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.

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 off the sea, ‘and he will be here, at furthest, in two days.’

‘Notwithstanding which,’ added Mr. Bounderby, ‘if he can be laid hold of
any sooner, he shall have an earlier opportunity of clearing himself.  As
to you, I have nothing against you; what you came and told me turns out
to be true, and I have given you the means of proving it to be true, and
there’s an end of it.  I wish you good night all!  I must be off to look
a little further into this.’

Tom came out of his corner when Mr. Bounderby moved, moved with him, kept
close to him, and went away with him.  The only parting salutation of
which he delivered himself was a sulky ‘Good night, father!’  With a
brief speech, and a scowl at his sister, he left the house.

Since his sheet-anchor had come home, Mr. Gradgrind had been sparing of
speech.  He still sat silent, when Louisa mildly said:

‘Rachael, you will not distrust me one day, when you know me better.’

‘It goes against me,’ Rachael answered, in a gentler manner, ‘to mistrust
any one; but when I am so mistrusted—when we all are—I cannot keep such
things quite out of my mind.  I ask your pardon for having done you an
injury.  I don’t think what I said now.  Yet I might come to think it
again, wi’ the poor lad so wronged.’

‘Did you tell him in your letter,’ inquired Sissy, ‘that suspicion seemed
to have fallen upon him, because he had been seen about the Bank at
night?  He would then know what he would have to explain on coming back,
and would be ready.’

‘Yes, dear,’ she returned; ‘but I can’t guess what can have ever taken
him there.  He never used to go there.  It was never in his way.  His way
was the same as mine, and not near it.’

Sissy had already been at her side asking her where she lived, and
whether she might come to-morrow night, to inquire if there were news of
him.

‘I doubt,’ said Rachael, ‘if he can be here till next day.’

‘Then I will come next night too,’ said Sissy.

When Rachael, assenting to this, was gone, Mr. Gradgrind lifted up his
head, and said to his daughter:

‘Louisa, my dear, I have never, that I know of, seen this man.  Do you
believe him to be implicated?’

‘I think I have believed it, father, though with great difficulty.  I do
not believe it now.’

‘That is to say, you once persuaded yourself to believe it, from knowing
him to be suspected.  His appearance and manner; are they so honest?’

‘Very honest.’

‘And her confidence not to be shaken!  I ask myself,’ said Mr. Gradgrind,
musing, ‘does the real culprit know of these accusations?  Where is he?
Who is he?’

His hair had latterly began to change its colour.  As he leaned upon his
hand again, looking gray and old, Louisa, with a face of fear and pity,
hurriedly went over to him, and sat close at his side.  Her eyes by
accident met Sissy’s at the moment.  Sissy flushed and started, and
Louisa put her finger on her lip.

Next night, when Sissy returned home and told Louisa that Stephen was not
come, she told it in a whisper.  Next night again, when she came home
with the same account, and added that he had not been heard of, she spoke
in the same low frightened tone.  From the moment of that interchange of
looks, they never uttered his name, or any reference to him, aloud; nor
ever pursued the subject of the robbery, when Mr. Gradgrind spoke of it.

The two appointed days ran out, three days and nights ran out, and
Stephen Blackpool was not come, and remained unheard of.  On the fourth
day, Rachael, with unabated confidence, but considering her despatch to
have miscarried, went up to the Bank, and showed her letter from him with
his address, at a working colony, one of many, not upon the main road,
sixty miles away.  Messengers were sent to that place, and the whole town
looked for Stephen to be brought in next day.

During this whole time the whelp moved about with Mr. Bounderby like his
shadow, assisting in all the proceedings.  He was greatly excited,
horribly fevered, bit his nails down to the quick, spoke in a hard
rattling voice, and with lips that were black and burnt up.  At the hour
when the suspected man was looked for, the whelp was at the station;
offering to wager that he had made off before the arrival of those who
were sent in quest of him, and that he would not appear.

The whelp was right.  The messengers returned alone.  Rachael’s letter
had gone, Rachael’s letter had been delivered.  Stephen Blackpool had
decamped in that same hour; and no soul knew more of him.  The only doubt
in Coketown was, whether Rachael had written in good faith, believing
that he really would come back, or warning him to fly.  On this point
opinion was divided.

Six days, seven days, far on into another week.  The wretched whelp
plucked up a ghastly courage, and began to grow defiant.  ‘_Was_ the
suspected fellow the thief?  A pretty question!  If not, where was the
man, and why did he not come back?’

