would

rather receive it from your hand, than from any other. Therefore, sir, I

accept your offer gratefully, and with many sincere acknowledgments for

past favours. And I hope, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, concluding in an

impressively compassionate manner, ‘I fondly hope that Miss Gradgrind may

be all you desire, and deserve!’

Nothing moved Mrs. Sparsit from that position any more. It was in vain

for Bounderby to bluster or to assert himself in any of his explosive

ways; Mrs. Sparsit was resolved to have compassion on him, as a Victim.

She was polite, obliging, cheerful, hopeful; but, the more polite, the

more obliging, the more cheerful, the more hopeful, the more exemplary

altogether, she; the forlorner Sacrifice and Victim, he. She had that

tenderness for his melancholy fate, that his great red countenance used

to break out into cold perspirations when she looked at him.

Meanwhile the marriage was appointed to be solemnized in eight weeks’

time, and Mr. Bounderby went every evening to Stone Lodge as an accepted

wooer. Love was made on these occasions in the form of bracelets; and,

on all occasions during the period of betrothal, took a manufacturing

aspect. Dresses were made, jewellery was made, cakes and gloves were

made, settlements were made, and an extensive assortment of Facts did

appropriate honour to the contract. The business was all Fact, from

first to last. The Hours did not go through any of those rosy

performances, which foolish poets have ascribed to them at such times;

neither did the clocks go any faster, or any slower, than at other

seasons. The deadly statistical recorder in the Gradgrind observatory

knocked every second on the head as it was born, and buried it with his

accustomed regularity.

So the day came, as all other days come to people who will only stick to

reason; and when it came, there were married in the church of the florid

wooden legs—that popular order of architecture—Josiah Bounderby Esquire

of Coketown, to Louisa eldest daughter of Thomas Gradgrind Esquire of

Stone Lodge, M.P. for that borough. And when they were united in holy

matrimony, they went home to breakfast at Stone Lodge aforesaid.

There was an improving party assembled on the auspicious occasion, who

knew what everything they had to eat and drink was made of, and how it

was imported or exported, and in what quantities, and in what bottoms,

whether native or foreign, and all about it. The bridesmaids, down to

little Jane Gradgrind, were, in an intellectual point of view, fit

helpmates for the calculating boy; and there was no nonsense about any of

the company.

After breakfast, the bridegroom addressed them in the following terms:

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. Since you have

done my wife and myself the honour of drinking our healths and happiness,

I suppose I must acknowledge the same; though, as you all know me, and

know what I am, and what my extraction was, you won’t expect a speech

from a man who, when he sees a Post, says “that’s a Post,” and when he

sees a Pump, says “that’s a Pump,” and is not to be got to call a Post a

Pump, or a Pump a Post, or either of them a Toothpick. If you want a

speech this morning, my friend and father-in-law, Tom Gradgrind, is a

Member of Parliament, and you know where to get it. I am not your man.

However, if I feel a little independent when I look around this table

to-day, and reflect how little I thought of marrying Tom Gradgrind’s

daughter when I was a ragged street-boy, who never washed his face unless

it was at a pump, and that not oftener than once a fortnight, I hope I

may be excused. So, I hope you like my feeling independent; if you

don’t, I can’t help it. I _do_ feel independent. Now I have mentioned,

and you have mentioned, that I am this day married to Tom Gradgrind’s

daughter. I am very glad to be so. It has long been my wish to be so.

I have watched her bringing-up, and I believe she is worthy of me. At

the same time—not to deceive you—I believe I am worthy of her. So, I

thank you, on both our parts, for the good-will you have shown towards

us; and the best wish I can give the unmarried part of the present

company, is this: I hope every bachelor may find as good a wife as I have

found. And I hope every spinster may find as good a husband as my wife

has found.’

Shortly after which oration, as they were going on a nuptial trip to

Lyons, in order that Mr. Bounderby might take the opportunity of seeing

how the Hands got on in those parts, and whether they, too, required to

be fed with gold spoons; the happy pair departed for the railroad. The

bride, in passing down-stairs, dressed for her journey, found Tom waiting

for her—flushed, either with his feelings, or the vinous part of the

breakfast.

‘What a game girl you are, to be such a first-rate sister, Loo!’

whispered Tom.

She clung to him as she should have clung to some far better nature that

day, and was a little shaken in her reserved composure for the first

time.

‘Old Bounderby’s quite ready,’ said Tom. ‘Time’s up. Good-bye! I shall

be on the look-out for you, when you come back. I say, my dear Loo!

AN’T it uncommonly jolly now!’

* * * * *

END OF THE FIRST BOOK

BOOK THE SECOND

_REAPING_

CHAPTER I

EFFECTS IN THE BANK

A SUNNY midsummer day. There was such a thing sometimes, even in

Coketown.

Seen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay shrouded in a haze of

its own, which appeared impervious to the sun’s rays. You only knew the

town was there, because you knew there could have been no such sulky

blotch upon the prospect without a town. A blur of soot and smoke, now

confusedly tending this way, now that way, now aspiring to the vault of

Heaven, now murkily creeping along the earth, as the wind rose and fell,

or changed its quarter: a dense formless jumble, with sheets of cross

light in it, that showed nothing but masses of darkness:—Coketown in the

distance was suggestive of itself, though not a brick of it could be

seen.

The wonder was, it was there at all. It had been ruined so often, that

it was amazing how it had borne so many shocks. Surely there never was

such fragile china-ware as that of which the millers of Coketown were

made. Handle them never so lightly, and they fell to pieces with such

ease that you might suspect them of having been flawed before. They were

ruined, when they were required to send labouring children to school;

they were ruined when inspectors were appointed to look into their works;

they were ruined, when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether

they were quite justified in chopping people up with their machinery;

they were utterly undone, when it was hinted that perhaps they need not

always make quite so much smoke. Besides Mr. Bounderby’s gold spoon

which was generally received in Coketown, another prevalent fiction was

very popular there. It took the form of a threat. Whenever a Coketowner

felt he was ill-used—that is to say, whenever he was not left entirely

alone, and it was proposed to hold him accountable for the consequences

of any of his acts—he was sure to come out with the awful menace, that he

would ‘sooner pitch his property into the Atlantic.’ This had terrified

the Home Secretary within an inch of his life, on several occasions.

However, the Coketowners were so patriotic after all, that they never had

pitched their property into the Atlantic yet, but, on the contrary, had

been kind enough to take mighty good care of it. So there it was, in the

haze yonder; and it increased and multiplied.

The streets were hot and dusty on the summer day, and the sun was so

bright that it even shone through the heavy vapour drooping over

Coketown, and could not be looked at steadily. Stokers emerged from low

underground doorways into factory yards, and sat on steps, and posts, and

palings, wiping their swarthy visages, and contemplating coals. The

whole town seemed to be frying in oil. There was a stifling smell of hot

oil everywhere. The steam-engines shone with it, the dresses of the

Hands were soiled with it, the mills throughout their many stories oozed

and trickled it. The atmosphere of those Fairy palaces was like the

breath of the simoom: and their inhabitants, wasting with heat, toiled

languidly in the desert. But no temperature made the melancholy mad

elephants more mad or more sane. Their wearisome heads went up and down

at the same rate, in hot weather and cold, wet weather and dry, fair

weather and foul. The measured motion of their shadows on the walls, was

the substitute Coketown had to show for the shadows of rustling woods;

while, for the summer hum of insects, it could offer, all the year round,

from the dawn of Monday to the night of Saturday, the whirr of shafts and

wheels.

Drowsily they whirred all through this sunny day, making the passenger

more sleepy and more hot as he passed the humming walls of the mills.

Sun-blinds, and sprinklings of water, a little cooled the main streets

and the shops; but the mills, and the courts and alleys, baked at a

fierce heat. Down upon the river that was black and thick with dye, some

Coketown boys who were at large—a rare sight there—rowed a crazy boat,

which made a spumous track upon the water as it jogged along, while every

dip of an oar stirred up vile smells. But the sun itself, however

beneficent, generally, was less kind to Coketown than hard frost, and

rarely looked intently into any of its closer regions without engendering

more death than life. So does the eye of Heaven itself become an evil

eye, when incapable or sordid hands are interposed between it and the

things it looks upon to bless.

Mrs. Sparsit sat in her afternoon apartment at the Bank, on the shadier

side of the frying street. Office-hours were over: and at that period of

the day, in warm weather, she usually embellished with her genteel

presence, a managerial board-room over the public office. Her own

private sitting-room was a story higher, at the window of which post of

observation she was ready, every morning, to greet Mr. Bounderby, as he

came across the road, with the sympathizing recognition appropriate to a

Victim. He had been married now a year; and Mrs. Sparsit had never

released him from her determined pity a moment.

The Bank offered no violence to the wholesome monotony of the town. It

was another red brick house, with black outside shutters, green inside

blinds, a black street-door up two white steps, a brazen door-plate, and

a brazen door-handle full stop. It was a size larger than Mr.

Bounderby’s house, as other houses were from a size to half-a-dozen sizes

smaller; in all other particulars, it was strictly according to pattern.

Mrs. Sparsit was conscious that by coming in the evening-tide among the

desks and writing implements, she shed a feminine, not to say also

aristocratic, grace upon the office. Seated, with her needlework or

netting apparatus, at the window, she had a self-laudatory sense of

correcting, by her ladylike deportment, the rude business aspect of the

place. With this impression of her interesting character upon her, Mrs.

Sparsit considered herself, in some sort, the Bank Fairy. The

townspeople who, in their passing and repassing, saw her there, regarded

her as the Bank Dragon keeping watch over the treasures of the mine.

