D

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

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

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

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

“If it hadn’t been mercifully brought about, that I was to have you to speak to,” pursued Rachael, “times are, when I think my mind would not have kept right. But I get hope and strength through you; and you believe that though appearances may rise

against him, he will be proved clear?”

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

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

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

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

“You don’t mistrust her now, Rachael?”

“Now that you have brought us more together, no. But I can’t at all times keep out of my mind—” Her voice so sunk into a low and slow communing with herself, that Sissy, sitting by her side, was obliged to listen with attention.

“I can’t at all times keep out of my mind, mistrustings of some one. I can’t think who ’tis, I can’t think how or why it may be done, but I mistrust that some one has put Stephen out of the way. I mistrust that by his coming back of his own accord, and showing

himself innocent before them all, some one would be confounded, who—to prevent that—has stopped him, and put him out of the way.”

“That is a dreadful thought,” said Sissy, turning pale. “It is a dreadful thought to think he may be murdered.” Sissy shuddered and turned paler yet.

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

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

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

“True,” was Sissy’s reluctant admission.

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

“Let us hope that tomorrow will bring something better, Rachael. Come into the air!”

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

“You are not so hurried now, Rachael, and your hand is cooler.” “I get better, dear, if I can only walk, and breathe a little fresh.

’Times when I can’t, I turn weak and confused.”

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

“Yes, dear.”

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

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

Hereupon, no other than the mysterious old woman descended.

Whom Mrs Sparsit incontinently collared.

“Leave her alone, everybody!” cried Mrs Sparsit, with great energy. “Let nobody touch her. She belongs to me. Come in, ma’am!” then said Mrs Sparsit, reversing her former word of

command. “Come in, ma’am, or we’ll have you dragged in!”

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

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

“It’s Mrs Pegler,” said Rachael.

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

Mr Bounderby now appeared, accompanied by Mr Gradgrind and the whelp, with whom he had been holding conference upstairs. Mr Bounderby looked more astonished than hospitable,

at the sight of this uninvited party in his dining-room.

“Why, what’s the matter now?” said he. “Mrs Sparsit, ma’am?” “Sir,” explained that worthy woman. “I trust it is my good

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

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

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

“Sir!” exclaimed Mrs Sparsit, faintly.

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

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

“My dear Josiah!” cried Mrs Pegler, trembling. “My darling

boy! I am not to blame. It’s not my fault, Josiah. I told this lady over and over again, that I knew she was doing what would not be agreeable to you, but she would do it.”

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

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

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

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

“Me unnatural!” cried poor old Mrs Pegler. “Me inhuman! To my dear boy?”

“Dear!” repeated Mr Gradgrind. “Yes; dear in his self-made

prosperity, madam, I dare say. Not very dear, however, when you deserted him in his infancy, and left him to the brutality of a drunken grandmother.”

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

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

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

“Josiah in the gutter!” exclaimed Mrs Pegler. “No such a thing, sir. Never! For shame on you! My dear boy knows, and will give you to know, that though he come of humble parents, he come of parents that loved him as dear as the best could, and never thought it hardship on themselves to pinch a bit that he might write and cipher beautiful, and I’ve his books at home to show it! Aye, have I!” said Mrs Pegler, with indignant pride. “And my dear boy knows, and will give you to know, sir, that after his beloved father died when he was eight year old, his mother, too, could pinch a bit, as it was her duty and her pleasure and her pride to do it, to help him out in life, and put him ’prentice. And a steady lad he was, and a kind master he had to lend him a hand, and well he worked his own way forward to be rich and thriving. And I’ll give you to know, sir—for this my dear boy won’t—that though his mother kept but a little village shop, he never forgot her, but pensioned me on thirty pound a-year—more than I want, for I put

by out of it—only making the condition that I was to keep down in my own part, and make no boasts about him, and not trouble him. And I never have, except with looking at him once a year, when he has never knowed it. And it’s right,” said poor old Mrs Pegler, in affectionate championship, “that I should keep down in my own part, and I have no doubts that if I was here I should do a many unbefitting things, and I am well contented, and I can keep my pride in my Josiah to myself, and I can love for love’s own sake! And I am ashamed of you, sir,” said Mrs Pegler, lastly, “for your slanders and suspicions. And I never stood here before, nor never wanted to stand here when my dear son said no. And I shouldn’t be here now, if it hadn’t been for being brought here. And for shame upon you, O for shame, to accuse me of being a bad mother to my son, with my son standing here to tell you so different!”

