Chapter XII - The old woman



OLD STEPHEN descended the two white steps, shutting the black door
with the brazen door-plate, by the aid of the brazen full-stop, to
which he gave a parting polish with the sleeve of his coat,
observing that his hot hand clouded it.  He crossed the street with
his eyes bent upon the ground, and thus was walking sorrowfully
away, when he felt a touch upon his arm.

It was not the touch he needed most at such a moment - the touch
that could calm the wild waters of his soul, as the uplifted hand
of the sublimest love and patience could abate the raging of the
sea - yet it was a woman's hand too.  It was an old woman, tall and
shapely still, though withered by time, on whom his eyes fell when
he stopped and turned.  She was very cleanly and plainly dressed,
had country mud upon her shoes, and was newly come from a journey.
The flutter of her manner, in the unwonted noise of the streets;
the spare shawl, carried unfolded on her arm; the heavy umbrella,
and little basket; the loose long-fingered gloves, to which her
hands were unused; all bespoke an old woman from the country, in
her plain holiday clothes, come into Coketown on an expedition of
rare occurrence.  Remarking this at a glance, with the quick
observation of his class, Stephen Blackpool bent his attentive face
- his face, which, like the faces of many of his order, by dint of
long working with eyes and hands in the midst of a prodigious
noise, had acquired the concentrated look with which we are
familiar in the countenances of the deaf - the better to hear what
she asked him.

'Pray, sir,' said the old woman, 'didn't I see you come out of that
gentleman's house?' pointing back to Mr. Bounderby's.  'I believe
it was you, unless I have had the bad luck to mistake the person in
following?'

'Yes, missus,' returned Stephen, 'it were me.'

'Have you - you'll excuse an old woman's curiosity - have you seen
the gentleman?'

'Yes, missus.'

'And how did he look, sir?  Was he portly, bold, outspoken, and
hearty?'  As she straightened her own figure, and held up her head
in adapting her action to her words, the idea crossed Stephen that
he had seen this old woman before, and had not quite liked her.

'O yes,' he returned, observing her more attentively, 'he were all
that.'

'And healthy,' said the old woman, 'as the fresh wind?'

'Yes,' returned Stephen.  'He were ett'n and drinking - as large
and as loud as a Hummobee.'

'Thank you!' said the old woman, with infinite content.  'Thank
you!'

He certainly never had seen this old woman before.  Yet there was a
vague remembrance in his mind, as if he had more than once dreamed
of some old woman like her.

She walked along at his side, and, gently accommodating himself to
her humour, he said Coketown was a busy place, was it not?  To
which she answered 'Eigh sure!  Dreadful busy!'  Then he said, she
came from the country, he saw?  To which she answered in the
affirmative.

'By Parliamentary, this morning.  I came forty mile by
Parliamentary this morning, and I'm going back the same forty mile
this afternoon.  I walked nine mile to the station this morning,
and if I find nobody on the road to give me a lift, I shall walk
the nine mile back to-night.  That's pretty well, sir, at my age!'
said the chatty old woman, her eye brightening with exultation.

''Deed 'tis.  Don't do't too often, missus.'

'No, no.  Once a year,' she answered, shaking her head.  'I spend
my savings so, once every year.  I come regular, to tramp about the
streets, and see the gentlemen.'

'Only to see 'em?' returned Stephen.

'That's enough for me,' she replied, with great earnestness and
interest of manner.  'I ask no more!  I have been standing about,
on this side of the way, to see that gentleman,' turning her head
back towards Mr. Bounderby's again, 'come out.  But, he's late this
year, and I have not seen him.  You came out instead.  Now, if I am
obliged to go back without a glimpse of him - I only want a glimpse
- well!  I have seen you, and you have seen him, and I must make
that do.'  Saying this, she looked at Stephen as if to fix his
features in her mind, and her eye was not so bright as it had been.

With a large allowance for difference of tastes, and with all
submission to the patricians of Coketown, this seemed so
extraordinary a source of interest to take so much trouble about,
that it perplexed him.  But they were passing the church now, and
as his eye caught the clock, he quickened his pace.

He was going to his work? the old woman said, quickening hers, too,
quite easily.  Yes, time was nearly out.  On his telling her where
he worked, the old woman became a more singular old woman than
before.

'An't you happy?' she asked him.

'Why - there's awmost nobbody but has their troubles, missus.'  He
answered evasively, because the old woman appeared to take it for
granted that he would be very happy indeed, and he had not the
heart to disappoint her.  He knew that there was trouble enough in
the world; and if the old woman had lived so long, and could count
upon his having so little, why so much the better for her, and none
the worse for him.

'Ay, ay!  You have your troubles at home, you mean?' she said.

'Times.  Just now and then,' he answered, slightly.

'But, working under such a gentleman, they don't follow you to the
Factory?'

No, no; they didn't follow him there, said Stephen.  All correct
there.  Everything accordant there.  (He did not go so far as to
say, for her pleasure, that there was a sort of Divine Right there;
but, I have heard claims almost as magnificent of late years.)

They were now in the black by-road near the place, and the Hands
were crowding in.  The bell was ringing, and the Serpent was a
Serpent of many coils, and the Elephant was getting ready.  The
strange old woman was delighted with the very bell.  It was the
beautifullest bell she had ever heard, she said, and sounded grand!

She asked him, when he stopped good-naturedly to shake hands with
her before going in, how long he had worked there?

'A dozen year,' he told her.

'I must kiss the hand,' said she, 'that has worked in this fine
factory for a dozen year!'  And she lifted it, though he would have
prevented her, and put it to her lips.  What harmony, besides her
age and her simplicity, surrounded her, he did not know, but even
in this fantastic action there was a something neither out of time
nor place:  a something which it seemed as if nobody else could
have made as serious, or done with such a natural and touching air.

He had been at his loom full half an hour, thinking about this old
woman, when, having occasion to move round the loom for its
adjustment, he glanced through a window which was in his corner,
and saw her still looking up at the pile of building, lost in
admiration.  Heedless of the smoke and mud and wet, and of her two
long journeys, she was gazing at it, as if the heavy thrum that
issued from its many stories were proud music to her.

She was gone by and by, and the day went after her, and the lights
sprung up again, and the Express whirled in full sight of the Fairy
Palace over the arches near:  little felt amid the jarring of the
machinery, and scarcely heard above its crash and rattle.  Long
before then his thoughts had gone back to the dreary room above the
little shop, and to the shameful figure heavy on the bed, but
heavier on his heart.

Machinery slackened; throbbing feebly like a fainting pulse;
stopped.  The bell again; the glare of light and heat dispelled;
the factories, looming heavy in the black wet night - their tall
chimneys rising up into the air like competing Towers of Babel.

He had spoken to Rachael only last night, it was true, and had
walked with her a little way; but he had his new misfortune on him,
in which no one else could give him a moment's relief, and, for the
sake of it, and because he knew himself to want that softening of
his anger which no voice but hers could effect, he felt he might so
far disregard what she had said as to wait for her again.  He
waited, but she had eluded him.  She was gone.  On no other night
in the year could he so ill have spared her patient face.

O!  Better to have no home in which to lay his head, than to have a
home and dread to go to it, through such a cause.  He ate and
drank, for he was exhausted - but he little knew or cared what; and
he wandered about in the chill rain, thinking and thinking, and
brooding and brooding.

No word of a new marriage had ever passed between them; but Rachael
had taken great pity on him years ago, and to her alone he had
opened his closed heart all this time, on the subject of his
miseries; and he knew very well that if he were free to ask her,
she would take him.  He thought of the home he might at that moment
have been seeking with pleasure and pride; of the different man he
might have been that night; of the lightness then in his now heavy-
laden breast; of the then restored honour, self-respect, and
tranquillity all torn to pieces.  He thought of the waste of the
best part of his life, of the change it made in his character for
the worse every day, of the dreadful nature of his existence, bound
hand and foot, to a dead woman, and tormented by a demon in her
shape.  He thought of Rachael, how young when they were first
brought together in these circumstances, how mature now, how soon
to grow old.  He thought of the number of girls and women she had
seen marry, how many homes with children in them she had seen grow
up around her, how she had contentedly pursued her own lone quiet
path - for him - and how he had sometimes seen a shade of
melancholy on her blessed face, that smote him with remorse and
despair.  He set the picture of her up, beside the infamous image
of last night; and thought, Could it be, that the whole earthly
course of one so gentle, good, and self-denying, was subjugate to
such a wretch as that!

Filled with these thoughts - so filled that he had an unwholesome
sense of growing larger, of being placed in some new and diseased
relation towards the objects among which he passed, of seeing the
iris round every misty light turn red - he went home for shelter.

Chapter XIII - Rachael



A CANDLE faintly burned in the window, to which the black ladder
had often been raised for the sliding away of all that was most
precious in this world to a striving wife and a brood of hungry
babies; and Stephen added to his other thoughts the stern
reflection, that of all the casualties of this existence upon
earth, not one was dealt out with so unequal a hand as Death.  The
inequality of Birth was nothing to it.  For, say that the child of
a King and the child of a Weaver were born to-night in the same
moment, what was that disparity, to the death of any human creature
who was serviceable to, or beloved by, another, while this
abandoned woman lived on!

From the outside of his home he gloomily passed to the inside, with
suspended breath and with a slow footstep.  He went up to his door,
opened it, and so into the room.

Quiet and peace were there.  Rachael was there, sitting by the bed.

She turned her head, and the light of her face shone in upon the
midnight of his mind.  She sat by the bed, watching and tending his
wife.  That is to say, he saw that some one lay there, and he knew
too well it must be she; but Rachael's hands had put a curtain up,
so that she was screened from his eyes.  Her disgraceful garments
were removed, and some of Rachael's were in the room.  Everything
was in its place and order as he had always kept it, the little
fire was newly trimmed, and the hearth was freshly swept.  It
appeared to him that he saw all this in Rachael's face, and looked
at nothing besides.  While looking at it, it was shut out from his
view by the softened tears that filled his eyes; but not before he
had seen how earnestly she looked at him, and how her own eyes were
filled too.

She turned again towards the bed, and satisfying herself that all
was quiet there, spoke in a low, calm, cheerful voice.

'I am glad you have come at last, Stephen.  You are very late.'

'I ha' been walking up an' down.'

'I thought so.  But 'tis too bad a night for that.  The rain falls
very heavy, and the wind has risen.'

The wind?  True.  It was blowing hard.  Hark to the thundering in
the chimney, and the surging noise!  To have been out in such a
wind, and not to have known it was blowing!

'I have been here once before, to-day, Stephen.  Landlady came
round for me at dinner-time.  There was some one here that needed
looking to, she said.  And 'deed she was right.  All wandering and
lost, Stephen.  Wounded too, and bruised.'

He slowly moved to a chair and sat down, drooping his head before
her.

'I came to do what little I could, Stephen; first, for that she
worked with me when we were girls both, and for that you courted
her and married her when I was her friend - '

He laid his furrowed forehead on his hand, with a low groan.

'And next, for that I know your heart, and am right sure and
certain that 'tis far too merciful to let her die, or even so much
as suffer, for want of aid.  Thou knowest who said, "Let him who is
without sin among you cast the first stone at her!"  There have
been plenty to do that.  Thou art not the man to cast the last
stone, Stephen, when she is brought so low.'

'O Rachael, Rachael!'

'Thou hast been a cruel sufferer, Heaven reward thee!' she said, in
compassionate accents.  'I am thy poor friend, with all my heart
and mind.'

The wounds of which she had spoken, seemed to be about the neck of
the self-made outcast.  She dressed them now, still without showing
her.  She steeped a piece of linen in a basin, into which she
poured some liquid from a bottle, and laid it with a gentle hand
upon the sore.  The three-legged table had been drawn close to the
bedside, and on it there were two bottles.  This was one.

It was not so far off, but that Stephen, following her hands with
his eyes, could read what was printed on it in large letters.  He
turned of a deadly hue, and a sudden horror seemed to fall upon
him.

'I will stay here, Stephen,' said Rachael, quietly resuming her
seat, 'till the bells go Three.  'Tis to be done again at three,
and then she may be left till morning.'

'But thy rest agen to-morrow's work, my dear.'

'I slept sound last night.  I can wake many nights, when I am put
to it.  'Tis thou who art in need of rest - so white and tired.
Try to sleep in the chair there, while I watch.  Thou hadst no
sleep last night, I can well believe.  To-morrow's work is far
harder for thee than for me.'

He heard the thundering and surging out of doors, and it seemed to
him as if his late angry mood were going about trying to get at
him.  She had cast it out; she would keep it out; he trusted to her
to defend him from himself.

'She don't know me, Stephen; she just drowsily mutters and stares.
I have spoken to her times and again, but she don't notice!  'Tis
as well so.  When she comes to her right mind once more, I shall
have done what I can, and she never the wiser.'

'How long, Rachael, is 't looked for, that she'll be so?'

'Doctor said she would haply come to her mind to-morrow.'

His eyes fell again on the bottle, and a tremble passed over him,
causing him to shiver in every limb.  She thought he was chilled
with the wet.  'No,' he said, 'it was not that.  He had had a
fright.'

'A fright?'

'Ay, ay! coming in.  When I were walking.  When I were thinking.
When I - '  It seized him again; and he stood up, holding by the
mantel-shelf, as he pressed his dank cold hair down with a hand
that shook as if it were palsied.

'Stephen!'

She was coming to him, but he stretched out his arm to stop her.

'No!  Don't, please; don't.  Let me see thee setten by the bed.
Let me see thee, a' so good, and so forgiving.  Let me see thee as
I see thee when I coom in.  I can never see thee better than so.
Never, never, never!'

He had a violent fit of trembling, and then sunk into his chair.
After a time he controlled himself, and, resting with an elbow on
one knee, and his head upon that hand, could look towards Rachael.
Seen across the dim candle with his moistened eyes, she looked as
if she had a glory shining round her head.  He could have believed
she had.  He did believe it, as the noise without shook the window,
rattled at the door below, and went about the house clamouring and
lamenting.

'When she gets better, Stephen, 'tis to be hoped she'll leave thee
to thyself again, and do thee no more hurt.  Anyways we will hope
so now.  And now I shall keep silence, for I want thee to sleep.'

He closed his eyes, more to please her than to rest his weary head;
but, by slow degrees as he listened to the great noise of the wind,
he ceased to hear it, or it changed into the working of his loom,
or even into the voices of the day (his own included) saying what
had been really said.  Even this imperfect consciousness faded away
at last, and he dreamed a long, troubled dream.

He thought that he, and some one on whom his heart had long been
set - but she was not Rachael, and that surprised him, even in the
midst of his imaginary happiness - stood in the church being
married.  While the ceremony was performing, and while he
recognized among the witnesses some whom he knew to be living, and
many whom he knew to be dead, darkness came on, succeeded by the
shining of a tremendous light.  It broke from one line in the table
of commandments at the altar, and illuminated the building with the
words.  They were sounded through the church, too, as if there were
voices in the fiery letters.  Upon this, the whole appearance
before him and around him changed, and nothing was left as it had
been, but himself and the clergyman.  They stood in the daylight
before a crowd so vast, that if all the people in the world could
have been brought together into one space, they could not have
looked, he thought, more numerous; and they all abhorred him, and
there was not one pitying or friendly eye among the millions that
were fastened on his face.  He stood on a raised stage, under his
own loom; and, looking up at the shape the loom took, and hearing
the burial service distinctly read, he knew that he was there to
suffer death.  In an instant what he stood on fell below him, and
he was gone.

- Out of what mystery he came back to his usual life, and to places
that he knew, he was unable to consider; but he was back in those
places by some means, and with this condemnation upon him, that he
was never, in this world or the next, through all the unimaginable
ages of eternity, to look on Rachael's face or hear her voice.
Wandering to and fro, unceasingly, without hope, and in search of
he knew not what (he only knew that he was doomed to seek it), he
was the subject of a nameless, horrible dread, a mortal fear of one
particular shape which everything took.  Whatsoever he looked at,
grew into that form sooner or later.  The object of his miserable
existence was to prevent its recognition by any one among the
various people he encountered.  Hopeless labour!  If he led them
out of rooms where it was, if he shut up drawers and closets where
it stood, if he drew the curious from places where he knew it to be
secreted, and got them out into the streets, the very chimneys of
the mills assumed that shape, and round them was the printed word.

The wind was blowing again, the rain was beating on the house-tops,
and the larger spaces through which he had strayed contracted to
the four walls of his room.  Saving that the fire had died out, it
was as his eyes had closed upon it.  Rachael seemed to have fallen
into a doze, in the chair by the bed.  She sat wrapped in her
shawl, perfectly still.  The table stood in the same place, close
by the bedside, and on it, in its real proportions and appearance,
was the shape so often repeated.

He thought he saw the curtain move.  He looked again, and he was
sure it moved.  He saw a hand come forth and grope about a little.
Then the curtain moved more perceptibly, and the woman in the bed
put it back, and sat up.

With her woful eyes, so haggard and wild, so heavy and large, she
looked all round the room, and passed the corner where he slept in
his chair.  Her eyes returned to that corner, and she put her hand
over them as a shade, while she looked into it.  Again they went
all round the room, scarcely heeding Rachael if at all, and
returned to that corner.  He thought, as she once more shaded them
- not so much looking at him, as looking for him with a brutish
instinct that he was there - that no single trace was left in those
debauched features, or in the mind that went along with them, of
the woman he had married eighteen years before.  But that he had
seen her come to this by inches, he never could have believed her
to be the same.

All this time, as if a spell were on him, he was motionless and
powerless, except to watch her.

