‘Did you offer him,’ asked Rachael, ‘a bank-note?’
‘Yes; but he refused it, and would only take two pounds in gold.’
Rachael cast her eyes towards Mr. Bounderby again.
‘Oh, certainly!’ said Bounderby. ‘If you put the question whether your
ridiculous and improbable account was true or not, I am bound to say it’s
confirmed.’
‘Young lady,’ said Rachael, ‘Stephen Blackpool is now named as a thief in
public print all over this town, and where else! There have been a
meeting to-night where he have been spoken of in the same shameful way.
Stephen! The honestest lad, the truest lad, the best!’ Her indignation
failed her, and she broke off sobbing.
‘I am very, very sorry,’ said Louisa.
‘Oh, young lady, young lady,’ returned Rachael, ‘I hope you may be, but I
don’t know! I can’t say what you may ha’ done! The like of you don’t
know us, don’t care for us, don’t belong to us. I am not sure why you
may ha’ come that night. I can’t tell but what you may ha’ come wi’ some
aim of your own, not mindin to what trouble you brought such as the poor
lad. I said then, Bless you for coming; and I said it of my heart, you
seemed to take so pitifully to him; but I don’t know now, I don’t know!’
Louisa could not reproach her for her unjust suspicions; she was so
faithful to her idea of the man, and so afflicted.
‘And when I think,’ said Rachael through her sobs, ‘that the poor lad was
so grateful, thinkin you so good to him—when I mind that he put his hand
over his hard-worken face to hide the tears that you brought up there—Oh,
I hope you may be sorry, and ha’ no bad cause to be it; but I don’t know,
I don’t know!’
‘You’re a pretty article,’ growled the whelp, moving uneasily in his dark
corner, ‘to come here with these precious imputations! You ought to be
bundled out for not knowing how to behave yourself, and you would be by
rights.’
She said nothing in reply; and her low weeping was the only sound that
was heard, until Mr. Bounderby spoke.
‘Come!’ said he, ‘you know what you have engaged to do. You had better
give your mind to that; not this.’
‘’Deed, I am loath,’ returned Rachael, drying her eyes, ‘that any here
should see me like this; but I won’t be seen so again. Young lady, when
I had read what’s put in print of Stephen—and what has just as much truth
in it as if it had been put in print of you—I went straight to the Bank
to say I knew where Stephen was, and to give a sure and certain promise
that he should be here in two days. I couldn’t meet wi’ Mr. Bounderby
then, and your brother sent me away, and I tried to find you, but you was
not to be found, and I went back to work. Soon as I come out of the Mill
to-night, I hastened to hear what was said of Stephen—for I know wi’
pride he will come back to shame it!—and then I went again to seek Mr.
Bounderby, and I found him, and I told him every word I knew; and he
believed no word I said, and brought me here.’
‘So far, that’s true enough,’ assented Mr. Bounderby, with his hands in
his pockets and his hat on. ‘But I have known you people before to-day,
you’ll observe, and I know you never die for want of talking. Now, I
recommend you not so much to mind talking just now, as doing. You have
undertaken to do something; all I remark upon that at present is, do it!’
‘I have written to Stephen by the post that went out this afternoon, as I
have written to him once before sin’ he went away,’ said Rachael; ‘and he
will be here, at furthest, in two days.’
‘Then, I’ll tell you something. You are not aware perhaps,’ retorted Mr.
Bounderby, ‘that you yourself have been looked after now and then, not
being considered quite free from suspicion in this business, on account
of most people being judged according to the company they keep. The
post-office hasn’t been forgotten either. What I’ll tell you is, that no
letter to Stephen Blackpool has ever got into it. Therefore, what has
become of yours, I leave you to guess. Perhaps you’re mistaken, and
never wrote any.’
‘He hadn’t been gone from here, young lady,’ said Rachael, turning
appealingly to Louisa, ‘as much as a week, when he sent me the only
letter I have had from him, saying that he was forced to seek work in
another name.’
‘Oh, by George!’ cried Bounderby, shaking his head, with a whistle, ‘he
changes his name, does he! That’s rather unlucky, too, for such an
immaculate chap. It’s considered a little suspicious in Courts of
Justice, I believe, when an Innocent happens to have many names.’
‘What,’ said Rachael, with the tears in her eyes again, ‘what, young
lady, in the name of Mercy, was left the poor lad to do! The masters
against him on one hand, the men against him on the other, he only wantin
to work hard in peace, and do what he felt right. Can a man have no soul
of his own, no mind of his own? Must he go wrong all through wi’ this
side, or must he go wrong all through wi’ that, or else be hunted like a
hare?’
‘Indeed, indeed, I pity him from my heart,’ returned Louisa; ‘and I hope
that he will clear himself.’
‘You need have no fear of that, young lady. He is sure!’
‘All the surer, I suppose,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘for your refusing to
tell where he is? Eh?’
‘He shall not, through any act of mine, come back wi’ the unmerited
reproach of being brought back. He shall come back of his own accord to
clear himself, and put all those that have injured his good character,
and he not here for its defence, to shame. I have told him what has been
done against him,’ said Rachael, throwing off all distrust as a rock
throws off the sea, ‘and he will be here, at furthest, in two days.’
‘Notwithstanding which,’ added Mr. Bounderby, ‘if he can be laid hold of
any sooner, he shall have an earlier opportunity of clearing himself. As
to you, I have nothing against you; what you came and told me turns out
to be true, and I have given you the means of proving it to be true, and
there’s an end of it. I wish you good night all! I must be off to look
a little further into this.’
Tom came out of his corner when Mr. Bounderby moved, moved with him, kept
close to him, and went away with him. The only parting salutation of
which he delivered himself was a sulky ‘Good night, father!’ With a
brief speech, and a scowl at his sister, he left the house.
Since his sheet-anchor had come home, Mr. Gradgrind had been sparing of
speech. He still sat silent, when Louisa mildly said:
‘Rachael, you will not distrust me one day, when you know me better.’
‘It goes against me,’ Rachael answered, in a gentler manner, ‘to mistrust
any one; but when I am so mistrusted—when we all are—I cannot keep such
things quite out of my mind. I ask your pardon for having done you an
injury. I don’t think what I said now. Yet I might come to think it
again, wi’ the poor lad so wronged.’
‘Did you tell him in your letter,’ inquired Sissy, ‘that suspicion seemed
to have fallen upon him, because he had been seen about the Bank at
night? He would then know what he would have to explain on coming back,
and would be ready.’
‘Yes, dear,’ she returned; ‘but I can’t guess what can have ever taken
him there. He never used to go there. It was never in his way. His way
was the same as mine, and not near it.’
Sissy had already been at her side asking her where she lived, and
whether she might come to-morrow night, to inquire if there were news of
him.
‘I doubt,’ said Rachael, ‘if he can be here till next day.’
‘Then I will come next night too,’ said Sissy.
When Rachael, assenting to this, was gone, Mr. Gradgrind lifted up his
head, and said to his daughter:
‘Louisa, my dear, I have never, that I know of, seen this man. Do you
believe him to be implicated?’
‘I think I have believed it, father, though with great difficulty. I do
not believe it now.’
‘That is to say, you once persuaded yourself to believe it, from knowing
him to be suspected. His appearance and manner; are they so honest?’
‘Very honest.’
‘And her confidence not to be shaken! I ask myself,’ said Mr. Gradgrind,
musing, ‘does the real culprit know of these accusations? Where is he?
Who is he?’
His hair had latterly began to change its colour. As he leaned upon his
hand again, looking gray and old, Louisa, with a face of fear and pity,
hurriedly went over to him, and sat close at his side. Her eyes by
accident met Sissy’s at the moment. Sissy flushed and started, and
Louisa put her finger on her lip.
Next night, when Sissy returned home and told Louisa that Stephen was not
come, she told it in a whisper. Next night again, when she came home
with the same account, and added that he had not been heard of, she spoke
in the same low frightened tone. From the moment of that interchange of
looks, they never uttered his name, or any reference to him, aloud; nor
ever pursued the subject of the robbery, when Mr. Gradgrind spoke of it.
The two appointed days ran out, three days and nights ran out, and
Stephen Blackpool was not come, and remained unheard of. On the fourth
day, Rachael, with unabated confidence, but considering her despatch to
have miscarried, went up to the Bank, and showed her letter from him with
his address, at a working colony, one of many, not upon the main road,
sixty miles away. Messengers were sent to that place, and the whole town
looked for Stephen to be brought in next day.
During this whole time the whelp moved about with Mr. Bounderby like his
shadow, assisting in all the proceedings. He was greatly excited,
horribly fevered, bit his nails down to the quick, spoke in a hard
rattling voice, and with lips that were black and burnt up. At the hour
when the suspected man was looked for, the whelp was at the station;
offering to wager that he had made off before the arrival of those who
were sent in quest of him, and that he would not appear.
The whelp was right. The messengers returned alone. Rachael’s letter
had gone, Rachael’s letter had been delivered. Stephen Blackpool had
decamped in that same hour; and no soul knew more of him. The only doubt
in Coketown was, whether Rachael had written in good faith, believing
that he really would come back, or warning him to fly. On this point
opinion was divided.
Six days, seven days, far on into another week. The wretched whelp
plucked up a ghastly courage, and began to grow defiant. ‘_Was_ the
suspected fellow the thief? A pretty question! If not, where was the
man, and why did he not come back?’
Where was the man, and why did he not come back? In the dead of night
the echoes of his own words, which had rolled Heaven knows how far away
in the daytime, came back instead, and abided by him until morning.
CHAPTER V
FOUND
DAY and night again, day and night again. No Stephen Blackpool. Where
was the man, and why did he not come back?
Every night, Sissy went to Rachael’s lodging, and sat with her in her
small neat room. All day, Rachael toiled as such people must toil,
whatever their anxieties. The smoke-serpents were indifferent who was
lost or found, who turned out bad or good; the melancholy mad elephants,
like the Hard Fact men, abated nothing of their set routine, whatever
happened. Day and night again, day and night again. The monotony was
unbroken. Even Stephen Blackpool’s disappearance was falling into the
general way, and becoming as monotonous a wonder as any piece of
machinery in Coketown.
‘I misdoubt,’ said Rachael, ‘if there is as many as twenty left in all
this place, who have any trust in the poor dear lad now.’
She said it to Sissy, as they sat in her lodging, lighted only by the
lamp at the street corner. Sissy had come there when it was already
dark, to await her return from work; and they had since sat at the window
where Rachael had found her, wanting no brighter light to shine on their
sorrowful talk.
‘If it hadn’t been mercifully brought about, that I was to have you to
speak to,’ pursued Rachael, ‘times are, when I think my mind would not
have kept right. But I get hope and strength through you; and you
believe that though appearances may rise against him, he will be proved
clear?’
