--- /dev/null
+
+
+ HARD TIMES
+ AND
+ REPRINTED PIECES {0}
+
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ By CHARLES DICKENS
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ _With illustrations by Marcus Stone_, _Maurice_
+ _Greiffenhagen_, _and F. Walker_
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD.
+ NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
+
+ 1905
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ _BOOK THE FIRST_. _SOWING_
+ PAGE
+ CHAPTER I
+_The One Thing Needful_ 3
+ CHAPTER II
+_Murdering the Innocents_ 4
+ CHAPTER III
+_A Loophole_ 8
+ CHAPTER IV
+_Mr. Bounderby_ 12
+ CHAPTER V
+_The Keynote_ 18
+ CHAPTER VI
+_Sleary’s Horsemanship_ 23
+ CHAPTER VII
+_Mrs. Sparsit_ 33
+ CHAPTER VIII
+_Never Wonder_ 38
+ CHAPTER IX
+_Sissy’s Progress_ 43
+ CHAPTER X
+_Stephen Blackpool_ 49
+ CHAPTER XI
+_No Way Out_ 53
+ CHAPTER XII
+_The Old Woman_ 59
+ CHAPTER XIII
+_Rachael_ 63
+ CHAPTER XIV
+_The Great Manufacturer_ 69
+ CHAPTER XV
+_Father and Daughter_ 73
+ CHAPTER XVI
+_Husband and Wife_ 79
+ _BOOK THE SECOND_. _REAPING_
+ CHAPTER I
+_Effects in the Bank_ 84
+ CHAPTER II
+_Mr. James Harthouse_ 94
+ CHAPTER III
+_The Whelp_ 101
+ CHAPTER IV
+_Men and Brothers_ 111
+ CHAPTER V
+_Men and Masters_ 105
+ CHAPTER VI
+_Fading Away_ 116
+ CHAPTER VII
+_Gunpowder_ 126
+ CHAPTER VIII
+_Explosion_ 136
+ CHAPTER IX
+_Hearing the Last of it_ 146
+ CHAPTER X
+_Mrs. Sparsit’s Staircase_ 152
+ CHAPTER XI
+_Lower and Lower_ 156
+ CHAPTER XII
+_Down_ 163
+ _BOOK THE THIRD_. _GARNERING_
+ CHAPTER I
+_Another Thing Needful_ 167
+ CHAPTER II
+_Very Ridiculous_ 172
+ CHAPTER III
+_Very Decided_ 179
+ CHAPTER IV
+_Lost_ 186
+ CHAPTER V
+_Found_ 193
+ CHAPTER VI
+_The Starlight_ 200
+ CHAPTER VII
+_Whelp-Hunting_ 208
+ CHAPTER VIII
+_Philosophical_ 216
+ CHAPTER IX
+_Final_ 222
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+ PAGE
+_Stephen and Rachael in the Sick-room_ 64
+_Mr. Harthouse Dining at the Bounderbys’_ 100
+_Mr. Harthouse and Tom Gradgrind in the Garden_ 132
+_Stephen Blackpool recovered from the Old Hell Shaft_ 206
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THE FIRST
+_SOWING_
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+THE ONE THING NEEDFUL
+
+
+‘NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but
+Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out
+everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon
+Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the
+principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle
+on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!’
+
+The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and the
+speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring
+every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasis
+was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his
+eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two
+dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the
+speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was
+helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and
+dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair, which
+bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the
+wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of
+a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts
+stored inside. The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, square
+legs, square shoulders,—nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by
+the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it
+was,—all helped the emphasis.
+
+‘In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!’
+
+The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present,
+all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of
+little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial
+gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+MURDERING THE INNOCENTS
+
+
+THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and
+calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are
+four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for
+anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir—peremptorily Thomas—Thomas
+Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication
+table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of
+human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere
+question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hope to get
+some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or
+Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all
+supposititious, non-existent persons), but into the head of Thomas
+Gradgrind—no, sir!
+
+In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether
+to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public in general. In
+such terms, no doubt, substituting the words ‘boys and girls,’ for ‘sir,’
+Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers
+before him, who were to be filled so full of facts.
+
+Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before
+mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts,
+and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one
+discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim
+mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be
+stormed away.
+
+‘Girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his
+square forefinger, ‘I don’t know that girl. Who is that girl?’
+
+‘Sissy Jupe, sir,’ explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and
+curtseying.
+
+‘Sissy is not a name,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Don’t call yourself Sissy.
+Call yourself Cecilia.’
+
+‘It’s father as calls me Sissy, sir,’ returned the young girl in a
+trembling voice, and with another curtsey.
+
+‘Then he has no business to do it,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Tell him he
+mustn’t. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is your father?’
+
+‘He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir.’
+
+Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with his
+hand.
+
+‘We don’t want to know anything about that, here. You mustn’t tell us
+about that, here. Your father breaks horses, don’t he?’
+
+‘If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses
+in the ring, sir.’
+
+‘You mustn’t tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then. Describe
+your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?’
+
+‘Oh yes, sir.’
+
+‘Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and
+horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.’
+
+(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)
+
+‘Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, for
+the general behoof of all the little pitchers. ‘Girl number twenty
+possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals!
+Some boy’s definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.’
+
+The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly on Bitzer,
+perhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray of sunlight which,
+darting in at one of the bare windows of the intensely white-washed room,
+irradiated Sissy. For, the boys and girls sat on the face of the
+inclined plane in two compact bodies, divided up the centre by a narrow
+interval; and Sissy, being at the corner of a row on the sunny side, came
+in for the beginning of a sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being at the corner
+of a row on the other side, a few rows in advance, caught the end. But,
+whereas the girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that she seemed to
+receive a deeper and more lustrous colour from the sun, when it shone
+upon her, the boy was so light-eyed and light-haired that the self-same
+rays appeared to draw out of him what little colour he ever possessed.
+His cold eyes would hardly have been eyes, but for the short ends of
+lashes which, by bringing them into immediate contrast with something
+paler than themselves, expressed their form. His short-cropped hair
+might have been a mere continuation of the sandy freckles on his forehead
+and face. His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge,
+that he looked as though, if he were cut, he would bleed white.
+
+‘Bitzer,’ said Thomas Gradgrind. ‘Your definition of a horse.’
+
+‘Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders,
+four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy
+countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with
+iron. Age known by marks in mouth.’ Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
+
+‘Now girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘You know what a horse
+is.’
+
+She curtseyed again, and would have blushed deeper, if she could have
+blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time. Bitzer, after rapidly
+blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both eyes at once, and so catching the
+light upon his quivering ends of lashes that they looked like the antennæ
+of busy insects, put his knuckles to his freckled forehead, and sat down
+again.
+
+The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at cutting and
+drying, he was; a government officer; in his way (and in most other
+people’s too), a professed pugilist; always in training, always with a
+system to force down the general throat like a bolus, always to be heard
+of at the bar of his little Public-office, ready to fight all England.
+To continue in fistic phraseology, he had a genius for coming up to the
+scratch, wherever and whatever it was, and proving himself an ugly
+customer. He would go in and damage any subject whatever with his right,
+follow up with his left, stop, exchange, counter, bore his opponent (he
+always fought All England) to the ropes, and fall upon him neatly. He
+was certain to knock the wind out of common sense, and render that
+unlucky adversary deaf to the call of time. And he had it in charge from
+high authority to bring about the great public-office Millennium, when
+Commissioners should reign upon earth.
+
+‘Very well,’ said this gentleman, briskly smiling, and folding his arms.
+‘That’s a horse. Now, let me ask you girls and boys, Would you paper a
+room with representations of horses?’
+
+After a pause, one half of the children cried in chorus, ‘Yes, sir!’
+Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman’s face that Yes was
+wrong, cried out in chorus, ‘No, sir!’—as the custom is, in these
+examinations.
+
+‘Of course, No. Why wouldn’t you?’
+
+A pause. One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner of breathing,
+ventured the answer, Because he wouldn’t paper a room at all, but would
+paint it.
+
+‘You _must_ paper it,’ said the gentleman, rather warmly.
+
+‘You must paper it,’ said Thomas Gradgrind, ‘whether you like it or not.
+Don’t tell _us_ you wouldn’t paper it. What do you mean, boy?’
+
+‘I’ll explain to you, then,’ said the gentleman, after another and a
+dismal pause, ‘why you wouldn’t paper a room with representations of
+horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in
+reality—in fact? Do you?’
+
+‘Yes, sir!’ from one half. ‘No, sir!’ from the other.
+
+‘Of course no,’ said the gentleman, with an indignant look at the wrong
+half. ‘Why, then, you are not to see anywhere, what you don’t see in
+fact; you are not to have anywhere, what you don’t have in fact. What is
+called Taste, is only another name for Fact.’ Thomas Gradgrind nodded
+his approbation.
+
+‘This is a new principle, a discovery, a great discovery,’ said the
+gentleman. ‘Now, I’ll try you again. Suppose you were going to carpet a
+room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon
+it?’
+
+There being a general conviction by this time that ‘No, sir!’ was always
+the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of NO was very strong.
+Only a few feeble stragglers said Yes: among them Sissy Jupe.
+
+‘Girl number twenty,’ said the gentleman, smiling in the calm strength of
+knowledge.
+
+Sissy blushed, and stood up.
+
+‘So you would carpet your room—or your husband’s room, if you were a
+grown woman, and had a husband—with representations of flowers, would
+you?’ said the gentleman. ‘Why would you?’
+
+‘If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,’ returned the girl.
+
+‘And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have
+people walking over them with heavy boots?’
+
+‘It wouldn’t hurt them, sir. They wouldn’t crush and wither, if you
+please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and
+pleasant, and I would fancy—’
+
+‘Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn’t fancy,’ cried the gentleman, quite elated
+by coming so happily to his point. ‘That’s it! You are never to fancy.’
+
+‘You are not, Cecilia Jupe,’ Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated, ‘to do
+anything of that kind.’
+
+‘Fact, fact, fact!’ said the gentleman. And ‘Fact, fact, fact!’ repeated
+Thomas Gradgrind.
+
+‘You are to be in all things regulated and governed,’ said the gentleman,
+‘by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of
+commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact,
+and of nothing but fact. You must discard the word Fancy altogether.
+You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have, in any object of
+use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don’t walk
+upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in
+carpets. You don’t find that foreign birds and butterflies come and
+perch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds
+and butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going
+up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls.
+You must use,’ said the gentleman, ‘for all these purposes, combinations
+and modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures which are
+susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This
+is fact. This is taste.’
+
+The girl curtseyed, and sat down. She was very young, and she looked as
+if she were frightened by the matter-of-fact prospect the world afforded.
+
+‘Now, if Mr. M’Choakumchild,’ said the gentleman, ‘will proceed to give
+his first lesson here, Mr. Gradgrind, I shall be happy, at your request,
+to observe his mode of procedure.’
+
+Mr. Gradgrind was much obliged. ‘Mr. M’Choakumchild, we only wait for
+you.’
+
+So, Mr. M’Choakumchild began in his best manner. He and some one hundred
+and forty other schoolmasters, had been lately turned at the same time,
+in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many pianoforte
+legs. He had been put through an immense variety of paces, and had
+answered volumes of head-breaking questions. Orthography, etymology,
+syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and general
+cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land-surveying
+and levelling, vocal music, and drawing from models, were all at the ends
+of his ten chilled fingers. He had worked his stony way into Her
+Majesty’s most Honourable Privy Council’s Schedule B, and had taken the
+bloom off the higher branches of mathematics and physical science,
+French, German, Latin, and Greek. He knew all about all the Water Sheds
+of all the world (whatever they are), and all the histories of all the
+peoples, and all the names of all the rivers and mountains, and all the
+productions, manners, and customs of all the countries, and all their
+boundaries and bearings on the two and thirty points of the compass. Ah,
+rather overdone, M’Choakumchild. If he had only learnt a little less,
+how infinitely better he might have taught much more!
+
+He went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in the
+Forty Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after
+another, to see what they contained. Say, good M’Choakumchild. When
+from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by-and-by,
+dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy
+lurking within—or sometimes only maim him and distort him!
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+A LOOPHOLE
+
+
+MR. GRADGRIND walked homeward from the school, in a state of considerable
+satisfaction. It was his school, and he intended it to be a model. He
+intended every child in it to be a model—just as the young Gradgrinds
+were all models.
+
+There were five young Gradgrinds, and they were models every one. They
+had been lectured at, from their tenderest years; coursed, like little
+hares. Almost as soon as they could run alone, they had been made to run
+to the lecture-room. The first object with which they had an
+association, or of which they had a remembrance, was a large black board
+with a dry Ogre chalking ghastly white figures on it.
+
+Not that they knew, by name or nature, anything about an Ogre Fact
+forbid! I only use the word to express a monster in a lecturing castle,
+with Heaven knows how many heads manipulated into one, taking childhood
+captive, and dragging it into gloomy statistical dens by the hair.
+
+No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon; it was up in the
+moon before it could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind had ever
+learnt the silly jingle, Twinkle, twinkle, little star; how I wonder what
+you are! No little Gradgrind had ever known wonder on the subject, each
+little Gradgrind having at five years old dissected the Great Bear like a
+Professor Owen, and driven Charles’s Wain like a locomotive
+engine-driver. No little Gradgrind had ever associated a cow in a field
+with that famous cow with the crumpled horn who tossed the dog who
+worried the cat who killed the rat who ate the malt, or with that yet
+more famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb: it had never heard of those
+celebrities, and had only been introduced to a cow as a graminivorous
+ruminating quadruped with several stomachs.
+
+To his matter-of-fact home, which was called Stone Lodge, Mr. Gradgrind
+directed his steps. He had virtually retired from the wholesale hardware
+trade before he built Stone Lodge, and was now looking about for a
+suitable opportunity of making an arithmetical figure in Parliament.
+Stone Lodge was situated on a moor within a mile or two of a great
+town—called Coketown in the present faithful guide-book.
+
+A very regular feature on the face of the country, Stone Lodge was. Not
+the least disguise toned down or shaded off that uncompromising fact in
+the landscape. A great square house, with a heavy portico darkening the
+principal windows, as its master’s heavy brows overshadowed his eyes. A
+calculated, cast up, balanced, and proved house. Six windows on this
+side of the door, six on that side; a total of twelve in this wing, a
+total of twelve in the other wing; four-and-twenty carried over to the
+back wings. A lawn and garden and an infant avenue, all ruled straight
+like a botanical account-book. Gas and ventilation, drainage and
+water-service, all of the primest quality. Iron clamps and girders,
+fire-proof from top to bottom; mechanical lifts for the housemaids, with
+all their brushes and brooms; everything that heart could desire.
+
+Everything? Well, I suppose so. The little Gradgrinds had cabinets in
+various departments of science too. They had a little conchological
+cabinet, and a little metallurgical cabinet, and a little mineralogical
+cabinet; and the specimens were all arranged and labelled, and the bits
+of stone and ore looked as though they might have been broken from the
+parent substances by those tremendously hard instruments their own names;
+and, to paraphrase the idle legend of Peter Piper, who had never found
+his way into their nursery, If the greedy little Gradgrinds grasped at
+more than this, what was it for good gracious goodness’ sake, that the
+greedy little Gradgrinds grasped it!
+
+Their father walked on in a hopeful and satisfied frame of mind. He was
+an affectionate father, after his manner; but he would probably have
+described himself (if he had been put, like Sissy Jupe, upon a
+definition) as ‘an eminently practical’ father. He had a particular
+pride in the phrase eminently practical, which was considered to have a
+special application to him. Whatsoever the public meeting held in
+Coketown, and whatsoever the subject of such meeting, some Coketowner was
+sure to seize the occasion of alluding to his eminently practical friend
+Gradgrind. This always pleased the eminently practical friend. He knew
+it to be his due, but his due was acceptable.
+
+He had reached the neutral ground upon the outskirts of the town, which
+was neither town nor country, and yet was either spoiled, when his ears
+were invaded by the sound of music. The clashing and banging band
+attached to the horse-riding establishment, which had there set up its
+rest in a wooden pavilion, was in full bray. A flag, floating from the
+summit of the temple, proclaimed to mankind that it was ‘Sleary’s
+Horse-riding’ which claimed their suffrages. Sleary himself, a stout
+modern statue with a money-box at its elbow, in an ecclesiastical niche
+of early Gothic architecture, took the money. Miss Josephine Sleary, as
+some very long and very narrow strips of printed bill announced, was then
+inaugurating the entertainments with her graceful equestrian Tyrolean
+flower-act. Among the other pleasing but always strictly moral wonders
+which must be seen to be believed, Signor Jupe was that afternoon to
+‘elucidate the diverting accomplishments of his highly trained performing
+dog Merrylegs.’ He was also to exhibit ‘his astounding feat of throwing
+seventy-five hundred-weight in rapid succession backhanded over his head,
+thus forming a fountain of solid iron in mid-air, a feat never before
+attempted in this or any other country, and which having elicited such
+rapturous plaudits from enthusiastic throngs it cannot be withdrawn.’
+The same Signor Jupe was to ‘enliven the varied performances at frequent
+intervals with his chaste Shaksperean quips and retorts.’ Lastly, he was
+to wind them up by appearing in his favourite character of Mr. William
+Button, of Tooley Street, in ‘the highly novel and laughable
+hippo-comedietta of The Tailor’s Journey to Brentford.’
+
+Thomas Gradgrind took no heed of these trivialities of course, but passed
+on as a practical man ought to pass on, either brushing the noisy insects
+from his thoughts, or consigning them to the House of Correction. But,
+the turning of the road took him by the back of the booth, and at the
+back of the booth a number of children were congregated in a number of
+stealthy attitudes, striving to peep in at the hidden glories of the
+place.
+
+This brought him to a stop. ‘Now, to think of these vagabonds,’ said he,
+‘attracting the young rabble from a model school.’
+
+A space of stunted grass and dry rubbish being between him and the young
+rabble, he took his eyeglass out of his waistcoat to look for any child
+he knew by name, and might order off. Phenomenon almost incredible
+though distinctly seen, what did he then behold but his own metallurgical
+Louisa, peeping with all her might through a hole in a deal board, and
+his own mathematical Thomas abasing himself on the ground to catch but a
+hoof of the graceful equestrian Tyrolean flower-act!
+
+Dumb with amazement, Mr. Gradgrind crossed to the spot where his family
+was thus disgraced, laid his hand upon each erring child, and said:
+
+‘Louisa!! Thomas!!’
+
+Both rose, red and disconcerted. But, Louisa looked at her father with
+more boldness than Thomas did. Indeed, Thomas did not look at him, but
+gave himself up to be taken home like a machine.
+
+‘In the name of wonder, idleness, and folly!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, leading
+each away by a hand; ‘what do you do here?’
+
+‘Wanted to see what it was like,’ returned Louisa, shortly.
+
+‘What it was like?’
+
+‘Yes, father.’
+
+There was an air of jaded sullenness in them both, and particularly in
+the girl: yet, struggling through the dissatisfaction of her face, there
+was a light with nothing to rest upon, a fire with nothing to burn, a
+starved imagination keeping life in itself somehow, which brightened its
+expression. Not with the brightness natural to cheerful youth, but with
+uncertain, eager, doubtful flashes, which had something painful in them,
+analogous to the changes on a blind face groping its way.
+
+She was a child now, of fifteen or sixteen; but at no distant day would
+seem to become a woman all at once. Her father thought so as he looked
+at her. She was pretty. Would have been self-willed (he thought in his
+eminently practical way) but for her bringing-up.
+
+‘Thomas, though I have the fact before me, I find it difficult to believe
+that you, with your education and resources, should have brought your
+sister to a scene like this.’
+
+‘I brought _him_, father,’ said Louisa, quickly. ‘I asked him to come.’
+
+‘I am sorry to hear it. I am very sorry indeed to hear it. It makes
+Thomas no better, and it makes you worse, Louisa.’
+
+She looked at her father again, but no tear fell down her cheek.
+
+‘You! Thomas and you, to whom the circle of the sciences is open; Thomas
+and you, who may be said to be replete with facts; Thomas and you, who
+have been trained to mathematical exactness; Thomas and you, here!’ cried
+Mr. Gradgrind. ‘In this degraded position! I am amazed.’
+
+‘I was tired, father. I have been tired a long time,’ said Louisa.
+
+‘Tired? Of what?’ asked the astonished father.
+
+‘I don’t know of what—of everything, I think.’
+
+‘Say not another word,’ returned Mr. Gradgrind. ‘You are childish. I
+will hear no more.’ He did not speak again until they had walked some
+half-a-mile in silence, when he gravely broke out with: ‘What would your
+best friends say, Louisa? Do you attach no value to their good opinion?
+What would Mr. Bounderby say?’ At the mention of this name, his daughter
+stole a look at him, remarkable for its intense and searching character.
+He saw nothing of it, for before he looked at her, she had again cast
+down her eyes!
+
+‘What,’ he repeated presently, ‘would Mr. Bounderby say?’ All the way to
+Stone Lodge, as with grave indignation he led the two delinquents home,
+he repeated at intervals ‘What would Mr. Bounderby say?’—as if Mr.
+Bounderby had been Mrs. Grundy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+MR. BOUNDERBY
+
+
+NOT being Mrs. Grundy, who _was_ Mr. Bounderby?
+
+Why, Mr. Bounderby was as near being Mr. Gradgrind’s bosom friend, as a
+man perfectly devoid of sentiment can approach that spiritual
+relationship towards another man perfectly devoid of sentiment. So near
+was Mr. Bounderby—or, if the reader should prefer it, so far off.
+
+He was a rich man: banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what not. A big,
+loud man, with a stare, and a metallic laugh. A man made out of a coarse
+material, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much of him. A
+man with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled veins in his temples,
+and such a strained skin to his face that it seemed to hold his eyes
+open, and lift his eyebrows up. A man with a pervading appearance on him
+of being inflated like a balloon, and ready to start. A man who could
+never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. A man who was always
+proclaiming, through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his
+old ignorance and his old poverty. A man who was the Bully of humility.
+
+A year or two younger than his eminently practical friend, Mr. Bounderby
+looked older; his seven or eight and forty might have had the seven or
+eight added to it again, without surprising anybody. He had not much
+hair. One might have fancied he had talked it off; and that what was
+left, all standing up in disorder, was in that condition from being
+constantly blown about by his windy boastfulness.
+
+In the formal drawing-room of Stone Lodge, standing on the hearthrug,
+warming himself before the fire, Mr. Bounderby delivered some
+observations to Mrs. Gradgrind on the circumstance of its being his
+birthday. He stood before the fire, partly because it was a cool spring
+afternoon, though the sun shone; partly because the shade of Stone Lodge
+was always haunted by the ghost of damp mortar; partly because he thus
+took up a commanding position, from which to subdue Mrs. Gradgrind.
+
+‘I hadn’t a shoe to my foot. As to a stocking, I didn’t know such a
+thing by name. I passed the day in a ditch, and the night in a pigsty.
+That’s the way I spent my tenth birthday. Not that a ditch was new to
+me, for I was born in a ditch.’
+
+Mrs. Gradgrind, a little, thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of shawls, of
+surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily; who was always taking physic
+without any effect, and who, whenever she showed a symptom of coming to
+life, was invariably stunned by some weighty piece of fact tumbling on
+her; Mrs. Gradgrind hoped it was a dry ditch?
+
+‘No! As wet as a sop. A foot of water in it,’ said Mr. Bounderby.
+
+‘Enough to give a baby cold,’ Mrs. Gradgrind considered.
+
+‘Cold? I was born with inflammation of the lungs, and of everything
+else, I believe, that was capable of inflammation,’ returned Mr.
+Bounderby. ‘For years, ma’am, I was one of the most miserable little
+wretches ever seen. I was so sickly, that I was always moaning and
+groaning. I was so ragged and dirty, that you wouldn’t have touched me
+with a pair of tongs.’
+
+Mrs. Gradgrind faintly looked at the tongs, as the most appropriate thing
+her imbecility could think of doing.
+
+‘How I fought through it, _I_ don’t know,’ said Bounderby. ‘I was
+determined, I suppose. I have been a determined character in later life,
+and I suppose I was then. Here I am, Mrs. Gradgrind, anyhow, and nobody
+to thank for my being here, but myself.’
+
+Mrs. Gradgrind meekly and weakly hoped that his mother—
+
+‘_My_ mother? Bolted, ma’am!’ said Bounderby.
+
+Mrs. Gradgrind, stunned as usual, collapsed and gave it up.
+
+‘My mother left me to my grandmother,’ said Bounderby; ‘and, according to
+the best of my remembrance, my grandmother was the wickedest and the
+worst old woman that ever lived. If I got a little pair of shoes by any
+chance, she would take ’em off and sell ’em for drink. Why, I have known
+that grandmother of mine lie in her bed and drink her four-teen glasses
+of liquor before breakfast!’
+
+Mrs. Gradgrind, weakly smiling, and giving no other sign of vitality,
+looked (as she always did) like an indifferently executed transparency of
+a small female figure, without enough light behind it.
+
+‘She kept a chandler’s shop,’ pursued Bounderby, ‘and kept me in an
+egg-box. That was the cot of _my_ infancy; an old egg-box. As soon as I
+was big enough to run away, of course I ran away. Then I became a young
+vagabond; and instead of one old woman knocking me about and starving me,
+everybody of all ages knocked me about and starved me. They were right;
+they had no business to do anything else. I was a nuisance, an
+incumbrance, and a pest. I know that very well.’
+
+His pride in having at any time of his life achieved such a great social
+distinction as to be a nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest, was only to
+be satisfied by three sonorous repetitions of the boast.
+
+‘I was to pull through it, I suppose, Mrs. Gradgrind. Whether I was to
+do it or not, ma’am, I did it. I pulled through it, though nobody threw
+me out a rope. Vagabond, errand-boy, vagabond, labourer, porter, clerk,
+chief manager, small partner, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. Those are
+the antecedents, and the culmination. Josiah Bounderby of Coketown
+learnt his letters from the outsides of the shops, Mrs. Gradgrind, and
+was first able to tell the time upon a dial-plate, from studying the
+steeple clock of St. Giles’s Church, London, under the direction of a
+drunken cripple, who was a convicted thief, and an incorrigible vagrant.
+Tell Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, of your district schools and your
+model schools, and your training schools, and your whole kettle-of-fish
+of schools; and Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, tells you plainly, all
+right, all correct—he hadn’t such advantages—but let us have hard-headed,
+solid-fisted people—the education that made him won’t do for everybody,
+he knows well—such and such his education was, however, and you may force
+him to swallow boiling fat, but you shall never force him to suppress the
+facts of his life.’
+
+Being heated when he arrived at this climax, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown
+stopped. He stopped just as his eminently practical friend, still
+accompanied by the two young culprits, entered the room. His eminently
+practical friend, on seeing him, stopped also, and gave Louisa a
+reproachful look that plainly said, ‘Behold your Bounderby!’
+
+‘Well!’ blustered Mr. Bounderby, ‘what’s the matter? What is young
+Thomas in the dumps about?’
+
+He spoke of young Thomas, but he looked at Louisa.
+
+‘We were peeping at the circus,’ muttered Louisa, haughtily, without
+lifting up her eyes, ‘and father caught us.’
+
+‘And, Mrs. Gradgrind,’ said her husband in a lofty manner, ‘I should as
+soon have expected to find my children reading poetry.’
+
+‘Dear me,’ whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind. ‘How can you, Louisa and Thomas! I
+wonder at you. I declare you’re enough to make one regret ever having
+had a family at all. I have a great mind to say I wish I hadn’t. _Then_
+what would you have done, I should like to know?’
+
+Mr. Gradgrind did not seem favourably impressed by these cogent remarks.
+He frowned impatiently.
+
+‘As if, with my head in its present throbbing state, you couldn’t go and
+look at the shells and minerals and things provided for you, instead of
+circuses!’ said Mrs. Gradgrind. ‘You know, as well as I do, no young
+people have circus masters, or keep circuses in cabinets, or attend
+lectures about circuses. What can you possibly want to know of circuses
+then? I am sure you have enough to do, if that’s what you want. With my
+head in its present state, I couldn’t remember the mere names of half the
+facts you have got to attend to.’
+
+‘That’s the reason!’ pouted Louisa.
+
+‘Don’t tell me that’s the reason, because it can’t be nothing of the
+sort,’ said Mrs. Gradgrind. ‘Go and be somethingological directly.’
+Mrs. Gradgrind was not a scientific character, and usually dismissed her
+children to their studies with this general injunction to choose their
+pursuit.
+
+In truth, Mrs. Gradgrind’s stock of facts in general was woefully
+defective; but Mr. Gradgrind in raising her to her high matrimonial
+position, had been influenced by two reasons. Firstly, she was most
+satisfactory as a question of figures; and, secondly, she had ‘no
+nonsense’ about her. By nonsense he meant fancy; and truly it is
+probable she was as free from any alloy of that nature, as any human
+being not arrived at the perfection of an absolute idiot, ever was.
+
+The simple circumstance of being left alone with her husband and Mr.
+Bounderby, was sufficient to stun this admirable lady again without
+collision between herself and any other fact. So, she once more died
+away, and nobody minded her.
+
+‘Bounderby,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, drawing a chair to the fireside, ‘you
+are always so interested in my young people—particularly in Louisa—that I
+make no apology for saying to you, I am very much vexed by this
+discovery. I have systematically devoted myself (as you know) to the
+education of the reason of my family. The reason is (as you know) the
+only faculty to which education should be addressed. ‘And yet,
+Bounderby, it would appear from this unexpected circumstance of to-day,
+though in itself a trifling one, as if something had crept into Thomas’s
+and Louisa’s minds which is—or rather, which is not—I don’t know that I
+can express myself better than by saying—which has never been intended to
+be developed, and in which their reason has no part.’
+
+‘There certainly is no reason in looking with interest at a parcel of
+vagabonds,’ returned Bounderby. ‘When I was a vagabond myself, nobody
+looked with any interest at _me_; I know that.’
+
+‘Then comes the question; said the eminently practical father, with his
+eyes on the fire, ‘in what has this vulgar curiosity its rise?’
+
+‘I’ll tell you in what. In idle imagination.’
+
+‘I hope not,’ said the eminently practical; ‘I confess, however, that the
+misgiving _has_ crossed me on my way home.’
+
+‘In idle imagination, Gradgrind,’ repeated Bounderby. ‘A very bad thing
+for anybody, but a cursed bad thing for a girl like Louisa. I should ask
+Mrs. Gradgrind’s pardon for strong expressions, but that she knows very
+well I am not a refined character. Whoever expects refinement in _me_
+will be disappointed. I hadn’t a refined bringing up.’
+
+‘Whether,’ said Gradgrind, pondering with his hands in his pockets, and
+his cavernous eyes on the fire, ‘whether any instructor or servant can
+have suggested anything? Whether Louisa or Thomas can have been reading
+anything? Whether, in spite of all precautions, any idle story-book can
+have got into the house? Because, in minds that have been practically
+formed by rule and line, from the cradle upwards, this is so curious, so
+incomprehensible.’
+
+‘Stop a bit!’ cried Bounderby, who all this time had been standing, as
+before, on the hearth, bursting at the very furniture of the room with
+explosive humility. ‘You have one of those strollers’ children in the
+school.’
+
+‘Cecilia Jupe, by name,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, with something of a stricken
+look at his friend.
+
+‘Now, stop a bit!’ cried Bounderby again. ‘How did she come there?’
+
+‘Why, the fact is, I saw the girl myself, for the first time, only just
+now. She specially applied here at the house to be admitted, as not
+regularly belonging to our town, and—yes, you are right, Bounderby, you
+are right.’
+
+‘Now, stop a bit!’ cried Bounderby, once more. ‘Louisa saw her when she
+came?’
+
+‘Louisa certainly did see her, for she mentioned the application to me.
+But Louisa saw her, I have no doubt, in Mrs. Gradgrind’s presence.’
+
+‘Pray, Mrs. Gradgrind,’ said Bounderby, ‘what passed?’
+
+‘Oh, my poor health!’ returned Mrs. Gradgrind. ‘The girl wanted to come
+to the school, and Mr. Gradgrind wanted girls to come to the school, and
+Louisa and Thomas both said that the girl wanted to come, and that Mr.
+Gradgrind wanted girls to come, and how was it possible to contradict
+them when such was the fact!’
+
+‘Now I tell you what, Gradgrind!’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘Turn this girl to
+the right about, and there’s an end of it.’
+
+‘I am much of your opinion.’
+
+‘Do it at once,’ said Bounderby, ‘has always been my motto from a child.
+When I thought I would run away from my egg-box and my grandmother, I did
+it at once. Do you the same. Do this at once!’
+
+‘Are you walking?’ asked his friend. ‘I have the father’s address.
+Perhaps you would not mind walking to town with me?’
+
+‘Not the least in the world,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘as long as you do it
+at once!’
+
+So, Mr. Bounderby threw on his hat—he always threw it on, as expressing a
+man who had been far too busily employed in making himself, to acquire
+any fashion of wearing his hat—and with his hands in his pockets,
+sauntered out into the hall. ‘I never wear gloves,’ it was his custom to
+say. ‘I didn’t climb up the ladder in _them_.—Shouldn’t be so high up,
+if I had.’
+
+Being left to saunter in the hall a minute or two while Mr. Gradgrind
+went up-stairs for the address, he opened the door of the children’s
+study and looked into that serene floor-clothed apartment, which,
+notwithstanding its book-cases and its cabinets and its variety of
+learned and philosophical appliances, had much of the genial aspect of a
+room devoted to hair-cutting. Louisa languidly leaned upon the window
+looking out, without looking at anything, while young Thomas stood
+sniffing revengefully at the fire. Adam Smith and Malthus, two younger
+Gradgrinds, were out at lecture in custody; and little Jane, after
+manufacturing a good deal of moist pipe-clay on her face with
+slate-pencil and tears, had fallen asleep over vulgar fractions.
+
+‘It’s all right now, Louisa: it’s all right, young Thomas,’ said Mr.
+Bounderby; ‘you won’t do so any more. I’ll answer for it’s being all
+over with father. Well, Louisa, that’s worth a kiss, isn’t it?’
+
+‘You can take one, Mr. Bounderby,’ returned Louisa, when she had coldly
+paused, and slowly walked across the room, and ungraciously raised her
+cheek towards him, with her face turned away.
+
+‘Always my pet; ain’t you, Louisa?’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘Good-bye,
+Louisa!’
+
+He went his way, but she stood on the same spot, rubbing the cheek he had
+kissed, with her handkerchief, until it was burning red. She was still
+doing this, five minutes afterwards.
+
+‘What are you about, Loo?’ her brother sulkily remonstrated. ‘You’ll rub
+a hole in your face.’
+
+‘You may cut the piece out with your penknife if you like, Tom. I
+wouldn’t cry!’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+THE KEYNOTE
+
+
+COKETOWN, to which Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked, was a
+triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs.
+Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before pursuing
+our tune.
+
+It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the
+smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of
+unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town
+of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of
+smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It
+had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling
+dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a
+rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the
+steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an
+elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large
+streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like
+one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went
+in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same
+pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as
+yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and
+the next.
+
+These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from the work
+by which it was sustained; against them were to be set off, comforts of
+life which found their way all over the world, and elegancies of life
+which made, we will not ask how much of the fine lady, who could scarcely
+bear to hear the place mentioned. The rest of its features were
+voluntary, and they were these.
+
+You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful. If the
+members of a religious persuasion built a chapel there—as the members of
+eighteen religious persuasions had done—they made it a pious warehouse of
+red brick, with sometimes (but this is only in highly ornamental
+examples) a bell in a birdcage on the top of it. The solitary exception
+was the New Church; a stuccoed edifice with a square steeple over the
+door, terminating in four short pinnacles like florid wooden legs. All
+the public inscriptions in the town were painted alike, in severe
+characters of black and white. The jail might have been the infirmary,
+the infirmary might have been the jail, the town-hall might have been
+either, or both, or anything else, for anything that appeared to the
+contrary in the graces of their construction. Fact, fact, fact,
+everywhere in the material aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact,
+everywhere in the immaterial. The M’Choakumchild school was all fact,
+and the school of design was all fact, and the relations between master
+and man were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in
+hospital and the cemetery, and what you couldn’t state in figures, or
+show to be purchaseable in the cheapest market and saleable in the
+dearest, was not, and never should be, world without end, Amen.
+
+A town so sacred to fact, and so triumphant in its assertion, of course
+got on well? Why no, not quite well. No? Dear me!
+
+No. Coketown did not come out of its own furnaces, in all respects like
+gold that had stood the fire. First, the perplexing mystery of the place
+was, Who belonged to the eighteen denominations? Because, whoever did,
+the labouring people did not. It was very strange to walk through the
+streets on a Sunday morning, and note how few of _them_ the barbarous
+jangling of bells that was driving the sick and nervous mad, called away
+from their own quarter, from their own close rooms, from the corners of
+their own streets, where they lounged listlessly, gazing at all the
+church and chapel going, as at a thing with which they had no manner of
+concern. Nor was it merely the stranger who noticed this, because there
+was a native organization in Coketown itself, whose members were to be
+heard of in the House of Commons every session, indignantly petitioning
+for acts of parliament that should make these people religious by main
+force. Then came the Teetotal Society, who complained that these same
+people _would_ get drunk, and showed in tabular statements that they did
+get drunk, and proved at tea parties that no inducement, human or Divine
+(except a medal), would induce them to forego their custom of getting
+drunk. Then came the chemist and druggist, with other tabular
+statements, showing that when they didn’t get drunk, they took opium.
+Then came the experienced chaplain of the jail, with more tabular
+statements, outdoing all the previous tabular statements, and showing
+that the same people _would_ resort to low haunts, hidden from the public
+eye, where they heard low singing and saw low dancing, and mayhap joined
+in it; and where A. B., aged twenty-four next birthday, and committed for
+eighteen months’ solitary, had himself said (not that he had ever shown
+himself particularly worthy of belief) his ruin began, as he was
+perfectly sure and confident that otherwise he would have been a tip-top
+moral specimen. Then came Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby, the two
+gentlemen at this present moment walking through Coketown, and both
+eminently practical, who could, on occasion, furnish more tabular
+statements derived from their own personal experience, and illustrated by
+cases they had known and seen, from which it clearly appeared—in short,
+it was the only clear thing in the case—that these same people were a bad
+lot altogether, gentlemen; that do what you would for them they were
+never thankful for it, gentlemen; that they were restless, gentlemen;
+that they never knew what they wanted; that they lived upon the best, and
+bought fresh butter; and insisted on Mocha coffee, and rejected all but
+prime parts of meat, and yet were eternally dissatisfied and
+unmanageable. In short, it was the moral of the old nursery fable:
+
+ There was an old woman, and what do you think?
+ She lived upon nothing but victuals and drink;
+ Victuals and drink were the whole of her diet,
+ And yet this old woman would NEVER be quiet.
+
+Is it possible, I wonder, that there was any analogy between the case of
+the Coketown population and the case of the little Gradgrinds? Surely,
+none of us in our sober senses and acquainted with figures, are to be
+told at this time of day, that one of the foremost elements in the
+existence of the Coketown working-people had been for scores of years,
+deliberately set at nought? That there was any Fancy in them demanding
+to be brought into healthy existence instead of struggling on in
+convulsions? That exactly in the ratio as they worked long and
+monotonously, the craving grew within them for some physical relief—some
+relaxation, encouraging good humour and good spirits, and giving them a
+vent—some recognized holiday, though it were but for an honest dance to a
+stirring band of music—some occasional light pie in which even
+M’Choakumchild had no finger—which craving must and would be satisfied
+aright, or must and would inevitably go wrong, until the laws of the
+Creation were repealed?
+
+‘This man lives at Pod’s End, and I don’t quite know Pod’s End,’ said Mr.
+Gradgrind. ‘Which is it, Bounderby?’
+
+Mr. Bounderby knew it was somewhere down town, but knew no more
+respecting it. So they stopped for a moment, looking about.
+
+Almost as they did so, there came running round the corner of the street
+at a quick pace and with a frightened look, a girl whom Mr. Gradgrind
+recognized. ‘Halloa!’ said he. ‘Stop! Where are you going! Stop!’
+Girl number twenty stopped then, palpitating, and made him a curtsey.
+
+‘Why are you tearing about the streets,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘in this
+improper manner?’
+
+‘I was—I was run after, sir,’ the girl panted, ‘and I wanted to get
+away.’
+
+‘Run after?’ repeated Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Who would run after _you_?’
+
+The question was unexpectedly and suddenly answered for her, by the
+colourless boy, Bitzer, who came round the corner with such blind speed
+and so little anticipating a stoppage on the pavement, that he brought
+himself up against Mr. Gradgrind’s waistcoat and rebounded into the road.
+
+‘What do you mean, boy?’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘What are you doing? How
+dare you dash against—everybody—in this manner?’ Bitzer picked up his
+cap, which the concussion had knocked off; and backing, and knuckling his
+forehead, pleaded that it was an accident.
+
+‘Was this boy running after you, Jupe?’ asked Mr. Gradgrind.
+
+‘Yes, sir,’ said the girl reluctantly.
+
+‘No, I wasn’t, sir!’ cried Bitzer. ‘Not till she run away from me. But
+the horse-riders never mind what they say, sir; they’re famous for it.
+You know the horse-riders are famous for never minding what they say,’
+addressing Sissy. ‘It’s as well known in the town as—please, sir, as the
+multiplication table isn’t known to the horse-riders.’ Bitzer tried Mr.
+Bounderby with this.
+
+‘He frightened me so,’ said the girl, ‘with his cruel faces!’
+
+‘Oh!’ cried Bitzer. ‘Oh! An’t you one of the rest! An’t you a
+horse-rider! I never looked at her, sir. I asked her if she would know
+how to define a horse to-morrow, and offered to tell her again, and she
+ran away, and I ran after her, sir, that she might know how to answer
+when she was asked. You wouldn’t have thought of saying such mischief if
+you hadn’t been a horse-rider?’
+
+‘Her calling seems to be pretty well known among ’em,’ observed Mr.
+Bounderby. ‘You’d have had the whole school peeping in a row, in a
+week.’
+
+‘Truly, I think so,’ returned his friend. ‘Bitzer, turn you about and
+take yourself home. Jupe, stay here a moment. Let me hear of your
+running in this manner any more, boy, and you will hear of me through the
+master of the school. You understand what I mean. Go along.’
+
+The boy stopped in his rapid blinking, knuckled his forehead again,
+glanced at Sissy, turned about, and retreated.
+
+‘Now, girl,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘take this gentleman and me to your
+father’s; we are going there. What have you got in that bottle you are
+carrying?’
+
+‘Gin,’ said Mr. Bounderby.
+
+‘Dear, no, sir! It’s the nine oils.’
+
+‘The what?’ cried Mr. Bounderby.
+
+‘The nine oils, sir, to rub father with.’
+
+‘Then,’ said Mr. Bounderby, with a loud short laugh, ‘what the devil do
+you rub your father with nine oils for?’
+
+‘It’s what our people aways use, sir, when they get any hurts in the
+ring,’ replied the girl, looking over her shoulder, to assure herself
+that her pursuer was gone. ‘They bruise themselves very bad sometimes.’
+
+‘Serve ’em right,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘for being idle.’ She glanced up
+at his face, with mingled astonishment and dread.
+
+‘By George!’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘when I was four or five years younger
+than you, I had worse bruises upon me than ten oils, twenty oils, forty
+oils, would have rubbed off. I didn’t get ’em by posture-making, but by
+being banged about. There was no rope-dancing for me; I danced on the
+bare ground and was larruped with the rope.’
+
+Mr. Gradgrind, though hard enough, was by no means so rough a man as Mr.
+Bounderby. His character was not unkind, all things considered; it might
+have been a very kind one indeed, if he had only made some round mistake
+in the arithmetic that balanced it, years ago. He said, in what he meant
+for a reassuring tone, as they turned down a narrow road, ‘And this is
+Pod’s End; is it, Jupe?’
+
+‘This is it, sir, and—if you wouldn’t mind, sir—this is the house.’
+
+She stopped, at twilight, at the door of a mean little public-house, with
+dim red lights in it. As haggard and as shabby, as if, for want of
+custom, it had itself taken to drinking, and had gone the way all
+drunkards go, and was very near the end of it.
+
+‘It’s only crossing the bar, sir, and up the stairs, if you wouldn’t
+mind, and waiting there for a moment till I get a candle. If you should
+hear a dog, sir, it’s only Merrylegs, and he only barks.’
+
+‘Merrylegs and nine oils, eh!’ said Mr. Bounderby, entering last with his
+metallic laugh. ‘Pretty well this, for a self-made man!’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+SLEARY’S HORSEMANSHIP
+
+
+THE name of the public-house was the Pegasus’s Arms. The Pegasus’s legs
+might have been more to the purpose; but, underneath the winged horse
+upon the sign-board, the Pegasus’s Arms was inscribed in Roman letters.
+Beneath that inscription again, in a flowing scroll, the painter had
+touched off the lines:
+
+ Good malt makes good beer,
+ Walk in, and they’ll draw it here;
+ Good wine makes good brandy,
+ Give us a call, and you’ll find it handy.
+
+Framed and glazed upon the wall behind the dingy little bar, was another
+Pegasus—a theatrical one—with real gauze let in for his wings, golden
+stars stuck on all over him, and his ethereal harness made of red silk.
+
+As it had grown too dusky without, to see the sign, and as it had not
+grown light enough within to see the picture, Mr. Gradgrind and Mr.
+Bounderby received no offence from these idealities. They followed the
+girl up some steep corner-stairs without meeting any one, and stopped in
+the dark while she went on for a candle. They expected every moment to
+hear Merrylegs give tongue, but the highly trained performing dog had not
+barked when the girl and the candle appeared together.
+
+‘Father is not in our room, sir,’ she said, with a face of great
+surprise. ‘If you wouldn’t mind walking in, I’ll find him directly.’
+They walked in; and Sissy, having set two chairs for them, sped away with
+a quick light step. It was a mean, shabbily furnished room, with a bed
+in it. The white night-cap, embellished with two peacock’s feathers and
+a pigtail bolt upright, in which Signor Jupe had that very afternoon
+enlivened the varied performances with his chaste Shaksperean quips and
+retorts, hung upon a nail; but no other portion of his wardrobe, or other
+token of himself or his pursuits, was to be seen anywhere. As to
+Merrylegs, that respectable ancestor of the highly trained animal who
+went aboard the ark, might have been accidentally shut out of it, for any
+sign of a dog that was manifest to eye or ear in the Pegasus’s Arms.
+
+They heard the doors of rooms above, opening and shutting as Sissy went
+from one to another in quest of her father; and presently they heard
+voices expressing surprise. She came bounding down again in a great
+hurry, opened a battered and mangy old hair trunk, found it empty, and
+looked round with her hands clasped and her face full of terror.
+
+‘Father must have gone down to the Booth, sir. I don’t know why he
+should go there, but he must be there; I’ll bring him in a minute!’ She
+was gone directly, without her bonnet; with her long, dark, childish hair
+streaming behind her.
+
+‘What does she mean!’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Back in a minute? It’s more
+than a mile off.’
+
+Before Mr. Bounderby could reply, a young man appeared at the door, and
+introducing himself with the words, ‘By your leaves, gentlemen!’ walked
+in with his hands in his pockets. His face, close-shaven, thin, and
+sallow, was shaded by a great quantity of dark hair, brushed into a roll
+all round his head, and parted up the centre. His legs were very robust,
+but shorter than legs of good proportions should have been. His chest
+and back were as much too broad, as his legs were too short. He was
+dressed in a Newmarket coat and tight-fitting trousers; wore a shawl
+round his neck; smelt of lamp-oil, straw, orange-peel, horses’ provender,
+and sawdust; and looked a most remarkable sort of Centaur, compounded of
+the stable and the play-house. Where the one began, and the other ended,
+nobody could have told with any precision. This gentleman was mentioned
+in the bills of the day as Mr. E. W. B. Childers, so justly celebrated
+for his daring vaulting act as the Wild Huntsman of the North American
+Prairies; in which popular performance, a diminutive boy with an old
+face, who now accompanied him, assisted as his infant son: being carried
+upside down over his father’s shoulder, by one foot, and held by the
+crown of his head, heels upwards, in the palm of his father’s hand,
+according to the violent paternal manner in which wild huntsmen may be
+observed to fondle their offspring. Made up with curls, wreaths, wings,
+white bismuth, and carmine, this hopeful young person soared into so
+pleasing a Cupid as to constitute the chief delight of the maternal part
+of the spectators; but in private, where his characteristics were a
+precocious cutaway coat and an extremely gruff voice, he became of the
+Turf, turfy.
+
+‘By your leaves, gentlemen,’ said Mr. E. W. B. Childers, glancing round
+the room. ‘It was you, I believe, that were wishing to see Jupe!’
+
+‘It was,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘His daughter has gone to fetch him, but I
+can’t wait; therefore, if you please, I will leave a message for him with
+you.’
+
+‘You see, my friend,’ Mr. Bounderby put in, ‘we are the kind of people
+who know the value of time, and you are the kind of people who don’t know
+the value of time.’
+
+‘I have not,’ retorted Mr. Childers, after surveying him from head to
+foot, ‘the honour of knowing _you_,—but if you mean that you can make
+more money of your time than I can of mine, I should judge from your
+appearance, that you are about right.’
+
+‘And when you have made it, you can keep it too, I should think,’ said
+Cupid.
+
+‘Kidderminster, stow that!’ said Mr. Childers. (Master Kidderminster was
+Cupid’s mortal name.)
+
+‘What does he come here cheeking us for, then?’ cried Master
+Kidderminster, showing a very irascible temperament. ‘If you want to
+cheek us, pay your ochre at the doors and take it out.’
+
+‘Kidderminster,’ said Mr. Childers, raising his voice, ‘stow that!—Sir,’
+to Mr. Gradgrind, ‘I was addressing myself to you. You may or you may
+not be aware (for perhaps you have not been much in the audience), that
+Jupe has missed his tip very often, lately.’
+
+‘Has—what has he missed?’ asked Mr. Gradgrind, glancing at the potent
+Bounderby for assistance.
+
+‘Missed his tip.’
+
+‘Offered at the Garters four times last night, and never done ’em once,’
+said Master Kidderminster. ‘Missed his tip at the banners, too, and was
+loose in his ponging.’
+
+‘Didn’t do what he ought to do. Was short in his leaps and bad in his
+tumbling,’ Mr. Childers interpreted.
+
+‘Oh!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘that is tip, is it?’
+
+‘In a general way that’s missing his tip,’ Mr. E. W. B. Childers
+answered.
+
+‘Nine oils, Merrylegs, missing tips, garters, banners, and Ponging, eh!’
+ejaculated Bounderby, with his laugh of laughs. ‘Queer sort of company,
+too, for a man who has raised himself!’
+
+‘Lower yourself, then,’ retorted Cupid. ‘Oh Lord! if you’ve raised
+yourself so high as all that comes to, let yourself down a bit.’
+
+‘This is a very obtrusive lad!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, turning, and knitting
+his brows on him.
+
+‘We’d have had a young gentleman to meet you, if we had known you were
+coming,’ retorted Master Kidderminster, nothing abashed. ‘It’s a pity
+you don’t have a bespeak, being so particular. You’re on the Tight-Jeff,
+ain’t you?’
+
+‘What does this unmannerly boy mean,’ asked Mr. Gradgrind, eyeing him in
+a sort of desperation, ‘by Tight-Jeff?’
+
+‘There! Get out, get out!’ said Mr. Childers, thrusting his young friend
+from the room, rather in the prairie manner. ‘Tight-Jeff or Slack-Jeff,
+it don’t much signify: it’s only tight-rope and slack-rope. You were
+going to give me a message for Jupe?’
+
+‘Yes, I was.’
+
+‘Then,’ continued Mr. Childers, quickly, ‘my opinion is, he will never
+receive it. Do you know much of him?’
+
+‘I never saw the man in my life.’
+
+‘I doubt if you ever _will_ see him now. It’s pretty plain to me, he’s
+off.’
+
+‘Do you mean that he has deserted his daughter?’
+
+‘Ay! I mean,’ said Mr. Childers, with a nod, ‘that he has cut. He was
+goosed last night, he was goosed the night before last, he was goosed
+to-day. He has lately got in the way of being always goosed, and he
+can’t stand it.’
+
+‘Why has he been—so very much—Goosed?’ asked Mr. Gradgrind, forcing the
+word out of himself, with great solemnity and reluctance.
+
+‘His joints are turning stiff, and he is getting used up,’ said Childers.
+‘He has his points as a Cackler still, but he can’t get a living out of
+_them_.’
+
+‘A Cackler!’ Bounderby repeated. ‘Here we go again!’
+
+‘A speaker, if the gentleman likes it better,’ said Mr. E. W. B.
+Childers, superciliously throwing the interpretation over his shoulder,
+and accompanying it with a shake of his long hair—which all shook at
+once. ‘Now, it’s a remarkable fact, sir, that it cut that man deeper, to
+know that his daughter knew of his being goosed, than to go through with
+it.’
+
+‘Good!’ interrupted Mr. Bounderby. ‘This is good, Gradgrind! A man so
+fond of his daughter, that he runs away from her! This is devilish good!
+Ha! ha! Now, I’ll tell you what, young man. I haven’t always occupied
+my present station of life. I know what these things are. You may be
+astonished to hear it, but my mother—ran away from _me_.’
+
+E. W. B. Childers replied pointedly, that he was not at all astonished to
+hear it.
+
+‘Very well,’ said Bounderby. ‘I was born in a ditch, and my mother ran
+away from me. Do I excuse her for it? No. Have I ever excused her for
+it? Not I. What do I call her for it? I call her probably the very
+worst woman that ever lived in the world, except my drunken grandmother.
+There’s no family pride about me, there’s no imaginative sentimental
+humbug about me. I call a spade a spade; and I call the mother of Josiah
+Bounderby of Coketown, without any fear or any favour, what I should call
+her if she had been the mother of Dick Jones of Wapping. So, with this
+man. He is a runaway rogue and a vagabond, that’s what he is, in
+English.’
+
+‘It’s all the same to me what he is or what he is not, whether in English
+or whether in French,’ retorted Mr. E. W. B. Childers, facing about. ‘I
+am telling your friend what’s the fact; if you don’t like to hear it, you
+can avail yourself of the open air. You give it mouth enough, you do;
+but give it mouth in your own building at least,’ remonstrated E. W. B.
+with stern irony. ‘Don’t give it mouth in this building, till you’re
+called upon. You have got some building of your own I dare say, now?’
+
+‘Perhaps so,’ replied Mr. Bounderby, rattling his money and laughing.
+
+‘Then give it mouth in your own building, will you, if you please?’ said
+Childers. ‘Because this isn’t a strong building, and too much of you
+might bring it down!’
+
+Eyeing Mr. Bounderby from head to foot again, he turned from him, as from
+a man finally disposed of, to Mr. Gradgrind.
+
+‘Jupe sent his daughter out on an errand not an hour ago, and then was
+seen to slip out himself, with his hat over his eyes, and a bundle tied
+up in a handkerchief under his arm. She will never believe it of him,
+but he has cut away and left her.’
+
+‘Pray,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘why will she never believe it of him?’