Stupidly dozing, or communing with her incapable self about
nothing, she sat for a little while with her hands at her ears, and
her head resting on them.  Presently, she resumed her staring round
the room.  And now, for the first time, her eyes stopped at the
table with the bottles on it.

Straightway she turned her eyes back to his corner, with the
defiance of last night, and moving very cautiously and softly,
stretched out her greedy hand.  She drew a mug into the bed, and
sat for a while considering which of the two bottles she should
choose.  Finally, she laid her insensate grasp upon the bottle that
had swift and certain death in it, and, before his eyes, pulled out
the cork with her teeth.

Dream or reality, he had no voice, nor had he power to stir.  If
this be real, and her allotted time be not yet come, wake, Rachael,
wake!

She thought of that, too.  She looked at Rachael, and very slowly,
very cautiously, poured out the contents.  The draught was at her
lips.  A moment and she would be past all help, let the whole world
wake and come about her with its utmost power.  But in that moment
Rachael started up with a suppressed cry.  The creature struggled,
struck her, seized her by the hair; but Rachael had the cup.

Stephen broke out of his chair.  'Rachael, am I wakin' or dreamin'
this dreadfo' night?'

''Tis all well, Stephen.  I have been asleep, myself.  'Tis near
three.  Hush!  I hear the bells.'

The wind brought the sounds of the church clock to the window.
They listened, and it struck three.  Stephen looked at her, saw how
pale she was, noted the disorder of her hair, and the red marks of
fingers on her forehead, and felt assured that his senses of sight
and hearing had been awake.  She held the cup in her hand even now.

'I thought it must be near three,' she said, calmly pouring from
the cup into the basin, and steeping the linen as before.  'I am
thankful I stayed!  'Tis done now, when I have put this on.  There!
And now she's quiet again.  The few drops in the basin I'll pour
away, for 'tis bad stuff to leave about, though ever so little of
it.'  As she spoke, she drained the basin into the ashes of the
fire, and broke the bottle on the hearth.

She had nothing to do, then, but to cover herself with her shawl
before going out into the wind and rain.

'Thou'lt let me walk wi' thee at this hour, Rachael?'

'No, Stephen.  'Tis but a minute, and I'm home.'

'Thou'rt not fearfo';' he said it in a low voice, as they went out
at the door; 'to leave me alone wi' her!'

As she looked at him, saying, 'Stephen?' he went down on his knee
before her, on the poor mean stairs, and put an end of her shawl to
his lips.

'Thou art an Angel.  Bless thee, bless thee!'

'I am, as I have told thee, Stephen, thy poor friend.  Angels are
not like me.  Between them, and a working woman fu' of faults,
there is a deep gulf set.  My little sister is among them, but she
is changed.'

She raised her eyes for a moment as she said the words; and then
they fell again, in all their gentleness and mildness, on his face.

'Thou changest me from bad to good.  Thou mak'st me humbly wishfo'
to be more like thee, and fearfo' to lose thee when this life is
ower, and a' the muddle cleared awa'.  Thou'rt an Angel; it may be,
thou hast saved my soul alive!'

She looked at him, on his knee at her feet, with her shawl still in
his hand, and the reproof on her lips died away when she saw the
working of his face.

'I coom home desp'rate.  I coom home wi'out a hope, and mad wi'
thinking that when I said a word o' complaint I was reckoned a
unreasonable Hand.  I told thee I had had a fright.  It were the
Poison-bottle on table.  I never hurt a livin' creetur; but
happenin' so suddenly upon 't, I thowt, "How can I say what I might
ha' done to myseln, or her, or both!"'

She put her two hands on his mouth, with a face of terror, to stop
him from saying more.  He caught them in his unoccupied hand, and
holding them, and still clasping the border of her shawl, said
hurriedly:

'But I see thee, Rachael, setten by the bed.  I ha' seen thee, aw
this night.  In my troublous sleep I ha' known thee still to be
there.  Evermore I will see thee there.  I nevermore will see her
or think o' her, but thou shalt be beside her.  I nevermore will
see or think o' anything that angers me, but thou, so much better
than me, shalt be by th' side on't.  And so I will try t' look t'
th' time, and so I will try t' trust t' th' time, when thou and me
at last shall walk together far awa', beyond the deep gulf, in th'
country where thy little sister is.'

He kissed the border of her shawl again, and let her go.  She bade
him good night in a broken voice, and went out into the street.

The wind blew from the quarter where the day would soon appear, and
still blew strongly.  It had cleared the sky before it, and the
rain had spent itself or travelled elsewhere, and the stars were
bright.  He stood bare-headed in the road, watching her quick
disappearance.  As the shining stars were to the heavy candle in
the window, so was Rachael, in the rugged fancy of this man, to the
common experiences of his life.

Chapter XIV - The great manufacturer



TIME went on in Coketown like its own machinery:  so much material
wrought up, so much fuel consumed, so many powers worn out, so much
money made.  But, less inexorable than iron, steal, and brass, it
brought its varying seasons even into that wilderness of smoke and
brick, and made the only stand that ever was made in the place
against its direful uniformity.

'Louisa is becoming,' said Mr. Gradgrind, 'almost a young woman.'

Time, with his innumerable horse-power, worked away, not minding
what anybody said, and presently turned out young Thomas a foot
taller than when his father had last taken particular notice of
him.

'Thomas is becoming,' said Mr. Gradgrind, 'almost a young man.'

Time passed Thomas on in the mill, while his father was thinking
about it, and there he stood in a long-tailed coat and a stiff
shirt-collar.

'Really,' said Mr. Gradgrind, 'the period has arrived when Thomas
ought to go to Bounderby.'

Time, sticking to him, passed him on into Bounderby's Bank, made
him an inmate of Bounderby's house, necessitated the purchase of
his first razor, and exercised him diligently in his calculations
relative to number one.

The same great manufacturer, always with an immense variety of work
on hand, in every stage of development, passed Sissy onward in his
mill, and worked her up into a very pretty article indeed.

'I fear, Jupe,' said Mr. Gradgrind, 'that your continuance at the
school any longer would be useless.'

'I am afraid it would, sir,' Sissy answered with a curtsey.

'I cannot disguise from you, Jupe,' said Mr. Gradgrind, knitting
his brow, 'that the result of your probation there has disappointed
me; has greatly disappointed me.  You have not acquired, under Mr.
and Mrs. M'Choakumchild, anything like that amount of exact
knowledge which I looked for.  You are extremely deficient in your
facts.  Your acquaintance with figures is very limited.  You are
altogether backward, and below the mark.'

'I am sorry, sir,' she returned; 'but I know it is quite true.  Yet
I have tried hard, sir.'

'Yes,' said Mr. Gradgrind, 'yes, I believe you have tried hard; I
have observed you, and I can find no fault in that respect.'

'Thank you, sir.  I have thought sometimes;' Sissy very timid here;
'that perhaps I tried to learn too much, and that if I had asked to
be allowed to try a little less, I might have - '

'No, Jupe, no,' said Mr. Gradgrind, shaking his head in his
profoundest and most eminently practical way.  'No.  The course you
pursued, you pursued according to the system - the system - and
there is no more to be said about it.  I can only suppose that the
circumstances of your early life were too unfavourable to the
development of your reasoning powers, and that we began too late.
Still, as I have said already, I am disappointed.'

'I wish I could have made a better acknowledgment, sir, of your
kindness to a poor forlorn girl who had no claim upon you, and of
your protection of her.'

'Don't shed tears,' said Mr. Gradgrind.  'Don't shed tears.  I
don't complain of you.  You are an affectionate, earnest, good
young woman - and - and we must make that do.'

'Thank you, sir, very much,' said Sissy, with a grateful curtsey.

'You are useful to Mrs. Gradgrind, and (in a generally pervading
way) you are serviceable in the family also; so I understand from
Miss Louisa, and, indeed, so I have observed myself.  I therefore
hope,' said Mr. Gradgrind, 'that you can make yourself happy in
those relations.'

'I should have nothing to wish, sir, if - '

'I understand you,' said Mr. Gradgrind; 'you still refer to your
father.  I have heard from Miss Louisa that you still preserve that
bottle.  Well!  If your training in the science of arriving at
exact results had been more successful, you would have been wiser
on these points.  I will say no more.'

He really liked Sissy too well to have a contempt for her;
otherwise he held her calculating powers in such very slight
estimation that he must have fallen upon that conclusion.  Somehow
or other, he had become possessed by an idea that there was
something in this girl which could hardly be set forth in a tabular
form.  Her capacity of definition might be easily stated at a very
low figure, her mathematical knowledge at nothing; yet he was not
sure that if he had been required, for example, to tick her off
into columns in a parliamentary return, he would have quite known
how to divide her.

In some stages of his manufacture of the human fabric, the
processes of Time are very rapid.  Young Thomas and Sissy being
both at such a stage of their working up, these changes were
effected in a year or two; while Mr. Gradgrind himself seemed
stationary in his course, and underwent no alteration.

Except one, which was apart from his necessary progress through the
mill.  Time hustled him into a little noisy and rather dirty
machinery, in a by-comer, and made him Member of Parliament for
Coketown:  one of the respected members for ounce weights and
measures, one of the representatives of the multiplication table,
one of the deaf honourable gentlemen, dumb honourable gentlemen,
blind honourable gentlemen, lame honourable gentlemen, dead
honourable gentlemen, to every other consideration.  Else wherefore
live we in a Christian land, eighteen hundred and odd years after
our Master?

All this while, Louisa had been passing on, so quiet and reserved,
and so much given to watching the bright ashes at twilight as they
fell into the grate, and became extinct, that from the period when
her father had said she was almost a young woman - which seemed but
yesterday - she had scarcely attracted his notice again, when he
found her quite a young woman.

'Quite a young woman,' said Mr. Gradgrind, musing.  'Dear me!'

Soon after this discovery, he became more thoughtful than usual for
several days, and seemed much engrossed by one subject.  On a
certain night, when he was going out, and Louisa came to bid him
good-bye before his departure - as he was not to be home until late
and she would not see him again until the morning - he held her in
his arms, looking at her in his kindest manner, and said:

'My dear Louisa, you are a woman!'

She answered with the old, quick, searching look of the night when
she was found at the Circus; then cast down her eyes.  'Yes,
father.'

'My dear,' said Mr. Gradgrind, 'I must speak with you alone and
seriously.  Come to me in my room after breakfast to-morrow, will
you?'

'Yes, father.'

'Your hands are rather cold, Louisa.  Are you not well?'

'Quite well, father.'

'And cheerful?'

She looked at him again, and smiled in her peculiar manner.  'I am
as cheerful, father, as I usually am, or usually have been.'

'That's well,' said Mr. Gradgrind.  So, he kissed her and went
away; and Louisa returned to the serene apartment of the
haircutting character, and leaning her elbow on her hand, looked
again at the short-lived sparks that so soon subsided into ashes.

'Are you there, Loo?' said her brother, looking in at the door.  He
was quite a young gentleman of pleasure now, and not quite a
prepossessing one.

'Dear Tom,' she answered, rising and embracing him, 'how long it is
since you have been to see me!'

'Why, I have been otherwise engaged, Loo, in the evenings; and in
the daytime old Bounderby has been keeping me at it rather.  But I
touch him up with you when he comes it too strong, and so we
preserve an understanding.  I say!  Has father said anything
particular to you to-day or yesterday, Loo?'

'No, Tom.  But he told me to-night that he wished to do so in the
morning.'

'Ah!  That's what I mean,' said Tom.  'Do you know where he is to-
night?' - with a very deep expression.

'No.'

'Then I'll tell you.  He's with old Bounderby.  They are having a
regular confab together up at the Bank.  Why at the Bank, do you
think?  Well, I'll tell you again.  To keep Mrs. Sparsit's ears as
far off as possible, I expect.'

With her hand upon her brother's shoulder, Louisa still stood
looking at the fire.  Her brother glanced at her face with greater
interest than usual, and, encircling her waist with his arm, drew
her coaxingly to him.

'You are very fond of me, an't you, Loo?'

'Indeed I am, Tom, though you do let such long intervals go by
without coming to see me.'

'Well, sister of mine,' said Tom, 'when you say that, you are near
my thoughts.  We might be so much oftener together - mightn't we?
Always together, almost - mightn't we?  It would do me a great deal
of good if you were to make up your mind to I know what, Loo.  It
would be a splendid thing for me.  It would be uncommonly jolly!'

Her thoughtfulness baffled his cunning scrutiny.  He could make
nothing of her face.  He pressed her in his arm, and kissed her
cheek.  She returned the kiss, but still looked at the fire.

'I say, Loo!  I thought I'd come, and just hint to you what was
going on:  though I supposed you'd most likely guess, even if you
didn't know.  I can't stay, because I'm engaged to some fellows to-
night.  You won't forget how fond you are of me?'

'No, dear Tom, I won't forget.'

'That's a capital girl,' said Tom.  'Good-bye, Loo.'

She gave him an affectionate good-night, and went out with him to
the door, whence the fires of Coketown could be seen, making the
distance lurid.  She stood there, looking steadfastly towards them,
and listening to his departing steps.  They retreated quickly, as
glad to get away from Stone Lodge; and she stood there yet, when he
was gone and all was quiet.  It seemed as if, first in her own fire
within the house, and then in the fiery haze without, she tried to
discover what kind of woof Old Time, that greatest and longest-
established Spinner of all, would weave from the threads he had
already spun into a woman.  But his factory is a secret place, his
work is noiseless, and his Hands are mutes.

Chapter XV - Father and daughter



ALTHOUGH Mr. Gradgrind did not take after Blue Beard, his room was
quite a blue chamber in its abundance of blue books.  Whatever they
could prove (which is usually anything you like), they proved
there, in an army constantly strengthening by the arrival of new
recruits.  In that charmed apartment, the most complicated social
questions were cast up, got into exact totals, and finally settled
- if those concerned could only have been brought to know it.  As
if an astronomical observatory should be made without any windows,
and the astronomer within should arrange the starry universe solely
by pen, ink, and paper, so Mr. Gradgrind, in his Observatory (and
there are many like it), had no need to cast an eye upon the
teeming myriads of human beings around him, but could settle all
their destinies on a slate, and wipe out all their tears with one
dirty little bit of sponge.

To this Observatory, then:  a stern room, with a deadly statistical
clock in it, which measured every second with a beat like a rap
upon a coffin-lid; Louisa repaired on the appointed morning.  A
window looked towards Coketown; and when she sat down near her
father's table, she saw the high chimneys and the long tracts of
smoke looming in the heavy distance gloomily.

'My dear Louisa,' said her father, 'I prepared you last night to
give me your serious attention in the conversation we are now going
to have together.  You have been so well trained, and you do, I am
happy to say, so much justice to the education you have received,
that I have perfect confidence in your good sense.  You are not
impulsive, you are not romantic, you are accustomed to view
everything from the strong dispassionate ground of reason and
calculation.  From that ground alone, I know you will view and
consider what I am going to communicate.'

He waited, as if he would have been glad that she said something.
But she said never a word.

'Louisa, my dear, you are the subject of a proposal of marriage
that has been made to me.'

Again he waited, and again she answered not one word.  This so far
surprised him, as to induce him gently to repeat, 'a proposal of
marriage, my dear.'  To which she returned, without any visible
emotion whatever:

'I hear you, father.  I am attending, I assure you.'

'Well!' said Mr. Gradgrind, breaking into a smile, after being for
the moment at a loss, 'you are even more dispassionate than I
expected, Louisa.  Or, perhaps, you are not unprepared for the
announcement I have it in charge to make?'

'I cannot say that, father, until I hear it.  Prepared or
unprepared, I wish to hear it all from you.  I wish to hear you
state it to me, father.'

Strange to relate, Mr. Gradgrind was not so collected at this
moment as his daughter was.  He took a paper-knife in his hand,
turned it over, laid it down, took it up again, and even then had
to look along the blade of it, considering how to go on.

'What you say, my dear Louisa, is perfectly reasonable.  I have
undertaken then to let you know that - in short, that Mr. Bounderby
has informed me that he has long watched your progress with
particular interest and pleasure, and has long hoped that the time
might ultimately arrive when he should offer you his hand in
marriage.  That time, to which he has so long, and certainly with
great constancy, looked forward, is now come.  Mr. Bounderby has
made his proposal of marriage to me, and has entreated me to make
it known to you, and to express his hope that you will take it into
your favourable consideration.'

Silence between them.  The deadly statistical clock very hollow.
The distant smoke very black and heavy.

'Father,' said Louisa, 'do you think I love Mr. Bounderby?'

Mr. Gradgrind was extremely discomfited by this unexpected
question.  'Well, my child,' he returned, 'I - really - cannot take
upon myself to say.'

'Father,' pursued Louisa in exactly the same voice as before, 'do
you ask me to love Mr. Bounderby?'

'My dear Louisa, no.  No.  I ask nothing.'

'Father,' she still pursued, 'does Mr. Bounderby ask me to love
him?'

'Really, my dear,' said Mr. Gradgrind, 'it is difficult to answer
your question - '

'Difficult to answer it, Yes or No, father?

'Certainly, my dear.  Because;' here was something to demonstrate,
and it set him up again; 'because the reply depends so materially,
Louisa, on the sense in which we use the expression.  Now, Mr.
Bounderby does not do you the injustice, and does not do himself
the injustice, of pretending to anything fanciful, fantastic, or (I
am using synonymous terms) sentimental.  Mr. Bounderby would have
seen you grow up under his eyes, to very little purpose, if he
could so far forget what is due to your good sense, not to say to
his, as to address you from any such ground.  Therefore, perhaps
the expression itself - I merely suggest this to you, my dear - may
be a little misplaced.'

