M

r James Harthouse passed a whole night and a day in a state of so much hurry, that the World, with its best glass in its eye, would scarcely have recognised him

during that insane interval, as the brother Jem of the honourable and jocular member. He was positively agitated. He several times spoke with an emphasis, similar to the vulgar manner. He went in and went out in an unaccountable way, like a man without an object. He rode like a highwayman. In a word, he was so horribly bored by existing circumstances, that he forgot to go in for boredom in the manner prescribed by the authorities.

After putting his horse at Coketown through the storm, as if it were a leap, he waited up all night: from time to time ringing his bell with the greatest fury, charging the porter who kept watch with delinquency in withholding letters or messages that could not fail to have been entrusted to him, and demanding restitution on the spot. The dawn coming, the morning coming, and the day coming, and neither message nor letter coming with either, he went down to the country-house. There, the report was, Mr Bounderby away, and Mrs Bounderby in town. Left for town suddenly last evening. Not even known to be gone until receipt of message, importing that her return was not to be expected for the present.

In these circumstances he had nothing for it but to follow her to town. He went to the house in town. Mrs Bounderby not there. He

looked in at the Bank. Mr Bounderby away, and Mrs Sparsit away. Mrs Sparsit away? Who could have been reduced to sudden extremity for the company of that griffin!

“Well! I don’t know,” said Tom, who had his own reasons for being uneasy about it. “She was off somewhere at daybreak this morning. She’s always full of mystery; I hate her. So I do that white chap; he’s always got his blinking eyes upon a fellow.”

“Where were you last night, Tom?”

“Where was I last night!” said Tom. “Come! I like that. I was waiting for you, Mr Harthouse, till it came down as I never saw it come down before. Where was I too! Where were you, you mean.”

“I was prevented from coming—detained.”

“Detained!” murmured Tom. “Two of us were detained. I was detained looking for you, till I lost every train but the mail. It would have been a pleasant job to go down by that on such a night, and have to walk home through a pond. I was obliged to sleep in town after all.”

“Where?”

“Where? Why, in my own bed at Bounderby’s.” “Did you see your sister?”

“How the deuce,” returned Tom, staring, “could I see my sister when she was fifteen miles off?”

Cursing these quick retorts of the young gentleman to whom he was so true a friend, Mr Harthouse disembarrassed himself of that interview with the smallest conceivable amount of ceremony, and debated for the hundredth time what all this could mean? He made only one thing clear. It was, that whether she was in town or out of town, whether he had been premature with her who was so hard to comprehend, or she had lost courage, or they were

discovered, or some mischance or mistake, at present incomprehensible had occurred, he must remain to confront his fortune, whatever it was. The hotel where he was known to live when condemned to that region of blackness, was the stake to which he was tied. As to all the rest—What will be, will be.

“So, whether I am waiting for a hostile message, or an assignation, or a penitent remonstrance, or an impromptu wrestle with my friend Bounderby in the Lancashire manner—which would seem as likely as anything else in the present state of affairs—I’ll dine,” said Mr James Harthouse. “Bounderby has the advantage in point of weight; and if anything of a British nature is to come off between us, it may be as well to be in training.”

Therefore he rang the bell, and tossing himself negligently on a sofa, ordered “Some dinner at six—with a beefsteak in it,” and got through the intervening time as well as he could. That was not particularly well; for he remained in the greatest perplexity, and, as the hours went on, and no kind of explanation offered itself, his perplexity augmented at compound interest.

However, he took affairs as coolly as it was in human nature to do, and entertained himself with the facetious idea of the training more than once. “It wouldn’t be bad,” he yawned at one time, “to give the waiter five shillings, and throw him.” At another time it occurred to him, “Or a fellow of about thirteen or fourteen stone might be hired by the hour.” But these jests did not tell materially on the afternoon, or his suspense; and, sooth to say, they both lagged fearfully.

It was impossible, even before dinner, to avoid often walking about in the pattern of the carpet, looking out of the window, listening at the door for footsteps, and occasionally becoming

rather hot when any steps approached that room. But, after dinner, when the day turned to twilight, and the twilight turned to night, and still no communication was made to him, it began to be as he expressed it, “like the Holy Office and slow torture”. However, still true to his conviction that indifference was the genuine high-breeding (the only conviction he had), he seized this crisis as the opportunity for ordering candles and a newspaper.

He had been trying in vain, for half an hour, to read this newspaper, when the waiter appeared and said, at once mysteriously and apologetically:

“Beg your pardon, sir. You’re wanted, sir, if you please.”

A general recollection that this was the kind of thing the Police said to the swell mob, caused Mr Harthouse to ask the waiter in return, with bristling indignation, what the Devil he meant by “wanted”?

“Beg your pardon, sir. Young lady outside, sir, wishes to see you.”

“Outside? Where?” “Outside this door, sir.”

Giving the waiter to the personage before-mentioned, as a blockhead duly qualified for that consignment, Mr Harthouse hurried into the gallery. A young woman whom he had never seen stood there. Plainly dressed, very quiet, very pretty. As he conducted her into the room and placed a chair for her, he observed, by the light of the candles, that she was even prettier than he had at first believed. Her face was innocent and youthful, and its expression remarkably pleasant. She was not afraid of him, or in any way disconcerted; she seemed to have her mind entirely preoccupied with the occasion of her visit, and to have substituted

that consideration for herself.