+
+‘Because those two were one. Because they were never asunder. Because,
+up to this time, he seemed to dote upon her,’ said Childers, taking a
+step or two to look into the empty trunk. Both Mr. Childers and Master
+Kidderminster walked in a curious manner; with their legs wider apart
+than the general run of men, and with a very knowing assumption of being
+stiff in the knees. This walk was common to all the male members of
+Sleary’s company, and was understood to express, that they were always on
+horseback.
+
+‘Poor Sissy! He had better have apprenticed her,’ said Childers, giving
+his hair another shake, as he looked up from the empty box. ‘Now, he
+leaves her without anything to take to.’
+
+‘It is creditable to you, who have never been apprenticed, to express
+that opinion,’ returned Mr. Gradgrind, approvingly.
+
+‘_I_ never apprenticed? I was apprenticed when I was seven year old.’
+
+‘Oh! Indeed?’ said Mr. Gradgrind, rather resentfully, as having been
+defrauded of his good opinion. ‘I was not aware of its being the custom
+to apprentice young persons to—’
+
+‘Idleness,’ Mr. Bounderby put in with a loud laugh. ‘No, by the Lord
+Harry! Nor I!’
+
+‘Her father always had it in his head,’ resumed Childers, feigning
+unconsciousness of Mr. Bounderby’s existence, ‘that she was to be taught
+the deuce-and-all of education. How it got into his head, I can’t say; I
+can only say that it never got out. He has been picking up a bit of
+reading for her, here—and a bit of writing for her, there—and a bit of
+ciphering for her, somewhere else—these seven years.’
+
+Mr. E. W. B. Childers took one of his hands out of his pockets, stroked
+his face and chin, and looked, with a good deal of doubt and a little
+hope, at Mr. Gradgrind. From the first he had sought to conciliate that
+gentleman, for the sake of the deserted girl.
+
+‘When Sissy got into the school here,’ he pursued, ‘her father was as
+pleased as Punch. I couldn’t altogether make out why, myself, as we were
+not stationary here, being but comers and goers anywhere. I suppose,
+however, he had this move in his mind—he was always half-cracked—and then
+considered her provided for. If you should happen to have looked in
+to-night, for the purpose of telling him that you were going to do her
+any little service,’ said Mr. Childers, stroking his face again, and
+repeating his look, ‘it would be very fortunate and well-timed; very
+fortunate and well-timed.’
+
+‘On the contrary,’ returned Mr. Gradgrind. ‘I came to tell him that her
+connections made her not an object for the school, and that she must not
+attend any more. Still, if her father really has left her, without any
+connivance on her part—Bounderby, let me have a word with you.’
+
+Upon this, Mr. Childers politely betook himself, with his equestrian
+walk, to the landing outside the door, and there stood stroking his face,
+and softly whistling. While thus engaged, he overheard such phrases in
+Mr. Bounderby’s voice as ‘No. _I_ say no. I advise you not. I say by
+no means.’ While, from Mr. Gradgrind, he heard in his much lower tone
+the words, ‘But even as an example to Louisa, of what this pursuit which
+has been the subject of a vulgar curiosity, leads to and ends in. Think
+of it, Bounderby, in that point of view.’
+
+Meanwhile, the various members of Sleary’s company gradually gathered
+together from the upper regions, where they were quartered, and, from
+standing about, talking in low voices to one another and to Mr. Childers,
+gradually insinuated themselves and him into the room. There were two or
+three handsome young women among them, with their two or three husbands,
+and their two or three mothers, and their eight or nine little children,
+who did the fairy business when required. The father of one of the
+families was in the habit of balancing the father of another of the
+families on the top of a great pole; the father of a third family often
+made a pyramid of both those fathers, with Master Kidderminster for the
+apex, and himself for the base; all the fathers could dance upon rolling
+casks, stand upon bottles, catch knives and balls, twirl hand-basins,
+ride upon anything, jump over everything, and stick at nothing. All the
+mothers could (and did) dance, upon the slack wire and the tight-rope,
+and perform rapid acts on bare-backed steeds; none of them were at all
+particular in respect of showing their legs; and one of them, alone in a
+Greek chariot, drove six in hand into every town they came to. They all
+assumed to be mighty rakish and knowing, they were not very tidy in their
+private dresses, they were not at all orderly in their domestic
+arrangements, and the combined literature of the whole company would have
+produced but a poor letter on any subject. Yet there was a remarkable
+gentleness and childishness about these people, a special inaptitude for
+any kind of sharp practice, and an untiring readiness to help and pity
+one another, deserving often of as much respect, and always of as much
+generous construction, as the every-day virtues of any class of people in
+the world.
+
+Last of all appeared Mr. Sleary: a stout man as already mentioned, with
+one fixed eye, and one loose eye, a voice (if it can be called so) like
+the efforts of a broken old pair of bellows, a flabby surface, and a
+muddled head which was never sober and never drunk.
+
+‘Thquire!’ said Mr. Sleary, who was troubled with asthma, and whose
+breath came far too thick and heavy for the letter s, ‘Your thervant!
+Thith ith a bad piethe of bithnith, thith ith. You’ve heard of my Clown
+and hith dog being thuppothed to have morrithed?’
+
+He addressed Mr. Gradgrind, who answered ‘Yes.’
+
+‘Well, Thquire,’ he returned, taking off his hat, and rubbing the lining
+with his pocket-handkerchief, which he kept inside for the purpose. ‘Ith
+it your intenthion to do anything for the poor girl, Thquire?’
+
+‘I shall have something to propose to her when she comes back,’ said Mr.
+Gradgrind.
+
+‘Glad to hear it, Thquire. Not that I want to get rid of the child, any
+more than I want to thtand in her way. I’m willing to take her prentith,
+though at her age ith late. My voithe ith a little huthky, Thquire, and
+not eathy heard by them ath don’t know me; but if you’d been chilled and
+heated, heated and chilled, chilled and heated in the ring when you wath
+young, ath often ath I have been, _your_ voithe wouldn’t have lathted
+out, Thquire, no more than mine.’
+
+‘I dare say not,’ said Mr. Gradgrind.
+
+‘What thall it be, Thquire, while you wait? Thall it be Therry? Give it
+a name, Thquire!’ said Mr. Sleary, with hospitable ease.
+
+‘Nothing for me, I thank you,’ said Mr. Gradgrind.
+
+‘Don’t thay nothing, Thquire. What doth your friend thay? If you
+haven’t took your feed yet, have a glath of bitterth.’
+
+Here his daughter Josephine—a pretty fair-haired girl of eighteen, who
+had been tied on a horse at two years old, and had made a will at twelve,
+which she always carried about with her, expressive of her dying desire
+to be drawn to the grave by the two piebald ponies—cried, ‘Father, hush!
+she has come back!’ Then came Sissy Jupe, running into the room as she
+had run out of it. And when she saw them all assembled, and saw their
+looks, and saw no father there, she broke into a most deplorable cry, and
+took refuge on the bosom of the most accomplished tight-rope lady
+(herself in the family-way), who knelt down on the floor to nurse her,
+and to weep over her.
+
+‘Ith an internal thame, upon my thoul it ith,’ said Sleary.
+
+‘O my dear father, my good kind father, where are you gone? You are gone
+to try to do me some good, I know! You are gone away for my sake, I am
+sure! And how miserable and helpless you will be without me, poor, poor
+father, until you come back!’ It was so pathetic to hear her saying many
+things of this kind, with her face turned upward, and her arms stretched
+out as if she were trying to stop his departing shadow and embrace it,
+that no one spoke a word until Mr. Bounderby (growing impatient) took the
+case in hand.
+
+‘Now, good people all,’ said he, ‘this is wanton waste of time. Let the
+girl understand the fact. Let her take it from me, if you like, who have
+been run away from, myself. Here, what’s your name! Your father has
+absconded—deserted you—and you mustn’t expect to see him again as long as
+you live.’
+
+They cared so little for plain Fact, these people, and were in that
+advanced state of degeneracy on the subject, that instead of being
+impressed by the speaker’s strong common sense, they took it in
+extraordinary dudgeon. The men muttered ‘Shame!’ and the women ‘Brute!’
+and Sleary, in some haste, communicated the following hint, apart to Mr.
+Bounderby.
+
+‘I tell you what, Thquire. To thpeak plain to you, my opinion ith that
+you had better cut it thort, and drop it. They’re a very good natur’d
+people, my people, but they’re accuthtomed to be quick in their
+movementh; and if you don’t act upon my advithe, I’m damned if I don’t
+believe they’ll pith you out o’ winder.’
+
+Mr. Bounderby being restrained by this mild suggestion, Mr. Gradgrind
+found an opening for his eminently practical exposition of the subject.
+
+‘It is of no moment,’ said he, ‘whether this person is to be expected
+back at any time, or the contrary. He is gone away, and there is no
+present expectation of his return. That, I believe, is agreed on all
+hands.’
+
+‘Thath agreed, Thquire. Thick to that!’ From Sleary.
+
+‘Well then. I, who came here to inform the father of the poor girl,
+Jupe, that she could not be received at the school any more, in
+consequence of there being practical objections, into which I need not
+enter, to the reception there of the children of persons so employed, am
+prepared in these altered circumstances to make a proposal. I am willing
+to take charge of you, Jupe, and to educate you, and provide for you.
+The only condition (over and above your good behaviour) I make is, that
+you decide now, at once, whether to accompany me or remain here. Also,
+that if you accompany me now, it is understood that you communicate no
+more with any of your friends who are here present. These observations
+comprise the whole of the case.’
+
+‘At the thame time,’ said Sleary, ‘I mutht put in my word, Thquire, tho
+that both thides of the banner may be equally theen. If you like,
+Thethilia, to be prentitht, you know the natur of the work and you know
+your companionth. Emma Gordon, in whothe lap you’re a lying at prethent,
+would be a mother to you, and Joth’phine would be a thithter to you. I
+don’t pretend to be of the angel breed myself, and I don’t thay but what,
+when you mith’d your tip, you’d find me cut up rough, and thwear an oath
+or two at you. But what I thay, Thquire, ith, that good tempered or bad
+tempered, I never did a horthe a injury yet, no more than thwearing at
+him went, and that I don’t expect I thall begin otherwithe at my time of
+life, with a rider. I never wath much of a Cackler, Thquire, and I have
+thed my thay.’
+
+The latter part of this speech was addressed to Mr. Gradgrind, who
+received it with a grave inclination of his head, and then remarked:
+
+‘The only observation I will make to you, Jupe, in the way of influencing
+your decision, is, that it is highly desirable to have a sound practical
+education, and that even your father himself (from what I understand)
+appears, on your behalf, to have known and felt that much.’
+
+The last words had a visible effect upon her. She stopped in her wild
+crying, a little detached herself from Emma Gordon, and turned her face
+full upon her patron. The whole company perceived the force of the
+change, and drew a long breath together, that plainly said, ‘she will
+go!’
+
+‘Be sure you know your own mind, Jupe,’ Mr. Gradgrind cautioned her; ‘I
+say no more. Be sure you know your own mind!’
+
+‘When father comes back,’ cried the girl, bursting into tears again after
+a minute’s silence, ‘how will he ever find me if I go away!’
+
+‘You may be quite at ease,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, calmly; he worked out the
+whole matter like a sum: ‘you may be quite at ease, Jupe, on that score.
+In such a case, your father, I apprehend, must find out Mr.—’
+
+‘Thleary. Thath my name, Thquire. Not athamed of it. Known all over
+England, and alwayth paythe ith way.’
+
+‘Must find out Mr. Sleary, who would then let him know where you went. I
+should have no power of keeping you against his wish, and he would have
+no difficulty, at any time, in finding Mr. Thomas Gradgrind of Coketown.
+I am well known.’
+
+‘Well known,’ assented Mr. Sleary, rolling his loose eye. ‘You’re one of
+the thort, Thquire, that keepth a prethiouth thight of money out of the
+houthe. But never mind that at prethent.’
+
+There was another silence; and then she exclaimed, sobbing with her hands
+before her face, ‘Oh, give me my clothes, give me my clothes, and let me
+go away before I break my heart!’
+
+The women sadly bestirred themselves to get the clothes together—it was
+soon done, for they were not many—and to pack them in a basket which had
+often travelled with them. Sissy sat all the time upon the ground, still
+sobbing, and covering her eyes. Mr. Gradgrind and his friend Bounderby
+stood near the door, ready to take her away. Mr. Sleary stood in the
+middle of the room, with the male members of the company about him,
+exactly as he would have stood in the centre of the ring during his
+daughter Josephine’s performance. He wanted nothing but his whip.
+
+The basket packed in silence, they brought her bonnet to her, and
+smoothed her disordered hair, and put it on. Then they pressed about
+her, and bent over her in very natural attitudes, kissing and embracing
+her: and brought the children to take leave of her; and were a
+tender-hearted, simple, foolish set of women altogether.
+
+‘Now, Jupe,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘If you are quite determined, come!’
+
+But she had to take her farewell of the male part of the company yet, and
+every one of them had to unfold his arms (for they all assumed the
+professional attitude when they found themselves near Sleary), and give
+her a parting kiss—Master Kidderminster excepted, in whose young nature
+there was an original flavour of the misanthrope, who was also known to
+have harboured matrimonial views, and who moodily withdrew. Mr. Sleary
+was reserved until the last. Opening his arms wide he took her by both
+her hands, and would have sprung her up and down, after the riding-master
+manner of congratulating young ladies on their dismounting from a rapid
+act; but there was no rebound in Sissy, and she only stood before him
+crying.
+
+‘Good-bye, my dear!’ said Sleary. ‘You’ll make your fortun, I hope, and
+none of our poor folkth will ever trouble you, I’ll pound it. I with
+your father hadn’t taken hith dog with him; ith a ill-conwenienth to have
+the dog out of the billth. But on thecond thoughth, he wouldn’t have
+performed without hith mathter, tho ith ath broad ath ith long!’
+
+With that he regarded her attentively with his fixed eye, surveyed his
+company with his loose one, kissed her, shook his head, and handed her to
+Mr. Gradgrind as to a horse.
+
+‘There the ith, Thquire,’ he said, sweeping her with a professional
+glance as if she were being adjusted in her seat, ‘and the’ll do you
+juthtithe. Good-bye, Thethilia!’
+
+‘Good-bye, Cecilia!’ ‘Good-bye, Sissy!’ ‘God bless you, dear!’ In a
+variety of voices from all the room.
+
+But the riding-master eye had observed the bottle of the nine oils in her
+bosom, and he now interposed with ‘Leave the bottle, my dear; ith large
+to carry; it will be of no uthe to you now. Give it to me!’
+
+‘No, no!’ she said, in another burst of tears. ‘Oh, no! Pray let me
+keep it for father till he comes back! He will want it when he comes
+back. He had never thought of going away, when he sent me for it. I
+must keep it for him, if you please!’
+
+‘Tho be it, my dear. (You thee how it ith, Thquire!) Farewell,
+Thethilia! My latht wordth to you ith thith, Thtick to the termth of
+your engagement, be obedient to the Thquire, and forget uth. But if,
+when you’re grown up and married and well off, you come upon any
+horthe-riding ever, don’t be hard upon it, don’t be croth with it, give
+it a Bethpeak if you can, and think you might do wurth. People mutht be
+amuthed, Thquire, thomehow,’ continued Sleary, rendered more pursy than
+ever, by so much talking; ‘they can’t be alwayth a working, nor yet they
+can’t be alwayth a learning. Make the betht of uth; not the wurtht.
+I’ve got my living out of the horthe-riding all my life, I know; but I
+conthider that I lay down the philothophy of the thubject when I thay to
+you, Thquire, make the betht of uth: not the wurtht!’
+
+The Sleary philosophy was propounded as they went downstairs and the
+fixed eye of Philosophy—and its rolling eye, too—soon lost the three
+figures and the basket in the darkness of the street.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+MRS. SPARSIT
+
+
+MR. BOUNDERBY being a bachelor, an elderly lady presided over his
+establishment, in consideration of a certain annual stipend. Mrs.
+Sparsit was this lady’s name; and she was a prominent figure in
+attendance on Mr. Bounderby’s car, as it rolled along in triumph with the
+Bully of humility inside.
+
+For, Mrs. Sparsit had not only seen different days, but was highly
+connected. She had a great aunt living in these very times called Lady
+Scadgers. Mr. Sparsit, deceased, of whom she was the relict, had been by
+the mother’s side what Mrs. Sparsit still called ‘a Powler.’ Strangers
+of limited information and dull apprehension were sometimes observed not
+to know what a Powler was, and even to appear uncertain whether it might
+be a business, or a political party, or a profession of faith. The
+better class of minds, however, did not need to be informed that the
+Powlers were an ancient stock, who could trace themselves so exceedingly
+far back that it was not surprising if they sometimes lost
+themselves—which they had rather frequently done, as respected
+horse-flesh, blind-hookey, Hebrew monetary transactions, and the
+Insolvent Debtors’ Court.
+
+The late Mr. Sparsit, being by the mother’s side a Powler, married this
+lady, being by the father’s side a Scadgers. Lady Scadgers (an immensely
+fat old woman, with an inordinate appetite for butcher’s meat, and a
+mysterious leg which had now refused to get out of bed for fourteen
+years) contrived the marriage, at a period when Sparsit was just of age,
+and chiefly noticeable for a slender body, weakly supported on two long
+slim props, and surmounted by no head worth mentioning. He inherited a
+fair fortune from his uncle, but owed it all before he came into it, and
+spent it twice over immediately afterwards. Thus, when he died, at
+twenty-four (the scene of his decease, Calais, and the cause, brandy), he
+did not leave his widow, from whom he had been separated soon after the
+honeymoon, in affluent circumstances. That bereaved lady, fifteen years
+older than he, fell presently at deadly feud with her only relative, Lady
+Scadgers; and, partly to spite her ladyship, and partly to maintain
+herself, went out at a salary. And here she was now, in her elderly
+days, with the Coriolanian style of nose and the dense black eyebrows
+which had captivated Sparsit, making Mr. Bounderby’s tea as he took his
+breakfast.
+
+If Bounderby had been a Conqueror, and Mrs. Sparsit a captive Princess
+whom he took about as a feature in his state-processions, he could not
+have made a greater flourish with her than he habitually did. Just as it
+belonged to his boastfulness to depreciate his own extraction, so it
+belonged to it to exalt Mrs. Sparsit’s. In the measure that he would not
+allow his own youth to have been attended by a single favourable
+circumstance, he brightened Mrs. Sparsit’s juvenile career with every
+possible advantage, and showered waggon-loads of early roses all over
+that lady’s path. ‘And yet, sir,’ he would say, ‘how does it turn out
+after all? Why here she is at a hundred a year (I give her a hundred,
+which she is pleased to term handsome), keeping the house of Josiah
+Bounderby of Coketown!’
+
+Nay, he made this foil of his so very widely known, that third parties
+took it up, and handled it on some occasions with considerable briskness.
+It was one of the most exasperating attributes of Bounderby, that he not
+only sang his own praises but stimulated other men to sing them. There
+was a moral infection of clap-trap in him. Strangers, modest enough
+elsewhere, started up at dinners in Coketown, and boasted, in quite a
+rampant way, of Bounderby. They made him out to be the Royal arms, the
+Union-Jack, Magna Charta, John Bull, Habeas Corpus, the Bill of Rights,
+An Englishman’s house is his castle, Church and State, and God save the
+Queen, all put together. And as often (and it was very often) as an
+orator of this kind brought into his peroration,
+
+ ‘Princes and lords may flourish or may fade,
+ A breath can make them, as a breath has made,’
+
+—it was, for certain, more or less understood among the company that he
+had heard of Mrs. Sparsit.
+
+‘Mr. Bounderby,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘you are unusually slow, sir, with
+your breakfast this morning.’
+
+‘Why, ma’am,’ he returned, ‘I am thinking about Tom Gradgrind’s whim;’
+Tom Gradgrind, for a bluff independent manner of speaking—as if somebody
+were always endeavouring to bribe him with immense sums to say Thomas,
+and he wouldn’t; ‘Tom Gradgrind’s whim, ma’am, of bringing up the
+tumbling-girl.’
+
+‘The girl is now waiting to know,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘whether she is to
+go straight to the school, or up to the Lodge.’
+
+‘She must wait, ma’am,’ answered Bounderby, ‘till I know myself. We
+shall have Tom Gradgrind down here presently, I suppose. If he should
+wish her to remain here a day or two longer, of course she can, ma’am.’
+
+‘Of course she can if you wish it, Mr. Bounderby.’
+
+‘I told him I would give her a shake-down here, last night, in order that
+he might sleep on it before he decided to let her have any association
+with Louisa.’
+
+‘Indeed, Mr. Bounderby? Very thoughtful of you!’ Mrs. Sparsit’s
+Coriolanian nose underwent a slight expansion of the nostrils, and her
+black eyebrows contracted as she took a sip of tea.
+
+‘It’s tolerably clear to _me_,’ said Bounderby, ‘that the little puss can
+get small good out of such companionship.’
+
+‘Are you speaking of young Miss Gradgrind, Mr. Bounderby?’
+
+‘Yes, ma’am, I’m speaking of Louisa.’
+
+‘Your observation being limited to “little puss,”’ said Mrs. Sparsit,
+‘and there being two little girls in question, I did not know which might
+be indicated by that expression.’
+
+‘Louisa,’ repeated Mr. Bounderby. ‘Louisa, Louisa.’
+
+‘You are quite another father to Louisa, sir.’ Mrs. Sparsit took a
+little more tea; and, as she bent her again contracted eyebrows over her
+steaming cup, rather looked as if her classical countenance were invoking
+the infernal gods.
+
+‘If you had said I was another father to Tom—young Tom, I mean, not my
+friend Tom Gradgrind—you might have been nearer the mark. I am going to
+take young Tom into my office. Going to have him under my wing, ma’am.’
+
+‘Indeed? Rather young for that, is he not, sir?’ Mrs. Spirit’s ‘sir,’
+in addressing Mr. Bounderby, was a word of ceremony, rather exacting
+consideration for herself in the use, than honouring him.
+
+‘I’m not going to take him at once; he is to finish his educational
+cramming before then,’ said Bounderby. ‘By the Lord Harry, he’ll have
+enough of it, first and last! He’d open his eyes, that boy would, if he
+knew how empty of learning _my_ young maw was, at his time of life.’
+Which, by the by, he probably did know, for he had heard of it often
+enough. ‘But it’s extraordinary the difficulty I have on scores of such
+subjects, in speaking to any one on equal terms. Here, for example, I
+have been speaking to you this morning about tumblers. Why, what do
+_you_ know about tumblers? At the time when, to have been a tumbler in
+the mud of the streets, would have been a godsend to me, a prize in the
+lottery to me, you were at the Italian Opera. You were coming out of the
+Italian Opera, ma’am, in white satin and jewels, a blaze of splendour,
+when I hadn’t a penny to buy a link to light you.’
+
+‘I certainly, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a dignity serenely
+mournful, ‘was familiar with the Italian Opera at a very early age.’
+
+‘Egad, ma’am, so was I,’ said Bounderby, ‘—with the wrong side of it. A
+hard bed the pavement of its Arcade used to make, I assure you. People
+like you, ma’am, accustomed from infancy to lie on Down feathers, have no
+idea _how_ hard a paving-stone is, without trying it. No, no, it’s of no
+use my talking to _you_ about tumblers. I should speak of foreign
+dancers, and the West End of London, and May Fair, and lords and ladies
+and honourables.’
+
+‘I trust, sir,’ rejoined Mrs. Sparsit, with decent resignation, ‘it is
+not necessary that you should do anything of that kind. I hope I have
+learnt how to accommodate myself to the changes of life. If I have
+acquired an interest in hearing of your instructive experiences, and can
+scarcely hear enough of them, I claim no merit for that, since I believe
+it is a general sentiment.’
+
+‘Well, ma’am,’ said her patron, ‘perhaps some people may be pleased to
+say that they do like to hear, in his own unpolished way, what Josiah
+Bounderby, of Coketown, has gone through. But you must confess that you
+were born in the lap of luxury, yourself. Come, ma’am, you know you were
+born in the lap of luxury.’
+
+‘I do not, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit with a shake of her head, ‘deny
+it.’
+
+Mr. Bounderby was obliged to get up from table, and stand with his back
+to the fire, looking at her; she was such an enhancement of his position.
+
+‘And you were in crack society. Devilish high society,’ he said, warming
+his legs.
+
+‘It is true, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, with an affectation of humility
+the very opposite of his, and therefore in no danger of jostling it.
+
+‘You were in the tiptop fashion, and all the rest of it,’ said Mr.
+Bounderby.
+
+‘Yes, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a kind of social widowhood upon
+her. ‘It is unquestionably true.’
+
+Mr. Bounderby, bending himself at the knees, literally embraced his legs
+in his great satisfaction and laughed aloud. Mr. and Miss Gradgrind
+being then announced, he received the former with a shake of the hand,
+and the latter with a kiss.
+
+‘Can Jupe be sent here, Bounderby?’ asked Mr. Gradgrind.
+
+Certainly. So Jupe was sent there. On coming in, she curtseyed to Mr.
+Bounderby, and to his friend Tom Gradgrind, and also to Louisa; but in
+her confusion unluckily omitted Mrs. Sparsit. Observing this, the
+blustrous Bounderby had the following remarks to make:
+
+‘Now, I tell you what, my girl. The name of that lady by the teapot, is
+Mrs. Sparsit. That lady acts as mistress of this house, and she is a
+highly connected lady. Consequently, if ever you come again into any
+room in this house, you will make a short stay in it if you don’t behave
+towards that lady in your most respectful manner. Now, I don’t care a
+button what you do to _me_, because I don’t affect to be anybody. So far
+from having high connections I have no connections at all, and I come of
+the scum of the earth. But towards that lady, I do care what you do; and
+you shall do what is deferential and respectful, or you shall not come
+here.’
+
+‘I hope, Bounderby,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, in a conciliatory voice, ‘that
+this was merely an oversight.’
+
+‘My friend Tom Gradgrind suggests, Mrs. Sparsit,’ said Bounderby, ‘that
+this was merely an oversight. Very likely. However, as you are aware,
+ma’am, I don’t allow of even oversights towards you.’
+
+‘You are very good indeed, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head
+with her State humility. ‘It is not worth speaking of.’
+
+Sissy, who all this time had been faintly excusing herself with tears in
+her eyes, was now waved over by the master of the house to Mr. Gradgrind.
+She stood looking intently at him, and Louisa stood coldly by, with her
+eyes upon the ground, while he proceeded thus:
+
+‘Jupe, I have made up my mind to take you into my house; and, when you
+are not in attendance at the school, to employ you about Mrs. Gradgrind,
+who is rather an invalid. I have explained to Miss Louisa—this is Miss
+Louisa—the miserable but natural end of your late career; and you are to
+expressly understand that the whole of that subject is past, and is not
+to be referred to any more. From this time you begin your history. You
+are, at present, ignorant, I know.’
+
+‘Yes, sir, very,’ she answered, curtseying.
+
+‘I shall have the satisfaction of causing you to be strictly educated;
+and you will be a living proof to all who come into communication with
+you, of the advantages of the training you will receive. You will be
+reclaimed and formed. You have been in the habit now of reading to your
+father, and those people I found you among, I dare say?’ said Mr.
+Gradgrind, beckoning her nearer to him before he said so, and dropping
+his voice.
+
+‘Only to father and Merrylegs, sir. At least I mean to father, when
+Merrylegs was always there.’
+
+‘Never mind Merrylegs, Jupe,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, with a passing frown.
+‘I don’t ask about him. I understand you to have been in the habit of
+reading to your father?’
+
+‘O, yes, sir, thousands of times. They were the happiest—O, of all the
+happy times we had together, sir!’
+
+It was only now when her sorrow broke out, that Louisa looked at her.
+
+‘And what,’ asked Mr. Gradgrind, in a still lower voice, ‘did you read to
+your father, Jupe?’
+
+‘About the Fairies, sir, and the Dwarf, and the Hunchback, and the
+Genies,’ she sobbed out; ‘and about—’
+
+‘Hush!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘that is enough. Never breathe a word of
+such destructive nonsense any more. Bounderby, this is a case for rigid
+training, and I shall observe it with interest.’
+
+‘Well,’ returned Mr. Bounderby, ‘I have given you my opinion already, and
+I shouldn’t do as you do. But, very well, very well. Since you are bent
+upon it, _very_ well!’
+
+So, Mr. Gradgrind and his daughter took Cecilia Jupe off with them to
+Stone Lodge, and on the way Louisa never spoke one word, good or bad.
+And Mr. Bounderby went about his daily pursuits. And Mrs. Sparsit got
+behind her eyebrows and meditated in the gloom of that retreat, all the
+evening.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+NEVER WONDER
+
+
+LET us strike the key-note again, before pursuing the tune.
+
+When she was half a dozen years younger, Louisa had been overheard to
+begin a conversation with her brother one day, by saying ‘Tom, I
+wonder’—upon which Mr. Gradgrind, who was the person overhearing, stepped
+forth into the light and said, ‘Louisa, never wonder!’
+
+Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the
+reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and
+affections. Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction,
+multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never
+wonder. Bring to me, says M’Choakumchild, yonder baby just able to walk,
+and I will engage that it shall never wonder.
+
+Now, besides very many babies just able to walk, there happened to be in
+Coketown a considerable population of babies who had been walking against
+time towards the infinite world, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years and
+more. These portentous infants being alarming creatures to stalk about
+in any human society, the eighteen denominations incessantly scratched
+one another’s faces and pulled one another’s hair by way of agreeing on
+the steps to be taken for their improvement—which they never did; a
+surprising circumstance, when the happy adaptation of the means to the
+end is considered. Still, although they differed in every other
+particular, conceivable and inconceivable (especially inconceivable),
+they were pretty well united on the point that these unlucky infants were
+never to wonder. Body number one, said they must take everything on
+trust. Body number two, said they must take everything on political
+economy. Body number three, wrote leaden little books for them, showing
+how the good grown-up baby invariably got to the Savings-bank, and the
+bad grown-up baby invariably got transported. Body number four, under
+dreary pretences of being droll (when it was very melancholy indeed),
+made the shallowest pretences of concealing pitfalls of knowledge, into
+which it was the duty of these babies to be smuggled and inveigled. But,
+all the bodies agreed that they were never to wonder.
+
+There was a library in Coketown, to which general access was easy. Mr.
+Gradgrind greatly tormented his mind about what the people read in this
+library: a point whereon little rivers of tabular statements periodically
+flowed into the howling ocean of tabular statements, which no diver ever
+got to any depth in and came up sane. It was a disheartening
+circumstance, but a melancholy fact, that even these readers persisted in
+wondering. They wondered about human nature, human passions, human hopes
+and fears, the struggles, triumphs and defeats, the cares and joys and
+sorrows, the lives and deaths of common men and women! They sometimes,
+after fifteen hours’ work, sat down to read mere fables about men and
+women, more or less like themselves, and about children, more or less
+like their own. They took De Foe to their bosoms, instead of Euclid, and
+seemed to be on the whole more comforted by Goldsmith than by Cocker.
+Mr. Gradgrind was for ever working, in print and out of print, at this
+eccentric sum, and he never could make out how it yielded this
+unaccountable product.
+
+‘I am sick of my life, Loo. I, hate it altogether, and I hate everybody
+except you,’ said the unnatural young Thomas Gradgrind in the
+hair-cutting chamber at twilight.
+
+‘You don’t hate Sissy, Tom?’
+
+‘I hate to be obliged to call her Jupe. And she hates me,’ said Tom,
+moodily.
+
+‘No, she does not, Tom, I am sure!’
+
+‘She must,’ said Tom. ‘She must just hate and detest the whole set-out
+of us. They’ll bother her head off, I think, before they have done with
+her. Already she’s getting as pale as wax, and as heavy as—I am.’
+
+Young Thomas expressed these sentiments sitting astride of a chair before
+the fire, with his arms on the back, and his sulky face on his arms. His
+sister sat in the darker corner by the fireside, now looking at him, now
+looking at the bright sparks as they dropped upon the hearth.
+
+‘As to me,’ said Tom, tumbling his hair all manner of ways with his sulky
+hands, ‘I am a Donkey, that’s what _I_ am. I am as obstinate as one, I
+am more stupid than one, I get as much pleasure as one, and I should like
+to kick like one.’
+
+‘Not me, I hope, Tom?’
+
+‘No, Loo; I wouldn’t hurt _you_. I made an exception of you at first. I
+don’t know what this—jolly old—Jaundiced Jail,’ Tom had paused to find a
+sufficiently complimentary and expressive name for the parental roof, and
+seemed to relieve his mind for a moment by the strong alliteration of
+this one, ‘would be without you.’
+
+‘Indeed, Tom? Do you really and truly say so?’
+
+‘Why, of course I do. What’s the use of talking about it!’ returned Tom,
+chafing his face on his coat-sleeve, as if to mortify his flesh, and have
+it in unison with his spirit.
+
+‘Because, Tom,’ said his sister, after silently watching the sparks
+awhile, ‘as I get older, and nearer growing up, I often sit wondering
+here, and think how unfortunate it is for me that I can’t reconcile you
+to home better than I am able to do. I don’t know what other girls know.
+I can’t play to you, or sing to you. I can’t talk to you so as to
+lighten your mind, for I never see any amusing sights or read any amusing
+books that it would be a pleasure or a relief to you to talk about, when
+you are tired.’
+
+‘Well, no more do I. I am as bad as you in that respect; and I am a Mule
+too, which you’re not. If father was determined to make me either a Prig
+or a Mule, and I am not a Prig, why, it stands to reason, I must be a
+Mule. And so I am,’ said Tom, desperately.
+
+‘It’s a great pity,’ said Louisa, after another pause, and speaking
+thoughtfully out of her dark corner: ‘it’s a great pity, Tom. It’s very
+unfortunate for both of us.’
+
+‘Oh! You,’ said Tom; ‘you are a girl, Loo, and a girl comes out of it
+better than a boy does. I don’t miss anything in you. You are the only
+pleasure I have—you can brighten even this place—and you can always lead
+me as you like.’
+
+‘You are a dear brother, Tom; and while you think I can do such things, I
+don’t so much mind knowing better. Though I do know better, Tom, and am
+very sorry for it.’ She came and kissed him, and went back into her
+corner again.
+
+‘I wish I could collect all the Facts we hear so much about,’ said Tom,
+spitefully setting his teeth, ‘and all the Figures, and all the people
+who found them out: and I wish I could put a thousand barrels of
+gunpowder under them, and blow them all up together! However, when I go
+to live with old Bounderby, I’ll have my revenge.’
+
+‘Your revenge, Tom?’
+
+‘I mean, I’ll enjoy myself a little, and go about and see something, and
+hear something. I’ll recompense myself for the way in which I have been
+brought up.’
+
+‘But don’t disappoint yourself beforehand, Tom. Mr. Bounderby thinks as
+father thinks, and is a great deal rougher, and not half so kind.’
+
+‘Oh!’ said Tom, laughing; ‘I don’t mind that. I shall very well know how
+to manage and smooth old Bounderby!’
+
+Their shadows were defined upon the wall, but those of the high presses
+in the room were all blended together on the wall and on the ceiling, as
+if the brother and sister were overhung by a dark cavern. Or, a fanciful
+imagination—if such treason could have been there—might have made it out
+to be the shadow of their subject, and of its lowering association with
+their future.
+
+‘What is your great mode of smoothing and managing, Tom? Is it a
+secret?’
+
+‘Oh!’ said Tom, ‘if it is a secret, it’s not far off. It’s you. You are
+his little pet, you are his favourite; he’ll do anything for you. When
+he says to me what I don’t like, I shall say to him, “My sister Loo will
+be hurt and disappointed, Mr. Bounderby. She always used to tell me she
+was sure you would be easier with me than this.” That’ll bring him
+about, or nothing will.’
+
+After waiting for some answering remark, and getting none, Tom wearily
+relapsed into the present time, and twined himself yawning round and
+about the rails of his chair, and rumpled his head more and more, until
+he suddenly looked up, and asked:
+
+‘Have you gone to sleep, Loo?’
+
+‘No, Tom. I am looking at the fire.’
+
+‘You seem to find more to look at in it than ever I could find,’ said
+Tom. ‘Another of the advantages, I suppose, of being a girl.’
+
+‘Tom,’ enquired his sister, slowly, and in a curious tone, as if she were
+reading what she asked in the fire, and it was not quite plainly written
+there, ‘do you look forward with any satisfaction to this change to Mr.
+Bounderby’s?’
+
+‘Why, there’s one thing to be said of it,’ returned Tom, pushing his
+chair from him, and standing up; ‘it will be getting away from home.’
+
+‘There is one thing to be said of it,’ Louisa repeated in her former
+curious tone; ‘it will be getting away from home. Yes.’
+
+‘Not but what I shall be very unwilling, both to leave you, Loo, and to
+leave you here. But I must go, you know, whether I like it or not; and I
+had better go where I can take with me some advantage of your influence,
+than where I should lose it altogether. Don’t you see?’
+
+‘Yes, Tom.’
+
+The answer was so long in coming, though there was no indecision in it,
+that Tom went and leaned on the back of her chair, to contemplate the
+fire which so engrossed her, from her point of view, and see what he
+could make of it.
+
+‘Except that it is a fire,’ said Tom, ‘it looks to me as stupid and blank
+as everything else looks. What do you see in it? Not a circus?’
+
+‘I don’t see anything in it, Tom, particularly. But since I have been
+looking at it, I have been wondering about you and me, grown up.’
+
+‘Wondering again!’ said Tom.
+
+‘I have such unmanageable thoughts,’ returned his sister, ‘that they
+_will_ wonder.’
+
+‘Then I beg of you, Louisa,’ said Mrs. Gradgrind, who had opened the door
+without being heard, ‘to do nothing of that description, for goodness’
+sake, you inconsiderate girl, or I shall never hear the last of it from
+your father. And, Thomas, it is really shameful, with my poor head
+continually wearing me out, that a boy brought up as you have been, and
+whose education has cost what yours has, should be found encouraging his
+sister to wonder, when he knows his father has expressly said that she is
+not to do it.’
+
+Louisa denied Tom’s participation in the offence; but her mother stopped
+her with the conclusive answer, ‘Louisa, don’t tell me, in my state of
+health; for unless you had been encouraged, it is morally and physically
+impossible that you could have done it.’
+
+‘I was encouraged by nothing, mother, but by looking at the red sparks
+dropping out of the fire, and whitening and dying. It made me think,
+after all, how short my life would be, and how little I could hope to do
+in it.’
+
+‘Nonsense!’ said Mrs. Gradgrind, rendered almost energetic. ‘Nonsense!
+Don’t stand there and tell me such stuff, Louisa, to my face, when you
+know very well that if it was ever to reach your father’s ears I should
+never hear the last of it. After all the trouble that has been taken
+with you! After the lectures you have attended, and the experiments you
+have seen! After I have heard you myself, when the whole of my right
+side has been benumbed, going on with your master about combustion, and
+calcination, and calorification, and I may say every kind of ation that
+could drive a poor invalid distracted, to hear you talking in this absurd
+way about sparks and ashes! I wish,’ whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind, taking a
+chair, and discharging her strongest point before succumbing under these
+mere shadows of facts, ‘yes, I really _do_ wish that I had never had a
+family, and then you would have known what it was to do without me!’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+SISSY’S PROGRESS
+
+
+SISSY JUPE had not an easy time of it, between Mr. M’Choakumchild and
+Mrs. Gradgrind, and was not without strong impulses, in the first months
+of her probation, to run away. It hailed facts all day long so very
+hard, and life in general was opened to her as such a closely ruled
+ciphering-book, that assuredly she would have run away, but for only one
+restraint.
+
+It is lamentable to think of; but this restraint was the result of no
+arithmetical process, was self-imposed in defiance of all calculation,
+and went dead against any table of probabilities that any Actuary would
+have drawn up from the premises. The girl believed that her father had
+not deserted her; she lived in the hope that he would come back, and in
+the faith that he would be made the happier by her remaining where she
+was.
+
+The wretched ignorance with which Jupe clung to this consolation,
+rejecting the superior comfort of knowing, on a sound arithmetical basis,
+that her father was an unnatural vagabond, filled Mr. Gradgrind with
+pity. Yet, what was to be done? M’Choakumchild reported that she had a
+very dense head for figures; that, once possessed with a general idea of
+the globe, she took the smallest conceivable interest in its exact
+measurements; that she was extremely slow in the acquisition of dates,
+unless some pitiful incident happened to be connected therewith; that she
+would burst into tears on being required (by the mental process)
+immediately to name the cost of two hundred and forty-seven muslin caps
+at fourteen-pence halfpenny; that she was as low down, in the school, as
+low could be; that after eight weeks of induction into the elements of
+Political Economy, she had only yesterday been set right by a prattler
+three feet high, for returning to the question, ‘What is the first
+principle of this science?’ the absurd answer, ‘To do unto others as I
+would that they should do unto me.’
+
+Mr. Gradgrind observed, shaking his head, that all this was very bad;
+that it showed the necessity of infinite grinding at the mill of
+knowledge, as per system, schedule, blue book, report, and tabular
+statements A to Z; and that Jupe ‘must be kept to it.’ So Jupe was kept
+to it, and became low-spirited, but no wiser.
+
+‘It would be a fine thing to be you, Miss Louisa!’ she said, one night,
+when Louisa had endeavoured to make her perplexities for next day
+something clearer to her.
+
+‘Do you think so?’
+
+‘I should know so much, Miss Louisa. All that is difficult to me now,
+would be so easy then.’
+
+‘You might not be the better for it, Sissy.’
+
+Sissy submitted, after a little hesitation, ‘I should not be the worse,
+Miss Louisa.’ To which Miss Louisa answered, ‘I don’t know that.’
+
+There had been so little communication between these two—both because
+life at Stone Lodge went monotonously round like a piece of machinery
+which discouraged human interference, and because of the prohibition
+relative to Sissy’s past career—that they were still almost strangers.
+Sissy, with her dark eyes wonderingly directed to Louisa’s face, was
+uncertain whether to say more or to remain silent.
+
+‘You are more useful to my mother, and more pleasant with her than I can
+ever be,’ Louisa resumed. ‘You are pleasanter to yourself, than _I_ am
+to _my_self.’
+
+‘But, if you please, Miss Louisa,’ Sissy pleaded, ‘I am—O so stupid!’
+
+Louisa, with a brighter laugh than usual, told her she would be wiser
+by-and-by.
+
+‘You don’t know,’ said Sissy, half crying, ‘what a stupid girl I am. All
+through school hours I make mistakes. Mr. and Mrs. M’Choakumchild call
+me up, over and over again, regularly to make mistakes. I can’t help
+them. They seem to come natural to me.’
+
+‘Mr. and Mrs. M’Choakumchild never make any mistakes themselves, I
+suppose, Sissy?’
+
+‘O no!’ she eagerly returned. ‘They know everything.’
+
+‘Tell me some of your mistakes.’
+
+‘I am almost ashamed,’ said Sissy, with reluctance. ‘But to-day, for
+instance, Mr. M’Choakumchild was explaining to us about Natural
+Prosperity.’
+
+‘National, I think it must have been,’ observed Louisa.
+
+‘Yes, it was.—But isn’t it the same?’ she timidly asked.
+
+‘You had better say, National, as he said so,’ returned Louisa, with her
+dry reserve.
+
+‘National Prosperity. And he said, Now, this schoolroom is a Nation.
+And in this nation, there are fifty millions of money. Isn’t this a
+prosperous nation? Girl number twenty, isn’t this a prosperous nation,
+and a’n’t you in a thriving state?’
+
+‘What did you say?’ asked Louisa.
+
+‘Miss Louisa, I said I didn’t know. I thought I couldn’t know whether it
+was a prosperous nation or not, and whether I was in a thriving state or
+not, unless I knew who had got the money, and whether any of it was mine.
+But that had nothing to do with it. It was not in the figures at all,’
+said Sissy, wiping her eyes.
+
+‘That was a great mistake of yours,’ observed Louisa.
+
+‘Yes, Miss Louisa, I know it was, now. Then Mr. M’Choakumchild said he
+would try me again. And he said, This schoolroom is an immense town, and
+in it there are a million of inhabitants, and only five-and-twenty are
+starved to death in the streets, in the course of a year. What is your
+remark on that proportion? And my remark was—for I couldn’t think of a
+better one—that I thought it must be just as hard upon those who were
+starved, whether the others were a million, or a million million. And
+that was wrong, too.’
+
+‘Of course it was.’
+
+‘Then Mr. M’Choakumchild said he would try me once more. And he said,
+Here are the stutterings—’
+
+‘Statistics,’ said Louisa.
+
+‘Yes, Miss Louisa—they always remind me of stutterings, and that’s
+another of my mistakes—of accidents upon the sea. And I find (Mr.
+M’Choakumchild said) that in a given time a hundred thousand persons went
+to sea on long voyages, and only five hundred of them were drowned or
+burnt to death. What is the percentage? And I said, Miss;’ here Sissy
+fairly sobbed as confessing with extreme contrition to her greatest
+error; ‘I said it was nothing.’
+
+‘Nothing, Sissy?’
+
+‘Nothing, Miss—to the relations and friends of the people who were
+killed. I shall never learn,’ said Sissy. ‘And the worst of all is,
+that although my poor father wished me so much to learn, and although I
+am so anxious to learn, because he wished me to, I am afraid I don’t like
+it.’
+
+Louisa stood looking at the pretty modest head, as it drooped abashed
+before her, until it was raised again to glance at her face. Then she
+asked:
+
+‘Did your father know so much himself, that he wished you to be well
+taught too, Sissy?’
+
+Sissy hesitated before replying, and so plainly showed her sense that
+they were entering on forbidden ground, that Louisa added, ‘No one hears
+us; and if any one did, I am sure no harm could be found in such an
+innocent question.’
+
+‘No, Miss Louisa,’ answered Sissy, upon this encouragement, shaking her
+head; ‘father knows very little indeed. It’s as much as he can do to
+write; and it’s more than people in general can do to read his writing.
+Though it’s plain to _me_.’
+
+‘Your mother?’
+
+‘Father says she was quite a scholar. She died when I was born. She
+was;’ Sissy made the terrible communication nervously; ‘she was a
+dancer.’
+
+‘Did your father love her?’ Louisa asked these questions with a strong,
+wild, wandering interest peculiar to her; an interest gone astray like a
+banished creature, and hiding in solitary places.
+
+‘O yes! As dearly as he loves me. Father loved me, first, for her sake.
+He carried me about with him when I was quite a baby. We have never been
+asunder from that time.’
+
+‘Yet he leaves you now, Sissy?’
+
+‘Only for my good. Nobody understands him as I do; nobody knows him as I
+do. When he left me for my good—he never would have left me for his
+own—I know he was almost broken-hearted with the trial. He will not be
+happy for a single minute, till he comes back.’
+
+‘Tell me more about him,’ said Louisa, ‘I will never ask you again.
+Where did you live?’
+
+‘We travelled about the country, and had no fixed place to live in.
+Father’s a;’ Sissy whispered the awful word, ‘a clown.’
+
+‘To make the people laugh?’ said Louisa, with a nod of intelligence.
+
+‘Yes. But they wouldn’t laugh sometimes, and then father cried. Lately,
+they very often wouldn’t laugh, and he used to come home despairing.
+Father’s not like most. Those who didn’t know him as well as I do, and
+didn’t love him as dearly as I do, might believe he was not quite right.
+Sometimes they played tricks upon him; but they never knew how he felt
+them, and shrunk up, when he was alone with me. He was far, far timider
+than they thought!’
+
+‘And you were his comfort through everything?’
+
+She nodded, with the tears rolling down her face. ‘I hope so, and father
+said I was. It was because he grew so scared and trembling, and because
+he felt himself to be a poor, weak, ignorant, helpless man (those used to
+be his words), that he wanted me so much to know a great deal, and be
+different from him. I used to read to him to cheer his courage, and he
+was very fond of that. They were wrong books—I am never to speak of them
+here—but we didn’t know there was any harm in them.’
+
+‘And he liked them?’ said Louisa, with a searching gaze on Sissy all this
+time.
+
+‘O very much! They kept him, many times, from what did him real harm.
+And often and often of a night, he used to forget all his troubles in
+wondering whether the Sultan would let the lady go on with the story, or
+would have her head cut off before it was finished.’
+
+‘And your father was always kind? To the last?’ asked Louisa
+contravening the great principle, and wondering very much.
+
+‘Always, always!’ returned Sissy, clasping her hands. ‘Kinder and kinder
+than I can tell. He was angry only one night, and that was not to me,
+but Merrylegs. Merrylegs;’ she whispered the awful fact; ‘is his
+performing dog.’
+
+‘Why was he angry with the dog?’ Louisa demanded.
+
+‘Father, soon after they came home from performing, told Merrylegs to
+jump up on the backs of the two chairs and stand across them—which is one
+of his tricks. He looked at father, and didn’t do it at once.
+Everything of father’s had gone wrong that night, and he hadn’t pleased
+the public at all. He cried out that the very dog knew he was failing,
+and had no compassion on him. Then he beat the dog, and I was
+frightened, and said, “Father, father! Pray don’t hurt the creature who
+is so fond of you! O Heaven forgive you, father, stop!” And he stopped,
+and the dog was bloody, and father lay down crying on the floor with the
+dog in his arms, and the dog licked his face.’
+
+Louisa saw that she was sobbing; and going to her, kissed her, took her
+hand, and sat down beside her.
+
+‘Finish by telling me how your father left you, Sissy. Now that I have
+asked you so much, tell me the end. The blame, if there is any blame, is
+mine, not yours.’
+
+‘Dear Miss Louisa,’ said Sissy, covering her eyes, and sobbing yet; ‘I
+came home from the school that afternoon, and found poor father just come
+home too, from the booth. And he sat rocking himself over the fire, as
+if he was in pain. And I said, “Have you hurt yourself, father?” (as he
+did sometimes, like they all did), and he said, “A little, my darling.”
+And when I came to stoop down and look up at his face, I saw that he was
+crying. The more I spoke to him, the more he hid his face; and at first
+he shook all over, and said nothing but “My darling;” and “My love!”’
+
+Here Tom came lounging in, and stared at the two with a coolness not
+particularly savouring of interest in anything but himself, and not much
+of that at present.
+
+‘I am asking Sissy a few questions, Tom,’ observed his sister. ‘You have
+no occasion to go away; but don’t interrupt us for a moment, Tom dear.’
+
+‘Oh! very well!’ returned Tom. ‘Only father has brought old Bounderby
+home, and I want you to come into the drawing-room. Because if you come,
+there’s a good chance of old Bounderby’s asking me to dinner; and if you
+don’t, there’s none.’
+
+‘I’ll come directly.’
+
+‘I’ll wait for you,’ said Tom, ‘to make sure.’
+
+Sissy resumed in a lower voice. ‘At last poor father said that he had
+given no satisfaction again, and never did give any satisfaction now, and
+that he was a shame and disgrace, and I should have done better without
+him all along. I said all the affectionate things to him that came into
+my heart, and presently he was quiet and I sat down by him, and told him
+all about the school and everything that had been said and done there.
+When I had no more left to tell, he put his arms round my neck, and
+kissed me a great many times. Then he asked me to fetch some of the
+stuff he used, for the little hurt he had had, and to get it at the best
+place, which was at the other end of town from there; and then, after
+kissing me again, he let me go. When I had gone down-stairs, I turned
+back that I might be a little bit more company to him yet, and looked in
+at the door, and said, “Father dear, shall I take Merrylegs?” Father
+shook his head and said, “No, Sissy, no; take nothing that’s known to be
+mine, my darling;” and I left him sitting by the fire. Then the thought
+must have come upon him, poor, poor father! of going away to try
+something for my sake; for when I came back, he was gone.’
+
+‘I say! Look sharp for old Bounderby, Loo!’ Tom remonstrated.
+
+‘There’s no more to tell, Miss Louisa. I keep the nine oils ready for
+him, and I know he will come back. Every letter that I see in Mr.
+Gradgrind’s hand takes my breath away and blinds my eyes, for I think it
+comes from father, or from Mr. Sleary about father. Mr. Sleary promised
+to write as soon as ever father should be heard of, and I trust to him to
+keep his word.’
+
+‘Do look sharp for old Bounderby, Loo!’ said Tom, with an impatient
+whistle. ‘He’ll be off if you don’t look sharp!’
+
+After this, whenever Sissy dropped a curtsey to Mr. Gradgrind in the
+presence of his family, and said in a faltering way, ‘I beg your pardon,
+sir, for being troublesome—but—have you had any letter yet about me?’
+Louisa would suspend the occupation of the moment, whatever it was, and
+look for the reply as earnestly as Sissy did. And when Mr. Gradgrind
+regularly answered, ‘No, Jupe, nothing of the sort,’ the trembling of
+Sissy’s lip would be repeated in Louisa’s face, and her eyes would follow
+Sissy with compassion to the door. Mr. Gradgrind usually improved these
+occasions by remarking, when she was gone, that if Jupe had been properly
+trained from an early age she would have remonstrated to herself on sound
+principles the baselessness of these fantastic hopes. Yet it did seem
+(though not to him, for he saw nothing of it) as if fantastic hope could
+take as strong a hold as Fact.
+
+This observation must be limited exclusively to his daughter. As to Tom,
+he was becoming that not unprecedented triumph of calculation which is
+usually at work on number one. As to Mrs. Gradgrind, if she said
+anything on the subject, she would come a little way out of her wrappers,
+like a feminine dormouse, and say:
+
+‘Good gracious bless me, how my poor head is vexed and worried by that
+girl Jupe’s so perseveringly asking, over and over again, about her
+tiresome letters! Upon my word and honour I seem to be fated, and
+destined, and ordained, to live in the midst of things that I am never to
+hear the last of. It really is a most extraordinary circumstance that it
+appears as if I never was to hear the last of anything!’
+
+At about this point, Mr. Gradgrind’s eye would fall upon her; and under
+the influence of that wintry piece of fact, she would become torpid
+again.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+STEPHEN BLACKPOOL
+
+
+I ENTERTAIN a weak idea that the English people are as hard-worked as any
+people upon whom the sun shines. I acknowledge to this ridiculous
+idiosyncrasy, as a reason why I would give them a little more play.
+
+In the hardest working part of Coketown; in the innermost fortifications
+of that ugly citadel, where Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing
+airs and gases were bricked in; at the heart of the labyrinth of narrow
+courts upon courts, and close streets upon streets, which had come into
+existence piecemeal, every piece in a violent hurry for some one man’s
+purpose, and the whole an unnatural family, shouldering, and trampling,
+and pressing one another to death; in the last close nook of this great
+exhausted receiver, where the chimneys, for want of air to make a
+draught, were built in an immense variety of stunted and crooked shapes,
+as though every house put out a sign of the kind of people who might be
+expected to be born in it; among the multitude of Coketown, generically
+called ‘the Hands,’—a race who would have found more favour with some
+people, if Providence had seen fit to make them only hands, or, like the
+lower creatures of the seashore, only hands and stomachs—lived a certain
+Stephen Blackpool, forty years of age.
+
+Stephen looked older, but he had had a hard life. It is said that every
+life has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a
+misadventure or mistake in Stephen’s case, whereby somebody else had
+become possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed of the same
+somebody else’s thorns in addition to his own. He had known, to use his
+words, a peck of trouble. He was usually called Old Stephen, in a kind
+of rough homage to the fact.