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

“I don’t exactly know,” said Mr Bounderby, “how I come to be favoured with the attendance of the present company, but I don’t inquire. When they’re quite satisfied, perhaps they’ll be so good as to disperse; whether they’re satisfied or not, perhaps they’ll be so good as to disperse. I’m not bound to deliver a lecture on my family affairs, I have not undertaken to do it, and I’m not a going to do it. Therefore those who expect any explanation whatever upon that branch of the subject, will be disappointed—particularly Tom Gradgrind, and he can’t know it too soon. In reference to the

Bank robbery, there has been a mistake made, concerning my mother. If there hadn’t been over-officiousness, it wouldn’t have been made, and I hate over-officiousness at all times, whether or no. Good evening!”

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

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

As to the whelp; throughout this scene as on all other late occasions, he had stuck close to Bounderby. He seemed to feel that as long as Bounderby could make no discovery without his knowledge, he was so far safe. He never visited his sister, and had

only seen her once since she went home: that is to say, on the night when he still stuck close to Bounderby, as already related.

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

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

Another night. Another day and night. No Stephen Blackpool.

Where was the man, and why did he not come back?

Chapter 6

The Starlight

T

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

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

Though the green landscape was blotted here and there with heaps of coal, it was green elsewhere, and there were trees to see, and there were larks singing (though it was Sunday), and there were pleasant scents in the air, and all was overarched by a bright blue sky. In the distance one way, Coketown showed as a black mist; in another distance, hills began to rise; in a third, there was a faint change in the light of the horizon, where it shone upon the far-off sea. Under their feet, the grass was fresh; beautiful shadows of branches flickered upon it, and speckled it; hedgerows were luxuriant; everything was at peace. Engines at pits’ mouths, and lean old horses that had worn the circle of their daily labour into

the ground, were alike quiet; wheels had ceased for a short space to turn; and the great wheel of earth seemed to revolve without the shocks and noises of another time.

They walked on across the fields and down the shady lanes, sometimes getting over a fragment of a fence so rotten that it dropped at a touch of the foot, sometimes passing near a wreck of bricks and beams overgrown with grass, marking the site of deserted works. They followed paths and tracks, however slight. Mounds where the grass was rank and high, and where brambles, dock-weed, and such-like vegetation, were confusedly heaped together, they always avoided; for dismal stories were told in that country of the old pits hidden beneath such indications.

The sun was high when they sat down to rest. They had seen no one, near or distant, for a long time; and the solitude remained unbroken. “It is so still here, Rachael, and the way is so untrodden, that I think we must be the first who have been here all the summer.”

As Sissy said it her eyes were attracted by another of those rotten fragments of fence upon the ground. She got up to look at it. “And yet I don’t know. This has not been broken very long. The wood is quite fresh where it gave way. Here are footsteps too.—O Rachael!”

She ran back and caught her round the neck. Rachael had already started up.

“What is the matter?”

“I don’t know. There is a hat lying in the grass.”

They went forward together. Rachael took it up, shaking from head to foot. She broke into a passion of tears and lamentations: Stephen Blackpool was written in his own hand on the inside.

“O the poor lad, the poor lad! He had been made away with. He is lying murdered here!”

“Is there—has the hat any blood upon it?” Sissy faltered.

They were afraid to look; but they did examine it, and found no mark of violence, inside or out. It had been lying there for some days, for rain and dew had stained it, and the mark of its shape was on the grass where it had fallen. They looked fearfully about them, without moving, but could see nothing more. “Rachael,” Sissy whispered, “I will go on a little by myself.”

She had unclasped her hand, and was in the act of stepping forward, when Rachael caught her in both arms with a scream that resounded over the wide landscape. Before them, at their very feet, was the brink of a black ragged chasm hidden by the thick grass. They sprang back, and fell upon their knees, each hiding her face upon the other’s neck.

“O, my good Lord! He’s down there! Down there!” At first this, and her terrific screams, were all that could be got from Rachael, by any tears, by any prayers, by any representations, by any means. It was impossible to hush her; and it was deadly necessary to hold her, or she would have flung herself down the shaft.

“Rachael, dear Rachael, good Rachael, for the love of Heaven not these dreadful cries! Think of Stephen, think of Stephen, think of Stephen!”

By an earnest repetition of this entreaty, poured out in all the agony of such a moment, Sissy at last brought her to be silent, and to look at her with a tearless face of stone.

“Rachael, Stephen may be living. You wouldn’t leave him lying maimed at the bottom of this dreadful place, a moment, if you could bring help to him!”

“No, no, no!”

“Don’t stir from here, for his sake! Let me go and listen.”

She shuddered to approach the pit; but she crept towards it on her hands and knees, and called to him as loud as she could call. She listened, but no sound replied. She called again and listened; still no answering sound. She did this, twenty, thirty times. She took a little clod of earth from the broken ground where he had stumbled and threw it in. She could not hear it fall.