‘I do believe so,’ returned Sissy, ‘with my whole heart. I feel so
certain, Rachael, that the confidence you hold in yours against all
discouragement, is not like to be wrong, that I have no more doubt of him
than if I had known him through as many years of trial as you have.’
‘And I, my dear,’ said Rachel, with a tremble in her voice, ‘have known
him through them all, to be, according to his quiet ways, so faithful to
everything honest and good, that if he was never to be heard of more, and
I was to live to be a hundred years old, I could say with my last breath,
God knows my heart. I have never once left trusting Stephen Blackpool!’
‘We all believe, up at the Lodge, Rachael, that he will be freed from
suspicion, sooner or later.’
‘The better I know it to be so believed there, my dear,’ said Rachael,
‘and the kinder I feel it that you come away from there, purposely to
comfort me, and keep me company, and be seen wi’ me when I am not yet
free from all suspicion myself, the more grieved I am that I should ever
have spoken those mistrusting words to the young lady. And yet I—’
‘You don’t mistrust her now, Rachael?’
‘Now that you have brought us more together, no. But I can’t at all
times keep out of my mind—’
Her voice so sunk into a low and slow communing with herself, that Sissy,
sitting by her side, was obliged to listen with attention.
‘I can’t at all times keep out of my mind, mistrustings of some one. I
can’t think who ’tis, I can’t think how or why it may be done, but I
mistrust that some one has put Stephen out of the way. I mistrust that
by his coming back of his own accord, and showing himself innocent before
them all, some one would be confounded, who—to prevent that—has stopped
him, and put him out of the way.’
‘That is a dreadful thought,’ said Sissy, turning pale.
‘It _is_ a dreadful thought to think he may be murdered.’
Sissy shuddered, and turned paler yet.
‘When it makes its way into my mind, dear,’ said Rachael, ‘and it will
come sometimes, though I do all I can to keep it out, wi’ counting on to
high numbers as I work, and saying over and over again pieces that I knew
when I were a child—I fall into such a wild, hot hurry, that, however
tired I am, I want to walk fast, miles and miles. I must get the better
of this before bed-time. I’ll walk home wi’ you.’
‘He might fall ill upon the journey back,’ said Sissy, faintly offering a
worn-out scrap of hope; ‘and in such a case, there are many places on the
road where he might stop.’
‘But he is in none of them. He has been sought for in all, and he’s not
there.’
‘True,’ was Sissy’s reluctant admission.
‘He’d walk the journey in two days. If he was footsore and couldn’t
walk, I sent him, in the letter he got, the money to ride, lest he should
have none of his own to spare.’
‘Let us hope that to-morrow will bring something better, Rachael. Come
into the air!’
Her gentle hand adjusted Rachael’s shawl upon her shining black hair in
the usual manner of her wearing it, and they went out. The night being
fine, little knots of Hands were here and there lingering at street
corners; but it was supper-time with the greater part of them, and there
were but few people in the streets.
‘You’re not so hurried now, Rachael, and your hand is cooler.’
‘I get better, dear, if I can only walk, and breathe a little fresh.
‘Times when I can’t, I turn weak and confused.’
‘But you must not begin to fail, Rachael, for you may be wanted at any
time to stand by Stephen. To-morrow is Saturday. If no news comes
to-morrow, let us walk in the country on Sunday morning, and strengthen
you for another week. Will you go?’
‘Yes, dear.’
They were by this time in the street where Mr. Bounderby’s house stood.
The way to Sissy’s destination led them past the door, and they were
going straight towards it. Some train had newly arrived in Coketown,
which had put a number of vehicles in motion, and scattered a
considerable bustle about the town. Several coaches were rattling before
them and behind them as they approached Mr. Bounderby’s, and one of the
latter drew up with such briskness as they were in the act of passing the
house, that they looked round involuntarily. The bright gaslight over
Mr. Bounderby’s steps showed them Mrs. Sparsit in the coach, in an
ecstasy of excitement, struggling to open the door; Mrs. Sparsit seeing
them at the same moment, called to them to stop.
‘It’s a coincidence,’ exclaimed Mrs. Sparsit, as she was released by the
coachman. ‘It’s a Providence! Come out, ma’am!’ then said Mrs. Sparsit,
to some one inside, ‘come out, or we’ll have you dragged out!’
Hereupon, no other than the mysterious old woman descended. Whom Mrs.
Sparsit incontinently collared.
‘Leave her alone, everybody!’ cried Mrs. Sparsit, with great energy.
‘Let nobody touch her. She belongs to me. Come in, ma’am!’ then said
Mrs. Sparsit, reversing her former word of command. ‘Come in, ma’am, or
we’ll have you dragged in!’
The spectacle of a matron of classical deportment, seizing an ancient
woman by the throat, and hauling her into a dwelling-house, would have
been under any circumstances, sufficient temptation to all true English
stragglers so blest as to witness it, to force a way into that
dwelling-house and see the matter out. But when the phenomenon was
enhanced by the notoriety and mystery by this time associated all over
the town with the Bank robbery, it would have lured the stragglers in,
with an irresistible attraction, though the roof had been expected to
fall upon their heads. Accordingly, the chance witnesses on the ground,
consisting of the busiest of the neighbours to the number of some
five-and-twenty, closed in after Sissy and Rachael, as they closed in
after Mrs. Sparsit and her prize; and the whole body made a disorderly
irruption into Mr. Bounderby’s dining-room, where the people behind lost
not a moment’s time in mounting on the chairs, to get the better of the
people in front.
‘Fetch Mr. Bounderby down!’ cried Mrs. Sparsit. ‘Rachael, young woman;
you know who this is?’
‘It’s Mrs. Pegler,’ said Rachael.
‘I should think it is!’ cried Mrs. Sparsit, exulting. ‘Fetch Mr.
Bounderby. Stand away, everybody!’ Here old Mrs. Pegler, muffling
herself up, and shrinking from observation, whispered a word of entreaty.
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, aloud. ‘I have told you twenty
times, coming along, that I will _not_ leave you till I have handed you
over to him myself.’
Mr. Bounderby now appeared, accompanied by Mr. Gradgrind and the whelp,
with whom he had been holding conference up-stairs. Mr. Bounderby looked
more astonished than hospitable, at sight of this uninvited party in his
dining-room.
‘Why, what’s the matter now!’ said he. ‘Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am?’
‘Sir,’ explained that worthy woman, ‘I trust it is my good fortune to
produce a person you have much desired to find. Stimulated by my wish to
relieve your mind, sir, and connecting together such imperfect clues to
the part of the country in which that person might be supposed to reside,
as have been afforded by the young woman, Rachael, fortunately now
present to identify, I have had the happiness to succeed, and to bring
that person with me—I need not say most unwillingly on her part. It has
not been, sir, without some trouble that I have effected this; but
trouble in your service is to me a pleasure, and hunger, thirst, and cold
a real gratification.’
Here Mrs. Sparsit ceased; for Mr. Bounderby’s visage exhibited an
extraordinary combination of all possible colours and expressions of
discomfiture, as old Mrs. Pegler was disclosed to his view.
‘Why, what do you mean by this?’ was his highly unexpected demand, in
great warmth. ‘I ask you, what do you mean by this, Mrs. Sparsit,
ma’am?’
‘Sir!’ exclaimed Mrs. Sparsit, faintly.
‘Why don’t you mind your own business, ma’am?’ roared Bounderby. ‘How
dare you go and poke your officious nose into my family affairs?’
This allusion to her favourite feature overpowered Mrs. Sparsit. She sat
down stiffly in a chair, as if she were frozen; and with a fixed stare at
Mr. Bounderby, slowly grated her mittens against one another, as if they
were frozen too.
‘My dear Josiah!’ cried Mrs. Pegler, trembling. ‘My darling boy! I am
not to blame. It’s not my fault, Josiah. I told this lady over and over
again, that I knew she was doing what would not be agreeable to you, but
she would do it.’
‘What did you let her bring you for? Couldn’t you knock her cap off, or
her tooth out, or scratch her, or do something or other to her?’ asked
Bounderby.
‘My own boy! She threatened me that if I resisted her, I should be
brought by constables, and it was better to come quietly than make that
stir in such a’—Mrs. Pegler glanced timidly but proudly round the
walls—‘such a fine house as this. Indeed, indeed, it is not my fault!
My dear, noble, stately boy! I have always lived quiet, and secret,
Josiah, my dear. I have never broken the condition once. I have never
said I was your mother. I have admired you at a distance; and if I have
come to town sometimes, with long times between, to take a proud peep at
you, I have done it unbeknown, my love, and gone away again.’
Mr. Bounderby, with his hands in his pockets, walked in impatient
mortification up and down at the side of the long dining-table, while the
spectators greedily took in every syllable of Mrs. Pegler’s appeal, and
at each succeeding syllable became more and more round-eyed. Mr.
Bounderby still walking up and down when Mrs. Pegler had done, Mr.
Gradgrind addressed that maligned old lady:
‘I am surprised, madam,’ he observed with severity, ‘that in your old age
you have the face to claim Mr. Bounderby for your son, after your
unnatural and inhuman treatment of him.’
‘_Me_ unnatural!’ cried poor old Mrs. Pegler. ‘_Me_ inhuman! To my dear
boy?’
‘Dear!’ repeated Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Yes; dear in his self-made prosperity,
madam, I dare say. Not very dear, however, when you deserted him in his
infancy, and left him to the brutality of a drunken grandmother.’
‘_I_ deserted my Josiah!’ cried Mrs. Pegler, clasping her hands. ‘Now,
Lord forgive you, sir, for your wicked imaginations, and for your scandal
against the memory of my poor mother, who died in my arms before Josiah
was born. May you repent of it, sir, and live to know better!’
She was so very earnest and injured, that Mr. Gradgrind, shocked by the
possibility which dawned upon him, said in a gentler tone:
‘Do you deny, then, madam, that you left your son to—to be brought up in
the gutter?’
‘Josiah in the gutter!’ exclaimed Mrs. Pegler. ‘No such a thing, sir.
Never! For shame on you! My dear boy knows, and will give _you_ to
know, that though he come of humble parents, he come of parents that
loved him as dear as the best could, and never thought it hardship on
themselves to pinch a bit that he might write and cipher beautiful, and
I’ve his books at home to show it! Aye, have I!’ said Mrs. Pegler, with
indignant pride. ‘And my dear boy knows, and will give _you_ to know,
sir, that after his beloved father died, when he was eight years old, his
mother, too, could pinch a bit, as it was her duty and her pleasure and
her pride to do it, to help him out in life, and put him ’prentice. And
a steady lad he was, and a kind master he had to lend him a hand, and
well he worked his own way forward to be rich and thriving. And _I_’ll
give you to know, sir—for this my dear boy won’t—that though his mother
kept but a little village shop, he never forgot her, but pensioned me on
thirty pound a year—more than I want, for I put by out of it—only making
the condition that I was to keep down in my own part, and make no boasts
about him, and not trouble him. And I never have, except with looking at
him once a year, when he has never knowed it. And it’s right,’ said poor
old Mrs. Pegler, in affectionate championship, ‘that I _should_ keep down
in my own part, and I have no doubts that if I was here I should do a
many unbefitting things, and I am well contented, and I can keep my pride
in my Josiah to myself, and I can love for love’s own sake! And I am
ashamed of you, sir,’ said Mrs. Pegler, lastly, ‘for your slanders and
suspicions. And I never stood here before, nor never wanted to stand
here when my dear son said no. And I shouldn’t be here now, if it hadn’t
been for being brought here. And for shame upon you, Oh, for shame, to
accuse me of being a bad mother to my son, with my son standing here to
tell you so different!’