What those treasures were, Mrs. Sparsit knew as little as they did. Gold

and silver coin, precious paper, secrets that if divulged would bring

vague destruction upon vague persons (generally, however, people whom she

disliked), were the chief items in her ideal catalogue thereof. For the

rest, she knew that after office-hours, she reigned supreme over all the

office furniture, and over a locked-up iron room with three locks,

against the door of which strong chamber the light porter laid his head

every night, on a truckle bed, that disappeared at cockcrow. Further,

she was lady paramount over certain vaults in the basement, sharply

spiked off from communication with the predatory world; and over the

relics of the current day’s work, consisting of blots of ink, worn-out

pens, fragments of wafers, and scraps of paper torn so small, that

nothing interesting could ever be deciphered on them when Mrs. Sparsit

tried. Lastly, she was guardian over a little armoury of cutlasses and

carbines, arrayed in vengeful order above one of the official

chimney-pieces; and over that respectable tradition never to be separated

from a place of business claiming to be wealthy—a row of

fire-buckets—vessels calculated to be of no physical utility on any

occasion, but observed to exercise a fine moral influence, almost equal

to bullion, on most beholders.

A deaf serving-woman and the light porter completed Mrs. Sparsit’s

empire. The deaf serving-woman was rumoured to be wealthy; and a saying

had for years gone about among the lower orders of Coketown, that she

would be murdered some night when the Bank was shut, for the sake of her

money. It was generally considered, indeed, that she had been due some

time, and ought to have fallen long ago; but she had kept her life, and

her situation, with an ill-conditioned tenacity that occasioned much

offence and disappointment.

Mrs. Sparsit’s tea was just set for her on a pert little table, with its

tripod of legs in an attitude, which she insinuated after office-hours,

into the company of the stern, leathern-topped, long board-table that

bestrode the middle of the room. The light porter placed the tea-tray on

it, knuckling his forehead as a form of homage.

‘Thank you, Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.

‘Thank _you_, ma’am,’ returned the light porter. He was a very light

porter indeed; as light as in the days when he blinkingly defined a

horse, for girl number twenty.

‘All is shut up, Bitzer?’ said Mrs. Sparsit.

‘All is shut up, ma’am.’

‘And what,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, pouring out her tea, ‘is the news of the

day? Anything?’

‘Well, ma’am, I can’t say that I have heard anything particular. Our

people are a bad lot, ma’am; but that is no news, unfortunately.’

‘What are the restless wretches doing now?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit.

‘Merely going on in the old way, ma’am. Uniting, and leaguing, and

engaging to stand by one another.’

‘It is much to be regretted,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, making her nose more

Roman and her eyebrows more Coriolanian in the strength of her severity,

‘that the united masters allow of any such class-combinations.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Bitzer.

‘Being united themselves, they ought one and all to set their faces

against employing any man who is united with any other man,’ said Mrs.

Sparsit.

‘They have done that, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer; ‘but it rather fell

through, ma’am.’

‘I do not pretend to understand these things,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with

dignity, ‘my lot having been signally cast in a widely different sphere;

and Mr. Sparsit, as a Powler, being also quite out of the pale of any

such dissensions. I only know that these people must be conquered, and

that it’s high time it was done, once for all.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer, with a demonstration of great respect for

Mrs. Sparsit’s oracular authority. ‘You couldn’t put it clearer, I am

sure, ma’am.’

As this was his usual hour for having a little confidential chat with

Mrs. Sparsit, and as he had already caught her eye and seen that she was

going to ask him something, he made a pretence of arranging the rulers,

inkstands, and so forth, while that lady went on with her tea, glancing

through the open window, down into the street.

‘Has it been a busy day, Bitzer?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit.

‘Not a very busy day, my lady. About an average day.’ He now and then

slided into my lady, instead of ma’am, as an involuntary acknowledgment

of Mrs. Sparsit’s personal dignity and claims to reverence.

‘The clerks,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, carefully brushing an imperceptible

crumb of bread and butter from her left-hand mitten, ‘are trustworthy,

punctual, and industrious, of course?’

‘Yes, ma’am, pretty fair, ma’am. With the usual exception.’

He held the respectable office of general spy and informer in the

establishment, for which volunteer service he received a present at

Christmas, over and above his weekly wage. He had grown into an

extremely clear-headed, cautious, prudent young man, who was safe to rise

in the world. His mind was so exactly regulated, that he had no

affections or passions. All his proceedings were the result of the

nicest and coldest calculation; and it was not without cause that Mrs.

Sparsit habitually observed of him, that he was a young man of the

steadiest principle she had ever known. Having satisfied himself, on his

father’s death, that his mother had a right of settlement in Coketown,

this excellent young economist had asserted that right for her with such

a steadfast adherence to the principle of the case, that she had been

shut up in the workhouse ever since. It must be admitted that he allowed

her half a pound of tea a year, which was weak in him: first, because all

gifts have an inevitable tendency to pauperise the recipient, and

secondly, because his only reasonable transaction in that commodity would

have been to buy it for as little as he could possibly give, and sell it

for as much as he could possibly get; it having been clearly ascertained

by philosophers that in this is comprised the whole duty of man—not a

part of man’s duty, but the whole.

‘Pretty fair, ma’am. With the usual exception, ma’am,’ repeated Bitzer.

‘Ah—h!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head over her tea-cup, and taking

a long gulp.

‘Mr. Thomas, ma’am, I doubt Mr. Thomas very much, ma’am, I don’t like his

ways at all.’

‘Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, in a very impressive manner, ‘do you

recollect my having said anything to you respecting names?’

‘I beg your pardon, ma’am. It’s quite true that you did object to names

being used, and they’re always best avoided.’

‘Please to remember that I have a charge here,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with

her air of state. ‘I hold a trust here, Bitzer, under Mr. Bounderby.

However improbable both Mr. Bounderby and myself might have deemed it

years ago, that he would ever become my patron, making me an annual

compliment, I cannot but regard him in that light. From Mr. Bounderby I

have received every acknowledgment of my social station, and every

recognition of my family descent, that I could possibly expect. More,

far more. Therefore, to my patron I will be scrupulously true. And I do

not consider, I will not consider, I cannot consider,’ said Mrs. Sparsit,

with a most extensive stock on hand of honour and morality, ‘that I

_should_ be scrupulously true, if I allowed names to be mentioned under

this roof, that are unfortunately—most unfortunately—no doubt of

that—connected with his.’

Bitzer knuckled his forehead again, and again begged pardon.

‘No, Bitzer,’ continued Mrs. Sparsit, ‘say an individual, and I will hear

you; say Mr. Thomas, and you must excuse me.’

‘With the usual exception, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, trying back, ‘of an

individual.’

‘Ah—h!’ Mrs. Sparsit repeated the ejaculation, the shake of the head

over her tea-cup, and the long gulp, as taking up the conversation again

at the point where it had been interrupted.

‘An individual, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, ‘has never been what he ought to

have been, since he first came into the place. He is a dissipated,

extravagant idler. He is not worth his salt, ma’am. He wouldn’t get it

either, if he hadn’t a friend and relation at court, ma’am!’

‘Ah—h!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with another melancholy shake of her head.

‘I only hope, ma’am,’ pursued Bitzer, ‘that his friend and relation may

not supply him with the means of carrying on. Otherwise, ma’am, we know

out of whose pocket _that_ money comes.’

‘Ah—h!’ sighed Mrs. Sparsit again, with another melancholy shake of her

head.

‘He is to be pitied, ma’am. The last party I have alluded to, is to be

pitied, ma’am,’ said Bitzer.

‘Yes, Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘I have always pitied the delusion,

always.’

‘As to an individual, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, dropping his voice and drawing

nearer, ‘he is as improvident as any of the people in this town. And you

know what _their_ improvidence is, ma’am. No one could wish to know it

better than a lady of your eminence does.’

‘They would do well,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘to take example by you,

Bitzer.’

‘Thank you, ma’am. But, since you do refer to me, now look at me, ma’am.

I have put by a little, ma’am, already. That gratuity which I receive at

Christmas, ma’am: I never touch it. I don’t even go the length of my

wages, though they’re not high, ma’am. Why can’t they do as I have done,

ma’am? What one person can do, another can do.’

This, again, was among the fictions of Coketown. Any capitalist there,

who had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, always professed to

wonder why the sixty thousand nearest Hands didn’t each make sixty

thousand pounds out of sixpence, and more or less reproached them every

one for not accomplishing the little feat. What I did you can do. Why

don’t you go and do it?

‘As to their wanting recreations, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, ‘it’s stuff and

nonsense. _I_ don’t want recreations. I never did, and I never shall; I

don’t like ’em. As to their combining together; there are many of them,

I have no doubt, that by watching and informing upon one another could

earn a trifle now and then, whether in money or good will, and improve

their livelihood. Then, why don’t they improve it, ma’am! It’s the

first consideration of a rational creature, and it’s what they pretend to

want.’

‘Pretend indeed!’ said Mrs. Sparsit.

‘I am sure we are constantly hearing, ma’am, till it becomes quite

nauseous, concerning their wives and families,’ said Bitzer. ‘Why look

at me, ma’am! I don’t want a wife and family. Why should they?’

‘Because they are improvident,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.

‘Yes, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer, ‘that’s where it is. If they were more

provident and less perverse, ma’am, what would they do? They would say,

“While my hat covers my family,” or “while my bonnet covers my

family,”—as the case might be, ma’am—“I have only one to feed, and that’s

the person I most like to feed.”’

‘To be sure,’ assented Mrs. Sparsit, eating muffin.

‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, knuckling his forehead again, in return

for the favour of Mrs. Sparsit’s improving conversation. ‘Would you wish

a little more hot water, ma’am, or is there anything else that I could

fetch you?’

‘Nothing just now, Bitzer.’

‘Thank you, ma’am. I shouldn’t wish to disturb you at your meals, ma’am,

particularly tea, knowing your partiality for it,’ said Bitzer, craning a

little to look over into the street from where he stood; ‘but there’s a

gentleman been looking up here for a minute or so, ma’am, and he has come

across as if he was going to knock. That _is_ his knock, ma’am, no

doubt.’

He stepped to the window; and looking out, and drawing in his head again,

confirmed himself with, ‘Yes, ma’am. Would you wish the gentleman to be

shown in, ma’am?’

‘I don’t know who it can be,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, wiping her mouth and

arranging her mittens.

‘A stranger, ma’am, evidently.’

‘What a stranger can want at the Bank at this time of the evening, unless

he comes upon some business for which he is too late, I don’t know,’ said

Mrs. Sparsit, ‘but I hold a charge in this establishment from Mr.