Where was the man, and why did he not come back?  In the dead of night
the echoes of his own words, which had rolled Heaven knows how far away
in the daytime, came back instead, and abided by him until morning.

CHAPTER V
FOUND

DAY and night again, day and night again.  No Stephen Blackpool.  Where
was the man, and why did he not come back?

Every night, Sissy went to Rachael’s lodging, and sat with her in her
small neat room.  All day, Rachael toiled as such people must toil,
whatever their anxieties.  The smoke-serpents were indifferent who was
lost or found, who turned out bad or good; the melancholy mad elephants,
like the Hard Fact men, abated nothing of their set routine, whatever
happened.  Day and night again, day and night again.  The monotony was
unbroken.  Even Stephen Blackpool’s disappearance was falling into the
general way, and becoming as monotonous a wonder as any piece of
machinery in Coketown.

‘I misdoubt,’ said Rachael, ‘if there is as many as twenty left in all
this place, who have any trust in the poor dear lad now.’

She said it to Sissy, as they sat in her lodging, lighted only by the
lamp at the street corner.  Sissy had come there when it was already
dark, to await her return from work; and they had since sat at the window
where Rachael had found her, wanting no brighter light to shine on their
sorrowful talk.

‘If it hadn’t been mercifully brought about, that I was to have you to
speak to,’ pursued Rachael, ‘times are, when I think my mind would not
have kept right.  But I get hope and strength through you; and you
believe that though appearances may rise against him, he will be proved
clear?’

‘I do believe so,’ returned Sissy, ‘with my whole heart.  I feel so
certain, Rachael, that the confidence you hold in yours against all
discouragement, is not like to be wrong, that I have no more doubt of him
than if I had known him through as many years of trial as you have.’

‘And I, my dear,’ said Rachel, with a tremble in her voice, ‘have known
him through them all, to be, according to his quiet ways, so faithful to
everything honest and good, that if he was never to be heard of more, and
I was to live to be a hundred years old, I could say with my last breath,
God knows my heart.  I have never once left trusting Stephen Blackpool!’

‘We all believe, up at the Lodge, Rachael, that he will be freed from
suspicion, sooner or later.’

‘The better I know it to be so believed there, my dear,’ said Rachael,
‘and the kinder I feel it that you come away from there, purposely to
comfort me, and keep me company, and be seen wi’ me when I am not yet
free from all suspicion myself, the more grieved I am that I should ever
have spoken those mistrusting words to the young lady.  And yet I—’

‘You don’t mistrust her now, Rachael?’

‘Now that you have brought us more together, no.  But I can’t at all
times keep out of my mind—’

Her voice so sunk into a low and slow communing with herself, that Sissy,
sitting by her side, was obliged to listen with attention.

‘I can’t at all times keep out of my mind, mistrustings of some one.  I
can’t think who ’tis, I can’t think how or why it may be done, but I
mistrust that some one has put Stephen out of the way.  I mistrust that
by his coming back of his own accord, and showing himself innocent before
them all, some one would be confounded, who—to prevent that—has stopped
him, and put him out of the way.’

‘That is a dreadful thought,’ said Sissy, turning pale.

‘It _is_ a dreadful thought to think he may be murdered.’

Sissy shuddered, and turned paler yet.

‘When it makes its way into my mind, dear,’ said Rachael, ‘and it will
come sometimes, though I do all I can to keep it out, wi’ counting on to
high numbers as I work, and saying over and over again pieces that I knew
when I were a child—I fall into such a wild, hot hurry, that, however
tired I am, I want to walk fast, miles and miles.  I must get the better
of this before bed-time.  I’ll walk home wi’ you.’

‘He might fall ill upon the journey back,’ said Sissy, faintly offering a
worn-out scrap of hope; ‘and in such a case, there are many places on the
road where he might stop.’

‘But he is in none of them.  He has been sought for in all, and he’s not
there.’

‘True,’ was Sissy’s reluctant admission.

‘He’d walk the journey in two days.  If he was footsore and couldn’t
walk, I sent him, in the letter he got, the money to ride, lest he should
have none of his own to spare.’

‘Let us hope that to-morrow will bring something better, Rachael.  Come
into the air!’

Her gentle hand adjusted Rachael’s shawl upon her shining black hair in
the usual manner of her wearing it, and they went out.  The night being
fine, little knots of Hands were here and there lingering at street
corners; but it was supper-time with the greater part of them, and there
were but few people in the streets.

‘You’re not so hurried now, Rachael, and your hand is cooler.’

‘I get better, dear, if I can only walk, and breathe a little fresh.
‘Times when I can’t, I turn weak and confused.’

