Accompanied by the lightest of porters, fit colourless servitor at Death's door when Mrs. Gradgrind knocked, Louisa rumbled to Coketown, over the coal-pits past and present, and was whirled into its smoky jaws. She dismissed the messenger to his own devices, and rode away to her old home.
She had seldom been there since her marriage. Her father was usually sifting and sifting at his parliamentary cinder-heap in London (without being observed to turn up many precious articles among the rubbish), and was still hard at it in the national dust-yard. Her mother had taken it rather as a disturbance than otherwise to be visited, as she reclined upon her sofa; young people, Louisa felt herself all unfit for; Sissy she had never softened to again, since the night when the stroller's child had raised her eyes to look at Mr. Bounderby's intended wife. She had no inducements to go back, and had rarely gone.
Neither, as she approached her old home now, did any of the best influences of old home descend upon her. The dreams of childhood--its airy fables, its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of the world beyond: so good to be believed in once, so good to be remembered when outgrown, for then the least among them rises to the stature of a great Charity in the heart, suffering little children to come into the midst of it, and to keep with their pure hands a garden in the stony ways of this world, wherein it were better for all the children of Adam that they should oftener sun themselves, simple and trustful, and not worldly-wise--what had she to do with these? Remembrances of how she had journeyed to the little that she knew, by the enchanted roads of what she and millions of innocent creatures had hoped and imagined; of how, first coming upon Reason through the tender light of Fancy, she had seen it a beneficent god, deferring to gods as great as itself: not a grim Idol, cruel and cold, with its victims bound hand to foot, and its big dumb shape set up with a sightless stare, never to be moved by anything but so many calculated tons of leverage--what had she to do with these? Her remembrances of home and childhood were remembrances of the drying up of every spring and fountain in her young heart as it gushed out. The golden waters were not there. They were flowing for the fertilization of the land where grapes are gathered from thorns, and figs from thistles.
She went, with a heavy, hardened kind of sorrow upon her, into the house and into her mother's room. Since the time of her leaving home, Sissy had lived with the rest of the family on equal terms. Sissy was at her mother's side, and Jane, her sister, now ten or twelve years old, was in the room.
There was great trouble before it could be made known to Mrs. Gradgrind that her eldest child was there. She reclined, propped up from mere habit, on a couch, as nearly in her old usual attitude as anything so helpless could be kept in. She had positively refused to take to her bed, on the ground that if she did she would never hear the last of it.
Her feeble voice sounded so far away in her bundle of shawls, and the sound of another voice addressing her seemed to take such a long time in getting down to her ears, that she might have been lying at the bottom of a well. The poor lady was nearer Truth than she ever had been--which had much to do with it.
On being told that Mrs. Bounderby was there, she replied, at cross-purposes, that she had never called him by that name since he married Louisa; that pending her choice of an objectionable name, she had called him J; and that she could not at present depart from that regulation, not being yet provided with a permanent substitute. Louisa had sat by her for some minutes, and had spoken to her often, before she arrived at a clear understanding who it was. She then seemed to come to it all at once.
"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Gradgrind, "and I hope you are going on satisfactorily to yourself. It was all your father's doing. He set his heart upon it. And he ought to know."
"I want to hear of you, Mother, not of myself."
"You want to hear of me, my dear? That's something new, I am sure, when anybody wants to hear of me. Not at all well, Louisa. Very faint and giddy."
"Are you in pain, dear Mother?"
"I think there's a pain somewhere in the room," said Mrs. Gradgrind, "but I couldn't positively say that I have got it."
After this strange speech, she lay silent for some time. Louisa, holding her hand, could feel no pulse, but, kissing it, could see a slight thin thread of life in fluttering motion.
"You very seldom see your sister," said Mrs. Gradgrind. "She grows like you. I wish you would look at her. Sissy, bring her here."
She was brought, and stood with her hand in her sister's. Louisa had observed her with her arm round Sissy's neck, and she felt the difference of this approach.
"Do you see the likeness, Louisa?"