+
+A rather stooping man, with a knitted brow, a pondering expression of
+face, and a hard-looking head sufficiently capacious, on which his
+iron-grey hair lay long and thin, Old Stephen might have passed for a
+particularly intelligent man in his condition. Yet he was not. He took
+no place among those remarkable ‘Hands,’ who, piecing together their
+broken intervals of leisure through many years, had mastered difficult
+sciences, and acquired a knowledge of most unlikely things. He held no
+station among the Hands who could make speeches and carry on debates.
+Thousands of his compeers could talk much better than he, at any time.
+He was a good power-loom weaver, and a man of perfect integrity. What
+more he was, or what else he had in him, if anything, let him show for
+himself.
+
+The lights in the great factories, which looked, when they were
+illuminated, like Fairy palaces—or the travellers by express-train said
+so—were all extinguished; and the bells had rung for knocking off for the
+night, and had ceased again; and the Hands, men and women, boy and girl,
+were clattering home. Old Stephen was standing in the street, with the
+old sensation upon him which the stoppage of the machinery always
+produced—the sensation of its having worked and stopped in his own head.
+
+‘Yet I don’t see Rachael, still!’ said he.
+
+It was a wet night, and many groups of young women passed him, with their
+shawls drawn over their bare heads and held close under their chins to
+keep the rain out. He knew Rachael well, for a glance at any one of
+these groups was sufficient to show him that she was not there. At last,
+there were no more to come; and then he turned away, saying in a tone of
+disappointment, ‘Why, then, ha’ missed her!’
+
+But, he had not gone the length of three streets, when he saw another of
+the shawled figures in advance of him, at which he looked so keenly that
+perhaps its mere shadow indistinctly reflected on the wet pavement—if he
+could have seen it without the figure itself moving along from lamp to
+lamp, brightening and fading as it went—would have been enough to tell
+him who was there. Making his pace at once much quicker and much softer,
+he darted on until he was very near this figure, then fell into his
+former walk, and called ‘Rachael!’
+
+She turned, being then in the brightness of a lamp; and raising her hood
+a little, showed a quiet oval face, dark and rather delicate, irradiated
+by a pair of very gentle eyes, and further set off by the perfect order
+of her shining black hair. It was not a face in its first bloom; she was
+a woman five and thirty years of age.
+
+‘Ah, lad! ’Tis thou?’ When she had said this, with a smile which would
+have been quite expressed, though nothing of her had been seen but her
+pleasant eyes, she replaced her hood again, and they went on together.
+
+‘I thought thou wast ahind me, Rachael?’
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘Early t’night, lass?’
+
+‘’Times I’m a little early, Stephen! ’times a little late. I’m never to
+be counted on, going home.’
+
+‘Nor going t’other way, neither, ’t seems to me, Rachael?’
+
+‘No, Stephen.’
+
+He looked at her with some disappointment in his face, but with a
+respectful and patient conviction that she must be right in whatever she
+did. The expression was not lost upon her; she laid her hand lightly on
+his arm a moment as if to thank him for it.
+
+‘We are such true friends, lad, and such old friends, and getting to be
+such old folk, now.’
+
+‘No, Rachael, thou’rt as young as ever thou wast.’
+
+‘One of us would be puzzled how to get old, Stephen, without ’t other
+getting so too, both being alive,’ she answered, laughing; ‘but, anyways,
+we’re such old friends, and t’ hide a word of honest truth fro’ one
+another would be a sin and a pity. ’Tis better not to walk too much
+together. ’Times, yes! ’Twould be hard, indeed, if ’twas not to be at
+all,’ she said, with a cheerfulness she sought to communicate to him.
+
+‘’Tis hard, anyways, Rachael.’
+
+‘Try to think not; and ’twill seem better.’
+
+‘I’ve tried a long time, and ’ta’nt got better. But thou’rt right; ’t
+might mak fok talk, even of thee. Thou hast been that to me, Rachael,
+through so many year: thou hast done me so much good, and heartened of me
+in that cheering way, that thy word is a law to me. Ah, lass, and a
+bright good law! Better than some real ones.’
+
+‘Never fret about them, Stephen,’ she answered quickly, and not without
+an anxious glance at his face. ‘Let the laws be.’
+
+‘Yes,’ he said, with a slow nod or two. ‘Let ’em be. Let everything be.
+Let all sorts alone. ’Tis a muddle, and that’s aw.’
+
+‘Always a muddle?’ said Rachael, with another gentle touch upon his arm,
+as if to recall him out of the thoughtfulness, in which he was biting the
+long ends of his loose neckerchief as he walked along. The touch had its
+instantaneous effect. He let them fall, turned a smiling face upon her,
+and said, as he broke into a good-humoured laugh, ‘Ay, Rachael, lass,
+awlus a muddle. That’s where I stick. I come to the muddle many times
+and agen, and I never get beyond it.’
+
+They had walked some distance, and were near their own homes. The
+woman’s was the first reached. It was in one of the many small streets
+for which the favourite undertaker (who turned a handsome sum out of the
+one poor ghastly pomp of the neighbourhood) kept a black ladder, in order
+that those who had done their daily groping up and down the narrow stairs
+might slide out of this working world by the windows. She stopped at the
+corner, and putting her hand in his, wished him good night.
+
+‘Good night, dear lass; good night!’
+
+She went, with her neat figure and her sober womanly step, down the dark
+street, and he stood looking after her until she turned into one of the
+small houses. There was not a flutter of her coarse shawl, perhaps, but
+had its interest in this man’s eyes; not a tone of her voice but had its
+echo in his innermost heart.
+
+When she was lost to his view, he pursued his homeward way, glancing up
+sometimes at the sky, where the clouds were sailing fast and wildly.
+But, they were broken now, and the rain had ceased, and the moon
+shone,—looking down the high chimneys of Coketown on the deep furnaces
+below, and casting Titanic shadows of the steam-engines at rest, upon the
+walls where they were lodged. The man seemed to have brightened with the
+night, as he went on.
+
+His home, in such another street as the first, saving that it was
+narrower, was over a little shop. How it came to pass that any people
+found it worth their while to sell or buy the wretched little toys, mixed
+up in its window with cheap newspapers and pork (there was a leg to be
+raffled for to-morrow-night), matters not here. He took his end of
+candle from a shelf, lighted it at another end of candle on the counter,
+without disturbing the mistress of the shop who was asleep in her little
+room, and went upstairs into his lodging.
+
+It was a room, not unacquainted with the black ladder under various
+tenants; but as neat, at present, as such a room could be. A few books
+and writings were on an old bureau in a corner, the furniture was decent
+and sufficient, and, though the atmosphere was tainted, the room was
+clean.
+
+Going to the hearth to set the candle down upon a round three-legged
+table standing there, he stumbled against something. As he recoiled,
+looking down at it, it raised itself up into the form of a woman in a
+sitting attitude.
+
+‘Heaven’s mercy, woman!’ he cried, falling farther off from the figure.
+‘Hast thou come back again!’
+
+Such a woman! A disabled, drunken creature, barely able to preserve her
+sitting posture by steadying herself with one begrimed hand on the floor,
+while the other was so purposeless in trying to push away her tangled
+hair from her face, that it only blinded her the more with the dirt upon
+it. A creature so foul to look at, in her tatters, stains and splashes,
+but so much fouler than that in her moral infamy, that it was a shameful
+thing even to see her.
+
+After an impatient oath or two, and some stupid clawing of herself with
+the hand not necessary to her support, she got her hair away from her
+eyes sufficiently to obtain a sight of him. Then she sat swaying her
+body to and fro, and making gestures with her unnerved arm, which seemed
+intended as the accompaniment to a fit of laughter, though her face was
+stolid and drowsy.
+
+‘Eigh, lad? What, yo’r there?’ Some hoarse sounds meant for this, came
+mockingly out of her at last; and her head dropped forward on her breast.
+
+‘Back agen?’ she screeched, after some minutes, as if he had that moment
+said it. ‘Yes! And back agen. Back agen ever and ever so often. Back?
+Yes, back. Why not?’
+
+Roused by the unmeaning violence with which she cried it out, she
+scrambled up, and stood supporting herself with her shoulders against the
+wall; dangling in one hand by the string, a dunghill-fragment of a
+bonnet, and trying to look scornfully at him.
+
+‘I’ll sell thee off again, and I’ll sell thee off again, and I’ll sell
+thee off a score of times!’ she cried, with something between a furious
+menace and an effort at a defiant dance. ‘Come awa’ from th’ bed!’ He
+was sitting on the side of it, with his face hidden in his hands. ‘Come
+awa! from ’t. ’Tis mine, and I’ve a right to t’!’
+
+As she staggered to it, he avoided her with a shudder, and passed—his
+face still hidden—to the opposite end of the room. She threw herself
+upon the bed heavily, and soon was snoring hard. He sunk into a chair,
+and moved but once all that night. It was to throw a covering over her;
+as if his hands were not enough to hide her, even in the darkness.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+NO WAY OUT
+
+
+THE Fairy palaces burst into illumination, before pale morning showed the
+monstrous serpents of smoke trailing themselves over Coketown. A
+clattering of clogs upon the pavement; a rapid ringing of bells; and all
+the melancholy mad elephants, polished and oiled up for the day’s
+monotony, were at their heavy exercise again.
+
+Stephen bent over his loom, quiet, watchful, and steady. A special
+contrast, as every man was in the forest of looms where Stephen worked,
+to the crashing, smashing, tearing piece of mechanism at which he
+laboured. Never fear, good people of an anxious turn of mind, that Art
+will consign Nature to oblivion. Set anywhere, side by side, the work of
+GOD and the work of man; and the former, even though it be a troop of
+Hands of very small account, will gain in dignity from the comparison.
+
+So many hundred Hands in this Mill; so many hundred horse Steam Power.
+It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will
+do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the
+capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or
+discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at
+any single moment in the soul of one of these its quiet servants, with
+the composed faces and the regulated actions. There is no mystery in it;
+there is an unfathomable mystery in the meanest of them, for
+ever.—Supposing we were to reverse our arithmetic for material objects,
+and to govern these awful unknown quantities by other means!
+
+The day grew strong, and showed itself outside, even against the flaming
+lights within. The lights were turned out, and the work went on. The
+rain fell, and the Smoke-serpents, submissive to the curse of all that
+tribe, trailed themselves upon the earth. In the waste-yard outside, the
+steam from the escape pipe, the litter of barrels and old iron, the
+shining heaps of coals, the ashes everywhere, were shrouded in a veil of
+mist and rain.
+
+The work went on, until the noon-bell rang. More clattering upon the
+pavements. The looms, and wheels, and Hands all out of gear for an hour.
+
+Stephen came out of the hot mill into the damp wind and cold wet streets,
+haggard and worn. He turned from his own class and his own quarter,
+taking nothing but a little bread as he walked along, towards the hill on
+which his principal employer lived, in a red house with black outside
+shutters, green inside blinds, a black street door, up two white steps,
+BOUNDERBY (in letters very like himself) upon a brazen plate, and a round
+brazen door-handle underneath it, like a brazen full-stop.
+
+Mr. Bounderby was at his lunch. So Stephen had expected. Would his
+servant say that one of the Hands begged leave to speak to him? Message
+in return, requiring name of such Hand. Stephen Blackpool. There was
+nothing troublesome against Stephen Blackpool; yes, he might come in.
+
+Stephen Blackpool in the parlour. Mr. Bounderby (whom he just knew by
+sight), at lunch on chop and sherry. Mrs. Sparsit netting at the
+fireside, in a side-saddle attitude, with one foot in a cotton stirrup.
+It was a part, at once of Mrs. Sparsit’s dignity and service, not to
+lunch. She supervised the meal officially, but implied that in her own
+stately person she considered lunch a weakness.
+
+‘Now, Stephen,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘what’s the matter with _you_?’
+
+Stephen made a bow. Not a servile one—these Hands will never do that!
+Lord bless you, sir, you’ll never catch them at that, if they have been
+with you twenty years!—and, as a complimentary toilet for Mrs. Sparsit,
+tucked his neckerchief ends into his waistcoat.
+
+‘Now, you know,’ said Mr. Bounderby, taking some sherry, ‘we have never
+had any difficulty with you, and you have never been one of the
+unreasonable ones. You don’t expect to be set up in a coach and six, and
+to be fed on turtle soup and venison, with a gold spoon, as a good many
+of ’em do!’ Mr. Bounderby always represented this to be the sole,
+immediate, and direct object of any Hand who was not entirely satisfied;
+‘and therefore I know already that you have not come here to make a
+complaint. Now, you know, I am certain of that, beforehand.’
+
+‘No, sir, sure I ha’ not coom for nowt o’ th’ kind.’
+
+Mr. Bounderby seemed agreeably surprised, notwithstanding his previous
+strong conviction. ‘Very well,’ he returned. ‘You’re a steady Hand, and
+I was not mistaken. Now, let me hear what it’s all about. As it’s not
+that, let me hear what it is. What have you got to say? Out with it,
+lad!’
+
+Stephen happened to glance towards Mrs. Sparsit. ‘I can go, Mr.
+Bounderby, if you wish it,’ said that self-sacrificing lady, making a
+feint of taking her foot out of the stirrup.
+
+Mr. Bounderby stayed her, by holding a mouthful of chop in suspension
+before swallowing it, and putting out his left hand. Then, withdrawing
+his hand and swallowing his mouthful of chop, he said to Stephen:
+
+‘Now you know, this good lady is a born lady, a high lady. You are not
+to suppose because she keeps my house for me, that she hasn’t been very
+high up the tree—ah, up at the top of the tree! Now, if you have got
+anything to say that can’t be said before a born lady, this lady will
+leave the room. If what you have got to say _can_ be said before a born
+lady, this lady will stay where she is.’
+
+‘Sir, I hope I never had nowt to say, not fitten for a born lady to year,
+sin’ I were born mysen’,’ was the reply, accompanied with a slight flush.
+
+‘Very well,’ said Mr. Bounderby, pushing away his plate, and leaning
+back. ‘Fire away!’
+
+‘I ha’ coom,’ Stephen began, raising his eyes from the floor, after a
+moment’s consideration, ‘to ask yo yor advice. I need ’t overmuch. I
+were married on Eas’r Monday nineteen year sin, long and dree. She were
+a young lass—pretty enow—wi’ good accounts of herseln. Well! She went
+bad—soon. Not along of me. Gonnows I were not a unkind husband to her.’
+
+‘I have heard all this before,’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘She took to
+drinking, left off working, sold the furniture, pawned the clothes, and
+played old Gooseberry.’
+
+‘I were patient wi’ her.’
+
+(‘The more fool you, I think,’ said Mr. Bounderby, in confidence to his
+wine-glass.)
+
+‘I were very patient wi’ her. I tried to wean her fra ’t ower and ower
+agen. I tried this, I tried that, I tried t’other. I ha’ gone home,
+many’s the time, and found all vanished as I had in the world, and her
+without a sense left to bless herseln lying on bare ground. I ha’ dun ’t
+not once, not twice—twenty time!’
+
+Every line in his face deepened as he said it, and put in its affecting
+evidence of the suffering he had undergone.
+
+‘From bad to worse, from worse to worsen. She left me. She disgraced
+herseln everyways, bitter and bad. She coom back, she coom back, she
+coom back. What could I do t’ hinder her? I ha’ walked the streets
+nights long, ere ever I’d go home. I ha’ gone t’ th’ brigg, minded to
+fling myseln ower, and ha’ no more on’t. I ha’ bore that much, that I
+were owd when I were young.’
+
+Mrs. Sparsit, easily ambling along with her netting-needles, raised the
+Coriolanian eyebrows and shook her head, as much as to say, ‘The great
+know trouble as well as the small. Please to turn your humble eye in My
+direction.’
+
+‘I ha’ paid her to keep awa’ fra’ me. These five year I ha’ paid her. I
+ha’ gotten decent fewtrils about me agen. I ha’ lived hard and sad, but
+not ashamed and fearfo’ a’ the minnits o’ my life. Last night, I went
+home. There she lay upon my har-stone! There she is!’
+
+In the strength of his misfortune, and the energy of his distress, he
+fired for the moment like a proud man. In another moment, he stood as he
+had stood all the time—his usual stoop upon him; his pondering face
+addressed to Mr. Bounderby, with a curious expression on it, half shrewd,
+half perplexed, as if his mind were set upon unravelling something very
+difficult; his hat held tight in his left hand, which rested on his hip;
+his right arm, with a rugged propriety and force of action, very
+earnestly emphasizing what he said: not least so when it always paused, a
+little bent, but not withdrawn, as he paused.
+
+‘I was acquainted with all this, you know,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘except
+the last clause, long ago. It’s a bad job; that’s what it is. You had
+better have been satisfied as you were, and not have got married.
+However, it’s too late to say that.’
+
+‘Was it an unequal marriage, sir, in point of years?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit.
+
+‘You hear what this lady asks. Was it an unequal marriage in point of
+years, this unlucky job of yours?’ said Mr. Bounderby.
+
+‘Not e’en so. I were one-and-twenty myseln; she were twenty nighbut.’
+
+‘Indeed, sir?’ said Mrs. Sparsit to her Chief, with great placidity. ‘I
+inferred, from its being so miserable a marriage, that it was probably an
+unequal one in point of years.’
+
+Mr. Bounderby looked very hard at the good lady in a side-long way that
+had an odd sheepishness about it. He fortified himself with a little
+more sherry.
+
+‘Well? Why don’t you go on?’ he then asked, turning rather irritably on
+Stephen Blackpool.
+
+‘I ha’ coom to ask yo, sir, how I am to be ridded o’ this woman.’
+Stephen infused a yet deeper gravity into the mixed expression of his
+attentive face. Mrs. Sparsit uttered a gentle ejaculation, as having
+received a moral shock.
+
+‘What do you mean?’ said Bounderby, getting up to lean his back against
+the chimney-piece. ‘What are you talking about? You took her for better
+for worse.’
+
+‘I mun’ be ridden o’ her. I cannot bear ’t nommore. I ha’ lived under
+’t so long, for that I ha’ had’n the pity and comforting words o’ th’
+best lass living or dead. Haply, but for her, I should ha’ gone
+battering mad.’
+
+‘He wishes to be free, to marry the female of whom he speaks, I fear,
+sir,’ observed Mrs. Sparsit in an undertone, and much dejected by the
+immorality of the people.
+
+‘I do. The lady says what’s right. I do. I were a coming to ’t. I ha’
+read i’ th’ papers that great folk (fair faw ’em a’! I wishes ’em no
+hurt!) are not bonded together for better for worst so fast, but that
+they can be set free fro’ _their_ misfortnet marriages, an’ marry ower
+agen. When they dunnot agree, for that their tempers is ill-sorted, they
+has rooms o’ one kind an’ another in their houses, above a bit, and they
+can live asunders. We fok ha’ only one room, and we can’t. When that
+won’t do, they ha’ gowd an’ other cash, an’ they can say “This for yo’
+an’ that for me,” an’ they can go their separate ways. We can’t. Spite
+o’ all that, they can be set free for smaller wrongs than mine. So, I
+mun be ridden o’ this woman, and I want t’ know how?’
+
+‘No how,’ returned Mr. Bounderby.
+
+‘If I do her any hurt, sir, there’s a law to punish me?’
+
+‘Of course there is.’
+
+‘If I flee from her, there’s a law to punish me?’
+
+‘Of course there is.’
+
+‘If I marry t’oother dear lass, there’s a law to punish me?’
+
+‘Of course there is.’
+
+‘If I was to live wi’ her an’ not marry her—saying such a thing could be,
+which it never could or would, an’ her so good—there’s a law to punish
+me, in every innocent child belonging to me?’
+
+‘Of course there is.’
+
+‘Now, a’ God’s name,’ said Stephen Blackpool, ‘show me the law to help
+me!’
+
+‘Hem! There’s a sanctity in this relation of life,’ said Mr. Bounderby,
+‘and—and—it must be kept up.’
+
+‘No no, dunnot say that, sir. ’Tan’t kep’ up that way. Not that way.
+’Tis kep’ down that way. I’m a weaver, I were in a fact’ry when a chilt,
+but I ha’ gotten een to see wi’ and eern to year wi’. I read in th’
+papers every ’Sizes, every Sessions—and you read too—I know it!—with
+dismay—how th’ supposed unpossibility o’ ever getting unchained from one
+another, at any price, on any terms, brings blood upon this land, and
+brings many common married fok to battle, murder, and sudden death. Let
+us ha’ this, right understood. Mine’s a grievous case, an’ I want—if yo
+will be so good—t’ know the law that helps me.’
+
+‘Now, I tell you what!’ said Mr. Bounderby, putting his hands in his
+pockets. ‘There _is_ such a law.’
+
+Stephen, subsiding into his quiet manner, and never wandering in his
+attention, gave a nod.
+
+‘But it’s not for you at all. It costs money. It costs a mint of
+money.’
+
+‘How much might that be?’ Stephen calmly asked.
+
+‘Why, you’d have to go to Doctors’ Commons with a suit, and you’d have to
+go to a court of Common Law with a suit, and you’d have to go to the
+House of Lords with a suit, and you’d have to get an Act of Parliament to
+enable you to marry again, and it would cost you (if it was a case of
+very plain sailing), I suppose from a thousand to fifteen hundred pound,’
+said Mr. Bounderby. ‘Perhaps twice the money.’
+
+‘There’s no other law?’
+
+‘Certainly not.’
+
+‘Why then, sir,’ said Stephen, turning white, and motioning with that
+right hand of his, as if he gave everything to the four winds, ‘’_tis_ a
+muddle. ’Tis just a muddle a’toogether, an’ the sooner I am dead, the
+better.’
+
+(Mrs. Sparsit again dejected by the impiety of the people.)
+
+‘Pooh, pooh! Don’t you talk nonsense, my good fellow,’ said Mr.
+Bounderby, ‘about things you don’t understand; and don’t you call the
+Institutions of your country a muddle, or you’ll get yourself into a real
+muddle one of these fine mornings. The institutions of your country are
+not your piece-work, and the only thing you have got to do, is, to mind
+your piece-work. You didn’t take your wife for fast and for loose; but
+for better for worse. If she has turned out worse—why, all we have got
+to say is, she might have turned out better.’
+
+‘’Tis a muddle,’ said Stephen, shaking his head as he moved to the door.
+‘’Tis a’ a muddle!’
+
+‘Now, I’ll tell you what!’ Mr. Bounderby resumed, as a valedictory
+address. ‘With what I shall call your unhallowed opinions, you have been
+quite shocking this lady: who, as I have already told you, is a born
+lady, and who, as I have not already told you, has had her own marriage
+misfortunes to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds—tens of Thousands
+of Pounds!’ (he repeated it with great relish). ‘Now, you have always
+been a steady Hand hitherto; but my opinion is, and so I tell you
+plainly, that you are turning into the wrong road. You have been
+listening to some mischievous stranger or other—they’re always about—and
+the best thing you can do is, to come out of that. Now you know;’ here
+his countenance expressed marvellous acuteness; ‘I can see as far into a
+grindstone as another man; farther than a good many, perhaps, because I
+had my nose well kept to it when I was young. I see traces of the turtle
+soup, and venison, and gold spoon in this. Yes, I do!’ cried Mr.
+Bounderby, shaking his head with obstinate cunning. ‘By the Lord Harry,
+I do!’
+
+With a very different shake of the head and deep sigh, Stephen said,
+‘Thank you, sir, I wish you good day.’ So he left Mr. Bounderby swelling
+at his own portrait on the wall, as if he were going to explode himself
+into it; and Mrs. Sparsit still ambling on with her foot in her stirrup,
+looking quite cast down by the popular vices.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+THE OLD WOMAN
+
+
+OLD STEPHEN descended the two white steps, shutting the black door with
+the brazen door-plate, by the aid of the brazen full-stop, to which he
+gave a parting polish with the sleeve of his coat, observing that his hot
+hand clouded it. He crossed the street with his eyes bent upon the
+ground, and thus was walking sorrowfully away, when he felt a touch upon
+his arm.
+
+It was not the touch he needed most at such a moment—the touch that could
+calm the wild waters of his soul, as the uplifted hand of the sublimest
+love and patience could abate the raging of the sea—yet it was a woman’s
+hand too. It was an old woman, tall and shapely still, though withered
+by time, on whom his eyes fell when he stopped and turned. She was very
+cleanly and plainly dressed, had country mud upon her shoes, and was
+newly come from a journey. The flutter of her manner, in the unwonted
+noise of the streets; the spare shawl, carried unfolded on her arm; the
+heavy umbrella, and little basket; the loose long-fingered gloves, to
+which her hands were unused; all bespoke an old woman from the country,
+in her plain holiday clothes, come into Coketown on an expedition of rare
+occurrence. Remarking this at a glance, with the quick observation of
+his class, Stephen Blackpool bent his attentive face—his face, which,
+like the faces of many of his order, by dint of long working with eyes
+and hands in the midst of a prodigious noise, had acquired the
+concentrated look with which we are familiar in the countenances of the
+deaf—the better to hear what she asked him.
+
+‘Pray, sir,’ said the old woman, ‘didn’t I see you come out of that
+gentleman’s house?’ pointing back to Mr. Bounderby’s. ‘I believe it was
+you, unless I have had the bad luck to mistake the person in following?’
+
+‘Yes, missus,’ returned Stephen, ‘it were me.’
+
+‘Have you—you’ll excuse an old woman’s curiosity—have you seen the
+gentleman?’
+
+‘Yes, missus.’
+
+‘And how did he look, sir? Was he portly, bold, outspoken, and hearty?’
+As she straightened her own figure, and held up her head in adapting her
+action to her words, the idea crossed Stephen that he had seen this old
+woman before, and had not quite liked her.
+
+‘O yes,’ he returned, observing her more attentively, ‘he were all that.’
+
+‘And healthy,’ said the old woman, ‘as the fresh wind?’
+
+‘Yes,’ returned Stephen. ‘He were ett’n and drinking—as large and as
+loud as a Hummobee.’
+
+‘Thank you!’ said the old woman, with infinite content. ‘Thank you!’
+
+He certainly never had seen this old woman before. Yet there was a vague
+remembrance in his mind, as if he had more than once dreamed of some old
+woman like her.
+
+She walked along at his side, and, gently accommodating himself to her
+humour, he said Coketown was a busy place, was it not? To which she
+answered ‘Eigh sure! Dreadful busy!’ Then he said, she came from the
+country, he saw? To which she answered in the affirmative.
+
+‘By Parliamentary, this morning. I came forty mile by Parliamentary this
+morning, and I’m going back the same forty mile this afternoon. I walked
+nine mile to the station this morning, and if I find nobody on the road
+to give me a lift, I shall walk the nine mile back to-night. That’s
+pretty well, sir, at my age!’ said the chatty old woman, her eye
+brightening with exultation.
+
+‘’Deed ’tis. Don’t do’t too often, missus.’
+
+‘No, no. Once a year,’ she answered, shaking her head. ‘I spend my
+savings so, once every year. I come regular, to tramp about the streets,
+and see the gentlemen.’
+
+‘Only to see ’em?’ returned Stephen.
+
+‘That’s enough for me,’ she replied, with great earnestness and interest
+of manner. ‘I ask no more! I have been standing about, on this side of
+the way, to see that gentleman,’ turning her head back towards Mr.
+Bounderby’s again, ‘come out. But, he’s late this year, and I have not
+seen him. You came out instead. Now, if I am obliged to go back without
+a glimpse of him—I only want a glimpse—well! I have seen you, and you
+have seen him, and I must make that do.’ Saying this, she looked at
+Stephen as if to fix his features in her mind, and her eye was not so
+bright as it had been.
+
+With a large allowance for difference of tastes, and with all submission
+to the patricians of Coketown, this seemed so extraordinary a source of
+interest to take so much trouble about, that it perplexed him. But they
+were passing the church now, and as his eye caught the clock, he
+quickened his pace.
+
+He was going to his work? the old woman said, quickening hers, too, quite
+easily. Yes, time was nearly out. On his telling her where he worked,
+the old woman became a more singular old woman than before.
+
+‘An’t you happy?’ she asked him.
+
+‘Why—there’s awmost nobbody but has their troubles, missus.’ He answered
+evasively, because the old woman appeared to take it for granted that he
+would be very happy indeed, and he had not the heart to disappoint her.
+He knew that there was trouble enough in the world; and if the old woman
+had lived so long, and could count upon his having so little, why so much
+the better for her, and none the worse for him.
+
+‘Ay, ay! You have your troubles at home, you mean?’ she said.
+
+‘Times. Just now and then,’ he answered, slightly.
+
+‘But, working under such a gentleman, they don’t follow you to the
+Factory?’
+
+No, no; they didn’t follow him there, said Stephen. All correct there.
+Everything accordant there. (He did not go so far as to say, for her
+pleasure, that there was a sort of Divine Right there; but, I have heard
+claims almost as magnificent of late years.)
+
+They were now in the black by-road near the place, and the Hands were
+crowding in. The bell was ringing, and the Serpent was a Serpent of many
+coils, and the Elephant was getting ready. The strange old woman was
+delighted with the very bell. It was the beautifullest bell she had ever
+heard, she said, and sounded grand!
+
+She asked him, when he stopped good-naturedly to shake hands with her
+before going in, how long he had worked there?
+
+‘A dozen year,’ he told her.
+
+‘I must kiss the hand,’ said she, ‘that has worked in this fine factory
+for a dozen year!’ And she lifted it, though he would have prevented
+her, and put it to her lips. What harmony, besides her age and her
+simplicity, surrounded her, he did not know, but even in this fantastic
+action there was a something neither out of time nor place: a something
+which it seemed as if nobody else could have made as serious, or done
+with such a natural and touching air.
+
+He had been at his loom full half an hour, thinking about this old woman,
+when, having occasion to move round the loom for its adjustment, he
+glanced through a window which was in his corner, and saw her still
+looking up at the pile of building, lost in admiration. Heedless of the
+smoke and mud and wet, and of her two long journeys, she was gazing at
+it, as if the heavy thrum that issued from its many stories were proud
+music to her.
+
+She was gone by and by, and the day went after her, and the lights sprung
+up again, and the Express whirled in full sight of the Fairy Palace over
+the arches near: little felt amid the jarring of the machinery, and
+scarcely heard above its crash and rattle. Long before then his thoughts
+had gone back to the dreary room above the little shop, and to the
+shameful figure heavy on the bed, but heavier on his heart.
+
+Machinery slackened; throbbing feebly like a fainting pulse; stopped.
+The bell again; the glare of light and heat dispelled; the factories,
+looming heavy in the black wet night—their tall chimneys rising up into
+the air like competing Towers of Babel.
+
+He had spoken to Rachael only last night, it was true, and had walked
+with her a little way; but he had his new misfortune on him, in which no
+one else could give him a moment’s relief, and, for the sake of it, and
+because he knew himself to want that softening of his anger which no
+voice but hers could effect, he felt he might so far disregard what she
+had said as to wait for her again. He waited, but she had eluded him.
+She was gone. On no other night in the year could he so ill have spared
+her patient face.
+
+O! Better to have no home in which to lay his head, than to have a home
+and dread to go to it, through such a cause. He ate and drank, for he
+was exhausted—but he little knew or cared what; and he wandered about in
+the chill rain, thinking and thinking, and brooding and brooding.
+
+No word of a new marriage had ever passed between them; but Rachael had
+taken great pity on him years ago, and to her alone he had opened his
+closed heart all this time, on the subject of his miseries; and he knew
+very well that if he were free to ask her, she would take him. He
+thought of the home he might at that moment have been seeking with
+pleasure and pride; of the different man he might have been that night;
+of the lightness then in his now heavy-laden breast; of the then restored
+honour, self-respect, and tranquillity all torn to pieces. He thought of
+the waste of the best part of his life, of the change it made in his
+character for the worse every day, of the dreadful nature of his
+existence, bound hand and foot, to a dead woman, and tormented by a demon
+in her shape. He thought of Rachael, how young when they were first
+brought together in these circumstances, how mature now, how soon to grow
+old. He thought of the number of girls and women she had seen marry, how
+many homes with children in them she had seen grow up around her, how she
+had contentedly pursued her own lone quiet path—for him—and how he had
+sometimes seen a shade of melancholy on her blessed face, that smote him
+with remorse and despair. He set the picture of her up, beside the
+infamous image of last night; and thought, Could it be, that the whole
+earthly course of one so gentle, good, and self-denying, was subjugate to
+such a wretch as that!
+
+Filled with these thoughts—so filled that he had an unwholesome sense of
+growing larger, of being placed in some new and diseased relation towards
+the objects among which he passed, of seeing the iris round every misty
+light turn red—he went home for shelter.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+RACHAEL
+
+
+A CANDLE faintly burned in the window, to which the black ladder had
+often been raised for the sliding away of all that was most precious in
+this world to a striving wife and a brood of hungry babies; and Stephen
+added to his other thoughts the stern reflection, that of all the
+casualties of this existence upon earth, not one was dealt out with so
+unequal a hand as Death. The inequality of Birth was nothing to it.
+For, say that the child of a King and the child of a Weaver were born
+to-night in the same moment, what was that disparity, to the death of any
+human creature who was serviceable to, or beloved by, another, while this
+abandoned woman lived on!
+
+From the outside of his home he gloomily passed to the inside, with
+suspended breath and with a slow footstep. He went up to his door,
+opened it, and so into the room.
+
+Quiet and peace were there. Rachael was there, sitting by the bed.
+
+She turned her head, and the light of her face shone in upon the midnight
+of his mind. She sat by the bed, watching and tending his wife. That is
+to say, he saw that some one lay there, and he knew too well it must be
+she; but Rachael’s hands had put a curtain up, so that she was screened
+from his eyes. Her disgraceful garments were removed, and some of
+Rachael’s were in the room. Everything was in its place and order as he
+had always kept it, the little fire was newly trimmed, and the hearth was
+freshly swept. It appeared to him that he saw all this in Rachael’s
+face, and looked at nothing besides. While looking at it, it was shut
+out from his view by the softened tears that filled his eyes; but not
+before he had seen how earnestly she looked at him, and how her own eyes
+were filled too.
+
+She turned again towards the bed, and satisfying herself that all was
+quiet there, spoke in a low, calm, cheerful voice.
+
+‘I am glad you have come at last, Stephen. You are very late.’
+
+‘I ha’ been walking up an’ down.’
+
+‘I thought so. But ’tis too bad a night for that. The rain falls very
+heavy, and the wind has risen.’
+
+The wind? True. It was blowing hard. Hark to the thundering in the
+chimney, and the surging noise! To have been out in such a wind, and not
+to have known it was blowing!
+
+‘I have been here once before, to-day, Stephen. Landlady came round for
+me at dinner-time. There was some one here that needed looking to, she
+said. And ‘deed she was right. All wandering and lost, Stephen.
+Wounded too, and bruised.’
+
+He slowly moved to a chair and sat down, drooping his head before her.
+
+‘I came to do what little I could, Stephen; first, for that she worked
+with me when we were girls both, and for that you courted her and married
+her when I was her friend—’
+
+He laid his furrowed forehead on his hand, with a low groan.
+
+‘And next, for that I know your heart, and am right sure and certain that
+’tis far too merciful to let her die, or even so much as suffer, for want
+of aid. Thou knowest who said, “Let him who is without sin among you
+cast the first stone at her!” There have been plenty to do that. Thou
+art not the man to cast the last stone, Stephen, when she is brought so
+low.’
+
+‘O Rachael, Rachael!’
+
+‘Thou hast been a cruel sufferer, Heaven reward thee!’ she said, in
+compassionate accents. ‘I am thy poor friend, with all my heart and
+mind.’
+
+ [Picture: Stephen and Rachael in the sick room]
+
+The wounds of which she had spoken, seemed to be about the neck of the
+self-made outcast. She dressed them now, still without showing her. She
+steeped a piece of linen in a basin, into which she poured some liquid
+from a bottle, and laid it with a gentle hand upon the sore. The
+three-legged table had been drawn close to the bedside, and on it there
+were two bottles. This was one.
+
+It was not so far off, but that Stephen, following her hands with his
+eyes, could read what was printed on it in large letters. He turned of a
+deadly hue, and a sudden horror seemed to fall upon him.
+
+‘I will stay here, Stephen,’ said Rachael, quietly resuming her seat,
+‘till the bells go Three. ’Tis to be done again at three, and then she
+may be left till morning.’
+
+‘But thy rest agen to-morrow’s work, my dear.’
+
+‘I slept sound last night. I can wake many nights, when I am put to it.
+’Tis thou who art in need of rest—so white and tired. Try to sleep in
+the chair there, while I watch. Thou hadst no sleep last night, I can
+well believe. To-morrow’s work is far harder for thee than for me.’
+
+He heard the thundering and surging out of doors, and it seemed to him as
+if his late angry mood were going about trying to get at him. She had
+cast it out; she would keep it out; he trusted to her to defend him from
+himself.
+
+‘She don’t know me, Stephen; she just drowsily mutters and stares. I
+have spoken to her times and again, but she don’t notice! ’Tis as well
+so. When she comes to her right mind once more, I shall have done what I
+can, and she never the wiser.’
+
+‘How long, Rachael, is ’t looked for, that she’ll be so?’
+
+‘Doctor said she would haply come to her mind to-morrow.’
+
+His eyes fell again on the bottle, and a tremble passed over him, causing
+him to shiver in every limb. She thought he was chilled with the wet.
+‘No,’ he said, ‘it was not that. He had had a fright.’
+
+‘A fright?’
+
+‘Ay, ay! coming in. When I were walking. When I were thinking. When
+I—’ It seized him again; and he stood up, holding by the mantel-shelf,
+as he pressed his dank cold hair down with a hand that shook as if it
+were palsied.
+
+‘Stephen!’
+
+She was coming to him, but he stretched out his arm to stop her.
+
+‘No! Don’t, please; don’t. Let me see thee setten by the bed. Let me
+see thee, a’ so good, and so forgiving. Let me see thee as I see thee
+when I coom in. I can never see thee better than so. Never, never,
+never!’
+
+He had a violent fit of trembling, and then sunk into his chair. After a
+time he controlled himself, and, resting with an elbow on one knee, and
+his head upon that hand, could look towards Rachael. Seen across the dim
+candle with his moistened eyes, she looked as if she had a glory shining
+round her head. He could have believed she had. He did believe it, as
+the noise without shook the window, rattled at the door below, and went
+about the house clamouring and lamenting.
+
+‘When she gets better, Stephen, ’tis to be hoped she’ll leave thee to
+thyself again, and do thee no more hurt. Anyways we will hope so now.
+And now I shall keep silence, for I want thee to sleep.’
+
+He closed his eyes, more to please her than to rest his weary head; but,
+by slow degrees as he listened to the great noise of the wind, he ceased
+to hear it, or it changed into the working of his loom, or even into the
+voices of the day (his own included) saying what had been really said.
+Even this imperfect consciousness faded away at last, and he dreamed a
+long, troubled dream.
+
+He thought that he, and some one on whom his heart had long been set—but
+she was not Rachael, and that surprised him, even in the midst of his
+imaginary happiness—stood in the church being married. While the
+ceremony was performing, and while he recognized among the witnesses some
+whom he knew to be living, and many whom he knew to be dead, darkness
+came on, succeeded by the shining of a tremendous light. It broke from
+one line in the table of commandments at the altar, and illuminated the
+building with the words. They were sounded through the church, too, as
+if there were voices in the fiery letters. Upon this, the whole
+appearance before him and around him changed, and nothing was left as it
+had been, but himself and the clergyman. They stood in the daylight
+before a crowd so vast, that if all the people in the world could have
+been brought together into one space, they could not have looked, he
+thought, more numerous; and they all abhorred him, and there was not one
+pitying or friendly eye among the millions that were fastened on his
+face. He stood on a raised stage, under his own loom; and, looking up at
+the shape the loom took, and hearing the burial service distinctly read,
+he knew that he was there to suffer death. In an instant what he stood
+on fell below him, and he was gone.
+
+—Out of what mystery he came back to his usual life, and to places that
+he knew, he was unable to consider; but he was back in those places by
+some means, and with this condemnation upon him, that he was never, in
+this world or the next, through all the unimaginable ages of eternity, to
+look on Rachael’s face or hear her voice. Wandering to and fro,
+unceasingly, without hope, and in search of he knew not what (he only
+knew that he was doomed to seek it), he was the subject of a nameless,
+horrible dread, a mortal fear of one particular shape which everything
+took. Whatsoever he looked at, grew into that form sooner or later. The
+object of his miserable existence was to prevent its recognition by any
+one among the various people he encountered. Hopeless labour! If he led
+them out of rooms where it was, if he shut up drawers and closets where
+it stood, if he drew the curious from places where he knew it to be
+secreted, and got them out into the streets, the very chimneys of the
+mills assumed that shape, and round them was the printed word.
+
+The wind was blowing again, the rain was beating on the house-tops, and
+the larger spaces through which he had strayed contracted to the four
+walls of his room. Saving that the fire had died out, it was as his eyes
+had closed upon it. Rachael seemed to have fallen into a doze, in the
+chair by the bed. She sat wrapped in her shawl, perfectly still. The
+table stood in the same place, close by the bedside, and on it, in its
+real proportions and appearance, was the shape so often repeated.
+
+He thought he saw the curtain move. He looked again, and he was sure it
+moved. He saw a hand come forth and grope about a little. Then the
+curtain moved more perceptibly, and the woman in the bed put it back, and
+sat up.
+
+With her woful eyes, so haggard and wild, so heavy and large, she looked
+all round the room, and passed the corner where he slept in his chair.
+Her eyes returned to that corner, and she put her hand over them as a
+shade, while she looked into it. Again they went all round the room,
+scarcely heeding Rachael if at all, and returned to that corner. He
+thought, as she once more shaded them—not so much looking at him, as
+looking for him with a brutish instinct that he was there—that no single
+trace was left in those debauched features, or in the mind that went
+along with them, of the woman he had married eighteen years before. But
+that he had seen her come to this by inches, he never could have believed
+her to be the same.
+
+All this time, as if a spell were on him, he was motionless and
+powerless, except to watch her.
+
+Stupidly dozing, or communing with her incapable self about nothing, she
+sat for a little while with her hands at her ears, and her head resting
+on them. Presently, she resumed her staring round the room. And now,
+for the first time, her eyes stopped at the table with the bottles on it.
+
+Straightway she turned her eyes back to his corner, with the defiance of
+last night, and moving very cautiously and softly, stretched out her
+greedy hand. She drew a mug into the bed, and sat for a while
+considering which of the two bottles she should choose. Finally, she
+laid her insensate grasp upon the bottle that had swift and certain death
+in it, and, before his eyes, pulled out the cork with her teeth.
+
+Dream or reality, he had no voice, nor had he power to stir. If this be
+real, and her allotted time be not yet come, wake, Rachael, wake!
+
+She thought of that, too. She looked at Rachael, and very slowly, very
+cautiously, poured out the contents. The draught was at her lips. A
+moment and she would be past all help, let the whole world wake and come
+about her with its utmost power. But in that moment Rachael started up
+with a suppressed cry. The creature struggled, struck her, seized her by
+the hair; but Rachael had the cup.
+
+Stephen broke out of his chair. ‘Rachael, am I wakin’ or dreamin’ this
+dreadfo’ night?’
+
+‘’Tis all well, Stephen. I have been asleep, myself. ’Tis near three.
+Hush! I hear the bells.’
+
+The wind brought the sounds of the church clock to the window. They
+listened, and it struck three. Stephen looked at her, saw how pale she
+was, noted the disorder of her hair, and the red marks of fingers on her
+forehead, and felt assured that his senses of sight and hearing had been
+awake. She held the cup in her hand even now.
+
+‘I thought it must be near three,’ she said, calmly pouring from the cup
+into the basin, and steeping the linen as before. ‘I am thankful I
+stayed! ’Tis done now, when I have put this on. There! And now she’s
+quiet again. The few drops in the basin I’ll pour away, for ’tis bad
+stuff to leave about, though ever so little of it.’ As she spoke, she
+drained the basin into the ashes of the fire, and broke the bottle on the
+hearth.
+
+She had nothing to do, then, but to cover herself with her shawl before
+going out into the wind and rain.
+
+‘Thou’lt let me walk wi’ thee at this hour, Rachael?’
+
+‘No, Stephen. ’Tis but a minute, and I’m home.’
+
+‘Thou’rt not fearfo’;’ he said it in a low voice, as they went out at the
+door; ‘to leave me alone wi’ her!’
+
+As she looked at him, saying, ‘Stephen?’ he went down on his knee before
+her, on the poor mean stairs, and put an end of her shawl to his lips.
+
+‘Thou art an Angel. Bless thee, bless thee!’
+
+‘I am, as I have told thee, Stephen, thy poor friend. Angels are not
+like me. Between them, and a working woman fu’ of faults, there is a
+deep gulf set. My little sister is among them, but she is changed.’
+
+She raised her eyes for a moment as she said the words; and then they
+fell again, in all their gentleness and mildness, on his face.
+
+‘Thou changest me from bad to good. Thou mak’st me humbly wishfo’ to be
+more like thee, and fearfo’ to lose thee when this life is ower, and a’
+the muddle cleared awa’. Thou’rt an Angel; it may be, thou hast saved my
+soul alive!’
+
+She looked at him, on his knee at her feet, with her shawl still in his
+hand, and the reproof on her lips died away when she saw the working of
+his face.
+
+‘I coom home desp’rate. I coom home wi’out a hope, and mad wi’ thinking
+that when I said a word o’ complaint I was reckoned a unreasonable Hand.
+I told thee I had had a fright. It were the Poison-bottle on table. I
+never hurt a livin’ creetur; but happenin’ so suddenly upon ’t, I thowt,
+“How can _I_ say what I might ha’ done to myseln, or her, or both!”’
+
+She put her two hands on his mouth, with a face of terror, to stop him
+from saying more. He caught them in his unoccupied hand, and holding
+them, and still clasping the border of her shawl, said hurriedly:
+
+‘But I see thee, Rachael, setten by the bed. I ha’ seen thee, aw this
+night. In my troublous sleep I ha’ known thee still to be there.
+Evermore I will see thee there. I nevermore will see her or think o’
+her, but thou shalt be beside her. I nevermore will see or think o’
+anything that angers me, but thou, so much better than me, shalt be by
+th’ side on’t. And so I will try t’ look t’ th’ time, and so I will try
+t’ trust t’ th’ time, when thou and me at last shall walk together far
+awa’, beyond the deep gulf, in th’ country where thy little sister is.’
+
+He kissed the border of her shawl again, and let her go. She bade him
+good night in a broken voice, and went out into the street.
+
+The wind blew from the quarter where the day would soon appear, and still
+blew strongly. It had cleared the sky before it, and the rain had spent
+itself or travelled elsewhere, and the stars were bright. He stood
+bare-headed in the road, watching her quick disappearance. As the
+shining stars were to the heavy candle in the window, so was Rachael, in
+the rugged fancy of this man, to the common experiences of his life.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+THE GREAT MANUFACTURER
+
+
+TIME went on in Coketown like its own machinery: so much material wrought
+up, so much fuel consumed, so many powers worn out, so much money made.
+But, less inexorable than iron, steel, and brass, it brought its varying
+seasons even into that wilderness of smoke and brick, and made the only
+stand that ever _was_ made in the place against its direful uniformity.
+
+‘Louisa is becoming,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘almost a young woman.’
+
+Time, with his innumerable horse-power, worked away, not minding what
+anybody said, and presently turned out young Thomas a foot taller than
+when his father had last taken particular notice of him.
+
+‘Thomas is becoming,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘almost a young man.’
+
+Time passed Thomas on in the mill, while his father was thinking about
+it, and there he stood in a long-tailed coat and a stiff shirt-collar.
+
+‘Really,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘the period has arrived when Thomas ought
+to go to Bounderby.’
+
+Time, sticking to him, passed him on into Bounderby’s Bank, made him an
+inmate of Bounderby’s house, necessitated the purchase of his first
+razor, and exercised him diligently in his calculations relative to
+number one.
+
+The same great manufacturer, always with an immense variety of work on
+hand, in every stage of development, passed Sissy onward in his mill, and
+worked her up into a very pretty article indeed.
+
+‘I fear, Jupe,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘that your continuance at the school
+any longer would be useless.’
+
+‘I am afraid it would, sir,’ Sissy answered with a curtsey.
+
+‘I cannot disguise from you, Jupe,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, knitting his
+brow, ‘that the result of your probation there has disappointed me; has
+greatly disappointed me. You have not acquired, under Mr. and Mrs.
+M’Choakumchild, anything like that amount of exact knowledge which I
+looked for. You are extremely deficient in your facts. Your
+acquaintance with figures is very limited. You are altogether backward,
+and below the mark.’
+
+‘I am sorry, sir,’ she returned; ‘but I know it is quite true. Yet I
+have tried hard, sir.’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘yes, I believe you have tried hard; I have
+observed you, and I can find no fault in that respect.’
+
+‘Thank you, sir. I have thought sometimes;’ Sissy very timid here; ‘that
+perhaps I tried to learn too much, and that if I had asked to be allowed
+to try a little less, I might have—’
+
+‘No, Jupe, no,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, shaking his head in his profoundest
+and most eminently practical way. ‘No. The course you pursued, you
+pursued according to the system—the system—and there is no more to be
+said about it. I can only suppose that the circumstances of your early
+life were too unfavourable to the development of your reasoning powers,
+and that we began too late. Still, as I have said already, I am
+disappointed.’
+
+‘I wish I could have made a better acknowledgment, sir, of your kindness
+to a poor forlorn girl who had no claim upon you, and of your protection
+of her.’
+
+‘Don’t shed tears,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Don’t shed tears. I don’t
+complain of you. You are an affectionate, earnest, good young
+woman—and—and we must make that do.’
+
+‘Thank you, sir, very much,’ said Sissy, with a grateful curtsey.
+
+‘You are useful to Mrs. Gradgrind, and (in a generally pervading way) you
+are serviceable in the family also; so I understand from Miss Louisa,
+and, indeed, so I have observed myself. I therefore hope,’ said Mr.
+Gradgrind, ‘that you can make yourself happy in those relations.’
+
+‘I should have nothing to wish, sir, if—’
+
+‘I understand you,’ said Mr. Gradgrind; ‘you still refer to your father.
+I have heard from Miss Louisa that you still preserve that bottle. Well!
+If your training in the science of arriving at exact results had been
+more successful, you would have been wiser on these points. I will say
+no more.’
+
+He really liked Sissy too well to have a contempt for her; otherwise he
+held her calculating powers in such very slight estimation that he must
+have fallen upon that conclusion. Somehow or other, he had become
+possessed by an idea that there was something in this girl which could
+hardly be set forth in a tabular form. Her capacity of definition might
+be easily stated at a very low figure, her mathematical knowledge at
+nothing; yet he was not sure that if he had been required, for example,
+to tick her off into columns in a parliamentary return, he would have
+quite known how to divide her.
+
+In some stages of his manufacture of the human fabric, the processes of
+Time are very rapid. Young Thomas and Sissy being both at such a stage
+of their working up, these changes were effected in a year or two; while
+Mr. Gradgrind himself seemed stationary in his course, and underwent no
+alteration.
+
+Except one, which was apart from his necessary progress through the mill.
+Time hustled him into a little noisy and rather dirty machinery, in a
+by-comer, and made him Member of Parliament for Coketown: one of the
+respected members for ounce weights and measures, one of the
+representatives of the multiplication table, one of the deaf honourable
+gentlemen, dumb honourable gentlemen, blind honourable gentlemen, lame
+honourable gentlemen, dead honourable gentlemen, to every other
+consideration. Else wherefore live we in a Christian land, eighteen
+hundred and odd years after our Master?
+
+All this while, Louisa had been passing on, so quiet and reserved, and so
+much given to watching the bright ashes at twilight as they fell into the
+grate, and became extinct, that from the period when her father had said
+she was almost a young woman—which seemed but yesterday—she had scarcely
+attracted his notice again, when he found her quite a young woman.
+
+‘Quite a young woman,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, musing. ‘Dear me!’
+
+Soon after this discovery, he became more thoughtful than usual for
+several days, and seemed much engrossed by one subject. On a certain
+night, when he was going out, and Louisa came to bid him good-bye before
+his departure—as he was not to be home until late and she would not see
+him again until the morning—he held her in his arms, looking at her in
+his kindest manner, and said:
+
+‘My dear Louisa, you are a woman!’
+
+She answered with the old, quick, searching look of the night when she
+was found at the Circus; then cast down her eyes. ‘Yes, father.’
+
+‘My dear,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘I must speak with you alone and
+seriously. Come to me in my room after breakfast to-morrow, will you?’
+
+‘Yes, father.’
+
+‘Your hands are rather cold, Louisa. Are you not well?’
+
+‘Quite well, father.’
+
+‘And cheerful?’
+
+She looked at him again, and smiled in her peculiar manner. ‘I am as
+cheerful, father, as I usually am, or usually have been.’
+
+‘That’s well,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. So, he kissed her and went away; and
+Louisa returned to the serene apartment of the hair-cutting character,
+and leaning her elbow on her hand, looked again at the short-lived sparks
+that so soon subsided into ashes.
+
+‘Are you there, Loo?’ said her brother, looking in at the door. He was
+quite a young gentleman of pleasure now, and not quite a prepossessing
+one.
+
+‘Dear Tom,’ she answered, rising and embracing him, ‘how long it is since
+you have been to see me!’
+
+‘Why, I have been otherwise engaged, Loo, in the evenings; and in the
+daytime old Bounderby has been keeping me at it rather. But I touch him
+up with you when he comes it too strong, and so we preserve an
+understanding. I say! Has father said anything particular to you to-day
+or yesterday, Loo?’
+
+‘No, Tom. But he told me to-night that he wished to do so in the
+morning.’
+
+‘Ah! That’s what I mean,’ said Tom. ‘Do you know where he is
+to-night?’—with a very deep expression.
+
+‘No.’
+
+‘Then I’ll tell you. He’s with old Bounderby. They are having a regular
+confab together up at the Bank. Why at the Bank, do you think? Well,
+I’ll tell you again. To keep Mrs. Sparsit’s ears as far off as possible,
+I expect.’
+
+With her hand upon her brother’s shoulder, Louisa still stood looking at
+the fire. Her brother glanced at her face with greater interest than
+usual, and, encircling her waist with his arm, drew her coaxingly to him.
+
+‘You are very fond of me, an’t you, Loo?’
+
+‘Indeed I am, Tom, though you do let such long intervals go by without
+coming to see me.’
+
+‘Well, sister of mine,’ said Tom, ‘when you say that, you are near my
+thoughts. We might be so much oftener together—mightn’t we? Always
+together, almost—mightn’t we? It would do me a great deal of good if you
+were to make up your mind to I know what, Loo. It would be a splendid
+thing for me. It would be uncommonly jolly!’
+
+Her thoughtfulness baffled his cunning scrutiny. He could make nothing
+of her face. He pressed her in his arm, and kissed her cheek. She
+returned the kiss, but still looked at the fire.
+
+‘I say, Loo! I thought I’d come, and just hint to you what was going on:
+though I supposed you’d most likely guess, even if you didn’t know. I
+can’t stay, because I’m engaged to some fellows to-night. You won’t
+forget how fond you are of me?’