Bounderby, and I will never shrink from it. If to see him is any part of

the duty I have accepted, I will see him. Use your own discretion,

Bitzer.’

Here the visitor, all unconscious of Mrs. Sparsit’s magnanimous words,

repeated his knock so loudly that the light porter hastened down to open

the door; while Mrs. Sparsit took the precaution of concealing her little

table, with all its appliances upon it, in a cupboard, and then decamped

up-stairs, that she might appear, if needful, with the greater dignity.

‘If you please, ma’am, the gentleman would wish to see you,’ said Bitzer,

with his light eye at Mrs. Sparsit’s keyhole. So, Mrs. Sparsit, who had

improved the interval by touching up her cap, took her classical features

down-stairs again, and entered the board-room in the manner of a Roman

matron going outside the city walls to treat with an invading general.

The visitor having strolled to the window, and being then engaged in

looking carelessly out, was as unmoved by this impressive entry as man

could possibly be. He stood whistling to himself with all imaginable

coolness, with his hat still on, and a certain air of exhaustion upon

him, in part arising from excessive summer, and in part from excessive

gentility. For it was to be seen with half an eye that he was a thorough

gentleman, made to the model of the time; weary of everything, and

putting no more faith in anything than Lucifer.

‘I believe, sir,’ quoth Mrs. Sparsit, ‘you wished to see me.’

‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, turning and removing his hat; ‘pray excuse

me.’

‘Humph!’ thought Mrs. Sparsit, as she made a stately bend. ‘Five and

thirty, good-looking, good figure, good teeth, good voice, good breeding,

well-dressed, dark hair, bold eyes.’ All which Mrs. Sparsit observed in

her womanly way—like the Sultan who put his head in the pail of

water—merely in dipping down and coming up again.

‘Please to be seated, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.

‘Thank you. Allow me.’ He placed a chair for her, but remained himself

carelessly lounging against the table. ‘I left my servant at the railway

looking after the luggage—very heavy train and vast quantity of it in the

van—and strolled on, looking about me. Exceedingly odd place. Will you

allow me to ask you if it’s _always_ as black as this?’

‘In general much blacker,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, in her uncompromising

way.

‘Is it possible! Excuse me: you are not a native, I think?’

‘No, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit. ‘It was once my good or ill fortune,

as it may be—before I became a widow—to move in a very different sphere.

My husband was a Powler.’

‘Beg your pardon, really!’ said the stranger. ‘Was—?’

Mrs. Sparsit repeated, ‘A Powler.’

‘Powler Family,’ said the stranger, after reflecting a few moments. Mrs.

Sparsit signified assent. The stranger seemed a little more fatigued

than before.

‘You must be very much bored here?’ was the inference he drew from the

communication.

‘I am the servant of circumstances, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘and I have

long adapted myself to the governing power of my life.’

‘Very philosophical,’ returned the stranger, ‘and very exemplary and

laudable, and—’ It seemed to be scarcely worth his while to finish the

sentence, so he played with his watch-chain wearily.

‘May I be permitted to ask, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘to what I am

indebted for the favour of—’

‘Assuredly,’ said the stranger. ‘Much obliged to you for reminding me.

I am the bearer of a letter of introduction to Mr. Bounderby, the banker.

Walking through this extraordinarily black town, while they were getting

dinner ready at the hotel, I asked a fellow whom I met; one of the

working people; who appeared to have been taking a shower-bath of

something fluffy, which I assume to be the raw material—’

Mrs. Sparsit inclined her head.

‘—Raw material—where Mr. Bounderby, the banker, might reside. Upon

which, misled no doubt by the word Banker, he directed me to the Bank.

Fact being, I presume, that Mr. Bounderby the Banker does _not_ reside in

the edifice in which I have the honour of offering this explanation?’

‘No, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘he does not.’

‘Thank you. I had no intention of delivering my letter at the present

moment, nor have I. But strolling on to the Bank to kill time, and having

the good fortune to observe at the window,’ towards which he languidly

waved his hand, then slightly bowed, ‘a lady of a very superior and

agreeable appearance, I considered that I could not do better than take

the liberty of asking that lady where Mr. Bounderby the Banker _does_

live. Which I accordingly venture, with all suitable apologies, to do.’

The inattention and indolence of his manner were sufficiently relieved,

to Mrs. Sparsit’s thinking, by a certain gallantry at ease, which offered

her homage too. Here he was, for instance, at this moment, all but

sitting on the table, and yet lazily bending over her, as if he

acknowledged an attraction in her that made her charming—in her way.

‘Banks, I know, are always suspicious, and officially must be,’ said the

stranger, whose lightness and smoothness of speech were pleasant

likewise; suggesting matter far more sensible and humorous than it ever

contained—which was perhaps a shrewd device of the founder of this

numerous sect, whosoever may have been that great man: ‘therefore I may

observe that my letter—here it is—is from the member for this

place—Gradgrind—whom I have had the pleasure of knowing in London.’

Mrs. Sparsit recognized the hand, intimated that such confirmation was

quite unnecessary, and gave Mr. Bounderby’s address, with all needful

clues and directions in aid.

‘Thousand thanks,’ said the stranger. ‘Of course you know the Banker

well?’

‘Yes, sir,’ rejoined Mrs. Sparsit. ‘In my dependent relation towards

him, I have known him ten years.’

‘Quite an eternity! I think he married Gradgrind’s daughter?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, suddenly compressing her mouth, ‘he had

that—honour.’

‘The lady is quite a philosopher, I am told?’

‘Indeed, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘_Is_ she?’

‘Excuse my impertinent curiosity,’ pursued the stranger, fluttering over

Mrs. Sparsit’s eyebrows, with a propitiatory air, ‘but you know the

family, and know the world. I am about to know the family, and may have

much to do with them. Is the lady so very alarming? Her father gives

her such a portentously hard-headed reputation, that I have a burning

desire to know. Is she absolutely unapproachable? Repellently and

stunningly clever? I see, by your meaning smile, you think not. You

have poured balm into my anxious soul. As to age, now. Forty? Five and

thirty?’

Mrs. Sparsit laughed outright. ‘A chit,’ said she. ‘Not twenty when she

was married.’

‘I give you my honour, Mrs. Powler,’ returned the stranger, detaching

himself from the table, ‘that I never was so astonished in my life!’

It really did seem to impress him, to the utmost extent of his capacity

of being impressed. He looked at his informant for full a quarter of a

minute, and appeared to have the surprise in his mind all the time. ‘I

assure you, Mrs. Powler,’ he then said, much exhausted, ‘that the

father’s manner prepared me for a grim and stony maturity. I am obliged

to you, of all things, for correcting so absurd a mistake. Pray excuse

my intrusion. Many thanks. Good day!’

He bowed himself out; and Mrs. Sparsit, hiding in the window curtain, saw

him languishing down the street on the shady side of the way, observed of

all the town.

‘What do you think of the gentleman, Bitzer?’ she asked the light porter,

when he came to take away.

‘Spends a deal of money on his dress, ma’am.’

‘It must be admitted,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘that it’s very tasteful.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer, ‘if that’s worth the money.’

‘Besides which, ma’am,’ resumed Bitzer, while he was polishing the table,

‘he looks to me as if he gamed.’

‘It’s immoral to game,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.

‘It’s ridiculous, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, ‘because the chances are against

the players.’

Whether it was that the heat prevented Mrs. Sparsit from working, or

whether it was that her hand was out, she did no work that night. She

sat at the window, when the sun began to sink behind the smoke; she sat

there, when the smoke was burning red, when the colour faded from it,

when darkness seemed to rise slowly out of the ground, and creep upward,

upward, up to the house-tops, up the church steeple, up to the summits of

the factory chimneys, up to the sky. Without a candle in the room, Mrs.

Sparsit sat at the window, with her hands before her, not thinking much

of the sounds of evening; the whooping of boys, the barking of dogs, the

rumbling of wheels, the steps and voices of passengers, the shrill street

cries, the clogs upon the pavement when it was their hour for going by,

the shutting-up of shop-shutters. Not until the light porter announced

that her nocturnal sweetbread was ready, did Mrs. Sparsit arouse herself

from her reverie, and convey her dense black eyebrows—by that time

creased with meditation, as if they needed ironing out-up-stairs.

‘O, you Fool!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, when she was alone at her supper. Whom

she meant, she did not say; but she could scarcely have meant the

sweetbread.

CHAPTER II

MR. JAMES HARTHOUSE

THE Gradgrind party wanted assistance in cutting the throats of the

Graces. They went about recruiting; and where could they enlist recruits

more hopefully, than among the fine gentlemen who, having found out

everything to be worth nothing, were equally ready for anything?

Moreover, the healthy spirits who had mounted to this sublime height were

attractive to many of the Gradgrind school. They liked fine gentlemen;

they pretended that they did not, but they did. They became exhausted in

imitation of them; and they yaw-yawed in their speech like them; and they

served out, with an enervated air, the little mouldy rations of political

economy, on which they regaled their disciples. There never before was

seen on earth such a wonderful hybrid race as was thus produced.

Among the fine gentlemen not regularly belonging to the Gradgrind school,

there was one of a good family and a better appearance, with a happy turn

of humour which had told immensely with the House of Commons on the

occasion of his entertaining it with his (and the Board of Directors)

view of a railway accident, in which the most careful officers ever

known, employed by the most liberal managers ever heard of, assisted by

the finest mechanical contrivances ever devised, the whole in action on

the best line ever constructed, had killed five people and wounded

thirty-two, by a casualty without which the excellence of the whole

system would have been positively incomplete. Among the slain was a cow,

and among the scattered articles unowned, a widow’s cap. And the

honourable member had so tickled the House (which has a delicate sense of

humour) by putting the cap on the cow, that it became impatient of any

serious reference to the Coroner’s Inquest, and brought the railway off

with Cheers and Laughter.

