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 overate 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 anyone 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, forever."
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 tonight. 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. Pe
gler 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 anyone, 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 everyone 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 upstairs. Presently, a light went upstairs after her, passing first the fan-light 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 tomorrow, 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 around his room, mournfully wondering whether he should ever see it again, he went out. The town was as entirely deserted as if the inhabitants had abandoned it rather than hold communication with him. Everything looked wan at that hour. Even the coming sun made but a pale waste in the sky, like a sad sea.
By the place where Rachael lived, though it was not in his way; by the red brick streets; by the great silent factories, not trembling yet; by the railway, where the danger-lights were waning in the strengthening day; by the railway's crazy neighbourhood, half pulled down and half built up; by scattered red brick villas, where the besmoked evergreens were sprinkled with a dirty powder, like untidy snuff-takers; by coal-dust paths and many varieties of ugliness, Stephen got to the top of the hill and looked back.
Day was shining radiantly upon the town then, and the bells were going for the morning work. Domestic fires were not yet lighted, and the high chimneys had the sky to themselves. Puffing out their poisonous volumes, they would not be long in hiding it; but, for half an hour, some of the many windows were golden, which showed the Coketown people a sun eternally in eclipse through a medium of smoked glass.
So strange to turn from the chimneys to the birds. So strange to have the road-dust on his feet instead of the coal-grit. So strange to have lived to his time of life, and yet to be beginning like a boy this summer morning! With these musings in his mind, and his bundle under his arm, Stephen took his attentive face along the high road. And the trees arched over him, whispering that he left a true and loving heart behind.
CHAPTER VII
Gunpowder
MR. JAMES HARTHOUSE, "going in" for his adopted party, soon began to score. With the aid of a little more coaching for the political sages, a little more genteel listlessness for the general society, and a tolerable management of the assumed honesty in dishonesty, most effective and most patronized of the polite deadly sins, he speedily came to be considered of much promise. The not being troubled with earnestness was a grand point in his favour, enabling him to take to the Hard Fact fellows with as good a grace as if he had been born one of the tribe, and to throw all other tribes overboard as conscious hypocrites.
"Whom none of us believe, my dear Mrs. Bounderby, and who do not believe themselves. The only difference between us and the professors of virtue or benevolence, or philanthropy--never mind the name--is that we know it is all meaningless, and say so, while they know it equally and will never say so."
Why should she be shocked or warned by this reiteration? It was not so unlike her father's principles and her early training that it need startle her. Where was the great difference between the two schools, when each chained her down to material realities, and inspired her with no faith in anything else? What was there in her soul for James Harthouse to destroy which Thomas Gradgrind had nurtured there in its state of innocence!
It was even the worse for her at this pass, that in her mind--implanted there before her eminently practical father began to form it--a struggling disposition to believe in a wider and nobler humanity than she had ever heard of constantly strove with doubts and
resentments. With doubts, because the aspiration had been so laid waste in her youth. With resentments, because of the wrong that had been done her, if it were indeed a whisper of the truth. Upon a nature long accustomed to self-suppression, thus torn and divided, the Harthouse philosophy came as a relief and justification. Everything being hollow and worthless, she had missed nothing and sacrificed nothing. What did it matter? she had said to her father, when he proposed her husband. What did it matter? she said still. With a scornful self-reliance, she asked herself, What did anything matter?--and went on.
Towards what? Step by step, onward and downward, towards some end, yet so gradually that she believed herself to remain motionless. As to Mr. Harthouse, whither he tended, he neither considered nor cared. He had no particular design or plan before him: no energetic wickedness ruffled his lassitude. He was as much amused and interested, at present, as it became so fine a gentleman to be, perhaps even more than it would have been consistent with his reputation to confess. Soon after his arrival he languidly wrote to his brother, the honourable and jocular member, that the Bounderbys were "great fun," and further, that the female Bounderby, instead of being the Gorgon he had expected, was young, and remarkably pretty. After that, he wrote no more about them, and devoted his leisure chiefly to their house. He was very often in their house, in his flittings and visitings about the Coketown district; and was much encouraged by Mr. Bounderby. It was quite in Mr. Bounderby's gusty way to boast to all his world that he didn't care about your highly connected people, but that if his wife, Tom Gradgrind's daughter, did, she was welcome to their company.
Mr. James Harthouse began to think it would be a new sensation if the face which changed so beautifully for the whelp would change for him.