“I speak to Mr Harthouse?” she said, when they were alone. “To Mr Harthouse.” He added in his mind, “And you speak to

him with the most confiding eyes I ever saw, and the most earnest voice (though so quiet) I ever heard.”

“If I do not understand—and I do not, sir”—said Sissy, “what your honour as a gentleman binds you to, in other matters”: the blood really rose in his face as she began in these words: “I am sure I may rely upon it to keep my visit secret, and to keep secret what I am going to say. I will rely upon it, if you will tell me I may so far trust—”

“You may, I assure you.”

“I am young, as you see; I am alone, as you see. In coming to you, sir, I have no advice or encouragement beyond my own hope.”

He thought, “But that is very strong,” as he followed the momentary upward glance of her eyes. He thought besides, “This is a very odd beginning. I don’t see where we are going.”

“I think,” said Sissy, “you have already guessed whom I left just now?”

“I have been in the greatest concern and uneasiness during the last four-and-twenty hours (which have appeared as many years),” he returned, “on a lady’s account. The hopes I have been encouraged to form that you come from that lady, do not deceive me, I trust.”

“I left her within an hour.” “At—?”

“At her father’s.”

Mr Harthouse’s face lengthened in spite of his coolness, and his

perplexity increased. “Then I certainly,” he thought, “do not see where we are going.”

“She hurried there last night. She arrived there in great agitation, and was insensible all through the night. I live at her father’s, and was with her. You may be sure, sir, you will never see her again as long as you live.”

Mr Harthouse drew a long breath; and, if ever man found himself in the position of not knowing what to say, made the discovery beyond all question that he was so circumstanced. The child-like ingenuousness with which his visitor spoke, her modest fearlessness, her truthfulness which put all artifice aside, her entire forgetfulness of herself in her earnest quiet holding to the object with which she had come; all this, together with her reliance on his easily-given promise—which in itself shamed him—presented something in which he was so inexperienced, and against which he knew any of his usual weapons would fall so powerless; that not a word could he rally to his relief.

At last he said:

“So startling an announcement, so confidently made, and by such lips, is really disconcerting in the last degree. May I be permitted to inquire, if you are charged to convey that information to me in those hopeless words, by the lady of whom we speak.”

“I have no charge from her.”

“The drowning man catches at the straw. With no disrespect for your judgement, and with no doubt of your sincerity, excuse my saying that I cling to the belief that there is yet hope that I am not condemned to perpetual exile from that lady’s presence.”

“There is not the least hope. The first object of my coming here, sir, is to assure you that you must believe that there is no more

hope of your ever speaking with her again, than there would be if she had died when she came home last night.”

“Must believe? But if I can’t—or if I should, by infirmity of nature, be obstinate—and won’t—”

“It is still true. There is no hope.”

James Harthouse looked at her with an incredulous smile upon his lips; but her mind looked over and beyond him, and the smile was quite thrown away.

He bit his lip, and took a little time for consideration.

“Well! If it should unhappily appear,” he said, “after due pains and duty on my part, that I am brought to a position so desolate as this banishment, I shall not become the lady’s persecutor. But you said you had no commission from her?”

“I have only the commission of my love for her, and her love for me. I have no other trust, than that I have been with her since she came home, and that she has given me her confidence. I have no further trust, than that I know something of her character and her marriage. O Mr Harthouse, I think you had that trust too!”

He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been—in that nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have lived if they had not been whistled away—by the fervour of this reproach.

“I am not a moral sort of fellow,” he said, “and I never make any pretensions to the character of a moral sort of fellow. I am as immoral as need be. At the same time, in bringing any distress upon the lady who is the subject of the present conversation, or in unfortunately compromising her in any way, or in committing myself by any expression of sentiments towards her, not perfectly reconcilable with—in fact with—the domestic hearth; or in taking

any advantage of her father’s being a machine, or of her brother’s being a whelp, or of her husband’s being a bear; I beg to be allowed to assure you that I have had no particularly evil intentions, but have glided on from one step to another with a smoothness so perfectly diabolical, that I had not the slightest idea the catalogue was half so long until I began to turn it over. Whereas I find,” said Mr James Harthouse, in conclusion, “that it is really in several volumes.”

Though he said all this in his frivolous way, the way seemed, for that once, a conscious polishing of but an ugly surface. He was silent for a moment; and then proceeded with a more self- possessed air, though with traces of vexation and disappointment that would not be polished out.

“After what has been just now represented to me, in a manner I find it impossible to doubt—I know of hardly any other source from which I could have accepted it so readily—I feel bound to say to you, in whom the confidence you have mentioned has been reposed, that I cannot refuse to contemplate the possibility (however unexpected) of my seeing the lady no more. I am solely to blame for the thing having come to this—and—and, I cannot say,” he added, rather hard up for a general peroration, “that I have any sanguine expectation of ever becoming a moral sort of fellow, or that I have any belief in any moral sort of fellow whatever.”

Sissy’s face sufficiently showed that her appeal to him was not finished.

“You spoke,” he resumed, as she raised her eyes to him again, “of your first object. I may assume that there is a second to be mentioned?”

“Yes.”

“Will you oblige me by confiding it?”