+
+‘No, dear Tom, I won’t forget.’
+
+‘That’s a capital girl,’ said Tom. ‘Good-bye, Loo.’
+
+She gave him an affectionate good-night, and went out with him to the
+door, whence the fires of Coketown could be seen, making the distance
+lurid. She stood there, looking steadfastly towards them, and listening
+to his departing steps. They retreated quickly, as glad to get away from
+Stone Lodge; and she stood there yet, when he was gone and all was quiet.
+It seemed as if, first in her own fire within the house, and then in the
+fiery haze without, she tried to discover what kind of woof Old Time,
+that greatest and longest-established Spinner of all, would weave from
+the threads he had already spun into a woman. But his factory is a
+secret place, his work is noiseless, and his Hands are mutes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+FATHER AND DAUGHTER
+
+
+ALTHOUGH Mr. Gradgrind did not take after Blue Beard, his room was quite
+a blue chamber in its abundance of blue books. Whatever they could prove
+(which is usually anything you like), they proved there, in an army
+constantly strengthening by the arrival of new recruits. In that charmed
+apartment, the most complicated social questions were cast up, got into
+exact totals, and finally settled—if those concerned could only have been
+brought to know it. As if an astronomical observatory should be made
+without any windows, and the astronomer within should arrange the starry
+universe solely by pen, ink, and paper, so Mr. Gradgrind, in _his_
+Observatory (and there are many like it), had no need to cast an eye upon
+the teeming myriads of human beings around him, but could settle all
+their destinies on a slate, and wipe out all their tears with one dirty
+little bit of sponge.
+
+To this Observatory, then: a stern room, with a deadly statistical clock
+in it, which measured every second with a beat like a rap upon a
+coffin-lid; Louisa repaired on the appointed morning. A window looked
+towards Coketown; and when she sat down near her father’s table, she saw
+the high chimneys and the long tracts of smoke looming in the heavy
+distance gloomily.
+
+‘My dear Louisa,’ said her father, ‘I prepared you last night to give me
+your serious attention in the conversation we are now going to have
+together. You have been so well trained, and you do, I am happy to say,
+so much justice to the education you have received, that I have perfect
+confidence in your good sense. You are not impulsive, you are not
+romantic, you are accustomed to view everything from the strong
+dispassionate ground of reason and calculation. From that ground alone,
+I know you will view and consider what I am going to communicate.’
+
+He waited, as if he would have been glad that she said something. But
+she said never a word.
+
+‘Louisa, my dear, you are the subject of a proposal of marriage that has
+been made to me.’
+
+Again he waited, and again she answered not one word. This so far
+surprised him, as to induce him gently to repeat, ‘a proposal of
+marriage, my dear.’ To which she returned, without any visible emotion
+whatever:
+
+‘I hear you, father. I am attending, I assure you.’
+
+‘Well!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, breaking into a smile, after being for the
+moment at a loss, ‘you are even more dispassionate than I expected,
+Louisa. Or, perhaps, you are not unprepared for the announcement I have
+it in charge to make?’
+
+‘I cannot say that, father, until I hear it. Prepared or unprepared, I
+wish to hear it all from you. I wish to hear you state it to me,
+father.’
+
+Strange to relate, Mr. Gradgrind was not so collected at this moment as
+his daughter was. He took a paper-knife in his hand, turned it over,
+laid it down, took it up again, and even then had to look along the blade
+of it, considering how to go on.
+
+‘What you say, my dear Louisa, is perfectly reasonable. I have
+undertaken then to let you know that—in short, that Mr. Bounderby has
+informed me that he has long watched your progress with particular
+interest and pleasure, and has long hoped that the time might ultimately
+arrive when he should offer you his hand in marriage. That time, to
+which he has so long, and certainly with great constancy, looked forward,
+is now come. Mr. Bounderby has made his proposal of marriage to me, and
+has entreated me to make it known to you, and to express his hope that
+you will take it into your favourable consideration.’
+
+Silence between them. The deadly statistical clock very hollow. The
+distant smoke very black and heavy.
+
+‘Father,’ said Louisa, ‘do you think I love Mr. Bounderby?’
+
+Mr. Gradgrind was extremely discomfited by this unexpected question.
+‘Well, my child,’ he returned, ‘I—really—cannot take upon myself to say.’
+
+‘Father,’ pursued Louisa in exactly the same voice as before, ‘do you ask
+me to love Mr. Bounderby?’
+
+‘My dear Louisa, no. No. I ask nothing.’
+
+‘Father,’ she still pursued, ‘does Mr. Bounderby ask me to love him?’
+
+‘Really, my dear,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘it is difficult to answer your
+question—’
+
+‘Difficult to answer it, Yes or No, father?
+
+‘Certainly, my dear. Because;’ here was something to demonstrate, and it
+set him up again; ‘because the reply depends so materially, Louisa, on
+the sense in which we use the expression. Now, Mr. Bounderby does not do
+you the injustice, and does not do himself the injustice, of pretending
+to anything fanciful, fantastic, or (I am using synonymous terms)
+sentimental. Mr. Bounderby would have seen you grow up under his eyes,
+to very little purpose, if he could so far forget what is due to your
+good sense, not to say to his, as to address you from any such ground.
+Therefore, perhaps the expression itself—I merely suggest this to you, my
+dear—may be a little misplaced.’
+
+‘What would you advise me to use in its stead, father?’
+
+‘Why, my dear Louisa,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, completely recovered by this
+time, ‘I would advise you (since you ask me) to consider this question,
+as you have been accustomed to consider every other question, simply as
+one of tangible Fact. The ignorant and the giddy may embarrass such
+subjects with irrelevant fancies, and other absurdities that have no
+existence, properly viewed—really no existence—but it is no compliment to
+you to say, that you know better. Now, what are the Facts of this case?
+You are, we will say in round numbers, twenty years of age; Mr. Bounderby
+is, we will say in round numbers, fifty. There is some disparity in your
+respective years, but in your means and positions there is none; on the
+contrary, there is a great suitability. Then the question arises, Is
+this one disparity sufficient to operate as a bar to such a marriage? In
+considering this question, it is not unimportant to take into account the
+statistics of marriage, so far as they have yet been obtained, in England
+and Wales. I find, on reference to the figures, that a large proportion
+of these marriages are contracted between parties of very unequal ages,
+and that the elder of these contracting parties is, in rather more than
+three-fourths of these instances, the bridegroom. It is remarkable as
+showing the wide prevalence of this law, that among the natives of the
+British possessions in India, also in a considerable part of China, and
+among the Calmucks of Tartary, the best means of computation yet
+furnished us by travellers, yield similar results. The disparity I have
+mentioned, therefore, almost ceases to be disparity, and (virtually) all
+but disappears.’
+
+‘What do you recommend, father,’ asked Louisa, her reserved composure not
+in the least affected by these gratifying results, ‘that I should
+substitute for the term I used just now? For the misplaced expression?’
+
+‘Louisa,’ returned her father, ‘it appears to me that nothing can be
+plainer. Confining yourself rigidly to Fact, the question of Fact you
+state to yourself is: Does Mr. Bounderby ask me to marry him? Yes, he
+does. The sole remaining question then is: Shall I marry him? I think
+nothing can be plainer than that?’
+
+‘Shall I marry him?’ repeated Louisa, with great deliberation.
+
+‘Precisely. And it is satisfactory to me, as your father, my dear
+Louisa, to know that you do not come to the consideration of that
+question with the previous habits of mind, and habits of life, that
+belong to many young women.’
+
+‘No, father,’ she returned, ‘I do not.’
+
+‘I now leave you to judge for yourself,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘I have
+stated the case, as such cases are usually stated among practical minds;
+I have stated it, as the case of your mother and myself was stated in its
+time. The rest, my dear Louisa, is for you to decide.’
+
+From the beginning, she had sat looking at him fixedly. As he now leaned
+back in his chair, and bent his deep-set eyes upon her in his turn,
+perhaps he might have seen one wavering moment in her, when she was
+impelled to throw herself upon his breast, and give him the pent-up
+confidences of her heart. But, to see it, he must have overleaped at a
+bound the artificial barriers he had for many years been erecting,
+between himself and all those subtle essences of humanity which will
+elude the utmost cunning of algebra until the last trumpet ever to be
+sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck. The barriers were too many and
+too high for such a leap. With his unbending, utilitarian,
+matter-of-fact face, he hardened her again; and the moment shot away into
+the plumbless depths of the past, to mingle with all the lost
+opportunities that are drowned there.
+
+Removing her eyes from him, she sat so long looking silently towards the
+town, that he said, at length: ‘Are you consulting the chimneys of the
+Coketown works, Louisa?’
+
+‘There seems to be nothing there but languid and monotonous smoke. Yet
+when the night comes, Fire bursts out, father!’ she answered, turning
+quickly.
+
+‘Of course I know that, Louisa. I do not see the application of the
+remark.’ To do him justice he did not, at all.
+
+She passed it away with a slight motion of her hand, and concentrating
+her attention upon him again, said, ‘Father, I have often thought that
+life is very short.’—This was so distinctly one of his subjects that he
+interposed.
+
+‘It is short, no doubt, my dear. Still, the average duration of human
+life is proved to have increased of late years. The calculations of
+various life assurance and annuity offices, among other figures which
+cannot go wrong, have established the fact.’
+
+‘I speak of my own life, father.’
+
+‘O indeed? Still,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘I need not point out to you,
+Louisa, that it is governed by the laws which govern lives in the
+aggregate.’
+
+‘While it lasts, I would wish to do the little I can, and the little I am
+fit for. What does it matter?’
+
+Mr. Gradgrind seemed rather at a loss to understand the last four words;
+replying, ‘How, matter? What matter, my dear?’
+
+‘Mr. Bounderby,’ she went on in a steady, straight way, without regarding
+this, ‘asks me to marry him. The question I have to ask myself is, shall
+I marry him? That is so, father, is it not? You have told me so,
+father. Have you not?’
+
+‘Certainly, my dear.’
+
+‘Let it be so. Since Mr. Bounderby likes to take me thus, I am satisfied
+to accept his proposal. Tell him, father, as soon as you please, that
+this was my answer. Repeat it, word for word, if you can, because I
+should wish him to know what I said.’
+
+‘It is quite right, my dear,’ retorted her father approvingly, ‘to be
+exact. I will observe your very proper request. Have you any wish in
+reference to the period of your marriage, my child?’
+
+‘None, father. What does it matter!’
+
+Mr. Gradgrind had drawn his chair a little nearer to her, and taken her
+hand. But, her repetition of these words seemed to strike with some
+little discord on his ear. He paused to look at her, and, still holding
+her hand, said:
+
+‘Louisa, I have not considered it essential to ask you one question,
+because the possibility implied in it appeared to me to be too remote.
+But perhaps I ought to do so. You have never entertained in secret any
+other proposal?’
+
+‘Father,’ she returned, almost scornfully, ‘what other proposal can have
+been made to _me_? Whom have I seen? Where have I been? What are my
+heart’s experiences?’
+
+‘My dear Louisa,’ returned Mr. Gradgrind, reassured and satisfied. ‘You
+correct me justly. I merely wished to discharge my duty.’
+
+‘What do _I_ know, father,’ said Louisa in her quiet manner, ‘of tastes
+and fancies; of aspirations and affections; of all that part of my nature
+in which such light things might have been nourished? What escape have I
+had from problems that could be demonstrated, and realities that could be
+grasped?’ As she said it, she unconsciously closed her hand, as if upon
+a solid object, and slowly opened it as though she were releasing dust or
+ash.
+
+‘My dear,’ assented her eminently practical parent, ‘quite true, quite
+true.’
+
+‘Why, father,’ she pursued, ‘what a strange question to ask _me_! The
+baby-preference that even I have heard of as common among children, has
+never had its innocent resting-place in my breast. You have been so
+careful of me, that I never had a child’s heart. You have trained me so
+well, that I never dreamed a child’s dream. You have dealt so wisely
+with me, father, from my cradle to this hour, that I never had a child’s
+belief or a child’s fear.’
+
+Mr. Gradgrind was quite moved by his success, and by this testimony to
+it. ‘My dear Louisa,’ said he, ‘you abundantly repay my care. Kiss me,
+my dear girl.’
+
+So, his daughter kissed him. Detaining her in his embrace, he said, ‘I
+may assure you now, my favourite child, that I am made happy by the sound
+decision at which you have arrived. Mr. Bounderby is a very remarkable
+man; and what little disparity can be said to exist between you—if any—is
+more than counterbalanced by the tone your mind has acquired. It has
+always been my object so to educate you, as that you might, while still
+in your early youth, be (if I may so express myself) almost any age.
+Kiss me once more, Louisa. Now, let us go and find your mother.’
+
+Accordingly, they went down to the drawing-room, where the esteemed lady
+with no nonsense about her, was recumbent as usual, while Sissy worked
+beside her. She gave some feeble signs of returning animation when they
+entered, and presently the faint transparency was presented in a sitting
+attitude.
+
+‘Mrs. Gradgrind,’ said her husband, who had waited for the achievement of
+this feat with some impatience, ‘allow me to present to you Mrs.
+Bounderby.’
+
+‘Oh!’ said Mrs. Gradgrind, ‘so you have settled it! Well, I’m sure I
+hope your health may be good, Louisa; for if your head begins to split as
+soon as you are married, which was the case with mine, I cannot consider
+that you are to be envied, though I have no doubt you think you are, as
+all girls do. However, I give you joy, my dear—and I hope you may now
+turn all your ological studies to good account, I am sure I do! I must
+give you a kiss of congratulation, Louisa; but don’t touch my right
+shoulder, for there’s something running down it all day long. And now
+you see,’ whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind, adjusting her shawls after the
+affectionate ceremony, ‘I shall be worrying myself, morning, noon, and
+night, to know what I am to call him!’
+
+‘Mrs. Gradgrind,’ said her husband, solemnly, ‘what do you mean?’
+
+‘Whatever I am to call him, Mr. Gradgrind, when he is married to Louisa!
+I must call him something. It’s impossible,’ said Mrs. Gradgrind, with a
+mingled sense of politeness and injury, ‘to be constantly addressing him
+and never giving him a name. I cannot call him Josiah, for the name is
+insupportable to me. You yourself wouldn’t hear of Joe, you very well
+know. Am I to call my own son-in-law, Mister! Not, I believe, unless
+the time has arrived when, as an invalid, I am to be trampled upon by my
+relations. Then, what am I to call him!’
+
+Nobody present having any suggestion to offer in the remarkable
+emergency, Mrs. Gradgrind departed this life for the time being, after
+delivering the following codicil to her remarks already executed:
+
+‘As to the wedding, all I ask, Louisa, is,—and I ask it with a fluttering
+in my chest, which actually extends to the soles of my feet,—that it may
+take place soon. Otherwise, I know it is one of those subjects I shall
+never hear the last of.’
+
+When Mr. Gradgrind had presented Mrs. Bounderby, Sissy had suddenly
+turned her head, and looked, in wonder, in pity, in sorrow, in doubt, in
+a multitude of emotions, towards Louisa. Louisa had known it, and seen
+it, without looking at her. From that moment she was impassive, proud
+and cold—held Sissy at a distance—changed to her altogether.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+HUSBAND AND WIFE
+
+
+MR. BOUNDERBY’S first disquietude on hearing of his happiness, was
+occasioned by the necessity of imparting it to Mrs. Sparsit. He could
+not make up his mind how to do that, or what the consequences of the step
+might be. Whether she would instantly depart, bag and baggage, to Lady
+Scadgers, or would positively refuse to budge from the premises; whether
+she would be plaintive or abusive, tearful or tearing; whether she would
+break her heart, or break the looking-glass; Mr. Bounderby could not all
+foresee. However, as it must be done, he had no choice but to do it; so,
+after attempting several letters, and failing in them all, he resolved to
+do it by word of mouth.
+
+On his way home, on the evening he set aside for this momentous purpose,
+he took the precaution of stepping into a chemist’s shop and buying a
+bottle of the very strongest smelling-salts. ‘By George!’ said Mr.
+Bounderby, ‘if she takes it in the fainting way, I’ll have the skin off
+her nose, at all events!’ But, in spite of being thus forearmed, he
+entered his own house with anything but a courageous air; and appeared
+before the object of his misgivings, like a dog who was conscious of
+coming direct from the pantry.
+
+‘Good evening, Mr. Bounderby!’
+
+‘Good evening, ma’am, good evening.’ He drew up his chair, and Mrs.
+Sparsit drew back hers, as who should say, ‘Your fireside, sir. I freely
+admit it. It is for you to occupy it all, if you think proper.’
+
+‘Don’t go to the North Pole, ma’am!’ said Mr. Bounderby.
+
+‘Thank you, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, and returned, though short of her
+former position.
+
+Mr. Bounderby sat looking at her, as, with the points of a stiff, sharp
+pair of scissors, she picked out holes for some inscrutable ornamental
+purpose, in a piece of cambric. An operation which, taken in connexion
+with the bushy eyebrows and the Roman nose, suggested with some
+liveliness the idea of a hawk engaged upon the eyes of a tough little
+bird. She was so steadfastly occupied, that many minutes elapsed before
+she looked up from her work; when she did so Mr. Bounderby bespoke her
+attention with a hitch of his head.
+
+‘Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am,’ said Mr. Bounderby, putting his hands in his
+pockets, and assuring himself with his right hand that the cork of the
+little bottle was ready for use, ‘I have no occasion to say to you, that
+you are not only a lady born and bred, but a devilish sensible woman.’
+
+‘Sir,’ returned the lady, ‘this is indeed not the first time that you
+have honoured me with similar expressions of your good opinion.’
+
+‘Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘I am going to astonish you.’
+
+‘Yes, sir?’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, interrogatively, and in the most
+tranquil manner possible. She generally wore mittens, and she now laid
+down her work, and smoothed those mittens.
+
+‘I am going, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘to marry Tom Gradgrind’s daughter.’
+
+‘Yes, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit. ‘I hope you may be happy, Mr.
+Bounderby. Oh, indeed I hope you may be happy, sir!’ And she said it
+with such great condescension as well as with such great compassion for
+him, that Bounderby,—far more disconcerted than if she had thrown her
+workbox at the mirror, or swooned on the hearthrug,—corked up the
+smelling-salts tight in his pocket, and thought, ‘Now confound this
+woman, who could have even guessed that she would take it in this way!’
+
+‘I wish with all my heart, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, in a highly superior
+manner; somehow she seemed, in a moment, to have established a right to
+pity him ever afterwards; ‘that you may be in all respects very happy.’
+
+‘Well, ma’am,’ returned Bounderby, with some resentment in his tone:
+which was clearly lowered, though in spite of himself, ‘I am obliged to
+you. I hope I shall be.’
+
+‘_Do_ you, sir!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with great affability. ‘But
+naturally you do; of course you do.’
+
+A very awkward pause on Mr. Bounderby’s part, succeeded. Mrs. Sparsit
+sedately resumed her work and occasionally gave a small cough, which
+sounded like the cough of conscious strength and forbearance.
+
+‘Well, ma’am,’ resumed Bounderby, ‘under these circumstances, I imagine
+it would not be agreeable to a character like yours to remain here,
+though you would be very welcome here.’
+
+‘Oh, dear no, sir, I could on no account think of that!’ Mrs. Sparsit
+shook her head, still in her highly superior manner, and a little changed
+the small cough—coughing now, as if the spirit of prophecy rose within
+her, but had better be coughed down.
+
+‘However, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘there are apartments at the Bank,
+where a born and bred lady, as keeper of the place, would be rather a
+catch than otherwise; and if the same terms—’
+
+‘I beg your pardon, sir. You were so good as to promise that you would
+always substitute the phrase, annual compliment.’
+
+‘Well, ma’am, annual compliment. If the same annual compliment would be
+acceptable there, why, I see nothing to part us, unless you do.’
+
+‘Sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit. ‘The proposal is like yourself, and if the
+position I shall assume at the Bank is one that I could occupy without
+descending lower in the social scale—’
+
+‘Why, of course it is,’ said Bounderby. ‘If it was not, ma’am, you don’t
+suppose that I should offer it to a lady who has moved in the society you
+have moved in. Not that _I_ care for such society, you know! But _you_
+do.’
+
+‘Mr. Bounderby, you are very considerate.’
+
+‘You’ll have your own private apartments, and you’ll have your coals and
+your candles, and all the rest of it, and you’ll have your maid to attend
+upon you, and you’ll have your light porter to protect you, and you’ll be
+what I take the liberty of considering precious comfortable,’ said
+Bounderby.
+
+‘Sir,’ rejoined Mrs. Sparsit, ‘say no more. In yielding up my trust
+here, I shall not be freed from the necessity of eating the bread of
+dependence:’ she might have said the sweetbread, for that delicate
+article in a savoury brown sauce was her favourite supper: ‘and I would
+rather receive it from your hand, than from any other. Therefore, sir, I
+accept your offer gratefully, and with many sincere acknowledgments for
+past favours. And I hope, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, concluding in an
+impressively compassionate manner, ‘I fondly hope that Miss Gradgrind may
+be all you desire, and deserve!’
+
+Nothing moved Mrs. Sparsit from that position any more. It was in vain
+for Bounderby to bluster or to assert himself in any of his explosive
+ways; Mrs. Sparsit was resolved to have compassion on him, as a Victim.
+She was polite, obliging, cheerful, hopeful; but, the more polite, the
+more obliging, the more cheerful, the more hopeful, the more exemplary
+altogether, she; the forlorner Sacrifice and Victim, he. She had that
+tenderness for his melancholy fate, that his great red countenance used
+to break out into cold perspirations when she looked at him.
+
+Meanwhile the marriage was appointed to be solemnized in eight weeks’
+time, and Mr. Bounderby went every evening to Stone Lodge as an accepted
+wooer. Love was made on these occasions in the form of bracelets; and,
+on all occasions during the period of betrothal, took a manufacturing
+aspect. Dresses were made, jewellery was made, cakes and gloves were
+made, settlements were made, and an extensive assortment of Facts did
+appropriate honour to the contract. The business was all Fact, from
+first to last. The Hours did not go through any of those rosy
+performances, which foolish poets have ascribed to them at such times;
+neither did the clocks go any faster, or any slower, than at other
+seasons. The deadly statistical recorder in the Gradgrind observatory
+knocked every second on the head as it was born, and buried it with his
+accustomed regularity.
+
+So the day came, as all other days come to people who will only stick to
+reason; and when it came, there were married in the church of the florid
+wooden legs—that popular order of architecture—Josiah Bounderby Esquire
+of Coketown, to Louisa eldest daughter of Thomas Gradgrind Esquire of
+Stone Lodge, M.P. for that borough. And when they were united in holy
+matrimony, they went home to breakfast at Stone Lodge aforesaid.
+
+There was an improving party assembled on the auspicious occasion, who
+knew what everything they had to eat and drink was made of, and how it
+was imported or exported, and in what quantities, and in what bottoms,
+whether native or foreign, and all about it. The bridesmaids, down to
+little Jane Gradgrind, were, in an intellectual point of view, fit
+helpmates for the calculating boy; and there was no nonsense about any of
+the company.
+
+After breakfast, the bridegroom addressed them in the following terms:
+
+‘Ladies and gentlemen, I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. Since you have
+done my wife and myself the honour of drinking our healths and happiness,
+I suppose I must acknowledge the same; though, as you all know me, and
+know what I am, and what my extraction was, you won’t expect a speech
+from a man who, when he sees a Post, says “that’s a Post,” and when he
+sees a Pump, says “that’s a Pump,” and is not to be got to call a Post a
+Pump, or a Pump a Post, or either of them a Toothpick. If you want a
+speech this morning, my friend and father-in-law, Tom Gradgrind, is a
+Member of Parliament, and you know where to get it. I am not your man.
+However, if I feel a little independent when I look around this table
+to-day, and reflect how little I thought of marrying Tom Gradgrind’s
+daughter when I was a ragged street-boy, who never washed his face unless
+it was at a pump, and that not oftener than once a fortnight, I hope I
+may be excused. So, I hope you like my feeling independent; if you
+don’t, I can’t help it. I _do_ feel independent. Now I have mentioned,
+and you have mentioned, that I am this day married to Tom Gradgrind’s
+daughter. I am very glad to be so. It has long been my wish to be so.
+I have watched her bringing-up, and I believe she is worthy of me. At
+the same time—not to deceive you—I believe I am worthy of her. So, I
+thank you, on both our parts, for the good-will you have shown towards
+us; and the best wish I can give the unmarried part of the present
+company, is this: I hope every bachelor may find as good a wife as I have
+found. And I hope every spinster may find as good a husband as my wife
+has found.’
+
+Shortly after which oration, as they were going on a nuptial trip to
+Lyons, in order that Mr. Bounderby might take the opportunity of seeing
+how the Hands got on in those parts, and whether they, too, required to
+be fed with gold spoons; the happy pair departed for the railroad. The
+bride, in passing down-stairs, dressed for her journey, found Tom waiting
+for her—flushed, either with his feelings, or the vinous part of the
+breakfast.
+
+‘What a game girl you are, to be such a first-rate sister, Loo!’
+whispered Tom.
+
+She clung to him as she should have clung to some far better nature that
+day, and was a little shaken in her reserved composure for the first
+time.
+
+‘Old Bounderby’s quite ready,’ said Tom. ‘Time’s up. Good-bye! I shall
+be on the look-out for you, when you come back. I say, my dear Loo!
+AN’T it uncommonly jolly now!’
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ END OF THE FIRST BOOK
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THE SECOND
+_REAPING_
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+EFFECTS IN THE BANK
+
+
+A SUNNY midsummer day. There was such a thing sometimes, even in
+Coketown.
+
+Seen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay shrouded in a haze of
+its own, which appeared impervious to the sun’s rays. You only knew the
+town was there, because you knew there could have been no such sulky
+blotch upon the prospect without a town. A blur of soot and smoke, now
+confusedly tending this way, now that way, now aspiring to the vault of
+Heaven, now murkily creeping along the earth, as the wind rose and fell,
+or changed its quarter: a dense formless jumble, with sheets of cross
+light in it, that showed nothing but masses of darkness:—Coketown in the
+distance was suggestive of itself, though not a brick of it could be
+seen.
+
+The wonder was, it was there at all. It had been ruined so often, that
+it was amazing how it had borne so many shocks. Surely there never was
+such fragile china-ware as that of which the millers of Coketown were
+made. Handle them never so lightly, and they fell to pieces with such
+ease that you might suspect them of having been flawed before. They were
+ruined, when they were required to send labouring children to school;
+they were ruined when inspectors were appointed to look into their works;
+they were ruined, when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether
+they were quite justified in chopping people up with their machinery;
+they were utterly undone, when it was hinted that perhaps they need not
+always make quite so much smoke. Besides Mr. Bounderby’s gold spoon
+which was generally received in Coketown, another prevalent fiction was
+very popular there. It took the form of a threat. Whenever a Coketowner
+felt he was ill-used—that is to say, whenever he was not left entirely
+alone, and it was proposed to hold him accountable for the consequences
+of any of his acts—he was sure to come out with the awful menace, that he
+would ‘sooner pitch his property into the Atlantic.’ This had terrified
+the Home Secretary within an inch of his life, on several occasions.
+
+However, the Coketowners were so patriotic after all, that they never had
+pitched their property into the Atlantic yet, but, on the contrary, had
+been kind enough to take mighty good care of it. So there it was, in the
+haze yonder; and it increased and multiplied.
+
+The streets were hot and dusty on the summer day, and the sun was so
+bright that it even shone through the heavy vapour drooping over
+Coketown, and could not be looked at steadily. Stokers emerged from low
+underground doorways into factory yards, and sat on steps, and posts, and
+palings, wiping their swarthy visages, and contemplating coals. The
+whole town seemed to be frying in oil. There was a stifling smell of hot
+oil everywhere. The steam-engines shone with it, the dresses of the
+Hands were soiled with it, the mills throughout their many stories oozed
+and trickled it. The atmosphere of those Fairy palaces was like the
+breath of the simoom: and their inhabitants, wasting with heat, toiled
+languidly in the desert. But no temperature made the melancholy mad
+elephants more mad or more sane. Their wearisome heads went up and down
+at the same rate, in hot weather and cold, wet weather and dry, fair
+weather and foul. The measured motion of their shadows on the walls, was
+the substitute Coketown had to show for the shadows of rustling woods;
+while, for the summer hum of insects, it could offer, all the year round,
+from the dawn of Monday to the night of Saturday, the whirr of shafts and
+wheels.
+
+Drowsily they whirred all through this sunny day, making the passenger
+more sleepy and more hot as he passed the humming walls of the mills.
+Sun-blinds, and sprinklings of water, a little cooled the main streets
+and the shops; but the mills, and the courts and alleys, baked at a
+fierce heat. Down upon the river that was black and thick with dye, some
+Coketown boys who were at large—a rare sight there—rowed a crazy boat,
+which made a spumous track upon the water as it jogged along, while every
+dip of an oar stirred up vile smells. But the sun itself, however
+beneficent, generally, was less kind to Coketown than hard frost, and
+rarely looked intently into any of its closer regions without engendering
+more death than life. So does the eye of Heaven itself become an evil
+eye, when incapable or sordid hands are interposed between it and the
+things it looks upon to bless.
+
+Mrs. Sparsit sat in her afternoon apartment at the Bank, on the shadier
+side of the frying street. Office-hours were over: and at that period of
+the day, in warm weather, she usually embellished with her genteel
+presence, a managerial board-room over the public office. Her own
+private sitting-room was a story higher, at the window of which post of
+observation she was ready, every morning, to greet Mr. Bounderby, as he
+came across the road, with the sympathizing recognition appropriate to a
+Victim. He had been married now a year; and Mrs. Sparsit had never
+released him from her determined pity a moment.
+
+The Bank offered no violence to the wholesome monotony of the town. It
+was another red brick house, with black outside shutters, green inside
+blinds, a black street-door up two white steps, a brazen door-plate, and
+a brazen door-handle full stop. It was a size larger than Mr.
+Bounderby’s house, as other houses were from a size to half-a-dozen sizes
+smaller; in all other particulars, it was strictly according to pattern.
+
+Mrs. Sparsit was conscious that by coming in the evening-tide among the
+desks and writing implements, she shed a feminine, not to say also
+aristocratic, grace upon the office. Seated, with her needlework or
+netting apparatus, at the window, she had a self-laudatory sense of
+correcting, by her ladylike deportment, the rude business aspect of the
+place. With this impression of her interesting character upon her, Mrs.
+Sparsit considered herself, in some sort, the Bank Fairy. The
+townspeople who, in their passing and repassing, saw her there, regarded
+her as the Bank Dragon keeping watch over the treasures of the mine.
+
+What those treasures were, Mrs. Sparsit knew as little as they did. Gold
+and silver coin, precious paper, secrets that if divulged would bring
+vague destruction upon vague persons (generally, however, people whom she
+disliked), were the chief items in her ideal catalogue thereof. For the
+rest, she knew that after office-hours, she reigned supreme over all the
+office furniture, and over a locked-up iron room with three locks,
+against the door of which strong chamber the light porter laid his head
+every night, on a truckle bed, that disappeared at cockcrow. Further,
+she was lady paramount over certain vaults in the basement, sharply
+spiked off from communication with the predatory world; and over the
+relics of the current day’s work, consisting of blots of ink, worn-out
+pens, fragments of wafers, and scraps of paper torn so small, that
+nothing interesting could ever be deciphered on them when Mrs. Sparsit
+tried. Lastly, she was guardian over a little armoury of cutlasses and
+carbines, arrayed in vengeful order above one of the official
+chimney-pieces; and over that respectable tradition never to be separated
+from a place of business claiming to be wealthy—a row of
+fire-buckets—vessels calculated to be of no physical utility on any
+occasion, but observed to exercise a fine moral influence, almost equal
+to bullion, on most beholders.
+
+A deaf serving-woman and the light porter completed Mrs. Sparsit’s
+empire. The deaf serving-woman was rumoured to be wealthy; and a saying
+had for years gone about among the lower orders of Coketown, that she
+would be murdered some night when the Bank was shut, for the sake of her
+money. It was generally considered, indeed, that she had been due some
+time, and ought to have fallen long ago; but she had kept her life, and
+her situation, with an ill-conditioned tenacity that occasioned much
+offence and disappointment.
+
+Mrs. Sparsit’s tea was just set for her on a pert little table, with its
+tripod of legs in an attitude, which she insinuated after office-hours,
+into the company of the stern, leathern-topped, long board-table that
+bestrode the middle of the room. The light porter placed the tea-tray on
+it, knuckling his forehead as a form of homage.
+
+‘Thank you, Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
+
+‘Thank _you_, ma’am,’ returned the light porter. He was a very light
+porter indeed; as light as in the days when he blinkingly defined a
+horse, for girl number twenty.
+
+‘All is shut up, Bitzer?’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
+
+‘All is shut up, ma’am.’
+
+‘And what,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, pouring out her tea, ‘is the news of the
+day? Anything?’
+
+‘Well, ma’am, I can’t say that I have heard anything particular. Our
+people are a bad lot, ma’am; but that is no news, unfortunately.’
+
+‘What are the restless wretches doing now?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit.
+
+‘Merely going on in the old way, ma’am. Uniting, and leaguing, and
+engaging to stand by one another.’
+
+‘It is much to be regretted,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, making her nose more
+Roman and her eyebrows more Coriolanian in the strength of her severity,
+‘that the united masters allow of any such class-combinations.’
+
+‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Bitzer.
+
+‘Being united themselves, they ought one and all to set their faces
+against employing any man who is united with any other man,’ said Mrs.
+Sparsit.
+
+‘They have done that, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer; ‘but it rather fell
+through, ma’am.’
+
+‘I do not pretend to understand these things,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with
+dignity, ‘my lot having been signally cast in a widely different sphere;
+and Mr. Sparsit, as a Powler, being also quite out of the pale of any
+such dissensions. I only know that these people must be conquered, and
+that it’s high time it was done, once for all.’
+
+‘Yes, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer, with a demonstration of great respect for
+Mrs. Sparsit’s oracular authority. ‘You couldn’t put it clearer, I am
+sure, ma’am.’
+
+As this was his usual hour for having a little confidential chat with
+Mrs. Sparsit, and as he had already caught her eye and seen that she was
+going to ask him something, he made a pretence of arranging the rulers,
+inkstands, and so forth, while that lady went on with her tea, glancing
+through the open window, down into the street.
+
+‘Has it been a busy day, Bitzer?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit.
+
+‘Not a very busy day, my lady. About an average day.’ He now and then
+slided into my lady, instead of ma’am, as an involuntary acknowledgment
+of Mrs. Sparsit’s personal dignity and claims to reverence.
+
+‘The clerks,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, carefully brushing an imperceptible
+crumb of bread and butter from her left-hand mitten, ‘are trustworthy,
+punctual, and industrious, of course?’
+
+‘Yes, ma’am, pretty fair, ma’am. With the usual exception.’
+
+He held the respectable office of general spy and informer in the
+establishment, for which volunteer service he received a present at
+Christmas, over and above his weekly wage. He had grown into an
+extremely clear-headed, cautious, prudent young man, who was safe to rise
+in the world. His mind was so exactly regulated, that he had no
+affections or passions. All his proceedings were the result of the
+nicest and coldest calculation; and it was not without cause that Mrs.
+Sparsit habitually observed of him, that he was a young man of the
+steadiest principle she had ever known. Having satisfied himself, on his
+father’s death, that his mother had a right of settlement in Coketown,
+this excellent young economist had asserted that right for her with such
+a steadfast adherence to the principle of the case, that she had been
+shut up in the workhouse ever since. It must be admitted that he allowed
+her half a pound of tea a year, which was weak in him: first, because all
+gifts have an inevitable tendency to pauperise the recipient, and
+secondly, because his only reasonable transaction in that commodity would
+have been to buy it for as little as he could possibly give, and sell it
+for as much as he could possibly get; it having been clearly ascertained
+by philosophers that in this is comprised the whole duty of man—not a
+part of man’s duty, but the whole.
+
+‘Pretty fair, ma’am. With the usual exception, ma’am,’ repeated Bitzer.
+
+‘Ah—h!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head over her tea-cup, and taking
+a long gulp.
+
+‘Mr. Thomas, ma’am, I doubt Mr. Thomas very much, ma’am, I don’t like his
+ways at all.’
+
+‘Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, in a very impressive manner, ‘do you
+recollect my having said anything to you respecting names?’
+
+‘I beg your pardon, ma’am. It’s quite true that you did object to names
+being used, and they’re always best avoided.’
+
+‘Please to remember that I have a charge here,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with
+her air of state. ‘I hold a trust here, Bitzer, under Mr. Bounderby.
+However improbable both Mr. Bounderby and myself might have deemed it
+years ago, that he would ever become my patron, making me an annual
+compliment, I cannot but regard him in that light. From Mr. Bounderby I
+have received every acknowledgment of my social station, and every
+recognition of my family descent, that I could possibly expect. More,
+far more. Therefore, to my patron I will be scrupulously true. And I do
+not consider, I will not consider, I cannot consider,’ said Mrs. Sparsit,
+with a most extensive stock on hand of honour and morality, ‘that I
+_should_ be scrupulously true, if I allowed names to be mentioned under
+this roof, that are unfortunately—most unfortunately—no doubt of
+that—connected with his.’
+
+Bitzer knuckled his forehead again, and again begged pardon.
+
+‘No, Bitzer,’ continued Mrs. Sparsit, ‘say an individual, and I will hear
+you; say Mr. Thomas, and you must excuse me.’
+
+‘With the usual exception, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, trying back, ‘of an
+individual.’
+
+‘Ah—h!’ Mrs. Sparsit repeated the ejaculation, the shake of the head
+over her tea-cup, and the long gulp, as taking up the conversation again
+at the point where it had been interrupted.
+
+‘An individual, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, ‘has never been what he ought to
+have been, since he first came into the place. He is a dissipated,
+extravagant idler. He is not worth his salt, ma’am. He wouldn’t get it
+either, if he hadn’t a friend and relation at court, ma’am!’
+
+‘Ah—h!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with another melancholy shake of her head.
+
+‘I only hope, ma’am,’ pursued Bitzer, ‘that his friend and relation may
+not supply him with the means of carrying on. Otherwise, ma’am, we know
+out of whose pocket _that_ money comes.’
+
+‘Ah—h!’ sighed Mrs. Sparsit again, with another melancholy shake of her
+head.
+
+‘He is to be pitied, ma’am. The last party I have alluded to, is to be
+pitied, ma’am,’ said Bitzer.
+
+‘Yes, Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘I have always pitied the delusion,
+always.’
+
+‘As to an individual, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, dropping his voice and drawing
+nearer, ‘he is as improvident as any of the people in this town. And you
+know what _their_ improvidence is, ma’am. No one could wish to know it
+better than a lady of your eminence does.’
+
+‘They would do well,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘to take example by you,
+Bitzer.’
+
+‘Thank you, ma’am. But, since you do refer to me, now look at me, ma’am.
+I have put by a little, ma’am, already. That gratuity which I receive at
+Christmas, ma’am: I never touch it. I don’t even go the length of my
+wages, though they’re not high, ma’am. Why can’t they do as I have done,
+ma’am? What one person can do, another can do.’
+
+This, again, was among the fictions of Coketown. Any capitalist there,
+who had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, always professed to
+wonder why the sixty thousand nearest Hands didn’t each make sixty
+thousand pounds out of sixpence, and more or less reproached them every
+one for not accomplishing the little feat. What I did you can do. Why
+don’t you go and do it?
+
+‘As to their wanting recreations, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, ‘it’s stuff and
+nonsense. _I_ don’t want recreations. I never did, and I never shall; I
+don’t like ’em. As to their combining together; there are many of them,
+I have no doubt, that by watching and informing upon one another could
+earn a trifle now and then, whether in money or good will, and improve
+their livelihood. Then, why don’t they improve it, ma’am! It’s the
+first consideration of a rational creature, and it’s what they pretend to
+want.’
+
+‘Pretend indeed!’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
+
+‘I am sure we are constantly hearing, ma’am, till it becomes quite
+nauseous, concerning their wives and families,’ said Bitzer. ‘Why look
+at me, ma’am! I don’t want a wife and family. Why should they?’
+
+‘Because they are improvident,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
+
+‘Yes, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer, ‘that’s where it is. If they were more
+provident and less perverse, ma’am, what would they do? They would say,
+“While my hat covers my family,” or “while my bonnet covers my
+family,”—as the case might be, ma’am—“I have only one to feed, and that’s
+the person I most like to feed.”’
+
+‘To be sure,’ assented Mrs. Sparsit, eating muffin.
+
+‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, knuckling his forehead again, in return
+for the favour of Mrs. Sparsit’s improving conversation. ‘Would you wish
+a little more hot water, ma’am, or is there anything else that I could
+fetch you?’
+
+‘Nothing just now, Bitzer.’
+
+‘Thank you, ma’am. I shouldn’t wish to disturb you at your meals, ma’am,
+particularly tea, knowing your partiality for it,’ said Bitzer, craning a
+little to look over into the street from where he stood; ‘but there’s a
+gentleman been looking up here for a minute or so, ma’am, and he has come
+across as if he was going to knock. That _is_ his knock, ma’am, no
+doubt.’
+
+He stepped to the window; and looking out, and drawing in his head again,
+confirmed himself with, ‘Yes, ma’am. Would you wish the gentleman to be
+shown in, ma’am?’
+
+‘I don’t know who it can be,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, wiping her mouth and
+arranging her mittens.
+
+‘A stranger, ma’am, evidently.’
+
+‘What a stranger can want at the Bank at this time of the evening, unless
+he comes upon some business for which he is too late, I don’t know,’ said
+Mrs. Sparsit, ‘but I hold a charge in this establishment from Mr.
+Bounderby, and I will never shrink from it. If to see him is any part of
+the duty I have accepted, I will see him. Use your own discretion,
+Bitzer.’
+
+Here the visitor, all unconscious of Mrs. Sparsit’s magnanimous words,
+repeated his knock so loudly that the light porter hastened down to open
+the door; while Mrs. Sparsit took the precaution of concealing her little
+table, with all its appliances upon it, in a cupboard, and then decamped
+up-stairs, that she might appear, if needful, with the greater dignity.
+
+‘If you please, ma’am, the gentleman would wish to see you,’ said Bitzer,
+with his light eye at Mrs. Sparsit’s keyhole. So, Mrs. Sparsit, who had
+improved the interval by touching up her cap, took her classical features
+down-stairs again, and entered the board-room in the manner of a Roman
+matron going outside the city walls to treat with an invading general.
+
+The visitor having strolled to the window, and being then engaged in
+looking carelessly out, was as unmoved by this impressive entry as man
+could possibly be. He stood whistling to himself with all imaginable
+coolness, with his hat still on, and a certain air of exhaustion upon
+him, in part arising from excessive summer, and in part from excessive
+gentility. For it was to be seen with half an eye that he was a thorough
+gentleman, made to the model of the time; weary of everything, and
+putting no more faith in anything than Lucifer.
+
+‘I believe, sir,’ quoth Mrs. Sparsit, ‘you wished to see me.’
+
+‘I beg your pardon,’ he said, turning and removing his hat; ‘pray excuse
+me.’
+
+‘Humph!’ thought Mrs. Sparsit, as she made a stately bend. ‘Five and
+thirty, good-looking, good figure, good teeth, good voice, good breeding,
+well-dressed, dark hair, bold eyes.’ All which Mrs. Sparsit observed in
+her womanly way—like the Sultan who put his head in the pail of
+water—merely in dipping down and coming up again.
+
+‘Please to be seated, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
+
+‘Thank you. Allow me.’ He placed a chair for her, but remained himself
+carelessly lounging against the table. ‘I left my servant at the railway
+looking after the luggage—very heavy train and vast quantity of it in the
+van—and strolled on, looking about me. Exceedingly odd place. Will you
+allow me to ask you if it’s _always_ as black as this?’
+
+‘In general much blacker,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, in her uncompromising
+way.
+
+‘Is it possible! Excuse me: you are not a native, I think?’
+
+‘No, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit. ‘It was once my good or ill fortune,
+as it may be—before I became a widow—to move in a very different sphere.
+My husband was a Powler.’
+
+‘Beg your pardon, really!’ said the stranger. ‘Was—?’
+
+Mrs. Sparsit repeated, ‘A Powler.’
+
+‘Powler Family,’ said the stranger, after reflecting a few moments. Mrs.
+Sparsit signified assent. The stranger seemed a little more fatigued
+than before.
+
+‘You must be very much bored here?’ was the inference he drew from the
+communication.
+
+‘I am the servant of circumstances, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘and I have
+long adapted myself to the governing power of my life.’
+
+‘Very philosophical,’ returned the stranger, ‘and very exemplary and
+laudable, and—’ It seemed to be scarcely worth his while to finish the
+sentence, so he played with his watch-chain wearily.
+
+‘May I be permitted to ask, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘to what I am
+indebted for the favour of—’
+
+‘Assuredly,’ said the stranger. ‘Much obliged to you for reminding me.
+I am the bearer of a letter of introduction to Mr. Bounderby, the banker.
+Walking through this extraordinarily black town, while they were getting
+dinner ready at the hotel, I asked a fellow whom I met; one of the
+working people; who appeared to have been taking a shower-bath of
+something fluffy, which I assume to be the raw material—’
+
+Mrs. Sparsit inclined her head.
+
+‘—Raw material—where Mr. Bounderby, the banker, might reside. Upon
+which, misled no doubt by the word Banker, he directed me to the Bank.
+Fact being, I presume, that Mr. Bounderby the Banker does _not_ reside in
+the edifice in which I have the honour of offering this explanation?’
+
+‘No, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘he does not.’
+
+‘Thank you. I had no intention of delivering my letter at the present
+moment, nor have I. But strolling on to the Bank to kill time, and having
+the good fortune to observe at the window,’ towards which he languidly
+waved his hand, then slightly bowed, ‘a lady of a very superior and
+agreeable appearance, I considered that I could not do better than take
+the liberty of asking that lady where Mr. Bounderby the Banker _does_
+live. Which I accordingly venture, with all suitable apologies, to do.’
+
+The inattention and indolence of his manner were sufficiently relieved,
+to Mrs. Sparsit’s thinking, by a certain gallantry at ease, which offered
+her homage too. Here he was, for instance, at this moment, all but
+sitting on the table, and yet lazily bending over her, as if he
+acknowledged an attraction in her that made her charming—in her way.
+
+‘Banks, I know, are always suspicious, and officially must be,’ said the
+stranger, whose lightness and smoothness of speech were pleasant
+likewise; suggesting matter far more sensible and humorous than it ever
+contained—which was perhaps a shrewd device of the founder of this
+numerous sect, whosoever may have been that great man: ‘therefore I may
+observe that my letter—here it is—is from the member for this
+place—Gradgrind—whom I have had the pleasure of knowing in London.’
+
+Mrs. Sparsit recognized the hand, intimated that such confirmation was
+quite unnecessary, and gave Mr. Bounderby’s address, with all needful
+clues and directions in aid.
+
+‘Thousand thanks,’ said the stranger. ‘Of course you know the Banker
+well?’
+
+‘Yes, sir,’ rejoined Mrs. Sparsit. ‘In my dependent relation towards
+him, I have known him ten years.’
+
+‘Quite an eternity! I think he married Gradgrind’s daughter?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, suddenly compressing her mouth, ‘he had
+that—honour.’
+
+‘The lady is quite a philosopher, I am told?’
+
+‘Indeed, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘_Is_ she?’
+
+‘Excuse my impertinent curiosity,’ pursued the stranger, fluttering over
+Mrs. Sparsit’s eyebrows, with a propitiatory air, ‘but you know the
+family, and know the world. I am about to know the family, and may have
+much to do with them. Is the lady so very alarming? Her father gives
+her such a portentously hard-headed reputation, that I have a burning
+desire to know. Is she absolutely unapproachable? Repellently and
+stunningly clever? I see, by your meaning smile, you think not. You
+have poured balm into my anxious soul. As to age, now. Forty? Five and
+thirty?’
+
+Mrs. Sparsit laughed outright. ‘A chit,’ said she. ‘Not twenty when she
+was married.’
+
+‘I give you my honour, Mrs. Powler,’ returned the stranger, detaching
+himself from the table, ‘that I never was so astonished in my life!’
+
+It really did seem to impress him, to the utmost extent of his capacity
+of being impressed. He looked at his informant for full a quarter of a
+minute, and appeared to have the surprise in his mind all the time. ‘I
+assure you, Mrs. Powler,’ he then said, much exhausted, ‘that the
+father’s manner prepared me for a grim and stony maturity. I am obliged
+to you, of all things, for correcting so absurd a mistake. Pray excuse
+my intrusion. Many thanks. Good day!’
+
+He bowed himself out; and Mrs. Sparsit, hiding in the window curtain, saw
+him languishing down the street on the shady side of the way, observed of
+all the town.
+
+‘What do you think of the gentleman, Bitzer?’ she asked the light porter,
+when he came to take away.
+
+‘Spends a deal of money on his dress, ma’am.’
+
+‘It must be admitted,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘that it’s very tasteful.’
+
+‘Yes, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer, ‘if that’s worth the money.’
+
+‘Besides which, ma’am,’ resumed Bitzer, while he was polishing the table,
+‘he looks to me as if he gamed.’
+
+‘It’s immoral to game,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
+
+‘It’s ridiculous, ma’am,’ said Bitzer, ‘because the chances are against
+the players.’
+
+Whether it was that the heat prevented Mrs. Sparsit from working, or
+whether it was that her hand was out, she did no work that night. She
+sat at the window, when the sun began to sink behind the smoke; she sat
+there, when the smoke was burning red, when the colour faded from it,
+when darkness seemed to rise slowly out of the ground, and creep upward,
+upward, up to the house-tops, up the church steeple, up to the summits of
+the factory chimneys, up to the sky. Without a candle in the room, Mrs.
+Sparsit sat at the window, with her hands before her, not thinking much
+of the sounds of evening; the whooping of boys, the barking of dogs, the
+rumbling of wheels, the steps and voices of passengers, the shrill street
+cries, the clogs upon the pavement when it was their hour for going by,
+the shutting-up of shop-shutters. Not until the light porter announced
+that her nocturnal sweetbread was ready, did Mrs. Sparsit arouse herself
+from her reverie, and convey her dense black eyebrows—by that time
+creased with meditation, as if they needed ironing out-up-stairs.
+
+‘O, you Fool!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, when she was alone at her supper. Whom
+she meant, she did not say; but she could scarcely have meant the
+sweetbread.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+MR. JAMES HARTHOUSE
+
+
+THE Gradgrind party wanted assistance in cutting the throats of the
+Graces. They went about recruiting; and where could they enlist recruits
+more hopefully, than among the fine gentlemen who, having found out
+everything to be worth nothing, were equally ready for anything?
+
+Moreover, the healthy spirits who had mounted to this sublime height were
+attractive to many of the Gradgrind school. They liked fine gentlemen;
+they pretended that they did not, but they did. They became exhausted in
+imitation of them; and they yaw-yawed in their speech like them; and they
+served out, with an enervated air, the little mouldy rations of political
+economy, on which they regaled their disciples. There never before was
+seen on earth such a wonderful hybrid race as was thus produced.
+
+Among the fine gentlemen not regularly belonging to the Gradgrind school,
+there was one of a good family and a better appearance, with a happy turn
+of humour which had told immensely with the House of Commons on the
+occasion of his entertaining it with his (and the Board of Directors)
+view of a railway accident, in which the most careful officers ever
+known, employed by the most liberal managers ever heard of, assisted by
+the finest mechanical contrivances ever devised, the whole in action on
+the best line ever constructed, had killed five people and wounded
+thirty-two, by a casualty without which the excellence of the whole
+system would have been positively incomplete. Among the slain was a cow,
+and among the scattered articles unowned, a widow’s cap. And the
+honourable member had so tickled the House (which has a delicate sense of
+humour) by putting the cap on the cow, that it became impatient of any
+serious reference to the Coroner’s Inquest, and brought the railway off
+with Cheers and Laughter.
+
+Now, this gentleman had a younger brother of still better appearance than
+himself, who had tried life as a Cornet of Dragoons, and found it a bore;
+and had afterwards tried it in the train of an English minister abroad,
+and found it a bore; and had then strolled to Jerusalem, and got bored
+there; and had then gone yachting about the world, and got bored
+everywhere. To whom this honourable and jocular, member fraternally said
+one day, ‘Jem, there’s a good opening among the hard Fact fellows, and
+they want men. I wonder you don’t go in for statistics.’ Jem, rather
+taken by the novelty of the idea, and very hard up for a change, was as
+ready to ‘go in’ for statistics as for anything else. So, he went in.
+He coached himself up with a blue-book or two; and his brother put it
+about among the hard Fact fellows, and said, ‘If you want to bring in,
+for any place, a handsome dog who can make you a devilish good speech,
+look after my brother Jem, for he’s your man.’ After a few dashes in the
+public meeting way, Mr. Gradgrind and a council of political sages
+approved of Jem, and it was resolved to send him down to Coketown, to
+become known there and in the neighbourhood. Hence the letter Jem had
+last night shown to Mrs. Sparsit, which Mr. Bounderby now held in his
+hand; superscribed, ‘Josiah Bounderby, Esquire, Banker, Coketown.
+Specially to introduce James Harthouse, Esquire. Thomas Gradgrind.’
+
+Within an hour of the receipt of this dispatch and Mr. James Harthouse’s
+card, Mr. Bounderby put on his hat and went down to the Hotel. There he
+found Mr. James Harthouse looking out of window, in a state of mind so
+disconsolate, that he was already half-disposed to ‘go in’ for something
+else.
+
+‘My name, sir,’ said his visitor, ‘is Josiah Bounderby, of Coketown.’
+
+Mr. James Harthouse was very happy indeed (though he scarcely looked so)
+to have a pleasure he had long expected.
+
+‘Coketown, sir,’ said Bounderby, obstinately taking a chair, ‘is not the
+kind of place you have been accustomed to. Therefore, if you will allow
+me—or whether you will or not, for I am a plain man—I’ll tell you
+something about it before we go any further.’
+
+Mr. Harthouse would be charmed.
+
+‘Don’t be too sure of that,’ said Bounderby. ‘I don’t promise it. First
+of all, you see our smoke. That’s meat and drink to us. It’s the
+healthiest thing in the world in all respects, and particularly for the
+lungs. If you are one of those who want us to consume it, I differ from
+you. We are not going to wear the bottoms of our boilers out any faster
+than we wear ’em out now, for all the humbugging sentiment in Great
+Britain and Ireland.’
+
+By way of ‘going in’ to the fullest extent, Mr. Harthouse rejoined, ‘Mr.
+Bounderby, I assure you I am entirely and completely of your way of
+thinking. On conviction.’
+
+‘I am glad to hear it,’ said Bounderby. ‘Now, you have heard a lot of
+talk about the work in our mills, no doubt. You have? Very good. I’ll
+state the fact of it to you. It’s the pleasantest work there is, and
+it’s the lightest work there is, and it’s the best-paid work there is.
+More than that, we couldn’t improve the mills themselves, unless we laid
+down Turkey carpets on the floors. Which we’re not a-going to do.’
+
+‘Mr. Bounderby, perfectly right.’