The wide prospect, so beautiful in its stillness but a few minutes ago, almost carried despair to her brave heart, as she rose and looked all round her, seeing no help. “Rachael, we must lose not a moment. We must go in different directions, seeking aid. You shall go by the way we have come, and I will go forward by the path. Tell any one you see, and every one what has happened. Think of Stephen, think of Stephen!”

She knew by Rachael’s face that she might trust her now. And after standing for a moment to see her running, wringing her hands as she ran, she turned and went upon her own search; she stopped at the hedge to tie her shawl there as a guide to the place, then threw her bonnet aside, and ran as she had never run before.

Run, Sissy, run, in Heaven’s name! Don’t stop for breath. Run, run! Quickening herself by carrying such entreaties in her thoughts, she ran from field to field, and lane to lane, and place to place, as she had never run before; until she came to a shed by an engine-house, where two men lay in the shade, asleep on straw.

First to wake them, and next to tell them, all so wild and breathless as she was, what had brought her there, were difficulties; but they no sooner understood her than their spirits were on fire like hers. One of the men was in a drunken slumber,

but on his comrade’s shouting to him that a man had fallen down the Old Hell Shaft, he started out to a pool of dirty water, put his head in it, and came back sober.

With these two men she ran to another half-a-mile further, and with that one to another, while they ran elsewhere. Then a horse was found; and she got another man to ride for life or death to the railroad, and send a message to Louisa, which she wrote and gave him. By this time a whole village was up; and windlasses, poles, candles, lanterns, all things necessary, were fast collecting and being brought into one place, to be carried to the Old Hell Shaft.

It seemed now hours and hours since she had left the lost man lying in the grave where he had been buried alive. She could not bear to remain away from it any longer—it was like deserting him—and she hurried swiftly back, accompanied by half-a-dozen labourers, including the drunken man whom the news had sobered, and who was the best man of all. When they came to the Old Hell Shaft, they found it as lonely as she had left it. The men called and listened as she had done, and examined the edge of the chasm, and settled how it had happened, and then sat down to wait until the implements they wanted should come up.

Every sound of insects in the air, every stirring of the leaves, every whisper among these men, made Sissy tremble, for she thought it was a cry at the bottom of the pit. But the wind blew idly over it, and no sound arose to the surface, and they sat upon the grass, waiting and waiting. After they had waited some time, straggling people who had heard of the accident began to come up; then the real help of implements began to arrive. In the midst of this, Rachael returned; and with her party there was a surgeon, who brought some wine and medicines. But, the expectation

among the people that the man would be found alive, was very slight indeed.

There being now people enough present to impede the work, the sobered man put himself at the head of the rest, or was put there by the general consent, and made a large ring round the Old Hell Shaft, and appointed men to keep it. Besides such volunteers as were accepted to work, only Sissy and Rachael were at first permitted within this ring; but, later in the day, when the message brought an express from Coketown, Mr Gradgrind and Louisa, and Mr Bounderby and the whelp, were also there.

The sun was four hours lower than when Sissy and Rachael had first sat down upon the grass, before a means of enabling two men to descend securely was rigged with poles and ropes. Difficulties had arisen in the construction of this machine, simple as it was; requisites had been found wanting, and messages had had to go and return. It was five o’clock in the afternoon of the bright autumnal Sunday, before a candle was sent down to try the air, while three or four rough faces stood crowded close together, attentively watching it: the men at the windlass lowering as they were told. The candle was brought up again, feebly burning, and then some water was cast in. Then the bucket was hooked on; and the sobered man and another got in with lights, giving the word “Lower away!”

As the rope went out, tight and strained, and the windlass creaked, there was not a breath among the one or two hundred men and women looking on, that came as it was wont to come. The signal was given and the windlass stopped, with abundant rope to spare. Apparently so long an interval ensued with the men at the windlass standing idle, that some women shrieked that another

accident had happened! But the surgeon who held the watch, declared five minutes not to have elapsed yet, and sternly admonished them to keep silence. He had not well done speaking, when the windlass was reversed and worked again. Practised eyes knew that it did not go as heavily as it would if both workmen had been coming up, and that only one was returning.

The rope came in tight and strained; and ring after ring was coiled upon the barrel of the windlass, and all eyes were fastened on the pit. The sobered man was brought up and leaped out briskly on the grass. There was an universal cry of “Alive or dead?” and then a deep, profound hush.

When he said “Alive!” a great shout arose and many eyes had tears in them.