Now, this gentleman had a younger brother of still better appearance than

himself, who had tried life as a Cornet of Dragoons, and found it a bore;

and had afterwards tried it in the train of an English minister abroad,

and found it a bore; and had then strolled to Jerusalem, and got bored

there; and had then gone yachting about the world, and got bored

everywhere. To whom this honourable and jocular, member fraternally said

one day, ‘Jem, there’s a good opening among the hard Fact fellows, and

they want men. I wonder you don’t go in for statistics.’ Jem, rather

taken by the novelty of the idea, and very hard up for a change, was as

ready to ‘go in’ for statistics as for anything else. So, he went in.

He coached himself up with a blue-book or two; and his brother put it

about among the hard Fact fellows, and said, ‘If you want to bring in,

for any place, a handsome dog who can make you a devilish good speech,

look after my brother Jem, for he’s your man.’ After a few dashes in the

public meeting way, Mr. Gradgrind and a council of political sages

approved of Jem, and it was resolved to send him down to Coketown, to

become known there and in the neighbourhood. Hence the letter Jem had

last night shown to Mrs. Sparsit, which Mr. Bounderby now held in his

hand; superscribed, ‘Josiah Bounderby, Esquire, Banker, Coketown.

Specially to introduce James Harthouse, Esquire. Thomas Gradgrind.’

Within an hour of the receipt of this dispatch and Mr. James Harthouse’s

card, Mr. Bounderby put on his hat and went down to the Hotel. There he

found Mr. James Harthouse looking out of window, in a state of mind so

disconsolate, that he was already half-disposed to ‘go in’ for something

else.

‘My name, sir,’ said his visitor, ‘is Josiah Bounderby, of Coketown.’

Mr. James Harthouse was very happy indeed (though he scarcely looked so)

to have a pleasure he had long expected.

‘Coketown, sir,’ said Bounderby, obstinately taking a chair, ‘is not the

kind of place you have been accustomed to. Therefore, if you will allow

me—or whether you will or not, for I am a plain man—I’ll tell you

something about it before we go any further.’

Mr. Harthouse would be charmed.

‘Don’t be too sure of that,’ said Bounderby. ‘I don’t promise it. First

of all, you see our smoke. That’s meat and drink to us. It’s the

healthiest thing in the world in all respects, and particularly for the

lungs. If you are one of those who want us to consume it, I differ from

you. We are not going to wear the bottoms of our boilers out any faster

than we wear ’em out now, for all the humbugging sentiment in Great

Britain and Ireland.’

By way of ‘going in’ to the fullest extent, Mr. Harthouse rejoined, ‘Mr.

Bounderby, I assure you I am entirely and completely of your way of

thinking. On conviction.’

‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Bounderby. ‘Now, you have heard a lot of

talk about the work in our mills, no doubt. You have? Very good. I’ll

state the fact of it to you. It’s the pleasantest work there is, and

it’s the lightest work there is, and it’s the best-paid work there is.

More than that, we couldn’t improve the mills themselves, unless we laid

down Turkey carpets on the floors. Which we’re not a-going to do.’

‘Mr. Bounderby, perfectly right.’

‘Lastly,’ said Bounderby, ‘as to our Hands. There’s not a Hand in this

town, sir, man, woman, or child, but has one ultimate object in life.

That object is, to be fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon.

Now, they’re not a-going—none of ’em—ever to be fed on turtle soup and

venison with a gold spoon. And now you know the place.’

Mr. Harthouse professed himself in the highest degree instructed and

refreshed, by this condensed epitome of the whole Coketown question.

‘Why, you see,’ replied Mr. Bounderby, ‘it suits my disposition to have a

full understanding with a man, particularly with a public man, when I

make his acquaintance. I have only one thing more to say to you, Mr.

Harthouse, before assuring you of the pleasure with which I shall

respond, to the utmost of my poor ability, to my friend Tom Gradgrind’s

letter of introduction. You are a man of family. Don’t you deceive

yourself by supposing for a moment that I am a man of family. I am a bit

of dirty riff-raff, and a genuine scrap of tag, rag, and bobtail.’

If anything could have exalted Jem’s interest in Mr. Bounderby, it would

have been this very circumstance. Or, so he told him.

‘So now,’ said Bounderby, ‘we may shake hands on equal terms. I say,

equal terms, because although I know what I am, and the exact depth of

the gutter I have lifted myself out of, better than any man does, I am as

proud as you are. I am just as proud as you are. Having now asserted my

independence in a proper manner, I may come to how do you find yourself,

and I hope you’re pretty well.’

The better, Mr. Harthouse gave him to understand as they shook hands, for

the salubrious air of Coketown. Mr. Bounderby received the answer with

favour.

‘Perhaps you know,’ said he, ‘or perhaps you don’t know, I married Tom

Gradgrind’s daughter. If you have nothing better to do than to walk up

town with me, I shall be glad to introduce you to Tom Gradgrind’s

daughter.’

‘Mr. Bounderby,’ said Jem, ‘you anticipate my dearest wishes.’

They went out without further discourse; and Mr. Bounderby piloted the

new acquaintance who so strongly contrasted with him, to the private red

brick dwelling, with the black outside shutters, the green inside blinds,

and the black street door up the two white steps. In the drawing-room of

which mansion, there presently entered to them the most remarkable girl

Mr. James Harthouse had ever seen. She was so constrained, and yet so

careless; so reserved, and yet so watchful; so cold and proud, and yet so

sensitively ashamed of her husband’s braggart humility—from which she

shrunk as if every example of it were a cut or a blow; that it was quite

a new sensation to observe her. In face she was no less remarkable than

in manner. Her features were handsome; but their natural play was so

locked up, that it seemed impossible to guess at their genuine

expression. Utterly indifferent, perfectly self-reliant, never at a

loss, and yet never at her ease, with her figure in company with them

there, and her mind apparently quite alone—it was of no use ‘going in’

yet awhile to comprehend this girl, for she baffled all penetration.

From the mistress of the house, the visitor glanced to the house itself.

There was no mute sign of a woman in the room. No graceful little

adornment, no fanciful little device, however trivial, anywhere expressed

her influence. Cheerless and comfortless, boastfully and doggedly rich,

there the room stared at its present occupants, unsoftened and unrelieved

by the least trace of any womanly occupation. As Mr. Bounderby stood in

the midst of his household gods, so those unrelenting divinities occupied

their places around Mr. Bounderby, and they were worthy of one another,

and well matched.

‘This, sir,’ said Bounderby, ‘is my wife, Mrs. Bounderby: Tom Gradgrind’s

eldest daughter. Loo, Mr. James Harthouse. Mr. Harthouse has joined

your father’s muster-roll. If he is not Tom Gradgrind’s colleague before

long, I believe we shall at least hear of him in connexion with one of

our neighbouring towns. You observe, Mr. Harthouse, that my wife is my

junior. I don’t know what she saw in me to marry me, but she saw

something in me, I suppose, or she wouldn’t have married me. She has

lots of expensive knowledge, sir, political and otherwise. If you want

to cram for anything, I should be troubled to recommend you to a better

adviser than Loo Bounderby.’

To a more agreeable adviser, or one from whom he would be more likely to

learn, Mr. Harthouse could never be recommended.

‘Come!’ said his host. ‘If you’re in the complimentary line, you’ll get

on here, for you’ll meet with no competition. I have never been in the

way of learning compliments myself, and I don’t profess to understand the

art of paying ’em. In fact, despise ’em. But, your bringing-up was

different from mine; mine was a real thing, by George! You’re a

gentleman, and I don’t pretend to be one. I am Josiah Bounderby of

Coketown, and that’s enough for me. However, though I am not influenced

by manners and station, Loo Bounderby may be. She hadn’t my

advantages—disadvantages you would call ’em, but I call ’em advantages—so

you’ll not waste your power, I dare say.’

‘Mr. Bounderby,’ said Jem, turning with a smile to Louisa, ‘is a noble

animal in a comparatively natural state, quite free from the harness in

which a conventional hack like myself works.’

‘You respect Mr. Bounderby very much,’ she quietly returned. ‘It is

natural that you should.’

He was disgracefully thrown out, for a gentleman who had seen so much of

the world, and thought, ‘Now, how am I to take this?’

‘You are going to devote yourself, as I gather from what Mr. Bounderby

has said, to the service of your country. You have made up your mind,’

said Louisa, still standing before him where she had first stopped—in all

the singular contrariety of her self-possession, and her being obviously

very ill at ease—‘to show the nation the way out of all its

difficulties.’

‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ he returned, laughing, ‘upon my honour, no. I will

make no such pretence to you. I have seen a little, here and there, up

and down; I have found it all to be very worthless, as everybody has, and

as some confess they have, and some do not; and I am going in for your

respected father’s opinions—really because I have no choice of opinions,

and may as well back them as anything else.’

‘Have you none of your own?’ asked Louisa.

‘I have not so much as the slightest predilection left. I assure you I

attach not the least importance to any opinions. The result of the

varieties of boredom I have undergone, is a conviction (unless conviction

is too industrious a word for the lazy sentiment I entertain on the

subject), that any set of ideas will do just as much good as any other

set, and just as much harm as any other set. There’s an English family

with a charming Italian motto. What will be, will be. It’s the only

truth going!’

This vicious assumption of honesty in dishonesty—a vice so dangerous, so

deadly, and so common—seemed, he observed, a little to impress her in his

favour. He followed up the advantage, by saying in his pleasantest

manner: a manner to which she might attach as much or as little meaning

as she pleased: ‘The side that can prove anything in a line of units,

tens, hundreds, and thousands, Mrs. Bounderby, seems to me to afford the

most fun, and to give a man the best chance. I am quite as much attached

to it as if I believed it. I am quite ready to go in for it, to the same

extent as if I believed it. And what more could I possibly do, if I did

believe it!’

‘You are a singular politician,’ said Louisa.

‘Pardon me; I have not even that merit. We are the largest party in the

state, I assure you, Mrs. Bounderby, if we all fell out of our adopted

ranks and were reviewed together.’

Mr. Bounderby, who had been in danger of bursting in silence, interposed

here with a project for postponing the family dinner till half-past six,

and taking Mr. James Harthouse in the meantime on a round of visits to

the voting and interesting notabilities of Coketown and its vicinity.