"Yes, Mother. I should think her like me. But----"
"Eh! Yes, I always say so," Mrs. Gradgrind cried, with unexpected quickness. "And that reminds me. I--I want to speak to you, my dear. Sissy, my good girl, leave us alone a minute."
Louisa had relinquished the hand; had thought that her sister's was a better and brighter face than hers had ever been; had seen in it, not without a rising feeling of resentment, even in that place and at that time, something of the gentleness of the other face in the room--the sweet face with the trusting eyes, made paler than watching and sympathy made it by the rich dark hair.
Left alone with her mother, Louisa saw her lying with an awful lull upon her face, like one who was floating away upon some great water, all resistance over, content to be carried down the stream. She put the shadow of a hand to her lips again, and recalled her.
"You were going to speak to me, Mother."
"Eh? Yes, to be sure, my dear. You know your father is almost always away now, and therefore I must write to him about it."
"About what, Mother? Don't be troubled. About what?"
"You must remember, my dear, that whenever I have said anything, on any subject, I have never heard the last of it, and consequently, that I have long left off saying anything."
"I can hear you, Mother." But, it was only by dint of bending down to her ear, and at the same time attentively watching the lips as they moved, that she could link such faint and broken sounds into any chain of connection.
"You learnt a great deal, Louisa, and so did your brother. Ologies of all kinds from morning to night. If there is any ology left, of any description, that has not been worn to rags in this house, all I can say is, I hope I shall never hear its name."
"I can hear you, Mother, when you have strength to go on." This, to keep her from floating away.
"But there is something--not an ology at all--that your father has missed, or forgotten, Louisa. I don't know what it is. I have often sat with Sissy near me, and thought about it. I shall never get its name now. But your father may. It makes me restless. I want to write to him, to find out, for God's sake, what it is. Give me a pen, give me a pen."
Even the power of restlessness was gone, except from the poor head, which could just turn from side to side.
She fancied, however, that her request had been complied with, and that the pen she could not have held was in her hand. It matters little what figures of wonderful no-meaning she began to trace upon her wrappers. The hand soon stopped in the midst of them; the light, that had always been feeble and dim behind the weak transparency, went out; and even Mrs. Gradgrind, emerged from the shadow in which man walketh and disquieteth himself in vain, took upon her the dread solemnity of the sages and patriarchs.
CHAPTER X
Mrs. Sparsit's Staircase
MRS. SPARSIT'S nerves being slow to recover their tone, the worthy woman made a stay of some weeks in duration at Mr. Bounderby's retreat, where, notwithstanding her anchorite turn of mind based upon her becoming consciousness of her altered station, she resigned herself with noble fortitude to lodging, as one may say, in clover, and feeding on the fat of the land. During the whole term of this recess from the guardian-ship of the Bank, Mrs. Sparsit was a pattern of consistency, continuing to take such pity on Mr. Bounderby to his face as if rarely taken on man, and to call his portrait a Noodle to its face with
the greatest acrimony and contempt.
Mr. Bounderby, having got it into his explosive composition that Mrs. Sparsit was a highly superior woman to perceive that he had that general cross upon him in his deserts (for he had not yet settled what it was), and further that Louisa would have objected to her as a frequent visitor if it had comported with his greatness that she should object to anything he chose to do, resolved not to lose sight of Mrs. Sparsit easily. So when her nerves were strung up to the pitch of again consuming sweetbreads in solitude, he said to her at the dinner-table, on the day before her departure, "I tell you what, ma'am; you shall come down here of a Saturday, while the fine weather lasts, and stay till Monday." To which Mrs. Sparsit returned, in effect, though not of the Mohammedan persuasion: "To hear is to obey."
Now, Mrs. Sparsit was not a poetical woman, but she took an idea in the nature of an allegorical fancy into her head. Much watching of Louisa, and much consequent observation of her impenetrable demeanour, which keenly whetted and sharpened Mrs. Sparsit's edge, must have given her as it were a lift, in the way of inspiration. She erected in her mind a mighty Staircase, with a dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom; and down those stairs, from day to day and hour to hour, she saw Louisa coming.