“But he’s hurt very bad,” be added, as soon as he could make himself heard again. “Where’s doctor? He’s hurt so very bad, sir, that we donno how to get him up.”

They all consulted together, and looked anxiously at the surgeon, as he asked some questions, and shook his head on receiving the replies. The sun was setting now and the red light in the evening sky touched every face there, and caused it to be distinctly seen in all its wrapped suspense.

The consultation ended in the men returning to the windlass, and the pitman going down again, carrying the wine and some other small matters with him. Then the other man came up. In the meantime under the surgeon’s directions, some men brought a hurdle on which others made a thick bed of spare clothes covered with loose straw, while he himself contrived some bandages and slings from shawls and handkerchiefs. As these were made, they were hung upon an arm of the pitman who had last come up, with

instructions how to use them: and as he stood, shown by the light he carried, leaning his powerful loose hand upon one of the poles, and sometimes glancing down the pit, and sometimes glancing round upon the people, he was not the least conspicuous figure in the scene. It was dark now, and torches were kindled.

It appeared from the little this man said to those about him, which was quickly repeated all over the circle, that the lost man had fallen upon a mass of crumbled rubbish with which the pit was half choked up, and that his fall had been further broken by some jagged earth at the side. He lay upon his back with one arm doubled under him, and according to his own belief had hardly stirred since he fell, except that he had moved his free hand to a side pocket, in which he remembered to have some bread and meat (of which he had swallowed crumbs), and had likewise scooped up a little water in it now and then. He had come straight away from his work, on being written to, and had walked the whole journey; and was on his way to Mr Bounderby’s country- house after dark, when he fell. He was crossing that dangerous country at such a dangerous time, because he was innocent of what was laid to his charge, and couldn’t rest from coming the nearest way to deliver himself up. The Old Hell Shaft, the pitman said, with a curse upon it, was worthy of its bad name to the last; for though Stephen could speak now, he believed it would soon be found to have mangled the life out of him.

When all was ready, this man, still taking his last hurried charges from his comrades and the surgeon after the windlass had begun to lower him, disappeared into the pit. The rope went out as before, the signal was made as before, and the windlass stopped. No man removed his hand from it now. Every one waited with his

grasp set, and his body bent down to the work, ready to reverse and wind in. At length the signal was given, and all the ring leaned forward.

For, now, the rope came in, tightened and strained to its utmost as it appeared, and the men turned heavily, and the windlass complained. It was scarcely endurable to look at the rope, and think of its giving way. But, ring after ring was coiled upon the barrel of the windlass safely, and the connecting chains appeared, and finally the bucket with the two men holding on at the sides—a sight to make the head swim, and oppress the head—and tenderly supporting between them, slung and tied within, the figure of a poor, crushed, human creature.

A low murmur of pity went round the throng, and the women wept aloud, as this form, almost without form, was moved very slowly from its iron deliverance, and laid upon the bed of straw. At first, none but the surgeon went close to it. He did what he could in its adjustment on the couch, but the best he could do was to cover it. That gently done, he called to him Rachael and Sissy. And at that time the pale, worn, patient face was seen looking up at the sky, with the broken right hand lying bare on the outside of the covering garments, as if waiting to be taken by another hand.

They gave him drink, moistened his face with water, and administered some drops of cordial and wine. Though he lay quite motionless looking up at the sky, he smiled and said, “Rachael.”

She stooped down on the grass at his side, and bent over him until her eyes were between his and the sky, for he could not so much as turn them to look at her.

“Rachael, my dear.”

She took hand. He smiled again and said, “Don’t let ’t go.”

“Thou’rt in great pain, my own dear Stephen?”

“I ha’ been, but not now. I ha’ been—dreadful, and dree, and long, my dear—but ’tis ower now. Ah, Rachael, aw a muddle! Fro’ first to last, a muddle!”

The spectre of his old look seemed to pass as he said the word. “I ha’ fell into th’ pit, my dear, as have cost wi’in the knowledge

o’ old fok now livin, hundreds and hundreds o’ men’s lives— fathers, sons, brothers, dear to thousands an thousands, an keepin’ ’em fro’ want and hunger. I ha’ fell into a pit that ha’ been wi’ th’ Fire-damp crueller than battle. I ha’ read on ’t in the public petition, as onny one may read, fro’ the men that works in pits, on which they ha’ pray’n an pray’n the lawmakers for Christ’s sake not to let their work be murder to ’em, but to spare ’em for th’ wives and children that they loves as well as gentlefok loves theirs. When it were in work, it killed wi’out need; when ’tis let alone, it kills wi’out need. See how we die an no need, one way an another—in a muddle—every day!”

He faintly said it, without any anger against any one. Merely as the truth.