The round of visits was made; and Mr. James Harthouse, with a discreet

use of his blue coaching, came off triumphantly, though with a

considerable accession of boredom.

In the evening, he found the dinner-table laid for four, but they sat

down only three. It was an appropriate occasion for Mr. Bounderby to

discuss the flavour of the hap’orth of stewed eels he had purchased in

the streets at eight years old; and also of the inferior water, specially

used for laying the dust, with which he had washed down that repast. He

likewise entertained his guest over the soup and fish, with the

calculation that he (Bounderby) had eaten in his youth at least three

horses under the guise of polonies and saveloys. These recitals, Jem, in

a languid manner, received with ‘charming!’ every now and then; and they

probably would have decided him to ‘go in’ for Jerusalem again to-morrow

morning, had he been less curious respecting Louisa.

‘Is there nothing,’ he thought, glancing at her as she sat at the head of

the table, where her youthful figure, small and slight, but very

graceful, looked as pretty as it looked misplaced; ‘is there nothing that

will move that face?’

Yes! By Jupiter, there was something, and here it was, in an unexpected

shape. Tom appeared. She changed as the door opened, and broke into a

beaming smile.

A beautiful smile. Mr. James Harthouse might not have thought so much of

it, but that he had wondered so long at her impassive face. She put out

her hand—a pretty little soft hand; and her fingers closed upon her

brother’s, as if she would have carried them to her lips.

‘Ay, ay?’ thought the visitor. ‘This whelp is the only creature she

cares for. So, so!’

The whelp was presented, and took his chair. The appellation was not

flattering, but not unmerited.

‘When I was your age, young Tom,’ said Bounderby, ‘I was punctual, or I

got no dinner!’

‘When you were my age,’ resumed Tom, ‘you hadn’t a wrong balance to get

right, and hadn’t to dress afterwards.’

‘Never mind that now,’ said Bounderby.

‘Well, then,’ grumbled Tom. ‘Don’t begin with me.’

‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ said Harthouse, perfectly hearing this under-strain as

it went on; ‘your brother’s face is quite familiar to me. Can I have

seen him abroad? Or at some public school, perhaps?’

‘No,’ she resumed, quite interested, ‘he has never been abroad yet, and

was educated here, at home. Tom, love, I am telling Mr. Harthouse that

he never saw you abroad.’

‘No such luck, sir,’ said Tom.

There was little enough in him to brighten her face, for he was a sullen

young fellow, and ungracious in his manner even to her. So much the

greater must have been the solitude of her heart, and her need of some

one on whom to bestow it. ‘So much the more is this whelp the only

creature she has ever cared for,’ thought Mr. James Harthouse, turning it

over and over. ‘So much the more. So much the more.’

Both in his sister’s presence, and after she had left the room, the whelp

took no pains to hide his contempt for Mr. Bounderby, whenever he could

indulge it without the observation of that independent man, by making wry

faces, or shutting one eye. Without responding to these telegraphic

communications, Mr. Harthouse encouraged him much in the course of the

evening, and showed an unusual liking for him. At last, when he rose to

return to his hotel, and was a little doubtful whether he knew the way by

night, the whelp immediately proffered his services as guide, and turned

out with him to escort him thither.

[Picture: Mr. Harthouse dines at the Bounderby’s]

CHAPTER III

THE WHELP

IT was very remarkable that a young gentleman who had been brought up

under one continuous system of unnatural restraint, should be a

hypocrite; but it was certainly the case with Tom. It was very strange

that a young gentleman who had never been left to his own guidance for

five consecutive minutes, should be incapable at last of governing

himself; but so it was with Tom. It was altogether unaccountable that a

young gentleman whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle,

should be still inconvenienced by its ghost in the form of grovelling

sensualities; but such a monster, beyond all doubt, was Tom.

‘Do you smoke?’ asked Mr. James Harthouse, when they came to the hotel.

‘I believe you!’ said Tom.

He could do no less than ask Tom up; and Tom could do no less than go up.

What with a cooling drink adapted to the weather, but not so weak as

cool; and what with a rarer tobacco than was to be bought in those parts;

Tom was soon in a highly free and easy state at his end of the sofa, and

more than ever disposed to admire his new friend at the other end.

Tom blew his smoke aside, after he had been smoking a little while, and

took an observation of his friend. ‘He don’t seem to care about his

dress,’ thought Tom, ‘and yet how capitally he does it. What an easy

swell he is!’

Mr. James Harthouse, happening to catch Tom’s eye, remarked that he drank

nothing, and filled his glass with his own negligent hand.

‘Thank’ee,’ said Tom. ‘Thank’ee. Well, Mr. Harthouse, I hope you have

had about a dose of old Bounderby to-night.’ Tom said this with one eye

shut up again, and looking over his glass knowingly, at his entertainer.

‘A very good fellow indeed!’ returned Mr. James Harthouse.

‘You think so, don’t you?’ said Tom. And shut up his eye again.

Mr. James Harthouse smiled; and rising from his end of the sofa, and

lounging with his back against the chimney-piece, so that he stood before

the empty fire-grate as he smoked, in front of Tom and looking down at

him, observed:

‘What a comical brother-in-law you are!’

‘What a comical brother-in-law old Bounderby is, I think you mean,’ said

Tom.

‘You are a piece of caustic, Tom,’ retorted Mr. James Harthouse.

There was something so very agreeable in being so intimate with such a

waistcoat; in being called Tom, in such an intimate way, by such a voice;

in being on such off-hand terms so soon, with such a pair of whiskers;

that Tom was uncommonly pleased with himself.

‘Oh! I don’t care for old Bounderby,’ said he, ‘if you mean that. I

have always called old Bounderby by the same name when I have talked

about him, and I have always thought of him in the same way. I am not

going to begin to be polite now, about old Bounderby. It would be rather

late in the day.’

‘Don’t mind me,’ returned James; ‘but take care when his wife is by, you

know.’

‘His wife?’ said Tom. ‘My sister Loo? O yes!’ And he laughed, and took

a little more of the cooling drink.

James Harthouse continued to lounge in the same place and attitude,

smoking his cigar in his own easy way, and looking pleasantly at the

whelp, as if he knew himself to be a kind of agreeable demon who had only

to hover over him, and he must give up his whole soul if required. It

certainly did seem that the whelp yielded to this influence. He looked

at his companion sneakingly, he looked at him admiringly, he looked at

him boldly, and put up one leg on the sofa.

‘My sister Loo?’ said Tom. ‘_She_ never cared for old Bounderby.’

‘That’s the past tense, Tom,’ returned Mr. James Harthouse, striking the

ash from his cigar with his little finger. ‘We are in the present tense,

now.’

‘Verb neuter, not to care. Indicative mood, present tense. First person

singular, I do not care; second person singular, thou dost not care;

third person singular, she does not care,’ returned Tom.

‘Good! Very quaint!’ said his friend. ‘Though you don’t mean it.’

‘But I _do_ mean it,’ cried Tom. ‘Upon my honour! Why, you won’t tell

me, Mr. Harthouse, that you really suppose my sister Loo does care for

old Bounderby.’

‘My dear fellow,’ returned the other, ‘what am I bound to suppose, when I

find two married people living in harmony and happiness?’

Tom had by this time got both his legs on the sofa. If his second leg

had not been already there when he was called a dear fellow, he would

have put it up at that great stage of the conversation. Feeling it

necessary to do something then, he stretched himself out at greater

length, and, reclining with the back of his head on the end of the sofa,

and smoking with an infinite assumption of negligence, turned his common

face, and not too sober eyes, towards the face looking down upon him so

carelessly yet so potently.

‘You know our governor, Mr. Harthouse,’ said Tom, ‘and therefore, you

needn’t be surprised that Loo married old Bounderby. She never had a

lover, and the governor proposed old Bounderby, and she took him.’

‘Very dutiful in your interesting sister,’ said Mr. James Harthouse.

‘Yes, but she wouldn’t have been as dutiful, and it would not have come

off as easily,’ returned the whelp, ‘if it hadn’t been for me.’

The tempter merely lifted his eyebrows; but the whelp was obliged to go

on.

‘_I_ persuaded her,’ he said, with an edifying air of superiority. ‘I

was stuck into old Bounderby’s bank (where I never wanted to be), and I

knew I should get into scrapes there, if she put old Bounderby’s pipe

out; so I told her my wishes, and she came into them. She would do

anything for me. It was very game of her, wasn’t it?’

‘It was charming, Tom!’

‘Not that it was altogether so important to her as it was to me,’

continued Tom coolly, ‘because my liberty and comfort, and perhaps my

getting on, depended on it; and she had no other lover, and staying at

home was like staying in jail—especially when I was gone. It wasn’t as

if she gave up another lover for old Bounderby; but still it was a good

thing in her.’

‘Perfectly delightful. And she gets on so placidly.’

‘Oh,’ returned Tom, with contemptuous patronage, ‘she’s a regular girl.

A girl can get on anywhere. She has settled down to the life, and _she_

don’t mind. It does just as well as another. Besides, though Loo is a

girl, she’s not a common sort of girl. She can shut herself up within

herself, and think—as I have often known her sit and watch the fire—for

an hour at a stretch.’

‘Ay, ay? Has resources of her own,’ said Harthouse, smoking quietly.

‘Not so much of that as you may suppose,’ returned Tom; ‘for our governor

had her crammed with all sorts of dry bones and sawdust. It’s his

system.’

‘Formed his daughter on his own model?’ suggested Harthouse.

‘His daughter? Ah! and everybody else. Why, he formed Me that way!’

said Tom.

‘Impossible!’

‘He did, though,’ said Tom, shaking his head. ‘I mean to say, Mr.

Harthouse, that when I first left home and went to old Bounderby’s, I was

as flat as a warming-pan, and knew no more about life, than any oyster

does.’

‘Come, Tom! I can hardly believe that. A joke’s a joke.’