+
+‘Lastly,’ said Bounderby, ‘as to our Hands. There’s not a Hand in this
+town, sir, man, woman, or child, but has one ultimate object in life.
+That object is, to be fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon.
+Now, they’re not a-going—none of ’em—ever to be fed on turtle soup and
+venison with a gold spoon. And now you know the place.’
+
+Mr. Harthouse professed himself in the highest degree instructed and
+refreshed, by this condensed epitome of the whole Coketown question.
+
+‘Why, you see,’ replied Mr. Bounderby, ‘it suits my disposition to have a
+full understanding with a man, particularly with a public man, when I
+make his acquaintance. I have only one thing more to say to you, Mr.
+Harthouse, before assuring you of the pleasure with which I shall
+respond, to the utmost of my poor ability, to my friend Tom Gradgrind’s
+letter of introduction. You are a man of family. Don’t you deceive
+yourself by supposing for a moment that I am a man of family. I am a bit
+of dirty riff-raff, and a genuine scrap of tag, rag, and bobtail.’
+
+If anything could have exalted Jem’s interest in Mr. Bounderby, it would
+have been this very circumstance. Or, so he told him.
+
+‘So now,’ said Bounderby, ‘we may shake hands on equal terms. I say,
+equal terms, because although I know what I am, and the exact depth of
+the gutter I have lifted myself out of, better than any man does, I am as
+proud as you are. I am just as proud as you are. Having now asserted my
+independence in a proper manner, I may come to how do you find yourself,
+and I hope you’re pretty well.’
+
+The better, Mr. Harthouse gave him to understand as they shook hands, for
+the salubrious air of Coketown. Mr. Bounderby received the answer with
+favour.
+
+‘Perhaps you know,’ said he, ‘or perhaps you don’t know, I married Tom
+Gradgrind’s daughter. If you have nothing better to do than to walk up
+town with me, I shall be glad to introduce you to Tom Gradgrind’s
+daughter.’
+
+‘Mr. Bounderby,’ said Jem, ‘you anticipate my dearest wishes.’
+
+They went out without further discourse; and Mr. Bounderby piloted the
+new acquaintance who so strongly contrasted with him, to the private red
+brick dwelling, with the black outside shutters, the green inside blinds,
+and the black street door up the two white steps. In the drawing-room of
+which mansion, there presently entered to them the most remarkable girl
+Mr. James Harthouse had ever seen. She was so constrained, and yet so
+careless; so reserved, and yet so watchful; so cold and proud, and yet so
+sensitively ashamed of her husband’s braggart humility—from which she
+shrunk as if every example of it were a cut or a blow; that it was quite
+a new sensation to observe her. In face she was no less remarkable than
+in manner. Her features were handsome; but their natural play was so
+locked up, that it seemed impossible to guess at their genuine
+expression. Utterly indifferent, perfectly self-reliant, never at a
+loss, and yet never at her ease, with her figure in company with them
+there, and her mind apparently quite alone—it was of no use ‘going in’
+yet awhile to comprehend this girl, for she baffled all penetration.
+
+From the mistress of the house, the visitor glanced to the house itself.
+There was no mute sign of a woman in the room. No graceful little
+adornment, no fanciful little device, however trivial, anywhere expressed
+her influence. Cheerless and comfortless, boastfully and doggedly rich,
+there the room stared at its present occupants, unsoftened and unrelieved
+by the least trace of any womanly occupation. As Mr. Bounderby stood in
+the midst of his household gods, so those unrelenting divinities occupied
+their places around Mr. Bounderby, and they were worthy of one another,
+and well matched.
+
+‘This, sir,’ said Bounderby, ‘is my wife, Mrs. Bounderby: Tom Gradgrind’s
+eldest daughter. Loo, Mr. James Harthouse. Mr. Harthouse has joined
+your father’s muster-roll. If he is not Tom Gradgrind’s colleague before
+long, I believe we shall at least hear of him in connexion with one of
+our neighbouring towns. You observe, Mr. Harthouse, that my wife is my
+junior. I don’t know what she saw in me to marry me, but she saw
+something in me, I suppose, or she wouldn’t have married me. She has
+lots of expensive knowledge, sir, political and otherwise. If you want
+to cram for anything, I should be troubled to recommend you to a better
+adviser than Loo Bounderby.’
+
+To a more agreeable adviser, or one from whom he would be more likely to
+learn, Mr. Harthouse could never be recommended.
+
+‘Come!’ said his host. ‘If you’re in the complimentary line, you’ll get
+on here, for you’ll meet with no competition. I have never been in the
+way of learning compliments myself, and I don’t profess to understand the
+art of paying ’em. In fact, despise ’em. But, your bringing-up was
+different from mine; mine was a real thing, by George! You’re a
+gentleman, and I don’t pretend to be one. I am Josiah Bounderby of
+Coketown, and that’s enough for me. However, though I am not influenced
+by manners and station, Loo Bounderby may be. She hadn’t my
+advantages—disadvantages you would call ’em, but I call ’em advantages—so
+you’ll not waste your power, I dare say.’
+
+‘Mr. Bounderby,’ said Jem, turning with a smile to Louisa, ‘is a noble
+animal in a comparatively natural state, quite free from the harness in
+which a conventional hack like myself works.’
+
+‘You respect Mr. Bounderby very much,’ she quietly returned. ‘It is
+natural that you should.’
+
+He was disgracefully thrown out, for a gentleman who had seen so much of
+the world, and thought, ‘Now, how am I to take this?’
+
+‘You are going to devote yourself, as I gather from what Mr. Bounderby
+has said, to the service of your country. You have made up your mind,’
+said Louisa, still standing before him where she had first stopped—in all
+the singular contrariety of her self-possession, and her being obviously
+very ill at ease—‘to show the nation the way out of all its
+difficulties.’
+
+‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ he returned, laughing, ‘upon my honour, no. I will
+make no such pretence to you. I have seen a little, here and there, up
+and down; I have found it all to be very worthless, as everybody has, and
+as some confess they have, and some do not; and I am going in for your
+respected father’s opinions—really because I have no choice of opinions,
+and may as well back them as anything else.’
+
+‘Have you none of your own?’ asked Louisa.
+
+‘I have not so much as the slightest predilection left. I assure you I
+attach not the least importance to any opinions. The result of the
+varieties of boredom I have undergone, is a conviction (unless conviction
+is too industrious a word for the lazy sentiment I entertain on the
+subject), that any set of ideas will do just as much good as any other
+set, and just as much harm as any other set. There’s an English family
+with a charming Italian motto. What will be, will be. It’s the only
+truth going!’
+
+This vicious assumption of honesty in dishonesty—a vice so dangerous, so
+deadly, and so common—seemed, he observed, a little to impress her in his
+favour. He followed up the advantage, by saying in his pleasantest
+manner: a manner to which she might attach as much or as little meaning
+as she pleased: ‘The side that can prove anything in a line of units,
+tens, hundreds, and thousands, Mrs. Bounderby, seems to me to afford the
+most fun, and to give a man the best chance. I am quite as much attached
+to it as if I believed it. I am quite ready to go in for it, to the same
+extent as if I believed it. And what more could I possibly do, if I did
+believe it!’
+
+‘You are a singular politician,’ said Louisa.
+
+‘Pardon me; I have not even that merit. We are the largest party in the
+state, I assure you, Mrs. Bounderby, if we all fell out of our adopted
+ranks and were reviewed together.’
+
+Mr. Bounderby, who had been in danger of bursting in silence, interposed
+here with a project for postponing the family dinner till half-past six,
+and taking Mr. James Harthouse in the meantime on a round of visits to
+the voting and interesting notabilities of Coketown and its vicinity.
+The round of visits was made; and Mr. James Harthouse, with a discreet
+use of his blue coaching, came off triumphantly, though with a
+considerable accession of boredom.
+
+In the evening, he found the dinner-table laid for four, but they sat
+down only three. It was an appropriate occasion for Mr. Bounderby to
+discuss the flavour of the hap’orth of stewed eels he had purchased in
+the streets at eight years old; and also of the inferior water, specially
+used for laying the dust, with which he had washed down that repast. He
+likewise entertained his guest over the soup and fish, with the
+calculation that he (Bounderby) had eaten in his youth at least three
+horses under the guise of polonies and saveloys. These recitals, Jem, in
+a languid manner, received with ‘charming!’ every now and then; and they
+probably would have decided him to ‘go in’ for Jerusalem again to-morrow
+morning, had he been less curious respecting Louisa.
+
+‘Is there nothing,’ he thought, glancing at her as she sat at the head of
+the table, where her youthful figure, small and slight, but very
+graceful, looked as pretty as it looked misplaced; ‘is there nothing that
+will move that face?’
+
+Yes! By Jupiter, there was something, and here it was, in an unexpected
+shape. Tom appeared. She changed as the door opened, and broke into a
+beaming smile.
+
+A beautiful smile. Mr. James Harthouse might not have thought so much of
+it, but that he had wondered so long at her impassive face. She put out
+her hand—a pretty little soft hand; and her fingers closed upon her
+brother’s, as if she would have carried them to her lips.
+
+‘Ay, ay?’ thought the visitor. ‘This whelp is the only creature she
+cares for. So, so!’
+
+The whelp was presented, and took his chair. The appellation was not
+flattering, but not unmerited.
+
+‘When I was your age, young Tom,’ said Bounderby, ‘I was punctual, or I
+got no dinner!’
+
+‘When you were my age,’ resumed Tom, ‘you hadn’t a wrong balance to get
+right, and hadn’t to dress afterwards.’
+
+‘Never mind that now,’ said Bounderby.
+
+‘Well, then,’ grumbled Tom. ‘Don’t begin with me.’
+
+‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ said Harthouse, perfectly hearing this under-strain as
+it went on; ‘your brother’s face is quite familiar to me. Can I have
+seen him abroad? Or at some public school, perhaps?’
+
+‘No,’ she resumed, quite interested, ‘he has never been abroad yet, and
+was educated here, at home. Tom, love, I am telling Mr. Harthouse that
+he never saw you abroad.’
+
+‘No such luck, sir,’ said Tom.
+
+There was little enough in him to brighten her face, for he was a sullen
+young fellow, and ungracious in his manner even to her. So much the
+greater must have been the solitude of her heart, and her need of some
+one on whom to bestow it. ‘So much the more is this whelp the only
+creature she has ever cared for,’ thought Mr. James Harthouse, turning it
+over and over. ‘So much the more. So much the more.’
+
+Both in his sister’s presence, and after she had left the room, the whelp
+took no pains to hide his contempt for Mr. Bounderby, whenever he could
+indulge it without the observation of that independent man, by making wry
+faces, or shutting one eye. Without responding to these telegraphic
+communications, Mr. Harthouse encouraged him much in the course of the
+evening, and showed an unusual liking for him. At last, when he rose to
+return to his hotel, and was a little doubtful whether he knew the way by
+night, the whelp immediately proffered his services as guide, and turned
+out with him to escort him thither.
+
+ [Picture: Mr. Harthouse dines at the Bounderby’s]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+THE WHELP
+
+
+IT was very remarkable that a young gentleman who had been brought up
+under one continuous system of unnatural restraint, should be a
+hypocrite; but it was certainly the case with Tom. It was very strange
+that a young gentleman who had never been left to his own guidance for
+five consecutive minutes, should be incapable at last of governing
+himself; but so it was with Tom. It was altogether unaccountable that a
+young gentleman whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle,
+should be still inconvenienced by its ghost in the form of grovelling
+sensualities; but such a monster, beyond all doubt, was Tom.
+
+‘Do you smoke?’ asked Mr. James Harthouse, when they came to the hotel.
+
+‘I believe you!’ said Tom.
+
+He could do no less than ask Tom up; and Tom could do no less than go up.
+What with a cooling drink adapted to the weather, but not so weak as
+cool; and what with a rarer tobacco than was to be bought in those parts;
+Tom was soon in a highly free and easy state at his end of the sofa, and
+more than ever disposed to admire his new friend at the other end.
+
+Tom blew his smoke aside, after he had been smoking a little while, and
+took an observation of his friend. ‘He don’t seem to care about his
+dress,’ thought Tom, ‘and yet how capitally he does it. What an easy
+swell he is!’
+
+Mr. James Harthouse, happening to catch Tom’s eye, remarked that he drank
+nothing, and filled his glass with his own negligent hand.
+
+‘Thank’ee,’ said Tom. ‘Thank’ee. Well, Mr. Harthouse, I hope you have
+had about a dose of old Bounderby to-night.’ Tom said this with one eye
+shut up again, and looking over his glass knowingly, at his entertainer.
+
+‘A very good fellow indeed!’ returned Mr. James Harthouse.
+
+‘You think so, don’t you?’ said Tom. And shut up his eye again.
+
+Mr. James Harthouse smiled; and rising from his end of the sofa, and
+lounging with his back against the chimney-piece, so that he stood before
+the empty fire-grate as he smoked, in front of Tom and looking down at
+him, observed:
+
+‘What a comical brother-in-law you are!’
+
+‘What a comical brother-in-law old Bounderby is, I think you mean,’ said
+Tom.
+
+‘You are a piece of caustic, Tom,’ retorted Mr. James Harthouse.
+
+There was something so very agreeable in being so intimate with such a
+waistcoat; in being called Tom, in such an intimate way, by such a voice;
+in being on such off-hand terms so soon, with such a pair of whiskers;
+that Tom was uncommonly pleased with himself.
+
+‘Oh! I don’t care for old Bounderby,’ said he, ‘if you mean that. I
+have always called old Bounderby by the same name when I have talked
+about him, and I have always thought of him in the same way. I am not
+going to begin to be polite now, about old Bounderby. It would be rather
+late in the day.’
+
+‘Don’t mind me,’ returned James; ‘but take care when his wife is by, you
+know.’
+
+‘His wife?’ said Tom. ‘My sister Loo? O yes!’ And he laughed, and took
+a little more of the cooling drink.
+
+James Harthouse continued to lounge in the same place and attitude,
+smoking his cigar in his own easy way, and looking pleasantly at the
+whelp, as if he knew himself to be a kind of agreeable demon who had only
+to hover over him, and he must give up his whole soul if required. It
+certainly did seem that the whelp yielded to this influence. He looked
+at his companion sneakingly, he looked at him admiringly, he looked at
+him boldly, and put up one leg on the sofa.
+
+‘My sister Loo?’ said Tom. ‘_She_ never cared for old Bounderby.’
+
+‘That’s the past tense, Tom,’ returned Mr. James Harthouse, striking the
+ash from his cigar with his little finger. ‘We are in the present tense,
+now.’
+
+‘Verb neuter, not to care. Indicative mood, present tense. First person
+singular, I do not care; second person singular, thou dost not care;
+third person singular, she does not care,’ returned Tom.
+
+‘Good! Very quaint!’ said his friend. ‘Though you don’t mean it.’
+
+‘But I _do_ mean it,’ cried Tom. ‘Upon my honour! Why, you won’t tell
+me, Mr. Harthouse, that you really suppose my sister Loo does care for
+old Bounderby.’
+
+‘My dear fellow,’ returned the other, ‘what am I bound to suppose, when I
+find two married people living in harmony and happiness?’
+
+Tom had by this time got both his legs on the sofa. If his second leg
+had not been already there when he was called a dear fellow, he would
+have put it up at that great stage of the conversation. Feeling it
+necessary to do something then, he stretched himself out at greater
+length, and, reclining with the back of his head on the end of the sofa,
+and smoking with an infinite assumption of negligence, turned his common
+face, and not too sober eyes, towards the face looking down upon him so
+carelessly yet so potently.
+
+‘You know our governor, Mr. Harthouse,’ said Tom, ‘and therefore, you
+needn’t be surprised that Loo married old Bounderby. She never had a
+lover, and the governor proposed old Bounderby, and she took him.’
+
+‘Very dutiful in your interesting sister,’ said Mr. James Harthouse.
+
+‘Yes, but she wouldn’t have been as dutiful, and it would not have come
+off as easily,’ returned the whelp, ‘if it hadn’t been for me.’
+
+The tempter merely lifted his eyebrows; but the whelp was obliged to go
+on.
+
+‘_I_ persuaded her,’ he said, with an edifying air of superiority. ‘I
+was stuck into old Bounderby’s bank (where I never wanted to be), and I
+knew I should get into scrapes there, if she put old Bounderby’s pipe
+out; so I told her my wishes, and she came into them. She would do
+anything for me. It was very game of her, wasn’t it?’
+
+‘It was charming, Tom!’
+
+‘Not that it was altogether so important to her as it was to me,’
+continued Tom coolly, ‘because my liberty and comfort, and perhaps my
+getting on, depended on it; and she had no other lover, and staying at
+home was like staying in jail—especially when I was gone. It wasn’t as
+if she gave up another lover for old Bounderby; but still it was a good
+thing in her.’
+
+‘Perfectly delightful. And she gets on so placidly.’
+
+‘Oh,’ returned Tom, with contemptuous patronage, ‘she’s a regular girl.
+A girl can get on anywhere. She has settled down to the life, and _she_
+don’t mind. It does just as well as another. Besides, though Loo is a
+girl, she’s not a common sort of girl. She can shut herself up within
+herself, and think—as I have often known her sit and watch the fire—for
+an hour at a stretch.’
+
+‘Ay, ay? Has resources of her own,’ said Harthouse, smoking quietly.
+
+‘Not so much of that as you may suppose,’ returned Tom; ‘for our governor
+had her crammed with all sorts of dry bones and sawdust. It’s his
+system.’
+
+‘Formed his daughter on his own model?’ suggested Harthouse.
+
+‘His daughter? Ah! and everybody else. Why, he formed Me that way!’
+said Tom.
+
+‘Impossible!’
+
+‘He did, though,’ said Tom, shaking his head. ‘I mean to say, Mr.
+Harthouse, that when I first left home and went to old Bounderby’s, I was
+as flat as a warming-pan, and knew no more about life, than any oyster
+does.’
+
+‘Come, Tom! I can hardly believe that. A joke’s a joke.’
+
+‘Upon my soul!’ said the whelp. ‘I am serious; I am indeed!’ He smoked
+with great gravity and dignity for a little while, and then added, in a
+highly complacent tone, ‘Oh! I have picked up a little since. I don’t
+deny that. But I have done it myself; no thanks to the governor.’
+
+‘And your intelligent sister?’
+
+‘My intelligent sister is about where she was. She used to complain to
+me that she had nothing to fall back upon, that girls usually fall back
+upon; and I don’t see how she is to have got over that since. But _she_
+don’t mind,’ he sagaciously added, puffing at his cigar again. ‘Girls
+can always get on, somehow.’
+
+‘Calling at the Bank yesterday evening, for Mr. Bounderby’s address, I
+found an ancient lady there, who seems to entertain great admiration for
+your sister,’ observed Mr. James Harthouse, throwing away the last small
+remnant of the cigar he had now smoked out.
+
+‘Mother Sparsit!’ said Tom. ‘What! you have seen her already, have you?’
+
+His friend nodded. Tom took his cigar out of his mouth, to shut up his
+eye (which had grown rather unmanageable) with the greater expression,
+and to tap his nose several times with his finger.
+
+‘Mother Sparsit’s feeling for Loo is more than admiration, I should
+think,’ said Tom. ‘Say affection and devotion. Mother Sparsit never set
+her cap at Bounderby when he was a bachelor. Oh no!’
+
+These were the last words spoken by the whelp, before a giddy drowsiness
+came upon him, followed by complete oblivion. He was roused from the
+latter state by an uneasy dream of being stirred up with a boot, and also
+of a voice saying: ‘Come, it’s late. Be off!’
+
+‘Well!’ he said, scrambling from the sofa. ‘I must take my leave of you
+though. I say. Yours is very good tobacco. But it’s too mild.’
+
+‘Yes, it’s too mild,’ returned his entertainer.
+
+‘It’s—it’s ridiculously mild,’ said Tom. ‘Where’s the door! Good
+night!’
+
+‘He had another odd dream of being taken by a waiter through a mist,
+which, after giving him some trouble and difficulty, resolved itself into
+the main street, in which he stood alone. He then walked home pretty
+easily, though not yet free from an impression of the presence and
+influence of his new friend—as if he were lounging somewhere in the air,
+in the same negligent attitude, regarding him with the same look.
+
+The whelp went home, and went to bed. If he had had any sense of what he
+had done that night, and had been less of a whelp and more of a brother,
+he might have turned short on the road, might have gone down to the
+ill-smelling river that was dyed black, might have gone to bed in it for
+good and all, and have curtained his head for ever with its filthy
+waters.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+MEN AND BROTHERS
+
+
+‘OH, my friends, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown! Oh, my friends
+and fellow-countrymen, the slaves of an iron-handed and a grinding
+despotism! Oh, my friends and fellow-sufferers, and fellow-workmen, and
+fellow-men! I tell you that the hour is come, when we must rally round
+one another as One united power, and crumble into dust the oppressors
+that too long have battened upon the plunder of our families, upon the
+sweat of our brows, upon the labour of our hands, upon the strength of
+our sinews, upon the God-created glorious rights of Humanity, and upon
+the holy and eternal privileges of Brotherhood!’
+
+‘Good!’ ‘Hear, hear, hear!’ ‘Hurrah!’ and other cries, arose in many
+voices from various parts of the densely crowded and suffocatingly close
+Hall, in which the orator, perched on a stage, delivered himself of this
+and what other froth and fume he had in him. He had declaimed himself
+into a violent heat, and was as hoarse as he was hot. By dint of roaring
+at the top of his voice under a flaring gaslight, clenching his fists,
+knitting his brows, setting his teeth, and pounding with his arms, he had
+taken so much out of himself by this time, that he was brought to a stop,
+and called for a glass of water.
+
+As he stood there, trying to quench his fiery face with his drink of
+water, the comparison between the orator and the crowd of attentive faces
+turned towards him, was extremely to his disadvantage. Judging him by
+Nature’s evidence, he was above the mass in very little but the stage on
+which he stood. In many great respects he was essentially below them.
+He was not so honest, he was not so manly, he was not so good-humoured;
+he substituted cunning for their simplicity, and passion for their safe
+solid sense. An ill-made, high-shouldered man, with lowering brows, and
+his features crushed into an habitually sour expression, he contrasted
+most unfavourably, even in his mongrel dress, with the great body of his
+hearers in their plain working clothes. Strange as it always is to
+consider any assembly in the act of submissively resigning itself to the
+dreariness of some complacent person, lord or commoner, whom
+three-fourths of it could, by no human means, raise out of the slough of
+inanity to their own intellectual level, it was particularly strange, and
+it was even particularly affecting, to see this crowd of earnest faces,
+whose honesty in the main no competent observer free from bias could
+doubt, so agitated by such a leader.
+
+Good! Hear, hear! Hurrah! The eagerness both of attention and
+intention, exhibited in all the countenances, made them a most impressive
+sight. There was no carelessness, no languor, no idle curiosity; none of
+the many shades of indifference to be seen in all other assemblies,
+visible for one moment there. That every man felt his condition to be,
+somehow or other, worse than it might be; that every man considered it
+incumbent on him to join the rest, towards the making of it better; that
+every man felt his only hope to be in his allying himself to the comrades
+by whom he was surrounded; and that in this belief, right or wrong
+(unhappily wrong then), the whole of that crowd were gravely, deeply,
+faithfully in earnest; must have been as plain to any one who chose to
+see what was there, as the bare beams of the roof and the whitened brick
+walls. Nor could any such spectator fail to know in his own breast, that
+these men, through their very delusions, showed great qualities,
+susceptible of being turned to the happiest and best account; and that to
+pretend (on the strength of sweeping axioms, howsoever cut and dried)
+that they went astray wholly without cause, and of their own irrational
+wills, was to pretend that there could be smoke without fire, death
+without birth, harvest without seed, anything or everything produced from
+nothing.
+
+The orator having refreshed himself, wiped his corrugated forehead from
+left to right several times with his handkerchief folded into a pad, and
+concentrated all his revived forces, in a sneer of great disdain and
+bitterness.
+
+‘But oh, my friends and brothers! Oh, men and Englishmen, the
+down-trodden operatives of Coketown! What shall we say of that man—that
+working-man, that I should find it necessary so to libel the glorious
+name—who, being practically and well acquainted with the grievances and
+wrongs of you, the injured pith and marrow of this land, and having heard
+you, with a noble and majestic unanimity that will make Tyrants tremble,
+resolve for to subscribe to the funds of the United Aggregate Tribunal,
+and to abide by the injunctions issued by that body for your benefit,
+whatever they may be—what, I ask you, will you say of that working-man,
+since such I must acknowledge him to be, who, at such a time, deserts his
+post, and sells his flag; who, at such a time, turns a traitor and a
+craven and a recreant, who, at such a time, is not ashamed to make to you
+the dastardly and humiliating avowal that he will hold himself aloof, and
+will _not_ be one of those associated in the gallant stand for Freedom
+and for Right?’
+
+The assembly was divided at this point. There were some groans and
+hisses, but the general sense of honour was much too strong for the
+condemnation of a man unheard. ‘Be sure you’re right, Slackbridge!’
+‘Put him up!’ ‘Let’s hear him!’ Such things were said on many sides.
+Finally, one strong voice called out, ‘Is the man heer? If the man’s
+heer, Slackbridge, let’s hear the man himseln, ’stead o’ yo.’ Which was
+received with a round of applause.
+
+Slackbridge, the orator, looked about him with a withering smile; and,
+holding out his right hand at arm’s length (as the manner of all
+Slackbridges is), to still the thundering sea, waited until there was a
+profound silence.
+
+‘Oh, my friends and fellow-men!’ said Slackbridge then, shaking his head
+with violent scorn, ‘I do not wonder that you, the prostrate sons of
+labour, are incredulous of the existence of such a man. But he who sold
+his birthright for a mess of pottage existed, and Judas Iscariot existed,
+and Castlereagh existed, and this man exists!’
+
+Here, a brief press and confusion near the stage, ended in the man
+himself standing at the orator’s side before the concourse. He was pale
+and a little moved in the face—his lips especially showed it; but he
+stood quiet, with his left hand at his chin, waiting to be heard. There
+was a chairman to regulate the proceedings, and this functionary now took
+the case into his own hands.
+
+‘My friends,’ said he, ‘by virtue o’ my office as your president, I askes
+o’ our friend Slackbridge, who may be a little over hetter in this
+business, to take his seat, whiles this man Stephen Blackpool is heern.
+You all know this man Stephen Blackpool. You know him awlung o’ his
+misfort’ns, and his good name.’
+
+With that, the chairman shook him frankly by the hand, and sat down
+again. Slackbridge likewise sat down, wiping his hot forehead—always
+from left to right, and never the reverse way.
+
+‘My friends,’ Stephen began, in the midst of a dead calm; ‘I ha’ hed
+what’s been spok’n o’ me, and ’tis lickly that I shan’t mend it. But I’d
+liefer you’d hearn the truth concernin myseln, fro my lips than fro onny
+other man’s, though I never cud’n speak afore so monny, wi’out bein
+moydert and muddled.’
+
+Slackbridge shook his head as if he would shake it off, in his
+bitterness.
+
+‘I’m th’ one single Hand in Bounderby’s mill, o’ a’ the men theer, as
+don’t coom in wi’ th’ proposed reg’lations. I canna coom in wi’ ’em. My
+friends, I doubt their doin’ yo onny good. Licker they’ll do yo hurt.’
+
+Slackbridge laughed, folded his arms, and frowned sarcastically.
+
+‘But ’t an’t sommuch for that as I stands out. If that were aw, I’d coom
+in wi’ th’ rest. But I ha’ my reasons—mine, yo see—for being hindered;
+not on’y now, but awlus—awlus—life long!’
+
+Slackbridge jumped up and stood beside him, gnashing and tearing. ‘Oh,
+my friends, what but this did I tell you? Oh, my fellow-countrymen, what
+warning but this did I give you? And how shows this recreant conduct in
+a man on whom unequal laws are known to have fallen heavy? Oh, you
+Englishmen, I ask you how does this subornation show in one of
+yourselves, who is thus consenting to his own undoing and to yours, and
+to your children’s and your children’s children’s?’
+
+There was some applause, and some crying of Shame upon the man; but the
+greater part of the audience were quiet. They looked at Stephen’s worn
+face, rendered more pathetic by the homely emotions it evinced; and, in
+the kindness of their nature, they were more sorry than indignant.
+
+‘’Tis this Delegate’s trade for t’ speak,’ said Stephen, ‘an’ he’s paid
+for ’t, an’ he knows his work. Let him keep to ’t. Let him give no heed
+to what I ha had’n to bear. That’s not for him. That’s not for nobbody
+but me.’
+
+There was a propriety, not to say a dignity in these words, that made the
+hearers yet more quiet and attentive. The same strong voice called out,
+‘Slackbridge, let the man be heern, and howd thee tongue!’ Then the
+place was wonderfully still.
+
+‘My brothers,’ said Stephen, whose low voice was distinctly heard, ‘and
+my fellow-workmen—for that yo are to me, though not, as I knows on, to
+this delegate here—I ha but a word to sen, and I could sen nommore if I
+was to speak till Strike o’ day. I know weel, aw what’s afore me. I
+know weel that yo aw resolve to ha nommore ado wi’ a man who is not wi’
+yo in this matther. I know weel that if I was a lyin parisht i’ th’
+road, yo’d feel it right to pass me by, as a forrenner and stranger.
+What I ha getn, I mun mak th’ best on.’
+
+‘Stephen Blackpool,’ said the chairman, rising, ‘think on ’t agen. Think
+on ’t once agen, lad, afore thou’rt shunned by aw owd friends.’
+
+There was an universal murmur to the same effect, though no man
+articulated a word. Every eye was fixed on Stephen’s face. To repent of
+his determination, would be to take a load from all their minds. He
+looked around him, and knew that it was so. Not a grain of anger with
+them was in his heart; he knew them, far below their surface weaknesses
+and misconceptions, as no one but their fellow-labourer could.
+
+‘I ha thowt on ’t, above a bit, sir. I simply canna coom in. I mun go
+th’ way as lays afore me. I mun tak my leave o’ aw heer.’
+
+He made a sort of reverence to them by holding up his arms, and stood for
+the moment in that attitude; not speaking until they slowly dropped at
+his sides.
+
+‘Monny’s the pleasant word as soom heer has spok’n wi’ me; monny’s the
+face I see heer, as I first seen when I were yoong and lighter heart’n
+than now. I ha’ never had no fratch afore, sin ever I were born, wi’ any
+o’ my like; Gonnows I ha’ none now that’s o’ my makin’. Yo’ll ca’ me
+traitor and that—yo I mean t’ say,’ addressing Slackbridge, ‘but ’tis
+easier to ca’ than mak’ out. So let be.’
+
+He had moved away a pace or two to come down from the platform, when he
+remembered something he had not said, and returned again.
+
+‘Haply,’ he said, turning his furrowed face slowly about, that he might
+as it were individually address the whole audience, those both near and
+distant; ‘haply, when this question has been tak’n up and discoosed,
+there’ll be a threat to turn out if I’m let to work among yo. I hope I
+shall die ere ever such a time cooms, and I shall work solitary among yo
+unless it cooms—truly, I mun do ’t, my friends; not to brave yo, but to
+live. I ha nobbut work to live by; and wheerever can I go, I who ha
+worked sin I were no heighth at aw, in Coketown heer? I mak’ no
+complaints o’ bein turned to the wa’, o’ bein outcasten and overlooken
+fro this time forrard, but hope I shall be let to work. If there is any
+right for me at aw, my friends, I think ’tis that.’
+
+Not a word was spoken. Not a sound was audible in the building, but the
+slight rustle of men moving a little apart, all along the centre of the
+room, to open a means of passing out, to the man with whom they had all
+bound themselves to renounce companionship. Looking at no one, and going
+his way with a lowly steadiness upon him that asserted nothing and sought
+nothing, Old Stephen, with all his troubles on his head, left the scene.
+
+Then Slackbridge, who had kept his oratorical arm extended during the
+going out, as if he were repressing with infinite solicitude and by a
+wonderful moral power the vehement passions of the multitude, applied
+himself to raising their spirits. Had not the Roman Brutus, oh, my
+British countrymen, condemned his son to death; and had not the Spartan
+mothers, oh my soon to be victorious friends, driven their flying
+children on the points of their enemies’ swords? Then was it not the
+sacred duty of the men of Coketown, with forefathers before them, an
+admiring world in company with them, and a posterity to come after them,
+to hurl out traitors from the tents they had pitched in a sacred and a
+God-like cause? The winds of heaven answered Yes; and bore Yes, east,
+west, north, and south. And consequently three cheers for the United
+Aggregate Tribunal!
+
+Slackbridge acted as fugleman, and gave the time. The multitude of
+doubtful faces (a little conscience-stricken) brightened at the sound,
+and took it up. Private feeling must yield to the common cause. Hurrah!
+The roof yet vibrated with the cheering, when the assembly dispersed.
+
+Thus easily did Stephen Blackpool fall into the loneliest of lives, the
+life of solitude among a familiar crowd. The stranger in the land who
+looks into ten thousand faces for some answering look and never finds it,
+is in cheering society as compared with him who passes ten averted faces
+daily, that were once the countenances of friends. Such experience was
+to be Stephen’s now, in every waking moment of his life; at his work, on
+his way to it and from it, at his door, at his window, everywhere. By
+general consent, they even avoided that side of the street on which he
+habitually walked; and left it, of all the working men, to him only.
+
+He had been for many years, a quiet silent man, associating but little
+with other men, and used to companionship with his own thoughts. He had
+never known before the strength of the want in his heart for the frequent
+recognition of a nod, a look, a word; or the immense amount of relief
+that had been poured into it by drops through such small means. It was
+even harder than he could have believed possible, to separate in his own
+conscience his abandonment by all his fellows from a baseless sense of
+shame and disgrace.
+
+The first four days of his endurance were days so long and heavy, that he
+began to be appalled by the prospect before him. Not only did he see no
+Rachael all the time, but he avoided every chance of seeing her; for,
+although he knew that the prohibition did not yet formally extend to the
+women working in the factories, he found that some of them with whom he
+was acquainted were changed to him, and he feared to try others, and
+dreaded that Rachael might be even singled out from the rest if she were
+seen in his company. So, he had been quite alone during the four days,
+and had spoken to no one, when, as he was leaving his work at night, a
+young man of a very light complexion accosted him in the street.
+
+‘Your name’s Blackpool, ain’t it?’ said the young man.
+
+Stephen coloured to find himself with his hat in his hand, in his
+gratitude for being spoken to, or in the suddenness of it, or both. He
+made a feint of adjusting the lining, and said, ‘Yes.’
+
+‘You are the Hand they have sent to Coventry, I mean?’ said Bitzer, the
+very light young man in question.
+
+Stephen answered ‘Yes,’ again.
+
+‘I supposed so, from their all appearing to keep away from you. Mr.
+Bounderby wants to speak to you. You know his house, don’t you?’
+
+Stephen said ‘Yes,’ again.
+
+‘Then go straight up there, will you?’ said Bitzer. ‘You’re expected,
+and have only to tell the servant it’s you. I belong to the Bank; so, if
+you go straight up without me (I was sent to fetch you), you’ll save me a
+walk.’
+
+Stephen, whose way had been in the contrary direction, turned about, and
+betook himself as in duty bound, to the red brick castle of the giant
+Bounderby.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+MEN AND MASTERS
+
+
+‘WELL, Stephen,’ said Bounderby, in his windy manner, ‘what’s this I
+hear? What have these pests of the earth been doing to _you_? Come in,
+and speak up.’
+
+It was into the drawing-room that he was thus bidden. A tea-table was
+set out; and Mr. Bounderby’s young wife, and her brother, and a great
+gentleman from London, were present. To whom Stephen made his obeisance,
+closing the door and standing near it, with his hat in his hand.
+
+‘This is the man I was telling you about, Harthouse,’ said Mr. Bounderby.
+The gentleman he addressed, who was talking to Mrs. Bounderby on the
+sofa, got up, saying in an indolent way, ‘Oh really?’ and dawdled to the
+hearthrug where Mr. Bounderby stood.
+
+‘Now,’ said Bounderby, ‘speak up!’
+
+After the four days he had passed, this address fell rudely and
+discordantly on Stephen’s ear. Besides being a rough handling of his
+wounded mind, it seemed to assume that he really was the self-interested
+deserter he had been called.
+
+‘What were it, sir,’ said Stephen, ‘as yo were pleased to want wi’ me?’
+
+‘Why, I have told you,’ returned Bounderby. ‘Speak up like a man, since
+you are a man, and tell us about yourself and this Combination.’
+
+‘Wi’ yor pardon, sir,’ said Stephen Blackpool, ‘I ha’ nowt to sen about
+it.’
+
+Mr. Bounderby, who was always more or less like a Wind, finding something
+in his way here, began to blow at it directly.
+
+‘Now, look here, Harthouse,’ said he, ‘here’s a specimen of ’em. When
+this man was here once before, I warned this man against the mischievous
+strangers who are always about—and who ought to be hanged wherever they
+are found—and I told this man that he was going in the wrong direction.
+Now, would you believe it, that although they have put this mark upon
+him, he is such a slave to them still, that he’s afraid to open his lips
+about them?’
+
+‘I sed as I had nowt to sen, sir; not as I was fearfo’ o’ openin’ my
+lips.’
+
+‘You said! Ah! _I_ know what you said; more than that, I know what you
+mean, you see. Not always the same thing, by the Lord Harry! Quite
+different things. You had better tell us at once, that that fellow
+Slackbridge is not in the town, stirring up the people to mutiny; and
+that he is not a regular qualified leader of the people: that is, a most
+confounded scoundrel. You had better tell us so at once; you can’t
+deceive me. You want to tell us so. Why don’t you?’
+
+‘I’m as sooary as yo, sir, when the people’s leaders is bad,’ said
+Stephen, shaking his head. ‘They taks such as offers. Haply ’tis na’
+the sma’est o’ their misfortuns when they can get no better.’
+
+The wind began to get boisterous.
+
+‘Now, you’ll think this pretty well, Harthouse,’ said Mr. Bounderby.
+‘You’ll think this tolerably strong. You’ll say, upon my soul this is a
+tidy specimen of what my friends have to deal with; but this is nothing,
+sir! You shall hear me ask this man a question. Pray, Mr.
+Blackpool’—wind springing up very fast—‘may I take the liberty of asking
+you how it happens that you refused to be in this Combination?’
+
+‘How ’t happens?’
+
+‘Ah!’ said Mr. Bounderby, with his thumbs in the arms of his coat, and
+jerking his head and shutting his eyes in confidence with the opposite
+wall: ‘how it happens.’
+
+‘I’d leefer not coom to ’t, sir; but sin you put th’ question—an’ not
+want’n t’ be ill-manner’n—I’ll answer. I ha passed a promess.’
+
+‘Not to me, you know,’ said Bounderby. (Gusty weather with deceitful
+calms. One now prevailing.)
+
+‘O no, sir. Not to yo.’
+
+‘As for me, any consideration for me has had just nothing at all to do
+with it,’ said Bounderby, still in confidence with the wall. ‘If only
+Josiah Bounderby of Coketown had been in question, you would have joined
+and made no bones about it?’
+
+‘Why yes, sir. ’Tis true.’
+
+‘Though he knows,’ said Mr. Bounderby, now blowing a gale, ‘that there
+are a set of rascals and rebels whom transportation is too good for!
+Now, Mr. Harthouse, you have been knocking about in the world some time.
+Did you ever meet with anything like that man out of this blessed
+country?’ And Mr. Bounderby pointed him out for inspection, with an
+angry finger.
+
+‘Nay, ma’am,’ said Stephen Blackpool, staunchly protesting against the
+words that had been used, and instinctively addressing himself to Louisa,
+after glancing at her face. ‘Not rebels, nor yet rascals. Nowt o’ th’
+kind, ma’am, nowt o’ th’ kind. They’ve not doon me a kindness, ma’am, as
+I know and feel. But there’s not a dozen men amoong ’em, ma’am—a dozen?
+Not six—but what believes as he has doon his duty by the rest and by
+himseln. God forbid as I, that ha’ known, and had’n experience o’ these
+men aw my life—I, that ha’ ett’n an’ droonken wi’ ’em, an’ seet’n wi’
+’em, and toil’n wi’ ’em, and lov’n ’em, should fail fur to stan by ’em
+wi’ the truth, let ’em ha’ doon to me what they may!’
+
+He spoke with the rugged earnestness of his place and character—deepened
+perhaps by a proud consciousness that he was faithful to his class under
+all their mistrust; but he fully remembered where he was, and did not
+even raise his voice.
+
+‘No, ma’am, no. They’re true to one another, faithfo’ to one another,
+’fectionate to one another, e’en to death. Be poor amoong ’em, be sick
+amoong ’em, grieve amoong ’em for onny o’ th’ monny causes that carries
+grief to the poor man’s door, an’ they’ll be tender wi’ yo, gentle wi’
+yo, comfortable wi’ yo, Chrisen wi’ yo. Be sure o’ that, ma’am. They’d
+be riven to bits, ere ever they’d be different.’
+
+‘In short,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘it’s because they are so full of virtues
+that they have turned you adrift. Go through with it while you are about
+it. Out with it.’
+
+‘How ’tis, ma’am,’ resumed Stephen, appearing still to find his natural
+refuge in Louisa’s face, ‘that what is best in us fok, seems to turn us
+most to trouble an’ misfort’n an’ mistake, I dunno. But ’tis so. I know
+’tis, as I know the heavens is over me ahint the smoke. We’re patient
+too, an’ wants in general to do right. An’ I canna think the fawt is aw
+wi’ us.’
+
+‘Now, my friend,’ said Mr. Bounderby, whom he could not have exasperated
+more, quite unconscious of it though he was, than by seeming to appeal to
+any one else, ‘if you will favour me with your attention for half a
+minute, I should like to have a word or two with you. You said just now,
+that you had nothing to tell us about this business. You are quite sure
+of that before we go any further.’
+
+‘Sir, I am sure on ’t.’
+
+‘Here’s a gentleman from London present,’ Mr. Bounderby made a backhanded
+point at Mr. James Harthouse with his thumb, ‘a Parliament gentleman. I
+should like him to hear a short bit of dialogue between you and me,
+instead of taking the substance of it—for I know precious well,
+beforehand, what it will be; nobody knows better than I do, take
+notice!—instead of receiving it on trust from my mouth.’
+
+Stephen bent his head to the gentleman from London, and showed a rather
+more troubled mind than usual. He turned his eyes involuntarily to his
+former refuge, but at a look from that quarter (expressive though
+instantaneous) he settled them on Mr. Bounderby’s face.
+
+‘Now, what do you complain of?’ asked Mr. Bounderby.
+
+‘I ha’ not coom here, sir,’ Stephen reminded him, ‘to complain. I coom
+for that I were sent for.’
+
+‘What,’ repeated Mr. Bounderby, folding his arms, ‘do you people, in a
+general way, complain of?’
+
+Stephen looked at him with some little irresolution for a moment, and
+then seemed to make up his mind.
+
+‘Sir, I were never good at showin o ’t, though I ha had’n my share in
+feeling o ’t. ’Deed we are in a muddle, sir. Look round town—so rich as
+’tis—and see the numbers o’ people as has been broughten into bein heer,
+fur to weave, an’ to card, an’ to piece out a livin’, aw the same one
+way, somehows, ’twixt their cradles and their graves. Look how we live,
+an’ wheer we live, an’ in what numbers, an’ by what chances, and wi’ what
+sameness; and look how the mills is awlus a goin, and how they never
+works us no nigher to ony dis’ant object—ceptin awlus, Death. Look how
+you considers of us, and writes of us, and talks of us, and goes up wi’
+yor deputations to Secretaries o’ State ’bout us, and how yo are awlus
+right, and how we are awlus wrong, and never had’n no reason in us sin
+ever we were born. Look how this ha growen an’ growen, sir, bigger an’
+bigger, broader an’ broader, harder an’ harder, fro year to year, fro
+generation unto generation. Who can look on ’t, sir, and fairly tell a
+man ’tis not a muddle?’
+
+‘Of course,’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘Now perhaps you’ll let the gentleman
+know, how you would set this muddle (as you’re so fond of calling it) to
+rights.’
+
+‘I donno, sir. I canna be expecten to ’t. ’Tis not me as should be
+looken to for that, sir. ’Tis them as is put ower me, and ower aw the
+rest of us. What do they tak upon themseln, sir, if not to do’t?’
+
+‘I’ll tell you something towards it, at any rate,’ returned Mr.
+Bounderby. ‘We will make an example of half a dozen Slackbridges. We’ll
+indict the blackguards for felony, and get ’em shipped off to penal
+settlements.’
+
+Stephen gravely shook his head.
+
+‘Don’t tell me we won’t, man,’ said Mr. Bounderby, by this time blowing a
+hurricane, ‘because we will, I tell you!’
+
+‘Sir,’ returned Stephen, with the quiet confidence of absolute certainty,
+‘if yo was t’ tak a hundred Slackbridges—aw as there is, and aw the
+number ten times towd—an’ was t’ sew ’em up in separate sacks, an’ sink
+’em in the deepest ocean as were made ere ever dry land coom to be, yo’d
+leave the muddle just wheer ’tis. Mischeevous strangers!’ said Stephen,
+with an anxious smile; ‘when ha we not heern, I am sure, sin ever we can
+call to mind, o’ th’ mischeevous strangers! ’Tis not by _them_ the
+trouble’s made, sir. ’Tis not wi’ _them_ ’t commences. I ha no favour
+for ’em—I ha no reason to favour ’em—but ’tis hopeless and useless to
+dream o’ takin them fro their trade, ’stead o’ takin their trade fro
+them! Aw that’s now about me in this room were heer afore I coom, an’
+will be heer when I am gone. Put that clock aboard a ship an’ pack it
+off to Norfolk Island, an’ the time will go on just the same. So ’tis
+wi’ Slackbridge every bit.’
+
+Reverting for a moment to his former refuge, he observed a cautionary
+movement of her eyes towards the door. Stepping back, he put his hand
+upon the lock. But he had not spoken out of his own will and desire; and
+he felt it in his heart a noble return for his late injurious treatment
+to be faithful to the last to those who had repudiated him. He stayed to
+finish what was in his mind.
+
+‘Sir, I canna, wi’ my little learning an’ my common way, tell the
+genelman what will better aw this—though some working men o’ this town
+could, above my powers—but I can tell him what I know will never do ’t.
+The strong hand will never do ’t. Vict’ry and triumph will never do ’t.
+Agreeing fur to mak one side unnat’rally awlus and for ever right, and
+toother side unnat’rally awlus and for ever wrong, will never, never do
+’t. Nor yet lettin alone will never do ’t. Let thousands upon thousands
+alone, aw leading the like lives and aw faw’en into the like muddle, and
+they will be as one, and yo will be as anoother, wi’ a black unpassable
+world betwixt yo, just as long or short a time as sich-like misery can
+last. Not drawin nigh to fok, wi’ kindness and patience an’ cheery ways,
+that so draws nigh to one another in their monny troubles, and so
+cherishes one another in their distresses wi’ what they need
+themseln—like, I humbly believe, as no people the genelman ha seen in aw
+his travels can beat—will never do ’t till th’ Sun turns t’ ice. Most o’
+aw, rating ’em as so much Power, and reg’latin ’em as if they was figures
+in a soom, or machines: wi’out loves and likens, wi’out memories and
+inclinations, wi’out souls to weary and souls to hope—when aw goes quiet,
+draggin on wi’ ’em as if they’d nowt o’ th’ kind, and when aw goes
+onquiet, reproachin ’em for their want o’ sitch humanly feelins in their
+dealins wi’ yo—this will never do ’t, sir, till God’s work is onmade.’
+
+Stephen stood with the open door in his hand, waiting to know if anything
+more were expected of him.
+
+‘Just stop a moment,’ said Mr. Bounderby, excessively red in the face.
+‘I told you, the last time you were here with a grievance, that you had
+better turn about and come out of that. And I also told you, if you
+remember, that I was up to the gold spoon look-out.’
+
+‘I were not up to ’t myseln, sir; I do assure yo.’
+
+‘Now it’s clear to me,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘that you are one of those
+chaps who have always got a grievance. And you go about, sowing it and
+raising crops. That’s the business of _your_ life, my friend.’
+
+Stephen shook his head, mutely protesting that indeed he had other
+business to do for his life.
+
+‘You are such a waspish, raspish, ill-conditioned chap, you see,’ said
+Mr. Bounderby, ‘that even your own Union, the men who know you best, will
+have nothing to do with you. I never thought those fellows could be
+right in anything; but I tell you what! I so far go along with them for
+a novelty, that _I_’ll have nothing to do with you either.’
+
+Stephen raised his eyes quickly to his face.
+
+‘You can finish off what you’re at,’ said Mr. Bounderby, with a meaning
+nod, ‘and then go elsewhere.’
+
+‘Sir, yo know weel,’ said Stephen expressively, ‘that if I canna get work
+wi’ yo, I canna get it elsewheer.’
+
+The reply was, ‘What I know, I know; and what you know, you know. I have
+no more to say about it.’
+
+Stephen glanced at Louisa again, but her eyes were raised to his no more;
+therefore, with a sigh, and saying, barely above his breath, ‘Heaven help
+us aw in this world!’ he departed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+FADING AWAY
+
+
+IT was falling dark when Stephen came out of Mr. Bounderby’s house. The
+shadows of night had gathered so fast, that he did not look about him
+when he closed the door, but plodded straight along the street. Nothing
+was further from his thoughts than the curious old woman he had
+encountered on his previous visit to the same house, when he heard a step
+behind him that he knew, and turning, saw her in Rachael’s company.
+
+He saw Rachael first, as he had heard her only.
+
+‘Ah, Rachael, my dear! Missus, thou wi’ her!’
+
+‘Well, and now you are surprised to be sure, and with reason I must say,’
+the old woman returned. ‘Here I am again, you see.’
+
+‘But how wi’ Rachael?’ said Stephen, falling into their step, walking
+between them, and looking from the one to the other.
+
+‘Why, I come to be with this good lass pretty much as I came to be with
+you,’ said the old woman, cheerfully, taking the reply upon herself. ‘My
+visiting time is later this year than usual, for I have been rather
+troubled with shortness of breath, and so put it off till the weather was
+fine and warm. For the same reason I don’t make all my journey in one
+day, but divide it into two days, and get a bed to-night at the
+Travellers’ Coffee House down by the railroad (a nice clean house), and
+go back Parliamentary, at six in the morning. Well, but what has this to
+do with this good lass, says you? I’m going to tell you. I have heard
+of Mr. Bounderby being married. I read it in the paper, where it looked
+grand—oh, it looked fine!’ the old woman dwelt on it with strange
+enthusiasm: ‘and I want to see his wife. I have never seen her yet.
+Now, if you’ll believe me, she hasn’t come out of that house since noon
+to-day. So not to give her up too easily, I was waiting about, a little
+last bit more, when I passed close to this good lass two or three times;
+and her face being so friendly I spoke to her, and she spoke to me.
+There!’ said the old woman to Stephen, ‘you can make all the rest out for
+yourself now, a deal shorter than I can, I dare say!’
+
+Once again, Stephen had to conquer an instinctive propensity to dislike
+this old woman, though her manner was as honest and simple as a manner
+possibly could be. With a gentleness that was as natural to him as he
+knew it to be to Rachael, he pursued the subject that interested her in
+her old age.
+
+‘Well, missus,’ said he, ‘I ha seen the lady, and she were young and
+hansom. Wi’ fine dark thinkin eyes, and a still way, Rachael, as I ha
+never seen the like on.’
+
+‘Young and handsome. Yes!’ cried the old woman, quite delighted. ‘As
+bonny as a rose! And what a happy wife!’
+
+‘Aye, missus, I suppose she be,’ said Stephen. But with a doubtful
+glance at Rachael.
+
+‘Suppose she be? She must be. She’s your master’s wife,’ returned the
+old woman.
+
+Stephen nodded assent. ‘Though as to master,’ said he, glancing again at
+Rachael, ‘not master onny more. That’s aw enden ’twixt him and me.’
+
+‘Have you left his work, Stephen?’ asked Rachael, anxiously and quickly.
+
+‘Why, Rachael,’ he replied, ‘whether I ha lef’n his work, or whether his
+work ha lef’n me, cooms t’ th’ same. His work and me are parted. ’Tis
+as weel so—better, I were thinkin when yo coom up wi’ me. It would ha
+brought’n trouble upon trouble if I had stayed theer. Haply ’tis a
+kindness to monny that I go; haply ’tis a kindness to myseln; anyways it
+mun be done. I mun turn my face fro Coketown fur th’ time, and seek a
+fort’n, dear, by beginnin fresh.’
+
+‘Where will you go, Stephen?’
+
+‘I donno t’night,’ said he, lifting off his hat, and smoothing his thin
+hair with the flat of his hand. ‘But I’m not goin t’night, Rachael, nor
+yet t’morrow. ’Tan’t easy overmuch t’ know wheer t’ turn, but a good
+heart will coom to me.’
+
+Herein, too, the sense of even thinking unselfishly aided him. Before he
+had so much as closed Mr. Bounderby’s door, he had reflected that at
+least his being obliged to go away was good for her, as it would save her
+from the chance of being brought into question for not withdrawing from
+him. Though it would cost him a hard pang to leave her, and though he
+could think of no similar place in which his condemnation would not
+pursue him, perhaps it was almost a relief to be forced away from the
+endurance of the last four days, even to unknown difficulties and
+distresses.
+
+So he said, with truth, ‘I’m more leetsome, Rachael, under ’t, than I
+could’n ha believed.’ It was not her part to make his burden heavier.
+She answered with her comforting smile, and the three walked on together.
+
+Age, especially when it strives to be self-reliant and cheerful, finds
+much consideration among the poor. The old woman was so decent and
+contented, and made so light of her infirmities, though they had
+increased upon her since her former interview with Stephen, that they
+both took an interest in her. She was too sprightly to allow of their
+walking at a slow pace on her account, but she was very grateful to be
+talked to, and very willing to talk to any extent: so, when they came to
+their part of the town, she was more brisk and vivacious than ever.
+
+‘Come to my poor place, missus,’ said Stephen, ‘and tak a coop o’ tea.
+Rachael will coom then; and arterwards I’ll see thee safe t’ thy
+Travellers’ lodgin. ’T may be long, Rachael, ere ever I ha th’ chance o’
+thy coompany agen.’
+
+They complied, and the three went on to the house where he lodged. When
+they turned into a narrow street, Stephen glanced at his window with a
+dread that always haunted his desolate home; but it was open, as he had
+left it, and no one was there. The evil spirit of his life had flitted
+away again, months ago, and he had heard no more of her since. The only
+evidence of her last return now, were the scantier moveables in his room,
+and the grayer hair upon his head.
+
+He lighted a candle, set out his little tea-board, got hot water from
+below, and brought in small portions of tea and sugar, a loaf, and some
+butter from the nearest shop. The bread was new and crusty, the butter
+fresh, and the sugar lump, of course—in fulfilment of the standard
+testimony of the Coketown magnates, that these people lived like princes,
+sir. Rachael made the tea (so large a party necessitated the borrowing
+of a cup), and the visitor enjoyed it mightily. It was the first glimpse
+of sociality the host had had for many days. He too, with the world a
+wide heath before him, enjoyed the meal—again in corroboration of the
+magnates, as exemplifying the utter want of calculation on the part of
+these people, sir.