'What would you advise me to use in its stead, father?'

'Why, my dear Louisa,' said Mr. Gradgrind, completely recovered by
this time, 'I would advise you (since you ask me) to consider this
question, as you have been accustomed to consider every other
question, simply as one of tangible Fact.  The ignorant and the
giddy may embarrass such subjects with irrelevant fancies, and
other absurdities that have no existence, properly viewed - really
no existence - but it is no compliment to you to say, that you know
better.  Now, what are the Facts of this case?  You are, we will
say in round numbers, twenty years of age; Mr. Bounderby is, we
will say in round numbers, fifty.  There is some disparity in your
respective years, but in your means and positions there is none; on
the contrary, there is a great suitability.  Then the question
arises, Is this one disparity sufficient to operate as a bar to
such a marriage?  In considering this question, it is not
unimportant to take into account the statistics of marriage, so far
as they have yet been obtained, in England and Wales.  I find, on
reference to the figures, that a large proportion of these
marriages are contracted between parties of very unequal ages, and
that the elder of these contracting parties is, in rather more than
three-fourths of these instances, the bridegroom.  It is remarkable
as showing the wide prevalence of this law, that among the natives
of the British possessions in India, also in a considerable part of
China, and among the Calmucks of Tartary, the best means of
computation yet furnished us by travellers, yield similar results.
The disparity I have mentioned, therefore, almost ceases to be
disparity, and (virtually) all but disappears.'

'What do you recommend, father,' asked Louisa, her reserved
composure not in the least affected by these gratifying results,
'that I should substitute for the term I used just now?  For the
misplaced expression?'

'Louisa,' returned her father, 'it appears to me that nothing can
be plainer.  Confining yourself rigidly to Fact, the question of
Fact you state to yourself is:  Does Mr. Bounderby ask me to marry
him?  Yes, he does.  The sole remaining question then is:  Shall I
marry him?  I think nothing can be plainer than that?'

'Shall I marry him?' repeated Louisa, with great deliberation.

'Precisely.  And it is satisfactory to me, as your father, my dear
Louisa, to know that you do not come to the consideration of that
question with the previous habits of mind, and habits of life, that
belong to many young women.'

'No, father,' she returned, 'I do not.'

'I now leave you to judge for yourself,' said Mr. Gradgrind.  'I
have stated the case, as such cases are usually stated among
practical minds; I have stated it, as the case of your mother and
myself was stated in its time.  The rest, my dear Louisa, is for
you to decide.'

From the beginning, she had sat looking at him fixedly.  As he now
leaned back in his chair, and bent his deep-set eyes upon her in
his turn, perhaps he might have seen one wavering moment in her,
when she was impelled to throw herself upon his breast, and give
him the pent-up confidences of her heart.  But, to see it, he must
have overleaped at a bound the artificial barriers he had for many
years been erecting, between himself and all those subtle essences
of humanity which will elude the utmost cunning of algebra until
the last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra to
wreck.  The barriers were too many and too high for such a leap.
With his unbending, utilitarian, matter-of-fact face, he hardened
her again; and the moment shot away into the plumbless depths of
the past, to mingle with all the lost opportunities that are
drowned there.

Removing her eyes from him, she sat so long looking silently
towards the town, that he said, at length:  'Are you consulting the
chimneys of the Coketown works, Louisa?'

'There seems to be nothing there but languid and monotonous smoke.
Yet when the night comes, Fire bursts out, father!' she answered,
turning quickly.

'Of course I know that, Louisa.  I do not see the application of
the remark.'  To do him justice he did not, at all.

She passed it away with a slight motion of her hand, and
concentrating her attention upon him again, said, 'Father, I have
often thought that life is very short.' - This was so distinctly
one of his subjects that he interposed.

'It is short, no doubt, my dear.  Still, the average duration of
human life is proved to have increased of late years.  The
calculations of various life assurance and annuity offices, among
other figures which cannot go wrong, have established the fact.'

'I speak of my own life, father.'

'O indeed?  Still,' said Mr. Gradgrind, 'I need not point out to
you, Louisa, that it is governed by the laws which govern lives in
the aggregate.'

'While it lasts, I would wish to do the little I can, and the
little I am fit for.  What does it matter?'

Mr. Gradgrind seemed rather at a loss to understand the last four
words; replying, 'How, matter?  What matter, my dear?'

'Mr. Bounderby,' she went on in a steady, straight way, without
regarding this, 'asks me to marry him.  The question I have to ask
myself is, shall I marry him?  That is so, father, is it not?  You
have told me so, father.  Have you not?'

'Certainly, my dear.'

'Let it be so.  Since Mr. Bounderby likes to take me thus, I am
satisfied to accept his proposal.  Tell him, father, as soon as you
please, that this was my answer.  Repeat it, word for word, if you
can, because I should wish him to know what I said.'

'It is quite right, my dear,' retorted her father approvingly, 'to
be exact.  I will observe your very proper request.  Have you any
wish in reference to the period of your marriage, my child?'

'None, father.  What does it matter!'

Mr. Gradgrind had drawn his chair a little nearer to her, and taken
her hand.  But, her repetition of these words seemed to strike with
some little discord on his ear.  He paused to look at her, and,
still holding her hand, said:

'Louisa, I have not considered it essential to ask you one
question, because the possibility implied in it appeared to me to
be too remote.  But perhaps I ought to do so.  You have never
entertained in secret any other proposal?'

'Father,' she returned, almost scornfully, 'what other proposal can
have been made to me?  Whom have I seen?  Where have I been?  What
are my heart's experiences?'

'My dear Louisa,' returned Mr. Gradgrind, reassured and satisfied.
'You correct me justly.  I merely wished to discharge my duty.'

'What do I know, father,' said Louisa in her quiet manner, 'of
tastes and fancies; of aspirations and affections; of all that part
of my nature in which such light things might have been nourished?
What escape have I had from problems that could be demonstrated,
and realities that could be grasped?'  As she said it, she
unconsciously closed her hand, as if upon a solid object, and
slowly opened it as though she were releasing dust or ash.

'My dear,' assented her eminently practical parent, 'quite true,
quite true.'

'Why, father,' she pursued, 'what a strange question to ask me!
The baby-preference that even I have heard of as common among
children, has never had its innocent resting-place in my breast.
You have been so careful of me, that I never had a child's heart.
You have trained me so well, that I never dreamed a child's dream.
You have dealt so wisely with me, father, from my cradle to this
hour, that I never had a child's belief or a child's fear.'

Mr. Gradgrind was quite moved by his success, and by this testimony
to it.  'My dear Louisa,' said he, 'you abundantly repay my care.
Kiss me, my dear girl.'

So, his daughter kissed him.  Detaining her in his embrace, he
said, 'I may assure you now, my favourite child, that I am made
happy by the sound decision at which you have arrived.  Mr.
Bounderby is a very remarkable man; and what little disparity can
be said to exist between you - if any - is more than
counterbalanced by the tone your mind has acquired.  It has always
been my object so to educate you, as that you might, while still in
your early youth, be (if I may so express myself) almost any age.
Kiss me once more, Louisa.  Now, let us go and find your mother.'

Accordingly, they went down to the drawing-room, where the esteemed
lady with no nonsense about her, was recumbent as usual, while
Sissy worked beside her.  She gave some feeble signs of returning
animation when they entered, and presently the faint transparency
was presented in a sitting attitude.

'Mrs. Gradgrind,' said her husband, who had waited for the
achievement of this feat with some impatience, 'allow me to present
to you Mrs. Bounderby.'

'Oh!' said Mrs. Gradgrind, 'so you have settled it!  Well, I'm sure
I hope your health may be good, Louisa; for if your head begins to
split as soon as you are married, which was the case with mine, I
cannot consider that you are to be envied, though I have no doubt
you think you are, as all girls do.  However, I give you joy, my
dear - and I hope you may now turn all your ological studies to
good account, I am sure I do!  I must give you a kiss of
congratulation, Louisa; but don't touch my right shoulder, for
there's something running down it all day long.  And now you see,'
whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind, adjusting her shawls after the
affectionate ceremony, 'I shall be worrying myself, morning, noon,
and night, to know what I am to call him!'

'Mrs. Gradgrind,' said her husband, solemnly, 'what do you mean?'

'Whatever I am to call him, Mr. Gradgrind, when he is married to
Louisa!  I must call him something.  It's impossible,' said Mrs.
Gradgrind, with a mingled sense of politeness and injury, 'to be
constantly addressing him and never giving him a name.  I cannot
call him Josiah, for the name is insupportable to me.  You yourself
wouldn't hear of Joe, you very well know.  Am I to call my own son-
in-law, Mister!  Not, I believe, unless the time has arrived when,
as an invalid, I am to be trampled upon by my relations.  Then,
what am I to call him!'

Nobody present having any suggestion to offer in the remarkable
emergency, Mrs. Gradgrind departed this life for the time being,
after delivering the following codicil to her remarks already
executed:

'As to the wedding, all I ask, Louisa, is, - and I ask it with a
fluttering in my chest, which actually extends to the soles of my
feet, - that it may take place soon.  Otherwise, I know it is one
of those subjects I shall never hear the last of.'

When Mr. Gradgrind had presented Mrs. Bounderby, Sissy had suddenly
turned her head, and looked, in wonder, in pity, in sorrow, in
doubt, in a multitude of emotions, towards Louisa.  Louisa had
known it, and seen it, without looking at her.  From that moment
she was impassive, proud and cold - held Sissy at a distance -
changed to her altogether.

Book the Second - Reaping




Chapter I - Effects in the bank



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

Seen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay shrouded in a
haze of its own, which appeared impervious to the sun's rays.  You
only knew the town was there, because you knew there could have
been no such sulky blotch upon the prospect without a town.  A blur
of soot and smoke, now confusedly tending this way, now that way,
now aspiring to the vault of Heaven, now murkily creeping along the
earth, as the wind rose and fell, or changed its quarter:  a dense
formless jumble, with sheets of cross light in it, that showed
nothing but masses of darkness:- Coketown in the distance was
suggestive of itself, though not a brick of it could be seen.

The wonder was, it was there at all.  It had been ruined so often,
that it was amazing how it had borne so many shocks.  Surely there
never was such fragile china-ware as that of which the millers of
Coketown were made.  Handle them never so lightly, and they fell to
pieces with such ease that you might suspect them of having been
flawed before.  They were ruined, when they were required to send
labouring children to school; they were ruined when inspectors were
appointed to look into their works; they were ruined, when such
inspectors considered it doubtful whether they were quite justified
in chopping people up with their machinery; they were utterly
undone, when it was hinted that perhaps they need not always make
quite so much smoke.  Besides Mr. Bounderby's gold spoon which was
generally received in Coketown, another prevalent fiction was very
popular there.  It took the form of a threat.  Whenever a
Coketowner felt he was ill-used - that is to say, whenever he was
not left entirely alone, and it was proposed to hold him
accountable for the consequences of any of his acts - he was sure
to come out with the awful menace, that he would 'sooner pitch his
property into the Atlantic.'  This had terrified the Home Secretary
within an inch of his life, on several occasions.

However, the Coketowners were so patriotic after all, that they
never had pitched their property into the Atlantic yet, but, on the
contrary, had been kind enough to take mighty good care of it.  So
there it was, in the haze yonder; and it increased and multiplied.

The streets were hot and dusty on the summer day, and the sun was
so bright that it even shone through the heavy vapour drooping over
Coketown, and could not be looked at steadily.  Stokers emerged
from low underground doorways into factory yards, and sat on steps,
and posts, and palings, wiping their swarthy visages, and
contemplating coals.  The whole town seemed to be frying in oil.
There was a stifling smell of hot oil everywhere.  The steam-
engines shone with it, the dresses of the Hands were soiled with
it, the mills throughout their many stories oozed and trickled it.
The atmosphere of those Fairy palaces was like the breath of the
simoom:  and their inhabitants, wasting with heat, toiled languidly
in the desert.  But no temperature made the melancholy mad
elephants more mad or more sane.  Their wearisome heads went up and
down at the same rate, in hot weather and cold, wet weather and
dry, fair weather and foul.  The measured motion of their shadows
on the walls, was the substitute Coketown had to show for the
shadows of rustling woods; while, for the summer hum of insects, it
could offer, all the year round, from the dawn of Monday to the
night of Saturday, the whirr of shafts and wheels.

Drowsily they whirred all through this sunny day, making the
passenger more sleepy and more hot as he passed the humming walls
of the mills.  Sun-blinds, and sprinklings of water, a little
cooled the main streets and the shops; but the mills, and the
courts and alleys, baked at a fierce heat.  Down upon the river
that was black and thick with dye, some Coketown boys who were at
large - a rare sight there - rowed a crazy boat, which made a
spumous track upon the water as it jogged along, while every dip of
an oar stirred up vile smells.  But the sun itself, however
beneficent, generally, was less kind to Coketown than hard frost,
and rarely looked intently into any of its closer regions without
engendering more death than life.  So does the eye of Heaven itself
become an evil eye, when incapable or sordid hands are interposed
between it and the things it looks upon to bless.

Mrs. Sparsit sat in her afternoon apartment at the Bank, on the
shadier side of the frying street.  Office-hours were over:  and at
that period of the day, in warm weather, she usually embellished
with her genteel presence, a managerial board-room over the public
office.  Her own private sitting-room was a story higher, at the
window of which post of observation she was ready, every morning,
to greet Mr. Bounderby, as he came across the road, with the
sympathizing recognition appropriate to a Victim.  He had been
married now a year; and Mrs. Sparsit had never released him from
her determined pity a moment.

The Bank offered no violence to the wholesome monotony of the town.
It was another red brick house, with black outside shutters, green
inside blinds, a black street-door up two white steps, a brazen
door-plate, and a brazen door-handle full stop.  It was a size
larger than Mr. Bounderby's house, as other houses were from a size
to half-a-dozen sizes smaller; in all other particulars, it was
strictly according to pattern.

Mrs. Sparsit was conscious that by coming in the evening-tide among
the desks and writing implements, she shed a feminine, not to say
also aristocratic, grace upon the office.  Seated, with her
needlework or netting apparatus, at the window, she had a self-
laudatory sense of correcting, by her ladylike deportment, the rude
business aspect of the place.  With this impression of her
interesting character upon her, Mrs. Sparsit considered herself, in
some sort, the Bank Fairy.  The townspeople who, in their passing
and repassing, saw her there, regarded her as the Bank Dragon
keeping watch over the treasures of the mine.

What those treasures were, Mrs. Sparsit knew as little as they did.
Gold and silver coin, precious paper, secrets that if divulged
would bring vague destruction upon vague persons (generally,
however, people whom she disliked), were the chief items in her
ideal catalogue thereof.  For the rest, she knew that after office-
hours, she reigned supreme over all the office furniture, and over
a locked-up iron room with three locks, against the door of which
strong chamber the light porter laid his head every night, on a
truckle bed, that disappeared at cockcrow.  Further, she was lady
paramount over certain vaults in the basement, sharply spiked off
from communication with the predatory world; and over the relics of
the current day's work, consisting of blots of ink, worn-out pens,
fragments of wafers, and scraps of paper torn so small, that
nothing interesting could ever be deciphered on them when Mrs.
Sparsit tried.  Lastly, she was guardian over a little armoury of
cutlasses and carbines, arrayed in vengeful order above one of the
official chimney-pieces; and over that respectable tradition never
to be separated from a place of business claiming to be wealthy - a
row of fire-buckets - vessels calculated to be of no physical
utility on any occasion, but observed to exercise a fine moral
influence, almost equal to bullion, on most beholders.

A deaf serving-woman and the light porter completed Mrs. Sparsit's
empire.  The deaf serving-woman was rumoured to be wealthy; and a
saying had for years gone about among the lower orders of Coketown,
that she would be murdered some night when the Bank was shut, for
the sake of her money.  It was generally considered, indeed, that
she had been due some time, and ought to have fallen long ago; but
she had kept her life, and her situation, with an ill-conditioned
tenacity that occasioned much offence and disappointment.

Mrs. Sparsit's tea was just set for her on a pert little table,
with its tripod of legs in an attitude, which she insinuated after
office-hours, into the company of the stern, leathern-topped, long
board-table that bestrode the middle of the room.  The light porter
placed the tea-tray on it, knuckling his forehead as a form of
homage.

'Thank you, Bitzer,' said Mrs. Sparsit.

'Thank you, ma'am,' returned the light porter.  He was a very light
porter indeed; as light as in the days when he blinkingly defined a
horse, for girl number twenty.

'All is shut up, Bitzer?' said Mrs. Sparsit.

'All is shut up, ma'am.'

'And what,' said Mrs. Sparsit, pouring out her tea, 'is the news of
the day?  Anything?'

'Well, ma'am, I can't say that I have heard anything particular.
Our people are a bad lot, ma'am; but that is no news,
unfortunately.'

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

'Merely going on in the old way, ma'am.  Uniting, and leaguing, and
engaging to stand by one another.'

'It is much to be regretted,' said Mrs. Sparsit, making her nose
more Roman and her eyebrows more Coriolanian in the strength of her
severity, 'that the united masters allow of any such class-
combinations.'

'Yes, ma'am,' said Bitzer.

'Being united themselves, they ought one and all to set their faces
against employing any man who is united with any other man,' said
Mrs. Sparsit.

'They have done that, ma'am,' returned Bitzer; 'but it rather fell
through, ma'am.'