‘Upon my soul!’ said the whelp. ‘I am serious; I am indeed!’ He smoked

with great gravity and dignity for a little while, and then added, in a

highly complacent tone, ‘Oh! I have picked up a little since. I don’t

deny that. But I have done it myself; no thanks to the governor.’

‘And your intelligent sister?’

‘My intelligent sister is about where she was. She used to complain to

me that she had nothing to fall back upon, that girls usually fall back

upon; and I don’t see how she is to have got over that since. But _she_

don’t mind,’ he sagaciously added, puffing at his cigar again. ‘Girls

can always get on, somehow.’

‘Calling at the Bank yesterday evening, for Mr. Bounderby’s address, I

found an ancient lady there, who seems to entertain great admiration for

your sister,’ observed Mr. James Harthouse, throwing away the last small

remnant of the cigar he had now smoked out.

‘Mother Sparsit!’ said Tom. ‘What! you have seen her already, have you?’

His friend nodded. Tom took his cigar out of his mouth, to shut up his

eye (which had grown rather unmanageable) with the greater expression,

and to tap his nose several times with his finger.

‘Mother Sparsit’s feeling for Loo is more than admiration, I should

think,’ said Tom. ‘Say affection and devotion. Mother Sparsit never set

her cap at Bounderby when he was a bachelor. Oh no!’

These were the last words spoken by the whelp, before a giddy drowsiness

came upon him, followed by complete oblivion. He was roused from the

latter state by an uneasy dream of being stirred up with a boot, and also

of a voice saying: ‘Come, it’s late. Be off!’

‘Well!’ he said, scrambling from the sofa. ‘I must take my leave of you

though. I say. Yours is very good tobacco. But it’s too mild.’

‘Yes, it’s too mild,’ returned his entertainer.

‘It’s—it’s ridiculously mild,’ said Tom. ‘Where’s the door! Good

night!’

He had another odd dream of being taken by a waiter through a mist,

which, after giving him some trouble and difficulty, resolved itself into

the main street, in which he stood alone. He then walked home pretty

easily, though not yet free from an impression of the presence and

influence of his new friend—as if he were lounging somewhere in the air,

in the same negligent attitude, regarding him with the same look.

The whelp went home, and went to bed. If he had had any sense of what he

had done that night, and had been less of a whelp and more of a brother,

he might have turned short on the road, might have gone down to the

ill-smelling river that was dyed black, might have gone to bed in it for

good and all, and have curtained his head for ever with its filthy

waters.

CHAPTER IV

MEN AND BROTHERS

‘OH, my friends, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown! Oh, my friends

and fellow-countrymen, the slaves of an iron-handed and a grinding

despotism! Oh, my friends and fellow-sufferers, and fellow-workmen, and

fellow-men! I tell you that the hour is come, when we must rally round

one another as One united power, and crumble into dust the oppressors

that too long have battened upon the plunder of our families, upon the

sweat of our brows, upon the labour of our hands, upon the strength of

our sinews, upon the God-created glorious rights of Humanity, and upon

the holy and eternal privileges of Brotherhood!’

‘Good!’ ‘Hear, hear, hear!’ ‘Hurrah!’ and other cries, arose in many

voices from various parts of the densely crowded and suffocatingly close

Hall, in which the orator, perched on a stage, delivered himself of this

and what other froth and fume he had in him. He had declaimed himself

into a violent heat, and was as hoarse as he was hot. By dint of roaring

at the top of his voice under a flaring gaslight, clenching his fists,

knitting his brows, setting his teeth, and pounding with his arms, he had

taken so much out of himself by this time, that he was brought to a stop,

and called for a glass of water.

As he stood there, trying to quench his fiery face with his drink of

water, the comparison between the orator and the crowd of attentive faces

turned towards him, was extremely to his disadvantage. Judging him by

Nature’s evidence, he was above the mass in very little but the stage on

which he stood. In many great respects he was essentially below them.

He was not so honest, he was not so manly, he was not so good-humoured;

he substituted cunning for their simplicity, and passion for their safe

solid sense. An ill-made, high-shouldered man, with lowering brows, and

his features crushed into an habitually sour expression, he contrasted

most unfavourably, even in his mongrel dress, with the great body of his

hearers in their plain working clothes. Strange as it always is to

consider any assembly in the act of submissively resigning itself to the

dreariness of some complacent person, lord or commoner, whom

three-fourths of it could, by no human means, raise out of the slough of

inanity to their own intellectual level, it was particularly strange, and

it was even particularly affecting, to see this crowd of earnest faces,

whose honesty in the main no competent observer free from bias could

doubt, so agitated by such a leader.

Good! Hear, hear! Hurrah! The eagerness both of attention and

intention, exhibited in all the countenances, made them a most impressive

sight. There was no carelessness, no languor, no idle curiosity; none of

the many shades of indifference to be seen in all other assemblies,

visible for one moment there. That every man felt his condition to be,

somehow or other, worse than it might be; that every man considered it

incumbent on him to join the rest, towards the making of it better; that

every man felt his only hope to be in his allying himself to the comrades

by whom he was surrounded; and that in this belief, right or wrong

(unhappily wrong then), the whole of that crowd were gravely, deeply,

faithfully in earnest; must have been as plain to any one who chose to

see what was there, as the bare beams of the roof and the whitened brick

walls. Nor could any such spectator fail to know in his own breast, that

these men, through their very delusions, showed great qualities,

susceptible of being turned to the happiest and best account; and that to

pretend (on the strength of sweeping axioms, howsoever cut and dried)

that they went astray wholly without cause, and of their own irrational

wills, was to pretend that there could be smoke without fire, death

without birth, harvest without seed, anything or everything produced from

nothing.

The orator having refreshed himself, wiped his corrugated forehead from

left to right several times with his handkerchief folded into a pad, and

concentrated all his revived forces, in a sneer of great disdain and

bitterness.

‘But oh, my friends and brothers! Oh, men and Englishmen, the

down-trodden operatives of Coketown! What shall we say of that man—that

working-man, that I should find it necessary so to libel the glorious

name—who, being practically and well acquainted with the grievances and

wrongs of you, the injured pith and marrow of this land, and having heard

you, with a noble and majestic unanimity that will make Tyrants tremble,

resolve for to subscribe to the funds of the United Aggregate Tribunal,

and to abide by the injunctions issued by that body for your benefit,

whatever they may be—what, I ask you, will you say of that working-man,

since such I must acknowledge him to be, who, at such a time, deserts his

post, and sells his flag; who, at such a time, turns a traitor and a

craven and a recreant, who, at such a time, is not ashamed to make to you

the dastardly and humiliating avowal that he will hold himself aloof, and

will _not_ be one of those associated in the gallant stand for Freedom

and for Right?’

The assembly was divided at this point. There were some groans and

hisses, but the general sense of honour was much too strong for the

condemnation of a man unheard. ‘Be sure you’re right, Slackbridge!’

‘Put him up!’ ‘Let’s hear him!’ Such things were said on many sides.

Finally, one strong voice called out, ‘Is the man heer? If the man’s

heer, Slackbridge, let’s hear the man himseln, ’stead o’ yo.’ Which was

received with a round of applause.

Slackbridge, the orator, looked about him with a withering smile; and,

holding out his right hand at arm’s length (as the manner of all

Slackbridges is), to still the thundering sea, waited until there was a

profound silence.

‘Oh, my friends and fellow-men!’ said Slackbridge then, shaking his head

with violent scorn, ‘I do not wonder that you, the prostrate sons of

labour, are incredulous of the existence of such a man. But he who sold

his birthright for a mess of pottage existed, and Judas Iscariot existed,

and Castlereagh existed, and this man exists!’

Here, a brief press and confusion near the stage, ended in the man

himself standing at the orator’s side before the concourse. He was pale

and a little moved in the face—his lips especially showed it; but he

stood quiet, with his left hand at his chin, waiting to be heard. There

was a chairman to regulate the proceedings, and this functionary now took

the case into his own hands.

‘My friends,’ said he, ‘by virtue o’ my office as your president, I askes

o’ our friend Slackbridge, who may be a little over hetter in this

business, to take his seat, whiles this man Stephen Blackpool is heern.

You all know this man Stephen Blackpool. You know him awlung o’ his

misfort’ns, and his good name.’

With that, the chairman shook him frankly by the hand, and sat down

again. Slackbridge likewise sat down, wiping his hot forehead—always

from left to right, and never the reverse way.

‘My friends,’ Stephen began, in the midst of a dead calm; ‘I ha’ hed

what’s been spok’n o’ me, and ’tis lickly that I shan’t mend it. But I’d

liefer you’d hearn the truth concernin myseln, fro my lips than fro onny

other man’s, though I never cud’n speak afore so monny, wi’out bein

moydert and muddled.’

Slackbridge shook his head as if he would shake it off, in his

bitterness.

‘I’m th’ one single Hand in Bounderby’s mill, o’ a’ the men theer, as

don’t coom in wi’ th’ proposed reg’lations. I canna coom in wi’ ’em. My

friends, I doubt their doin’ yo onny good. Licker they’ll do yo hurt.’

Slackbridge laughed, folded his arms, and frowned sarcastically.

‘But ’t an’t sommuch for that as I stands out. If that were aw, I’d coom

in wi’ th’ rest. But I ha’ my reasons—mine, yo see—for being hindered;

not on’y now, but awlus—awlus—life long!’

Slackbridge jumped up and stood beside him, gnashing and tearing. ‘Oh,

my friends, what but this did I tell you? Oh, my fellow-countrymen, what

warning but this did I give you? And how shows this recreant conduct in

a man on whom unequal laws are known to have fallen heavy? Oh, you

Englishmen, I ask you how does this subornation show in one of

yourselves, who is thus consenting to his own undoing and to yours, and

to your children’s and your children’s children’s?’

There was some applause, and some crying of Shame upon the man; but the

greater part of the audience were quiet. They looked at Stephen’s worn

face, rendered more pathetic by the homely emotions it evinced; and, in

the kindness of their nature, they were more sorry than indignant.

‘’Tis this Delegate’s trade for t’ speak,’ said Stephen, ‘an’ he’s paid

for ’t, an’ he knows his work. Let him keep to ’t. Let him give no heed

to what I ha had’n to bear. That’s not for him. That’s not for nobbody

but me.’