The bystanders, on and off the dining-room chairs, raised a murmur of
sympathy with Mrs. Pegler, and Mr. Gradgrind felt himself innocently
placed in a very distressing predicament, when Mr. Bounderby, who had
never ceased walking up and down, and had every moment swelled larger and
larger, and grown redder and redder, stopped short.
‘I don’t exactly know,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘how I come to be favoured
with the attendance of the present company, but I don’t inquire. When
they’re quite satisfied, perhaps they’ll be so good as to disperse;
whether they’re satisfied or not, perhaps they’ll be so good as to
disperse. I’m not bound to deliver a lecture on my family affairs, I
have not undertaken to do it, and I’m not a going to do it. Therefore
those who expect any explanation whatever upon that branch of the
subject, will be disappointed—particularly Tom Gradgrind, and he can’t
know it too soon. In reference to the Bank robbery, there has been a
mistake made, concerning my mother. If there hadn’t been
over-officiousness it wouldn’t have been made, and I hate
over-officiousness at all times, whether or no. Good evening!’
Although Mr. Bounderby carried it off in these terms, holding the door
open for the company to depart, there was a blustering sheepishness upon
him, at once extremely crestfallen and superlatively absurd. Detected as
the Bully of humility, who had built his windy reputation upon lies, and
in his boastfulness had put the honest truth as far away from him as if
he had advanced the mean claim (there is no meaner) to tack himself on to
a pedigree, he cut a most ridiculous figure. With the people filing off
at the door he held, who he knew would carry what had passed to the whole
town, to be given to the four winds, he could not have looked a Bully
more shorn and forlorn, if he had had his ears cropped. Even that
unlucky female, Mrs. Sparsit, fallen from her pinnacle of exultation into
the Slough of Despond, was not in so bad a plight as that remarkable man
and self-made Humbug, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown.
Rachael and Sissy, leaving Mrs. Pegler to occupy a bed at her son’s for
that night, walked together to the gate of Stone Lodge and there parted.
Mr. Gradgrind joined them before they had gone very far, and spoke with
much interest of Stephen Blackpool; for whom he thought this signal
failure of the suspicions against Mrs. Pegler was likely to work well.
As to the whelp; throughout this scene as on all other late occasions, he
had stuck close to Bounderby. He seemed to feel that as long as
Bounderby could make no discovery without his knowledge, he was so far
safe. He never visited his sister, and had only seen her once since she
went home: that is to say on the night when he still stuck close to
Bounderby, as already related.
There was one dim unformed fear lingering about his sister’s mind, to
which she never gave utterance, which surrounded the graceless and
ungrateful boy with a dreadful mystery. The same dark possibility had
presented itself in the same shapeless guise, this very day, to Sissy,
when Rachael spoke of some one who would be confounded by Stephen’s
return, having put him out of the way. Louisa had never spoken of
harbouring any suspicion of her brother in connexion with the robbery,
she and Sissy had held no confidence on the subject, save in that one
interchange of looks when the unconscious father rested his gray head on
his hand; but it was understood between them, and they both knew it.
This other fear was so awful, that it hovered about each of them like a
ghostly shadow; neither daring to think of its being near herself, far
less of its being near the other.
And still the forced spirit which the whelp had plucked up, throve with
him. If Stephen Blackpool was not the thief, let him show himself. Why
didn’t he?
Another night. Another day and night. No Stephen Blackpool. Where was
the man, and why did he not come back?
CHAPTER VI
THE STARLIGHT
THE Sunday was a bright Sunday in autumn, clear and cool, when early in
the morning Sissy and Rachael met, to walk in the country.
As Coketown cast ashes not only on its own head but on the
neighbourhood’s too—after the manner of those pious persons who do
penance for their own sins by putting other people into sackcloth—it was
customary for those who now and then thirsted for a draught of pure air,
which is not absolutely the most wicked among the vanities of life, to
get a few miles away by the railroad, and then begin their walk, or their
lounge in the fields. Sissy and Rachael helped themselves out of the
smoke by the usual means, and were put down at a station about midway
between the town and Mr. Bounderby’s retreat.
Though the green landscape was blotted here and there with heaps of coal,
it was green elsewhere, and there were trees to see, and there were larks
singing (though it was Sunday), and there were pleasant scents in the
air, and all was over-arched by a bright blue sky. In the distance one
way, Coketown showed as a black mist; in another distance hills began to
rise; in a third, there was a faint change in the light of the horizon
where it shone upon the far-off sea. Under their feet, the grass was
fresh; beautiful shadows of branches flickered upon it, and speckled it;
hedgerows were luxuriant; everything was at peace. Engines at pits’
mouths, and lean old horses that had worn the circle of their daily
labour into the ground, were alike quiet; wheels had ceased for a short
space to turn; and the great wheel of earth seemed to revolve without the
shocks and noises of another time.
They walked on across the fields and down the shady lanes, sometimes
getting over a fragment of a fence so rotten that it dropped at a touch
of the foot, sometimes passing near a wreck of bricks and beams overgrown
with grass, marking the site of deserted works. They followed paths and
tracks, however slight. Mounds where the grass was rank and high, and
where brambles, dock-weed, and such-like vegetation, were confusedly
heaped together, they always avoided; for dismal stories were told in
that country of the old pits hidden beneath such indications.
The sun was high when they sat down to rest. They had seen no one, near
or distant, for a long time; and the solitude remained unbroken. ‘It is
so still here, Rachael, and the way is so untrodden, that I think we must
be the first who have been here all the summer.’
As Sissy said it, her eyes were attracted by another of those rotten
fragments of fence upon the ground. She got up to look at it. ‘And yet
I don’t know. This has not been broken very long. The wood is quite
fresh where it gave way. Here are footsteps too.—O Rachael!’
She ran back, and caught her round the neck. Rachael had already started
up.
‘What is the matter?’
‘I don’t know. There is a hat lying in the grass.’ They went forward
together. Rachael took it up, shaking from head to foot. She broke into
a passion of tears and lamentations: Stephen Blackpool was written in his
own hand on the inside.
‘O the poor lad, the poor lad! He has been made away with. He is lying
murdered here!’
‘Is there—has the hat any blood upon it?’ Sissy faltered.
They were afraid to look; but they did examine it, and found no mark of
violence, inside or out. It had been lying there some days, for rain and
dew had stained it, and the mark of its shape was on the grass where it
had fallen. They looked fearfully about them, without moving, but could
see nothing more. ‘Rachael,’ Sissy whispered, ‘I will go on a little by
myself.’
She had unclasped her hand, and was in the act of stepping forward, when
Rachael caught her in both arms with a scream that resounded over the
wide landscape. Before them, at their very feet, was the brink of a
black ragged chasm hidden by the thick grass. They sprang back, and fell
upon their knees, each hiding her face upon the other’s neck.
‘O, my good Lord! He’s down there! Down there!’ At first this, and her
terrific screams, were all that could be got from Rachael, by any tears,
by any prayers, by any representations, by any means. It was impossible
to hush her; and it was deadly necessary to hold her, or she would have
flung herself down the shaft.
‘Rachael, dear Rachael, good Rachael, for the love of Heaven, not these
dreadful cries! Think of Stephen, think of Stephen, think of Stephen!’
By an earnest repetition of this entreaty, poured out in all the agony of
such a moment, Sissy at last brought her to be silent, and to look at her
with a tearless face of stone.
‘Rachael, Stephen may be living. You wouldn’t leave him lying maimed at
the bottom of this dreadful place, a moment, if you could bring help to
him?’
‘No, no, no!’
‘Don’t stir from here, for his sake! Let me go and listen.’
She shuddered to approach the pit; but she crept towards it on her hands
and knees, and called to him as loud as she could call. She listened,
but no sound replied. She called again and listened; still no answering
sound. She did this, twenty, thirty times. She took a little clod of
earth from the broken ground where he had stumbled, and threw it in. She
could not hear it fall.
The wide prospect, so beautiful in its stillness but a few minutes ago,
almost carried despair to her brave heart, as she rose and looked all
round her, seeing no help. ‘Rachael, we must lose not a moment. We must
go in different directions, seeking aid. You shall go by the way we have
come, and I will go forward by the path. Tell any one you see, and every
one what has happened. Think of Stephen, think of Stephen!’
She knew by Rachael’s face that she might trust her now. And after
standing for a moment to see her running, wringing her hands as she ran,
she turned and went upon her own search; she stopped at the hedge to tie
her shawl there as a guide to the place, then threw her bonnet aside, and
ran as she had never run before.
Run, Sissy, run, in Heaven’s name! Don’t stop for breath. Run, run!
Quickening herself by carrying such entreaties in her thoughts, she ran
from field to field, and lane to lane, and place to place, as she had
never run before; until she came to a shed by an engine-house, where two
men lay in the shade, asleep on straw.
First to wake them, and next to tell them, all so wild and breathless as
she was, what had brought her there, were difficulties; but they no
sooner understood her than their spirits were on fire like hers. One of
the men was in a drunken slumber, but on his comrade’s shouting to him
that a man had fallen down the Old Hell Shaft, he started out to a pool
of dirty water, put his head in it, and came back sober.
With these two men she ran to another half-a-mile further, and with that
one to another, while they ran elsewhere. Then a horse was found; and
she got another man to ride for life or death to the railroad, and send a
message to Louisa, which she wrote and gave him. By this time a whole
village was up: and windlasses, ropes, poles, candles, lanterns, all
things necessary, were fast collecting and being brought into one place,
to be carried to the Old Hell Shaft.
It seemed now hours and hours since she had left the lost man lying in
the grave where he had been buried alive. She could not bear to remain
away from it any longer—it was like deserting him—and she hurried swiftly
back, accompanied by half-a-dozen labourers, including the drunken man
whom the news had sobered, and who was the best man of all. When they
came to the Old Hell Shaft, they found it as lonely as she had left it.
The men called and listened as she had done, and examined the edge of the
chasm, and settled how it had happened, and then sat down to wait until
the implements they wanted should come up.