+
+‘I ha never thowt yet, missus,’ said Stephen, ‘o’ askin thy name.’
+
+The old lady announced herself as ‘Mrs. Pegler.’
+
+‘A widder, I think?’ said Stephen.
+
+‘Oh, many long years!’ Mrs. Pegler’s husband (one of the best on record)
+was already dead, by Mrs. Pegler’s calculation, when Stephen was born.
+
+‘’Twere a bad job, too, to lose so good a one,’ said Stephen. ‘Onny
+children?’
+
+Mrs. Pegler’s cup, rattling against her saucer as she held it, denoted
+some nervousness on her part. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not now, not now.’
+
+‘Dead, Stephen,’ Rachael softly hinted.
+
+‘I’m sooary I ha spok’n on ’t,’ said Stephen, ‘I ought t’ hadn in my mind
+as I might touch a sore place. I—I blame myseln.’
+
+While he excused himself, the old lady’s cup rattled more and more. ‘I
+had a son,’ she said, curiously distressed, and not by any of the usual
+appearances of sorrow; ‘and he did well, wonderfully well. But he is not
+to be spoken of if you please. He is—’ Putting down her cup, she moved
+her hands as if she would have added, by her action, ‘dead!’ Then she
+said aloud, ‘I have lost him.’
+
+Stephen had not yet got the better of his having given the old lady pain,
+when his landlady came stumbling up the narrow stairs, and calling him to
+the door, whispered in his ear. Mrs. Pegler was by no means deaf, for
+she caught a word as it was uttered.
+
+‘Bounderby!’ she cried, in a suppressed voice, starting up from the
+table. ‘Oh hide me! Don’t let me be seen for the world. Don’t let him
+come up till I’ve got away. Pray, pray!’ She trembled, and was
+excessively agitated; getting behind Rachael, when Rachael tried to
+reassure her; and not seeming to know what she was about.
+
+‘But hearken, missus, hearken,’ said Stephen, astonished. ‘’Tisn’t Mr.
+Bounderby; ’tis his wife. Yo’r not fearfo’ o’ her. Yo was hey-go-mad
+about her, but an hour sin.’
+
+‘But are you sure it’s the lady, and not the gentleman?’ she asked, still
+trembling.
+
+‘Certain sure!’
+
+‘Well then, pray don’t speak to me, nor yet take any notice of me,’ said
+the old woman. ‘Let me be quite to myself in this corner.’
+
+Stephen nodded; looking to Rachael for an explanation, which she was
+quite unable to give him; took the candle, went downstairs, and in a few
+moments returned, lighting Louisa into the room. She was followed by the
+whelp.
+
+Rachael had risen, and stood apart with her shawl and bonnet in her hand,
+when Stephen, himself profoundly astonished by this visit, put the candle
+on the table. Then he too stood, with his doubled hand upon the table
+near it, waiting to be addressed.
+
+For the first time in her life Louisa had come into one of the dwellings
+of the Coketown Hands; for the first time in her life she was face to
+face with anything like individuality in connection with them. She knew
+of their existence by hundreds and by thousands. She knew what results
+in work a given number of them would produce in a given space of time.
+She knew them in crowds passing to and from their nests, like ants or
+beetles. But she knew from her reading infinitely more of the ways of
+toiling insects than of these toiling men and women.
+
+Something to be worked so much and paid so much, and there ended;
+something to be infallibly settled by laws of supply and demand;
+something that blundered against those laws, and floundered into
+difficulty; something that was a little pinched when wheat was dear, and
+over-ate itself when wheat was cheap; something that increased at such a
+rate of percentage, and yielded such another percentage of crime, and
+such another percentage of pauperism; something wholesale, of which vast
+fortunes were made; something that occasionally rose like a sea, and did
+some harm and waste (chiefly to itself), and fell again; this she knew
+the Coketown Hands to be. But, she had scarcely thought more of
+separating them into units, than of separating the sea itself into its
+component drops.
+
+She stood for some moments looking round the room. From the few chairs,
+the few books, the common prints, and the bed, she glanced to the two
+women, and to Stephen.
+
+‘I have come to speak to you, in consequence of what passed just now. I
+should like to be serviceable to you, if you will let me. Is this your
+wife?’
+
+Rachael raised her eyes, and they sufficiently answered no, and dropped
+again.
+
+‘I remember,’ said Louisa, reddening at her mistake; ‘I recollect, now,
+to have heard your domestic misfortunes spoken of, though I was not
+attending to the particulars at the time. It was not my meaning to ask a
+question that would give pain to any one here. If I should ask any other
+question that may happen to have that result, give me credit, if you
+please, for being in ignorance how to speak to you as I ought.’
+
+As Stephen had but a little while ago instinctively addressed himself to
+her, so she now instinctively addressed herself to Rachael. Her manner
+was short and abrupt, yet faltering and timid.
+
+‘He has told you what has passed between himself and my husband? You
+would be his first resource, I think.’
+
+‘I have heard the end of it, young lady,’ said Rachael.
+
+‘Did I understand, that, being rejected by one employer, he would
+probably be rejected by all? I thought he said as much?’
+
+‘The chances are very small, young lady—next to nothing—for a man who
+gets a bad name among them.’
+
+‘What shall I understand that you mean by a bad name?’
+
+‘The name of being troublesome.’
+
+‘Then, by the prejudices of his own class, and by the prejudices of the
+other, he is sacrificed alike? Are the two so deeply separated in this
+town, that there is no place whatever for an honest workman between
+them?’
+
+Rachael shook her head in silence.
+
+‘He fell into suspicion,’ said Louisa, ‘with his fellow-weavers,
+because—he had made a promise not to be one of them. I think it must
+have been to you that he made that promise. Might I ask you why he made
+it?’
+
+Rachael burst into tears. ‘I didn’t seek it of him, poor lad. I prayed
+him to avoid trouble for his own good, little thinking he’d come to it
+through me. But I know he’d die a hundred deaths, ere ever he’d break
+his word. I know that of him well.’
+
+Stephen had remained quietly attentive, in his usual thoughtful attitude,
+with his hand at his chin. He now spoke in a voice rather less steady
+than usual.
+
+‘No one, excepting myseln, can ever know what honour, an’ what love, an’
+respect, I bear to Rachael, or wi’ what cause. When I passed that
+promess, I towd her true, she were th’ Angel o’ my life. ’Twere a solemn
+promess. ’Tis gone fro’ me, for ever.’
+
+Louisa turned her head to him, and bent it with a deference that was new
+in her. She looked from him to Rachael, and her features softened.
+‘What will you do?’ she asked him. And her voice had softened too.
+
+‘Weel, ma’am,’ said Stephen, making the best of it, with a smile; ‘when I
+ha finished off, I mun quit this part, and try another. Fortnet or
+misfortnet, a man can but try; there’s nowt to be done wi’out tryin’—cept
+laying down and dying.’
+
+‘How will you travel?’
+
+‘Afoot, my kind ledy, afoot.’
+
+Louisa coloured, and a purse appeared in her hand. The rustling of a
+bank-note was audible, as she unfolded one and laid it on the table.
+
+‘Rachael, will you tell him—for you know how, without offence—that this
+is freely his, to help him on his way? Will you entreat him to take it?’
+
+‘I canna do that, young lady,’ she answered, turning her head aside.
+‘Bless you for thinking o’ the poor lad wi’ such tenderness. But ’tis
+for him to know his heart, and what is right according to it.’
+
+Louisa looked, in part incredulous, in part frightened, in part overcome
+with quick sympathy, when this man of so much self-command, who had been
+so plain and steady through the late interview, lost his composure in a
+moment, and now stood with his hand before his face. She stretched out
+hers, as if she would have touched him; then checked herself, and
+remained still.
+
+‘Not e’en Rachael,’ said Stephen, when he stood again with his face
+uncovered, ‘could mak sitch a kind offerin, by onny words, kinder. T’
+show that I’m not a man wi’out reason and gratitude, I’ll tak two pound.
+I’ll borrow ’t for t’ pay ’t back. ’Twill be the sweetest work as ever I
+ha done, that puts it in my power t’ acknowledge once more my lastin
+thankfulness for this present action.’
+
+She was fain to take up the note again, and to substitute the much
+smaller sum he had named. He was neither courtly, nor handsome, nor
+picturesque, in any respect; and yet his manner of accepting it, and of
+expressing his thanks without more words, had a grace in it that Lord
+Chesterfield could not have taught his son in a century.
+
+Tom had sat upon the bed, swinging one leg and sucking his walking-stick
+with sufficient unconcern, until the visit had attained this stage.
+Seeing his sister ready to depart, he got up, rather hurriedly, and put
+in a word.
+
+‘Just wait a moment, Loo! Before we go, I should like to speak to him a
+moment. Something comes into my head. If you’ll step out on the stairs,
+Blackpool, I’ll mention it. Never mind a light, man!’ Tom was
+remarkably impatient of his moving towards the cupboard, to get one. ‘It
+don’t want a light.’
+
+Stephen followed him out, and Tom closed the room door, and held the lock
+in his hand.
+
+‘I say!’ he whispered. ‘I think I can do you a good turn. Don’t ask me
+what it is, because it may not come to anything. But there’s no harm in
+my trying.’
+
+His breath fell like a flame of fire on Stephen’s ear, it was so hot.
+
+‘That was our light porter at the Bank,’ said Tom, ‘who brought you the
+message to-night. I call him our light porter, because I belong to the
+Bank too.’
+
+Stephen thought, ‘What a hurry he is in!’ He spoke so confusedly.
+
+‘Well!’ said Tom. ‘Now look here! When are you off?’
+
+‘T’ day’s Monday,’ replied Stephen, considering. ‘Why, sir, Friday or
+Saturday, nigh ’bout.’
+
+‘Friday or Saturday,’ said Tom. ‘Now look here! I am not sure that I
+can do you the good turn I want to do you—that’s my sister, you know, in
+your room—but I may be able to, and if I should not be able to, there’s
+no harm done. So I tell you what. You’ll know our light porter again?’
+
+‘Yes, sure,’ said Stephen.
+
+‘Very well,’ returned Tom. ‘When you leave work of a night, between this
+and your going away, just hang about the Bank an hour or so, will you?
+Don’t take on, as if you meant anything, if he should see you hanging
+about there; because I shan’t put him up to speak to you, unless I find I
+can do you the service I want to do you. In that case he’ll have a note
+or a message for you, but not else. Now look here! You are sure you
+understand.’
+
+He had wormed a finger, in the darkness, through a button-hole of
+Stephen’s coat, and was screwing that corner of the garment tight up
+round and round, in an extraordinary manner.
+
+‘I understand, sir,’ said Stephen.
+
+‘Now look here!’ repeated Tom. ‘Be sure you don’t make any mistake then,
+and don’t forget. I shall tell my sister as we go home, what I have in
+view, and she’ll approve, I know. Now look here! You’re all right, are
+you? You understand all about it? Very well then. Come along, Loo!’
+
+He pushed the door open as he called to her, but did not return into the
+room, or wait to be lighted down the narrow stairs. He was at the bottom
+when she began to descend, and was in the street before she could take
+his arm.
+
+Mrs. Pegler remained in her corner until the brother and sister were
+gone, and until Stephen came back with the candle in his hand. She was
+in a state of inexpressible admiration of Mrs. Bounderby, and, like an
+unaccountable old woman, wept, ‘because she was such a pretty dear.’ Yet
+Mrs. Pegler was so flurried lest the object of her admiration should
+return by chance, or anybody else should come, that her cheerfulness was
+ended for that night. It was late too, to people who rose early and
+worked hard; therefore the party broke up; and Stephen and Rachael
+escorted their mysterious acquaintance to the door of the Travellers’
+Coffee House, where they parted from her.
+
+They walked back together to the corner of the street where Rachael
+lived, and as they drew nearer and nearer to it, silence crept upon them.
+When they came to the dark corner where their unfrequent meetings always
+ended, they stopped, still silent, as if both were afraid to speak.
+
+‘I shall strive t’ see thee agen, Rachael, afore I go, but if not—’
+
+‘Thou wilt not, Stephen, I know. ’Tis better that we make up our minds
+to be open wi’ one another.’
+
+‘Thou’rt awlus right. ’Tis bolder and better. I ha been thinkin then,
+Rachael, that as ’tis but a day or two that remains, ’twere better for
+thee, my dear, not t’ be seen wi’ me. ’T might bring thee into trouble,
+fur no good.’
+
+‘’Tis not for that, Stephen, that I mind. But thou know’st our old
+agreement. ’Tis for that.’
+
+‘Well, well,’ said he. ‘’Tis better, onnyways.’
+
+‘Thou’lt write to me, and tell me all that happens, Stephen?’
+
+‘Yes. What can I say now, but Heaven be wi’ thee, Heaven bless thee,
+Heaven thank thee and reward thee!’
+
+‘May it bless thee, Stephen, too, in all thy wanderings, and send thee
+peace and rest at last!’
+
+‘I towd thee, my dear,’ said Stephen Blackpool—‘that night—that I would
+never see or think o’ onnything that angered me, but thou, so much better
+than me, should’st be beside it. Thou’rt beside it now. Thou mak’st me
+see it wi’ a better eye. Bless thee. Good night. Good-bye!’
+
+It was but a hurried parting in a common street, yet it was a sacred
+remembrance to these two common people. Utilitarian economists,
+skeletons of schoolmasters, Commissioners of Fact, genteel and used-up
+infidels, gabblers of many little dog’s-eared creeds, the poor you will
+have always with you. Cultivate in them, while there is yet time, the
+utmost graces of the fancies and affections, to adorn their lives so much
+in need of ornament; or, in the day of your triumph, when romance is
+utterly driven out of their souls, and they and a bare existence stand
+face to face, Reality will take a wolfish turn, and make an end of you.
+
+Stephen worked the next day, and the next, uncheered by a word from any
+one, and shunned in all his comings and goings as before. At the end of
+the second day, he saw land; at the end of the third, his loom stood
+empty.
+
+He had overstayed his hour in the street outside the Bank, on each of the
+two first evenings; and nothing had happened there, good or bad. That he
+might not be remiss in his part of the engagement, he resolved to wait
+full two hours, on this third and last night.
+
+There was the lady who had once kept Mr. Bounderby’s house, sitting at
+the first-floor window as he had seen her before; and there was the light
+porter, sometimes talking with her there, and sometimes looking over the
+blind below which had BANK upon it, and sometimes coming to the door and
+standing on the steps for a breath of air. When he first came out,
+Stephen thought he might be looking for him, and passed near; but the
+light porter only cast his winking eyes upon him slightly, and said
+nothing.
+
+Two hours were a long stretch of lounging about, after a long day’s
+labour. Stephen sat upon the step of a door, leaned against a wall under
+an archway, strolled up and down, listened for the church clock, stopped
+and watched children playing in the street. Some purpose or other is so
+natural to every one, that a mere loiterer always looks and feels
+remarkable. When the first hour was out, Stephen even began to have an
+uncomfortable sensation upon him of being for the time a disreputable
+character.
+
+Then came the lamplighter, and two lengthening lines of light all down
+the long perspective of the street, until they were blended and lost in
+the distance. Mrs. Sparsit closed the first-floor window, drew down the
+blind, and went up-stairs. Presently, a light went up-stairs after her,
+passing first the fanlight of the door, and afterwards the two staircase
+windows, on its way up. By and by, one corner of the second-floor blind
+was disturbed, as if Mrs. Sparsit’s eye were there; also the other
+corner, as if the light porter’s eye were on that side. Still, no
+communication was made to Stephen. Much relieved when the two hours were
+at last accomplished, he went away at a quick pace, as a recompense for
+so much loitering.
+
+He had only to take leave of his landlady, and lie down on his temporary
+bed upon the floor; for his bundle was made up for to-morrow, and all was
+arranged for his departure. He meant to be clear of the town very early;
+before the Hands were in the streets.
+
+It was barely daybreak, when, with a parting look round his room,
+mournfully wondering whether he should ever see it again, he went out.
+The town was as entirely deserted as if the inhabitants had abandoned it,
+rather than hold communication with him. Everything looked wan at that
+hour. Even the coming sun made but a pale waste in the sky, like a sad
+sea.
+
+By the place where Rachael lived, though it was not in his way; by the
+red brick streets; by the great silent factories, not trembling yet; by
+the railway, where the danger-lights were waning in the strengthening
+day; by the railway’s crazy neighbourhood, half pulled down and half
+built up; by scattered red brick villas, where the besmoked evergreens
+were sprinkled with a dirty powder, like untidy snuff-takers; by
+coal-dust paths and many varieties of ugliness; Stephen got to the top of
+the hill, and looked back.
+
+Day was shining radiantly upon the town then, and the bells were going
+for the morning work. Domestic fires were not yet lighted, and the high
+chimneys had the sky to themselves. Puffing out their poisonous volumes,
+they would not be long in hiding it; but, for half an hour, some of the
+many windows were golden, which showed the Coketown people a sun
+eternally in eclipse, through a medium of smoked glass.
+
+So strange to turn from the chimneys to the birds. So strange, to have
+the road-dust on his feet instead of the coal-grit. So strange to have
+lived to his time of life, and yet to be beginning like a boy this summer
+morning! With these musings in his mind, and his bundle under his arm,
+Stephen took his attentive face along the high road. And the trees
+arched over him, whispering that he left a true and loving heart behind.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+GUNPOWDER
+
+
+MR. JAMES HARTHOUSE, ‘going in’ for his adopted party, soon began to
+score. With the aid of a little more coaching for the political sages, a
+little more genteel listlessness for the general society, and a tolerable
+management of the assumed honesty in dishonesty, most effective and most
+patronized of the polite deadly sins, he speedily came to be considered
+of much promise. The not being troubled with earnestness was a grand
+point in his favour, enabling him to take to the hard Fact fellows with
+as good a grace as if he had been born one of the tribe, and to throw all
+other tribes overboard, as conscious hypocrites.
+
+‘Whom none of us believe, my dear Mrs. Bounderby, and who do not believe
+themselves. The only difference between us and the professors of virtue
+or benevolence, or philanthropy—never mind the name—is, that we know it
+is all meaningless, and say so; while they know it equally and will never
+say so.’
+
+Why should she be shocked or warned by this reiteration? It was not so
+unlike her father’s principles, and her early training, that it need
+startle her. Where was the great difference between the two schools,
+when each chained her down to material realities, and inspired her with
+no faith in anything else? What was there in her soul for James
+Harthouse to destroy, which Thomas Gradgrind had nurtured there in its
+state of innocence!
+
+It was even the worse for her at this pass, that in her mind—implanted
+there before her eminently practical father began to form it—a struggling
+disposition to believe in a wider and nobler humanity than she had ever
+heard of, constantly strove with doubts and resentments. With doubts,
+because the aspiration had been so laid waste in her youth. With
+resentments, because of the wrong that had been done her, if it were
+indeed a whisper of the truth. Upon a nature long accustomed to
+self-suppression, thus torn and divided, the Harthouse philosophy came as
+a relief and justification. Everything being hollow and worthless, she
+had missed nothing and sacrificed nothing. What did it matter, she had
+said to her father, when he proposed her husband. What did it matter,
+she said still. With a scornful self-reliance, she asked herself, What
+did anything matter—and went on.
+
+Towards what? Step by step, onward and downward, towards some end, yet
+so gradually, that she believed herself to remain motionless. As to Mr.
+Harthouse, whither _he_ tended, he neither considered nor cared. He had
+no particular design or plan before him: no energetic wickedness ruffled
+his lassitude. He was as much amused and interested, at present, as it
+became so fine a gentleman to be; perhaps even more than it would have
+been consistent with his reputation to confess. Soon after his arrival
+he languidly wrote to his brother, the honourable and jocular member,
+that the Bounderbys were ‘great fun;’ and further, that the female
+Bounderby, instead of being the Gorgon he had expected, was young, and
+remarkably pretty. After that, he wrote no more about them, and devoted
+his leisure chiefly to their house. He was very often in their house, in
+his flittings and visitings about the Coketown district; and was much
+encouraged by Mr. Bounderby. It was quite in Mr. Bounderby’s gusty way
+to boast to all his world that _he_ didn’t care about your highly
+connected people, but that if his wife Tom Gradgrind’s daughter did, she
+was welcome to their company.
+
+Mr. James Harthouse began to think it would be a new sensation, if the
+face which changed so beautifully for the whelp, would change for him.
+
+He was quick enough to observe; he had a good memory, and did not forget
+a word of the brother’s revelations. He interwove them with everything
+he saw of the sister, and he began to understand her. To be sure, the
+better and profounder part of her character was not within his scope of
+perception; for in natures, as in seas, depth answers unto depth; but he
+soon began to read the rest with a student’s eye.
+
+Mr. Bounderby had taken possession of a house and grounds, about fifteen
+miles from the town, and accessible within a mile or two, by a railway
+striding on many arches over a wild country, undermined by deserted
+coal-shafts, and spotted at night by fires and black shapes of stationary
+engines at pits’ mouths. This country, gradually softening towards the
+neighbourhood of Mr. Bounderby’s retreat, there mellowed into a rustic
+landscape, golden with heath, and snowy with hawthorn in the spring of
+the year, and tremulous with leaves and their shadows all the summer
+time. The bank had foreclosed a mortgage effected on the property thus
+pleasantly situated, by one of the Coketown magnates, who, in his
+determination to make a shorter cut than usual to an enormous fortune,
+overspeculated himself by about two hundred thousand pounds. These
+accidents did sometimes happen in the best regulated families of
+Coketown, but the bankrupts had no connexion whatever with the
+improvident classes.
+
+It afforded Mr. Bounderby supreme satisfaction to instal himself in this
+snug little estate, and with demonstrative humility to grow cabbages in
+the flower-garden. He delighted to live, barrack-fashion, among the
+elegant furniture, and he bullied the very pictures with his origin.
+‘Why, sir,’ he would say to a visitor, ‘I am told that Nickits,’ the late
+owner, ‘gave seven hundred pound for that Seabeach. Now, to be plain
+with you, if I ever, in the whole course of my life, take seven looks at
+it, at a hundred pound a look, it will be as much as I shall do. No, by
+George! I don’t forget that I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. For
+years upon years, the only pictures in my possession, or that I could
+have got into my possession, by any means, unless I stole ’em, were the
+engravings of a man shaving himself in a boot, on the blacking bottles
+that I was overjoyed to use in cleaning boots with, and that I sold when
+they were empty for a farthing a-piece, and glad to get it!’
+
+Then he would address Mr. Harthouse in the same style.
+
+‘Harthouse, you have a couple of horses down here. Bring half a dozen
+more if you like, and we’ll find room for ’em. There’s stabling in this
+place for a dozen horses; and unless Nickits is belied, he kept the full
+number. A round dozen of ’em, sir. When that man was a boy, he went to
+Westminster School. Went to Westminster School as a King’s Scholar, when
+I was principally living on garbage, and sleeping in market baskets.
+Why, if I wanted to keep a dozen horses—which I don’t, for one’s enough
+for me—I couldn’t bear to see ’em in their stalls here, and think what my
+own lodging used to be. I couldn’t look at ’em, sir, and not order ’em
+out. Yet so things come round. You see this place; you know what sort
+of a place it is; you are aware that there’s not a completer place of its
+size in this kingdom or elsewhere—I don’t care where—and here, got into
+the middle of it, like a maggot into a nut, is Josiah Bounderby. While
+Nickits (as a man came into my office, and told me yesterday), Nickits,
+who used to act in Latin, in the Westminster School plays, with the
+chief-justices and nobility of this country applauding him till they were
+black in the face, is drivelling at this minute—drivelling, sir!—in a
+fifth floor, up a narrow dark back street in Antwerp.’
+
+It was among the leafy shadows of this retirement, in the long sultry
+summer days, that Mr. Harthouse began to prove the face which had set him
+wondering when he first saw it, and to try if it would change for him.
+
+‘Mrs. Bounderby, I esteem it a most fortunate accident that I find you
+alone here. I have for some time had a particular wish to speak to you.’
+
+It was not by any wonderful accident that he found her, the time of day
+being that at which she was always alone, and the place being her
+favourite resort. It was an opening in a dark wood, where some felled
+trees lay, and where she would sit watching the fallen leaves of last
+year, as she had watched the falling ashes at home.
+
+He sat down beside her, with a glance at her face.
+
+‘Your brother. My young friend Tom—’
+
+Her colour brightened, and she turned to him with a look of interest. ‘I
+never in my life,’ he thought, ‘saw anything so remarkable and so
+captivating as the lighting of those features!’ His face betrayed his
+thoughts—perhaps without betraying him, for it might have been according
+to its instructions so to do.
+
+‘Pardon me. The expression of your sisterly interest is so beautiful—Tom
+should be so proud of it—I know this is inexcusable, but I am so
+compelled to admire.’
+
+‘Being so impulsive,’ she said composedly.
+
+‘Mrs. Bounderby, no: you know I make no pretence with you. You know I am
+a sordid piece of human nature, ready to sell myself at any time for any
+reasonable sum, and altogether incapable of any Arcadian proceeding
+whatever.’
+
+‘I am waiting,’ she returned, ‘for your further reference to my brother.’
+
+‘You are rigid with me, and I deserve it. I am as worthless a dog as you
+will find, except that I am not false—not false. But you surprised and
+started me from my subject, which was your brother. I have an interest
+in him.’
+
+‘Have you an interest in anything, Mr. Harthouse?’ she asked, half
+incredulously and half gratefully.
+
+‘If you had asked me when I first came here, I should have said no. I
+must say now—even at the hazard of appearing to make a pretence, and of
+justly awakening your incredulity—yes.’
+
+She made a slight movement, as if she were trying to speak, but could not
+find voice; at length she said, ‘Mr. Harthouse, I give you credit for
+being interested in my brother.’
+
+‘Thank you. I claim to deserve it. You know how little I do claim, but
+I will go that length. You have done so much for him, you are so fond of
+him; your whole life, Mrs. Bounderby, expresses such charming
+self-forgetfulness on his account—pardon me again—I am running wide of
+the subject. I am interested in him for his own sake.’
+
+She had made the slightest action possible, as if she would have risen in
+a hurry and gone away. He had turned the course of what he said at that
+instant, and she remained.
+
+‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ he resumed, in a lighter manner, and yet with a show of
+effort in assuming it, which was even more expressive than the manner he
+dismissed; ‘it is no irrevocable offence in a young fellow of your
+brother’s years, if he is heedless, inconsiderate, and expensive—a little
+dissipated, in the common phrase. Is he?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Allow me to be frank. Do you think he games at all?’
+
+‘I think he makes bets.’ Mr. Harthouse waiting, as if that were not her
+whole answer, she added, ‘I know he does.’
+
+‘Of course he loses?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Everybody does lose who bets. May I hint at the probability of your
+sometimes supplying him with money for these purposes?’
+
+She sat, looking down; but, at this question, raised her eyes searchingly
+and a little resentfully.
+
+‘Acquit me of impertinent curiosity, my dear Mrs. Bounderby. I think Tom
+may be gradually falling into trouble, and I wish to stretch out a
+helping hand to him from the depths of my wicked experience.—Shall I say
+again, for his sake? Is that necessary?’
+
+She seemed to try to answer, but nothing came of it.
+
+‘Candidly to confess everything that has occurred to me,’ said James
+Harthouse, again gliding with the same appearance of effort into his more
+airy manner; ‘I will confide to you my doubt whether he has had many
+advantages. Whether—forgive my plainness—whether any great amount of
+confidence is likely to have been established between himself and his
+most worthy father.’
+
+‘I do not,’ said Louisa, flushing with her own great remembrance in that
+wise, ‘think it likely.’
+
+‘Or, between himself, and—I may trust to your perfect understanding of my
+meaning, I am sure—and his highly esteemed brother-in-law.’
+
+She flushed deeper and deeper, and was burning red when she replied in a
+fainter voice, ‘I do not think that likely, either.’
+
+‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ said Harthouse, after a short silence, ‘may there be a
+better confidence between yourself and me? Tom has borrowed a
+considerable sum of you?’
+
+‘You will understand, Mr. Harthouse,’ she returned, after some
+indecision: she had been more or less uncertain, and troubled throughout
+the conversation, and yet had in the main preserved her self-contained
+manner; ‘you will understand that if I tell you what you press to know,
+it is not by way of complaint or regret. I would never complain of
+anything, and what I have done I do not in the least regret.’
+
+‘So spirited, too!’ thought James Harthouse.
+
+‘When I married, I found that my brother was even at that time heavily in
+debt. Heavily for him, I mean. Heavily enough to oblige me to sell some
+trinkets. They were no sacrifice. I sold them very willingly. I
+attached no value to them. They, were quite worthless to me.’
+
+Either she saw in his face that he knew, or she only feared in her
+conscience that he knew, that she spoke of some of her husband’s gifts.
+She stopped, and reddened again. If he had not known it before, he would
+have known it then, though he had been a much duller man than he was.
+
+‘Since then, I have given my brother, at various times, what money I
+could spare: in short, what money I have had. Confiding in you at all,
+on the faith of the interest you profess for him, I will not do so by
+halves. Since you have been in the habit of visiting here, he has wanted
+in one sum as much as a hundred pounds. I have not been able to give it
+to him. I have felt uneasy for the consequences of his being so
+involved, but I have kept these secrets until now, when I trust them to
+your honour. I have held no confidence with any one, because—you
+anticipated my reason just now.’ She abruptly broke off.
+
+He was a ready man, and he saw, and seized, an opportunity here of
+presenting her own image to her, slightly disguised as her brother.
+
+‘Mrs. Bounderby, though a graceless person, of the world worldly, I feel
+the utmost interest, I assure you, in what you tell me. I cannot
+possibly be hard upon your brother. I understand and share the wise
+consideration with which you regard his errors. With all possible
+respect both for Mr. Gradgrind and for Mr. Bounderby, I think I perceive
+that he has not been fortunate in his training. Bred at a disadvantage
+towards the society in which he has his part to play, he rushes into
+these extremes for himself, from opposite extremes that have long been
+forced—with the very best intentions we have no doubt—upon him. Mr.
+Bounderby’s fine bluff English independence, though a most charming
+characteristic, does not—as we have agreed—invite confidence. If I might
+venture to remark that it is the least in the world deficient in that
+delicacy to which a youth mistaken, a character misconceived, and
+abilities misdirected, would turn for relief and guidance, I should
+express what it presents to my own view.’
+
+As she sat looking straight before her, across the changing lights upon
+the grass into the darkness of the wood beyond, he saw in her face her
+application of his very distinctly uttered words.
+
+‘All allowance,’ he continued, ‘must be made. I have one great fault to
+find with Tom, however, which I cannot forgive, and for which I take him
+heavily to account.’
+
+Louisa turned her eyes to his face, and asked him what fault was that?
+
+‘Perhaps,’ he returned, ‘I have said enough. Perhaps it would have been
+better, on the whole, if no allusion to it had escaped me.’
+
+‘You alarm me, Mr. Harthouse. Pray let me know it.’
+
+‘To relieve you from needless apprehension—and as this confidence
+regarding your brother, which I prize I am sure above all possible
+things, has been established between us—I obey. I cannot forgive him for
+not being more sensible in every word, look, and act of his life, of the
+affection of his best friend; of the devotion of his best friend; of her
+unselfishness; of her sacrifice. The return he makes her, within my
+observation, is a very poor one. What she has done for him demands his
+constant love and gratitude, not his ill-humour and caprice. Careless
+fellow as I am, I am not so indifferent, Mrs. Bounderby, as to be
+regardless of this vice in your brother, or inclined to consider it a
+venial offence.’
+
+The wood floated before her, for her eyes were suffused with tears. They
+rose from a deep well, long concealed, and her heart was filled with
+acute pain that found no relief in them.
+
+‘In a word, it is to correct your brother in this, Mrs. Bounderby, that I
+must aspire. My better knowledge of his circumstances, and my direction
+and advice in extricating them—rather valuable, I hope, as coming from a
+scapegrace on a much larger scale—will give me some influence over him,
+and all I gain I shall certainly use towards this end. I have said
+enough, and more than enough. I seem to be protesting that I am a sort
+of good fellow, when, upon my honour, I have not the least intention to
+make any protestation to that effect, and openly announce that I am
+nothing of the sort. Yonder, among the trees,’ he added, having lifted
+up his eyes and looked about; for he had watched her closely until now;
+‘is your brother himself; no doubt, just come down. As he seems to be
+loitering in this direction, it may be as well, perhaps, to walk towards
+him, and throw ourselves in his way. He has been very silent and doleful
+of late. Perhaps, his brotherly conscience is touched—if there are such
+things as consciences. Though, upon my honour, I hear of them much too
+often to believe in them.’
+
+He assisted her to rise, and she took his arm, and they advanced to meet
+the whelp. He was idly beating the branches as he lounged along: or he
+stooped viciously to rip the moss from the trees with his stick. He was
+startled when they came upon him while he was engaged in this latter
+pastime, and his colour changed.
+
+‘Halloa!’ he stammered; ‘I didn’t know you were here.’
+
+‘Whose name, Tom,’ said Mr. Harthouse, putting his hand upon his shoulder
+and turning him, so that they all three walked towards the house
+together, ‘have you been carving on the trees?’
+
+‘Whose name?’ returned Tom. ‘Oh! You mean what girl’s name?’
+
+‘You have a suspicious appearance of inscribing some fair creature’s on
+the bark, Tom.’
+
+ [Picture: Mr. Harthouse and Tom Gradgrind in the garden]
+
+‘Not much of that, Mr. Harthouse, unless some fair creature with a
+slashing fortune at her own disposal would take a fancy to me. Or she
+might be as ugly as she was rich, without any fear of losing me. I’d
+carve her name as often as she liked.’
+
+‘I am afraid you are mercenary, Tom.’
+
+‘Mercenary,’ repeated Tom. ‘Who is not mercenary? Ask my sister.’
+
+‘Have you so proved it to be a failing of mine, Tom?’ said Louisa,
+showing no other sense of his discontent and ill-nature.
+
+‘You know whether the cap fits you, Loo,’ returned her brother sulkily.
+‘If it does, you can wear it.’
+
+‘Tom is misanthropical to-day, as all bored people are now and then,’
+said Mr. Harthouse. ‘Don’t believe him, Mrs. Bounderby. He knows much
+better. I shall disclose some of his opinions of you, privately
+expressed to me, unless he relents a little.’
+
+‘At all events, Mr. Harthouse,’ said Tom, softening in his admiration of
+his patron, but shaking his head sullenly too, ‘you can’t tell her that I
+ever praised her for being mercenary. I may have praised her for being
+the contrary, and I should do it again, if I had as good reason.
+However, never mind this now; it’s not very interesting to you, and I am
+sick of the subject.’
+
+They walked on to the house, where Louisa quitted her visitor’s arm and
+went in. He stood looking after her, as she ascended the steps, and
+passed into the shadow of the door; then put his hand upon her brother’s
+shoulder again, and invited him with a confidential nod to a walk in the
+garden.
+
+‘Tom, my fine fellow, I want to have a word with you.’
+
+They had stopped among a disorder of roses—it was part of Mr. Bounderby’s
+humility to keep Nickits’s roses on a reduced scale—and Tom sat down on a
+terrace-parapet, plucking buds and picking them to pieces; while his
+powerful Familiar stood over him, with a foot upon the parapet, and his
+figure easily resting on the arm supported by that knee. They were just
+visible from her window. Perhaps she saw them.
+
+‘Tom, what’s the matter?’
+
+‘Oh! Mr. Harthouse,’ said Tom with a groan, ‘I am hard up, and bothered
+out of my life.’
+
+‘My good fellow, so am I.’
+
+‘You!’ returned Tom. ‘You are the picture of independence. Mr.
+Harthouse, I am in a horrible mess. You have no idea what a state I have
+got myself into—what a state my sister might have got me out of, if she
+would only have done it.’
+
+He took to biting the rosebuds now, and tearing them away from his teeth
+with a hand that trembled like an infirm old man’s. After one
+exceedingly observant look at him, his companion relapsed into his
+lightest air.
+
+‘Tom, you are inconsiderate: you expect too much of your sister. You
+have had money of her, you dog, you know you have.’
+
+‘Well, Mr. Harthouse, I know I have. How else was I to get it? Here’s
+old Bounderby always boasting that at my age he lived upon twopence a
+month, or something of that sort. Here’s my father drawing what he calls
+a line, and tying me down to it from a baby, neck and heels. Here’s my
+mother who never has anything of her own, except her complaints. What
+_is_ a fellow to do for money, and where _am_ I to look for it, if not to
+my sister?’
+
+He was almost crying, and scattered the buds about by dozens. Mr.
+Harthouse took him persuasively by the coat.
+
+‘But, my dear Tom, if your sister has not got it—’
+
+‘Not got it, Mr. Harthouse? I don’t say she has got it. I may have
+wanted more than she was likely to have got. But then she ought to get
+it. She could get it. It’s of no use pretending to make a secret of
+matters now, after what I have told you already; you know she didn’t
+marry old Bounderby for her own sake, or for his sake, but for my sake.
+Then why doesn’t she get what I want, out of him, for my sake? She is
+not obliged to say what she is going to do with it; she is sharp enough;
+she could manage to coax it out of him, if she chose. Then why doesn’t
+she choose, when I tell her of what consequence it is? But no. There
+she sits in his company like a stone, instead of making herself agreeable
+and getting it easily. I don’t know what you may call this, but I call
+it unnatural conduct.’
+
+There was a piece of ornamental water immediately below the parapet, on
+the other side, into which Mr. James Harthouse had a very strong
+inclination to pitch Mr. Thomas Gradgrind junior, as the injured men of
+Coketown threatened to pitch their property into the Atlantic. But he
+preserved his easy attitude; and nothing more solid went over the stone
+balustrades than the accumulated rosebuds now floating about, a little
+surface-island.
+
+‘My dear Tom,’ said Harthouse, ‘let me try to be your banker.’
+
+‘For God’s sake,’ replied Tom, suddenly, ‘don’t talk about bankers!’ And
+very white he looked, in contrast with the roses. Very white.
+
+Mr. Harthouse, as a thoroughly well-bred man, accustomed to the best
+society, was not to be surprised—he could as soon have been affected—but
+he raised his eyelids a little more, as if they were lifted by a feeble
+touch of wonder. Albeit it was as much against the precepts of his
+school to wonder, as it was against the doctrines of the Gradgrind
+College.
+
+‘What is the present need, Tom? Three figures? Out with them. Say what
+they are.’
+
+‘Mr. Harthouse,’ returned Tom, now actually crying; and his tears were
+better than his injuries, however pitiful a figure he made: ‘it’s too
+late; the money is of no use to me at present. I should have had it
+before to be of use to me. But I am very much obliged to you; you’re a
+true friend.’
+
+A true friend! ‘Whelp, whelp!’ thought Mr. Harthouse, lazily; ‘what an
+Ass you are!’
+
+‘And I take your offer as a great kindness,’ said Tom, grasping his hand.
+‘As a great kindness, Mr. Harthouse.’
+
+‘Well,’ returned the other, ‘it may be of more use by and by. And, my
+good fellow, if you will open your bedevilments to me when they come
+thick upon you, I may show you better ways out of them than you can find
+for yourself.’
+
+‘Thank you,’ said Tom, shaking his head dismally, and chewing rosebuds.
+‘I wish I had known you sooner, Mr. Harthouse.’
+
+‘Now, you see, Tom,’ said Mr. Harthouse in conclusion, himself tossing
+over a rose or two, as a contribution to the island, which was always
+drifting to the wall as if it wanted to become a part of the mainland:
+‘every man is selfish in everything he does, and I am exactly like the
+rest of my fellow-creatures. I am desperately intent;’ the languor of
+his desperation being quite tropical; ‘on your softening towards your
+sister—which you ought to do; and on your being a more loving and
+agreeable sort of brother—which you ought to be.’
+
+‘I will be, Mr. Harthouse.’
+
+‘No time like the present, Tom. Begin at once.’
+
+‘Certainly I will. And my sister Loo shall say so.’
+
+‘Having made which bargain, Tom,’ said Harthouse, clapping him on the
+shoulder again, with an air which left him at liberty to infer—as he did,
+poor fool—that this condition was imposed upon him in mere careless good
+nature to lessen his sense of obligation, ‘we will tear ourselves asunder
+until dinner-time.’
+
+When Tom appeared before dinner, though his mind seemed heavy enough, his
+body was on the alert; and he appeared before Mr. Bounderby came in. ‘I
+didn’t mean to be cross, Loo,’ he said, giving her his hand, and kissing
+her. ‘I know you are fond of me, and you know I am fond of you.’
+
+After this, there was a smile upon Louisa’s face that day, for some one
+else. Alas, for some one else!
+
+‘So much the less is the whelp the only creature that she cares for,’
+thought James Harthouse, reversing the reflection of his first day’s
+knowledge of her pretty face. ‘So much the less, so much the less.’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+EXPLOSION
+
+
+THE next morning was too bright a morning for sleep, and James Harthouse
+rose early, and sat in the pleasant bay window of his dressing-room,
+smoking the rare tobacco that had had so wholesome an influence on his
+young friend. Reposing in the sunlight, with the fragrance of his
+eastern pipe about him, and the dreamy smoke vanishing into the air, so
+rich and soft with summer odours, he reckoned up his advantages as an
+idle winner might count his gains. He was not at all bored for the time,
+and could give his mind to it.
+
+He had established a confidence with her, from which her husband was
+excluded. He had established a confidence with her, that absolutely
+turned upon her indifference towards her husband, and the absence, now
+and at all times, of any congeniality between them. He had artfully, but
+plainly, assured her that he knew her heart in its last most delicate
+recesses; he had come so near to her through its tenderest sentiment; he
+had associated himself with that feeling; and the barrier behind which
+she lived, had melted away. All very odd, and very satisfactory!
+
+And yet he had not, even now, any earnest wickedness of purpose in him.
+Publicly and privately, it were much better for the age in which he
+lived, that he and the legion of whom he was one were designedly bad,
+than indifferent and purposeless. It is the drifting icebergs setting
+with any current anywhere, that wreck the ships.
+
+When the Devil goeth about like a roaring lion, he goeth about in a shape
+by which few but savages and hunters are attracted. But, when he is
+trimmed, smoothed, and varnished, according to the mode; when he is
+aweary of vice, and aweary of virtue, used up as to brimstone, and used
+up as to bliss; then, whether he take to the serving out of red tape, or
+to the kindling of red fire, he is the very Devil.
+
+So James Harthouse reclined in the window, indolently smoking, and
+reckoning up the steps he had taken on the road by which he happened to
+be travelling. The end to which it led was before him, pretty plainly;
+but he troubled himself with no calculations about it. What will be,
+will be.
+
+As he had rather a long ride to take that day—for there was a public
+occasion ‘to do’ at some distance, which afforded a tolerable opportunity
+of going in for the Gradgrind men—he dressed early and went down to
+breakfast. He was anxious to see if she had relapsed since the previous
+evening. No. He resumed where he had left off. There was a look of
+interest for him again.
+
+He got through the day as much (or as little) to his own satisfaction, as
+was to be expected under the fatiguing circumstances; and came riding
+back at six o’clock. There was a sweep of some half-mile between the
+lodge and the house, and he was riding along at a foot pace over the
+smooth gravel, once Nickits’s, when Mr. Bounderby burst out of the
+shrubbery, with such violence as to make his horse shy across the road.
+
+‘Harthouse!’ cried Mr. Bounderby. ‘Have you heard?’
+
+‘Heard what?’ said Harthouse, soothing his horse, and inwardly favouring
+Mr. Bounderby with no good wishes.
+
+‘Then you _haven’t_ heard!’
+
+‘I have heard you, and so has this brute. I have heard nothing else.’
+
+Mr. Bounderby, red and hot, planted himself in the centre of the path
+before the horse’s head, to explode his bombshell with more effect.
+
+‘The Bank’s robbed!’
+
+‘You don’t mean it!’
+
+‘Robbed last night, sir. Robbed in an extraordinary manner. Robbed with
+a false key.’
+
+‘Of much?’
+
+Mr. Bounderby, in his desire to make the most of it, really seemed
+mortified by being obliged to reply, ‘Why, no; not of very much. But it
+might have been.’
+
+‘Of how much?’
+
+‘Oh! as a sum—if you stick to a sum—of not more than a hundred and fifty
+pound,’ said Bounderby, with impatience. ‘But it’s not the sum; it’s the
+fact. It’s the fact of the Bank being robbed, that’s the important
+circumstance. I am surprised you don’t see it.’
+
+‘My dear Bounderby,’ said James, dismounting, and giving his bridle to
+his servant, ‘I _do_ see it; and am as overcome as you can possibly
+desire me to be, by the spectacle afforded to my mental view.
+Nevertheless, I may be allowed, I hope, to congratulate you—which I do
+with all my soul, I assure you—on your not having sustained a greater
+loss.’
+
+‘Thank’ee,’ replied Bounderby, in a short, ungracious manner. ‘But I
+tell you what. It might have been twenty thousand pound.’
+
+‘I suppose it might.’
+
+‘Suppose it might! By the Lord, you _may_ suppose so. By George!’ said
+Mr. Bounderby, with sundry menacing nods and shakes of his head. ‘It
+might have been twice twenty. There’s no knowing what it would have
+been, or wouldn’t have been, as it was, but for the fellows’ being
+disturbed.’
+
+Louisa had come up now, and Mrs. Sparsit, and Bitzer.
+
+‘Here’s Tom Gradgrind’s daughter knows pretty well what it might have
+been, if you don’t,’ blustered Bounderby. ‘Dropped, sir, as if she was
+shot when I told her! Never knew her do such a thing before. Does her
+credit, under the circumstances, in my opinion!’
+
+She still looked faint and pale. James Harthouse begged her to take his
+arm; and as they moved on very slowly, asked her how the robbery had been
+committed.
+
+‘Why, I am going to tell you,’ said Bounderby, irritably giving his arm
+to Mrs. Sparsit. ‘If you hadn’t been so mighty particular about the sum,
+I should have begun to tell you before. You know this lady (for she _is_
+a lady), Mrs. Sparsit?’
+
+‘I have already had the honour—’
+
+‘Very well. And this young man, Bitzer, you saw him too on the same
+occasion?’ Mr. Harthouse inclined his head in assent, and Bitzer
+knuckled his forehead.
+
+‘Very well. They live at the Bank. You know they live at the Bank,
+perhaps? Very well. Yesterday afternoon, at the close of business
+hours, everything was put away as usual. In the iron room that this
+young fellow sleeps outside of, there was never mind how much. In the
+little safe in young Tom’s closet, the safe used for petty purposes,
+there was a hundred and fifty odd pound.’
+
+‘A hundred and fifty-four, seven, one,’ said Bitzer.
+
+‘Come!’ retorted Bounderby, stopping to wheel round upon him, ‘let’s have
+none of _your_ interruptions. It’s enough to be robbed while you’re
+snoring because you’re too comfortable, without being put right with
+_your_ four seven ones. I didn’t snore, myself, when I was your age, let
+me tell you. I hadn’t victuals enough to snore. And I didn’t four seven
+one. Not if I knew it.’
+
+Bitzer knuckled his forehead again, in a sneaking manner, and seemed at
+once particularly impressed and depressed by the instance last given of
+Mr. Bounderby’s moral abstinence.
+
+‘A hundred and fifty odd pound,’ resumed Mr. Bounderby. ‘That sum of
+money, young Tom locked in his safe, not a very strong safe, but that’s
+no matter now. Everything was left, all right. Some time in the night,
+while this young fellow snored—Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am, you say you have
+heard him snore?’
+
+‘Sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘I cannot say that I have heard him
+precisely snore, and therefore must not make that statement. But on
+winter evenings, when he has fallen asleep at his table, I have heard
+him, what I should prefer to describe as partially choke. I have heard
+him on such occasions produce sounds of a nature similar to what may be
+sometimes heard in Dutch clocks. Not,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, with a lofty
+sense of giving strict evidence, ‘that I would convey any imputation on
+his moral character. Far from it. I have always considered Bitzer a
+young man of the most upright principle; and to that I beg to bear my
+testimony.’
+
+‘Well!’ said the exasperated Bounderby, ‘while he was snoring, _or_
+choking, _or_ Dutch-clocking, _or_ something _or_ other—being asleep—some
+fellows, somehow, whether previously concealed in the house or not
+remains to be seen, got to young Tom’s safe, forced it, and abstracted
+the contents. Being then disturbed, they made off; letting themselves
+out at the main door, and double-locking it again (it was double-locked,
+and the key under Mrs. Sparsit’s pillow) with a false key, which was
+picked up in the street near the Bank, about twelve o’clock to-day. No
+alarm takes place, till this chap, Bitzer, turns out this morning, and
+begins to open and prepare the offices for business. Then, looking at
+Tom’s safe, he sees the door ajar, and finds the lock forced, and the
+money gone.’
+
+‘Where is Tom, by the by?’ asked Harthouse, glancing round.
+
+‘He has been helping the police,’ said Bounderby, ‘and stays behind at
+the Bank. I wish these fellows had tried to rob me when I was at his
+time of life. They would have been out of pocket if they had invested
+eighteenpence in the job; I can tell ’em that.’
+
+‘Is anybody suspected?’
+
+‘Suspected? I should think there was somebody suspected. Egod!’ said
+Bounderby, relinquishing Mrs. Sparsit’s arm to wipe his heated head.
+‘Josiah Bounderby of Coketown is not to be plundered and nobody
+suspected. No, thank you!’
+
+Might Mr. Harthouse inquire Who was suspected?
+
+‘Well,’ said Bounderby, stopping and facing about to confront them all,
+‘I’ll tell you. It’s not to be mentioned everywhere; it’s not to be
+mentioned anywhere: in order that the scoundrels concerned (there’s a
+gang of ’em) may be thrown off their guard. So take this in confidence.
+Now wait a bit.’ Mr. Bounderby wiped his head again. ‘What should you
+say to;’ here he violently exploded: ‘to a Hand being in it?’
+
+‘I hope,’ said Harthouse, lazily, ‘not our friend Blackpot?’
+
+‘Say Pool instead of Pot, sir,’ returned Bounderby, ‘and that’s the man.’
+
+Louisa faintly uttered some word of incredulity and surprise.
+
+‘O yes! I know!’ said Bounderby, immediately catching at the sound. ‘I
+know! I am used to that. I know all about it. They are the finest
+people in the world, these fellows are. They have got the gift of the
+gab, they have. They only want to have their rights explained to them,
+they do. But I tell you what. Show me a dissatisfied Hand, and I’ll
+show you a man that’s fit for anything bad, I don’t care what it is.’
+
+Another of the popular fictions of Coketown, which some pains had been
+taken to disseminate—and which some people really believed.
+
+‘But I am acquainted with these chaps,’ said Bounderby. ‘I can read ’em
+off, like books. Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am, I appeal to you. What warning did
+I give that fellow, the first time he set foot in the house, when the
+express object of his visit was to know how he could knock Religion over,
+and floor the Established Church? Mrs. Sparsit, in point of high
+connexions, you are on a level with the aristocracy,—did I say, or did I
+not say, to that fellow, “you can’t hide the truth from me: you are not
+the kind of fellow I like; you’ll come to no good”?’
+
+‘Assuredly, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘you did, in a highly impressive
+manner, give him such an admonition.’
+
+‘When he shocked you, ma’am,’ said Bounderby; ‘when he shocked your
+feelings?’
+
+‘Yes, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a meek shake of her head, ‘he
+certainly did so. Though I do not mean to say but that my feelings may
+be weaker on such points—more foolish if the term is preferred—than they
+might have been, if I had always occupied my present position.’
+
+Mr. Bounderby stared with a bursting pride at Mr. Harthouse, as much as
+to say, ‘I am the proprietor of this female, and she’s worth your
+attention, I think.’ Then, resumed his discourse.
+
+‘You can recall for yourself, Harthouse, what I said to him when you saw
+him. I didn’t mince the matter with him. I am never mealy with ’em. I
+KNOW ’em. Very well, sir. Three days after that, he bolted. Went off,
+nobody knows where: as my mother did in my infancy—only with this
+difference, that he is a worse subject than my mother, if possible. What
+did he do before he went? What do you say;’ Mr. Bounderby, with his hat
+in his hand, gave a beat upon the crown at every little division of his
+sentences, as if it were a tambourine; ‘to his being seen—night after
+night—watching the Bank?—to his lurking about there—after dark?—To its
+striking Mrs. Sparsit—that he could be lurking for no good—To her calling
+Bitzer’s attention to him, and their both taking notice of him—And to its
+appearing on inquiry to-day—that he was also noticed by the neighbours?’
+Having come to the climax, Mr. Bounderby, like an oriental dancer, put
+his tambourine on his head.
+
+‘Suspicious,’ said James Harthouse, ‘certainly.’
+
+‘I think so, sir,’ said Bounderby, with a defiant nod. ‘I think so. But
+there are more of ’em in it. There’s an old woman. One never hears of
+these things till the mischief’s done; all sorts of defects are found out
+in the stable door after the horse is stolen; there’s an old woman turns
+up now. An old woman who seems to have been flying into town on a
+broomstick, every now and then. _She_ watches the place a whole day
+before this fellow begins, and on the night when you saw him, she steals
+away with him and holds a council with him—I suppose, to make her report
+on going off duty, and be damned to her.’
+
+There was such a person in the room that night, and she shrunk from
+observation, thought Louisa.
+
+‘This is not all of ’em, even as we already know ’em,’ said Bounderby,
+with many nods of hidden meaning. ‘But I have said enough for the
+present. You’ll have the goodness to keep it quiet, and mention it to no
+one. It may take time, but we shall have ’em. It’s policy to give ’em
+line enough, and there’s no objection to that.’
+
+‘Of course, they will be punished with the utmost rigour of the law, as
+notice-boards observe,’ replied James Harthouse, ‘and serve them right.
+Fellows who go in for Banks must take the consequences. If there were no
+consequences, we should all go in for Banks.’ He had gently taken
+Louisa’s parasol from her hand, and had put it up for her; and she walked
+under its shade, though the sun did not shine there.
+
+‘For the present, Loo Bounderby,’ said her husband, ‘here’s Mrs. Sparsit
+to look after. Mrs. Sparsit’s nerves have been acted upon by this
+business, and she’ll stay here a day or two. So make her comfortable.’
+
+‘Thank you very much, sir,’ that discreet lady observed, ‘but pray do not
+let My comfort be a consideration. Anything will do for Me.’
+
+It soon appeared that if Mrs. Sparsit had a failing in her association
+with that domestic establishment, it was that she was so excessively
+regardless of herself and regardful of others, as to be a nuisance. On
+being shown her chamber, she was so dreadfully sensible of its comforts
+as to suggest the inference that she would have preferred to pass the
+night on the mangle in the laundry. True, the Powlers and the Scadgerses
+were accustomed to splendour, ‘but it is my duty to remember,’ Mrs.
+Sparsit was fond of observing with a lofty grace: particularly when any
+of the domestics were present, ‘that what I was, I am no longer.
+Indeed,’ said she, ‘if I could altogether cancel the remembrance that Mr.