“Mr Harthouse,” returned Sissy, with a blending of gentleness and steadiness that quite defeated him, and with a simple confidence in his being bound to do what she required, that held him at a singular disadvantage, “the only reparation that remains with you, is to leave here immediately and finally. I am quite sure that you can mitigate in no other way the wrong and harm you have done. I am quite sure that it is the only compensation you have left it in your power to make. I do not say that it is much, or that it is enough; but it is something, and it is necessary. Therefore, though without any other authority than I have given you, and even without the knowledge of any other person than yourself and myself, I ask you to depart from this place tonight, under an obligation never to return to it.”

If she had asserted any influence over him beyond her plain faith in the truth and right of what she said; if she had concealed the least doubt or irresolution, or had harboured for the best purpose any reserve or pretence; if she had shown, or felt, the lightest trace of any sensitiveness to his ridicule or his astonishment, or any remonstrance he might offer; he would have carried it against her at this point. But he could as easily have changed a clear sky by looking at it in surprise, as affect her.

“But do you know,” he asked, quite at a loss, “the extent of what you ask? You probably are not aware that I am here on a public kind of business, preposterous enough in itself, but which I have gone in for, and sworn by, and am supposed to be devoted to in quite a desperate manner? You probably are not aware of that, but I assure you it’s the fact.

“It had no effect on Sissy, fact or no fact.

“Besides which,” said Mr Harthouse, taking a turn or two across the room, dubiously, “it’s so alarmingly absurd. It would make a man so ridiculous, after going in for these fellows, to back out in such an incomprehensible way.”

“I am quite sure,” repeated Sissy, “that it is the only reparation in your power, sir. I am quite sure, or I would not have come here.

He glanced at her face, and walked about again. “Upon my soul, I don’t know what to say. So immensely absurd!”

It fell to his lot, now, to stipulate for secrecy.

“If I were to do such a very ridiculous thing,” he said, stopping again presently, and leaning against the chimney-piece, “it could only be in the most inviolable confidence.”

“I will trust to you, sir,” returned Sissy, “and you will trust to me.”

His leaning against the chimney-piece reminded him of the night with the whelp. It was the self-same chimney-piece, and somehow he felt as if he were the whelp tonight. He could make no way at all.

“I suppose a man never was placed in a more ridiculous position,” he said, after looking down, and looking up, and laughing, and frowning, and walking off, and walking back again. “But I see no way out of it. What will be, will be. This will be, I suppose. I must take off myself, I imagine—in short, I engage to do it.”

Sissy rose. She was not surprised by the result, but she was happy in it, and her face beamed brightly.

“You will permit me to say,” continued Mr James Harthouse, “that I doubt if any other ambassador, or ambassadress, could

have addressed me with the same success. I must not only regard myself as being in a very ridiculous position, but as being vanquished at all points. Will you allow me the privilege of remembering my enemy’s name?”

“My name?” said the ambassadress.

“The only name I could possibly care to know, tonight.” “Sissy Jupe.”

“Pardon my curiosity at parting. Related to the family?”

“I am only a poor girl,” returned Sissy. “I was separated from my father—he was only a stroller—and taken pity on by Mr Gradgrind. I have lived in the house ever since.”

She was gone.

“It wanted this to complete the defeat,” said Mr James Harthouse, sinking, with a resigned air, on the sofa, after standing transfixed a little while. “The defeat may now be considered perfectly accomplished. Only a poor girl—only a stroller—only James Harthouse made nothing of—only James Harthouse a Great Pyramid of failure.”

The Great Pyramid put it into his head to go up the Nile. He took a pen upon the instant, and wrote the following note (in appropriate hieroglyphics) to his brother:

Dear Jack.—All up at Coketown. Bored out of the place, and going in for camels.

Affectionately, JEM.

He rang the bell. “Send my fellow here.” “Gone to bed, sir.”

“Tell him to get up, and pack up.”

He wrote two more notes. One, to Mr Bounderby, announcing his retirement from that part of the country, and showing where he would be found for the next fortnight. The other, similar in effect, to Mr Gradgrind. Almost as soon as the ink was dry upon their superscriptions, he had left the tall chimneys of Coketown behind, and was in a railway carriage, tearing and glaring over the dark landscape.

The moral sort of fellows might suppose that Mr James Harthouse derived some comfortable reflections afterwards, from this prompt retreat, as one of his few actions that made any amends for anything, and as a token to himself that he had escaped the climax of a very bad business. But it was not so, at all. A secret sense of having failed and been ridiculous—a dread of what other fellows who went in for similar sorts of things, would say at his expense if they knew it—so oppressed him, that what was about the very best passage in his life was the one of all others he would not have owned to on any account, and the only one that made him ashamed of himself.

Chapter 3

Very Decided

T

he indefatigable Mrs Sparsit, with a violent cold upon her, her voice reduced to a whisper, and her stately frame so racked by continual sneezes that it seemed in danger of

dismemberment, gave chase to her patron until she found him in the metropolis; and there, majestically sweeping in upon him at his hotel in St James’s Street, exploded the combustibles with which she was charged, and blew up. Having executed her mission with infinite relish, this high-minded woman then fainted away on Mr Bounderby’s coat-collar.

Mr Bounderby’s first procedure was to shake Mrs Sparsit off, and leave her to progress as she might through various stages of suffering on the floor. He next had recourse to the administration of potent restoratives, such as screwing the patient’s thumbs, smiting her hands, abundantly watering her face, and inserting salt in her mouth. When these attentions had recovered her (which they speedily did), he hustled her into a fast train without offering any other refreshment, and carried her back to Coketown more dead than alive.