Every sound of insects in the air, every stirring of the leaves, every
whisper among these men, made Sissy tremble, for she thought it was a cry
at the bottom of the pit. But the wind blew idly over it, and no sound
arose to the surface, and they sat upon the grass, waiting and waiting.
After they had waited some time, straggling people who had heard of the
accident began to come up; then the real help of implements began to
arrive. In the midst of this, Rachael returned; and with her party there
was a surgeon, who brought some wine and medicines. But, the expectation
among the people that the man would be found alive was very slight
indeed.
There being now people enough present to impede the work, the sobered man
put himself at the head of the rest, or was put there by the general
consent, and made a large ring round the Old Hell Shaft, and appointed
men to keep it. Besides such volunteers as were accepted to work, only
Sissy and Rachael were at first permitted within this ring; but, later in
the day, when the message brought an express from Coketown, Mr. Gradgrind
and Louisa, and Mr. Bounderby, and the whelp, were also there.
The sun was four hours lower than when Sissy and Rachael had first sat
down upon the grass, before a means of enabling two men to descend
securely was rigged with poles and ropes. Difficulties had arisen in the
construction of this machine, simple as it was; requisites had been found
wanting, and messages had had to go and return. It was five o’clock in
the afternoon of the bright autumnal Sunday, before a candle was sent
down to try the air, while three or four rough faces stood crowded close
together, attentively watching it: the man at the windlass lowering as
they were told. The candle was brought up again, feebly burning, and
then some water was cast in. Then the bucket was hooked on; and the
sobered man and another got in with lights, giving the word ‘Lower away!’
As the rope went out, tight and strained, and the windlass creaked, there
was not a breath among the one or two hundred men and women looking on,
that came as it was wont to come. The signal was given and the windlass
stopped, with abundant rope to spare. Apparently so long an interval
ensued with the men at the windlass standing idle, that some women
shrieked that another accident had happened! But the surgeon who held
the watch, declared five minutes not to have elapsed yet, and sternly
admonished them to keep silence. He had not well done speaking, when the
windlass was reversed and worked again. Practised eyes knew that it did
not go as heavily as it would if both workmen had been coming up, and
that only one was returning.
The rope came in tight and strained; and ring after ring was coiled upon
the barrel of the windlass, and all eyes were fastened on the pit. The
sobered man was brought up and leaped out briskly on the grass. There
was an universal cry of ‘Alive or dead?’ and then a deep, profound hush.
When he said ‘Alive!’ a great shout arose and many eyes had tears in
them.
‘But he’s hurt very bad,’ he added, as soon as he could make himself
heard again. ‘Where’s doctor? He’s hurt so very bad, sir, that we donno
how to get him up.’
They all consulted together, and looked anxiously at the surgeon, as he
asked some questions, and shook his head on receiving the replies. The
sun was setting now; and the red light in the evening sky touched every
face there, and caused it to be distinctly seen in all its rapt suspense.
The consultation ended in the men returning to the windlass, and the
pitman going down again, carrying the wine and some other small matters
with him. Then the other man came up. In the meantime, under the
surgeon’s directions, some men brought a hurdle, on which others made a
thick bed of spare clothes covered with loose straw, while he himself
contrived some bandages and slings from shawls and handkerchiefs. As
these were made, they were hung upon an arm of the pitman who had last
come up, with instructions how to use them: and as he stood, shown by the
light he carried, leaning his powerful loose hand upon one of the poles,
and sometimes glancing down the pit, and sometimes glancing round upon
the people, he was not the least conspicuous figure in the scene. It was
dark now, and torches were kindled.
It appeared from the little this man said to those about him, which was
quickly repeated all over the circle, that the lost man had fallen upon a
mass of crumbled rubbish with which the pit was half choked up, and that
his fall had been further broken by some jagged earth at the side. He
lay upon his back with one arm doubled under him, and according to his
own belief had hardly stirred since he fell, except that he had moved his
free hand to a side pocket, in which he remembered to have some bread and
meat (of which he had swallowed crumbs), and had likewise scooped up a
little water in it now and then. He had come straight away from his
work, on being written to, and had walked the whole journey; and was on
his way to Mr. Bounderby’s country house after dark, when he fell. He
was crossing that dangerous country at such a dangerous time, because he
was innocent of what was laid to his charge, and couldn’t rest from
coming the nearest way to deliver himself up. The Old Hell Shaft, the
pitman said, with a curse upon it, was worthy of its bad name to the
last; for though Stephen could speak now, he believed it would soon be
found to have mangled the life out of him.
When all was ready, this man, still taking his last hurried charges from
his comrades and the surgeon after the windlass had begun to lower him,
disappeared into the pit. The rope went out as before, the signal was
made as before, and the windlass stopped. No man removed his hand from
it now. Every one waited with his grasp set, and his body bent down to
the work, ready to reverse and wind in. At length the signal was given,
and all the ring leaned forward.
For, now, the rope came in, tightened and strained to its utmost as it
appeared, and the men turned heavily, and the windlass complained. It
was scarcely endurable to look at the rope, and think of its giving way.
But, ring after ring was coiled upon the barrel of the windlass safely,
and the connecting chains appeared, and finally the bucket with the two
men holding on at the sides—a sight to make the head swim, and oppress
the heart—and tenderly supporting between them, slung and tied within,
the figure of a poor, crushed, human creature.
A low murmur of pity went round the throng, and the women wept aloud, as
this form, almost without form, was moved very slowly from its iron
deliverance, and laid upon the bed of straw. At first, none but the
surgeon went close to it. He did what he could in its adjustment on the
couch, but the best that he could do was to cover it. That gently done,
he called to him Rachael and Sissy. And at that time the pale, worn,
patient face was seen looking up at the sky, with the broken right hand
lying bare on the outside of the covering garments, as if waiting to be
taken by another hand.
They gave him drink, moistened his face with water, and administered some
drops of cordial and wine. Though he lay quite motionless looking up at
the sky, he smiled and said, ‘Rachael.’ She stooped down on the grass at
his side, and bent over him until her eyes were between his and the sky,
for he could not so much as turn them to look at her.
‘Rachael, my dear.’
She took his hand. He smiled again and said, ‘Don’t let ’t go.’
‘Thou’rt in great pain, my own dear Stephen?’
‘I ha’ been, but not now. I ha’ been—dreadful, and dree, and long, my
dear—but ’tis ower now. Ah, Rachael, aw a muddle! Fro’ first to last, a
muddle!’
The spectre of his old look seemed to pass as he said the word.
‘I ha’ fell into th’ pit, my dear, as have cost wi’in the knowledge o’
old fok now livin, hundreds and hundreds o’ men’s lives—fathers, sons,
brothers, dear to thousands an’ thousands, an’ keeping ’em fro’ want and
hunger. I ha’ fell into a pit that ha’ been wi’ th’ Firedamp crueller
than battle. I ha’ read on ’t in the public petition, as onny one may
read, fro’ the men that works in pits, in which they ha’ pray’n and
pray’n the lawmakers for Christ’s sake not to let their work be murder to
’em, but to spare ’em for th’ wives and children that they loves as well
as gentlefok loves theirs. When it were in work, it killed wi’out need;
when ’tis let alone, it kills wi’out need. See how we die an’ no need,
one way an’ another—in a muddle—every day!’
He faintly said it, without any anger against any one. Merely as the
truth.
‘Thy little sister, Rachael, thou hast not forgot her. Thou’rt not like
to forget her now, and me so nigh her. Thou know’st—poor, patient,
suff’rin, dear—how thou didst work for her, seet’n all day long in her
little chair at thy winder, and how she died, young and misshapen, awlung
o’ sickly air as had’n no need to be, an’ awlung o’ working people’s
miserable homes. A muddle! Aw a muddle!’
Louisa approached him; but he could not see her, lying with his face
turned up to the night sky.
‘If aw th’ things that tooches us, my dear, was not so muddled, I
should’n ha’ had’n need to coom heer. If we was not in a muddle among
ourseln, I should’n ha’ been, by my own fellow weavers and workin’
brothers, so mistook. If Mr. Bounderby had ever know’d me right—if he’d
ever know’d me at aw—he would’n ha’ took’n offence wi’ me. He would’n
ha’ suspect’n me. But look up yonder, Rachael! Look aboove!’
Following his eyes, she saw that he was gazing at a star.
[Picture: Stephen Blackpool recovered from the Old Hell Shaft]
‘It ha’ shined upon me,’ he said reverently, ‘in my pain and trouble down
below. It ha’ shined into my mind. I ha’ look’n at ’t and thowt o’
thee, Rachael, till the muddle in my mind have cleared awa, above a bit,
I hope. If soom ha’ been wantin’ in unnerstan’in me better, I, too, ha’
been wantin’ in unnerstan’in them better. When I got thy letter, I
easily believen that what the yoong ledy sen and done to me, and what her
brother sen and done to me, was one, and that there were a wicked plot
betwixt ’em. When I fell, I were in anger wi’ her, an’ hurryin on t’ be
as onjust t’ her as oothers was t’ me. But in our judgments, like as in
our doins, we mun bear and forbear. In my pain an’ trouble, lookin up
yonder,—wi’ it shinin on me—I ha’ seen more clear, and ha’ made it my
dyin prayer that aw th’ world may on’y coom toogether more, an’ get a
better unnerstan’in o’ one another, than when I were in ’t my own weak
seln.’
Louisa hearing what he said, bent over him on the opposite side to
Rachael, so that he could see her.
‘You ha’ heard?’ he said, after a few moments’ silence. ‘I ha’ not
forgot you, ledy.’
‘Yes, Stephen, I have heard you. And your prayer is mine.’
‘You ha’ a father. Will yo tak’ a message to him?’
‘He is here,’ said Louisa, with dread. ‘Shall I bring him to you?’
‘If yo please.’
Louisa returned with her father. Standing hand-in-hand, they both looked
down upon the solemn countenance.
‘Sir, yo will clear me an’ mak my name good wi’ aw men. This I leave to
yo.’
Mr. Gradgrind was troubled and asked how?
‘Sir,’ was the reply: ‘yor son will tell yo how. Ask him. I mak no
charges: I leave none ahint me: not a single word. I ha’ seen an’ spok’n
wi’ yor son, one night. I ask no more o’ yo than that yo clear me—an’ I
trust to yo to do ’t.’
The bearers being now ready to carry him away, and the surgeon being
anxious for his removal, those who had torches or lanterns, prepared to
go in front of the litter. Before it was raised, and while they were
arranging how to go, he said to Rachael, looking upward at the star:
‘Often as I coom to myseln, and found it shinin’ on me down there in my
trouble, I thowt it were the star as guided to Our Saviour’s home. I
awmust think it be the very star!’
They lifted him up, and he was overjoyed to find that they were about to
take him in the direction whither the star seemed to him to lead.
‘Rachael, beloved lass! Don’t let go my hand. We may walk toogether
t’night, my dear!’
‘I will hold thy hand, and keep beside thee, Stephen, all the way.’