+Sparsit was a Powler, or that I myself am related to the Scadgers family;
+or if I could even revoke the fact, and make myself a person of common
+descent and ordinary connexions; I would gladly do so. I should think
+it, under existing circumstances, right to do so.’ The same Hermitical
+state of mind led to her renunciation of made dishes and wines at dinner,
+until fairly commanded by Mr. Bounderby to take them; when she said,
+‘Indeed you are very good, sir;’ and departed from a resolution of which
+she had made rather formal and public announcement, to ‘wait for the
+simple mutton.’ She was likewise deeply apologetic for wanting the salt;
+and, feeling amiably bound to bear out Mr. Bounderby to the fullest
+extent in the testimony he had borne to her nerves, occasionally sat back
+in her chair and silently wept; at which periods a tear of large
+dimensions, like a crystal ear-ring, might be observed (or rather, must
+be, for it insisted on public notice) sliding down her Roman nose.
+
+But Mrs. Sparsit’s greatest point, first and last, was her determination
+to pity Mr. Bounderby. There were occasions when in looking at him she
+was involuntarily moved to shake her head, as who would say, ‘Alas, poor
+Yorick!’ After allowing herself to be betrayed into these evidences of
+emotion, she would force a lambent brightness, and would be fitfully
+cheerful, and would say, ‘You have still good spirits, sir, I am thankful
+to find;’ and would appear to hail it as a blessed dispensation that Mr.
+Bounderby bore up as he did. One idiosyncrasy for which she often
+apologized, she found it excessively difficult to conquer. She had a
+curious propensity to call Mrs. Bounderby ‘Miss Gradgrind,’ and yielded
+to it some three or four score times in the course of the evening. Her
+repetition of this mistake covered Mrs. Sparsit with modest confusion;
+but indeed, she said, it seemed so natural to say Miss Gradgrind:
+whereas, to persuade herself that the young lady whom she had had the
+happiness of knowing from a child could be really and truly Mrs.
+Bounderby, she found almost impossible. It was a further singularity of
+this remarkable case, that the more she thought about it, the more
+impossible it appeared; ‘the differences,’ she observed, ‘being such.’
+
+In the drawing-room after dinner, Mr. Bounderby tried the case of the
+robbery, examined the witnesses, made notes of the evidence, found the
+suspected persons guilty, and sentenced them to the extreme punishment of
+the law. That done, Bitzer was dismissed to town with instructions to
+recommend Tom to come home by the mail-train.
+
+When candles were brought, Mrs. Sparsit murmured, ‘Don’t be low, sir.
+Pray let me see you cheerful, sir, as I used to do.’ Mr. Bounderby, upon
+whom these consolations had begun to produce the effect of making him, in
+a bull-headed blundering way, sentimental, sighed like some large
+sea-animal. ‘I cannot bear to see you so, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘Try
+a hand at backgammon, sir, as you used to do when I had the honour of
+living under your roof.’ ‘I haven’t played backgammon, ma’am,’ said Mr.
+Bounderby, ‘since that time.’ ‘No, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, soothingly,
+‘I am aware that you have not. I remember that Miss Gradgrind takes no
+interest in the game. But I shall be happy, sir, if you will
+condescend.’
+
+They played near a window, opening on the garden. It was a fine night:
+not moonlight, but sultry and fragrant. Louisa and Mr. Harthouse
+strolled out into the garden, where their voices could be heard in the
+stillness, though not what they said. Mrs. Sparsit, from her place at
+the backgammon board, was constantly straining her eyes to pierce the
+shadows without. ‘What’s the matter, ma’am?’ said Mr. Bounderby; ‘you
+don’t see a Fire, do you?’ ‘Oh dear no, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘I
+was thinking of the dew.’ ‘What have you got to do with the dew, ma’am?’
+said Mr. Bounderby. ‘It’s not myself, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘I am
+fearful of Miss Gradgrind’s taking cold.’ ‘She never takes cold,’ said
+Mr. Bounderby. ‘Really, sir?’ said Mrs. Sparsit. And was affected with
+a cough in her throat.
+
+When the time drew near for retiring, Mr. Bounderby took a glass of
+water. ‘Oh, sir?’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘Not your sherry warm, with
+lemon-peel and nutmeg?’ ‘Why, I have got out of the habit of taking it
+now, ma’am,’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘The more’s the pity, sir,’ returned
+Mrs. Sparsit; ‘you are losing all your good old habits. Cheer up, sir!
+If Miss Gradgrind will permit me, I will offer to make it for you, as I
+have often done.’
+
+Miss Gradgrind readily permitting Mrs. Sparsit to do anything she
+pleased, that considerate lady made the beverage, and handed it to Mr.
+Bounderby. ‘It will do you good, sir. It will warm your heart. It is
+the sort of thing you want, and ought to take, sir.’ And when Mr.
+Bounderby said, ‘Your health, ma’am!’ she answered with great feeling,
+‘Thank you, sir. The same to you, and happiness also.’ Finally, she
+wished him good night, with great pathos; and Mr. Bounderby went to bed,
+with a maudlin persuasion that he had been crossed in something tender,
+though he could not, for his life, have mentioned what it was.
+
+Long after Louisa had undressed and lain down, she watched and waited for
+her brother’s coming home. That could hardly be, she knew, until an hour
+past midnight; but in the country silence, which did anything but calm
+the trouble of her thoughts, time lagged wearily. At last, when the
+darkness and stillness had seemed for hours to thicken one another, she
+heard the bell at the gate. She felt as though she would have been glad
+that it rang on until daylight; but it ceased, and the circles of its
+last sound spread out fainter and wider in the air, and all was dead
+again.
+
+She waited yet some quarter of an hour, as she judged. Then she arose,
+put on a loose robe, and went out of her room in the dark, and up the
+staircase to her brother’s room. His door being shut, she softly opened
+it and spoke to him, approaching his bed with a noiseless step.
+
+She kneeled down beside it, passed her arm over his neck, and drew his
+face to hers. She knew that he only feigned to be asleep, but she said
+nothing to him.
+
+He started by and by as if he were just then awakened, and asked who that
+was, and what was the matter?
+
+‘Tom, have you anything to tell me? If ever you loved me in your life,
+and have anything concealed from every one besides, tell it to me.’
+
+‘I don’t know what you mean, Loo. You have been dreaming.’
+
+‘My dear brother:’ she laid her head down on his pillow, and her hair
+flowed over him as if she would hide him from every one but herself: ‘is
+there nothing that you have to tell me? Is there nothing you can tell me
+if you will? You can tell me nothing that will change me. O Tom, tell
+me the truth!’
+
+‘I don’t know what you mean, Loo!’
+
+‘As you lie here alone, my dear, in the melancholy night, so you must lie
+somewhere one night, when even I, if I am living then, shall have left
+you. As I am here beside you, barefoot, unclothed, undistinguishable in
+darkness, so must I lie through all the night of my decay, until I am
+dust. In the name of that time, Tom, tell me the truth now!’
+
+‘What is it you want to know?’
+
+‘You may be certain;’ in the energy of her love she took him to her bosom
+as if he were a child; ‘that I will not reproach you. You may be certain
+that I will be compassionate and true to you. You may be certain that I
+will save you at whatever cost. O Tom, have you nothing to tell me?
+Whisper very softly. Say only “yes,” and I shall understand you!’
+
+She turned her ear to his lips, but he remained doggedly silent.
+
+‘Not a word, Tom?’
+
+‘How can I say Yes, or how can I say No, when I don’t know what you mean?
+Loo, you are a brave, kind girl, worthy I begin to think of a better
+brother than I am. But I have nothing more to say. Go to bed, go to
+bed.’
+
+‘You are tired,’ she whispered presently, more in her usual way.
+
+‘Yes, I am quite tired out.’
+
+‘You have been so hurried and disturbed to-day. Have any fresh
+discoveries been made?’
+
+‘Only those you have heard of, from—him.’
+
+‘Tom, have you said to any one that we made a visit to those people, and
+that we saw those three together?’
+
+‘No. Didn’t you yourself particularly ask me to keep it quiet when you
+asked me to go there with you?’
+
+‘Yes. But I did not know then what was going to happen.’
+
+‘Nor I neither. How could I?’
+
+He was very quick upon her with this retort.
+
+‘Ought I to say, after what has happened,’ said his sister, standing by
+the bed—she had gradually withdrawn herself and risen, ‘that I made that
+visit? Should I say so? Must I say so?’
+
+‘Good Heavens, Loo,’ returned her brother, ‘you are not in the habit of
+asking my advice. Say what you like. If you keep it to yourself, I
+shall keep it to _my_self. If you disclose it, there’s an end of it.’
+
+It was too dark for either to see the other’s face; but each seemed very
+attentive, and to consider before speaking.
+
+‘Tom, do you believe the man I gave the money to, is really implicated in
+this crime?’
+
+‘I don’t know. I don’t see why he shouldn’t be.’
+
+‘He seemed to me an honest man.’
+
+‘Another person may seem to you dishonest, and yet not be so.’ There was
+a pause, for he had hesitated and stopped.
+
+‘In short,’ resumed Tom, as if he had made up his mind, ‘if you come to
+that, perhaps I was so far from being altogether in his favour, that I
+took him outside the door to tell him quietly, that I thought he might
+consider himself very well off to get such a windfall as he had got from
+my sister, and that I hoped he would make good use of it. You remember
+whether I took him out or not. I say nothing against the man; he may be
+a very good fellow, for anything I know; I hope he is.’
+
+‘Was he offended by what you said?’
+
+‘No, he took it pretty well; he was civil enough. Where are you, Loo?’
+He sat up in bed and kissed her. ‘Good night, my dear, good night.’
+
+‘You have nothing more to tell me?’
+
+‘No. What should I have? You wouldn’t have me tell you a lie!’
+
+‘I wouldn’t have you do that to-night, Tom, of all the nights in your
+life; many and much happier as I hope they will be.’
+
+‘Thank you, my dear Loo. I am so tired, that I am sure I wonder I don’t
+say anything to get to sleep. Go to bed, go to bed.’
+
+Kissing her again, he turned round, drew the coverlet over his head, and
+lay as still as if that time had come by which she had adjured him. She
+stood for some time at the bedside before she slowly moved away. She
+stopped at the door, looked back when she had opened it, and asked him if
+he had called her? But he lay still, and she softly closed the door and
+returned to her room.
+
+Then the wretched boy looked cautiously up and found her gone, crept out
+of bed, fastened his door, and threw himself upon his pillow again:
+tearing his hair, morosely crying, grudgingly loving her, hatefully but
+impenitently spurning himself, and no less hatefully and unprofitably
+spurning all the good in the world.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+HEARING THE LAST OF IT
+
+
+MRS. SPARSIT, lying by to recover the tone of her nerves in Mr.
+Bounderby’s retreat, kept such a sharp look-out, night and day, under her
+Coriolanian eyebrows, that her eyes, like a couple of lighthouses on an
+iron-bound coast, might have warned all prudent mariners from that bold
+rock her Roman nose and the dark and craggy region in its neighbourhood,
+but for the placidity of her manner. Although it was hard to believe
+that her retiring for the night could be anything but a form, so severely
+wide awake were those classical eyes of hers, and so impossible did it
+seem that her rigid nose could yield to any relaxing influence, yet her
+manner of sitting, smoothing her uncomfortable, not to say, gritty
+mittens (they were constructed of a cool fabric like a meat-safe), or of
+ambling to unknown places of destination with her foot in her cotton
+stirrup, was so perfectly serene, that most observers would have been
+constrained to suppose her a dove, embodied by some freak of nature, in
+the earthly tabernacle of a bird of the hook-beaked order.
+
+She was a most wonderful woman for prowling about the house. How she got
+from story to story was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so decorous in
+herself, and so highly connected, was not to be suspected of dropping
+over the banisters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary facility
+of locomotion suggested the wild idea. Another noticeable circumstance
+in Mrs. Sparsit was, that she was never hurried. She would shoot with
+consummate velocity from the roof to the hall, yet would be in full
+possession of her breath and dignity on the moment of her arrival there.
+Neither was she ever seen by human vision to go at a great pace.
+
+She took very kindly to Mr. Harthouse, and had some pleasant conversation
+with him soon after her arrival. She made him her stately curtsey in the
+garden, one morning before breakfast.
+
+‘It appears but yesterday, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘that I had the
+honour of receiving you at the Bank, when you were so good as to wish to
+be made acquainted with Mr. Bounderby’s address.’
+
+‘An occasion, I am sure, not to be forgotten by myself in the course of
+Ages,’ said Mr. Harthouse, inclining his head to Mrs. Sparsit with the
+most indolent of all possible airs.
+
+‘We live in a singular world, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
+
+‘I have had the honour, by a coincidence of which I am proud, to have
+made a remark, similar in effect, though not so epigrammatically
+expressed.’
+
+‘A singular world, I would say, sir,’ pursued Mrs. Sparsit; after
+acknowledging the compliment with a drooping of her dark eyebrows, not
+altogether so mild in its expression as her voice was in its dulcet
+tones; ‘as regards the intimacies we form at one time, with individuals
+we were quite ignorant of, at another. I recall, sir, that on that
+occasion you went so far as to say you were actually apprehensive of Miss
+Gradgrind.’
+
+‘Your memory does me more honour than my insignificance deserves. I
+availed myself of your obliging hints to correct my timidity, and it is
+unnecessary to add that they were perfectly accurate. Mrs. Sparsit’s
+talent for—in fact for anything requiring accuracy—with a combination of
+strength of mind—and Family—is too habitually developed to admit of any
+question.’ He was almost falling asleep over this compliment; it took
+him so long to get through, and his mind wandered so much in the course
+of its execution.
+
+‘You found Miss Gradgrind—I really cannot call her Mrs. Bounderby; it’s
+very absurd of me—as youthful as I described her?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit,
+sweetly.
+
+‘You drew her portrait perfectly,’ said Mr. Harthouse. ‘Presented her
+dead image.’
+
+‘Very engaging, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, causing her mittens slowly to
+revolve over one another.
+
+‘Highly so.’
+
+‘It used to be considered,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘that Miss Gradgrind was
+wanting in animation, but I confess she appears to me considerably and
+strikingly improved in that respect. Ay, and indeed here _is_ Mr.
+Bounderby!’ cried Mrs. Sparsit, nodding her head a great many times, as
+if she had been talking and thinking of no one else. ‘How do you find
+yourself this morning, sir? Pray let us see you cheerful, sir.’
+
+Now, these persistent assuagements of his misery, and lightenings of his
+load, had by this time begun to have the effect of making Mr. Bounderby
+softer than usual towards Mrs. Sparsit, and harder than usual to most
+other people from his wife downward. So, when Mrs. Sparsit said with
+forced lightness of heart, ‘You want your breakfast, sir, but I dare say
+Miss Gradgrind will soon be here to preside at the table,’ Mr. Bounderby
+replied, ‘If I waited to be taken care of by my wife, ma’am, I believe
+you know pretty well I should wait till Doomsday, so I’ll trouble _you_
+to take charge of the teapot.’ Mrs. Sparsit complied, and assumed her
+old position at table.
+
+This again made the excellent woman vastly sentimental. She was so
+humble withal, that when Louisa appeared, she rose, protesting she never
+could think of sitting in that place under existing circumstances, often
+as she had had the honour of making Mr. Bounderby’s breakfast, before
+Mrs. Gradgrind—she begged pardon, she meant to say Miss Bounderby—she
+hoped to be excused, but she really could not get it right yet, though
+she trusted to become familiar with it by and by—had assumed her present
+position. It was only (she observed) because Miss Gradgrind happened to
+be a little late, and Mr. Bounderby’s time was so very precious, and she
+knew it of old to be so essential that he should breakfast to the moment,
+that she had taken the liberty of complying with his request; long as his
+will had been a law to her.
+
+‘There! Stop where you are, ma’am,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘stop where you
+are! Mrs. Bounderby will be very glad to be relieved of the trouble, I
+believe.’
+
+‘Don’t say that, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, almost with severity,
+‘because that is very unkind to Mrs. Bounderby. And to be unkind is not
+to be you, sir.’
+
+‘You may set your mind at rest, ma’am.—You can take it very quietly,
+can’t you, Loo?’ said Mr. Bounderby, in a blustering way to his wife.
+
+‘Of course. It is of no moment. Why should it be of any importance to
+me?’
+
+‘Why should it be of any importance to any one, Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am?’
+said Mr. Bounderby, swelling with a sense of slight. ‘You attach too
+much importance to these things, ma’am. By George, you’ll be corrupted
+in some of your notions here. You are old-fashioned, ma’am. You are
+behind Tom Gradgrind’s children’s time.’
+
+‘What is the matter with you?’ asked Louisa, coldly surprised. ‘What has
+given you offence?’
+
+‘Offence!’ repeated Bounderby. ‘Do you suppose if there was any offence
+given me, I shouldn’t name it, and request to have it corrected? I am a
+straightforward man, I believe. I don’t go beating about for
+side-winds.’
+
+‘I suppose no one ever had occasion to think you too diffident, or too
+delicate,’ Louisa answered him composedly: ‘I have never made that
+objection to you, either as a child or as a woman. I don’t understand
+what you would have.’
+
+‘Have?’ returned Mr. Bounderby. ‘Nothing. Otherwise, don’t you, Loo
+Bounderby, know thoroughly well that I, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown,
+would have it?’
+
+She looked at him, as he struck the table and made the teacups ring, with
+a proud colour in her face that was a new change, Mr. Harthouse thought.
+‘You are incomprehensible this morning,’ said Louisa. ‘Pray take no
+further trouble to explain yourself. I am not curious to know your
+meaning. What does it matter?’
+
+Nothing more was said on this theme, and Mr. Harthouse was soon idly gay
+on indifferent subjects. But from this day, the Sparsit action upon Mr.
+Bounderby threw Louisa and James Harthouse more together, and
+strengthened the dangerous alienation from her husband and confidence
+against him with another, into which she had fallen by degrees so fine
+that she could not retrace them if she tried. But whether she ever tried
+or no, lay hidden in her own closed heart.
+
+Mrs. Sparsit was so much affected on this particular occasion, that,
+assisting Mr. Bounderby to his hat after breakfast, and being then alone
+with him in the hall, she imprinted a chaste kiss upon his hand, murmured
+‘My benefactor!’ and retired, overwhelmed with grief. Yet it is an
+indubitable fact, within the cognizance of this history, that five
+minutes after he had left the house in the self-same hat, the same
+descendant of the Scadgerses and connexion by matrimony of the Powlers,
+shook her right-hand mitten at his portrait, made a contemptuous grimace
+at that work of art, and said ‘Serve you right, you Noodle, and I am glad
+of it.’
+
+Mr. Bounderby had not been long gone, when Bitzer appeared. Bitzer had
+come down by train, shrieking and rattling over the long line of arches
+that bestrode the wild country of past and present coal-pits, with an
+express from Stone Lodge. It was a hasty note to inform Louisa that Mrs.
+Gradgrind lay very ill. She had never been well within her daughter’s
+knowledge; but, she had declined within the last few days, had continued
+sinking all through the night, and was now as nearly dead, as her limited
+capacity of being in any state that implied the ghost of an intention to
+get out of it, allowed.
+
+Accompanied by the lightest of porters, fit colourless servitor at
+Death’s door when Mrs. Gradgrind knocked, Louisa rumbled to Coketown,
+over the coal-pits past and present, and was whirled into its smoky jaws.
+She dismissed the messenger to his own devices, and rode away to her old
+home.
+
+She had seldom been there since her marriage. Her father was usually
+sifting and sifting at his parliamentary cinder-heap in London (without
+being observed to turn up many precious articles among the rubbish), and
+was still hard at it in the national dust-yard. Her mother had taken it
+rather as a disturbance than otherwise, to be visited, as she reclined
+upon her sofa; young people, Louisa felt herself all unfit for; Sissy she
+had never softened to again, since the night when the stroller’s child
+had raised her eyes to look at Mr. Bounderby’s intended wife. She had no
+inducements to go back, and had rarely gone.
+
+Neither, as she approached her old home now, did any of the best
+influences of old home descend upon her. The dreams of childhood—its
+airy fables; its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of
+the world beyond: so good to be believed in once, so good to be
+remembered when outgrown, for then the least among them rises to the
+stature of a great Charity in the heart, suffering little children to
+come into the midst of it, and to keep with their pure hands a garden in
+the stony ways of this world, wherein it were better for all the children
+of Adam that they should oftener sun themselves, simple and trustful, and
+not worldly-wise—what had she to do with these? Remembrances of how she
+had journeyed to the little that she knew, by the enchanted roads of what
+she and millions of innocent creatures had hoped and imagined; of how,
+first coming upon Reason through the tender light of Fancy, she had seen
+it a beneficent god, deferring to gods as great as itself; not a grim
+Idol, cruel and cold, with its victims bound hand to foot, and its big
+dumb shape set up with a sightless stare, never to be moved by anything
+but so many calculated tons of leverage—what had she to do with these?
+Her remembrances of home and childhood were remembrances of the drying up
+of every spring and fountain in her young heart as it gushed out. The
+golden waters were not there. They were flowing for the fertilization of
+the land where grapes are gathered from thorns, and figs from thistles.
+
+She went, with a heavy, hardened kind of sorrow upon her, into the house
+and into her mother’s room. Since the time of her leaving home, Sissy
+had lived with the rest of the family on equal terms. Sissy was at her
+mother’s side; and Jane, her sister, now ten or twelve years old, was in
+the room.
+
+There was great trouble before it could be made known to Mrs. Gradgrind
+that her eldest child was there. She reclined, propped up, from mere
+habit, on a couch: as nearly in her old usual attitude, as anything so
+helpless could be kept in. She had positively refused to take to her
+bed; on the ground that if she did, she would never hear the last of it.
+
+Her feeble voice sounded so far away in her bundle of shawls, and the
+sound of another voice addressing her seemed to take such a long time in
+getting down to her ears, that she might have been lying at the bottom of
+a well. The poor lady was nearer Truth than she ever had been: which had
+much to do with it.
+
+On being told that Mrs. Bounderby was there, she replied, at
+cross-purposes, that she had never called him by that name since he
+married Louisa; that pending her choice of an objectionable name, she had
+called him J; and that she could not at present depart from that
+regulation, not being yet provided with a permanent substitute. Louisa
+had sat by her for some minutes, and had spoken to her often, before she
+arrived at a clear understanding who it was. She then seemed to come to
+it all at once.
+
+‘Well, my dear,’ said Mrs. Gradgrind, ‘and I hope you are going on
+satisfactorily to yourself. It was all your father’s doing. He set his
+heart upon it. And he ought to know.’
+
+‘I want to hear of you, mother; not of myself.’
+
+‘You want to hear of me, my dear? That’s something new, I am sure, when
+anybody wants to hear of me. Not at all well, Louisa. Very faint and
+giddy.’
+
+‘Are you in pain, dear mother?’
+
+‘I think there’s a pain somewhere in the room,’ said Mrs. Gradgrind, ‘but
+I couldn’t positively say that I have got it.’
+
+After this strange speech, she lay silent for some time. Louisa, holding
+her hand, could feel no pulse; but kissing it, could see a slight thin
+thread of life in fluttering motion.
+
+‘You very seldom see your sister,’ said Mrs. Gradgrind. ‘She grows like
+you. I wish you would look at her. Sissy, bring her here.’
+
+She was brought, and stood with her hand in her sister’s. Louisa had
+observed her with her arm round Sissy’s neck, and she felt the difference
+of this approach.
+
+‘Do you see the likeness, Louisa?’
+
+‘Yes, mother. I should think her like me. But—’
+
+‘Eh! Yes, I always say so,’ Mrs. Gradgrind cried, with unexpected
+quickness. ‘And that reminds me. I—I want to speak to you, my dear.
+Sissy, my good girl, leave us alone a minute.’ Louisa had relinquished
+the hand: had thought that her sister’s was a better and brighter face
+than hers had ever been: had seen in it, not without a rising feeling of
+resentment, even in that place and at that time, something of the
+gentleness of the other face in the room; the sweet face with the
+trusting eyes, made paler than watching and sympathy made it, by the rich
+dark hair.
+
+Left alone with her mother, Louisa saw her lying with an awful lull upon
+her face, like one who was floating away upon some great water, all
+resistance over, content to be carried down the stream. She put the
+shadow of a hand to her lips again, and recalled her.
+
+‘You were going to speak to me, mother.’
+
+‘Eh? Yes, to be sure, my dear. You know your father is almost always
+away now, and therefore I must write to him about it.’
+
+‘About what, mother? Don’t be troubled. About what?’
+
+‘You must remember, my dear, that whenever I have said anything, on any
+subject, I have never heard the last of it: and consequently, that I have
+long left off saying anything.’
+
+‘I can hear you, mother.’ But, it was only by dint of bending down to
+her ear, and at the same time attentively watching the lips as they
+moved, that she could link such faint and broken sounds into any chain of
+connexion.
+
+‘You learnt a great deal, Louisa, and so did your brother. Ologies of
+all kinds from morning to night. If there is any Ology left, of any
+description, that has not been worn to rags in this house, all I can say
+is, I hope I shall never hear its name.’
+
+‘I can hear you, mother, when you have strength to go on.’ This, to keep
+her from floating away.
+
+‘But there is something—not an Ology at all—that your father has missed,
+or forgotten, Louisa. I don’t know what it is. I have often sat with
+Sissy near me, and thought about it. I shall never get its name now.
+But your father may. It makes me restless. I want to write to him, to
+find out for God’s sake, what it is. Give me a pen, give me a pen.’
+
+Even the power of restlessness was gone, except from the poor head, which
+could just turn from side to side.
+
+She fancied, however, that her request had been complied with, and that
+the pen she could not have held was in her hand. It matters little what
+figures of wonderful no-meaning she began to trace upon her wrappers.
+The hand soon stopped in the midst of them; the light that had always
+been feeble and dim behind the weak transparency, went out; and even Mrs.
+Gradgrind, emerged from the shadow in which man walketh and disquieteth
+himself in vain, took upon her the dread solemnity of the sages and
+patriarchs.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+MRS. SPARSIT’S STAIRCASE
+
+
+MRS. SPARSIT’S nerves being slow to recover their tone, the worthy woman
+made a stay of some weeks in duration at Mr. Bounderby’s retreat, where,
+notwithstanding her anchorite turn of mind based upon her becoming
+consciousness of her altered station, she resigned herself with noble
+fortitude to lodging, as one may say, in clover, and feeding on the fat
+of the land. During the whole term of this recess from the guardianship
+of the Bank, Mrs. Sparsit was a pattern of consistency; continuing to
+take such pity on Mr. Bounderby to his face, as is rarely taken on man,
+and to call his portrait a Noodle to _its_ face, with the greatest
+acrimony and contempt.
+
+Mr. Bounderby, having got it into his explosive composition that Mrs.
+Sparsit was a highly superior woman to perceive that he had that general
+cross upon him in his deserts (for he had not yet settled what it was),
+and further that Louisa would have objected to her as a frequent visitor
+if it had comported with his greatness that she should object to anything
+he chose to do, resolved not to lose sight of Mrs. Sparsit easily. So
+when her nerves were strung up to the pitch of again consuming
+sweetbreads in solitude, he said to her at the dinner-table, on the day
+before her departure, ‘I tell you what, ma’am; you shall come down here
+of a Saturday, while the fine weather lasts, and stay till Monday.’ To
+which Mrs. Sparsit returned, in effect, though not of the Mahomedan
+persuasion: ‘To hear is to obey.’
+
+Now, Mrs. Sparsit was not a poetical woman; but she took an idea in the
+nature of an allegorical fancy, into her head. Much watching of Louisa,
+and much consequent observation of her impenetrable demeanour, which
+keenly whetted and sharpened Mrs. Sparsit’s edge, must have given her as
+it were a lift, in the way of inspiration. She erected in her mind a
+mighty Staircase, with a dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom; and
+down those stairs, from day to day and hour to hour, she saw Louisa
+coming.
+
+It became the business of Mrs. Sparsit’s life, to look up at her
+staircase, and to watch Louisa coming down. Sometimes slowly, sometimes
+quickly, sometimes several steps at one bout, sometimes stopping, never
+turning back. If she had once turned back, it might have been the death
+of Mrs. Sparsit in spleen and grief.
+
+She had been descending steadily, to the day, and on the day, when Mr.
+Bounderby issued the weekly invitation recorded above. Mrs. Sparsit was
+in good spirits, and inclined to be conversational.
+
+‘And pray, sir,’ said she, ‘if I may venture to ask a question
+appertaining to any subject on which you show reserve—which is indeed
+hardy in me, for I well know you have a reason for everything you do—have
+you received intelligence respecting the robbery?’
+
+‘Why, ma’am, no; not yet. Under the circumstances, I didn’t expect it
+yet. Rome wasn’t built in a day, ma’am.’
+
+‘Very true, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head.
+
+‘Nor yet in a week, ma’am.’
+
+‘No, indeed, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a gentle melancholy upon
+her.
+
+‘In a similar manner, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘I can wait, you know. If
+Romulus and Remus could wait, Josiah Bounderby can wait. They were
+better off in their youth than I was, however. They had a she-wolf for a
+nurse; I had only a she-wolf for a grandmother. She didn’t give any
+milk, ma’am; she gave bruises. She was a regular Alderney at that.’
+
+‘Ah!’ Mrs. Sparsit sighed and shuddered.
+
+‘No, ma’am,’ continued Bounderby, ‘I have not heard anything more about
+it. It’s in hand, though; and young Tom, who rather sticks to business
+at present—something new for him; he hadn’t the schooling _I_ had—is
+helping. My injunction is, Keep it quiet, and let it seem to blow over.
+Do what you like under the rose, but don’t give a sign of what you’re
+about; or half a hundred of ’em will combine together and get this fellow
+who has bolted, out of reach for good. Keep it quiet, and the thieves
+will grow in confidence by little and little, and we shall have ’em.’
+
+‘Very sagacious indeed, sir,’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘Very interesting. The
+old woman you mentioned, sir—’
+
+‘The old woman I mentioned, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, cutting the matter
+short, as it was nothing to boast about, ‘is not laid hold of; but, she
+may take her oath she will be, if that is any satisfaction to her
+villainous old mind. In the mean time, ma’am, I am of opinion, if you
+ask me my opinion, that the less she is talked about, the better.’
+
+The same evening, Mrs. Sparsit, in her chamber window, resting from her
+packing operations, looked towards her great staircase and saw Louisa
+still descending.
+
+She sat by Mr. Harthouse, in an alcove in the garden, talking very low;
+he stood leaning over her, as they whispered together, and his face
+almost touched her hair. ‘If not quite!’ said Mrs. Sparsit, straining
+her hawk’s eyes to the utmost. Mrs. Sparsit was too distant to hear a
+word of their discourse, or even to know that they were speaking softly,
+otherwise than from the expression of their figures; but what they said
+was this:
+
+‘You recollect the man, Mr. Harthouse?’
+
+‘Oh, perfectly!’
+
+‘His face, and his manner, and what he said?’
+
+‘Perfectly. And an infinitely dreary person he appeared to me to be.
+Lengthy and prosy in the extreme. It was knowing to hold forth, in the
+humble-virtue school of eloquence; but, I assure you I thought at the
+time, “My good fellow, you are over-doing this!”’
+
+‘It has been very difficult to me to think ill of that man.’
+
+‘My dear Louisa—as Tom says.’ Which he never did say. ‘You know no good
+of the fellow?’
+
+‘No, certainly.’
+
+‘Nor of any other such person?’
+
+‘How can I,’ she returned, with more of her first manner on her than he
+had lately seen, ‘when I know nothing of them, men or women?’
+
+‘My dear Louisa, then consent to receive the submissive representation of
+your devoted friend, who knows something of several varieties of his
+excellent fellow-creatures—for excellent they are, I am quite ready to
+believe, in spite of such little foibles as always helping themselves to
+what they can get hold of. This fellow talks. Well; every fellow talks.
+He professes morality. Well; all sorts of humbugs profess morality.
+From the House of Commons to the House of Correction, there is a general
+profession of morality, except among our people; it really is that
+exception which makes our people quite reviving. You saw and heard the
+case. Here was one of the fluffy classes pulled up extremely short by my
+esteemed friend Mr. Bounderby—who, as we know, is not possessed of that
+delicacy which would soften so tight a hand. The member of the fluffy
+classes was injured, exasperated, left the house grumbling, met somebody
+who proposed to him to go in for some share in this Bank business, went
+in, put something in his pocket which had nothing in it before, and
+relieved his mind extremely. Really he would have been an uncommon,
+instead of a common, fellow, if he had not availed himself of such an
+opportunity. Or he may have originated it altogether, if he had the
+cleverness.’
+
+‘I almost feel as though it must be bad in me,’ returned Louisa, after
+sitting thoughtful awhile, ‘to be so ready to agree with you, and to be
+so lightened in my heart by what you say.’
+
+‘I only say what is reasonable; nothing worse. I have talked it over
+with my friend Tom more than once—of course I remain on terms of perfect
+confidence with Tom—and he is quite of my opinion, and I am quite of his.
+Will you walk?’
+
+They strolled away, among the lanes beginning to be indistinct in the
+twilight—she leaning on his arm—and she little thought how she was going
+down, down, down, Mrs. Sparsit’s staircase.
+
+Night and day, Mrs. Sparsit kept it standing. When Louisa had arrived at
+the bottom and disappeared in the gulf, it might fall in upon her if it
+would; but, until then, there it was to be, a Building, before Mrs.
+Sparsit’s eyes. And there Louisa always was, upon it.
+
+And always gliding down, down, down!
+
+Mrs. Sparsit saw James Harthouse come and go; she heard of him here and
+there; she saw the changes of the face he had studied; she, too, remarked
+to a nicety how and when it clouded, how and when it cleared; she kept
+her black eyes wide open, with no touch of pity, with no touch of
+compunction, all absorbed in interest. In the interest of seeing her,
+ever drawing, with no hand to stay her, nearer and nearer to the bottom
+of this new Giant’s Staircase.
+
+With all her deference for Mr. Bounderby as contradistinguished from his
+portrait, Mrs. Sparsit had not the smallest intention of interrupting the
+descent. Eager to see it accomplished, and yet patient, she waited for
+the last fall, as for the ripeness and fulness of the harvest of her
+hopes. Hushed in expectancy, she kept her wary gaze upon the stairs; and
+seldom so much as darkly shook her right mitten (with her fist in it), at
+the figure coming down.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+LOWER AND LOWER
+
+
+THE figure descended the great stairs, steadily, steadily; always
+verging, like a weight in deep water, to the black gulf at the bottom.
+
+Mr. Gradgrind, apprised of his wife’s decease, made an expedition from
+London, and buried her in a business-like manner. He then returned with
+promptitude to the national cinder-heap, and resumed his sifting for the
+odds and ends he wanted, and his throwing of the dust about into the eyes
+of other people who wanted other odds and ends—in fact resumed his
+parliamentary duties.
+
+In the meantime, Mrs. Sparsit kept unwinking watch and ward. Separated
+from her staircase, all the week, by the length of iron road dividing
+Coketown from the country house, she yet maintained her cat-like
+observation of Louisa, through her husband, through her brother, through
+James Harthouse, through the outsides of letters and packets, through
+everything animate and inanimate that at any time went near the stairs.
+‘Your foot on the last step, my lady,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, apostrophizing
+the descending figure, with the aid of her threatening mitten, ‘and all
+your art shall never blind me.’
+
+Art or nature though, the original stock of Louisa’s character or the
+graft of circumstances upon it,—her curious reserve did baffle, while it
+stimulated, one as sagacious as Mrs. Sparsit. There were times when Mr.
+James Harthouse was not sure of her. There were times when he could not
+read the face he had studied so long; and when this lonely girl was a
+greater mystery to him, than any woman of the world with a ring of
+satellites to help her.
+
+So the time went on; until it happened that Mr. Bounderby was called away
+from home by business which required his presence elsewhere, for three or
+four days. It was on a Friday that he intimated this to Mrs. Sparsit at
+the Bank, adding: ‘But you’ll go down to-morrow, ma’am, all the same.
+You’ll go down just as if I was there. It will make no difference to
+you.’
+
+‘Pray, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, reproachfully, ‘let me beg you not to
+say that. Your absence will make a vast difference to me, sir, as I
+think you very well know.’
+
+‘Well, ma’am, then you must get on in my absence as well as you can,’
+said Mr. Bounderby, not displeased.
+
+‘Mr. Bounderby,’ retorted Mrs. Sparsit, ‘your will is to me a law, sir;
+otherwise, it might be my inclination to dispute your kind commands, not
+feeling sure that it will be quite so agreeable to Miss Gradgrind to
+receive me, as it ever is to your own munificent hospitality. But you
+shall say no more, sir. I will go, upon your invitation.’
+
+‘Why, when I invite you to my house, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, opening his
+eyes, ‘I should hope you want no other invitation.’
+
+‘No, indeed, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit, ‘I should hope not. Say no
+more, sir. I would, sir, I could see you gay again.’
+
+‘What do you mean, ma’am?’ blustered Bounderby.
+
+‘Sir,’ rejoined Mrs. Sparsit, ‘there was wont to be an elasticity in you
+which I sadly miss. Be buoyant, sir!’
+
+Mr. Bounderby, under the influence of this difficult adjuration, backed
+up by her compassionate eye, could only scratch his head in a feeble and
+ridiculous manner, and afterwards assert himself at a distance, by being
+heard to bully the small fry of business all the morning.
+
+‘Bitzer,’ said Mrs. Sparsit that afternoon, when her patron was gone on
+his journey, and the Bank was closing, ‘present my compliments to young
+Mr. Thomas, and ask him if he would step up and partake of a lamb chop
+and walnut ketchup, with a glass of India ale?’ Young Mr. Thomas being
+usually ready for anything in that way, returned a gracious answer, and
+followed on its heels. ‘Mr. Thomas,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘these plain
+viands being on table, I thought you might be tempted.’
+
+‘Thank’ee, Mrs. Sparsit,’ said the whelp. And gloomily fell to.
+
+‘How is Mr. Harthouse, Mr. Tom?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit.
+
+‘Oh, he’s all right,’ said Tom.
+
+‘Where may he be at present?’ Mrs. Sparsit asked in a light
+conversational manner, after mentally devoting the whelp to the Furies
+for being so uncommunicative.
+
+‘He is shooting in Yorkshire,’ said Tom. ‘Sent Loo a basket half as big
+as a church, yesterday.’
+
+‘The kind of gentleman, now,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, sweetly, ‘whom one might
+wager to be a good shot!’
+
+‘Crack,’ said Tom.
+
+He had long been a down-looking young fellow, but this characteristic had
+so increased of late, that he never raised his eyes to any face for three
+seconds together. Mrs. Sparsit consequently had ample means of watching
+his looks, if she were so inclined.
+
+‘Mr. Harthouse is a great favourite of mine,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘as
+indeed he is of most people. May we expect to see him again shortly, Mr.
+Tom?’
+
+‘Why, _I_ expect to see him to-morrow,’ returned the whelp.
+
+‘Good news!’ cried Mrs. Sparsit, blandly.
+
+‘I have got an appointment with him to meet him in the evening at the
+station here,’ said Tom, ‘and I am going to dine with him afterwards, I
+believe. He is not coming down to the country house for a week or so,
+being due somewhere else. At least, he says so; but I shouldn’t wonder
+if he was to stop here over Sunday, and stray that way.’
+
+‘Which reminds me!’ said Mrs. Sparsit. ‘Would you remember a message to
+your sister, Mr. Tom, if I was to charge you with one?’
+
+‘Well? I’ll try,’ returned the reluctant whelp, ‘if it isn’t a long un.’
+
+‘It is merely my respectful compliments,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, ‘and I fear
+I may not trouble her with my society this week; being still a little
+nervous, and better perhaps by my poor self.’
+
+‘Oh! If that’s all,’ observed Tom, ‘it wouldn’t much matter, even if I
+was to forget it, for Loo’s not likely to think of you unless she sees
+you.’
+
+Having paid for his entertainment with this agreeable compliment, he
+relapsed into a hangdog silence until there was no more India ale left,
+when he said, ‘Well, Mrs. Sparsit, I must be off!’ and went off.
+
+Next day, Saturday, Mrs. Sparsit sat at her window all day long looking
+at the customers coming in and out, watching the postmen, keeping an eye
+on the general traffic of the street, revolving many things in her mind,
+but, above all, keeping her attention on her staircase. The evening
+come, she put on her bonnet and shawl, and went quietly out: having her
+reasons for hovering in a furtive way about the station by which a
+passenger would arrive from Yorkshire, and for preferring to peep into it
+round pillars and corners, and out of ladies’ waiting-room windows, to
+appearing in its precincts openly.
+
+Tom was in attendance, and loitered about until the expected train came
+in. It brought no Mr. Harthouse. Tom waited until the crowd had
+dispersed, and the bustle was over; and then referred to a posted list of
+trains, and took counsel with porters. That done, he strolled away idly,
+stopping in the street and looking up it and down it, and lifting his hat
+off and putting it on again, and yawning and stretching himself, and
+exhibiting all the symptoms of mortal weariness to be expected in one who
+had still to wait until the next train should come in, an hour and forty
+minutes hence.
+
+‘This is a device to keep him out of the way,’ said Mrs. Sparsit,
+starting from the dull office window whence she had watched him last.
+‘Harthouse is with his sister now!’
+
+It was the conception of an inspired moment, and she shot off with her
+utmost swiftness to work it out. The station for the country house was
+at the opposite end of the town, the time was short, the road not easy;
+but she was so quick in pouncing on a disengaged coach, so quick in
+darting out of it, producing her money, seizing her ticket, and diving
+into the train, that she was borne along the arches spanning the land of
+coal-pits past and present, as if she had been caught up in a cloud and
+whirled away.
+
+All the journey, immovable in the air though never left behind; plain to
+the dark eyes of her mind, as the electric wires which ruled a colossal
+strip of music-paper out of the evening sky, were plain to the dark eyes
+of her body; Mrs. Sparsit saw her staircase, with the figure coming down.
+Very near the bottom now. Upon the brink of the abyss.
+
+An overcast September evening, just at nightfall, saw beneath its
+drooping eyelids Mrs. Sparsit glide out of her carriage, pass down the
+wooden steps of the little station into a stony road, cross it into a
+green lane, and become hidden in a summer-growth of leaves and branches.
+One or two late birds sleepily chirping in their nests, and a bat heavily
+crossing and recrossing her, and the reek of her own tread in the thick
+dust that felt like velvet, were all Mrs. Sparsit heard or saw until she
+very softly closed a gate.
+
+She went up to the house, keeping within the shrubbery, and went round
+it, peeping between the leaves at the lower windows. Most of them were
+open, as they usually were in such warm weather, but there were no lights
+yet, and all was silent. She tried the garden with no better effect.
+She thought of the wood, and stole towards it, heedless of long grass and
+briers: of worms, snails, and slugs, and all the creeping things that be.
+With her dark eyes and her hook nose warily in advance of her, Mrs.
+Sparsit softly crushed her way through the thick undergrowth, so intent
+upon her object that she probably would have done no less, if the wood
+had been a wood of adders.
+
+Hark!
+
+The smaller birds might have tumbled out of their nests, fascinated by
+the glittering of Mrs. Sparsit’s eyes in the gloom, as she stopped and
+listened.
+
+Low voices close at hand. His voice and hers. The appointment _was_ a
+device to keep the brother away! There they were yonder, by the felled
+tree.
+
+Bending low among the dewy grass, Mrs. Sparsit advanced closer to them.
+She drew herself up, and stood behind a tree, like Robinson Crusoe in his
+ambuscade against the savages; so near to them that at a spring, and that
+no great one, she could have touched them both. He was there secretly,
+and had not shown himself at the house. He had come on horseback, and
+must have passed through the neighbouring fields; for his horse was tied
+to the meadow side of the fence, within a few paces.
+
+‘My dearest love,’ said he, ‘what could I do? Knowing you were alone,
+was it possible that I could stay away?’
+
+‘You may hang your head, to make yourself the more attractive; _I_ don’t
+know what they see in you when you hold it up,’ thought Mrs. Sparsit;
+‘but you little think, my dearest love, whose eyes are on you!’
+
+That she hung her head, was certain. She urged him to go away, she
+commanded him to go away; but she neither turned her face to him, nor
+raised it. Yet it was remarkable that she sat as still as ever the
+amiable woman in ambuscade had seen her sit, at any period in her life.
+Her hands rested in one another, like the hands of a statue; and even her
+manner of speaking was not hurried.
+
+‘My dear child,’ said Harthouse; Mrs. Sparsit saw with delight that his
+arm embraced her; ‘will you not bear with my society for a little while?’
+
+‘Not here.’
+
+‘Where, Louisa?
+
+‘Not here.’
+
+‘But we have so little time to make so much of, and I have come so far,
+and am altogether so devoted, and distracted. There never was a slave at
+once so devoted and ill-used by his mistress. To look for your sunny
+welcome that has warmed me into life, and to be received in your frozen
+manner, is heart-rending.’
+
+‘Am I to say again, that I must be left to myself here?’
+
+‘But we must meet, my dear Louisa. Where shall we meet?’
+
+They both started. The listener started, guiltily, too; for she thought
+there was another listener among the trees. It was only rain, beginning
+to fall fast, in heavy drops.
+
+‘Shall I ride up to the house a few minutes hence, innocently supposing
+that its master is at home and will be charmed to receive me?’
+
+‘No!’
+
+‘Your cruel commands are implicitly to be obeyed; though I am the most
+unfortunate fellow in the world, I believe, to have been insensible to
+all other women, and to have fallen prostrate at last under the foot of
+the most beautiful, and the most engaging, and the most imperious. My
+dearest Louisa, I cannot go myself, or let you go, in this hard abuse of
+your power.’
+
+Mrs. Sparsit saw him detain her with his encircling arm, and heard him
+then and there, within her (Mrs. Sparsit’s) greedy hearing, tell her how
+he loved her, and how she was the stake for which he ardently desired to
+play away all that he had in life. The objects he had lately pursued,
+turned worthless beside her; such success as was almost in his grasp, he
+flung away from him like the dirt it was, compared with her. Its
+pursuit, nevertheless, if it kept him near her, or its renunciation if it
+took him from her, or flight if she shared it, or secrecy if she
+commanded it, or any fate, or every fate, all was alike to him, so that
+she was true to him,—the man who had seen how cast away she was, whom she
+had inspired at their first meeting with an admiration, an interest, of
+which he had thought himself incapable, whom she had received into her
+confidence, who was devoted to her and adored her. All this, and more,
+in his hurry, and in hers, in the whirl of her own gratified malice, in
+the dread of being discovered, in the rapidly increasing noise of heavy
+rain among the leaves, and a thunderstorm rolling up—Mrs. Sparsit
+received into her mind, set off with such an unavoidable halo of
+confusion and indistinctness, that when at length he climbed the fence
+and led his horse away, she was not sure where they were to meet, or
+when, except that they had said it was to be that night.
+
+But one of them yet remained in the darkness before her; and while she
+tracked that one she must be right. ‘Oh, my dearest love,’ thought Mrs.
+Sparsit, ‘you little think how well attended you are!’
+
+Mrs. Sparsit saw her out of the wood, and saw her enter the house. What
+to do next? It rained now, in a sheet of water. Mrs. Sparsit’s white
+stockings were of many colours, green predominating; prickly things were
+in her shoes; caterpillars slung themselves, in hammocks of their own
+making, from various parts of her dress; rills ran from her bonnet, and
+her Roman nose. In such condition, Mrs. Sparsit stood hidden in the
+density of the shrubbery, considering what next?
+
+Lo, Louisa coming out of the house! Hastily cloaked and muffled, and
+stealing away. She elopes! She falls from the lowermost stair, and is
+swallowed up in the gulf.
+
+Indifferent to the rain, and moving with a quick determined step, she
+struck into a side-path parallel with the ride. Mrs. Sparsit followed in
+the shadow of the trees, at but a short distance; for it was not easy to
+keep a figure in view going quickly through the umbrageous darkness.
+
+When she stopped to close the side-gate without noise, Mrs. Sparsit
+stopped. When she went on, Mrs. Sparsit went on. She went by the way
+Mrs. Sparsit had come, emerged from the green lane, crossed the stony
+road, and ascended the wooden steps to the railroad. A train for
+Coketown would come through presently, Mrs. Sparsit knew; so she
+understood Coketown to be her first place of destination.
+
+In Mrs. Sparsit’s limp and streaming state, no extensive precautions were
+necessary to change her usual appearance; but, she stopped under the lee
+of the station wall, tumbled her shawl into a new shape, and put it on
+over her bonnet. So disguised she had no fear of being recognized when
+she followed up the railroad steps, and paid her money in the small
+office. Louisa sat waiting in a corner. Mrs. Sparsit sat waiting in
+another corner. Both listened to the thunder, which was loud, and to the
+rain, as it washed off the roof, and pattered on the parapets of the
+arches. Two or three lamps were rained out and blown out; so, both saw
+the lightning to advantage as it quivered and zigzagged on the iron
+tracks.
+
+The seizure of the station with a fit of trembling, gradually deepening
+to a complaint of the heart, announced the train. Fire and steam, and
+smoke, and red light; a hiss, a crash, a bell, and a shriek; Louisa put
+into one carriage, Mrs. Sparsit put into another: the little station a
+desert speck in the thunderstorm.
+
+Though her teeth chattered in her head from wet and cold, Mrs. Sparsit
+exulted hugely. The figure had plunged down the precipice, and she felt
+herself, as it were, attending on the body. Could she, who had been so
+active in the getting up of the funeral triumph, do less than exult?
+‘She will be at Coketown long before him,’ thought Mrs. Sparsit, ‘though
+his horse is never so good. Where will she wait for him? And where will
+they go together? Patience. We shall see.’
+
+The tremendous rain occasioned infinite confusion, when the train stopped
+at its destination. Gutters and pipes had burst, drains had overflowed,
+and streets were under water. In the first instant of alighting, Mrs.
+Sparsit turned her distracted eyes towards the waiting coaches, which
+were in great request. ‘She will get into one,’ she considered, ‘and
+will be away before I can follow in another. At all risks of being run
+over, I must see the number, and hear the order given to the coachman.’
+
+But, Mrs. Sparsit was wrong in her calculation. Louisa got into no
+coach, and was already gone. The black eyes kept upon the
+railroad-carriage in which she had travelled, settled upon it a moment
+too late. The door not being opened after several minutes, Mrs. Sparsit
+passed it and repassed it, saw nothing, looked in, and found it empty.
+Wet through and through: with her feet squelching and squashing in her
+shoes whenever she moved; with a rash of rain upon her classical visage;
+with a bonnet like an over-ripe fig; with all her clothes spoiled; with
+damp impressions of every button, string, and hook-and-eye she wore,
+printed off upon her highly connected back; with a stagnant verdure on
+her general exterior, such as accumulates on an old park fence in a
+mouldy lane; Mrs. Sparsit had no resource but to burst into tears of
+bitterness and say, ‘I have lost her!’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+DOWN
+
+
+THE national dustmen, after entertaining one another with a great many
+noisy little fights among themselves, had dispersed for the present, and
+Mr. Gradgrind was at home for the vacation.
+
+He sat writing in the room with the deadly statistical clock, proving
+something no doubt—probably, in the main, that the Good Samaritan was a
+Bad Economist. The noise of the rain did not disturb him much; but it
+attracted his attention sufficiently to make him raise his head
+sometimes, as if he were rather remonstrating with the elements. When it
+thundered very loudly, he glanced towards Coketown, having it in his mind
+that some of the tall chimneys might be struck by lightning.
+
+The thunder was rolling into distance, and the rain was pouring down like
+a deluge, when the door of his room opened. He looked round the lamp
+upon his table, and saw, with amazement, his eldest daughter.
+
+‘Louisa!’
+
+‘Father, I want to speak to you.’
+
+‘What is the matter? How strange you look! And good Heaven,’ said Mr.
+Gradgrind, wondering more and more, ‘have you come here exposed to this
+storm?’
+
+She put her hands to her dress, as if she hardly knew. ‘Yes.’ Then she
+uncovered her head, and letting her cloak and hood fall where they might,
+stood looking at him: so colourless, so dishevelled, so defiant and
+despairing, that he was afraid of her.
+
+‘What is it? I conjure you, Louisa, tell me what is the matter.’
+
+She dropped into a chair before him, and put her cold hand on his arm.
+
+‘Father, you have trained me from my cradle?’
+
+‘Yes, Louisa.’
+
+‘I curse the hour in which I was born to such a destiny.’
+
+He looked at her in doubt and dread, vacantly repeating: ‘Curse the hour?
+Curse the hour?’
+
+‘How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable
+things that raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are the
+graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you
+done, O father, what have you done, with the garden that should have
+bloomed once, in this great wilderness here!’
+
+She struck herself with both her hands upon her bosom.
+
+‘If it had ever been here, its ashes alone would save me from the void in
+which my whole life sinks. I did not mean to say this; but, father, you
+remember the last time we conversed in this room?’
+
+He had been so wholly unprepared for what he heard now, that it was with
+difficulty he answered, ‘Yes, Louisa.’
+
+‘What has risen to my lips now, would have risen to my lips then, if you
+had given me a moment’s help. I don’t reproach you, father. What you
+have never nurtured in me, you have never nurtured in yourself; but O! if
+you had only done so long ago, or if you had only neglected me, what a
+much better and much happier creature I should have been this day!’
+
+On hearing this, after all his care, he bowed his head upon his hand and
+groaned aloud.
+
+‘Father, if you had known, when we were last together here, what even I
+feared while I strove against it—as it has been my task from infancy to
+strive against every natural prompting that has arisen in my heart; if
+you had known that there lingered in my breast, sensibilities,
+affections, weaknesses capable of being cherished into strength, defying
+all the calculations ever made by man, and no more known to his
+arithmetic than his Creator is,—would you have given me to the husband
+whom I am now sure that I hate?’
+
+He said, ‘No. No, my poor child.’
+
+‘Would you have doomed me, at any time, to the frost and blight that have
+hardened and spoiled me? Would you have robbed me—for no one’s
+enrichment—only for the greater desolation of this world—of the
+immaterial part of my life, the spring and summer of my belief, my refuge
+from what is sordid and bad in the real things around me, my school in
+which I should have learned to be more humble and more trusting with
+them, and to hope in my little sphere to make them better?’
+
+‘O no, no. No, Louisa.’
+
+‘Yet, father, if I had been stone blind; if I had groped my way by my
+sense of touch, and had been free, while I knew the shapes and surfaces
+of things, to exercise my fancy somewhat, in regard to them; I should
+have been a million times wiser, happier, more loving, more contented,
+more innocent and human in all good respects, than I am with the eyes I
+have. Now, hear what I have come to say.’
+
+He moved, to support her with his arm. She rising as he did so, they
+stood close together: she, with a hand upon his shoulder, looking fixedly
+in his face.
+
+‘With a hunger and thirst upon me, father, which have never been for a
+moment appeased; with an ardent impulse towards some region where rules,
+and figures, and definitions were not quite absolute; I have grown up,
+battling every inch of my way.’
+
+‘I never knew you were unhappy, my child.’
+
+‘Father, I always knew it. In this strife I have almost repulsed and
+crushed my better angel into a demon. What I have learned has left me
+doubting, misbelieving, despising, regretting, what I have not learned;
+and my dismal resource has been to think that life would soon go by, and
+that nothing in it could be worth the pain and trouble of a contest.’