'I do not pretend to understand these things,' said Mrs. Sparsit,
with dignity, 'my lot having been signally cast in a widely
different sphere; and Mr. Sparsit, as a Powler, being also quite
out of the pale of any such dissensions.  I only know that these
people must be conquered, and that it's high time it was done, once
for all.'

'Yes, ma'am,' returned Bitzer, with a demonstration of great
respect for Mrs. Sparsit's oracular authority.  'You couldn't put
it clearer, I am sure, ma'am.'

As this was his usual hour for having a little confidential chat
with Mrs. Sparsit, and as he had already caught her eye and seen
that she was going to ask him something, he made a pretence of
arranging the rulers, inkstands, and so forth, while that lady went
on with her tea, glancing through the open window, down into the
street.

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

'Not a very busy day, my lady.  About an average day.'  He now and
then slided into my lady, instead of ma'am, as an involuntary
acknowledgment of Mrs. Sparsit's personal dignity and claims to
reverence.

'The clerks,' said Mrs. Sparsit, carefully brushing an
imperceptible crumb of bread and butter from her left-hand mitten,
'are trustworthy, punctual, and industrious, of course?'

'Yes, ma'am, pretty fair, ma'am.  With the usual exception.'

He held the respectable office of general spy and informer in the
establishment, for which volunteer service he received a present at
Christmas, over and above his weekly wage.  He had grown into an
extremely clear-headed, cautious, prudent young man, who was safe
to rise in the world.  His mind was so exactly regulated, that he
had no affections or passions.  All his proceedings were the result
of the nicest and coldest calculation; and it was not without cause
that Mrs. Sparsit habitually observed of him, that he was a young
man of the steadiest principle she had ever known.  Having
satisfied himself, on his father's death, that his mother had a
right of settlement in Coketown, this excellent young economist had
asserted that right for her with such a steadfast adherence to the
principle of the case, that she had been shut up in the workhouse
ever since.  It must be admitted that he allowed her half a pound
of tea a year, which was weak in him:  first, because all gifts
have an inevitable tendency to pauperise the recipient, and
secondly, because his only reasonable transaction in that commodity
would have been to buy it for as little as he could possibly give,
and sell it for as much as he could possibly get; it having been
clearly ascertained by philosophers that in this is comprised the
whole duty of man - not a part of man's duty, but the whole.

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

'Ah - h!' said Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head over her tea-cup, and
taking a long gulp.

'Mr. Thomas, ma'am, I doubt Mr. Thomas very much, ma'am, I don't
like his ways at all.'

'Bitzer,' said Mrs. Sparsit, in a very impressive manner, 'do you
recollect my having said anything to you respecting names?'

'I beg your pardon, ma'am.  It's quite true that you did object to
names being used, and they're always best avoided.'

'Please to remember that I have a charge here,' said Mrs. Sparsit,
with her air of state.  'I hold a trust here, Bitzer, under Mr.
Bounderby.  However improbable both Mr. Bounderby and myself might
have deemed it years ago, that he would ever become my patron,
making me an annual compliment, I cannot but regard him in that
light.  From Mr. Bounderby I have received every acknowledgment of
my social station, and every recognition of my family descent, that
I could possibly expect.  More, far more.  Therefore, to my patron
I will be scrupulously true.  And I do not consider, I will not
consider, I cannot consider,' said Mrs. Sparsit, with a most
extensive stock on hand of honour and morality, 'that I should be
scrupulously true, if I allowed names to be mentioned under this
roof, that are unfortunately - most unfortunately - no doubt of
that - connected with his.'

Bitzer knuckled his forehead again, and again begged pardon.

'No, Bitzer,' continued Mrs. Sparsit, 'say an individual, and I
will hear you; say Mr. Thomas, and you must excuse me.'

'With the usual exception, ma'am,' said Bitzer, trying back, 'of an
individual.'

'Ah - h!'  Mrs. Sparsit repeated the ejaculation, the shake of the
head over her tea-cup, and the long gulp, as taking up the
conversation again at the point where it had been interrupted.

'An individual, ma'am,' said Bitzer, 'has never been what he ought
to have been, since he first came into the place.  He is a
dissipated, extravagant idler.  He is not worth his salt, ma'am.
He wouldn't get it either, if he hadn't a friend and relation at
court, ma'am!'

'Ah - h!' said Mrs. Sparsit, with another melancholy shake of her
head.

'I only hope, ma'am,' pursued Bitzer, 'that his friend and relation
may not supply him with the means of carrying on.  Otherwise,
ma'am, we know out of whose pocket that money comes.'

'Ah - h!' sighed Mrs. Sparsit again, with another melancholy shake
of her head.

'He is to be pitied, ma'am.  The last party I have alluded to, is
to be pitied, ma'am,' said Bitzer.

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

'As to an individual, ma'am,' said Bitzer, dropping his voice and
drawing nearer, 'he is as improvident as any of the people in this
town.  And you know what their improvidence is, ma'am.  No one
could wish to know it better than a lady of your eminence does.'

'They would do well,' returned Mrs. Sparsit, 'to take example by
you, Bitzer.'

'Thank you, ma'am.  But, since you do refer to me, now look at me,
ma'am.  I have put by a little, ma'am, already.  That gratuity
which I receive at Christmas, ma'am:  I never touch it.  I don't
even go the length of my wages, though they're not high, ma'am.
Why can't they do as I have done, ma'am?  What one person can do,
another can do.'

This, again, was among the fictions of Coketown.  Any capitalist
there, who had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, always
professed to wonder why the sixty thousand nearest Hands didn't
each make sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, and more or less
reproached them every one for not accomplishing the little feat.
What I did you can do.  Why don't you go and do it?

'As to their wanting recreations, ma'am,' said Bitzer, 'it's stuff
and nonsense.  I don't want recreations.  I never did, and I never
shall; I don't like 'em.  As to their combining together; there are
many of them, I have no doubt, that by watching and informing upon
one another could earn a trifle now and then, whether in money or
good will, and improve their livelihood.  Then, why don't they
improve it, ma'am!  It's the first consideration of a rational
creature, and it's what they pretend to want.'

'Pretend indeed!' said Mrs. Sparsit.

'I am sure we are constantly hearing, ma'am, till it becomes quite
nauseous, concerning their wives and families,' said Bitzer.  'Why
look at me, ma'am!  I don't want a wife and family.  Why should
they?'

'Because they are improvident,' said Mrs. Sparsit.

'Yes, ma'am,' returned Bitzer, 'that's where it is.  If they were
more provident and less perverse, ma'am, what would they do?  They
would say, "While my hat covers my family," or "while my bonnet
covers my family," - as the case might be, ma'am - "I have only one
to feed, and that's the person I most like to feed."'

'To be sure,' assented Mrs. Sparsit, eating muffin.

'Thank you, ma'am,' said Bitzer, knuckling his forehead again, in
return for the favour of Mrs. Sparsit's improving conversation.
'Would you wish a little more hot water, ma'am, or is there
anything else that I could fetch you?'

'Nothing just now, Bitzer.'

'Thank you, ma'am.  I shouldn't wish to disturb you at your meals,
ma'am, particularly tea, knowing your partiality for it,' said
Bitzer, craning a little to look over into the street from where he
stood; 'but there's a gentleman been looking up here for a minute
or so, ma'am, and he has come across as if he was going to knock.
That is his knock, ma'am, no doubt.'

He stepped to the window; and looking out, and drawing in his head
again, confirmed himself with, 'Yes, ma'am.  Would you wish the
gentleman to be shown in, ma'am?'

'I don't know who it can be,' said Mrs. Sparsit, wiping her mouth
and arranging her mittens.

'A stranger, ma'am, evidently.'

'What a stranger can want at the Bank at this time of the evening,
unless he comes upon some business for which he is too late, I
don't know,' said Mrs. Sparsit, 'but I hold a charge in this
establishment from Mr. Bounderby, and I will never shrink from it.
If to see him is any part of the duty I have accepted, I will see
him.  Use your own discretion, Bitzer.'

Here the visitor, all unconscious of Mrs. Sparsit's magnanimous
words, repeated his knock so loudly that the light porter hastened
down to open the door; while Mrs. Sparsit took the precaution of
concealing her little table, with all its appliances upon it, in a
cupboard, and then decamped up-stairs, that she might appear, if
needful, with the greater dignity.

'If you please, ma'am, the gentleman would wish to see you,' said
Bitzer, with his light eye at Mrs. Sparsit's keyhole.  So, Mrs.
Sparsit, who had improved the interval by touching up her cap, took
her classical features down-stairs again, and entered the board-
room in the manner of a Roman matron going outside the city walls
to treat with an invading general.

The visitor having strolled to the window, and being then engaged
in looking carelessly out, was as unmoved by this impressive entry
as man could possibly be.  He stood whistling to himself with all
imaginable coolness, with his hat still on, and a certain air of
exhaustion upon him, in part arising from excessive summer, and in
part from excessive gentility.  For it was to be seen with half an
eye that he was a thorough gentleman, made to the model of the
time; weary of everything, and putting no more faith in anything
than Lucifer.

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

'I beg your pardon,' he said, turning and removing his hat; 'pray
excuse me.'

'Humph!' thought Mrs. Sparsit, as she made a stately bend.  'Five
and thirty, good-looking, good figure, good teeth, good voice, good
breeding, well-dressed, dark hair, bold eyes.'  All which Mrs.
Sparsit observed in her womanly way - like the Sultan who put his
head in the pail of water - merely in dipping down and coming up
again.

'Please to be seated, sir,' said Mrs. Sparsit.

'Thank you.  Allow me.'  He placed a chair for her, but remained
himself carelessly lounging against the table.  'I left my servant
at the railway looking after the luggage - very heavy train and
vast quantity of it in the van - and strolled on, looking about me.
Exceedingly odd place.  Will you allow me to ask you if it's always
as black as this?'

'In general much blacker,' returned Mrs. Sparsit, in her
uncompromising way.

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

'No, sir,' returned Mrs. Sparsit.  'It was once my good or ill
fortune, as it may be - before I became a widow - to move in a very
different sphere.  My husband was a Powler.'

'Beg your pardon, really!' said the stranger.  'Was - ?'

Mrs. Sparsit repeated, 'A Powler.'

'Powler Family,' said the stranger, after reflecting a few moments.
Mrs. Sparsit signified assent.  The stranger seemed a little more
fatigued than before.

'You must be very much bored here?' was the inference he drew from
the communication.

'I am the servant of circumstances, sir,' said Mrs. Sparsit, 'and I
have long adapted myself to the governing power of my life.'

'Very philosophical,' returned the stranger, 'and very exemplary
and laudable, and - '  It seemed to be scarcely worth his while to
finish the sentence, so he played with his watch-chain wearily.

'May I be permitted to ask, sir,' said Mrs. Sparsit, 'to what I am
indebted for the favour of - '

'Assuredly,' said the stranger.  'Much obliged to you for reminding
me.  I am the bearer of a letter of introduction to Mr. Bounderby,
the banker.  Walking through this extraordinarily black town, while
they were getting dinner ready at the hotel, I asked a fellow whom
I met; one of the working people; who appeared to have been taking
a shower-bath of something fluffy, which I assume to be the raw
material - '

Mrs. Sparsit inclined her head.

' - Raw material - where Mr. Bounderby, the banker, might reside.
Upon which, misled no doubt by the word Banker, he directed me to
the Bank.  Fact being, I presume, that Mr. Bounderby the Banker
does not reside in the edifice in which I have the honour of
offering this explanation?'

'No, sir,' returned Mrs. Sparsit, 'he does not.'

'Thank you.  I had no intention of delivering my letter at the
present moment, nor have I. But strolling on to the Bank to kill
time, and having the good fortune to observe at the window,'
towards which he languidly waved his hand, then slightly bowed, 'a
lady of a very superior and agreeable appearance, I considered that
I could not do better than take the liberty of asking that lady
where Mr. Bounderby the Banker does live.  Which I accordingly
venture, with all suitable apologies, to do.'

The inattention and indolence of his manner were sufficiently
relieved, to Mrs. Sparsit's thinking, by a certain gallantry at
ease, which offered her homage too.  Here he was, for instance, at
this moment, all but sitting on the table, and yet lazily bending
over her, as if he acknowledged an attraction in her that made her
charming - in her way.

'Banks, I know, are always suspicious, and officially must be,'
said the stranger, whose lightness and smoothness of speech were
pleasant likewise; suggesting matter far more sensible and humorous
than it ever contained - which was perhaps a shrewd device of the
founder of this numerous sect, whosoever may have been that great
man:  'therefore I may observe that my letter - here it is - is
from the member for this place - Gradgrind - whom I have had the
pleasure of knowing in London.'

Mrs. Sparsit recognized the hand, intimated that such confirmation
was quite unnecessary, and gave Mr. Bounderby's address, with all
needful clues and directions in aid.

'Thousand thanks,' said the stranger.  'Of course you know the
Banker well?'

'Yes, sir,' rejoined Mrs. Sparsit.  'In my dependent relation
towards him, I have known him ten years.'

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

'Yes,' said Mrs. Sparsit, suddenly compressing her mouth, 'he had
that - honour.'

'The lady is quite a philosopher, I am told?'

'Indeed, sir,' said Mrs. Sparsit.  'Is she?'

'Excuse my impertinent curiosity,' pursued the stranger, fluttering
over Mrs. Sparsit's eyebrows, with a propitiatory air, 'but you
know the family, and know the world.  I am about to know the
family, and may have much to do with them.  Is the lady so very
alarming?  Her father gives her such a portentously hard-headed
reputation, that I have a burning desire to know.  Is she
absolutely unapproachable?  Repellently and stunningly clever?  I
see, by your meaning smile, you think not.  You have poured balm
into my anxious soul.  As to age, now.  Forty?  Five and thirty?'

Mrs. Sparsit laughed outright.  'A chit,' said she.  'Not twenty
when she was married.'

'I give you my honour, Mrs. Powler,' returned the stranger,
detaching himself from the table, 'that I never was so astonished
in my life!'

It really did seem to impress him, to the utmost extent of his
capacity of being impressed.  He looked at his informant for full a
quarter of a minute, and appeared to have the surprise in his mind
all the time.  'I assure you, Mrs. Powler,' he then said, much
exhausted, 'that the father's manner prepared me for a grim and
stony maturity.  I am obliged to you, of all things, for correcting
so absurd a mistake.  Pray excuse my intrusion.  Many thanks.  Good
day!'

He bowed himself out; and Mrs. Sparsit, hiding in the window
curtain, saw him languishing down the street on the shady side of
the way, observed of all the town.

'What do you think of the gentleman, Bitzer?' she asked the light
porter, when he came to take away.

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

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

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

'Besides which, ma'am,' resumed Bitzer, while he was polishing the
table, 'he looks to me as if he gamed.'

'It's immoral to game,' said Mrs. Sparsit.

'It's ridiculous, ma'am,' said Bitzer, 'because the chances are
against the players.'

Whether it was that the heat prevented Mrs. Sparsit from working,
or whether it was that her hand was out, she did no work that
night.  She sat at the window, when the sun began to sink behind
the smoke; she sat there, when the smoke was burning red, when the
colour faded from it, when darkness seemed to rise slowly out of
the ground, and creep upward, upward, up to the house-tops, up the
church steeple, up to the summits of the factory chimneys, up to
the sky.  Without a candle in the room, Mrs. Sparsit sat at the
window, with her hands before her, not thinking much of the sounds
of evening; the whooping of boys, the barking of dogs, the rumbling
of wheels, the steps and voices of passengers, the shrill street
cries, the clogs upon the pavement when it was their hour for going
by, the shutting-up of shop-shutters.  Not until the light porter
announced that her nocturnal sweetbread was ready, did Mrs. Sparsit
arouse herself from her reverie, and convey her dense black
eyebrows - by that time creased with meditation, as if they needed
ironing out-up-stairs.

'O, you Fool!' said Mrs. Sparsit, when she was alone at her supper.
Whom she meant, she did not say; but she could scarcely have meant
the sweetbread.

Chapter II - Mr. James Harthouse



THE Gradgrind party wanted assistance in cutting the throats of the
Graces.  They went about recruiting; and where could they enlist
recruits more hopefully, than among the fine gentlemen who, having
found out everything to be worth nothing, were equally ready for
anything?

Moreover, the healthy spirits who had mounted to this sublime
height were attractive to many of the Gradgrind school.  They liked
fine gentlemen; they pretended that they did not, but they did.
They became exhausted in imitation of them; and they yaw-yawed in
their speech like them; and they served out, with an enervated air,
the little mouldy rations of political economy, on which they
regaled their disciples.  There never before was seen on earth such
a wonderful hybrid race as was thus produced.

Among the fine gentlemen not regularly belonging to the Gradgrind
school, there was one of a good family and a better appearance,
with a happy turn of humour which had told immensely with the House
of Commons on the occasion of his entertaining it with his (and the
Board of Directors) view of a railway accident, in which the most
careful officers ever known, employed by the most liberal managers
ever heard of, assisted by the finest mechanical contrivances ever
devised, the whole in action on the best line ever constructed, had
killed five people and wounded thirty-two, by a casualty without
which the excellence of the whole system would have been positively
incomplete.  Among the slain was a cow, and among the scattered
articles unowned, a widow's cap.  And the honourable member had so
tickled the House (which has a delicate sense of humour) by putting
the cap on the cow, that it became impatient of any serious
reference to the Coroner's Inquest, and brought the railway off
with Cheers and Laughter.