Regarded as a classical ruin, Mrs Sparsit was an interesting spectacle on her arrival at her journey’s end; but considered in any other light, the amount of damage she had by that time sustained was excessive, and impaired her claims to admiration. Utterly heedless of the wear and tear of her clothes and constitution, and adamant to her pathetic sneezes, Mr Bounderby

immediately crammed her into a coach, and bore her off to Stone Lodge.

“Now, Tom Gradgrind,” said Bounderby, bursting into his father-in-law’s room late at night; “here’s a lady here—Mrs Sparsit—you know Mrs Sparsit—who has something to say to you that will strike you dumb.”

“You have missed my letter!” exclaimed Mr Gradgrind, surprised by the apparition.

“Missed your letter, sir!” bawled Bounderby. “The present time is no time for letters. No man shall talk to Josiah Bounderby of Coketown about letters, with his mind in the state it’s in now.”

“Bounderby,” said Mr Gradgrind, in a tone of temperate remonstrance, “I speak of a very special letter I have written to you, in reference to Louisa.”

“Tom Gradgrind,” replied Bounderby, knocking the flat of his hand several times with great vehemence on the table, “I speak of a very special messenger that has come to me, in reference to Louisa. Mrs Sparsit ma’am, stand forward!”

That unfortunate lady hereupon essaying to offer testimony, without any voice and with painful gestures expressive of an inflamed throat, became so aggravating and underwent so many facial contortions, that Mr Bounderby, unable to bear it, seized her by the arm and shook her.

“If you can’t get it out ma’am,” said Bounderby, “leave me to get it out. This is not a time for a lady, however highly connected, to be totally inaudible, and seemingly swallowing marbles. Tom Gradgrind, Mrs Sparsit latterly found herself, by accident, in a situation to overhear a conversation out of doors between your daughter and your precious gentleman-friend, Mr James

Harthouse.”

“Indeed?” said Mr Gradgrind.

“Ah! Indeed!” cried Bounderby. “And in that conversation—” “It is not necessary to repeat its tenor, Bounderby. I know what

passed.”

“You do? Perhaps,” said Bounderby, starting with all his might at his so quiet and assuasive father-in-law, “you know where your daughter is at the present time?”

“Undoubtedly. She is here.” “Here?”

“My dear Bounderby, let me beg you to restrain these loud outbreaks, on all accounts. Louisa is here. The moment she could detach herself from that interview with the person of whom you speak, and whom I deeply regret to have been the means of introducing to you, Louisa hurried here, for protection. I myself had not been at home many hours, when I received her—here, in this room. She hurried by the train to town, she ran from town to this house through a raging storm, and presented herself before me in a state of distraction. Of course, she has remained here ever since. Let me entreat you, for your own sake and for hers, to be more quiet.”

Mr Bounderby silently gazed about him for some moments, in every direction except Mrs Sparsit’s direction; and then, abruptly turning upon the niece of Lady Scadgers, said to that wretched woman:

“Now, ma’am! We shall be happy to hear any little apology you may think proper to offer, for going about the country at express pace, with no other luggage than a Cock-and-a-Bull, ma’am!”

“Sir,” whispered Mrs Sparsit, “my nerves are at present too

much shaken, and my health is at present too much impaired, in your service, to admit of my doing more than taking refuge in tears.”

(Which she did.) “Well, ma’am,” said Bounderby, “without making any observation to you that may not be made with propriety to a woman of good family, what I have got to add to that, is, that there’s something else in which it appears to me you may take refuge, namely a coach. And the coach in which we came here, being at the door, you’ll allow me to hand you down to it, and pack you home to the Bank: where the best course for you to pursue, will be to put your feet into the hottest water you can bear, and take a glass of scalding rum and butter after you get into bed.” With these words, Mr Bounderby extended his right hand to the weeping lady and escorted her to the conveyance in question, shedding many plaintive sneezes by the way. He soon returned alone.

“Now, as you showed me in your face, Tom Gradgrind, that you wanted to speak to me,” he resumed, “here I am. But, I am not in a very agreeable state, I tell you plainly; not relishing this business even as it is, and not considering that I am at any time as dutifully and submissively treated by your daughter, as Josiah Bounderby of Coketown ought to be treated by his wife. You have your opinion, I dare say; and I have mine, I know. If you mean to say anything to me tonight, that goes against this candid remark, you had better let it alone.”

Mr Gradgrind, it will be observed, being much softened, Mr Bounderby took particular pains to harden himself at all points. It was his amiable nature.

“My dear Bounderby,” Mr Gradgrind began in reply.

“Now, you’ll excuse me,” said Bounderby, “but I don’t want to be too dear. That, to start with. When I begin to be dear to a man, I generally find that his intention is to come over me. I am not speaking to you politely; but, as you are aware, I am not polite. If you like politeness, you know where to get it. You have your gentleman-friends you know, and they’ll serve you with as much of the article as you want. I don’t keep it myself.”

“Bounderby,” urged Mr Gradgrind, “we are all liable to mistakes—”

“I thought you couldn’t make ’em,” interrupted Bounderby. “Perhaps I thought so. But, I say we are all liable to mistakes;

and I should feel sensible of your delicacy, and grateful for it, if you would spare me these references to Harthouse. I shall not associate him in our conversation with your intimacy and encouragement; pray do not persist in connecting him with mine.”

“I never mentioned his name!” said Bounderby.