It became the business of Mrs. Sparsit's life to look up at her staircase, and to watch Louisa coming down. Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, sometimes several steps at one bout, sometimes stopping, never turning back. If she had once turned back, it might have been the death of Mrs. Sparsit in spleen and grief.
She had been descending steadily, to the day, and on the day, when Mr. Bounderby issued the weekly invitation recorded above. Mrs. Sparsit was in good spirits, and inclined to be conversational.
"And pray, sir," said she, "if I may venture to ask a question appertaining to any subject on which you show reserve--which is indeed hardy in me, for I well know you have a reason for everything you do--have you received intelligence respecting the robbery?"
"Why, ma'am, no; not yet. Under the circumstances, I didn't expect it yet. Rome wasn't built in a day, ma'am."
"Very true, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit, shaking her head.
"Nor yet in a week, ma'am."
"No, indeed, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, with a gentle melancholy upon her.
"In a similar manner, ma'am," said Bounderby, "I can wait, you know. If Romulus and Remus could wait, Josiah Bounderby can wait. They were better off in their youth than I was, however. They had a she-wolf for a nurse; I had only a she-wolf for a grandmother. She didn't give any milk, ma'am; she gave bruises. She was a regular Alderney at that."
"Ah!" Mrs. Sparsit sighed and shuddered.
"No, ma'am," continued Bounderby, "I have not heard anything more about it. It's in hand, though; and young Tom, who rather sticks to business at present--something new for him; he hadn't the schooling I had--is helping. My injunction is, Keep it quiet, and let it seem to blow over. Do what you like under the rose, but don't give a sign of what you're about, or half a hundred of 'em will combine together and get this fellow who has bolted out of reach for good. Keep it quiet, and the thieves will grow in confidence by little and little, and we shall have 'em."
"Very sagacious indeed, sir," said Mrs. Sparsit. "Very interesting. The old woman you mentioned, sir----"
"The old woman I mentioned, ma'am," said Bounderby, cutting the matter short, as it was nothing to boast about, "is not laid hold of, but she may take her oath she will be, if that is any satisfaction to her villainous old mind. In the meantime, ma'am, I am of opinion, if you ask me my opinion, that the less she is talked about, the better."
That same evening, Mrs. Sparsit, in her chamber window, resting from her packing operations, looked towards her great staircase and saw Louisa still descending.
She sat by Mr. Harthouse, in an alcove in the garden, talking very low; he stood leaning over her, as they whispered together, and his face almost touched her hair. "If not quite!" said Mrs. Sparsit, straining her hawk's eyes to the utmost. Mrs. Sparsit was too distant to hear a word of their discourse, or even to know that they were speaking softly, otherwise than from the expression of their figures; but what they said was this:
"You recollect the man, Mr. Harthouse?"
"Oh, perfectly!"
"His face, and his manner, and what he said?"
"Perfectly. And an infinitely dreary person he appeared to me to be. Lengthy and prosy in the extreme. It was knowing to hold forth, in the humble-virtue school of eloquence, but I assure you I thought at the time, 'My good fellow, you are overdoing this!' "
"It has been very difficult to me to think ill of that man."
"My dear Louisa--as Tom says" (which he never did say) "you know no good of the fellow?"
"No, certainly."
"Nor of any other such person?"
"How can I," she returned, with more of her first manner of her than he had lately seen, "when I know nothing of them, men or women?"
"My dear Louisa, then consent to receive the submissive representation of your devoted friend, who knows something of several varieties of his excellent fellow-creatures--for excellent they are, I am quite ready to believe, in spite of such little foibles as always helping themselves to what they can get hold of. This fellow talks. Well, every fellow talks. He professes morality. Well, all sorts of humbugs profess morality. From the House of Commons to the House of Correction there is a general profession of morality, except among our people; it really is that exception which makes our people quite reviving. You saw and heard the case. Here was one of the fluffy classes pulled up extremely short by my esteemed friend Mr. Bounderby--who, as we know, is not possessed of that delicacy which would soften so tight a hand. The member of the fluffy classes was injured, exasperated, left the house grumbling, met somebody who proposed to him to go in for some share in this Bank business, went in, put something in his pocket which had nothing in it before, and relieved his mind extremely. Really he would have been an uncommon, instead of a common, fellow, if he had not availed himself of such an opportunity. Or he may have originated it altogether, if he had the cleverness."