“Thy little sister, Rachael, thou hast not forgot her. Thou’rt not like to forget her now, and me so nigh her. Thou know’st—poor, patient, suff’rin, dear—how thou didst work for her, seet’n all day long in her little chair at thy winder, and how she died, young and misshapen, awlung o’ sickly air as had’n no need to be, an awlung o’ working people’s miserable homes. A muddle! Aw a muddle!”

Louisa approached him; but he could not see her, lying with his face turned up to the night sky.

“If aw th’ things that tooches us, my dear, was not so muddled, I should’n ha’ had’n need to coom heer. If we was not in a muddle

among ourseln, I should’n ha’ been, by my own fellow weavers and workin’ brothers, so mistook. If Mr Bounderby had ever know’d me right—if he’d ever know’d me at aw—he would’n ha’ took’n offence wi’ me. He wouldn’t ha’ suspect’n me. But look up yonder, Rachael! Look aboove!” following his eyes, she saw that he was gazing at a star.

“It ha’ shined upon me,” he said reverently, “in my pain and trouble down below. It ha’ shined into my mind. I ha’ look’n at ’t an thowt o’ thee, Rachael, till the muddle in my mind have cleared awa, above a bit, I hope. If soom ha’ been wantin’ in unnerstan’in me better, I, too, ha’ been wantin’ in unnerstan’in them better. When I got thy letter, I easily believen that what the yoong ledy sen and done to me, an what her brother sen and done to me, was one, and that there were a wicket plot betwixt ’em. When I fell, I were in anger wi’ her, and hurryin on t’ be as unjust t’ her as oothers was t’ me. But in our judgments, like as in our doins, we mun bear and forbear. In my pain and trouble, lookin’ up yonder,—wi’ it shinin’ on me—I ha seen more clear, and ha’ made it my dyin’ prayer that aw th’ world may on’y coom toogether more and get a better unnerstan’in’ o’ one another, than when I were in’t my own weak seln.”

Louisa hearing what he said, bent over him on the opposite side to Rachael, so that he could see her.

“You ha’ heard?” he said after a few moments’ silence. “I ha’ not forgot you, ledy.”

“Yes, Stephen, I have heard you. And your prayer is mine.” “You ha’ a father. Will yo tak’ a message to him?”

“He is here,” said Louisa, with dread. “Shall I bring him to you?”

“If you please.”

Louisa returned with her father. Standing hand-in-hand, they both looked down upon the solemn countenance.

“Sir, yo will clear me and mak my name good wi’ aw men. This I leave to yo.”

Mr Gradgrind was troubled and asked how?

“Sir,” was the reply: “yor son will tell yo how. Ask him. I make no charges: I leave none ahint me: not a single word. I ha’ seen and spok’n wi’ yor son, one night. I ask no more o’ yo than that yo clear me—an I trust to yo to do’t.”

The bearers being now ready to carry him away, and the surgeon being anxious for his removal, those who had torches or lanterns prepared to go in front of the litter. Before it was raised, and while they were arranging how to go, he said to Rachael, looking upward at the star:

“Often as I coom to myseln, and found it shinin’ on me down there in my trouble, I thowt it were the star as guided to Our Saviour’s home. I awmust think it be the very star!”

They lifted him up and he was overjoyed to find that they were about to take him in the direction whither the star seemed to him to lead.

“Rachael, beloved lass! Don’t let go my hand. We may walk toogether t’night, my dear!”

“I will hold thy hand, and keep beside thee, Stephen, all the way.”

“Bless thee! Will soombody be pleased to coover my face!”

They carried him very gently along the fields, and down the lanes, and over the wide landscape; Rachael always holding the hand in hers. Very few whispers broke the mournful silence. It

was soon a funeral procession. The star had shown him where to find the God of the poor; and through humility, and sorrow, and forgiveness, he had gone to his Redeemer’s rest.

Chapter 7

Whelp-Hunting

efore the ring formed round the Old Hell Shaft was broken, one figure had disappeared from within it. Mr Bounderby and his shadow had not stood near Louisa,

who held her father’s arm, but in a retired place by themselves. When Mr Gradgrind was summoned to the couch, Sissy, attentive to all that happened, slipped behind that wicked shadow—a sight in the horror of his face, if there had been eyes there for any sight but one—and whispered in his ear. Without turning his head, he conferred with her a few moments, and vanished. Thus the whelp had gone out of the circle before the people moved.

When the father reached home, he sent a message to Mr Bounderby’s, desiring his son to come to him directly. The reply was, that Mr Bounderby having missed him in the crowd, and seeing nothing of him since, had supposed him to be at Stone Lodge.