Now, this gentleman had a younger brother of still better
appearance than himself, who had tried life as a Cornet of
Dragoons, and found it a bore; and had afterwards tried it in the
train of an English minister abroad, and found it a bore; and had
then strolled to Jerusalem, and got bored there; and had then gone
yachting about the world, and got bored everywhere.  To whom this
honourable and jocular, member fraternally said one day, 'Jem,
there's a good opening among the hard Fact fellows, and they want
men.  I wonder you don't go in for statistics.'  Jem, rather taken
by the novelty of the idea, and very hard up for a change, was as
ready to 'go in' for statistics as for anything else.  So, he went
in.  He coached himself up with a blue-book or two; and his brother
put it about among the hard Fact fellows, and said, 'If you want to
bring in, for any place, a handsome dog who can make you a devilish
good speech, look after my brother Jem, for he's your man.'  After
a few dashes in the public meeting way, Mr. Gradgrind and a council
of political sages approved of Jem, and it was resolved to send him
down to Coketown, to become known there and in the neighbourhood.
Hence the letter Jem had last night shown to Mrs. Sparsit, which
Mr. Bounderby now held in his hand; superscribed, 'Josiah
Bounderby, Esquire, Banker, Coketown.  Specially to introduce James
Harthouse, Esquire.  Thomas Gradgrind.'

Within an hour of the receipt of this dispatch and Mr. James
Harthouse's card, Mr. Bounderby put on his hat and went down to the
Hotel.  There he found Mr. James Harthouse looking out of window,
in a state of mind so disconsolate, that he was already half-
disposed to 'go in' for something else.

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

Mr. James Harthouse was very happy indeed (though he scarcely
looked so) to have a pleasure he had long expected.

'Coketown, sir,' said Bounderby, obstinately taking a chair, 'is
not the kind of place you have been accustomed to.  Therefore, if
you will allow me - or whether you will or not, for I am a plain
man - I'll tell you something about it before we go any further.'

Mr. Harthouse would be charmed.

'Don't be too sure of that,' said Bounderby.  'I don't promise it.
First of all, you see our smoke.  That's meat and drink to us.
It's the healthiest thing in the world in all respects, and
particularly for the lungs.  If you are one of those who want us to
consume it, I differ from you.  We are not going to wear the
bottoms of our boilers out any faster than we wear 'em out now, for
all the humbugging sentiment in Great Britain and Ireland.'

By way of 'going in' to the fullest extent, Mr. Harthouse rejoined,
'Mr. Bounderby, I assure you I am entirely and completely of your
way of thinking.  On conviction.'

'I am glad to hear it,' said Bounderby.  'Now, you have heard a lot
of talk about the work in our mills, no doubt.  You have?  Very
good.  I'll state the fact of it to you.  It's the pleasantest work
there is, and it's the lightest work there is, and it's the best-
paid work there is.  More than that, we couldn't improve the mills
themselves, unless we laid down Turkey carpets on the floors.
Which we're not a-going to do.'

'Mr. Bounderby, perfectly right.'

'Lastly,' said Bounderby, 'as to our Hands.  There's not a Hand in
this town, sir, man, woman, or child, but has one ultimate object
in life.  That object is, to be fed on turtle soup and venison with
a gold spoon.  Now, they're not a-going - none of 'em - ever to be
fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon.  And now you know
the place.'

Mr. Harthouse professed himself in the highest degree instructed
and refreshed, by this condensed epitome of the whole Coketown
question.

'Why, you see,' replied Mr. Bounderby, 'it suits my disposition to
have a full understanding with a man, particularly with a public
man, when I make his acquaintance.  I have only one thing more to
say to you, Mr. Harthouse, before assuring you of the pleasure with
which I shall respond, to the utmost of my poor ability, to my
friend Tom Gradgrind's letter of introduction.  You are a man of
family.  Don't you deceive yourself by supposing for a moment that
I am a man of family.  I am a bit of dirty riff-raff, and a genuine
scrap of tag, rag, and bobtail.'

If anything could have exalted Jem's interest in Mr. Bounderby, it
would have been this very circumstance.  Or, so he told him.

'So now,' said Bounderby, 'we may shake hands on equal terms.  I
say, equal terms, because although I know what I am, and the exact
depth of the gutter I have lifted myself out of, better than any
man does, I am as proud as you are.  I am just as proud as you are.
Having now asserted my independence in a proper manner, I may come
to how do you find yourself, and I hope you're pretty well.'

The better, Mr. Harthouse gave him to understand as they shook
hands, for the salubrious air of Coketown.  Mr. Bounderby received
the answer with favour.

'Perhaps you know,' said he, 'or perhaps you don't know, I married
Tom Gradgrind's daughter.  If you have nothing better to do than to
walk up town with me, I shall be glad to introduce you to Tom
Gradgrind's daughter.'

'Mr. Bounderby,' said Jem, 'you anticipate my dearest wishes.'

They went out without further discourse; and Mr. Bounderby piloted
the new acquaintance who so strongly contrasted with him, to the
private red brick dwelling, with the black outside shutters, the
green inside blinds, and the black street door up the two white
steps.  In the drawing-room of which mansion, there presently
entered to them the most remarkable girl Mr. James Harthouse had
ever seen.  She was so constrained, and yet so careless; so
reserved, and yet so watchful; so cold and proud, and yet so
sensitively ashamed of her husband's braggart humility - from which
she shrunk as if every example of it were a cut or a blow; that it
was quite a new sensation to observe her.  In face she was no less
remarkable than in manner.  Her features were handsome; but their
natural play was so locked up, that it seemed impossible to guess
at their genuine expression.  Utterly indifferent, perfectly self-
reliant, never at a loss, and yet never at her ease, with her
figure in company with them there, and her mind apparently quite
alone - it was of no use 'going in' yet awhile to comprehend this
girl, for she baffled all penetration.

From the mistress of the house, the visitor glanced to the house
itself.  There was no mute sign of a woman in the room.  No
graceful little adornment, no fanciful little device, however
trivial, anywhere expressed her influence.  Cheerless and
comfortless, boastfully and doggedly rich, there the room stared at
its present occupants, unsoftened and unrelieved by the least trace
of any womanly occupation.  As Mr. Bounderby stood in the midst of
his household gods, so those unrelenting divinities occupied their
places around Mr. Bounderby, and they were worthy of one another,
and well matched.

'This, sir,' said Bounderby, 'is my wife, Mrs. Bounderby:  Tom
Gradgrind's eldest daughter.  Loo, Mr. James Harthouse.  Mr.
Harthouse has joined your father's muster-roll.  If he is not Torn
Gradgrind's colleague before long, I believe we shall at least hear
of him in connexion with one of our neighbouring towns.  You
observe, Mr. Harthouse, that my wife is my junior.  I don't know
what she saw in me to marry me, but she saw something in me, I
suppose, or she wouldn't have married me.  She has lots of
expensive knowledge, sir, political and otherwise.  If you want to
cram for anything, I should be troubled to recommend you to a
better adviser than Loo Bounderby.'

To a more agreeable adviser, or one from whom he would be more
likely to learn, Mr. Harthouse could never be recommended.

'Come!' said his host.  'If you're in the complimentary line,
you'll get on here, for you'll meet with no competition.  I have
never been in the way of learning compliments myself, and I don't
profess to understand the art of paying 'em.  In fact, despise 'em.
But, your bringing-up was different from mine; mine was a real
thing, by George!  You're a gentleman, and I don't pretend to be
one.  I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, and that's enough for me.
However, though I am not influenced by manners and station, Loo
Bounderby may be.  She hadn't my advantages - disadvantages you
would call 'em, but I call 'em advantages - so you'll not waste
your power, I dare say.'

'Mr. Bounderby,' said Jem, turning with a smile to Louisa, 'is a
noble animal in a comparatively natural state, quite free from the
harness in which a conventional hack like myself works.'

'You respect Mr. Bounderby very much,' she quietly returned.  'It
is natural that you should.'

He was disgracefully thrown out, for a gentleman who had seen so
much of the world, and thought, 'Now, how am I to take this?'

'You are going to devote yourself, as I gather from what Mr.
Bounderby has said, to the service of your country.  You have made
up your mind,' said Louisa, still standing before him where she had
first stopped - in all the singular contrariety of her self-
possession, and her being obviously very ill at ease - 'to show the
nation the way out of all its difficulties.'

'Mrs. Bounderby,' he returned, laughing, 'upon my honour, no.  I
will make no such pretence to you.  I have seen a little, here and
there, up and down; I have found it all to be very worthless, as
everybody has, and as some confess they have, and some do not; and
I am going in for your respected father's opinions - really because
I have no choice of opinions, and may as well back them as anything
else.'

'Have you none of your own?' asked Louisa.

'I have not so much as the slightest predilection left.  I assure
you I attach not the least importance to any opinions.  The result
of the varieties of boredom I have undergone, is a conviction
(unless conviction is too industrious a word for the lazy sentiment
I entertain on the subject), that any set of ideas will do just as
much good as any other set, and just as much harm as any other set.
There's an English family with a charming Italian motto.  What will
be, will be.  It's the only truth going!'

This vicious assumption of honesty in dishonesty - a vice so
dangerous, so deadly, and so common - seemed, he observed, a little
to impress her in his favour.  He followed up the advantage, by
saying in his pleasantest manner:  a manner to which she might
attach as much or as little meaning as she pleased:  'The side that
can prove anything in a line of units, tens, hundreds, and
thousands, Mrs. Bounderby, seems to me to afford the most fun, and
to give a man the best chance.  I am quite as much attached to it
as if I believed it.  I am quite ready to go in for it, to the same
extent as if I believed it.  And what more could I possibly do, if
I did believe it!'

'You are a singular politician,' said Louisa.

'Pardon me; I have not even that merit.  We are the largest party
in the state, I assure you, Mrs. Bounderby, if we all fell out of
our adopted ranks and were reviewed together.'

Mr. Bounderby, who had been in danger of bursting in silence,
interposed here with a project for postponing the family dinner
till half-past six, and taking Mr. James Harthouse in the meantime
on a round of visits to the voting and interesting notabilities of
Coketown and its vicinity.  The round of visits was made; and Mr.
James Harthouse, with a discreet use of his blue coaching, came off
triumphantly, though with a considerable accession of boredom.

In the evening, he found the dinner-table laid for four, but they
sat down only three.  It was an appropriate occasion for Mr.
Bounderby to discuss the flavour of the hap'orth of stewed eels he
had purchased in the streets at eight years old; and also of the
inferior water, specially used for laying the dust, with which he
had washed down that repast.  He likewise entertained his guest
over the soup and fish, with the calculation that he (Bounderby)
had eaten in his youth at least three horses under the guise of
polonies and saveloys.  These recitals, Jem, in a languid manner,
received with 'charming!' every now and then; and they probably
would have decided him to 'go in' for Jerusalem again to-morrow
morning, had he been less curious respecting Louisa.

'Is there nothing,' he thought, glancing at her as she sat at the
head of the table, where her youthful figure, small and slight, but
very graceful, looked as pretty as it looked misplaced; 'is there
nothing that will move that face?'

Yes!  By Jupiter, there was something, and here it was, in an
unexpected shape.  Tom appeared.  She changed as the door opened,
and broke into a beaming smile.

A beautiful smile.  Mr. James Harthouse might not have thought so
much of it, but that he had wondered so long at her impassive face.
She put out her hand - a pretty little soft hand; and her fingers
closed upon her brother's, as if she would have carried them to her
lips.

'Ay, ay?' thought the visitor.  'This whelp is the only creature
she cares for.  So, so!'

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

'When I was your age, young Tom,' said Bounderby, 'I was punctual,
or I got no dinner!'

'When you were my age,' resumed Tom, 'you hadn't a wrong balance to
get right, and hadn't to dress afterwards.'

'Never mind that now,' said Bounderby.

'Well, then,' grumbled Tom.  'Don't begin with me.'

'Mrs. Bounderby,' said Harthouse, perfectly hearing this under-
strain as it went on; 'your brother's face is quite familiar to me.
Can I have seen him abroad?  Or at some public school, perhaps?'

'No,' she resumed, quite interested, 'he has never been abroad yet,
and was educated here, at home.  Tom, love, I am telling Mr.
Harthouse that he never saw you abroad.'

'No such luck, sir,' said Tom.

There was little enough in him to brighten her face, for he was a
sullen young fellow, and ungracious in his manner even to her.  So
much the greater must have been the solitude of her heart, and her
need of some one on whom to bestow it.  'So much the more is this
whelp the only creature she has ever cared for,' thought Mr. James
Harthouse, turning it over and over.  'So much the more.  So much
the more.'

Both in his sister's presence, and after she had left the room, the
whelp took no pains to hide his contempt for Mr. Bounderby,
whenever he could indulge it without the observation of that
independent man, by making wry faces, or shutting one eye.  Without
responding to these telegraphic communications, Mr. Harthouse
encouraged him much in the course of the evening, and showed an
unusual liking for him.  At last, when he rose to return to his
hotel, and was a little doubtful whether he knew the way by night,
the whelp immediately proffered his services as guide, and turned
out with him to escort him thither.

Chapter III - The whelp



IT was very remarkable that a young gentleman who had been brought
up under one continuous system of unnatural restraint, should be a
hypocrite; but it was certainly the case with Tom.  It was very
strange that a young gentleman who had never been left to his own
guidance for five consecutive minutes, should be incapable at last
of governing himself; but so it was with Tom.  It was altogether
unaccountable that a young gentleman whose imagination had been
strangled in his cradle, should be still inconvenienced by its
ghost in the form of grovelling sensualities; but such a monster,
beyond all doubt, was Tom.

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

'I believe you!' said Tom.

He could do no less than ask Tom up; and Tom could do no less than
go up.  What with a cooling drink adapted to the weather, but not
so weak as cool; and what with a rarer tobacco than was to be
bought in those parts; Tom was soon in a highly free and easy state
at his end of the sofa, and more than ever disposed to admire his
new friend at the other end.

Tom blew his smoke aside, after he had been smoking a little while,
and took an observation of his friend.  'He don't seem to care
about his dress,' thought Tom, 'and yet how capitally he does it.
What an easy swell he is!'

Mr. James Harthouse, happening to catch Tom's eye, remarked that he
drank nothing, and filled his glass with his own negligent hand.

'Thank'ee,' said Tom.  'Thank'ee.  Well, Mr. Harthouse, I hope you
have had about a dose of old Bounderby to-night.'  Tom said this
with one eye shut up again, and looking over his glass knowingly,
at his entertainer.

'A very good fellow indeed!' returned Mr. James Harthouse.

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

Mr. James Harthouse smiled; and rising from his end of the sofa,
and lounging with his back against the chimney-piece, so that he
stood before the empty fire-grate as he smoked, in front of Tom and
looking down at him, observed:

'What a comical brother-in-law you are!'

'What a comical brother-in-law old Bounderby is, I think you mean,'
said Tom.

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

There was something so very agreeable in being so intimate with
such a waistcoat; in being called Tom, in such an intimate way, by
such a voice; in being on such off-hand terms so soon, with such a
pair of whiskers; that Tom was uncommonly pleased with himself.

'Oh!  I don't care for old Bounderby,' said he, 'if you mean that.
I have always called old Bounderby by the same name when I have
talked about him, and I have always thought of him in the same way.
I am not going to begin to be polite now, about old Bounderby.  It
would be rather late in the day.'

'Don't mind me,' returned James; 'but take care when his wife is
by, you know.'

'His wife?' said Tom.  'My sister Loo?  O yes!'  And he laughed,
and took a little more of the cooling drink.

James Harthouse continued to lounge in the same place and attitude,
smoking his cigar in his own easy way, and looking pleasantly at
the whelp, as if he knew himself to be a kind of agreeable demon
who had only to hover over him, and he must give up his whole soul
if required.  It certainly did seem that the whelp yielded to this
influence.  He looked at his companion sneakingly, he looked at him
admiringly, he looked at him boldly, and put up one leg on the
sofa.

'My sister Loo?' said Tom.  'She never cared for old Bounderby.'

'That's the past tense, Tom,' returned Mr. James Harthouse,
striking the ash from his cigar with his little finger.  'We are in
the present tense, now.'

'Verb neuter, not to care.  Indicative mood, present tense.  First
person singular, I do not care; second person singular, thou dost
not care; third person singular, she does not care,' returned Tom.

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

'But I do mean it,' cried Tom.  'Upon my honour!  Why, you won't
tell me, Mr. Harthouse, that you really suppose my sister Loo does
care for old Bounderby.'

'My dear fellow,' returned the other, 'what am I bound to suppose,
when I find two married people living in harmony and happiness?'

Tom had by this time got both his legs on the sofa.  If his second
leg had not been already there when he was called a dear fellow, he
would have put it up at that great stage of the conversation.
Feeling it necessary to do something then, he stretched himself out
at greater length, and, reclining with the back of his head on the
end of the sofa, and smoking with an infinite assumption of
negligence, turned his common face, and not too sober eyes, towards
the face looking down upon him so carelessly yet so potently.

'You know our governor, Mr. Harthouse,' said Tom, 'and therefore,
you needn't be surprised that Loo married old Bounderby.  She never
had a lover, and the governor proposed old Bounderby, and she took
him.'

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

'Yes, but she wouldn't have been as dutiful, and it would not have
come off as easily,' returned the whelp, 'if it hadn't been for
me.'

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

'I persuaded her,' he said, with an edifying air of superiority.
'I was stuck into old Bounderby's bank (where I never wanted to
be), and I knew I should get into scrapes there, if she put old
Bounderby's pipe out; so I told her my wishes, and she came into
them.  She would do anything for me.  It was very game of her,
wasn't it?'

'It was charming, Tom!'