"I almost feel as though it must be bad in me," returned Louisa, after sitting thoughtful awhile, "to be so ready to agree with you, and to be so lightened in my heart by what you say."
"I only say what is reasonable, nothing worse. I have talked it over with my friend Tom more than once--of course I remain on terms of perfect confidence with Tom--and he is quite of my opinion, and I am quite of his. Will you walk?"
They strolled away, among the lanes beginning to be indistinct in the twilight--she leaning on his arm--and she little thought how she was going down, down, down, Mrs. Sparsit's staircase.
Night and day, Mrs. Sparsit kept it standing. When Louisa had arrived at the bottom and disappeared in the gulf, it might fall in upon her if it would; but, until then, there it was to be, a Building, before Mrs. Sparsit's eyes. And there Louisa always was, upon it. And always gliding down, down, down!
Mrs. Sparsit saw James Harthouse come and go; she heard of him here and there; she saw the changes of the face he had studied; she, too, remarked to a nicety how and when it clouded, how and when it cleared; she kept her black eyes wide open, with no touch of pity, with no touch of compunction, all absorbed in interest. In the interest of seeing her, ever drawing, with no hand to stay her, nearer and nearer to the bottom of this new Giant's Staircase.
With all her deference for Mr. Bounderby as contradistinguished from his portrait, Mrs. Sparsit had not the smallest intention of interrupting the descent. Eager to see it accomplished, and yet patient, she waited for the last fall, as for the ripeness and fulness of the harvest of her hopes. Hushed in expectancy, she kept her weary gaze upon the stairs, and seldom so much as darkly shook her right mitten (with her fist in it), at the figure coming down.
CHAPTER XI
Lower and Lower
THE figure descended the great stairs, steadily, steadily, always verging, like a weight in deep water,
to the black gulf at the bottom.
Mr. Gradgrind, apprised of his wife's decease, made an expedition from London and buried her in a businesslike manner. He then returned with promptitude to the national cinder-heap, and resumed his sifting for the odds and ends he wanted, and his throwing of the dust about into the eyes of other people who wanted other odds and ends--in fact resumed his parliamentary duties.
In the meantime, Mrs. Sparsit kept unwinking watch and ward. Separated from her staircase, all the week, by the length of iron road dividing Coketown from the country house, she yet maintained her catlike observation of Louisa, through her husband, through her brother, through James Harthouse, through the outsides of letters and packets, through everything animate and inanimate that at any time went near the stairs. "Your foot on the last step, my lady," said Mrs. Sparsit, apostrophizing the descending figure, with the aid of her threatening mitten, "and all your art shall never blind me."
Art or nature, though, the original stock of Louisa's character or the graft of circumstances upon it--her curious reserve did baffle, while it stimulated, one as sagacious as Mrs. Sparsit. There were times when Mr. James Harthouse was not sure of her. There were times when he could not read the face he had studied so long, and when this lonely girl was a greater mystery to him than any woman of the world with a ring of satellites to help her.
So the time went on, until it happened that Mr. Bounderby was called away from home by business which required his presence elsewhere for three or four days. It was on a Friday that he intimated this to Mrs. Sparsit at the Bank, adding: "But you'll go down tomorrow, ma'am, all the same. You'll go down just as if I was there. It will make no difference to you."
"Pray, sir," returned Mrs. Sparsit, reproachfully, "let me beg you not to say that. Your absence will make a vast difference to me, sir, as I think you very well know."
"Well, ma'am, then you must get on in my absence as well as you can," said Mr. Bounderby, not displeased.