“I believe, father,” said Louisa, “he will not come back to town tonight.” Mr Gradgrind turned away and said no more.

In the morning he went down to the Bank himself as soon as it was opened, and seeing his son’s place empty (he had not the courage to look in at first), went back along the street to meet Mr Bounderby on his way there. To whom he said that, for reasons he would soon explain, but entreated not then to be asked for, he had found it necessary to employ his son at a distance for a little while. Also, that he was charged with the duty of vindicating Stephen

Blackpool’s memory, and declaring the thief. Mr Bounderby quite confounded, stood stock-still in the street after his father-in-law had left him, swelling like an immense soap-bubble, without its beauty.

Mr Gradgrind went home, locked himself in his room, and kept it all that day. When Sissy and Louisa tapped at his door, he said, without opening it, “Not now, my dears; in the evening.” On their return in the evening, he said, “I am not able yet—tomorrow.” He ate nothing all day, and had no candle after dark: and they heard him walking to and fro late at night.

But in the morning he appeared at breakfast at the usual hour, and took his usual place at the table. Aged and bent he looked, and quite bowed down; and yet he looked a wiser man, and a better man, than in the days when in this life he wanted nothing but Facts. Before he left the room, he appointed a time for them to come to him; and so with his grey head drooping went away.

“Dear father,” said Louisa, when they kept their appointment, “you have three young children left. They will be different, I will be different yet, with Heaven’s help.”

She gave her hand to Sissy, as if she meant with her help too. “Your wretched brother,” said Mr Gradgrind. “Do you think he

had planned this robbery, when he went with you to the lodgings?”

“I fear so, father. I know he had wanted money very much, and had spent a great deal.”

“The poor man being about to leave the town, it came into his evil brain to cast suspicion on him?”

“I think it must have flashed upon him while he sat there, father. For I asked him to go there with me. The visit did not

originate with him.”

“He had some conversation with the poor man. Did he take him aside?”

“He took him out of the room. I asked him afterwards, why he done so, and he made a plausible excuse; but since last night, father, and when I remember the circumstances by its light, I am afraid I can imagine too truly what passed between them.”

“Let me know,” said her father, “if your thoughts present your guilty brother in the same dark view as mine.”

“I fear, father,” hesitated Louisa, “that he must have made some representation to Stephen Blackpool—perhaps in my name, perhaps in his own—which induced him to do in good faith and honesty, what he had never done before, and to wait about the Bank those two or three nights before he left the town.”

“Too plain!” returned the father. “Too plain!”

He shaded his face, and remained silent for some moments.

Recovering himself, he said:

“And now, how is he to be found? How is he to be saved from justice? In the few hours that I can possibly allow to elapse before I publish the truth, how is he to be found by us, and only by us? Ten thousand pounds could not effect it.”

“Sissy has effected it, father.”

He raised his eyes to where she stood, like a good fairy in his house, and said in a tone of softened gratitude and grateful kindness, “It is always you, my child!”

“We had our fears.” Sissy explained, glancing at Louisa, “before yesterday; and when I saw you brought to the side of the litter last night, and heard what passed (being close to Rachael all the time), I went to him when no one saw, and said to him, ‘Don’t look at me.

See where your father is. Escape at once, for his sake and your own!’ He was in a tremble before I whispered to him, and he started and trembled more then, and said, ‘Where can I go? I have very little money, and I don’t know who will hide me!” I thought of father’s old circus. I have not forgotten where Mr Sleary goes at this time of year, and I read of him in a paper only the other day. I told him to hurry there, and tell his name, and ask Mr Sleary to hide him till I came. ‘I’ll get to him before the morning,’ he said. And I saw him shrink away among the people.”

“Thank Heaven!” exclaimed his father. “He may be got abroad yet.”

It was the more hopeful as the town to which Sissy had directed him was within three hours’ journey of Liverpool, whence he could be swiftly dispatched to any part of the world. But, caution being necessary in communicating with him—for there was a greater danger every moment of his being suspected now, and nobody could be sure at heart, but that Mr Bounderby himself, in a bullying vein of public zeal, might play a Roman part—it was consented that Sissy and Louisa should repair to the place in question, by a circuitous course alone; and that the unhappy father, setting forth in an opposite direction, should get round to the same bourne by another and wider route. It was further agreed that he should not present himself to Mr Sleary, lest his intentions should be mistrusted, or the intelligence of his arrival should cause his son to take flight anew; but, that the communication should be left to Sissy and Louisa to open; and that they should inform the cause of so much misery and disgrace, of his father’s being at hand and of the purpose for which they had come. When these arrangements had been well considered and

were fully understood by all three, it was time to begin to carry them into execution. Early in the afternoon, Mr Gradgrind walked direct from his own house into the country, to be taken up on the line by which he was to travel; and at night the remaining two set forth upon their different course, encouraged by not seeing any face they knew.