'Not that it was altogether so important to her as it was to me,'
continued Tom coolly, 'because my liberty and comfort, and perhaps
my getting on, depended on it; and she had no other lover, and
staying at home was like staying in jail - especially when I was
gone.  It wasn't as if she gave up another lover for old Bounderby;
but still it was a good thing in her.'

'Perfectly delightful.  And she gets on so placidly.'

'Oh,' returned Tom, with contemptuous patronage, 'she's a regular
girl.  A girl can get on anywhere.  She has settled down to the
life, and she don't mind.  It does just as well as another.
Besides, though Loo is a girl, she's not a common sort of girl.
She can shut herself up within herself, and think - as I have often
known her sit and watch the fire - for an hour at a stretch.'

'Ay, ay?  Has resources of her own,' said Harthouse, smoking
quietly.

'Not so much of that as you may suppose,' returned Tom; 'for our
governor had her crammed with all sorts of dry bones and sawdust.
It's his system.'

'Formed his daughter on his own model?' suggested Harthouse.

'His daughter?  Ah! and everybody else.  Why, he formed Me that
way!' said Tom.

'Impossible!'

'He did, though,' said Tom, shaking his head.  'I mean to say, Mr.
Harthouse, that when I first left home and went to old Bounderby's,
I was as flat as a warming-pan, and knew no more about life, than
any oyster does.'

'Come, Tom!  I can hardly believe that.  A joke's a joke.'

'Upon my soul!' said the whelp.  'I am serious; I am indeed!'  He
smoked with great gravity and dignity for a little while, and then
added, in a highly complacent tone, 'Oh!  I have picked up a little
since.  I don't deny that.  But I have done it myself; no thanks to
the governor.'

'And your intelligent sister?'

'My intelligent sister is about where she was.  She used to
complain to me that she had nothing to fall back upon, that girls
usually fall back upon; and I don't see how she is to have got over
that since.  But she don't mind,' he sagaciously added, puffing at
his cigar again.  'Girls can always get on, somehow.'

'Calling at the Bank yesterday evening, for Mr. Bounderby's
address, I found an ancient lady there, who seems to entertain
great admiration for your sister,' observed Mr. James Harthouse,
throwing away the last small remnant of the cigar he had now smoked
out.

'Mother Sparsit!' said Tom.  'What! you have seen her already, have
you?'

His friend nodded.  Tom took his cigar out of his mouth, to shut up
his eye (which had grown rather unmanageable) with the greater
expression, and to tap his nose several times with his finger.

'Mother Sparsit's feeling for Loo is more than admiration, I should
think,' said Tom.  'Say affection and devotion.  Mother Sparsit
never set her cap at Bounderby when he was a bachelor.  Oh no!'

These were the last words spoken by the whelp, before a giddy
drowsiness came upon him, followed by complete oblivion.  He was
roused from the latter state by an uneasy dream of being stirred up
with a boot, and also of a voice saying:  'Come, it's late.  Be
off!'

'Well!' he said, scrambling from the sofa.  'I must take my leave
of you though.  I say.  Yours is very good tobacco.  But it's too
mild.'

'Yes, it's too mild,' returned his entertainer.

'It's - it's ridiculously mild,' said Tom.  'Where's the door!
Good night!'

'He had another odd dream of being taken by a waiter through a
mist, which, after giving him some trouble and difficulty, resolved
itself into the main street, in which he stood alone.  He then
walked home pretty easily, though not yet free from an impression
of the presence and influence of his new friend - as if he were
lounging somewhere in the air, in the same negligent attitude,
regarding him with the same look.

The whelp went home, and went to bed.  If he had had any sense of
what he had done that night, and had been less of a whelp and more
of a brother, he might have turned short on the road, might have
gone down to the ill-smelling river that was dyed black, might have
gone to bed in it for good and all, and have curtained his head for
ever with its filthy waters.

Chapter IV - Men and brothers



'OH, my friends, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown!  Oh, my
friends and fellow-countrymen, the slaves of an iron-handed and a
grinding despotism!  Oh, my friends and fellow-sufferers, and
fellow-workmen, and fellow-men!  I tell you that the hour is come,
when we must rally round one another as One united power, and
crumble into dust the oppressors that too long have battened upon
the plunder of our families, upon the sweat of our brows, upon the
labour of our hands, upon the strength of our sinews, upon the God-
created glorious rights of Humanity, and upon the holy and eternal
privileges of Brotherhood!'

'Good!'  'Hear, hear, hear!'  'Hurrah!' and other cries, arose in
many voices from various parts of the densely crowded and
suffocatingly close Hall, in which the orator, perched on a stage,
delivered himself of this and what other froth and fume he had in
him.  He had declaimed himself into a violent heat, and was as
hoarse as he was hot.  By dint of roaring at the top of his voice
under a flaring gaslight, clenching his fists, knitting his brows,
setting his teeth, and pounding with his arms, he had taken so much
out of himself by this time, that he was brought to a stop, and
called for a glass of water.

As he stood there, trying to quench his fiery face with his drink
of water, the comparison between the orator and the crowd of
attentive faces turned towards him, was extremely to his
disadvantage.  Judging him by Nature's evidence, he was above the
mass in very little but the stage on which he stood.  In many great
respects he was essentially below them.  He was not so honest, he
was not so manly, he was not so good-humoured; he substituted
cunning for their simplicity, and passion for their safe solid
sense.  An ill-made, high-shouldered man, with lowering brows, and
his features crushed into an habitually sour expression, he
contrasted most unfavourably, even in his mongrel dress, with the
great body of his hearers in their plain working clothes.  Strange
as it always is to consider any assembly in the act of submissively
resigning itself to the dreariness of some complacent person, lord
or commoner, whom three-fourths of it could, by no human means,
raise out of the slough of inanity to their own intellectual level,
it was particularly strange, and it was even particularly
affecting, to see this crowd of earnest faces, whose honesty in the
main no competent observer free from bias could doubt, so agitated
by such a leader.

Good!  Hear, hear!  Hurrah!  The eagerness both of attention and
intention, exhibited in all the countenances, made them a most
impressive sight.  There was no carelessness, no languor, no idle
curiosity; none of the many shades of indifference to be seen in
all other assemblies, visible for one moment there.  That every man
felt his condition to be, somehow or other, worse than it might be;
that every man considered it incumbent on him to join the rest,
towards the making of it better; that every man felt his only hope
to be in his allying himself to the comrades by whom he was
surrounded; and that in this belief, right or wrong (unhappily
wrong then), the whole of that crowd were gravely, deeply,
faithfully in earnest; must have been as plain to any one who chose
to see what was there, as the bare beams of the roof and the
whitened brick walls.  Nor could any such spectator fail to know in
his own breast, that these men, through their very delusions,
showed great qualities, susceptible of being turned to the happiest
and best account; and that to pretend (on the strength of sweeping
axioms, howsoever cut and dried) that they went astray wholly
without cause, and of their own irrational wills, was to pretend
that there could be smoke without fire, death without birth,
harvest without seed, anything or everything produced from nothing.

The orator having refreshed himself, wiped his corrugated forehead
from left to right several times with his handkerchief folded into
a pad, and concentrated all his revived forces, in a sneer of great
disdain and bitterness.

'But oh, my friends and brothers!  Oh, men and Englishmen, the
down-trodden operatives of Coketown!  What shall we say of that man
- that working-man, that I should find it necessary so to libel the
glorious name - who, being practically and well acquainted with the
grievances and wrongs of you, the injured pith and marrow of this
land, and having heard you, with a noble and majestic unanimity
that will make Tyrants tremble, resolve for to subscribe to the
funds of the United Aggregate Tribunal, and to abide by the
injunctions issued by that body for your benefit, whatever they may
be - what, I ask you, will you say of that working-man, since such
I must acknowledge him to be, who, at such a time, deserts his
post, and sells his flag; who, at such a time, turns a traitor and
a craven and a recreant, who, at such a time, is not ashamed to
make to you the dastardly and humiliating avowal that he will hold
himself aloof, and will not be one of those associated in the
gallant stand for Freedom and for Right?'

The assembly was divided at this point.  There were some groans and
hisses, but the general sense of honour was much too strong for the
condemnation of a man unheard.  'Be sure you're right,
Slackbridge!'  'Put him up!'  'Let's hear him!'  Such things were
said on many sides.  Finally, one strong voice called out, 'Is the
man heer?  If the man's heer, Slackbridge, let's hear the man
himseln, 'stead o' yo.'  Which was received with a round of
applause.

Slackbridge, the orator, looked about him with a withering smile;
and, holding out his right hand at arm's length (as the manner of
all Slackbridges is), to still the thundering sea, waited until
there was a profound silence.

'Oh, my friends and fellow-men!' said Slackbridge then, shaking his
head with violent scorn, 'I do not wonder that you, the prostrate
sons of labour, are incredulous of the existence of such a man.
But he who sold his birthright for a mess of pottage existed, and
Judas Iscariot existed, and Castlereagh existed, and this man
exists!'

Here, a brief press and confusion near the stage, ended in the man
himself standing at the orator's side before the concourse.  He was
pale and a little moved in the face - his lips especially showed
it; but he stood quiet, with his left hand at his chin, waiting to
be heard.  There was a chairman to regulate the proceedings, and
this functionary now took the case into his own hands.

'My friends,' said he, 'by virtue o' my office as your president, I
askes o' our friend Slackbridge, who may be a little over hetter in
this business, to take his seat, whiles this man Stephen Blackpool
is heern.  You all know this man Stephen Blackpool.  You know him
awlung o' his misfort'ns, and his good name.'

With that, the chairman shook him frankly by the hand, and sat down
again.  Slackbridge likewise sat down, wiping his hot forehead -
always from left to right, and never the reverse way.

'My friends,' Stephen began, in the midst of a dead calm; 'I ha'
hed what's been spok'n o' me, and 'tis lickly that I shan't mend
it.  But I'd liefer you'd hearn the truth concernin myseln, fro my
lips than fro onny other man's, though I never cud'n speak afore so
monny, wi'out bein moydert and muddled.'

Slackbridge shook his head as if he would shake it off, in his
bitterness.

'I'm th' one single Hand in Bounderby's mill, o' a' the men theer,
as don't coom in wi' th' proposed reg'lations.  I canna coom in wi'
'em.  My friends, I doubt their doin' yo onny good.  Licker they'll
do yo hurt.'

Slackbridge laughed, folded his arms, and frowned sarcastically.

'But 't an't sommuch for that as I stands out.  If that were aw,
I'd coom in wi' th' rest.  But I ha' my reasons - mine, yo see -
for being hindered; not on'y now, but awlus - awlus - life long!'

Slackbridge jumped up and stood beside him, gnashing and tearing.
'Oh, my friends, what but this did I tell you?  Oh, my fellow-
countrymen, what warning but this did I give you?  And how shows
this recreant conduct in a man on whom unequal laws are known to
have fallen heavy?  Oh, you Englishmen, I ask you how does this
subornation show in one of yourselves, who is thus consenting to
his own undoing and to yours, and to your children's and your
children's children's?'

There was some applause, and some crying of Shame upon the man; but
the greater part of the audience were quiet.  They looked at
Stephen's worn face, rendered more pathetic by the homely emotions
it evinced; and, in the kindness of their nature, they were more
sorry than indignant.

''Tis this Delegate's trade for t' speak,' said Stephen, 'an' he's
paid for 't, an' he knows his work.  Let him keep to 't.  Let him
give no heed to what I ha had'n to bear.  That's not for him.
That's not for nobbody but me.'

There was a propriety, not to say a dignity in these words, that
made the hearers yet more quiet and attentive.  The same strong
voice called out, 'Slackbridge, let the man be heern, and howd thee
tongue!'  Then the place was wonderfully still.

'My brothers,' said Stephen, whose low voice was distinctly heard,
'and my fellow-workmen - for that yo are to me, though not, as I
knows on, to this delegate here - I ha but a word to sen, and I
could sen nommore if I was to speak till Strike o' day.  I know
weel, aw what's afore me.  I know weel that yo aw resolve to ha
nommore ado wi' a man who is not wi' yo in this matther.  I know
weel that if I was a lyin parisht i' th' road, yo'd feel it right
to pass me by, as a forrenner and stranger.  What I ha getn, I mun
mak th' best on.'

'Stephen Blackpool,' said the chairman, rising, 'think on 't agen.
Think on 't once agen, lad, afore thou'rt shunned by aw owd
friends.'

There was an universal murmur to the same effect, though no man
articulated a word.  Every eye was fixed on Stephen's face.  To
repent of his determination, would be to take a load from all their
minds.  He looked around him, and knew that it was so.  Not a grain
of anger with them was in his heart; he knew them, far below their
surface weaknesses and misconceptions, as no one but their fellow-
labourer could.

'I ha thowt on 't, above a bit, sir.  I simply canna coom in.  I
mun go th' way as lays afore me.  I mun tak my leave o' aw heer.'

He made a sort of reverence to them by holding up his arms, and
stood for the moment in that attitude; not speaking until they
slowly dropped at his sides.

'Monny's the pleasant word as soom heer has spok'n wi' me; monny's
the face I see heer, as I first seen when I were yoong and lighter
heart'n than now.  I ha' never had no fratch afore, sin ever I were
born, wi' any o' my like; Gonnows I ha' none now that's o' my
makin'.  Yo'll ca' me traitor and that - yo I mean t' say,'
addressing Slackbridge, 'but 'tis easier to ca' than mak' out.  So
let be.'

He had moved away a pace or two to come down from the platform,
when he remembered something he had not said, and returned again.

'Haply,' he said, turning his furrowed face slowly about, that he
might as it were individually address the whole audience, those
both near and distant; 'haply, when this question has been tak'n up
and discoosed, there'll be a threat to turn out if I'm let to work
among yo.  I hope I shall die ere ever such a time cooms, and I
shall work solitary among yo unless it cooms - truly, I mun do 't,
my friends; not to brave yo, but to live.  I ha nobbut work to live
by; and wheerever can I go, I who ha worked sin I were no heighth
at aw, in Coketown heer?  I mak' no complaints o' bein turned to
the wa', o' bein outcasten and overlooken fro this time forrard,
but hope I shall be let to work.  If there is any right for me at
aw, my friends, I think 'tis that.'

Not a word was spoken.  Not a sound was audible in the building,
but the slight rustle of men moving a little apart, all along the
centre of the room, to open a means of passing out, to the man with
whom they had all bound themselves to renounce companionship.
Looking at no one, and going his way with a lowly steadiness upon
him that asserted nothing and sought nothing, Old Stephen, with all
his troubles on his head, left the scene.

Then Slackbridge, who had kept his oratorical arm extended during
the going out, as if he were repressing with infinite solicitude
and by a wonderful moral power the vehement passions of the
multitude, applied himself to raising their spirits.  Had not the
Roman Brutus, oh, my British countrymen, condemned his son to
death; and had not the Spartan mothers, oh my soon to be victorious
friends, driven their flying children on the points of their
enemies' swords?  Then was it not the sacred duty of the men of
Coketown, with forefathers before them, an admiring world in
company with them, and a posterity to come after them, to hurl out
traitors from the tents they had pitched in a sacred and a God-like
cause?  The winds of heaven answered Yes; and bore Yes, east, west,
north, and south.  And consequently three cheers for the United
Aggregate Tribunal!

Slackbridge acted as fugleman, and gave the time.  The multitude of
doubtful faces (a little conscience-stricken) brightened at the
sound, and took it up.  Private feeling must yield to the common
cause.  Hurrah!  The roof yet vibrated with the cheering, when the
assembly dispersed.

Thus easily did Stephen Blackpool fall into the loneliest of lives,
the life of solitude among a familiar crowd.  The stranger in the
land who looks into ten thousand faces for some answering look and
never finds it, is in cheering society as compared with him who
passes ten averted faces daily, that were once the countenances of
friends.  Such experience was to be Stephen's now, in every waking
moment of his life; at his work, on his way to it and from it, at
his door, at his window, everywhere.  By general consent, they even
avoided that side of the street on which he habitually walked; and
left it, of all the working men, to him only.

He had been for many years, a quiet silent man, associating but
little with other men, and used to companionship with his own
thoughts.  He had never known before the strength of the want in
his heart for the frequent recognition of a nod, a look, a word; or
the immense amount of relief that had been poured into it by drops
through such small means.  It was even harder than he could have
believed possible, to separate in his own conscience his
abandonment by all his fellows from a baseless sense of shame and
disgrace.

The first four days of his endurance were days so long and heavy,
that he began to be appalled by the prospect before him.  Not only
did he see no Rachael all the time, but he avoided every chance of
seeing her; for, although he knew that the prohibition did not yet
formally extend to the women working in the factories, he found
that some of them with whom he was acquainted were changed to him,
and he feared to try others, and dreaded that Rachael might be even
singled out from the rest if she were seen in his company.  So, he
had been quite alone during the four days, and had spoken to no
one, when, as he was leaving his work at night, a young man of a
very light complexion accosted him in the street.

'Your name's Blackpool, ain't it?' said the young man.

Stephen coloured to find himself with his hat in his hand, in his
gratitude for being spoken to, or in the suddenness of it, or both.
He made a feint of adjusting the lining, and said, 'Yes.'

'You are the Hand they have sent to Coventry, I mean?' said Bitzer,
the very light young man in question.

Stephen answered 'Yes,' again.

'I supposed so, from their all appearing to keep away from you.
Mr. Bounderby wants to speak to you.  You know his house, don't
you?'

Stephen said 'Yes,' again.

'Then go straight up there, will you?' said Bitzer.  'You're
expected, and have only to tell the servant it's you.  I belong to
the Bank; so, if you go straight up without me (I was sent to fetch
you), you'll save me a walk.'