‘Bless thee! Will soombody be pleased to coover my face!’
They carried him very gently along the fields, and down the lanes, and
over the wide landscape; Rachael always holding the hand in hers. Very
few whispers broke the mournful silence. It was soon a funeral
procession. The star had shown him where to find the God of the poor;
and through humility, and sorrow, and forgiveness, he had gone to his
Redeemer’s rest.
CHAPTER VII
WHELP-HUNTING
BEFORE the ring formed round the Old Hell Shaft was broken, one figure
had disappeared from within it. Mr. Bounderby and his shadow had not
stood near Louisa, who held her father’s arm, but in a retired place by
themselves. When Mr. Gradgrind was summoned to the couch, Sissy,
attentive to all that happened, slipped behind that wicked shadow—a sight
in the horror of his face, if there had been eyes there for any sight but
one—and whispered in his ear. Without turning his head, he conferred
with her a few moments, and vanished. Thus the whelp had gone out of the
circle before the people moved.
When the father reached home, he sent a message to Mr. Bounderby’s,
desiring his son to come to him directly. The reply was, that Mr.
Bounderby having missed him in the crowd, and seeing nothing of him
since, had supposed him to be at Stone Lodge.
‘I believe, father,’ said Louisa, ‘he will not come back to town
to-night.’ Mr. Gradgrind turned away, and said no more.
In the morning, he went down to the Bank himself as soon as it was
opened, and seeing his son’s place empty (he had not the courage to look
in at first) went back along the street to meet Mr. Bounderby on his way
there. To whom he said that, for reasons he would soon explain, but
entreated not then to be asked for, he had found it necessary to employ
his son at a distance for a little while. Also, that he was charged with
the duty of vindicating Stephen Blackpool’s memory, and declaring the
thief. Mr. Bounderby quite confounded, stood stock-still in the street
after his father-in-law had left him, swelling like an immense
soap-bubble, without its beauty.
Mr. Gradgrind went home, locked himself in his room, and kept it all that
day. When Sissy and Louisa tapped at his door, he said, without opening
it, ‘Not now, my dears; in the evening.’ On their return in the evening,
he said, ‘I am not able yet—to-morrow.’ He ate nothing all day, and had
no candle after dark; and they heard him walking to and fro late at
night.
But, in the morning he appeared at breakfast at the usual hour, and took
his usual place at the table. Aged and bent he looked, and quite bowed
down; and yet he looked a wiser man, and a better man, than in the days
when in this life he wanted nothing—but Facts. Before he left the room,
he appointed a time for them to come to him; and so, with his gray head
drooping, went away.
‘Dear father,’ said Louisa, when they kept their appointment, ‘you have
three young children left. They will be different, I will be different
yet, with Heaven’s help.’
She gave her hand to Sissy, as if she meant with her help too.
‘Your wretched brother,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Do you think he had
planned this robbery, when he went with you to the lodging?’
‘I fear so, father. I know he had wanted money very much, and had spent
a great deal.’
‘The poor man being about to leave the town, it came into his evil brain
to cast suspicion on him?’
‘I think it must have flashed upon him while he sat there, father. For I
asked him to go there with me. The visit did not originate with him.’
‘He had some conversation with the poor man. Did he take him aside?’
‘He took him out of the room. I asked him afterwards, why he had done
so, and he made a plausible excuse; but since last night, father, and
when I remember the circumstances by its light, I am afraid I can imagine
too truly what passed between them.’
‘Let me know,’ said her father, ‘if your thoughts present your guilty
brother in the same dark view as mine.’
‘I fear, father,’ hesitated Louisa, ‘that he must have made some
representation to Stephen Blackpool—perhaps in my name, perhaps in his
own—which induced him to do in good faith and honesty, what he had never
done before, and to wait about the Bank those two or three nights before
he left the town.’
‘Too plain!’ returned the father. ‘Too plain!’
He shaded his face, and remained silent for some moments. Recovering
himself, he said:
‘And now, how is he to be found? How is he to be saved from justice? In
the few hours that I can possibly allow to elapse before I publish the
truth, how is he to be found by us, and only by us? Ten thousand pounds
could not effect it.’
‘Sissy has effected it, father.’
He raised his eyes to where she stood, like a good fairy in his house,
and said in a tone of softened gratitude and grateful kindness, ‘It is
always you, my child!’
‘We had our fears,’ Sissy explained, glancing at Louisa, ‘before
yesterday; and when I saw you brought to the side of the litter last
night, and heard what passed (being close to Rachael all the time), I
went to him when no one saw, and said to him, “Don’t look at me. See
where your father is. Escape at once, for his sake and your own!” He
was in a tremble before I whispered to him, and he started and trembled
more then, and said, “Where can I go? I have very little money, and I
don’t know who will hide me!” I thought of father’s old circus. I have
not forgotten where Mr. Sleary goes at this time of year, and I read of
him in a paper only the other day. I told him to hurry there, and tell
his name, and ask Mr. Sleary to hide him till I came. “I’ll get to him
before the morning,” he said. And I saw him shrink away among the
people.’
‘Thank Heaven!’ exclaimed his father. ‘He may be got abroad yet.’
It was the more hopeful as the town to which Sissy had directed him was
within three hours’ journey of Liverpool, whence he could be swiftly
dispatched to any part of the world. But, caution being necessary in
communicating with him—for there was a greater danger every moment of his
being suspected now, and nobody could be sure at heart but that Mr.
Bounderby himself, in a bullying vein of public zeal, might play a Roman
part—it was consented that Sissy and Louisa should repair to the place in
question, by a circuitous course, alone; and that the unhappy father,
setting forth in an opposite direction, should get round to the same
bourne by another and wider route. It was further agreed that he should
not present himself to Mr. Sleary, lest his intentions should be
mistrusted, or the intelligence of his arrival should cause his son to
take flight anew; but, that the communication should be left to Sissy and
Louisa to open; and that they should inform the cause of so much misery
and disgrace, of his father’s being at hand and of the purpose for which
they had come. When these arrangements had been well considered and were
fully understood by all three, it was time to begin to carry them into
execution. Early in the afternoon, Mr. Gradgrind walked direct from his
own house into the country, to be taken up on the line by which he was to
travel; and at night the remaining two set forth upon their different
course, encouraged by not seeing any face they knew.
The two travelled all night, except when they were left, for odd numbers
of minutes, at branch-places, up illimitable flights of steps, or down
wells—which was the only variety of those branches—and, early in the
morning, were turned out on a swamp, a mile or two from the town they
sought. From this dismal spot they were rescued by a savage old
postilion, who happened to be up early, kicking a horse in a fly: and so
were smuggled into the town by all the back lanes where the pigs lived:
which, although not a magnificent or even savoury approach, was, as is
usual in such cases, the legitimate highway.
The first thing they saw on entering the town was the skeleton of
Sleary’s Circus. The company had departed for another town more than
twenty miles off, and had opened there last night. The connection
between the two places was by a hilly turnpike-road, and the travelling
on that road was very slow. Though they took but a hasty breakfast, and
no rest (which it would have been in vain to seek under such anxious
circumstances), it was noon before they began to find the bills of
Sleary’s Horse-riding on barns and walls, and one o’clock when they
stopped in the market-place.
A Grand Morning Performance by the Riders, commencing at that very hour,
was in course of announcement by the bellman as they set their feet upon
the stones of the street. Sissy recommended that, to avoid making
inquiries and attracting attention in the town, they should present
themselves to pay at the door. If Mr. Sleary were taking the money, he
would be sure to know her, and would proceed with discretion. If he were
not, he would be sure to see them inside; and, knowing what he had done
with the fugitive, would proceed with discretion still.
Therefore, they repaired, with fluttering hearts, to the well-remembered
booth. The flag with the inscription SLEARY’S HORSE-RIDING was there;
and the Gothic niche was there; but Mr. Sleary was not there. Master
Kidderminster, grown too maturely turfy to be received by the wildest
credulity as Cupid any more, had yielded to the invincible force of
circumstances (and his beard), and, in the capacity of a man who made
himself generally useful, presided on this occasion over the
exchequer—having also a drum in reserve, on which to expend his leisure
moments and superfluous forces. In the extreme sharpness of his look out
for base coin, Mr. Kidderminster, as at present situated, never saw
anything but money; so Sissy passed him unrecognised, and they went in.
The Emperor of Japan, on a steady old white horse stencilled with black
spots, was twirling five wash-hand basins at once, as it is the favourite
recreation of that monarch to do. Sissy, though well acquainted with his
Royal line, had no personal knowledge of the present Emperor, and his
reign was peaceful. Miss Josephine Sleary, in her celebrated graceful
Equestrian Tyrolean Flower Act, was then announced by a new clown (who
humorously said Cauliflower Act), and Mr. Sleary appeared, leading her
in.
Mr. Sleary had only made one cut at the Clown with his long whip-lash,
and the Clown had only said, ‘If you do it again, I’ll throw the horse at
you!’ when Sissy was recognised both by father and daughter. But they
got through the Act with great self-possession; and Mr. Sleary, saving
for the first instant, conveyed no more expression into his locomotive
eye than into his fixed one. The performance seemed a little long to
Sissy and Louisa, particularly when it stopped to afford the Clown an
opportunity of telling Mr. Sleary (who said ‘Indeed, sir!’ to all his
observations in the calmest way, and with his eye on the house) about two
legs sitting on three legs looking at one leg, when in came four legs,
and laid hold of one leg, and up got two legs, caught hold of three legs,
and threw ’em at four legs, who ran away with one leg. For, although an
ingenious Allegory relating to a butcher, a three-legged stool, a dog,
and a leg of mutton, this narrative consumed time; and they were in great
suspense. At last, however, little fair-haired Josephine made her
curtsey amid great applause; and the Clown, left alone in the ring, had
just warmed himself, and said, ‘Now _I_’ll have a turn!’ when Sissy was
touched on the shoulder, and beckoned out.
She took Louisa with her; and they were received by Mr. Sleary in a very
little private apartment, with canvas sides, a grass floor, and a wooden
ceiling all aslant, on which the box company stamped their approbation,
as if they were coming through. ‘Thethilia,’ said Mr. Sleary, who had
brandy and water at hand, ‘it doth me good to thee you. You wath alwayth
a favourite with uth, and you’ve done uth credith thinth the old timeth
I’m thure. You mutht thee our people, my dear, afore we thpeak of
bithnith, or they’ll break their hearth—ethpethially the women. Here’th
Jothphine hath been and got married to E. W. B. Childerth, and thee hath
got a boy, and though he’th only three yearth old, he thtickth on to any
pony you can bring againtht him. He’th named The Little Wonder of
Thcolathtic Equitation; and if you don’t hear of that boy at Athley’th,
you’ll hear of him at Parith. And you recollect Kidderminthter, that
wath thought to be rather thweet upon yourthelf? Well. He’th married
too. Married a widder. Old enough to be hith mother. Thee wath
Tightrope, thee wath, and now thee’th nothing—on accounth of fat.