The two travelled all night, except when they were left, for odd numbers of minutes, at branch-places up illimitable flights of steps, or down wells—which was the only variety of those branches—and, early in the morning, were turned out on a swamp, a mile or two from the town they sought. From this dismal spot they were rescued by a savage old postilion, who happened to be up early, kicking a horse in a fly; and so were smuggled into the town by all the back lanes where the pigs lived: which, although not a magnificent or even savoury approach, was, as is usual in such cases, the legitimate highway.

The first thing they saw on entering the town was the skeleton of Sleary’s Circus. The company had departed for another town more than twenty miles off, and had opened there last night. The connection between the two places was by a hilly turnpike-road, and the travelling on that road was very slow. Though they took but a hasty breakfast, and no rest (which it would have been in vain to seek under such circumstances), it was noon before they began to find the bills of Sleary’s Horse-riding on barns and walls, and one o’clock when they stopped in the market-place.

A Grand Morning Performance by the Riders, commencing at that very hour, was in course of announcement by the bellman as they set their feet upon the stones of the street. Sissy recommended that, to avoid making inquiries and attracting

attention in the town, they should present themselves to pay at the door. If Mr Sleary were taking the money, he would be sure to know her, and would proceed with discretion. If he were not, he would be sure to see them inside; and, knowing what he had done with the fugitive, would proceed with discretion still.

Therefore, they repaired, with fluttering hearts, to the well remembered booth. The flag with the inscription SLEARY’S HORSE-RIDING, was there; and the Gothic niche was there; but Mr Sleary was not there. Master Kidderminster, grown too maturely turfy to be received by the wildest credulity as Cupid any more, had yielded to the invincible force of circumstances (and his beard), and, in the capacity of a man who made himself generally useful, presided on this occasion over the exchequer—having also a drum in reserve, on which to expend his leisure moments and superfluous forces. In the extreme sharpness of his look out for base coin, Mr Kidderminster, as at present situated, never saw anything but money; so Sissy passed him unrecognised, and they went in.

The Emperor of Japan, on a steady old white horse stencilled with black spots, was twirling five wash-hand basins at once, as it is the favourite recreation of that monarch to do. Sissy, though well acquainted with his Royal line, had no personal knowledge of the present Emperor, and his reign was peaceful. Miss Josephine Sleary, in her celebrated graceful Equestrian Tyrolean Flower-Act was then announced by a new clown (who humorously said Cauliflower Act), and Mr Sleary appeared, leading her in.

Mr Sleary had only made one cut at the Clown with his long whip-lash, and the Clown had only said, “If you do it again, I’ll throw the horse at you!” when Sissy was recognised both by father

and daughter. But they got through the Act with great self- possession; and Mr Sleary, saving for the first instant, conveyed no more expression into his locomotive eye than into his fixed one. The performance seemed a little long to Sissy and Louisa, particularly when it stopped to afford the Clown an opportunity of telling Mr Sleary (who said “Indeed, sir!” to all his observations in the calmest way, and with his eye on the house), about two legs sitting on three legs looking at one leg, when in came four legs, and laid hold of one leg, and up got two legs, caught hold of three legs, and threw ’em at four legs, who ran away with one leg. For, although an ingenious Allegory relating to a butcher, a three- legged stool, a dog, and a leg of mutton, this narrative consumed time; and they were in great suspense. At last, however, little fair- haired Josephine made her curtsey amid great applause; and the Clown, left alone in the ring, had just warmed himself, and said, “Now I’ll have a turn!” when Sissy was touched on the shoulder, and beckoned out.

She took Louisa with her; and they were received by Mr Sleary in a very little private apartment, with canvas sides, a grass floor, and a wooden ceiling all aslant, on which the box company stamped their approbation, as if they were coming through. “Thethilia,” said Mr Sleary, who had brandy and water at hand, “it doth me good to thee you. You wath alwayth a favourite with uth, and you’ve have done uth credit thinth the old timeth I’m thure. You mutht thee our people, my dear, afore we thpeak of bithnith, or they’ll break their hearts—ethpethially the women. Here’th Jothphine hath been and got married to E. W. B. Childerth, and thee hath got a boy, and though he’th only three yearth old, he thtickth on to any pony you can bring againth him.