“Well, well!” returned Mr Gradgrind, with a patient, even a submissive, air. And he sat for a little while pondering. “Bounderby, I see reason to doubt whether we have ever quite understood Louisa.”

“Who do you mean by We?”

“Let me say I, then,” he returned, in answer to the coarsely blurted question; “I doubt whether I have understood Louisa. I doubt whether I have been quite right in the manner of her education.”

“There you hit it,” returned Bounderby. “There I agree with you. You have found it out at last, have you? Education! I’ll tell you what education is—To be tumbled out of doors, neck and crop, and put upon the shortest allowance of everything except

blows. That’s what I call education.”

“I think your good sense will perceive,” Mr Gradgrind remonstrated in all humility, “that whatever the merits of such a system may be, it would be difficult of general application to girls.

“I don’t see it at all, sir,” returned the obstinate Bounderby. “Well,” sighed Mr Gradgrind, “we will not enter into the question. I assure you I have no desire to be controversial. I seek to repair what is amiss, if I possibly can; and I hope you will assist me in a good spirit, Bounderby, for I have been very much distressed.”

“I don’t understand you, yet,” said Bounderby, with determined obstinacy, “and therefore I won’t make any promises.”

“In the course of a few hours, my dear Bounderby,” Mr Gradgrind proceeded, in the same depressed and propitiatory manner, “I appear to myself to have become better informed as to Louisa’s character, than in previous years. The enlightenment has been forced upon me, and the discovery is not mine. I think there are—Bounderby, you will be surprised to hear me say this—I think there are qualities in Louisa, which—which have been harshly neglected, and—and a little perverted. And—and I would suggest to you, that—that if you would kindly meet me in a timely endeavour to leave her to her better nature for a while—and to encourage it to develop itself by tenderness and consideration— it—it would be the better for the happiness of all of us. Louisa,” said Mr Gradgrind, shading his face with his hand, “has always been my favourite child.”

The blustrous Bounderby crimsoned and swelled to such an extent on hearing these words, that he seemed to be, and probably was, on the brink of a fit. With his very ears a bright purple shot with crimson, he pent up his indignation, however, and said:

“You’d like to keep her here for a time?”

“I—I had intended to recommend, my dear Bounderby, that you should allow Louisa to remain here on a visit, and be attended by Sissy (I mean of course Cecilia Jupe), who understands her, and in whom she trusts.”

“I gather from all this, Tom Gradgrind,” said Bounderby, standing up with his hands in his pockets, “that you are of opinion that there’s what people call some incompatibility between Loo Bounderby and myself.”

“I fear there is at present a general incompatibility between Louisa, and—and—almost all the relations in which I have placed her,” was her father’s sorrowful reply.

“Now, look you here, Tom Gradgrind,” said Bounderby the flushed, confronting him with his legs wide apart, his hands deeper in his pockets, and his hair like a hayfield wherein his windy anger was boisterous. “You have said your say; I am going to say mine. I am a Coketown man. I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. I know the bricks of this town, and I know the works of this town, and I know the chimneys of this town, and I know the smoke of this town, and I know the Hands of this town. I know ’em all pretty well. They’re real. When a man tells me anything about imaginative qualities, I always tell that man, whoever he is, that I know what he means. He means turtle-soup and venison, with a gold spoon, and that he wants to be set up with a coach and six. That’s what your daughter wants. Since you are of opinion that she ought to have what she wants, I recommend you to provide it for her. Because, Tom Gradgrind, she will never have it from me.” “Bounderby,” said Mr Gradgrind, “I hoped, after my entreaty,

you would have taken a different tone.”

“Just wait a bit,” retorted Bounderby, “you have said your say, I believe. I heard you out; hear me out, if you please. Don’t make yourself a spectacle of unfairness as well as inconsistency, because, although I am sorry to see Tom Gradgrind reduced to his present position, I should be doubly sorry to see him brought so low as that. Now, there’s an incompatibility of some sort or another, I am given to understand by you, between your daughter and me. I’ll give you to understand, in reply to that, that there unquestionably is an incompatibility of the first magnitude—to be summed up in this—that your daughter don’t properly know her husband’s merits, and is not impressed with such a sense as would become her, by George! of the honour of his alliance. That’s plain speaking, I hope.”

“Bounderby,” urged Mr Gradgrind, “this is unreasonable.”

“Is it?” said Bounderby. “I am glad to hear you say so. Because when Tom Gradgrind with his new lights, tells me that what I say is unreasonable, I am convinced at once it must be devilish sensible. With your permission I am going on. You know my origin; and you know that for a good many years of my life I didn’t want a shoeing-horn, in consequence of not having a shoe. Yet you may believe or not, as you think proper, that there are ladies— born ladies—belonging to families—Families!—who next to worship the ground I walk on.”

He discharged this, like a Rocket, at his father-in-law’s head. “Whereas your daughter,” proceeded Bounderby, “is far from

being a born lady. That you know, yourself. Not that I care a pinch of candle-snuff about such things, for you are very well aware I don’t; but that such is the fact, and you, Tom Gradgrind, can’t change it. Why do I say this?”

“Not, I fear,” observed Mr Gradgrind, in a low voice, “to spare me.”

“Hear me out,” said Bounderby, “and refrain from cutting in till your turn comes round. I say this, because highly connected females have been astonished to see the way in which your daughter has conducted herself, and to witness her insensibility. They have wondered how I have suffered it. And I wonder myself now, and I won’t suffer it.”