Stephen, whose way had been in the contrary direction, turned
about, and betook himself as in duty bound, to the red brick castle
of the giant Bounderby.

Chapter V - Men and masters



'WELL, Stephen,' said Bounderby, in his windy manner, 'what's this
I hear?  What have these pests of the earth been doing to you?
Come in, and speak up.'

It was into the drawing-room that he was thus bidden.  A tea-table
was set out; and Mr. Bounderby's young wife, and her brother, and a
great gentleman from London, were present.  To whom Stephen made
his obeisance, closing the door and standing near it, with his hat
in his hand.

'This is the man I was telling you about, Harthouse,' said Mr.
Bounderby.  The gentleman he addressed, who was talking to Mrs.
Bounderby on the sofa, got up, saying in an indolent way, 'Oh
really?' and dawdled to the hearthrug where Mr. Bounderby stood.

'Now,' said Bounderby, 'speak up!'

After the four days he had passed, this address fell rudely and
discordantly on Stephen's ear.  Besides being a rough handling of
his wounded mind, it seemed to assume that he really was the self-
interested deserter he had been called.

'What were it, sir,' said Stephen, 'as yo were pleased to want wi'
me?'

'Why, I have told you,' returned Bounderby.  'Speak up like a man,
since you are a man, and tell us about yourself and this
Combination.'

'Wi' yor pardon, sir,' said Stephen Blackpool, 'I ha' nowt to sen
about it.'

Mr. Bounderby, who was always more or less like a Wind, finding
something in his way here, began to blow at it directly.

'Now, look here, Harthouse,' said he, 'here's a specimen of 'em.
When this man was here once before, I warned this man against the
mischievous strangers who are always about - and who ought to be
hanged wherever they are found - and I told this man that he was
going in the wrong direction.  Now, would you believe it, that
although they have put this mark upon him, he is such a slave to
them still, that he's afraid to open his lips about them?'

'I sed as I had nowt to sen, sir; not as I was fearfo' o' openin'
my lips.'

'You said!  Ah!  I know what you said; more than that, I know what
you mean, you see.  Not always the same thing, by the Lord Harry!
Quite different things.  You had better tell us at once, that that
fellow Slackbridge is not in the town, stirring up the people to
mutiny; and that he is not a regular qualified leader of the
people:  that is, a most confounded scoundrel.  You had better tell
us so at once; you can't deceive me.  You want to tell us so.  Why
don't you?'

'I'm as sooary as yo, sir, when the people's leaders is bad,' said
Stephen, shaking his head.  'They taks such as offers.  Haply 'tis
na' the sma'est o' their misfortuns when they can get no better.'

The wind began to get boisterous.

'Now, you'll think this pretty well, Harthouse,' said Mr.
Bounderby.  'You'll think this tolerably strong.  You'll say, upon
my soul this is a tidy specimen of what my friends have to deal
with; but this is nothing, sir!  You shall hear me ask this man a
question.  Pray, Mr. Blackpool' - wind springing up very fast -
'may I take the liberty of asking you how it happens that you
refused to be in this Combination?'

'How 't happens?'

'Ah!' said Mr. Bounderby, with his thumbs in the arms of his coat,
and jerking his head and shutting his eyes in confidence with the
opposite wall:  'how it happens.'

'I'd leefer not coom to 't, sir; but sin you put th' question - an'
not want'n t' be ill-manner'n - I'll answer.  I ha passed a
promess.'

'Not to me, you know,' said Bounderby.  (Gusty weather with
deceitful calms.  One now prevailing.)

'O no, sir.  Not to yo.'

'As for me, any consideration for me has had just nothing at all to
do with it,' said Bounderby, still in confidence with the wall.
'If only Josiah Bounderby of Coketown had been in question, you
would have joined and made no bones about it?'

'Why yes, sir.  'Tis true.'

'Though he knows,' said Mr. Bounderby, now blowing a gale, 'that
there are a set of rascals and rebels whom transportation is too
good for!  Now, Mr. Harthouse, you have been knocking about in the
world some time.  Did you ever meet with anything like that man out
of this blessed country?'  And Mr. Bounderby pointed him out for
inspection, with an angry finger.

'Nay, ma'am,' said Stephen Blackpool, staunchly protesting against
the words that had been used, and instinctively addressing himself
to Louisa, after glancing at her face.  'Not rebels, nor yet
rascals.  Nowt o' th' kind, ma'am, nowt o' th' kind.  They've not
doon me a kindness, ma'am, as I know and feel.  But there's not a
dozen men amoong 'em, ma'am - a dozen?  Not six - but what believes
as he has doon his duty by the rest and by himseln.  God forbid as
I, that ha' known, and had'n experience o' these men aw my life -
I, that ha' ett'n an' droonken wi' 'em, an' seet'n wi' 'em, and
toil'n wi' 'em, and lov'n 'em, should fail fur to stan by 'em wi'
the truth, let 'em ha' doon to me what they may!'

He spoke with the rugged earnestness of his place and character -
deepened perhaps by a proud consciousness that he was faithful to
his class under all their mistrust; but he fully remembered where
he was, and did not even raise his voice.

'No, ma'am, no.  They're true to one another, faithfo' to one
another, 'fectionate to one another, e'en to death.  Be poor amoong
'em, be sick amoong 'em, grieve amoong 'em for onny o' th' monny
causes that carries grief to the poor man's door, an' they'll be
tender wi' yo, gentle wi' yo, comfortable wi' yo, Chrisen wi' yo.
Be sure o' that, ma'am.  They'd be riven to bits, ere ever they'd
be different.'

'In short,' said Mr. Bounderby, 'it's because they are so full of
virtues that they have turned you adrift.  Go through with it while
you are about it.  Out with it.'

'How 'tis, ma'am,' resumed Stephen, appearing still to find his
natural refuge in Louisa's face, 'that what is best in us fok,
seems to turn us most to trouble an' misfort'n an' mistake, I
dunno.  But 'tis so.  I know 'tis, as I know the heavens is over me
ahint the smoke.  We're patient too, an' wants in general to do
right.  An' I canna think the fawt is aw wi' us.'

'Now, my friend,' said Mr. Bounderby, whom he could not have
exasperated more, quite unconscious of it though he was, than by
seeming to appeal to any one else, 'if you will favour me with your
attention for half a minute, I should like to have a word or two
with you.  You said just now, that you had nothing to tell us about
this business.  You are quite sure of that before we go any
further.'

'Sir, I am sure on 't.'

'Here's a gentleman from London present,' Mr. Bounderby made a
backhanded point at Mr. James Harthouse with his thumb, 'a
Parliament gentleman.  I should like him to hear a short bit of
dialogue between you and me, instead of taking the substance of it
- for I know precious well, beforehand, what it will be; nobody
knows better than I do, take notice! - instead of receiving it on
trust from my mouth.'

Stephen bent his head to the gentleman from London, and showed a
rather more troubled mind than usual.  He turned his eyes
involuntarily to his former refuge, but at a look from that quarter
(expressive though instantaneous) he settled them on Mr.
Bounderby's face.

'Now, what do you complain of?' asked Mr. Bounderby.

'I ha' not coom here, sir,' Stephen reminded him, 'to complain.  I
coom for that I were sent for.'

'What,' repeated Mr. Bounderby, folding his arms, 'do you people,
in a general way, complain of?'

Stephen looked at him with some little irresolution for a moment,
and then seemed to make up his mind.

'Sir, I were never good at showin o 't, though I ha had'n my share
in feeling o 't.  'Deed we are in a muddle, sir.  Look round town -
so rich as 'tis - and see the numbers o' people as has been
broughten into bein heer, fur to weave, an' to card, an' to piece
out a livin', aw the same one way, somehows, 'twixt their cradles
and their graves.  Look how we live, an' wheer we live, an' in what
numbers, an' by what chances, and wi' what sameness; and look how
the mills is awlus a goin, and how they never works us no nigher to
ony dis'ant object - ceptin awlus, Death.  Look how you considers
of us, and writes of us, and talks of us, and goes up wi' yor
deputations to Secretaries o' State 'bout us, and how yo are awlus
right, and how we are awlus wrong, and never had'n no reason in us
sin ever we were born.  Look how this ha growen an' growen, sir,
bigger an' bigger, broader an' broader, harder an' harder, fro year
to year, fro generation unto generation.  Who can look on 't, sir,
and fairly tell a man 'tis not a muddle?'

'Of course,' said Mr. Bounderby.  'Now perhaps you'll let the
gentleman know, how you would set this muddle (as you're so fond of
calling it) to rights.'

'I donno, sir.  I canna be expecten to 't.  'Tis not me as should
be looken to for that, sir.  'Tis them as is put ower me, and ower
aw the rest of us.  What do they tak upon themseln, sir, if not to
do't?'

'I'll tell you something towards it, at any rate,' returned Mr.
Bounderby.  'We will make an example of half a dozen Slackbridges.
We'll indict the blackguards for felony, and get 'em shipped off to
penal settlements.'

Stephen gravely shook his head.

'Don't tell me we won't, man,' said Mr. Bounderby, by this time
blowing a hurricane, 'because we will, I tell you!'

'Sir,' returned Stephen, with the quiet confidence of absolute
certainty, 'if yo was t' tak a hundred Slackbridges - aw as there
is, and aw the number ten times towd - an' was t' sew 'em up in
separate sacks, an' sink 'em in the deepest ocean as were made ere
ever dry land coom to be, yo'd leave the muddle just wheer 'tis.
Mischeevous strangers!' said Stephen, with an anxious smile; 'when
ha we not heern, I am sure, sin ever we can call to mind, o' th'
mischeevous strangers!  'Tis not by them the trouble's made, sir.
'Tis not wi' them 't commences.  I ha no favour for 'em - I ha no
reason to favour 'em - but 'tis hopeless and useless to dream o'
takin them fro their trade, 'stead o' takin their trade fro them!
Aw that's now about me in this room were heer afore I coom, an'
will be heer when I am gone.  Put that clock aboard a ship an' pack
it off to Norfolk Island, an' the time will go on just the same.
So 'tis wi' Slackbridge every bit.'

Reverting for a moment to his former refuge, he observed a
cautionary movement of her eyes towards the door.  Stepping back,
he put his hand upon the lock.  But he had not spoken out of his
own will and desire; and he felt it in his heart a noble return for
his late injurious treatment to be faithful to the last to those
who had repudiated him.  He stayed to finish what was in his mind.

'Sir, I canna, wi' my little learning an' my common way, tell the
genelman what will better aw this - though some working men o' this
town could, above my powers - but I can tell him what I know will
never do 't.  The strong hand will never do 't.  Vict'ry and
triumph will never do 't.  Agreeing fur to mak one side unnat'rally
awlus and for ever right, and toother side unnat'rally awlus and
for ever wrong, will never, never do 't.  Nor yet lettin alone will
never do 't.  Let thousands upon thousands alone, aw leading the
like lives and aw faw'en into the like muddle, and they will be as
one, and yo will be as anoother, wi' a black unpassable world
betwixt yo, just as long or short a time as sich-like misery can
last.  Not drawin nigh to fok, wi' kindness and patience an' cheery
ways, that so draws nigh to one another in their monny troubles,
and so cherishes one another in their distresses wi' what they need
themseln - like, I humbly believe, as no people the genelman ha
seen in aw his travels can beat - will never do 't till th' Sun
turns t' ice.  Most o' aw, rating 'em as so much Power, and
reg'latin 'em as if they was figures in a soom, or machines:
wi'out loves and likens, wi'out memories and inclinations, wi'out
souls to weary and souls to hope - when aw goes quiet, draggin on
wi' 'em as if they'd nowt o' th' kind, and when aw goes onquiet,
reproachin 'em for their want o' sitch humanly feelins in their
dealins wi' yo - this will never do 't, sir, till God's work is
onmade.'

Stephen stood with the open door in his hand, waiting to know if
anything more were expected of him.

'Just stop a moment,' said Mr. Bounderby, excessively red in the
face.  'I told you, the last time you were here with a grievance,
that you had better turn about and come out of that.  And I also
told you, if you remember, that I was up to the gold spoon look-
out.'

'I were not up to 't myseln, sir; I do assure yo.'

'Now it's clear to me,' said Mr. Bounderby, 'that you are one of
those chaps who have always got a grievance.  And you go about,
sowing it and raising crops.  That's the business of your life, my
friend.'

Stephen shook his head, mutely protesting that indeed he had other
business to do for his life.

'You are such a waspish, raspish, ill-conditioned chap, you see,'
said Mr. Bounderby, 'that even your own Union, the men who know you
best, will have nothing to do with you.  I never thought those
fellows could be right in anything; but I tell you what!  I so far
go along with them for a novelty, that I'll have nothing to do with
you either.'

Stephen raised his eyes quickly to his face.

'You can finish off what you're at,' said Mr. Bounderby, with a
meaning nod, 'and then go elsewhere.'

'Sir, yo know weel,' said Stephen expressively, 'that if I canna
get work wi' yo, I canna get it elsewheer.'

The reply was, 'What I know, I know; and what you know, you know.
I have no more to say about it.'

Stephen glanced at Louisa again, but her eyes were raised to his no
more; therefore, with a sigh, and saying, barely above his breath,
'Heaven help us aw in this world!' he departed.

Chapter VI - Fading away



IT was falling dark when Stephen came out of Mr. Bounderby's house.
The shadows of night had gathered so fast, that he did not look
about him when he closed the door, but plodded straight along the
street.  Nothing was further from his thoughts than the curious old
woman he had encountered on his previous visit to the same house,
when he heard a step behind him that he knew, and turning, saw her
in Rachael's company.

He saw Rachael first, as he had heard her only.

'Ah, Rachael, my dear!  Missus, thou wi' her!'

'Well, and now you are surprised to be sure, and with reason I must
say,' the old woman returned.  'Here I am again, you see.'

'But how wi' Rachael?' said Stephen, falling into their step,
walking between them, and looking from the one to the other.

'Why, I come to be with this good lass pretty much as I came to be
with you,' said the old woman, cheerfully, taking the reply upon
herself.  'My visiting time is later this year than usual, for I
have been rather troubled with shortness of breath, and so put it
off till the weather was fine and warm.  For the same reason I
don't make all my journey in one day, but divide it into two days,
and get a bed to-night at the Travellers' Coffee House down by the
railroad (a nice clean house), and go back Parliamentary, at six in
the morning.  Well, but what has this to do with this good lass,
says you?  I'm going to tell you.  I have heard of Mr. Bounderby
being married.  I read it in the paper, where it looked grand - oh,
it looked fine!' the old woman dwelt on it with strange enthusiasm:
'and I want to see his wife.  I have never seen her yet.  Now, if
you'll believe me, she hasn't come out of that house since noon to-
day.  So not to give her up too easily, I was waiting about, a
little last bit more, when I passed close to this good lass two or
three times; and her face being so friendly I spoke to her, and she
spoke to me.  There!' said the old woman to Stephen, 'you can make
all the rest out for yourself now, a deal shorter than I can, I
dare say!'

Once again, Stephen had to conquer an instinctive propensity to
dislike this old woman, though her manner was as honest and simple
as a manner possibly could be.  With a gentleness that was as
natural to him as he knew it to be to Rachael, he pursued the
subject that interested her in her old age.

'Well, missus,' said he, 'I ha seen the lady, and she were young
and hansom.  Wi' fine dark thinkin eyes, and a still way, Rachael,
as I ha never seen the like on.'

'Young and handsome.  Yes!' cried the old woman, quite delighted.
'As bonny as a rose!  And what a happy wife!'

'Aye, missus, I suppose she be,' said Stephen.  But with a doubtful
glance at Rachael.

'Suppose she be?  She must be.  She's your master's wife,' returned
the old woman.

Stephen nodded assent.  'Though as to master,' said he, glancing
again at Rachael, 'not master onny more.  That's aw enden 'twixt
him and me.'

'Have you left his work, Stephen?' asked Rachael, anxiously and
quickly.

'Why, Rachael,' he replied, 'whether I ha lef'n his work, or
whether his work ha lef'n me, cooms t' th' same.  His work and me
are parted.  'Tis as weel so - better, I were thinkin when yo coom
up wi' me.  It would ha brought'n trouble upon trouble if I had
stayed theer.  Haply 'tis a kindness to monny that I go; haply 'tis
a kindness to myseln; anyways it mun be done.  I mun turn my face
fro Coketown fur th' time, and seek a fort'n, dear, by beginnin
fresh.'

'Where will you go, Stephen?'

'I donno t'night,' said he, lifting off his hat, and smoothing his
thin hair with the flat of his hand.  'But I'm not goin t'night,
Rachael, nor yet t'morrow.  'Tan't easy overmuch t' know wheer t'
turn, but a good heart will coom to me.'

Herein, too, the sense of even thinking unselfishly aided him.
Before he had so much as closed Mr. Bounderby's door, he had
reflected that at least his being obliged to go away was good for
her, as it would save her from the chance of being brought into
question for not withdrawing from him.  Though it would cost him a
hard pang to leave her, and though he could think of no similar
place in which his condemnation would not pursue him, perhaps it
was almost a relief to be forced away from the endurance of the
last four days, even to unknown difficulties and distresses.

So he said, with truth, 'I'm more leetsome, Rachael, under 't, than
I could'n ha believed.'  It was not her part to make his burden
heavier.  She answered with her comforting smile, and the three
walked on together.