There was a propriety, not to say a dignity in these words, that made the

hearers yet more quiet and attentive. The same strong voice called out,

‘Slackbridge, let the man be heern, and howd thee tongue!’ Then the

place was wonderfully still.

‘My brothers,’ said Stephen, whose low voice was distinctly heard, ‘and

my fellow-workmen—for that yo are to me, though not, as I knows on, to

this delegate here—I ha but a word to sen, and I could sen nommore if I

was to speak till Strike o’ day. I know weel, aw what’s afore me. I

know weel that yo aw resolve to ha nommore ado wi’ a man who is not wi’

yo in this matther. I know weel that if I was a lyin parisht i’ th’

road, yo’d feel it right to pass me by, as a forrenner and stranger.

What I ha getn, I mun mak th’ best on.’

‘Stephen Blackpool,’ said the chairman, rising, ‘think on ’t agen. Think

on ’t once agen, lad, afore thou’rt shunned by aw owd friends.’

There was an universal murmur to the same effect, though no man

articulated a word. Every eye was fixed on Stephen’s face. To repent of

his determination, would be to take a load from all their minds. He

looked around him, and knew that it was so. Not a grain of anger with

them was in his heart; he knew them, far below their surface weaknesses

and misconceptions, as no one but their fellow-labourer could.

‘I ha thowt on ’t, above a bit, sir. I simply canna coom in. I mun go

th’ way as lays afore me. I mun tak my leave o’ aw heer.’

He made a sort of reverence to them by holding up his arms, and stood for

the moment in that attitude; not speaking until they slowly dropped at

his sides.

‘Monny’s the pleasant word as soom heer has spok’n wi’ me; monny’s the

face I see heer, as I first seen when I were yoong and lighter heart’n

than now. I ha’ never had no fratch afore, sin ever I were born, wi’ any

o’ my like; Gonnows I ha’ none now that’s o’ my makin’. Yo’ll ca’ me

traitor and that—yo I mean t’ say,’ addressing Slackbridge, ‘but ’tis

easier to ca’ than mak’ out. So let be.’

He had moved away a pace or two to come down from the platform, when he

remembered something he had not said, and returned again.

‘Haply,’ he said, turning his furrowed face slowly about, that he might

as it were individually address the whole audience, those both near and

distant; ‘haply, when this question has been tak’n up and discoosed,

there’ll be a threat to turn out if I’m let to work among yo. I hope I

shall die ere ever such a time cooms, and I shall work solitary among yo

unless it cooms—truly, I mun do ’t, my friends; not to brave yo, but to

live. I ha nobbut work to live by; and wheerever can I go, I who ha

worked sin I were no heighth at aw, in Coketown heer? I mak’ no

complaints o’ bein turned to the wa’, o’ bein outcasten and overlooken

fro this time forrard, but hope I shall be let to work. If there is any

right for me at aw, my friends, I think ’tis that.’

Not a word was spoken. Not a sound was audible in the building, but the

slight rustle of men moving a little apart, all along the centre of the

room, to open a means of passing out, to the man with whom they had all

bound themselves to renounce companionship. Looking at no one, and going

his way with a lowly steadiness upon him that asserted nothing and sought

nothing, Old Stephen, with all his troubles on his head, left the scene.

Then Slackbridge, who had kept his oratorical arm extended during the

going out, as if he were repressing with infinite solicitude and by a

wonderful moral power the vehement passions of the multitude, applied

himself to raising their spirits. Had not the Roman Brutus, oh, my

British countrymen, condemned his son to death; and had not the Spartan

mothers, oh my soon to be victorious friends, driven their flying

children on the points of their enemies’ swords? Then was it not the

sacred duty of the men of Coketown, with forefathers before them, an

admiring world in company with them, and a posterity to come after them,

to hurl out traitors from the tents they had pitched in a sacred and a

God-like cause? The winds of heaven answered Yes; and bore Yes, east,

west, north, and south. And consequently three cheers for the United

Aggregate Tribunal!

Slackbridge acted as fugleman, and gave the time. The multitude of

doubtful faces (a little conscience-stricken) brightened at the sound,

and took it up. Private feeling must yield to the common cause. Hurrah!

The roof yet vibrated with the cheering, when the assembly dispersed.

Thus easily did Stephen Blackpool fall into the loneliest of lives, the

life of solitude among a familiar crowd. The stranger in the land who

looks into ten thousand faces for some answering look and never finds it,

is in cheering society as compared with him who passes ten averted faces

daily, that were once the countenances of friends. Such experience was

to be Stephen’s now, in every waking moment of his life; at his work, on

his way to it and from it, at his door, at his window, everywhere. By

general consent, they even avoided that side of the street on which he

habitually walked; and left it, of all the working men, to him only.

He had been for many years, a quiet silent man, associating but little

with other men, and used to companionship with his own thoughts. He had

never known before the strength of the want in his heart for the frequent

recognition of a nod, a look, a word; or the immense amount of relief

that had been poured into it by drops through such small means. It was

even harder than he could have believed possible, to separate in his own

conscience his abandonment by all his fellows from a baseless sense of

shame and disgrace.

The first four days of his endurance were days so long and heavy, that he

began to be appalled by the prospect before him. Not only did he see no

Rachael all the time, but he avoided every chance of seeing her; for,

although he knew that the prohibition did not yet formally extend to the

women working in the factories, he found that some of them with whom he

was acquainted were changed to him, and he feared to try others, and

dreaded that Rachael might be even singled out from the rest if she were

seen in his company. So, he had been quite alone during the four days,

and had spoken to no one, when, as he was leaving his work at night, a

young man of a very light complexion accosted him in the street.

‘Your name’s Blackpool, ain’t it?’ said the young man.

Stephen coloured to find himself with his hat in his hand, in his

gratitude for being spoken to, or in the suddenness of it, or both. He

made a feint of adjusting the lining, and said, ‘Yes.’

‘You are the Hand they have sent to Coventry, I mean?’ said Bitzer, the

very light young man in question.

Stephen answered ‘Yes,’ again.

‘I supposed so, from their all appearing to keep away from you. Mr.

Bounderby wants to speak to you. You know his house, don’t you?’

Stephen said ‘Yes,’ again.

‘Then go straight up there, will you?’ said Bitzer. ‘You’re expected,

and have only to tell the servant it’s you. I belong to the Bank; so, if

you go straight up without me (I was sent to fetch you), you’ll save me a

walk.’

Stephen, whose way had been in the contrary direction, turned about, and

betook himself as in duty bound, to the red brick castle of the giant

Bounderby.

CHAPTER V

MEN AND MASTERS

‘WELL, Stephen,’ said Bounderby, in his windy manner, ‘what’s this I

hear? What have these pests of the earth been doing to _you_? Come in,

and speak up.’

It was into the drawing-room that he was thus bidden. A tea-table was

set out; and Mr. Bounderby’s young wife, and her brother, and a great

gentleman from London, were present. To whom Stephen made his obeisance,

closing the door and standing near it, with his hat in his hand.

‘This is the man I was telling you about, Harthouse,’ said Mr. Bounderby.

The gentleman he addressed, who was talking to Mrs. Bounderby on the

sofa, got up, saying in an indolent way, ‘Oh really?’ and dawdled to the

hearthrug where Mr. Bounderby stood.

‘Now,’ said Bounderby, ‘speak up!’

After the four days he had passed, this address fell rudely and

discordantly on Stephen’s ear. Besides being a rough handling of his

wounded mind, it seemed to assume that he really was the self-interested

deserter he had been called.

‘What were it, sir,’ said Stephen, ‘as yo were pleased to want wi’ me?’

‘Why, I have told you,’ returned Bounderby. ‘Speak up like a man, since

you are a man, and tell us about yourself and this Combination.’

‘Wi’ yor pardon, sir,’ said Stephen Blackpool, ‘I ha’ nowt to sen about

it.’

Mr. Bounderby, who was always more or less like a Wind, finding something

in his way here, began to blow at it directly.

‘Now, look here, Harthouse,’ said he, ‘here’s a specimen of ’em. When

this man was here once before, I warned this man against the mischievous

strangers who are always about—and who ought to be hanged wherever they

are found—and I told this man that he was going in the wrong direction.

Now, would you believe it, that although they have put this mark upon

him, he is such a slave to them still, that he’s afraid to open his lips

about them?’

‘I sed as I had nowt to sen, sir; not as I was fearfo’ o’ openin’ my

lips.’

‘You said! Ah! _I_ know what you said; more than that, I know what you

mean, you see. Not always the same thing, by the Lord Harry! Quite

different things. You had better tell us at once, that that fellow

Slackbridge is not in the town, stirring up the people to mutiny; and

that he is not a regular qualified leader of the people: that is, a most

confounded scoundrel. You had better tell us so at once; you can’t

deceive me. You want to tell us so. Why don’t you?’

‘I’m as sooary as yo, sir, when the people’s leaders is bad,’ said

Stephen, shaking his head. ‘They taks such as offers. Haply ’tis na’

the sma’est o’ their misfortuns when they can get no better.’

The wind began to get boisterous.

‘Now, you’ll think this pretty well, Harthouse,’ said Mr. Bounderby.

‘You’ll think this tolerably strong. You’ll say, upon my soul this is a

tidy specimen of what my friends have to deal with; but this is nothing,

sir! You shall hear me ask this man a question. Pray, Mr.

Blackpool’—wind springing up very fast—‘may I take the liberty of asking

you how it happens that you refused to be in this Combination?’

‘How ’t happens?’

‘Ah!’ said Mr. Bounderby, with his thumbs in the arms of his coat, and

jerking his head and shutting his eyes in confidence with the opposite

wall: ‘how it happens.’

‘I’d leefer not coom to ’t, sir; but sin you put th’ question—an’ not

want’n t’ be ill-manner’n—I’ll answer. I ha passed a promess.’

‘Not to me, you know,’ said Bounderby. (Gusty weather with deceitful

calms. One now prevailing.)

‘O no, sir. Not to yo.’