‘But you must not begin to fail, Rachael, for you may be wanted at any
time to stand by Stephen.  To-morrow is Saturday.  If no news comes
to-morrow, let us walk in the country on Sunday morning, and strengthen
you for another week.  Will you go?’

‘Yes, dear.’

They were by this time in the street where Mr. Bounderby’s house stood.
The way to Sissy’s destination led them past the door, and they were
going straight towards it.  Some train had newly arrived in Coketown,
which had put a number of vehicles in motion, and scattered a
considerable bustle about the town.  Several coaches were rattling before
them and behind them as they approached Mr. Bounderby’s, and one of the
latter drew up with such briskness as they were in the act of passing the
house, that they looked round involuntarily.  The bright gaslight over
Mr. Bounderby’s steps showed them Mrs. Sparsit in the coach, in an
ecstasy of excitement, struggling to open the door; Mrs. Sparsit seeing
them at the same moment, called to them to stop.

‘It’s a coincidence,’ exclaimed Mrs. Sparsit, as she was released by the
coachman.  ‘It’s a Providence!  Come out, ma’am!’ then said Mrs. Sparsit,
to some one inside, ‘come out, or we’ll have you dragged out!’

Hereupon, no other than the mysterious old woman descended.  Whom Mrs.
Sparsit incontinently collared.

‘Leave her alone, everybody!’ cried Mrs. Sparsit, with great energy.
‘Let nobody touch her.  She belongs to me.  Come in, ma’am!’ then said
Mrs. Sparsit, reversing her former word of command.  ‘Come in, ma’am, or
we’ll have you dragged in!’

The spectacle of a matron of classical deportment, seizing an ancient
woman by the throat, and hauling her into a dwelling-house, would have
been under any circumstances, sufficient temptation to all true English
stragglers so blest as to witness it, to force a way into that
dwelling-house and see the matter out.  But when the phenomenon was
enhanced by the notoriety and mystery by this time associated all over
the town with the Bank robbery, it would have lured the stragglers in,
with an irresistible attraction, though the roof had been expected to
fall upon their heads.  Accordingly, the chance witnesses on the ground,
consisting of the busiest of the neighbours to the number of some
five-and-twenty, closed in after Sissy and Rachael, as they closed in
after Mrs. Sparsit and her prize; and the whole body made a disorderly
irruption into Mr. Bounderby’s dining-room, where the people behind lost
not a moment’s time in mounting on the chairs, to get the better of the
people in front.

‘Fetch Mr. Bounderby down!’ cried Mrs. Sparsit.  ‘Rachael, young woman;
you know who this is?’

‘It’s Mrs. Pegler,’ said Rachael.

‘I should think it is!’ cried Mrs. Sparsit, exulting.  ‘Fetch Mr.
Bounderby.  Stand away, everybody!’  Here old Mrs. Pegler, muffling
herself up, and shrinking from observation, whispered a word of entreaty.
‘Don’t tell me,’ said Mrs. Sparsit, aloud.  ‘I have told you twenty
times, coming along, that I will _not_ leave you till I have handed you
over to him myself.’

Mr. Bounderby now appeared, accompanied by Mr. Gradgrind and the whelp,
with whom he had been holding conference up-stairs.  Mr. Bounderby looked
more astonished than hospitable, at sight of this uninvited party in his
dining-room.

‘Why, what’s the matter now!’ said he.  ‘Mrs. Sparsit, ma’am?’

‘Sir,’ explained that worthy woman, ‘I trust it is my good fortune to
produce a person you have much desired to find.  Stimulated by my wish to
relieve your mind, sir, and connecting together such imperfect clues to
the part of the country in which that person might be supposed to reside,
as have been afforded by the young woman, Rachael, fortunately now
present to identify, I have had the happiness to succeed, and to bring
that person with me—I need not say most unwillingly on her part.  It has
not been, sir, without some trouble that I have effected this; but
trouble in your service is to me a pleasure, and hunger, thirst, and cold
a real gratification.’

Here Mrs. Sparsit ceased; for Mr. Bounderby’s visage exhibited an
extraordinary combination of all possible colours and expressions of
discomfiture, as old Mrs. Pegler was disclosed to his view.

‘Why, what do you mean by this?’ was his highly unexpected demand, in
great warmth.  ‘I ask you, what do you mean by this, Mrs. Sparsit,
ma’am?’

‘Sir!’ exclaimed Mrs. Sparsit, faintly.

‘Why don’t you mind your own business, ma’am?’ roared Bounderby.  ‘How
dare you go and poke your officious nose into my family affairs?’