“Bounderby,” returned Mr Gradgrind, rising, “the less we say tonight the better, I think.”

“On the contrary, Tom Gradgrind, the more we say tonight, the better, I think. That is,” the consideration checked him, “till I have said all I mean to say, and then I don’t care how soon we stop. I come to a question that may shorten the business. What do you mean by the proposal you made just now?”

“What do I mean, Bounderby?”

“By your visiting proposition,” said Bounderby, with an inflexible jerk of the hayfield.

“I mean that I hope you may be induced to arrange, in a friendly manner, for allowing Louisa a period of repose and reflection here, which may tend to a gradual alteration for the better in many respects.”

“To a softening down of your ideas of the incompatibility?” said Bounderby.

“If you put it in those terms.”

“What made you think of this?” said Bounderby.

“I have already said, I fear Louisa has not been understood. Is it asking too much, Bounderby, that you, so far her elder, should aid in trying to set her right? You have accepted a great charge of her;

for better for worse, for—” Mr Bounderby may have been annoyed by the repetition of his own words to Stephen Blackpool, but he cut the quotation short with an angry start.

“Come!” said he, “I don’t want to be told about that. I know what I took her for, as well as you do. Never you mind what I took her for; that’s my look-out.”

“I was merely going on to remark, Bounderby, that we may all be more or less in the wrong, not even excepting you; and that some yielding on your part, remembering the trust you have accepted, may not only be an act of true kindness, but perhaps a debt incurred towards Louisa.”

“I think differently,” blustered Bounderby. “I am going to finish this business according to my own opinions. Now, I don’t want to make a quarrel of it with you, Tom Gradgrind. To tell you the truth, I don’t think it would be worthy of my reputation to quarrel on such a subject. As to your gentleman-friend, he may take himself off, wherever he likes best. If he falls in my way, I shall tell him my mind; if he don’t fall in my way, I shan’t, for it won’t be worth my while to do it. As to your daughter, whom I made Loo Bounderby, and might have done better by leaving Loo Gradgrind, if she don’t come home tomorrow by twelve o’clock at noon, I shall understand that she prefers to stay away, and I shall send her wearing apparel and so forth over here, and you’ll take charge of her for the future. What I shall say to people in general, of the incompatibility that led to my so laying down the law, will be this. I am Josiah Bounderby, and I had my bringing-up; she’s the daughter of Tom Gradgrind, and she had her bringing-up; and the two horses wouldn’t pull together. I am pretty well known to be rather an uncommon man, I believe; and most people will

understand fast enough that it must be a woman rather out of the common, also, who, in the long run, would come up to my mark.”

“Let me seriously entreat you to re-consider this, Bounderby,” urged Mr Gradgrind, “before you commit yourself to such a decision.”

“I always come to a decision,” said Bounderby, tossing his hat on: “and whatever I do, I do at once. I should be surprised at Tom Gradgrind’s addressing such a remark to Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, knowing what he knows of him, if I could be surprised by anything Tom Gradgrind did, after his making himself a party to sentimental humbug. I have given you my decision, and I have got no more to say. Good-night!

So Mr Bounderby went home to his town house to bed. At five minutes past twelve o’clock next day, he directed Mrs Bounderby’s property to be carefully packed up and sent to Tom Gradgrind’s; advertised his country retreat for sale by private contract; and resumed a bachelor life.

Chapter 4

Lost

T

he robbery at the Bank had not languished before, and did not cease to occupy a front place in the attention of the principal of that establishment now. In boastful proof of

his promptitude and activity, as a remarkable man, and a self- made man, and a commercial wonder more admirable than Venus, who had risen out of the mud instead of the sea, he liked to show how little his domestic affairs abated his business ardour. Consequently, in the first few weeks of his resumed bachelorhood, he even advanced upon his usual display of bustle, and every day made such a rout in renewing his investigations into the robbery, that the officers who had it in hand almost wished it had never been committed.

They were at fault too, and off the scent. Although they had been so quiet since the first outbreak of the matter, that most people really did suppose it to have been abandoned as hopeless, nothing new occurred. No implicated man or woman took untimely courage, or made a self-betraying step. More remarkable yet, Stephen Blackpool could not be heard of, and the mysterious old woman remained a mystery.

Things having come to this pass, and showing no latent signs of stirring beyond it, the upshot of Mr Bounderby’s investigations was, that he resolved to hazard a bold burst. He drew up a placard, offering Twenty Pounds reward for the apprehension of Stephen Blackpool, suspected of complicity in the robbery of the Coketown

Bank on such a night; he described the said Stephen Blackpool by dress, complexion, estimated height, and manner, as minutely as he could; he recited how he had left the town, and in what direction he had been last seen going; he had the whole printed in great black letters on a staring broadsheet; and he caused the walls to be posted with it in the dead of night, so that it should strike upon the sight of the whole population at one blow.

The factory-bells had need to ring their loudest that morning to disperse the groups of workers who stood in the tardy daybreak, collected round the placards, devouring them with eager eyes. Not the least eager of the eyes assembled, were the eyes of those who could not read. These people, as they listened to the friendly voice that read aloud—there was always some such ready to help them—stared at the characters which meant so much with a vague awe and respect that would have been half ludicrous, if any aspect of public ignorance could ever be otherwise than threatening and full of evil. Many ears and eyes were busy with a vision of the matter of these placards, among turning spindles, rattling looms, and whirring wheels, for hours afterwards; and when the Hands cleared out again into the streets, there were still as many readers as before.