‘As for me, any consideration for me has had just nothing at all to do

with it,’ said Bounderby, still in confidence with the wall. ‘If only

Josiah Bounderby of Coketown had been in question, you would have joined

and made no bones about it?’

‘Why yes, sir. ’Tis true.’

‘Though he knows,’ said Mr. Bounderby, now blowing a gale, ‘that there

are a set of rascals and rebels whom transportation is too good for!

Now, Mr. Harthouse, you have been knocking about in the world some time.

Did you ever meet with anything like that man out of this blessed

country?’ And Mr. Bounderby pointed him out for inspection, with an

angry finger.

‘Nay, ma’am,’ said Stephen Blackpool, staunchly protesting against the

words that had been used, and instinctively addressing himself to Louisa,

after glancing at her face. ‘Not rebels, nor yet rascals. Nowt o’ th’

kind, ma’am, nowt o’ th’ kind. They’ve not doon me a kindness, ma’am, as

I know and feel. But there’s not a dozen men amoong ’em, ma’am—a dozen?

Not six—but what believes as he has doon his duty by the rest and by

himseln. God forbid as I, that ha’ known, and had’n experience o’ these

men aw my life—I, that ha’ ett’n an’ droonken wi’ ’em, an’ seet’n wi’

’em, and toil’n wi’ ’em, and lov’n ’em, should fail fur to stan by ’em

wi’ the truth, let ’em ha’ doon to me what they may!’

He spoke with the rugged earnestness of his place and character—deepened

perhaps by a proud consciousness that he was faithful to his class under

all their mistrust; but he fully remembered where he was, and did not

even raise his voice.

‘No, ma’am, no. They’re true to one another, faithfo’ to one another,

’fectionate to one another, e’en to death. Be poor amoong ’em, be sick

amoong ’em, grieve amoong ’em for onny o’ th’ monny causes that carries

grief to the poor man’s door, an’ they’ll be tender wi’ yo, gentle wi’

yo, comfortable wi’ yo, Chrisen wi’ yo. Be sure o’ that, ma’am. They’d

be riven to bits, ere ever they’d be different.’

‘In short,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘it’s because they are so full of virtues

that they have turned you adrift. Go through with it while you are about

it. Out with it.’

‘How ’tis, ma’am,’ resumed Stephen, appearing still to find his natural

refuge in Louisa’s face, ‘that what is best in us fok, seems to turn us

most to trouble an’ misfort’n an’ mistake, I dunno. But ’tis so. I know

’tis, as I know the heavens is over me ahint the smoke. We’re patient

too, an’ wants in general to do right. An’ I canna think the fawt is aw

wi’ us.’

‘Now, my friend,’ said Mr. Bounderby, whom he could not have exasperated

more, quite unconscious of it though he was, than by seeming to appeal to

any one else, ‘if you will favour me with your attention for half a

minute, I should like to have a word or two with you. You said just now,

that you had nothing to tell us about this business. You are quite sure

of that before we go any further.’

‘Sir, I am sure on ’t.’

‘Here’s a gentleman from London present,’ Mr. Bounderby made a backhanded

point at Mr. James Harthouse with his thumb, ‘a Parliament gentleman. I

should like him to hear a short bit of dialogue between you and me,

instead of taking the substance of it—for I know precious well,

beforehand, what it will be; nobody knows better than I do, take

notice!—instead of receiving it on trust from my mouth.’

Stephen bent his head to the gentleman from London, and showed a rather

more troubled mind than usual. He turned his eyes involuntarily to his

former refuge, but at a look from that quarter (expressive though

instantaneous) he settled them on Mr. Bounderby’s face.

‘Now, what do you complain of?’ asked Mr. Bounderby.

‘I ha’ not coom here, sir,’ Stephen reminded him, ‘to complain. I coom

for that I were sent for.’

‘What,’ repeated Mr. Bounderby, folding his arms, ‘do you people, in a

general way, complain of?’

Stephen looked at him with some little irresolution for a moment, and

then seemed to make up his mind.

‘Sir, I were never good at showin o ’t, though I ha had’n my share in

feeling o ’t. ’Deed we are in a muddle, sir. Look round town—so rich as

’tis—and see the numbers o’ people as has been broughten into bein heer,

fur to weave, an’ to card, an’ to piece out a livin’, aw the same one

way, somehows, ’twixt their cradles and their graves. Look how we live,

an’ wheer we live, an’ in what numbers, an’ by what chances, and wi’ what

sameness; and look how the mills is awlus a goin, and how they never

works us no nigher to ony dis’ant object—ceptin awlus, Death. Look how

you considers of us, and writes of us, and talks of us, and goes up wi’

yor deputations to Secretaries o’ State ’bout us, and how yo are awlus

right, and how we are awlus wrong, and never had’n no reason in us sin

ever we were born. Look how this ha growen an’ growen, sir, bigger an’

bigger, broader an’ broader, harder an’ harder, fro year to year, fro

generation unto generation. Who can look on ’t, sir, and fairly tell a

man ’tis not a muddle?’

‘Of course,’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘Now perhaps you’ll let the gentleman

know, how you would set this muddle (as you’re so fond of calling it) to

rights.’

‘I donno, sir. I canna be expecten to ’t. ’Tis not me as should be

looken to for that, sir. ’Tis them as is put ower me, and ower aw the

rest of us. What do they tak upon themseln, sir, if not to do’t?’

‘I’ll tell you something towards it, at any rate,’ returned Mr.

Bounderby. ‘We will make an example of half a dozen Slackbridges. We’ll

indict the blackguards for felony, and get ’em shipped off to penal

settlements.’

Stephen gravely shook his head.

‘Don’t tell me we won’t, man,’ said Mr. Bounderby, by this time blowing a

hurricane, ‘because we will, I tell you!’

‘Sir,’ returned Stephen, with the quiet confidence of absolute certainty,

‘if yo was t’ tak a hundred Slackbridges—aw as there is, and aw the

number ten times towd—an’ was t’ sew ’em up in separate sacks, an’ sink

’em in the deepest ocean as were made ere ever dry land coom to be, yo’d

leave the muddle just wheer ’tis. Mischeevous strangers!’ said Stephen,

with an anxious smile; ‘when ha we not heern, I am sure, sin ever we can

call to mind, o’ th’ mischeevous strangers! ’Tis not by _them_ the

trouble’s made, sir. ’Tis not wi’ _them_ ’t commences. I ha no favour

for ’em—I ha no reason to favour ’em—but ’tis hopeless and useless to

dream o’ takin them fro their trade, ’stead o’ takin their trade fro

them! Aw that’s now about me in this room were heer afore I coom, an’

will be heer when I am gone. Put that clock aboard a ship an’ pack it

off to Norfolk Island, an’ the time will go on just the same. So ’tis

wi’ Slackbridge every bit.’

Reverting for a moment to his former refuge, he observed a cautionary

movement of her eyes towards the door. Stepping back, he put his hand

upon the lock. But he had not spoken out of his own will and desire; and

he felt it in his heart a noble return for his late injurious treatment

to be faithful to the last to those who had repudiated him. He stayed to

finish what was in his mind.

‘Sir, I canna, wi’ my little learning an’ my common way, tell the

genelman what will better aw this—though some working men o’ this town

could, above my powers—but I can tell him what I know will never do ’t.

The strong hand will never do ’t. Vict’ry and triumph will never do ’t.

Agreeing fur to mak one side unnat’rally awlus and for ever right, and

toother side unnat’rally awlus and for ever wrong, will never, never do

’t. Nor yet lettin alone will never do ’t. Let thousands upon thousands

alone, aw leading the like lives and aw faw’en into the like muddle, and

they will be as one, and yo will be as anoother, wi’ a black unpassable

world betwixt yo, just as long or short a time as sich-like misery can

last. Not drawin nigh to fok, wi’ kindness and patience an’ cheery ways,

that so draws nigh to one another in their monny troubles, and so

cherishes one another in their distresses wi’ what they need

themseln—like, I humbly believe, as no people the genelman ha seen in aw

his travels can beat—will never do ’t till th’ Sun turns t’ ice. Most o’

aw, rating ’em as so much Power, and reg’latin ’em as if they was figures

in a soom, or machines: wi’out loves and likens, wi’out memories and

inclinations, wi’out souls to weary and souls to hope—when aw goes quiet,

draggin on wi’ ’em as if they’d nowt o’ th’ kind, and when aw goes

onquiet, reproachin ’em for their want o’ sitch humanly feelins in their

dealins wi’ yo—this will never do ’t, sir, till God’s work is onmade.’

Stephen stood with the open door in his hand, waiting to know if anything

more were expected of him.

‘Just stop a moment,’ said Mr. Bounderby, excessively red in the face.

‘I told you, the last time you were here with a grievance, that you had

better turn about and come out of that. And I also told you, if you

remember, that I was up to the gold spoon look-out.’

‘I were not up to ’t myseln, sir; I do assure yo.’

‘Now it’s clear to me,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘that you are one of those

chaps who have always got a grievance. And you go about, sowing it and

raising crops. That’s the business of _your_ life, my friend.’

Stephen shook his head, mutely protesting that indeed he had other

business to do for his life.

‘You are such a waspish, raspish, ill-conditioned chap, you see,’ said

Mr. Bounderby, ‘that even your own Union, the men who know you best, will

have nothing to do with you. I never thought those fellows could be

right in anything; but I tell you what! I so far go along with them for

a novelty, that _I_’ll have nothing to do with you either.’

Stephen raised his eyes quickly to his face.

‘You can finish off what you’re at,’ said Mr. Bounderby, with a meaning

nod, ‘and then go elsewhere.’

‘Sir, yo know weel,’ said Stephen expressively, ‘that if I canna get work

wi’ yo, I canna get it elsewheer.’

The reply was, ‘What I know, I know; and what you know, you know. I have

no more to say about it.’

Stephen glanced at Louisa again, but her eyes were raised to his no more;

therefore, with a sigh, and saying, barely above his breath, ‘Heaven help

us aw in this world!’ he departed.

CHAPTER VI

FADING AWAY