They’ve got two children, tho we’re thtrong in the Fairy bithnith and the
Nurthery dodge. If you wath to thee our Children in the Wood, with their
father and mother both a dyin’ on a horthe—their uncle a retheiving of
’em ath hith wardth, upon a horthe—themthelvth both a goin’ a
black-berryin’ on a horthe—and the Robinth a coming in to cover ’em with
leavth, upon a horthe—you’d thay it wath the completetht thing ath ever
you thet your eyeth on! And you remember Emma Gordon, my dear, ath wath
a’motht a mother to you? Of courthe you do; I needn’t athk. Well!
Emma, thee lotht her huthband. He wath throw’d a heavy back-fall off a
Elephant in a thort of a Pagoda thing ath the Thultan of the Indieth, and
he never got the better of it; and thee married a thecond time—married a
Cheethemonger ath fell in love with her from the front—and he’th a
Overtheer and makin’ a fortun.’
These various changes, Mr. Sleary, very short of breath now, related with
great heartiness, and with a wonderful kind of innocence, considering
what a bleary and brandy-and-watery old veteran he was. Afterwards he
brought in Josephine, and E. W. B. Childers (rather deeply lined in the
jaws by daylight), and the Little Wonder of Scholastic Equitation, and in
a word, all the company. Amazing creatures they were in Louisa’s eyes,
so white and pink of complexion, so scant of dress, and so demonstrative
of leg; but it was very agreeable to see them crowding about Sissy, and
very natural in Sissy to be unable to refrain from tears.
‘There! Now Thethilia hath kithd all the children, and hugged all the
women, and thaken handth all round with all the men, clear, every one of
you, and ring in the band for the thecond part!’
As soon as they were gone, he continued in a low tone. ‘Now, Thethilia,
I don’t athk to know any thecreth, but I thuppothe I may conthider thith
to be Mith Thquire.’
‘This is his sister. Yes.’
‘And t’other on’th daughter. That’h what I mean. Hope I thee you well,
mith. And I hope the Thquire’th well?’
‘My father will be here soon,’ said Louisa, anxious to bring him to the
point. ‘Is my brother safe?’
‘Thafe and thound!’ he replied. ‘I want you jutht to take a peep at the
Ring, mith, through here. Thethilia, you know the dodgeth; find a
thpy-hole for yourthelf.’
They each looked through a chink in the boards.
‘That’h Jack the Giant Killer—piethe of comic infant bithnith,’ said
Sleary. ‘There’th a property-houthe, you thee, for Jack to hide in;
there’th my Clown with a thauthepan-lid and a thpit, for Jack’th
thervant; there’th little Jack himthelf in a thplendid thoot of armour;
there’th two comic black thervanth twithe ath big ath the houthe, to
thtand by it and to bring it in and clear it; and the Giant (a very
ecthpenthive bathket one), he an’t on yet. Now, do you thee ’em all?’
‘Yes,’ they both said.
‘Look at ’em again,’ said Sleary, ‘look at ’em well. You thee em all?
Very good. Now, mith;’ he put a form for them to sit on; ‘I have my
opinionth, and the Thquire your father hath hith. I don’t want to know
what your brother’th been up to; ith better for me not to know. All I
thay ith, the Thquire hath thtood by Thethilia, and I’ll thtand by the
Thquire. Your brother ith one them black thervanth.’
Louisa uttered an exclamation, partly of distress, partly of
satisfaction.
‘Ith a fact,’ said Sleary, ‘and even knowin’ it, you couldn’t put your
finger on him. Let the Thquire come. I thall keep your brother here
after the performanth. I thant undreth him, nor yet wath hith paint off.
Let the Thquire come here after the performanth, or come here yourthelf
after the performanth, and you thall find your brother, and have the
whole plathe to talk to him in. Never mind the lookth of him, ath long
ath he’th well hid.’
Louisa, with many thanks and with a lightened load, detained Mr. Sleary
no longer then. She left her love for her brother, with her eyes full of
tears; and she and Sissy went away until later in the afternoon.
Mr. Gradgrind arrived within an hour afterwards. He too had encountered
no one whom he knew; and was now sanguine with Sleary’s assistance, of
getting his disgraced son to Liverpool in the night. As neither of the
three could be his companion without almost identifying him under any
disguise, he prepared a letter to a correspondent whom he could trust,
beseeching him to ship the bearer off at any cost, to North or South
America, or any distant part of the world to which he could be the most
speedily and privately dispatched.
This done, they walked about, waiting for the Circus to be quite vacated;
not only by the audience, but by the company and by the horses. After
watching it a long time, they saw Mr. Sleary bring out a chair and sit
down by the side-door, smoking; as if that were his signal that they
might approach.
‘Your thervant, Thquire,’ was his cautious salutation as they passed in.
‘If you want me you’ll find me here. You muthn’t mind your thon having a
comic livery on.’
They all three went in; and Mr. Gradgrind sat down forlorn, on the
Clown’s performing chair in the middle of the ring. On one of the back
benches, remote in the subdued light and the strangeness of the place,
sat the villainous whelp, sulky to the last, whom he had the misery to
call his son.
In a preposterous coat, like a beadle’s, with cuffs and flaps exaggerated
to an unspeakable extent; in an immense waistcoat, knee-breeches, buckled
shoes, and a mad cocked hat; with nothing fitting him, and everything of
coarse material, moth-eaten and full of holes; with seams in his black
face, where fear and heat had started through the greasy composition
daubed all over it; anything so grimly, detestably, ridiculously shameful
as the whelp in his comic livery, Mr. Gradgrind never could by any other
means have believed in, weighable and measurable fact though it was. And
one of his model children had come to this!
At first the whelp would not draw any nearer, but persisted in remaining
up there by himself. Yielding at length, if any concession so sullenly
made can be called yielding, to the entreaties of Sissy—for Louisa he
disowned altogether—he came down, bench by bench, until he stood in the
sawdust, on the verge of the circle, as far as possible, within its
limits from where his father sat.
‘How was this done?’ asked the father.
‘How was what done?’ moodily answered the son.
‘This robbery,’ said the father, raising his voice upon the word.
‘I forced the safe myself over night, and shut it up ajar before I went
away. I had had the key that was found, made long before. I dropped it
that morning, that it might be supposed to have been used. I didn’t take
the money all at once. I pretended to put my balance away every night,
but I didn’t. Now you know all about it.’
‘If a thunderbolt had fallen on me,’ said the father, ‘it would have
shocked me less than this!’
‘I don’t see why,’ grumbled the son. ‘So many people are employed in
situations of trust; so many people, out of so many, will be dishonest.
I have heard you talk, a hundred times, of its being a law. How can _I_
help laws? You have comforted others with such things, father. Comfort
yourself!’
The father buried his face in his hands, and the son stood in his
disgraceful grotesqueness, biting straw: his hands, with the black partly
worn away inside, looking like the hands of a monkey. The evening was
fast closing in; and from time to time, he turned the whites of his eyes
restlessly and impatiently towards his father. They were the only parts
of his face that showed any life or expression, the pigment upon it was
so thick.
‘You must be got to Liverpool, and sent abroad.’
‘I suppose I must. I can’t be more miserable anywhere,’ whimpered the
whelp, ‘than I have been here, ever since I can remember. That’s one
thing.’
Mr. Gradgrind went to the door, and returned with Sleary, to whom he
submitted the question, How to get this deplorable object away?
‘Why, I’ve been thinking of it, Thquire. There’th not muth time to
lothe, tho you muth thay yeth or no. Ith over twenty mileth to the rail.
There’th a coath in half an hour, that goeth _to_ the rail, ‘purpothe to
cath the mail train. That train will take him right to Liverpool.’
‘But look at him,’ groaned Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Will any coach—’
‘I don’t mean that he thould go in the comic livery,’ said Sleary. ‘Thay
the word, and I’ll make a Jothkin of him, out of the wardrobe, in five
minutes.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Mr. Gradgrind.
‘A Jothkin—a Carter. Make up your mind quick, Thquire. There’ll be beer
to feth. I’ve never met with nothing but beer ath’ll ever clean a comic
blackamoor.’
Mr. Gradgrind rapidly assented; Mr. Sleary rapidly turned out from a box,
a smock frock, a felt hat, and other essentials; the whelp rapidly
changed clothes behind a screen of baize; Mr. Sleary rapidly brought
beer, and washed him white again.
‘Now,’ said Sleary, ‘come along to the coath, and jump up behind; I’ll go
with you there, and they’ll thuppothe you one of my people. Thay
farewell to your family, and tharp’th the word.’ With which he
delicately retired.
‘Here is your letter,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘All necessary means will be
provided for you. Atone, by repentance and better conduct, for the
shocking action you have committed, and the dreadful consequences to
which it has led. Give me your hand, my poor boy, and may God forgive
you as I do!’
The culprit was moved to a few abject tears by these words and their
pathetic tone. But, when Louisa opened her arms, he repulsed her afresh.
‘Not you. I don’t want to have anything to say to you!’
‘O Tom, Tom, do we end so, after all my love!’
‘After all your love!’ he returned, obdurately. ‘Pretty love! Leaving
old Bounderby to himself, and packing my best friend Mr. Harthouse off,
and going home just when I was in the greatest danger. Pretty love that!
Coming out with every word about our having gone to that place, when you
saw the net was gathering round me. Pretty love that! You have
regularly given me up. You never cared for me.’
‘Tharp’th the word!’ said Sleary, at the door.
They all confusedly went out: Louisa crying to him that she forgave him,
and loved him still, and that he would one day be sorry to have left her
so, and glad to think of these her last words, far away: when some one
ran against them. Mr. Gradgrind and Sissy, who were both before him
while his sister yet clung to his shoulder, stopped and recoiled.
For, there was Bitzer, out of breath, his thin lips parted, his thin
nostrils distended, his white eyelashes quivering, his colourless face
more colourless than ever, as if he ran himself into a white heat, when
other people ran themselves into a glow. There he stood, panting and
heaving, as if he had never stopped since the night, now long ago, when
he had run them down before.
‘I’m sorry to interfere with your plans,’ said Bitzer, shaking his head,
‘but I can’t allow myself to be done by horse-riders. I must have young
Mr. Tom; he mustn’t be got away by horse-riders; here he is in a smock
frock, and I must have him!’
By the collar, too, it seemed. For, so he took possession of him.
CHAPTER VIII
PHILOSOPHICAL
THEY went back into the booth, Sleary shutting the door to keep intruders
out. Bitzer, still holding the paralysed culprit by the collar, stood in
the Ring, blinking at his old patron through the darkness of the
twilight.
‘Bitzer,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, broken down, and miserably submissive to
him, ‘have you a heart?’