Slackbridge, the delegate, had to address his audience too that night; and Slackbridge had obtained a clean bill from the printer, and had brought it in his pocket. O my friends and fellow countrymen, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown, oh, my fellow brothers and fellow workmen and fellow citizens and fellow men, what a to-do was there, when Slackbridge unfolded what he called “that damning document,” and held it up to the gaze, and for the execration, of the workingman community! “Oh my fellow

men, behold what a traitor in the camp of those great spirits who are enrolled upon the holy scroll of Justice and of Union, is appropriately capable! Oh my prostrate friends, with the galling yoke of tyrants on your necks and the iron foot of despotism treading down your fallen forms into the dust of the earth, upon which right glad would your oppressors be to see you creeping on your bellies all the days of your lives, like the serpent in the garden—oh my brothers, and shall I as a man not add, my sisters too, what do you say, now, of Stephen Blackpool, with a slight stoop in his shoulders, and about five foot seven in height, as set forth in this degrading and disgusting document, this blighting bill, this pernicious placard, this abominable advertisement; and with what majesty of denouncement will you crush the viper, who would bring this stain and shame upon the God-like race that happily has cast him out for ever! Yes, my compatriots, happily cast him out and send him forth! For you remember how he stood here before you on this platform; you remember how, face to face and foot to foot, I pursued him through all his intricate windings; you remember how he sneaked and slunk, and sidled, and splitted of straws, until, with not an inch of ground to which to cling, I hurled him out from amongst us: an object for the undying finger of scorn to point at, and for the avenging fire of every free and thinking mind to scorch and sear! And now my friends—my labouring friends, for I rejoice and triumph in that stigma—my friends whose hard but honest beds are made in toil, and whose scanty but independent pots are boiled in hardship; and, now I say, my friends, what appellation has that dastard craven taken to himself, when, with the mask torn from his features he stands before us in all his native deformity, a What? A thief! A plunderer!

A proscribed fugitive, with a price upon his head; a fester and a wound upon the noble character of the Coketown operative! Therefore, my band of brothers in a sacred bond, to which your children and your children’s children yet unborn have set their infant hands and seals, I propose to you on the part of the United Aggregate Tribunal, ever watchful for your welfare, ever zealous for your benefit, that this meeting does Resolve; That Stephen Blackpool, weaver, referred to in this placard, having been already solemnly disowned by the community of Coketown Hands, the same are free from the shame of his misdeeds, and cannot as a class be reproached with his dishonest actions!”

Thus Slackbridge; gnashing and perspiring after a prodigious sort. A few stern voices called out “No!” and a score or two hailed, with assenting cries of “Hear, hear!” the caution from one man, “Slackbridge, y’or over hetter int; y’or a goen too fast!” But these were pigmies against an army; the general assemblage subscribed to the gospel according to Slackbridge, and gave three cheers for him, as he sat demonstratively panting at them.

These men and women were yet in the streets, passing quietly to their homes, when Sissy, who had been called away from Louisa some minutes before, returned.

“Who is it?” asked Louisa.

“It is Mr Bounderby,” said Sissy, timid of the name, “and your brother Mr Tom, and a young woman who says her name is Rachael, and that you know her.”

“What do they want, Sissy dear?”

“They want to see you. Rachael has been crying, and seems angry.”

“Father,” said Louisa, for he was present, “I cannot refuse to

see them, for a reason that will explain itself. Shall they come in here?”

As he answered in the affirmative, Sissy went away to bring them. She reappeared with them directly. Tom was last; and remained standing in the obscurest part of the room, near the door.

“Mrs Bounderby,” said her husband, entering with a cool nod, “I don’t disturb you, I hope. This is an unseasonable hour, but here is a young woman who has been making statements which render my visit necessary. Tom Gradgrind, as your son, young Tom, refuses for some obstinate reason or other to say anything at all about those statements, good or bad, I am obliged to confront her with your daughter.”

“You have seen me once before, young lady,” said Rachael, standing in front of Louisa.

Tom coughed.

“You have seen me, young lady,” repeated Rachael, as she did not answer, “once before.”

Tom coughed again. “I have.”

Rachael cast her eyes proudly towards Mr Bounderby, and said, “Will you make it known, young lady, where, and who was there?” “I went to the house where Stephen Blackpool lodged, on the night of his discharge from his work, and I saw you there. He was there too: and an old woman who did not speak, and whom I could

scarcely see, stood in a dark corner. My brother was with me.” “Why couldn’t you say so, young Tom?” demanded Bounderby. “I promised my sister I wouldn’t.” Which Louisa hastily

confirmed. “And besides,” said the whelp bitterly, “she tells her

own story so precious well—and so full—that what business had I to take it out of her mouth!”

“Say, young lady, if you please,” pursued Rachael, “why in an evil hour, you ever came to Stephen’s that night.

“I felt compassion for him,” said Louisa, her colour deepening, “and I wished to know what he was going to do, and wished to offer him assistance.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Mr Bounderby. “Much flattered and obliged.”

“Did you offer him,” asked Rachael, “a banknote?”

“Yes; but he refused it, and would only take two pounds in gold.”

Rachael cast her eyes towards Mr Bounderby again.