+
+‘And you so young, Louisa!’ he said with pity.
+
+‘And I so young. In this condition, father—for I show you now, without
+fear or favour, the ordinary deadened state of my mind as I know it—you
+proposed my husband to me. I took him. I never made a pretence to him
+or you that I loved him. I knew, and, father, you knew, and he knew,
+that I never did. I was not wholly indifferent, for I had a hope of
+being pleasant and useful to Tom. I made that wild escape into something
+visionary, and have slowly found out how wild it was. But Tom had been
+the subject of all the little tenderness of my life; perhaps he became so
+because I knew so well how to pity him. It matters little now, except as
+it may dispose you to think more leniently of his errors.’
+
+As her father held her in his arms, she put her other hand upon his other
+shoulder, and still looking fixedly in his face, went on.
+
+‘When I was irrevocably married, there rose up into rebellion against the
+tie, the old strife, made fiercer by all those causes of disparity which
+arise out of our two individual natures, and which no general laws shall
+ever rule or state for me, father, until they shall be able to direct the
+anatomist where to strike his knife into the secrets of my soul.’
+
+‘Louisa!’ he said, and said imploringly; for he well remembered what had
+passed between them in their former interview.
+
+‘I do not reproach you, father, I make no complaint. I am here with
+another object.’
+
+‘What can I do, child? Ask me what you will.’
+
+‘I am coming to it. Father, chance then threw into my way a new
+acquaintance; a man such as I had had no experience of; used to the
+world; light, polished, easy; making no pretences; avowing the low
+estimate of everything, that I was half afraid to form in secret;
+conveying to me almost immediately, though I don’t know how or by what
+degrees, that he understood me, and read my thoughts. I could not find
+that he was worse than I. There seemed to be a near affinity between us.
+I only wondered it should be worth his while, who cared for nothing else,
+to care so much for me.’
+
+‘For you, Louisa!’
+
+Her father might instinctively have loosened his hold, but that he felt
+her strength departing from her, and saw a wild dilating fire in the eyes
+steadfastly regarding him.
+
+‘I say nothing of his plea for claiming my confidence. It matters very
+little how he gained it. Father, he did gain it. What you know of the
+story of my marriage, he soon knew, just as well.’
+
+Her father’s face was ashy white, and he held her in both his arms.
+
+‘I have done no worse, I have not disgraced you. But if you ask me
+whether I have loved him, or do love him, I tell you plainly, father,
+that it may be so. I don’t know.’
+
+She took her hands suddenly from his shoulders, and pressed them both
+upon her side; while in her face, not like itself—and in her figure,
+drawn up, resolute to finish by a last effort what she had to say—the
+feelings long suppressed broke loose.
+
+‘This night, my husband being away, he has been with me, declaring
+himself my lover. This minute he expects me, for I could release myself
+of his presence by no other means. I do not know that I am sorry, I do
+not know that I am ashamed, I do not know that I am degraded in my own
+esteem. All that I know is, your philosophy and your teaching will not
+save me. Now, father, you have brought me to this. Save me by some
+other means!’
+
+He tightened his hold in time to prevent her sinking on the floor, but
+she cried out in a terrible voice, ‘I shall die if you hold me! Let me
+fall upon the ground!’ And he laid her down there, and saw the pride of
+his heart and the triumph of his system, lying, an insensible heap, at
+his feet.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ END OF THE SECOND BOOK
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THE THIRD
+_GARNERING_
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+ANOTHER THING NEEDFUL
+
+
+LOUISA awoke from a torpor, and her eyes languidly opened on her old bed
+at home, and her old room. It seemed, at first, as if all that had
+happened since the days when these objects were familiar to her were the
+shadows of a dream, but gradually, as the objects became more real to her
+sight, the events became more real to her mind.
+
+She could scarcely move her head for pain and heaviness, her eyes were
+strained and sore, and she was very weak. A curious passive inattention
+had such possession of her, that the presence of her little sister in the
+room did not attract her notice for some time. Even when their eyes had
+met, and her sister had approached the bed, Louisa lay for minutes
+looking at her in silence, and suffering her timidly to hold her passive
+hand, before she asked:
+
+‘When was I brought to this room?’
+
+‘Last night, Louisa.’
+
+‘Who brought me here?’
+
+‘Sissy, I believe.’
+
+‘Why do you believe so?’
+
+‘Because I found her here this morning. She didn’t come to my bedside to
+wake me, as she always does; and I went to look for her. She was not in
+her own room either; and I went looking for her all over the house, until
+I found her here taking care of you and cooling your head. Will you see
+father? Sissy said I was to tell him when you woke.’
+
+‘What a beaming face you have, Jane!’ said Louisa, as her young
+sister—timidly still—bent down to kiss her.
+
+‘Have I? I am very glad you think so. I am sure it must be Sissy’s
+doing.’
+
+The arm Louisa had begun to twine around her neck, unbent itself. ‘You
+can tell father if you will.’ Then, staying her for a moment, she said,
+‘It was you who made my room so cheerful, and gave it this look of
+welcome?’
+
+‘Oh no, Louisa, it was done before I came. It was—’
+
+Louisa turned upon her pillow, and heard no more. When her sister had
+withdrawn, she turned her head back again, and lay with her face towards
+the door, until it opened and her father entered.
+
+He had a jaded anxious look upon him, and his hand, usually steady,
+trembled in hers. He sat down at the side of the bed, tenderly asking
+how she was, and dwelling on the necessity of her keeping very quiet
+after her agitation and exposure to the weather last night. He spoke in
+a subdued and troubled voice, very different from his usual dictatorial
+manner; and was often at a loss for words.
+
+‘My dear Louisa. My poor daughter.’ He was so much at a loss at that
+place, that he stopped altogether. He tried again.
+
+‘My unfortunate child.’ The place was so difficult to get over, that he
+tried again.
+
+‘It would be hopeless for me, Louisa, to endeavour to tell you how
+overwhelmed I have been, and still am, by what broke upon me last night.
+The ground on which I stand has ceased to be solid under my feet. The
+only support on which I leaned, and the strength of which it seemed, and
+still does seem, impossible to question, has given way in an instant. I
+am stunned by these discoveries. I have no selfish meaning in what I
+say; but I find the shock of what broke upon me last night, to be very
+heavy indeed.’
+
+She could give him no comfort herein. She had suffered the wreck of her
+whole life upon the rock.
+
+‘I will not say, Louisa, that if you had by any happy chance undeceived
+me some time ago, it would have been better for us both; better for your
+peace, and better for mine. For I am sensible that it may not have been
+a part of my system to invite any confidence of that kind. I had proved
+my—my system to myself, and I have rigidly administered it; and I must
+bear the responsibility of its failures. I only entreat you to believe,
+my favourite child, that I have meant to do right.’
+
+He said it earnestly, and to do him justice he had. In gauging
+fathomless deeps with his little mean excise-rod, and in staggering over
+the universe with his rusty stiff-legged compasses, he had meant to do
+great things. Within the limits of his short tether he had tumbled
+about, annihilating the flowers of existence with greater singleness of
+purpose than many of the blatant personages whose company he kept.
+
+‘I am well assured of what you say, father. I know I have been your
+favourite child. I know you have intended to make me happy. I have
+never blamed you, and I never shall.’
+
+He took her outstretched hand, and retained it in his.
+
+‘My dear, I have remained all night at my table, pondering again and
+again on what has so painfully passed between us. When I consider your
+character; when I consider that what has been known to me for hours, has
+been concealed by you for years; when I consider under what immediate
+pressure it has been forced from you at last; I come to the conclusion
+that I cannot but mistrust myself.’
+
+He might have added more than all, when he saw the face now looking at
+him. He did add it in effect, perhaps, as he softly moved her scattered
+hair from her forehead with his hand. Such little actions, slight in
+another man, were very noticeable in him; and his daughter received them
+as if they had been words of contrition.
+
+‘But,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, slowly, and with hesitation, as well as with a
+wretched sense of happiness, ‘if I see reason to mistrust myself for the
+past, Louisa, I should also mistrust myself for the present and the
+future. To speak unreservedly to you, I do. I am far from feeling
+convinced now, however differently I might have felt only this time
+yesterday, that I am fit for the trust you repose in me; that I know how
+to respond to the appeal you have come home to make to me; that I have
+the right instinct—supposing it for the moment to be some quality of that
+nature—how to help you, and to set you right, my child.’
+
+She had turned upon her pillow, and lay with her face upon her arm, so
+that he could not see it. All her wildness and passion had subsided;
+but, though softened, she was not in tears. Her father was changed in
+nothing so much as in the respect that he would have been glad to see her
+in tears.
+
+‘Some persons hold,’ he pursued, still hesitating, ‘that there is a
+wisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of the Heart. I have not
+supposed so; but, as I have said, I mistrust myself now. I have supposed
+the head to be all-sufficient. It may not be all-sufficient; how can I
+venture this morning to say it is! If that other kind of wisdom should
+be what I have neglected, and should be the instinct that is wanted,
+Louisa—’
+
+He suggested it very doubtfully, as if he were half unwilling to admit it
+even now. She made him no answer, lying before him on her bed, still
+half-dressed, much as he had seen her lying on the floor of his room last
+night.
+
+‘Louisa,’ and his hand rested on her hair again, ‘I have been absent from
+here, my dear, a good deal of late; and though your sister’s training has
+been pursued according to—the system,’ he appeared to come to that word
+with great reluctance always, ‘it has necessarily been modified by daily
+associations begun, in her case, at an early age. I ask you—ignorantly
+and humbly, my daughter—for the better, do you think?’
+
+‘Father,’ she replied, without stirring, ‘if any harmony has been
+awakened in her young breast that was mute in mine until it turned to
+discord, let her thank Heaven for it, and go upon her happier way, taking
+it as her greatest blessing that she has avoided my way.’
+
+‘O my child, my child!’ he said, in a forlorn manner, ‘I am an unhappy
+man to see you thus! What avails it to me that you do not reproach me,
+if I so bitterly reproach myself!’ He bent his head, and spoke low to
+her. ‘Louisa, I have a misgiving that some change may have been slowly
+working about me in this house, by mere love and gratitude: that what the
+Head had left undone and could not do, the Heart may have been doing
+silently. Can it be so?’
+
+She made him no reply.
+
+‘I am not too proud to believe it, Louisa. How could I be arrogant, and
+you before me! Can it be so? Is it so, my dear?’ He looked upon her
+once more, lying cast away there; and without another word went out of
+the room. He had not been long gone, when she heard a light tread near
+the door, and knew that some one stood beside her.
+
+She did not raise her head. A dull anger that she should be seen in her
+distress, and that the involuntary look she had so resented should come
+to this fulfilment, smouldered within her like an unwholesome fire. All
+closely imprisoned forces rend and destroy. The air that would be
+healthful to the earth, the water that would enrich it, the heat that
+would ripen it, tear it when caged up. So in her bosom even now; the
+strongest qualities she possessed, long turned upon themselves, became a
+heap of obduracy, that rose against a friend.
+
+It was well that soft touch came upon her neck, and that she understood
+herself to be supposed to have fallen asleep. The sympathetic hand did
+not claim her resentment. Let it lie there, let it lie.
+
+It lay there, warming into life a crowd of gentler thoughts; and she
+rested. As she softened with the quiet, and the consciousness of being
+so watched, some tears made their way into her eyes. The face touched
+hers, and she knew that there were tears upon it too, and she the cause
+of them.
+
+As Louisa feigned to rouse herself, and sat up, Sissy retired, so that
+she stood placidly near the bedside.
+
+‘I hope I have not disturbed you. I have come to ask if you would let me
+stay with you?’
+
+‘Why should you stay with me? My sister will miss you. You are
+everything to her.’
+
+‘Am I?’ returned Sissy, shaking her head. ‘I would be something to you,
+if I might.’
+
+‘What?’ said Louisa, almost sternly.
+
+‘Whatever you want most, if I could be that. At all events, I would like
+to try to be as near it as I can. And however far off that may be, I
+will never tire of trying. Will you let me?’
+
+‘My father sent you to ask me.’
+
+‘No indeed,’ replied Sissy. ‘He told me that I might come in now, but he
+sent me away from the room this morning—or at least—’
+
+She hesitated and stopped.
+
+‘At least, what?’ said Louisa, with her searching eyes upon her.
+
+‘I thought it best myself that I should be sent away, for I felt very
+uncertain whether you would like to find me here.’
+
+‘Have I always hated you so much?’
+
+‘I hope not, for I have always loved you, and have always wished that you
+should know it. But you changed to me a little, shortly before you left
+home. Not that I wondered at it. You knew so much, and I knew so
+little, and it was so natural in many ways, going as you were among other
+friends, that I had nothing to complain of, and was not at all hurt.’
+
+Her colour rose as she said it modestly and hurriedly. Louisa understood
+the loving pretence, and her heart smote her.
+
+‘May I try?’ said Sissy, emboldened to raise her hand to the neck that
+was insensibly drooping towards her.
+
+Louisa, taking down the hand that would have embraced her in another
+moment, held it in one of hers, and answered:
+
+‘First, Sissy, do you know what I am? I am so proud and so hardened, so
+confused and troubled, so resentful and unjust to every one and to
+myself, that everything is stormy, dark, and wicked to me. Does not that
+repel you?’
+
+‘No!’
+
+‘I am so unhappy, and all that should have made me otherwise is so laid
+waste, that if I had been bereft of sense to this hour, and instead of
+being as learned as you think me, had to begin to acquire the simplest
+truths, I could not want a guide to peace, contentment, honour, all the
+good of which I am quite devoid, more abjectly than I do. Does not that
+repel you?’
+
+‘No!’
+
+In the innocence of her brave affection, and the brimming up of her old
+devoted spirit, the once deserted girl shone like a beautiful light upon
+the darkness of the other.
+
+Louisa raised the hand that it might clasp her neck and join its fellow
+there. She fell upon her knees, and clinging to this stroller’s child
+looked up at her almost with veneration.
+
+‘Forgive me, pity me, help me! Have compassion on my great need, and let
+me lay this head of mine upon a loving heart!’
+
+‘O lay it here!’ cried Sissy. ‘Lay it here, my dear.’
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+VERY RIDICULOUS
+
+
+MR. JAMES HARTHOUSE passed a whole night and a day in a state of so much
+hurry, that the World, with its best glass in his eye, would scarcely
+have recognized him during that insane interval, as the brother Jem of
+the honourable and jocular member. He was positively agitated. He
+several times spoke with an emphasis, similar to the vulgar manner. He
+went in and went out in an unaccountable way, like a man without an
+object. He rode like a highwayman. In a word, he was so horribly bored
+by existing circumstances, that he forgot to go in for boredom in the
+manner prescribed by the authorities.
+
+After putting his horse at Coketown through the storm, as if it were a
+leap, he waited up all night: from time to time ringing his bell with the
+greatest fury, charging the porter who kept watch with delinquency in
+withholding letters or messages that could not fail to have been
+entrusted to him, and demanding restitution on the spot. The dawn
+coming, the morning coming, and the day coming, and neither message nor
+letter coming with either, he went down to the country house. There, the
+report was, Mr. Bounderby away, and Mrs. Bounderby in town. Left for
+town suddenly last evening. Not even known to be gone until receipt of
+message, importing that her return was not to be expected for the
+present.
+
+In these circumstances he had nothing for it but to follow her to town.
+He went to the house in town. Mrs. Bounderby not there. He looked in at
+the Bank. Mr. Bounderby away and Mrs. Sparsit away. Mrs. Sparsit away?
+Who could have been reduced to sudden extremity for the company of that
+griffin!
+
+‘Well! I don’t know,’ said Tom, who had his own reasons for being uneasy
+about it. ‘She was off somewhere at daybreak this morning. She’s always
+full of mystery; I hate her. So I do that white chap; he’s always got
+his blinking eyes upon a fellow.’
+
+‘Where were you last night, Tom?’
+
+‘Where was I last night!’ said Tom. ‘Come! I like that. I was waiting
+for you, Mr. Harthouse, till it came down as _I_ never saw it come down
+before. Where was I too! Where were you, you mean.’
+
+‘I was prevented from coming—detained.’
+
+‘Detained!’ murmured Tom. ‘Two of us were detained. I was detained
+looking for you, till I lost every train but the mail. It would have
+been a pleasant job to go down by that on such a night, and have to walk
+home through a pond. I was obliged to sleep in town after all.’
+
+‘Where?’
+
+‘Where? Why, in my own bed at Bounderby’s.’
+
+‘Did you see your sister?’
+
+‘How the deuce,’ returned Tom, staring, ‘could I see my sister when she
+was fifteen miles off?’
+
+Cursing these quick retorts of the young gentleman to whom he was so true
+a friend, Mr. Harthouse disembarrassed himself of that interview with the
+smallest conceivable amount of ceremony, and debated for the hundredth
+time what all this could mean? He made only one thing clear. It was,
+that whether she was in town or out of town, whether he had been
+premature with her who was so hard to comprehend, or she had lost
+courage, or they were discovered, or some mischance or mistake, at
+present incomprehensible, had occurred, he must remain to confront his
+fortune, whatever it was. The hotel where he was known to live when
+condemned to that region of blackness, was the stake to which he was
+tied. As to all the rest—What will be, will be.
+
+‘So, whether I am waiting for a hostile message, or an assignation, or a
+penitent remonstrance, or an impromptu wrestle with my friend Bounderby
+in the Lancashire manner—which would seem as likely as anything else in
+the present state of affairs—I’ll dine,’ said Mr. James Harthouse.
+‘Bounderby has the advantage in point of weight; and if anything of a
+British nature is to come off between us, it may be as well to be in
+training.’
+
+Therefore he rang the bell, and tossing himself negligently on a sofa,
+ordered ‘Some dinner at six—with a beefsteak in it,’ and got through the
+intervening time as well as he could. That was not particularly well;
+for he remained in the greatest perplexity, and, as the hours went on,
+and no kind of explanation offered itself, his perplexity augmented at
+compound interest.
+
+However, he took affairs as coolly as it was in human nature to do, and
+entertained himself with the facetious idea of the training more than
+once. ‘It wouldn’t be bad,’ he yawned at one time, ‘to give the waiter
+five shillings, and throw him.’ At another time it occurred to him, ‘Or
+a fellow of about thirteen or fourteen stone might be hired by the hour.’
+But these jests did not tell materially on the afternoon, or his
+suspense; and, sooth to say, they both lagged fearfully.
+
+It was impossible, even before dinner, to avoid often walking about in
+the pattern of the carpet, looking out of the window, listening at the
+door for footsteps, and occasionally becoming rather hot when any steps
+approached that room. But, after dinner, when the day turned to
+twilight, and the twilight turned to night, and still no communication
+was made to him, it began to be as he expressed it, ‘like the Holy Office
+and slow torture.’ However, still true to his conviction that
+indifference was the genuine high-breeding (the only conviction he had),
+he seized this crisis as the opportunity for ordering candles and a
+newspaper.
+
+He had been trying in vain, for half an hour, to read this newspaper,
+when the waiter appeared and said, at once mysteriously and
+apologetically:
+
+‘Beg your pardon, sir. You’re wanted, sir, if you please.’
+
+A general recollection that this was the kind of thing the Police said to
+the swell mob, caused Mr. Harthouse to ask the waiter in return, with
+bristling indignation, what the Devil he meant by ‘wanted’?
+
+‘Beg your pardon, sir. Young lady outside, sir, wishes to see you.’
+
+‘Outside? Where?’
+
+‘Outside this door, sir.’
+
+Giving the waiter to the personage before mentioned, as a block-head duly
+qualified for that consignment, Mr. Harthouse hurried into the gallery.
+A young woman whom he had never seen stood there. Plainly dressed, very
+quiet, very pretty. As he conducted her into the room and placed a chair
+for her, he observed, by the light of the candles, that she was even
+prettier than he had at first believed. Her face was innocent and
+youthful, and its expression remarkably pleasant. She was not afraid of
+him, or in any way disconcerted; she seemed to have her mind entirely
+preoccupied with the occasion of her visit, and to have substituted that
+consideration for herself.
+
+‘I speak to Mr. Harthouse?’ she said, when they were alone.
+
+‘To Mr. Harthouse.’ He added in his mind, ‘And you speak to him with the
+most confiding eyes I ever saw, and the most earnest voice (though so
+quiet) I ever heard.’
+
+‘If I do not understand—and I do not, sir’—said Sissy, ‘what your honour
+as a gentleman binds you to, in other matters:’ the blood really rose in
+his face as she began in these words: ‘I am sure I may rely upon it to
+keep my visit secret, and to keep secret what I am going to say. I will
+rely upon it, if you will tell me I may so far trust—’
+
+‘You may, I assure you.’
+
+‘I am young, as you see; I am alone, as you see. In coming to you, sir,
+I have no advice or encouragement beyond my own hope.’ He thought, ‘But
+that is very strong,’ as he followed the momentary upward glance of her
+eyes. He thought besides, ‘This is a very odd beginning. I don’t see
+where we are going.’
+
+‘I think,’ said Sissy, ‘you have already guessed whom I left just now!’
+
+‘I have been in the greatest concern and uneasiness during the last
+four-and-twenty hours (which have appeared as many years),’ he returned,
+‘on a lady’s account. The hopes I have been encouraged to form that you
+come from that lady, do not deceive me, I trust.’
+
+‘I left her within an hour.’
+
+‘At—!’
+
+‘At her father’s.’
+
+Mr. Harthouse’s face lengthened in spite of his coolness, and his
+perplexity increased. ‘Then I certainly,’ he thought, ‘do _not_ see
+where we are going.’
+
+‘She hurried there last night. She arrived there in great agitation, and
+was insensible all through the night. I live at her father’s, and was
+with her. You may be sure, sir, you will never see her again as long as
+you live.’
+
+Mr. Harthouse drew a long breath; and, if ever man found himself in the
+position of not knowing what to say, made the discovery beyond all
+question that he was so circumstanced. The child-like ingenuousness with
+which his visitor spoke, her modest fearlessness, her truthfulness which
+put all artifice aside, her entire forgetfulness of herself in her
+earnest quiet holding to the object with which she had come; all this,
+together with her reliance on his easily given promise—which in itself
+shamed him—presented something in which he was so inexperienced, and
+against which he knew any of his usual weapons would fall so powerless;
+that not a word could he rally to his relief.
+
+At last he said:
+
+‘So startling an announcement, so confidently made, and by such lips, is
+really disconcerting in the last degree. May I be permitted to inquire,
+if you are charged to convey that information to me in those hopeless
+words, by the lady of whom we speak?’
+
+‘I have no charge from her.’
+
+‘The drowning man catches at the straw. With no disrespect for your
+judgment, and with no doubt of your sincerity, excuse my saying that I
+cling to the belief that there is yet hope that I am not condemned to
+perpetual exile from that lady’s presence.’
+
+‘There is not the least hope. The first object of my coming here, sir,
+is to assure you that you must believe that there is no more hope of your
+ever speaking with her again, than there would be if she had died when
+she came home last night.’
+
+‘Must believe? But if I can’t—or if I should, by infirmity of nature, be
+obstinate—and won’t—’
+
+‘It is still true. There is no hope.’
+
+James Harthouse looked at her with an incredulous smile upon his lips;
+but her mind looked over and beyond him, and the smile was quite thrown
+away.
+
+He bit his lip, and took a little time for consideration.
+
+‘Well! If it should unhappily appear,’ he said, ‘after due pains and
+duty on my part, that I am brought to a position so desolate as this
+banishment, I shall not become the lady’s persecutor. But you said you
+had no commission from her?’
+
+‘I have only the commission of my love for her, and her love for me. I
+have no other trust, than that I have been with her since she came home,
+and that she has given me her confidence. I have no further trust, than
+that I know something of her character and her marriage. O Mr.
+Harthouse, I think you had that trust too!’
+
+He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been—in that
+nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have lived if they
+had not been whistled away—by the fervour of this reproach.
+
+‘I am not a moral sort of fellow,’ he said, ‘and I never make any
+pretensions to the character of a moral sort of fellow. I am as immoral
+as need be. At the same time, in bringing any distress upon the lady who
+is the subject of the present conversation, or in unfortunately
+compromising her in any way, or in committing myself by any expression of
+sentiments towards her, not perfectly reconcilable with—in fact with—the
+domestic hearth; or in taking any advantage of her father’s being a
+machine, or of her brother’s being a whelp, or of her husband’s being a
+bear; I beg to be allowed to assure you that I have had no particularly
+evil intentions, but have glided on from one step to another with a
+smoothness so perfectly diabolical, that I had not the slightest idea the
+catalogue was half so long until I began to turn it over. Whereas I
+find,’ said Mr. James Harthouse, in conclusion, ‘that it is really in
+several volumes.’
+
+Though he said all this in his frivolous way, the way seemed, for that
+once, a conscious polishing of but an ugly surface. He was silent for a
+moment; and then proceeded with a more self-possessed air, though with
+traces of vexation and disappointment that would not be polished out.
+
+‘After what has been just now represented to me, in a manner I find it
+impossible to doubt—I know of hardly any other source from which I could
+have accepted it so readily—I feel bound to say to you, in whom the
+confidence you have mentioned has been reposed, that I cannot refuse to
+contemplate the possibility (however unexpected) of my seeing the lady no
+more. I am solely to blame for the thing having come to this—and—and, I
+cannot say,’ he added, rather hard up for a general peroration, ‘that I
+have any sanguine expectation of ever becoming a moral sort of fellow, or
+that I have any belief in any moral sort of fellow whatever.’
+
+Sissy’s face sufficiently showed that her appeal to him was not finished.
+
+‘You spoke,’ he resumed, as she raised her eyes to him again, ‘of your
+first object. I may assume that there is a second to be mentioned?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Will you oblige me by confiding it?’
+
+‘Mr. Harthouse,’ returned Sissy, with a blending of gentleness and
+steadiness that quite defeated him, and with a simple confidence in his
+being bound to do what she required, that held him at a singular
+disadvantage, ‘the only reparation that remains with you, is to leave
+here immediately and finally. I am quite sure that you can mitigate in
+no other way the wrong and harm you have done. I am quite sure that it
+is the only compensation you have left it in your power to make. I do
+not say that it is much, or that it is enough; but it is something, and
+it is necessary. Therefore, though without any other authority than I
+have given you, and even without the knowledge of any other person than
+yourself and myself, I ask you to depart from this place to-night, under
+an obligation never to return to it.’
+
+If she had asserted any influence over him beyond her plain faith in the
+truth and right of what she said; if she had concealed the least doubt or
+irresolution, or had harboured for the best purpose any reserve or
+pretence; if she had shown, or felt, the lightest trace of any
+sensitiveness to his ridicule or his astonishment, or any remonstrance he
+might offer; he would have carried it against her at this point. But he
+could as easily have changed a clear sky by looking at it in surprise, as
+affect her.
+
+‘But do you know,’ he asked, quite at a loss, ‘the extent of what you
+ask? You probably are not aware that I am here on a public kind of
+business, preposterous enough in itself, but which I have gone in for,
+and sworn by, and am supposed to be devoted to in quite a desperate
+manner? You probably are not aware of that, but I assure you it’s the
+fact.’
+
+It had no effect on Sissy, fact or no fact.
+
+‘Besides which,’ said Mr. Harthouse, taking a turn or two across the
+room, dubiously, ‘it’s so alarmingly absurd. It would make a man so
+ridiculous, after going in for these fellows, to back out in such an
+incomprehensible way.’
+
+‘I am quite sure,’ repeated Sissy, ‘that it is the only reparation in
+your power, sir. I am quite sure, or I would not have come here.’
+
+He glanced at her face, and walked about again. ‘Upon my soul, I don’t
+know what to say. So immensely absurd!’
+
+It fell to his lot, now, to stipulate for secrecy.
+
+‘If I were to do such a very ridiculous thing,’ he said, stopping again
+presently, and leaning against the chimney-piece, ‘it could only be in
+the most inviolable confidence.’
+
+‘I will trust to you, sir,’ returned Sissy, ‘and you will trust to me.’
+
+His leaning against the chimney-piece reminded him of the night with the
+whelp. It was the self-same chimney-piece, and somehow he felt as if
+_he_ were the whelp to-night. He could make no way at all.
+
+‘I suppose a man never was placed in a more ridiculous position,’ he
+said, after looking down, and looking up, and laughing, and frowning, and
+walking off, and walking back again. ‘But I see no way out of it. What
+will be, will be. _This_ will be, I suppose. I must take off myself, I
+imagine—in short, I engage to do it.’
+
+Sissy rose. She was not surprised by the result, but she was happy in
+it, and her face beamed brightly.
+
+‘You will permit me to say,’ continued Mr. James Harthouse, ‘that I doubt
+if any other ambassador, or ambassadress, could have addressed me with
+the same success. I must not only regard myself as being in a very
+ridiculous position, but as being vanquished at all points. Will you
+allow me the privilege of remembering my enemy’s name?’
+
+‘_My_ name?’ said the ambassadress.
+
+‘The only name I could possibly care to know, to-night.’
+
+‘Sissy Jupe.’
+
+‘Pardon my curiosity at parting. Related to the family?’
+
+‘I am only a poor girl,’ returned Sissy. ‘I was separated from my
+father—he was only a stroller—and taken pity on by Mr. Gradgrind. I have
+lived in the house ever since.’
+
+She was gone.
+
+‘It wanted this to complete the defeat,’ said Mr. James Harthouse,
+sinking, with a resigned air, on the sofa, after standing transfixed a
+little while. ‘The defeat may now be considered perfectly accomplished.
+Only a poor girl—only a stroller—only James Harthouse made nothing
+of—only James Harthouse a Great Pyramid of failure.’
+
+The Great Pyramid put it into his head to go up the Nile. He took a pen
+upon the instant, and wrote the following note (in appropriate
+hieroglyphics) to his brother:
+
+ Dear Jack,—All up at Coketown. Bored out of the place, and going in
+ for camels.
+
+ Affectionately,
+ JEM.
+
+He rang the bell.
+
+‘Send my fellow here.’
+
+‘Gone to bed, sir.’
+
+‘Tell him to get up, and pack up.’
+
+He wrote two more notes. One, to Mr. Bounderby, announcing his
+retirement from that part of the country, and showing where he would be
+found for the next fortnight. The other, similar in effect, to Mr.
+Gradgrind. Almost as soon as the ink was dry upon their superscriptions,
+he had left the tall chimneys of Coketown behind, and was in a railway
+carriage, tearing and glaring over the dark landscape.
+
+The moral sort of fellows might suppose that Mr. James Harthouse derived
+some comfortable reflections afterwards, from this prompt retreat, as one
+of his few actions that made any amends for anything, and as a token to
+himself that he had escaped the climax of a very bad business. But it
+was not so, at all. A secret sense of having failed and been
+ridiculous—a dread of what other fellows who went in for similar sorts of
+things, would say at his expense if they knew it—so oppressed him, that
+what was about the very best passage in his life was the one of all
+others he would not have owned to on any account, and the only one that
+made him ashamed of himself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+VERY DECIDED
+
+
+THE indefatigable Mrs. Sparsit, with a violent cold upon her, her voice
+reduced to a whisper, and her stately frame so racked by continual
+sneezes that it seemed in danger of dismemberment, gave chase to her
+patron until she found him in the metropolis; and there, majestically
+sweeping in upon him at his hotel in St. James’s Street, exploded the
+combustibles with which she was charged, and blew up. Having executed
+her mission with infinite relish, this high-minded woman then fainted
+away on Mr. Bounderby’s coat-collar.
+
+Mr. Bounderby’s first procedure was to shake Mrs. Sparsit off, and leave
+her to progress as she might through various stages of suffering on the
+floor. He next had recourse to the administration of potent
+restoratives, such as screwing the patient’s thumbs, smiting her hands,
+abundantly watering her face, and inserting salt in her mouth. When
+these attentions had recovered her (which they speedily did), he hustled
+her into a fast train without offering any other refreshment, and carried
+her back to Coketown more dead than alive.
+
+Regarded as a classical ruin, Mrs. Sparsit was an interesting spectacle
+on her arrival at her journey’s end; but considered in any other light,
+the amount of damage she had by that time sustained was excessive, and
+impaired her claims to admiration. Utterly heedless of the wear and tear
+of her clothes and constitution, and adamant to her pathetic sneezes, Mr.
+Bounderby immediately crammed her into a coach, and bore her off to Stone
+Lodge.
+
+‘Now, Tom Gradgrind,’ said Bounderby, bursting into his father-in-law’s
+room late at night; ‘here’s a lady here—Mrs. Sparsit—you know Mrs.
+Sparsit—who has something to say to you that will strike you dumb.’
+
+‘You have missed my letter!’ exclaimed Mr. Gradgrind, surprised by the
+apparition.
+
+‘Missed your letter, sir!’ bawled Bounderby. ‘The present time is no
+time for letters. No man shall talk to Josiah Bounderby of Coketown
+about letters, with his mind in the state it’s in now.’
+
+‘Bounderby,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, in a tone of temperate remonstrance, ‘I
+speak of a very special letter I have written to you, in reference to
+Louisa.’
+
+‘Tom Gradgrind,’ replied Bounderby, knocking the flat of his hand several
+times with great vehemence on the table, ‘I speak of a very special
+messenger that has come to me, in reference to Louisa. Mrs. Sparsit,
+ma’am, stand forward!’
+
+That unfortunate lady hereupon essaying to offer testimony, without any
+voice and with painful gestures expressive of an inflamed throat, became
+so aggravating and underwent so many facial contortions, that Mr.
+Bounderby, unable to bear it, seized her by the arm and shook her.
+
+‘If you can’t get it out, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘leave _me_ to get it
+out. This is not a time for a lady, however highly connected, to be
+totally inaudible, and seemingly swallowing marbles. Tom Gradgrind, Mrs.
+Sparsit latterly found herself, by accident, in a situation to overhear a
+conversation out of doors between your daughter and your precious
+gentleman-friend, Mr. James Harthouse.’
+
+‘Indeed!’ said Mr. Gradgrind.
+
+‘Ah! Indeed!’ cried Bounderby. ‘And in that conversation—’
+
+‘It is not necessary to repeat its tenor, Bounderby. I know what
+passed.’
+
+‘You do? Perhaps,’ said Bounderby, staring with all his might at his so
+quiet and assuasive father-in-law, ‘you know where your daughter is at
+the present time!’
+
+‘Undoubtedly. She is here.’
+
+‘Here?’
+
+‘My dear Bounderby, let me beg you to restrain these loud out-breaks, on
+all accounts. Louisa is here. The moment she could detach herself from
+that interview with the person of whom you speak, and whom I deeply
+regret to have been the means of introducing to you, Louisa hurried here,
+for protection. I myself had not been at home many hours, when I
+received her—here, in this room. She hurried by the train to town, she
+ran from town to this house, through a raging storm, and presented
+herself before me in a state of distraction. Of course, she has remained
+here ever since. Let me entreat you, for your own sake and for hers, to
+be more quiet.’
+
+Mr. Bounderby silently gazed about him for some moments, in every
+direction except Mrs. Sparsit’s direction; and then, abruptly turning
+upon the niece of Lady Scadgers, said to that wretched woman:
+
+‘Now, ma’am! We shall be happy to hear any little apology you may think
+proper to offer, for going about the country at express pace, with no
+other luggage than a Cock-and-a-Bull, ma’am!’
+
+‘Sir,’ whispered Mrs. Sparsit, ‘my nerves are at present too much shaken,
+and my health is at present too much impaired, in your service, to admit
+of my doing more than taking refuge in tears.’ (Which she did.)
+
+‘Well, ma’am,’ said Bounderby, ‘without making any observation to you
+that may not be made with propriety to a woman of good family, what I
+have got to add to that, is that there is something else in which it
+appears to me you may take refuge, namely, a coach. And the coach in
+which we came here being at the door, you’ll allow me to hand you down to
+it, and pack you home to the Bank: where the best course for you to
+pursue, will be to put your feet into the hottest water you can bear, and
+take a glass of scalding rum and butter after you get into bed.’ With
+these words, Mr. Bounderby extended his right hand to the weeping lady,
+and escorted her to the conveyance in question, shedding many plaintive
+sneezes by the way. He soon returned alone.
+
+‘Now, as you showed me in your face, Tom Gradgrind, that you wanted to
+speak to me,’ he resumed, ‘here I am. But, I am not in a very agreeable
+state, I tell you plainly: not relishing this business, even as it is,
+and not considering that I am at any time as dutifully and submissively
+treated by your daughter, as Josiah Bounderby of Coketown ought to be
+treated by his wife. You have your opinion, I dare say; and I have mine,
+I know. If you mean to say anything to me to-night, that goes against
+this candid remark, you had better let it alone.’
+
+Mr. Gradgrind, it will be observed, being much softened, Mr. Bounderby
+took particular pains to harden himself at all points. It was his
+amiable nature.
+
+‘My dear Bounderby,’ Mr. Gradgrind began in reply.
+
+‘Now, you’ll excuse me,’ said Bounderby, ‘but I don’t want to be too
+dear. That, to start with. When I begin to be dear to a man, I
+generally find that his intention is to come over me. I am not speaking
+to you politely; but, as you are aware, I am _not_ polite. If you like
+politeness, you know where to get it. You have your gentleman-friends,
+you know, and they’ll serve you with as much of the article as you want.
+I don’t keep it myself.’
+
+‘Bounderby,’ urged Mr. Gradgrind, ‘we are all liable to mistakes—’
+
+‘I thought you couldn’t make ’em,’ interrupted Bounderby.
+
+‘Perhaps I thought so. But, I say we are all liable to mistakes and I
+should feel sensible of your delicacy, and grateful for it, if you would
+spare me these references to Harthouse. I shall not associate him in our
+conversation with your intimacy and encouragement; pray do not persist in
+connecting him with mine.’
+
+‘I never mentioned his name!’ said Bounderby.
+
+‘Well, well!’ returned Mr. Gradgrind, with a patient, even a submissive,
+air. And he sat for a little while pondering. ‘Bounderby, I see reason
+to doubt whether we have ever quite understood Louisa.’
+
+‘Who do you mean by We?’
+
+‘Let me say I, then,’ he returned, in answer to the coarsely blurted
+question; ‘I doubt whether I have understood Louisa. I doubt whether I
+have been quite right in the manner of her education.’
+
+‘There you hit it,’ returned Bounderby. ‘There I agree with you. You
+have found it out at last, have you? Education! I’ll tell you what
+education is—To be tumbled out of doors, neck and crop, and put upon the
+shortest allowance of everything except blows. That’s what _I_ call
+education.’
+
+‘I think your good sense will perceive,’ Mr. Gradgrind remonstrated in
+all humility, ‘that whatever the merits of such a system may be, it would
+be difficult of general application to girls.’
+
+‘I don’t see it at all, sir,’ returned the obstinate Bounderby.
+
+‘Well,’ sighed Mr. Gradgrind, ‘we will not enter into the question. I
+assure you I have no desire to be controversial. I seek to repair what
+is amiss, if I possibly can; and I hope you will assist me in a good
+spirit, Bounderby, for I have been very much distressed.’
+
+‘I don’t understand you, yet,’ said Bounderby, with determined obstinacy,
+‘and therefore I won’t make any promises.’
+
+‘In the course of a few hours, my dear Bounderby,’ Mr. Gradgrind
+proceeded, in the same depressed and propitiatory manner, ‘I appear to
+myself to have become better informed as to Louisa’s character, than in
+previous years. The enlightenment has been painfully forced upon me, and
+the discovery is not mine. I think there are—Bounderby, you will be
+surprised to hear me say this—I think there are qualities in Louisa,
+which—which have been harshly neglected, and—and a little perverted.
+And—and I would suggest to you, that—that if you would kindly meet me in
+a timely endeavour to leave her to her better nature for a while—and to
+encourage it to develop itself by tenderness and consideration—it—it
+would be the better for the happiness of all of us. Louisa,’ said Mr.
+Gradgrind, shading his face with his hand, ‘has always been my favourite
+child.’
+
+The blustrous Bounderby crimsoned and swelled to such an extent on
+hearing these words, that he seemed to be, and probably was, on the brink
+of a fit. With his very ears a bright purple shot with crimson, he pent
+up his indignation, however, and said:
+
+‘You’d like to keep her here for a time?’
+
+‘I—I had intended to recommend, my dear Bounderby, that you should allow
+Louisa to remain here on a visit, and be attended by Sissy (I mean of
+course Cecilia Jupe), who understands her, and in whom she trusts.’
+
+‘I gather from all this, Tom Gradgrind,’ said Bounderby, standing up with
+his hands in his pockets, ‘that you are of opinion that there’s what
+people call some incompatibility between Loo Bounderby and myself.’
+
+‘I fear there is at present a general incompatibility between Louisa,
+and—and—and almost all the relations in which I have placed her,’ was her
+father’s sorrowful reply.
+
+‘Now, look you here, Tom Gradgrind,’ said Bounderby the flushed,
+confronting him with his legs wide apart, his hands deeper in his
+pockets, and his hair like a hayfield wherein his windy anger was
+boisterous. ‘You have said your say; I am going to say mine. I am a
+Coketown man. I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. I know the bricks of
+this town, and I know the works of this town, and I know the chimneys of
+this town, and I know the smoke of this town, and I know the Hands of
+this town. I know ’em all pretty well. They’re real. When a man tells
+me anything about imaginative qualities, I always tell that man, whoever
+he is, that I know what he means. He means turtle soup and venison, with
+a gold spoon, and that he wants to be set up with a coach and six.
+That’s what your daughter wants. Since you are of opinion that she ought
+to have what she wants, I recommend you to provide it for her. Because,
+Tom Gradgrind, she will never have it from me.’
+
+‘Bounderby,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘I hoped, after my entreaty, you would
+have taken a different tone.’
+
+‘Just wait a bit,’ retorted Bounderby; ‘you have said your say, I
+believe. I heard you out; hear me out, if you please. Don’t make
+yourself a spectacle of unfairness as well as inconsistency, because,
+although I am sorry to see Tom Gradgrind reduced to his present position,
+I should be doubly sorry to see him brought so low as that. Now, there’s
+an incompatibility of some sort or another, I am given to understand by
+you, between your daughter and me. I’ll give _you_ to understand, in
+reply to that, that there unquestionably is an incompatibility of the
+first magnitude—to be summed up in this—that your daughter don’t properly
+know her husband’s merits, and is not impressed with such a sense as
+would become her, by George! of the honour of his alliance. That’s plain
+speaking, I hope.’
+
+‘Bounderby,’ urged Mr. Gradgrind, ‘this is unreasonable.’
+
+‘Is it?’ said Bounderby. ‘I am glad to hear you say so. Because when
+Tom Gradgrind, with his new lights, tells me that what I say is
+unreasonable, I am convinced at once it must be devilish sensible. With
+your permission I am going on. You know my origin; and you know that for
+a good many years of my life I didn’t want a shoeing-horn, in consequence
+of not having a shoe. Yet you may believe or not, as you think proper,
+that there are ladies—born ladies—belonging to families—Families!—who
+next to worship the ground I walk on.’
+
+He discharged this like a Rocket, at his father-in-law’s head.
+
+‘Whereas your daughter,’ proceeded Bounderby, ‘is far from being a born
+lady. That you know, yourself. Not that I care a pinch of candle-snuff
+about such things, for you are very well aware I don’t; but that such is
+the fact, and you, Tom Gradgrind, can’t change it. Why do I say this?’
+
+‘Not, I fear,’ observed Mr. Gradgrind, in a low voice, ‘to spare me.’
+
+‘Hear me out,’ said Bounderby, ‘and refrain from cutting in till your
+turn comes round. I say this, because highly connected females have been
+astonished to see the way in which your daughter has conducted herself,
+and to witness her insensibility. They have wondered how I have suffered
+it. And I wonder myself now, and I won’t suffer it.’
+
+‘Bounderby,’ returned Mr. Gradgrind, rising, ‘the less we say to-night
+the better, I think.’
+
+‘On the contrary, Tom Gradgrind, the more we say to-night, the better, I
+think. That is,’ the consideration checked him, ‘till I have said all I
+mean to say, and then I don’t care how soon we stop. I come to a
+question that may shorten the business. What do you mean by the proposal
+you made just now?’
+
+‘What do I mean, Bounderby?’
+
+‘By your visiting proposition,’ said Bounderby, with an inflexible jerk
+of the hayfield.
+
+‘I mean that I hope you may be induced to arrange in a friendly manner,
+for allowing Louisa a period of repose and reflection here, which may
+tend to a gradual alteration for the better in many respects.’
+
+‘To a softening down of your ideas of the incompatibility?’ said
+Bounderby.
+
+‘If you put it in those terms.’
+
+‘What made you think of this?’ said Bounderby.
+
+‘I have already said, I fear Louisa has not been understood. Is it
+asking too much, Bounderby, that you, so far her elder, should aid in
+trying to set her right? You have accepted a great charge of her; for
+better for worse, for—’
+
+Mr. Bounderby may have been annoyed by the repetition of his own words to
+Stephen Blackpool, but he cut the quotation short with an angry start.
+
+‘Come!’ said he, ‘I don’t want to be told about that. I know what I took
+her for, as well as you do. Never you mind what I took her for; that’s
+my look out.’
+
+‘I was merely going on to remark, Bounderby, that we may all be more or
+less in the wrong, not even excepting you; and that some yielding on your
+part, remembering the trust you have accepted, may not only be an act of
+true kindness, but perhaps a debt incurred towards Louisa.’
+
+‘I think differently,’ blustered Bounderby. ‘I am going to finish this
+business according to my own opinions. Now, I don’t want to make a
+quarrel of it with you, Tom Gradgrind. To tell you the truth, I don’t
+think it would be worthy of my reputation to quarrel on such a subject.
+As to your gentleman-friend, he may take himself off, wherever he likes
+best. If he falls in my way, I shall tell him my mind; if he don’t fall
+in my way, I shan’t, for it won’t be worth my while to do it. As to your
+daughter, whom I made Loo Bounderby, and might have done better by
+leaving Loo Gradgrind, if she don’t come home to-morrow, by twelve
+o’clock at noon, I shall understand that she prefers to stay away, and I
+shall send her wearing apparel and so forth over here, and you’ll take
+charge of her for the future. What I shall say to people in general, of
+the incompatibility that led to my so laying down the law, will be this.
+I am Josiah Bounderby, and I had my bringing-up; she’s the daughter of
+Tom Gradgrind, and she had her bringing-up; and the two horses wouldn’t
+pull together. I am pretty well known to be rather an uncommon man, I
+believe; and most people will understand fast enough that it must be a
+woman rather out of the common, also, who, in the long run, would come up
+to my mark.’
+
+‘Let me seriously entreat you to reconsider this, Bounderby,’ urged Mr.
+Gradgrind, ‘before you commit yourself to such a decision.’
+
+‘I always come to a decision,’ said Bounderby, tossing his hat on: ‘and
+whatever I do, I do at once. I should be surprised at Tom Gradgrind’s
+addressing such a remark to Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, knowing what he
+knows of him, if I could be surprised by anything Tom Gradgrind did,
+after his making himself a party to sentimental humbug. I have given you
+my decision, and I have got no more to say. Good night!’
+
+So Mr. Bounderby went home to his town house to bed. At five minutes
+past twelve o’clock next day, he directed Mrs. Bounderby’s property to be
+carefully packed up and sent to Tom Gradgrind’s; advertised his country
+retreat for sale by private contract; and resumed a bachelor life.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+LOST
+
+
+THE robbery at the Bank had not languished before, and did not cease to
+occupy a front place in the attention of the principal of that
+establishment now. In boastful proof of his promptitude and activity, as
+a remarkable man, and a self-made man, and a commercial wonder more
+admirable than Venus, who had risen out of the mud instead of the sea, he
+liked to show how little his domestic affairs abated his business ardour.
+Consequently, in the first few weeks of his resumed bachelorhood, he even
+advanced upon his usual display of bustle, and every day made such a rout
+in renewing his investigations into the robbery, that the officers who
+had it in hand almost wished it had never been committed.
+
+They were at fault too, and off the scent. Although they had been so
+quiet since the first outbreak of the matter, that most people really did
+suppose it to have been abandoned as hopeless, nothing new occurred. No
+implicated man or woman took untimely courage, or made a self-betraying
+step. More remarkable yet, Stephen Blackpool could not be heard of, and
+the mysterious old woman remained a mystery.
+
+Things having come to this pass, and showing no latent signs of stirring
+beyond it, the upshot of Mr. Bounderby’s investigations was, that he
+resolved to hazard a bold burst. He drew up a placard, offering Twenty
+Pounds reward for the apprehension of Stephen Blackpool, suspected of
+complicity in the robbery of Coketown Bank on such a night; he described
+the said Stephen Blackpool by dress, complexion, estimated height, and
+manner, as minutely as he could; he recited how he had left the town, and
+in what direction he had been last seen going; he had the whole printed
+in great black letters on a staring broadsheet; and he caused the walls
+to be posted with it in the dead of night, so that it should strike upon
+the sight of the whole population at one blow.
+
+The factory-bells had need to ring their loudest that morning to disperse
+the groups of workers who stood in the tardy daybreak, collected round
+the placards, devouring them with eager eyes. Not the least eager of the
+eyes assembled, were the eyes of those who could not read. These people,
+as they listened to the friendly voice that read aloud—there was always
+some such ready to help them—stared at the characters which meant so much
+with a vague awe and respect that would have been half ludicrous, if any
+aspect of public ignorance could ever be otherwise than threatening and
+full of evil. Many ears and eyes were busy with a vision of the matter
+of these placards, among turning spindles, rattling looms, and whirling
+wheels, for hours afterwards; and when the Hands cleared out again into
+the streets, there were still as many readers as before.
+
+Slackbridge, the delegate, had to address his audience too that night;
+and Slackbridge had obtained a clean bill from the printer, and had
+brought it in his pocket. Oh, my friends and fellow-countrymen, the
+down-trodden operatives of Coketown, oh, my fellow-brothers and
+fellow-workmen and fellow-citizens and fellow-men, what a to-do was
+there, when Slackbridge unfolded what he called ‘that damning document,’
+and held it up to the gaze, and for the execration of the working-man
+community! ‘Oh, my fellow-men, behold of what a traitor in the camp of
+those great spirits who are enrolled upon the holy scroll of Justice and
+of Union, is appropriately capable! Oh, my prostrate friends, with the
+galling yoke of tyrants on your necks and the iron foot of despotism
+treading down your fallen forms into the dust of the earth, upon which
+right glad would your oppressors be to see you creeping on your bellies
+all the days of your lives, like the serpent in the garden—oh, my
+brothers, and shall I as a man not add, my sisters too, what do you say,
+_now_, of Stephen Blackpool, with a slight stoop in his shoulders and
+about five foot seven in height, as set forth in this degrading and
+disgusting document, this blighting bill, this pernicious placard, this
+abominable advertisement; and with what majesty of denouncement will you
+crush the viper, who would bring this stain and shame upon the God-like
+race that happily has cast him out for ever! Yes, my compatriots,
+happily cast him out and sent him forth! For you remember how he stood
+here before you on this platform; you remember how, face to face and foot
+to foot, I pursued him through all his intricate windings; you remember
+how he sneaked and slunk, and sidled, and splitted of straws, until, with
+not an inch of ground to which to cling, I hurled him out from amongst
+us: an object for the undying finger of scorn to point at, and for the
+avenging fire of every free and thinking mind to scorch and scar! And
+now, my friends—my labouring friends, for I rejoice and triumph in that
+stigma—my friends whose hard but honest beds are made in toil, and whose
+scanty but independent pots are boiled in hardship; and now, I say, my
+friends, what appellation has that dastard craven taken to himself, when,
+with the mask torn from his features, he stands before us in all his
+native deformity, a What? A thief! A plunderer! A proscribed fugitive,
+with a price upon his head; a fester and a wound upon the noble character
+of the Coketown operative! Therefore, my band of brothers in a sacred
+bond, to which your children and your children’s children yet unborn have
+set their infant hands and seals, I propose to you on the part of the
+United Aggregate Tribunal, ever watchful for your welfare, ever zealous
+for your benefit, that this meeting does Resolve: That Stephen Blackpool,
+weaver, referred to in this placard, having been already solemnly
+disowned by the community of Coketown Hands, the same are free from the
+shame of his misdeeds, and cannot as a class be reproached with his
+dishonest actions!’
+
+Thus Slackbridge; gnashing and perspiring after a prodigious sort. A few
+stern voices called out ‘No!’ and a score or two hailed, with assenting
+cries of ‘Hear, hear!’ the caution from one man, ‘Slackbridge, y’or over
+hetter in’t; y’or a goen too fast!’ But these were pigmies against an
+army; the general assemblage subscribed to the gospel according to
+Slackbridge, and gave three cheers for him, as he sat demonstratively
+panting at them.
+
+These men and women were yet in the streets, passing quietly to their
+homes, when Sissy, who had been called away from Louisa some minutes
+before, returned.
+
+‘Who is it?’ asked Louisa.
+
+‘It is Mr. Bounderby,’ said Sissy, timid of the name, ‘and your brother
+Mr. Tom, and a young woman who says her name is Rachael, and that you
+know her.’
+
+‘What do they want, Sissy dear?’
+
+‘They want to see you. Rachael has been crying, and seems angry.’
+
+‘Father,’ said Louisa, for he was present, ‘I cannot refuse to see them,
+for a reason that will explain itself. Shall they come in here?’
+
+As he answered in the affirmative, Sissy went away to bring them. She
+reappeared with them directly. Tom was last; and remained standing in
+the obscurest part of the room, near the door.
+
+‘Mrs. Bounderby,’ said her husband, entering with a cool nod, ‘I don’t
+disturb you, I hope. This is an unseasonable hour, but here is a young
+woman who has been making statements which render my visit necessary.
+Tom Gradgrind, as your son, young Tom, refuses for some obstinate reason
+or other to say anything at all about those statements, good or bad, I am
+obliged to confront her with your daughter.’
+
+‘You have seen me once before, young lady,’ said Rachael, standing in
+front of Louisa.
+
+Tom coughed.
+
+‘You have seen me, young lady,’ repeated Rachael, as she did not answer,
+‘once before.’
+
+Tom coughed again.
+
+‘I have.’
+
+Rachael cast her eyes proudly towards Mr. Bounderby, and said, ‘Will you
+make it known, young lady, where, and who was there?’
+
+‘I went to the house where Stephen Blackpool lodged, on the night of his
+discharge from his work, and I saw you there. He was there too; and an
+old woman who did not speak, and whom I could scarcely see, stood in a
+dark corner. My brother was with me.’
+
+‘Why couldn’t you say so, young Tom?’ demanded Bounderby.
+
+‘I promised my sister I wouldn’t.’ Which Louisa hastily confirmed. ‘And
+besides,’ said the whelp bitterly, ‘she tells her own story so precious
+well—and so full—that what business had I to take it out of her mouth!’
+
+‘Say, young lady, if you please,’ pursued Rachael, ‘why, in an evil hour,
+you ever came to Stephen’s that night.’
+
+‘I felt compassion for him,’ said Louisa, her colour deepening, ‘and I
+wished to know what he was going to do, and wished to offer him
+assistance.’
+
+‘Thank you, ma’am,’ said Bounderby. ‘Much flattered and obliged.’
+
+‘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 of 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 bath 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.
+
projects / gender-roles-text-analysis.git / blobdiff