‘The circulation, sir,’ returned Bitzer, smiling at the oddity of the
question, ‘couldn’t be carried on without one. No man, sir, acquainted
with the facts established by Harvey relating to the circulation of the
blood, can doubt that I have a heart.’
‘Is it accessible,’ cried Mr. Gradgrind, ‘to any compassionate
influence?’
‘It is accessible to Reason, sir,’ returned the excellent young man.
‘And to nothing else.’
They stood looking at each other; Mr. Gradgrind’s face as white as the
pursuer’s.
‘What motive—even what motive in reason—can you have for preventing the
escape of this wretched youth,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘and crushing his
miserable father? See his sister here. Pity us!’
‘Sir,’ returned Bitzer, in a very business-like and logical manner,
‘since you ask me what motive I have in reason, for taking young Mr. Tom
back to Coketown, it is only reasonable to let you know. I have
suspected young Mr. Tom of this bank-robbery from the first. I had had
my eye upon him before that time, for I knew his ways. I have kept my
observations to myself, but I have made them; and I have got ample proofs
against him now, besides his running away, and besides his own
confession, which I was just in time to overhear. I had the pleasure of
watching your house yesterday morning, and following you here. I am
going to take young Mr. Tom back to Coketown, in order to deliver him
over to Mr. Bounderby. Sir, I have no doubt whatever that Mr. Bounderby
will then promote me to young Mr. Tom’s situation. And I wish to have
his situation, sir, for it will be a rise to me, and will do me good.’
‘If this is solely a question of self-interest with you—’ Mr. Gradgrind
began.
‘I beg your pardon for interrupting you, sir,’ returned Bitzer; ‘but I am
sure you know that the whole social system is a question of
self-interest. What you must always appeal to, is a person’s
self-interest. It’s your only hold. We are so constituted. I was
brought up in that catechism when I was very young, sir, as you are
aware.’
‘What sum of money,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘will you set against your
expected promotion?’
‘Thank you, sir,’ returned Bitzer, ‘for hinting at the proposal; but I
will not set any sum against it. Knowing that your clear head would
propose that alternative, I have gone over the calculations in my mind;
and I find that to compound a felony, even on very high terms indeed,
would not be as safe and good for me as my improved prospects in the
Bank.’
‘Bitzer,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, stretching out his hands as though he would
have said, See how miserable I am! ‘Bitzer, I have but one chance left
to soften you. You were many years at my school. If, in remembrance of
the pains bestowed upon you there, you can persuade yourself in any
degree to disregard your present interest and release my son, I entreat
and pray you to give him the benefit of that remembrance.’
‘I really wonder, sir,’ rejoined the old pupil in an argumentative
manner, ‘to find you taking a position so untenable. My schooling was
paid for; it was a bargain; and when I came away, the bargain ended.’
It was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that
everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give
anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was
to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every
inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a
bargain across a counter. And if we didn’t get to Heaven that way, it
was not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there.
‘I don’t deny,’ added Bitzer, ‘that my schooling was cheap. But that
comes right, sir. I was made in the cheapest market, and have to dispose
of myself in the dearest.’
He was a little troubled here, by Louisa and Sissy crying.
‘Pray don’t do that,’ said he, ‘it’s of no use doing that: it only
worries. You seem to think that I have some animosity against young Mr.
Tom; whereas I have none at all. I am only going, on the reasonable
grounds I have mentioned, to take him back to Coketown. If he was to
resist, I should set up the cry of Stop thief! But, he won’t resist, you
may depend upon it.’
Mr. Sleary, who with his mouth open and his rolling eye as immovably
jammed in his head as his fixed one, had listened to these doctrines with
profound attention, here stepped forward.
‘Thquire, you know perfectly well, and your daughter knowth perfectly
well (better than you, becauthe I thed it to her), that I didn’t know
what your thon had done, and that I didn’t want to know—I thed it wath
better not, though I only thought, then, it wath thome thkylarking.
However, thith young man having made it known to be a robbery of a bank,
why, that’h a theriouth thing; muth too theriouth a thing for me to
compound, ath thith young man hath very properly called it.
Conthequently, Thquire, you muthn’t quarrel with me if I take thith young
man’th thide, and thay he’th right and there’th no help for it. But I
tell you what I’ll do, Thquire; I’ll drive your thon and thith young man
over to the rail, and prevent expothure here. I can’t conthent to do
more, but I’ll do that.’
Fresh lamentations from Louisa, and deeper affliction on Mr. Gradgrind’s
part, followed this desertion of them by their last friend. But, Sissy
glanced at him with great attention; nor did she in her own breast
misunderstand him. As they were all going out again, he favoured her
with one slight roll of his movable eye, desiring her to linger behind.
As he locked the door, he said excitedly:
‘The Thquire thtood by you, Thethilia, and I’ll thtand by the Thquire.
More than that: thith ith a prethiouth rathcal, and belongth to that
bluthtering Cove that my people nearly pitht out o’ winder. It’ll be a
dark night; I’ve got a horthe that’ll do anything but thpeak; I’ve got a
pony that’ll go fifteen mile an hour with Childerth driving of him; I’ve
got a dog that’ll keep a man to one plathe four-and-twenty hourth. Get a
word with the young Thquire. Tell him, when he theeth our horthe begin
to danthe, not to be afraid of being thpilt, but to look out for a
pony-gig coming up. Tell him, when he theeth that gig clothe by, to jump
down, and it’ll take him off at a rattling pathe. If my dog leth thith
young man thtir a peg on foot, I give him leave to go. And if my horthe
ever thtirth from that thpot where he beginth a danthing, till the
morning—I don’t know him?—Tharp’th the word!’
The word was so sharp, that in ten minutes Mr. Childers, sauntering about
the market-place in a pair of slippers, had his cue, and Mr. Sleary’s
equipage was ready. It was a fine sight, to behold the learned dog
barking round it, and Mr. Sleary instructing him, with his one
practicable eye, that Bitzer was the object of his particular attentions.
Soon after dark they all three got in and started; the learned dog (a
formidable creature) already pinning Bitzer with his eye, and sticking
close to the wheel on his side, that he might be ready for him in the
event of his showing the slightest disposition to alight.
The other three sat up at the inn all night in great suspense. At eight
o’clock in the morning Mr. Sleary and the dog reappeared: both in high
spirits.
‘All right, Thquire!’ said Mr. Sleary, ‘your thon may be aboard-a-thip by
thith time. Childerth took him off, an hour and a half after we left
there latht night. The horthe danthed the polka till he wath dead beat
(he would have walthed if he hadn’t been in harneth), and then I gave him
the word and he went to thleep comfortable. When that prethiouth young
Rathcal thed he’d go for’ard afoot, the dog hung on to hith
neck-hankercher with all four legth in the air and pulled him down and
rolled him over. Tho he come back into the drag, and there he that,
’till I turned the horthe’th head, at half-patht thixth thith morning.’
Mr. Gradgrind overwhelmed him with thanks, of course; and hinted as
delicately as he could, at a handsome remuneration in money.
‘I don’t want money mythelf, Thquire; but Childerth ith a family man, and
if you wath to like to offer him a five-pound note, it mightn’t be
unactheptable. Likewithe if you wath to thtand a collar for the dog, or
a thet of bellth for the horthe, I thould be very glad to take ’em.
Brandy and water I alwayth take.’ He had already called for a glass, and
now called for another. ‘If you wouldn’t think it going too far,
Thquire, to make a little thpread for the company at about three and
thixth ahead, not reckoning Luth, it would make ’em happy.’
All these little tokens of his gratitude, Mr. Gradgrind very willingly
undertook to render. Though he thought them far too slight, he said, for
such a service.
‘Very well, Thquire; then, if you’ll only give a Horthe-riding, a
bethpeak, whenever you can, you’ll more than balanthe the account. Now,
Thquire, if your daughter will ethcuthe me, I thould like one parting
word with you.’
Louisa and Sissy withdrew into an adjoining room; Mr. Sleary, stirring
and drinking his brandy and water as he stood, went on:
‘Thquire,—you don’t need to be told that dogth ith wonderful animalth.’
‘Their instinct,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘is surprising.’
‘Whatever you call it—and I’m bletht if _I_ know what to call it’—said
Sleary, ‘it ith athtonithing. The way in whith a dog’ll find you—the
dithtanthe he’ll come!’
‘His scent,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘being so fine.’
‘I’m bletht if I know what to call it,’ repeated Sleary, shaking his
head, ‘but I have had dogth find me, Thquire, in a way that made me think
whether that dog hadn’t gone to another dog, and thed, “You don’t happen
to know a perthon of the name of Thleary, do you? Perthon of the name of
Thleary, in the Horthe-Riding way—thtout man—game eye?” And whether that
dog mightn’t have thed, “Well, I can’t thay I know him mythelf, but I
know a dog that I think would be likely to be acquainted with him.” And
whether that dog mightn’t have thought it over, and thed, “Thleary,
Thleary! O yeth, to be thure! A friend of mine menthioned him to me at
one time. I can get you hith addreth directly.” In conthequenth of my
being afore the public, and going about tho muth, you thee, there mutht
be a number of dogth acquainted with me, Thquire, that _I_ don’t know!’
Mr. Gradgrind seemed to be quite confounded by this speculation.
‘Any way,’ said Sleary, after putting his lips to his brandy and water,
‘ith fourteen month ago, Thquire, thinthe we wath at Chethter. We wath
getting up our Children in the Wood one morning, when there cometh into
our Ring, by the thtage door, a dog. He had travelled a long way, he
wath in a very bad condithon, he wath lame, and pretty well blind. He
went round to our children, one after another, as if he wath a theeking
for a child he know’d; and then he come to me, and throwd hithelf up
behind, and thtood on hith two forelegth, weak ath he wath, and then he
wagged hith tail and died. Thquire, that dog wath Merrylegth.’
‘Sissy’s father’s dog!’
‘Thethilia’th father’th old dog. Now, Thquire, I can take my oath, from
my knowledge of that dog, that that man wath dead—and buried—afore that
dog come back to me. Joth’phine and Childerth and me talked it over a
long time, whether I thould write or not. But we agreed, “No. There’th
nothing comfortable to tell; why unthettle her mind, and make her
unhappy?” Tho, whether her father bathely detherted her; or whether he
broke hith own heart alone, rather than pull her down along with him;
never will be known, now, Thquire, till—no, not till we know how the
dogth findth uth out!’
‘She keeps the bottle that he sent her for, to this hour; and she will
believe in his affection to the last moment of her life,’ said Mr.
Gradgrind.
‘It theemth to prethent two thingth to a perthon, don’t it, Thquire?’
said Mr. Sleary, musing as he looked down into the depths of his brandy
and water: ‘one, that there ith a love in the world, not all
Thelf-interetht after all, but thomething very different; t’other, that
it hath a way of ith own of calculating or not calculating, whith
thomehow or another ith at leatht ath hard to give a name to, ath the
wayth of the dogth ith!’