This allusion to her favourite feature overpowered Mrs. Sparsit.  She sat
down stiffly in a chair, as if she were frozen; and with a fixed stare at
Mr. Bounderby, slowly grated her mittens against one another, as if they
were frozen too.

‘My dear Josiah!’ cried Mrs. Pegler, trembling.  ‘My darling boy!  I am
not to blame.  It’s not my fault, Josiah.  I told this lady over and over
again, that I knew she was doing what would not be agreeable to you, but
she would do it.’

‘What did you let her bring you for?  Couldn’t you knock her cap off, or
her tooth out, or scratch her, or do something or other to her?’ asked
Bounderby.

‘My own boy!  She threatened me that if I resisted her, I should be
brought by constables, and it was better to come quietly than make that
stir in such a’—Mrs. Pegler glanced timidly but proudly round the
walls—‘such a fine house as this.  Indeed, indeed, it is not my fault!
My dear, noble, stately boy!  I have always lived quiet, and secret,
Josiah, my dear.  I have never broken the condition once.  I have never
said I was your mother.  I have admired you at a distance; and if I have
come to town sometimes, with long times between, to take a proud peep at
you, I have done it unbeknown, my love, and gone away again.’

Mr. Bounderby, with his hands in his pockets, walked in impatient
mortification up and down at the side of the long dining-table, while the
spectators greedily took in every syllable of Mrs. Pegler’s appeal, and
at each succeeding syllable became more and more round-eyed.  Mr.
Bounderby still walking up and down when Mrs. Pegler had done, Mr.
Gradgrind addressed that maligned old lady:

‘I am surprised, madam,’ he observed with severity, ‘that in your old age
you have the face to claim Mr. Bounderby for your son, after your
unnatural and inhuman treatment of him.’

‘_Me_ unnatural!’ cried poor old Mrs. Pegler.  ‘_Me_ inhuman!  To my dear
boy?’

‘Dear!’ repeated Mr. Gradgrind.  ‘Yes; dear in his self-made prosperity,
madam, I dare say.  Not very dear, however, when you deserted him in his
infancy, and left him to the brutality of a drunken grandmother.’

‘_I_ deserted my Josiah!’ cried Mrs. Pegler, clasping her hands.  ‘Now,
Lord forgive you, sir, for your wicked imaginations, and for your scandal
against the memory of my poor mother, who died in my arms before Josiah
was born.  May you repent of it, sir, and live to know better!’

She was so very earnest and injured, that Mr. Gradgrind, shocked by the
possibility which dawned upon him, said in a gentler tone:

‘Do you deny, then, madam, that you left your son to—to be brought up in
the gutter?’

‘Josiah in the gutter!’ exclaimed Mrs. Pegler.  ‘No such a thing, sir.
Never!  For shame on you!  My dear boy knows, and will give _you_ to
know, that though he come of humble parents, he come of parents that
loved him as dear as the best could, and never thought it hardship on
themselves to pinch a bit that he might write and cipher beautiful, and
I’ve his books at home to show it!  Aye, have I!’ said Mrs. Pegler, with
indignant pride.  ‘And my dear boy knows, and will give _you_ to know,
sir, that after his beloved father died, when he was eight years old, his
mother, too, could pinch a bit, as it was her duty and her pleasure and
her pride to do it, to help him out in life, and put him ’prentice.  And
a steady lad he was, and a kind master he had to lend him a hand, and
well he worked his own way forward to be rich and thriving.  And _I_’ll
give you to know, sir—for this my dear boy won’t—that though his mother
kept but a little village shop, he never forgot her, but pensioned me on
thirty pound a year—more than I want, for I put by out of it—only making
the condition that I was to keep down in my own part, and make no boasts
about him, and not trouble him.  And I never have, except with looking at
him once a year, when he has never knowed it.  And it’s right,’ said poor
old Mrs. Pegler, in affectionate championship, ‘that I _should_ keep down
in my own part, and I have no doubts that if I was here I should do a
many unbefitting things, and I am well contented, and I can keep my pride
in my Josiah to myself, and I can love for love’s own sake!  And I am
ashamed of you, sir,’ said Mrs. Pegler, lastly, ‘for your slanders and
suspicions.  And I never stood here before, nor never wanted to stand
here when my dear son said no.  And I shouldn’t be here now, if it hadn’t
been for being brought here.  And for shame upon you, Oh, for shame, to
accuse me of being a bad mother to my son, with my son standing here to
tell you so different!’