Age, especially when it strives to be self-reliant and cheerful,
finds much consideration among the poor.  The old woman was so
decent and contented, and made so light of her infirmities, though
they had increased upon her since her former interview with
Stephen, that they both took an interest in her.  She was too
sprightly to allow of their walking at a slow pace on her account,
but she was very grateful to be talked to, and very willing to talk
to any extent:  so, when they came to their part of the town, she
was more brisk and vivacious than ever.

'Come to my poor place, missus,' said Stephen, 'and tak a coop o'
tea.  Rachael will coom then; and arterwards I'll see thee safe t'
thy Travellers' lodgin.  'T may be long, Rachael, ere ever I ha th'
chance o' thy coompany agen.'

They complied, and the three went on to the house where he lodged.
When they turned into a narrow street, Stephen glanced at his
window with a dread that always haunted his desolate home; but it
was open, as he had left it, and no one was there.  The evil spirit
of his life had flitted away again, months ago, and he had heard no
more of her since.  The only evidence of her last return now, were
the scantier moveables in his room, and the grayer hair upon his
head.

He lighted a candle, set out his little tea-board, got hot water
from below, and brought in small portions of tea and sugar, a loaf,
and some butter from the nearest shop.  The bread was new and
crusty, the butter fresh, and the sugar lump, of course - in
fulfilment of the standard testimony of the Coketown magnates, that
these people lived like princes, sir.  Rachael made the tea (so
large a party necessitated the borrowing of a cup), and the visitor
enjoyed it mightily.  It was the first glimpse of sociality the
host had had for many days.  He too, with the world a wide heath
before him, enjoyed the meal - again in corroboration of the
magnates, as exemplifying the utter want of calculation on the part
of these people, sir.

'I ha never thowt yet, missus,' said Stephen, 'o' askin thy name.'

The old lady announced herself as 'Mrs. Pegler.'

'A widder, I think?' said Stephen.

'Oh, many long years!'  Mrs. Pegler's husband (one of the best on
record) was already dead, by Mrs. Pegler's calculation, when
Stephen was born.

''Twere a bad job, too, to lose so good a one,' said Stephen.
'Onny children?'

Mrs. Pegler's cup, rattling against her saucer as she held it,
denoted some nervousness on her part.  'No,' she said.  'Not now,
not now.'

'Dead, Stephen,' Rachael softly hinted.

'I'm sooary I ha spok'n on 't,' said Stephen, 'I ought t' hadn in
my mind as I might touch a sore place.  I - I blame myseln.'

While he excused himself, the old lady's cup rattled more and more.
'I had a son,' she said, curiously distressed, and not by any of
the usual appearances of sorrow; 'and he did well, wonderfully
well.  But he is not to be spoken of if you please.  He is - '
Putting down her cup, she moved her hands as if she would have
added, by her action, 'dead!'  Then she said aloud, 'I have lost
him.'

Stephen had not yet got the better of his having given the old lady
pain, when his landlady came stumbling up the narrow stairs, and
calling him to the door, whispered in his ear.  Mrs. Pegler was by
no means deaf, for she caught a word as it was uttered.

'Bounderby!' she cried, in a suppressed voice, starting up from the
table.  'Oh hide me!  Don't let me be seen for the world.  Don't
let him come up till I've got away.  Pray, pray!'  She trembled,
and was excessively agitated; getting behind Rachael, when Rachael
tried to reassure her; and not seeming to know what she was about.

'But hearken, missus, hearken,' said Stephen, astonished.  "Tisn't
Mr. Bounderby; 'tis his wife.  Yo'r not fearfo' o' her.  Yo was
hey-go-mad about her, but an hour sin.'

'But are you sure it's the lady, and not the gentleman?' she asked,
still trembling.

'Certain sure!'

'Well then, pray don't speak to me, nor yet take any notice of me,'
said the old woman.  'Let me be quite to myself in this corner.'

Stephen nodded; looking to Rachael for an explanation, which she
was quite unable to give him; took the candle, went downstairs, and
in a few moments returned, lighting Louisa into the room.  She was
followed by the whelp.

Rachael had risen, and stood apart with her shawl and bonnet in her
hand, when Stephen, himself profoundly astonished by this visit,
put the candle on the table.  Then he too stood, with his doubled
hand upon the table near it, waiting to be addressed.

For the first time in her life Louisa had come into one of the
dwellings of the Coketown Hands; for the first time in her life she
was face to face with anything like individuality in connection
with them.  She knew of their existence by hundreds and by
thousands.  She knew what results in work a given number of them
would produce in a given space of time.  She knew them in crowds
passing to and from their nests, like ants or beetles.  But she
knew from her reading infinitely more of the ways of toiling
insects than of these toiling men and women.

Something to be worked so much and paid so much, and there ended;
something to be infallibly settled by laws of supply and demand;
something that blundered against those laws, and floundered into
difficulty; something that was a little pinched when wheat was
dear, and over-ate itself when wheat was cheap; something that
increased at such a rate of percentage, and yielded such another
percentage of crime, and such another percentage of pauperism;
something wholesale, of which vast fortunes were made; something
that occasionally rose like a sea, and did some harm and waste
(chiefly to itself), and fell again; this she knew the Coketown
Hands to be.  But, she had scarcely thought more of separating them
into units, than of separating the sea itself into its component
drops.

She stood for some moments looking round the room.  From the few
chairs, the few books, the common prints, and the bed, she glanced
to the two women, and to Stephen.

'I have come to speak to you, in consequence of what passed just
now.  I should like to be serviceable to you, if you will let me.
Is this your wife?'

Rachael raised her eyes, and they sufficiently answered no, and
dropped again.

'I remember,' said Louisa, reddening at her mistake; 'I recollect,
now, to have heard your domestic misfortunes spoken of, though I
was not attending to the particulars at the time.  It was not my
meaning to ask a question that would give pain to any one here.  If
I should ask any other question that may happen to have that
result, give me credit, if you please, for being in ignorance how
to speak to you as I ought.'

As Stephen had but a little while ago instinctively addressed
himself to her, so she now instinctively addressed herself to
Rachael.  Her manner was short and abrupt, yet faltering and timid.

'He has told you what has passed between himself and my husband?
You would be his first resource, I think.'

'I have heard the end of it, young lady,' said Rachael.

'Did I understand, that, being rejected by one employer, he would
probably be rejected by all?  I thought he said as much?'

'The chances are very small, young lady - next to nothing - for a
man who gets a bad name among them.'

'What shall I understand that you mean by a bad name?'

'The name of being troublesome.'

'Then, by the prejudices of his own class, and by the prejudices of
the other, he is sacrificed alike?  Are the two so deeply separated
in this town, that there is no place whatever for an honest workman
between them?'

Rachael shook her head in silence.

'He fell into suspicion,' said Louisa, 'with his fellow-weavers,
because - he had made a promise not to be one of them.  I think it
must have been to you that he made that promise.  Might I ask you
why he made it?'

Rachael burst into tears.  'I didn't seek it of him, poor lad.  I
prayed him to avoid trouble for his own good, little thinking he'd
come to it through me.  But I know he'd die a hundred deaths, ere
ever he'd break his word.  I know that of him well.'

Stephen had remained quietly attentive, in his usual thoughtful
attitude, with his hand at his chin.  He now spoke in a voice
rather less steady than usual.

'No one, excepting myseln, can ever know what honour, an' what
love, an' respect, I bear to Rachael, or wi' what cause.  When I
passed that promess, I towd her true, she were th' Angel o' my
life.  'Twere a solemn promess.  'Tis gone fro' me, for ever.'

Louisa turned her head to him, and bent it with a deference that
was new in her.  She looked from him to Rachael, and her features
softened.  'What will you do?' she asked him.  And her voice had
softened too.

'Weel, ma'am,' said Stephen, making the best of it, with a smile;
'when I ha finished off, I mun quit this part, and try another.
Fortnet or misfortnet, a man can but try; there's nowt to be done
wi'out tryin' - cept laying down and dying.'

'How will you travel?'

'Afoot, my kind ledy, afoot.'

Louisa coloured, and a purse appeared in her hand.  The rustling of
a bank-note was audible, as she unfolded one and laid it on the
table.

'Rachael, will you tell him - for you know how, without offence -
that this is freely his, to help him on his way?  Will you entreat
him to take it?'

'I canna do that, young lady,' she answered, turning her head
aside.  'Bless you for thinking o' the poor lad wi' such
tenderness.  But 'tis for him to know his heart, and what is right
according to it.'

Louisa looked, in part incredulous, in part frightened, in part
overcome with quick sympathy, when this man of so much self-
command, who had been so plain and steady through the late
interview, lost his composure in a moment, and now stood with his
hand before his face.  She stretched out hers, as if she would have
touched him; then checked herself, and remained still.

'Not e'en Rachael,' said Stephen, when he stood again with his face
uncovered, 'could mak sitch a kind offerin, by onny words, kinder.
T' show that I'm not a man wi'out reason and gratitude, I'll tak
two pound.  I'll borrow 't for t' pay 't back.  'Twill be the
sweetest work as ever I ha done, that puts it in my power t'
acknowledge once more my lastin thankfulness for this present
action.'

She was fain to take up the note again, and to substitute the much
smaller sum he had named.  He was neither courtly, nor handsome,
nor picturesque, in any respect; and yet his manner of accepting
it, and of expressing his thanks without more words, had a grace in
it that Lord Chesterfield could not have taught his son in a
century.

Tom had sat upon the bed, swinging one leg and sucking his walking-
stick with sufficient unconcern, until the visit had attained this
stage.  Seeing his sister ready to depart, he got up, rather
hurriedly, and put in a word.

'Just wait a moment, Loo!  Before we go, I should like to speak to
him a moment.  Something comes into my head.  If you'll step out on
the stairs, Blackpool, I'll mention it.  Never mind a light, man!'
Tom was remarkably impatient of his moving towards the cupboard, to
get one.  'It don't want a light.'

Stephen followed him out, and Tom closed the room door, and held
the lock in his hand.

'I say!' he whispered.  'I think I can do you a good turn.  Don't
ask me what it is, because it may not come to anything.  But
there's no harm in my trying.'

His breath fell like a flame of fire on Stephen's ear, it was so
hot.

'That was our light porter at the Bank,' said Tom, 'who brought you
the message to-night.  I call him our light porter, because I
belong to the Bank too.'

Stephen thought, 'What a hurry he is in!'  He spoke so confusedly.

'Well!' said Tom.  'Now look here!  When are you off?'

'T' day's Monday,' replied Stephen, considering.  'Why, sir, Friday
or Saturday, nigh 'bout.'

'Friday or Saturday,' said Tom.  'Now look here!  I am not sure
that I can do you the good turn I want to do you - that's my
sister, you know, in your room - but I may be able to, and if I
should not be able to, there's no harm done.  So I tell you what.
You'll know our light porter again?'

'Yes, sure,' said Stephen.

'Very well,' returned Tom.  'When you leave work of a night,
between this and your going away, just hang about the Bank an hour
or so, will you?  Don't take on, as if you meant anything, if he
should see you hanging about there; because I shan't put him up to
speak to you, unless I find I can do you the service I want to do
you.  In that case he'll have a note or a message for you, but not
else.  Now look here!  You are sure you understand.'

He had wormed a finger, in the darkness, through a button-hole of
Stephen's coat, and was screwing that corner of the garment tight
up round and round, in an extraordinary manner.

'I understand, sir,' said Stephen.

'Now look here!' repeated Tom.  'Be sure you don't make any mistake
then, and don't forget.  I shall tell my sister as we go home, what
I have in view, and she'll approve, I know.  Now look here!  You're
all right, are you?  You understand all about it?  Very well then.
Come along, Loo!'

He pushed the door open as he called to her, but did not return
into the room, or wait to be lighted down the narrow stairs.  He
was at the bottom when she began to descend, and was in the street
before she could take his arm.

Mrs. Pegler remained in her corner until the brother and sister
were gone, and until Stephen came back with the candle in his hand.
She was in a state of inexpressible admiration of Mrs. Bounderby,
and, like an unaccountable old woman, wept, 'because she was such a
pretty dear.'  Yet Mrs. Pegler was so flurried lest the object of
her admiration should return by chance, or anybody else should
come, that her cheerfulness was ended for that night.  It was late
too, to people who rose early and worked hard; therefore the party
broke up; and Stephen and Rachael escorted their mysterious
acquaintance to the door of the Travellers' Coffee House, where
they parted from her.

They walked back together to the corner of the street where Rachael
lived, and as they drew nearer and nearer to it, silence crept upon
them.  When they came to the dark corner where their unfrequent
meetings always ended, they stopped, still silent, as if both were
afraid to speak.

'I shall strive t' see thee agen, Rachael, afore I go, but if not -
'

'Thou wilt not, Stephen, I know.  'Tis better that we make up our
minds to be open wi' one another.'

'Thou'rt awlus right.  'Tis bolder and better.  I ha been thinkin
then, Rachael, that as 'tis but a day or two that remains, 'twere
better for thee, my dear, not t' be seen wi' me.  'T might bring
thee into trouble, fur no good.'

''Tis not for that, Stephen, that I mind.  But thou know'st our old
agreement.  'Tis for that.'

'Well, well,' said he.  "Tis better, onnyways.'

'Thou'lt write to me, and tell me all that happens, Stephen?'

'Yes.  What can I say now, but Heaven be wi' thee, Heaven bless
thee, Heaven thank thee and reward thee!'

'May it bless thee, Stephen, too, in all thy wanderings, and send
thee peace and rest at last!'

'I towd thee, my dear,' said Stephen Blackpool - 'that night - that
I would never see or think o' onnything that angered me, but thou,
so much better than me, should'st be beside it.  Thou'rt beside it
now.  Thou mak'st me see it wi' a better eye.  Bless thee.  Good
night.  Good-bye!'

It was but a hurried parting in a common street, yet it was a
sacred remembrance to these two common people.  Utilitarian
economists, skeletons of schoolmasters, Commissioners of Fact,
genteel and used-up infidels, gabblers of many little dog's-eared
creeds, the poor you will have always with you.  Cultivate in them,
while there is yet time, the utmost graces of the fancies and
affections, to adorn their lives so much in need of ornament; or,
in the day of your triumph, when romance is utterly driven out of
their souls, and they and a bare existence stand face to face,
Reality will take a wolfish turn, and make an end of you.

Stephen worked the next day, and the next, uncheered by a word from
any one, and shunned in all his comings and goings as before.  At
the end of the second day, he saw land; at the end of the third,
his loom stood empty.

He had overstayed his hour in the street outside the Bank, on each
of the two first evenings; and nothing had happened there, good or
bad.  That he might not be remiss in his part of the engagement, he
resolved to wait full two hours, on this third and last night.

There was the lady who had once kept Mr. Bounderby's house, sitting
at the first-floor window as he had seen her before; and there was
the light porter, sometimes talking with her there, and sometimes
looking over the blind below which had BANK upon it, and sometimes
coming to the door and standing on the steps for a breath of air.
When he first came out, Stephen thought he might be looking for
him, and passed near; but the light porter only cast his winking
eyes upon him slightly, and said nothing.

Two hours were a long stretch of lounging about, after a long day's
labour.  Stephen sat upon the step of a door, leaned against a wall
under an archway, strolled up and down, listened for the church
clock, stopped and watched children playing in the street.  Some
purpose or other is so natural to every one, that a mere loiterer
always looks and feels remarkable.  When the first hour was out,
Stephen even began to have an uncomfortable sensation upon him of
being for the time a disreputable character.

Then came the lamplighter, and two lengthening lines of light all
down the long perspective of the street, until they were blended
and lost in the distance.  Mrs. Sparsit closed the first-floor
window, drew down the blind, and went up-stairs.  Presently, a
light went up-stairs after her, passing first the fanlight of the
door, and afterwards the two staircase windows, on its way up.  By
and by, one corner of the second-floor blind was disturbed, as if
Mrs. Sparsit's eye were there; also the other corner, as if the
light porter's eye were on that side.  Still, no communication was
made to Stephen.  Much relieved when the two hours were at last
accomplished, he went away at a quick pace, as a recompense for so
much loitering.

He had only to take leave of his landlady, and lie down on his
temporary bed upon the floor; for his bundle was made up for to-
morrow, and all was arranged for his departure.  He meant to be
clear of the town very early; before the Hands were in the streets.

It was barely daybreak, when, with a parting look round his room,
mournfully wondering whether he should ever see it again, he went
out.  The town was as entirely deserted as if the inhabitants had
abandoned it, rather than hold communication with him.  Everything
looked wan at that hour.  Even the coming sun made but a pale waste
in the sky, like a sad sea.

By the place where Rachael lived, though it was not in his way; by
the red brick streets; by the great silent factories, not trembling
yet; by the railway, where the danger-lights were waning in the
strengthening day; by the railway's crazy neighbourhood, half
pulled down and half built up; by scattered red brick villas, where
the besmoked evergreens were sprinkled with a dirty powder, like
untidy snuff-takers; by coal-dust paths and many varieties of
ugliness; Stephen got to the top of the hill, and looked back.

Day was shining radiantly upon the town then, and the bells were
going for the morning work.  Domestic fires were not yet lighted,
and the high chimneys had the sky to themselves.  Puffing out their
poisonous volumes, they would not be long in hiding it; but, for
half an hour, some of the many windows were golden, which showed
the Coketown people a sun eternally in eclipse, through a medium of
smoked glass.

So strange to turn from the chimneys to the birds.  So strange, to
have the road-dust on his feet instead of the coal-grit.  So
strange to have lived to his time of life, and yet to be beginning
like a boy this summer morning!  With these musings in his mind,
and his bundle under his arm, Stephen took his attentive face along
the high road.  And the trees arched over him, whispering that he
left a true and loving heart behind.