“Oh certainly!” said Bounderby. “If you put the question whether your ridiculous and improbable account was true or not, I am bound to say it’s confirmed.”

“Young lady,” said Rachael, “Stephen Blackpool is now named as a thief in public print all over this town, and where else! There have been a meeting tonight where he have been spoken of in the same shameful way. Stephen! The honestest lad, the truest lad, the best!” Her indignation failed her, and she broke off, sobbing.

“I am very, very sorry,” said Louisa.

“O young lady, young lady,” returned Rachael, “I hope you may be, but I don’t know! I can’t say what you may ha’ done! The like of you don’t know us, don’t care for us, don’t belong to us. I am not sure why you may ha’ come that night. I can’t tell but what you may ha’ come wi’ some aim of your own, not mindin’ to what trouble you brought such as the poor lad. I said then, Bless you for coming, and I said it of my heart, you seemed to take so pitifully to

him; but I don’t know now, I don’t know!”

Louisa could not reproach her for her unjust suspicions; she was so faithful to her idea of the man, and so afflicted.

“And when I think,” said Rachael through her sobs, “that the poor lad was so grateful, thinkin you so good to him—when I mind that he put his hand over his hard-worken face to hide the tears that you brought up there—O, I hope you may be sorry, and ha’ no bad cause to be it; but I don’t know, I don’t know!”

“You’re a pretty article,” growled the whelp, moving uneasily in his dark corner, “to come here with these precious imputations! You ought to be bundled out for not knowing how to behave yourself, and you would be by rights.”

She said nothing in reply; and her low weeping was the only sound that was heard, until Mr Bounderby spoke.

“Come!” said he, “you know what you have engaged to do. You had better give your mind to that; not this.”

“’Deed, I am loath,” returned Rachael, drying her eyes, “that any here should see me like this; but I won’t be seen so again. Young lady, when I had read what’s put in print of Stephen—and what has just as much truth in it as if it had been put in print of you—I went straight to the Bank to say I knew where Stephen was, and to give a sure and certain promise that he should be here in two days. I couldn’t meet wi’ Mr Bounderby then, and your brother sent me away, and I tried to find you, but you was not to be found, and I went back to work. Soon as I come out of the Mill tonight, I hastened to hear what was said of Stephen—for I know wi’ pride he will come back to shame it!—and then I went again to seek Mr Bounderby, and I found him, and I told him every word I knew; and he believed no word I said, and brought me here.”

“So far, that’s true enough,” assented Mr Bounderby, with his hands in his pockets and his hat on. “But I have known you people before today, you’ll observe, and I know you never die for want of talking. Now, I recommend you not so much to mind talking just now, as doing. You have undertaken to do something; all I remark upon that at present is, do it!”

“I have written to Stephen by the post that went out this afternoon, as I have written to him once before sin’ he went away,” said Rachael; “and he will be here, at furthest, in two days.”

“Then, I’ll tell you something. You are not aware perhaps,” retorted Mr Bounderby, “that you yourself have been looked after now and then, not being considered quite free from suspicion in this business, on account of most people being judged according to the company they keep. The post-office hasn’t been forgotten either. What I’ll tell you is, that no letter to Stephen Blackpool has ever got into it. Therefore, what has become of yours, I leave you to guess. Perhaps you’re mistaken, and never wrote any.”

“He hadn’t been gone from here, young lady,” said Rachael, turning appealingly to Louisa, “as much as a week, when he sent me the only letter I have had from him, saying that he was forced to seek work in another name.”

“Oh, by George!” cried Bounderby, shaking his head, with a whistle, “he changes his name, does he! That’s rather unlucky, too, for such an immaculate chap. It’s considered a little suspicious in Courts of Justice, I believe, when an Innocent happens to have many names.”

“What,” said Rachael, with tears in her eyes again, “what young lady, in the name of Mercy, was left the poor lad to do! The masters against him on one hand, the men against him on the

other, he only wantin’ to work hard in peace, and do what he felt right. Can a man have no soul of his own, no mind of his own? Must he go wrong all through wi’ this side, or must he go wrong all through wi’ that, or else be hunted like a hare?”

“Indeed, indeed, I pity him from my heart,” returned Louisa; “and I hope that he will clear himself.”

“You need have no fear of that, young lady. He is sure!”

“All the surer, I suppose,” said Mr Bounderby, “for your refusing to tell where he is? Eh?”

“He shall not, through any act of mine, come back wi’ the unmerited reproach of being brought back. He shall come back of his own accord to clear himself, and put all those that have injured his good character, and he not here for its defence, to shame. I have told him what has been done against him,” said Rachael, throwing off all distrust as a rock throws off the sea, “and he will be here, at furthest, in two days.”

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

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

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

“Rachael, you will not distrust me one day, when you know me better.”

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

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

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

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

“I doubt,” said Rachael, “if he can be here till next day.” “Then I will come next night too,” said Sissy.

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

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

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

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

“Very honest.”

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

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

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

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

During this whole time the whelp, moved about with Mr Bounderby like his shadow, assisting in all the proceedings. He was greatly excited, horribly fevered, bit his nails down to the quick, spoke in a hard rattling voice, and with lips that were black and burnt up. At the hour when the suspected man was looked for,

the whelp was at the station; offering to wager that he had made off before the arrival of those who were sent in quest of him, and that he would not appear.

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

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

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

Chapter 5

Found