The bystanders, on and off the dining-room chairs, raised a murmur of
sympathy with Mrs. Pegler, and Mr. Gradgrind felt himself innocently
placed in a very distressing predicament, when Mr. Bounderby, who had
never ceased walking up and down, and had every moment swelled larger and
larger, and grown redder and redder, stopped short.

‘I don’t exactly know,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘how I come to be favoured
with the attendance of the present company, but I don’t inquire.  When
they’re quite satisfied, perhaps they’ll be so good as to disperse;
whether they’re satisfied or not, perhaps they’ll be so good as to
disperse.  I’m not bound to deliver a lecture on my family affairs, I
have not undertaken to do it, and I’m not a going to do it.  Therefore
those who expect any explanation whatever upon that branch of the
subject, will be disappointed—particularly Tom Gradgrind, and he can’t
know it too soon.  In reference to the Bank robbery, there has been a
mistake made, concerning my mother.  If there hadn’t been
over-officiousness it wouldn’t have been made, and I hate
over-officiousness at all times, whether or no. Good evening!’

Although Mr. Bounderby carried it off in these terms, holding the door
open for the company to depart, there was a blustering sheepishness upon
him, at once extremely crestfallen and superlatively absurd.  Detected as
the Bully of humility, who had built his windy reputation upon lies, and
in his boastfulness had put the honest truth as far away from him as if
he had advanced the mean claim (there is no meaner) to tack himself on to
a pedigree, he cut a most ridiculous figure.  With the people filing off
at the door he held, who he knew would carry what had passed to the whole
town, to be given to the four winds, he could not have looked a Bully
more shorn and forlorn, if he had had his ears cropped.  Even that
unlucky female, Mrs. Sparsit, fallen from her pinnacle of exultation into
the Slough of Despond, was not in so bad a plight as that remarkable man
and self-made Humbug, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown.

Rachael and Sissy, leaving Mrs. Pegler to occupy a bed at her son’s for
that night, walked together to the gate of Stone Lodge and there parted.
Mr. Gradgrind joined them before they had gone very far, and spoke with
much interest of Stephen Blackpool; for whom he thought this signal
failure of the suspicions against Mrs. Pegler was likely to work well.

As to the whelp; throughout this scene as on all other late occasions, he
had stuck close to Bounderby.  He seemed to feel that as long as
Bounderby could make no discovery without his knowledge, he was so far
safe.  He never visited his sister, and had only seen her once since she
went home: that is to say on the night when he still stuck close to
Bounderby, as already related.

There was one dim unformed fear lingering about his sister’s mind, to
which she never gave utterance, which surrounded the graceless and
ungrateful boy with a dreadful mystery.  The same dark possibility had
presented itself in the same shapeless guise, this very day, to Sissy,
when Rachael spoke of some one who would be confounded by Stephen’s
return, having put him out of the way.  Louisa had never spoken of
harbouring any suspicion of her brother in connexion with the robbery,
she and Sissy had held no confidence on the subject, save in that one
interchange of looks when the unconscious father rested his gray head on
his hand; but it was understood between them, and they both knew it.
This other fear was so awful, that it hovered about each of them like a
ghostly shadow; neither daring to think of its being near herself, far
less of its being near the other.

And still the forced spirit which the whelp had plucked up, throve with
him.  If Stephen Blackpool was not the thief, let him show himself.  Why
didn’t he?

Another night.  Another day and night.  No Stephen Blackpool.  Where was
the man, and why did he not come back?

CHAPTER VI
THE STARLIGHT

THE Sunday was a bright Sunday in autumn, clear and cool, when early in
the morning Sissy and Rachael met, to walk in the country.

As Coketown cast ashes not only on its own head but on the
neighbourhood’s too—after the manner of those pious persons who do
penance for their own sins by putting other people into sackcloth—it was
customary for those who now and then thirsted for a draught of pure air,
which is not absolutely the most wicked among the vanities of life, to
get a few miles away by the railroad, and then begin their walk, or their
lounge in the fields.  Sissy and Rachael helped themselves out of the
smoke by the usual means, and were put down at a station about midway
between the town and Mr. Bounderby’s retreat.

Though the green landscape was blotted here and there with heaps of coal,
it was green elsewhere, and there were trees to see, and there were larks
singing (though it was Sunday), and there were pleasant scents in the
air, and all was over-arched by a bright blue sky.  In the distance one
way, Coketown showed as a black mist; in another distance hills began to
rise; in a third, there was a faint change in the light of the horizon
where it shone upon the far-off sea.  Under their feet, the grass was
fresh; beautiful shadows of branches flickered upon it, and speckled it;