Mr. Gradgrind looked out of window, and made no reply. Mr. Sleary
emptied his glass and recalled the ladies.
‘Thethilia my dear, kith me and good-bye! Mith Thquire, to thee you
treating of her like a thithter, and a thithter that you trutht and
honour with all your heart and more, ith a very pretty thight to me. I
hope your brother may live to be better detherving of you, and a greater
comfort to you. Thquire, thake handth, firtht and latht! Don’t be croth
with uth poor vagabondth. People mutht be amuthed. They can’t be
alwayth a learning, nor yet they can’t be alwayth a working, they an’t
made for it. You _mutht_ have uth, Thquire. Do the withe thing and the
kind thing too, and make the betht of uth; not the wurtht!’
‘And I never thought before,’ said Mr. Sleary, putting his head in at the
door again to say it, ‘that I wath tho muth of a Cackler!’
CHAPTER IX
FINAL
IT is a dangerous thing to see anything in the sphere of a vain
blusterer, before the vain blusterer sees it himself. Mr. Bounderby felt
that Mrs. Sparsit had audaciously anticipated him, and presumed to be
wiser than he. Inappeasably indignant with her for her triumphant
discovery of Mrs. Pegler, he turned this presumption, on the part of a
woman in her dependent position, over and over in his mind, until it
accumulated with turning like a great snowball. At last he made the
discovery that to discharge this highly connected female—to have it in
his power to say, ‘She was a woman of family, and wanted to stick to me,
but I wouldn’t have it, and got rid of her’—would be to get the utmost
possible amount of crowning glory out of the connection, and at the same
time to punish Mrs. Sparsit according to her deserts.
Filled fuller than ever, with this great idea, Mr. Bounderby came in to
lunch, and sat himself down in the dining-room of former days, where his
portrait was. Mrs. Sparsit sat by the fire, with her foot in her cotton
stirrup, little thinking whither she was posting.
Since the Pegler affair, this gentlewoman had covered her pity for Mr.
Bounderby with a veil of quiet melancholy and contrition. In virtue
thereof, it had become her habit to assume a woful look, which woful look
she now bestowed upon her patron.
‘What’s the matter now, ma’am?’ said Mr. Bounderby, in a very short,
rough way.
‘Pray, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘do not bite my nose off.’
‘Bite your nose off, ma’am?’ repeated Mr. Bounderby. ‘_Your_ nose!’
meaning, as Mrs. Sparsit conceived, that it was too developed a nose for
the purpose. After which offensive implication, he cut himself a crust
of bread, and threw the knife down with a noise.
Mrs. Sparsit took her foot out of her stirrup, and said, ‘Mr. Bounderby,
sir!’
‘Well, ma’am?’ retorted Mr. Bounderby. ‘What are you staring at?’
‘May I ask, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘have you been ruffled this
morning?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘May I inquire, sir,’ pursued the injured woman, ‘whether _I_ am the
unfortunate cause of your having lost your temper?’
‘Now, I’ll tell you what, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘I am not come here to
be bullied. A female may be highly connected, but she can’t be permitted
to bother and badger a man in my position, and I am not going to put up
with it.’ (Mr. Bounderby felt it necessary to get on: foreseeing that if
he allowed of details, he would be beaten.)
Mrs. Sparsit first elevated, then knitted, her Coriolanian eyebrows;
gathered up her work into its proper basket; and rose.
‘Sir,’ said she, majestically. ‘It is apparent to me that I am in your
way at present. I will retire to my own apartment.’
‘Allow me to open the door, ma’am.’
‘Thank you, sir; I can do it for myself.’
‘You had better allow me, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, passing her, and
getting his hand upon the lock; ‘because I can take the opportunity of
saying a word to you, before you go. Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am, I rather think
you are cramped here, do you know? It appears to me, that, under my
humble roof, there’s hardly opening enough for a lady of your genius in
other people’s affairs.’
Mrs. Sparsit gave him a look of the darkest scorn, and said with great
politeness, ‘Really, sir?’
‘I have been thinking it over, you see, since the late affairs have
happened, ma’am,’ said Bounderby; ‘and it appears to my poor judgment—’
‘Oh! Pray, sir,’ Mrs. Sparsit interposed, with sprightly cheerfulness,
‘don’t disparage your judgment. Everybody knows how unerring Mr.
Bounderby’s judgment is. Everybody has had proofs of it. It must be the
theme of general conversation. Disparage anything in yourself but your
judgment, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, laughing.
Mr. Bounderby, very red and uncomfortable, resumed:
‘It appears to me, ma’am, I say, that a different sort of establishment
altogether would bring out a lady of _your_ powers. Such an
establishment as your relation, Lady Scadgers’s, now. Don’t you think
you might find some affairs there, ma’am, to interfere with?’
‘It never occurred to me before, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit; ‘but now
you mention it, should think it highly probable.’
‘Then suppose you try, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, laying an envelope with a
cheque in it in her little basket. ‘You can take your own time for
going, ma’am; but perhaps in the meanwhile, it will be more agreeable to
a lady of your powers of mind, to eat her meals by herself, and not to be
intruded upon. I really ought to apologise to you—being only Josiah
Bounderby of Coketown—for having stood in your light so long.’
‘Pray don’t name it, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit. ‘If that portrait
could speak, sir—but it has the advantage over the original of not
possessing the power of committing itself and disgusting others,—it would
testify, that a long period has elapsed since I first habitually
addressed it as the picture of a Noodle. Nothing that a Noodle does, can
awaken surprise or indignation; the proceedings of a Noodle can only
inspire contempt.’
Thus saying, Mrs. Sparsit, with her Roman features like a medal struck to
commemorate her scorn of Mr. Bounderby, surveyed him fixedly from head to
foot, swept disdainfully past him, and ascended the staircase. Mr.
Bounderby closed the door, and stood before the fire; projecting himself
after his old explosive manner into his portrait—and into futurity.
* * * * *
Into how much of futurity? He saw Mrs. Sparsit fighting out a daily
fight at the points of all the weapons in the female armoury, with the
grudging, smarting, peevish, tormenting Lady Scadgers, still laid up in
bed with her mysterious leg, and gobbling her insufficient income down by
about the middle of every quarter, in a mean little airless lodging, a
mere closet for one, a mere crib for two; but did he see more? Did he
catch any glimpse of himself making a show of Bitzer to strangers, as the
rising young man, so devoted to his master’s great merits, who had won
young Tom’s place, and had almost captured young Tom himself, in the
times when by various rascals he was spirited away? Did he see any faint
reflection of his own image making a vain-glorious will, whereby
five-and-twenty Humbugs, past five-and-fifty years of age, each taking
upon himself the name, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, should for ever dine
in Bounderby Hall, for ever lodge in Bounderby buildings, for ever attend
a Bounderby chapel, for ever go to sleep under a Bounderby chaplain, for
ever be supported out of a Bounderby estate, and for ever nauseate all
healthy stomachs, with a vast amount of Bounderby balderdash and bluster?
Had he any prescience of the day, five years to come, when Josiah
Bounderby of Coketown was to die of a fit in the Coketown street, and
this same precious will was to begin its long career of quibble, plunder,
false pretences, vile example, little service and much law? Probably
not. Yet the portrait was to see it all out.
Here was Mr. Gradgrind on the same day, and in the same hour, sitting
thoughtful in his own room. How much of futurity did _he_ see? Did he
see himself, a white-haired decrepit man, bending his hitherto inflexible
theories to appointed circumstances; making his facts and figures
subservient to Faith, Hope, and Charity; and no longer trying to grind
that Heavenly trio in his dusty little mills? Did he catch sight of
himself, therefore much despised by his late political associates? Did
he see them, in the era of its being quite settled that the national
dustmen have only to do with one another, and owe no duty to an
abstraction called a People, ‘taunting the honourable gentleman’ with
this and with that and with what not, five nights a-week, until the small
hours of the morning? Probably he had that much foreknowledge, knowing
his men.
* * * * *
Here was Louisa on the night of the same day, watching the fire as in
days of yore, though with a gentler and a humbler face. How much of the
future might arise before _her_ vision? Broadsides in the streets,
signed with her father’s name, exonerating the late Stephen Blackpool,
weaver, from misplaced suspicion, and publishing the guilt of his own
son, with such extenuation as his years and temptation (he could not
bring himself to add, his education) might beseech; were of the Present.
So, Stephen Blackpool’s tombstone, with her father’s record of his death,
was almost of the Present, for she knew it was to be. These things she
could plainly see. But, how much of the Future?
A working woman, christened Rachael, after a long illness once again
appearing at the ringing of the Factory bell, and passing to and fro at
the set hours, among the Coketown Hands; a woman of pensive beauty,
always dressed in black, but sweet-tempered and serene, and even
cheerful; who, of all the people in the place, alone appeared to have
compassion on a degraded, drunken wretch of her own sex, who was
sometimes seen in the town secretly begging of her, and crying to her; a
woman working, ever working, but content to do it, and preferring to do
it as her natural lot, until she should be too old to labour any more?
Did Louisa see this? Such a thing was to be.
A lonely brother, many thousands of miles away, writing, on paper blotted
with tears, that her words had too soon come true, and that all the
treasures in the world would be cheaply bartered for a sight of her dear
face? At length this brother coming nearer home, with hope of seeing
her, and being delayed by illness; and then a letter, in a strange hand,
saying ‘he died in hospital, of fever, such a day, and died in penitence
and love of you: his last word being your name’? Did Louisa see these
things? Such things were to be.
Herself again a wife—a mother—lovingly watchful of her children, ever
careful that they should have a childhood of the mind no less than a
childhood of the body, as knowing it to be even a more beautiful thing,
and a possession, any hoarded scrap of which, is a blessing and happiness
to the wisest? Did Louisa see this? Such a thing was never to be.
But, happy Sissy’s happy children loving her; all children loving her;
she, grown learned in childish lore; thinking no innocent and pretty
fancy ever to be despised; trying hard to know her humbler
fellow-creatures, and to beautify their lives of machinery and reality
with those imaginative graces and delights, without which the heart of
infancy will wither up, the sturdiest physical manhood will be morally
stark death, and the plainest national prosperity figures can show, will
be the Writing on the Wall,—she holding this course as part of no
fantastic vow, or bond, or brotherhood, or sisterhood, or pledge, or
covenant, or fancy dress, or fancy fair; but simply as a duty to be
done,—did Louisa see these things of herself? These things were to be.
Dear reader! It rests with you and me, whether, in our two fields of
action, similar things shall be or not. Let them be! We shall sit with
lighter bosoms on the hearth, to see the ashes of our fires turn gray and
cold.
FOOTNOTES
{0} _Reprinted Pieces_ was released as a separate eText by Project
Gutenberg, and is not included in this eText.