He’th named The Little Wonder Of Thcolathic Equitation; and if you don’t hear of that boy at Athley’th, you’ll hear of him at Parith. And you recollect Kidderminthter, that wath thought to be rather thweet upon yourthelf. Well. He’th married too. Married a widder. Old enough to be hith mother. Thee wath Tightrope, thee wath, and now thee’th nothing—on accounth of fat. They’ve got two children, tho we’re thtrong in the Fairy bithnith and the Nurthery dodge. If you wath to thee our Children in the Wood, with their father and mother both a dyin’ on a horthe—their uncle a rethieving of ’em ath hith wardth, upon a horthe—themthelvth both a goin’ a blackberryin’ on a horthe—and the Robinth a coming in to cover ’em with leavth, upon a horthe—you’d thay it wath the completetht thing ath ever you that your eyeth on! And you remember Emma Gordon, my dear, ath wath a’motht a mother to you? Of courthe you do; I needn’t athk. Well! Emma, thee lotht her huthband. He wath throw’d a heavy back-fall off a Elephant in a thort of a Pagoda thing ath the Thultan of the Indieth, and he never got the better of it; and thee married a thecond time—married a Cheethe-monger ath fell in love with her from the front—and he’th a Overtheer and makin’ a fortun.”

These various changes, Mr Sleary, very short of breath now, related with heartiness, and with a wonderful kind of innocence, considering what a bleary and brandy-and-watery old veteran he was. Afterwards he brought in Josephine, and E. W. B. Childers (rather deeply-lined in the jaws by daylight), and The Little Wonder of Scholastic Equitation, and in a word, all the company. Amazing creatures they were in Louisa’s eyes, so white and pink of complexion, so scant of dress, and so demonstrative of leg; but it was very agreeable to see them crowding about Sissy, and very

natural in Sissy to be unable to refrain from tears.

“There! Now Thethilia hath kithd all the children, and hugged all the women, and thaken handth all round with all the men, clear, every one of you, and ring in the band for the thecond part!” As soon as they were gone, he continued in a low tone. “Now,

Thethilia, I don’t athk to know any thecret, but I thuppothe I may conthider thith to be Mith Thquire.”

“This is his sister. Yes.”

“And t’other on’th daughter. That’h what I mean. Hope I thee you well, mith. And I hope the Thquire’th well?”

“My father will be here soon,” said Louisa, anxious to bring him to the point. “Is my brother safe?”

“Thafe and thound!” he replied. “I want you jutht to take a peep at the Ring, mith, through there. Thethilia, you know the dodgeth; find a thpy-hole for yourthelf.”

They each looked through a chinck in the boards.

“That’h Jack the Giant Killer—piethe of comic infant bithnith,” said Sleary. “There’th a property-houthe, you thee, for Jack to hide in; there’th my Clown with a thauthpanlid and a thpit, for Jack’th thervant; there’th little Jack himthelf in a thplendid thoot of armour; there’th two comic black thervants twithe ath big ath the houthe, to thtand by it and to bring it in and clear it; and the Giant (a very ecthpenthive bathket one), he an’t on yet. Now, do you know thee ’em all?”

“Yes,” they both said.

“Look at ’em again,” said Sleary, “look at ’em well. You thee ’em all? Very good. Now, mith;” he put a form for them to sit on; “I have my opinionth, and the Thquire your father hath hith. I don’t want to know what your brother’th been up to; ith better for me

not to know. All I thay ith, the Thquire hath thtood by Thethilia, and I’ll thtand by the Thquire. Your brother ith one o’ them black thervanth.”

Louisa uttered an exclamation, partly of distress, partly of satisfaction.

“Ith a fact,” said Sleary, “and even knowin’ it, you couldn’t put your finger on him. Let the Thquire come. I thall keep your brother here after the performanth. I thant undreth him, nor yet wath hith paint off. Let the Thquire come here after the performanth, or come here yourthelf after the performanth, and you thall find your brother, and have the whole plathe to talk to him in. Never mind the lookth of him, ath long ath he’th well hid.”

Louisa, with many thanks and with a lightened load, detained Mr Sleary no longer then. She left her love for her brother, with her eyes full of tears; and she and Sissy went away until later in the afternoon.

Mr Gradgrind arrived within an hour afterwards. He too had encountered no one whom he knew; and was now sanguine with Sleary’s assistance, of getting his disgraced son to Liverpool in the night. As neither of the three could be his companion without almost identifying him under any disguise, he prepared a letter to a correspondent whom he could trust, beseeching him to ship the bearer off at any cost, to North or South America, or any distant part of the world to which he could be the most speedily and privately dispatched.

This done, they walked about, waiting for the Circus to be quite vacated; not only by the audience, but by the company and by the horses. After watching it a long time, they saw Mr Sleary bring out a chair and sit down by the side-door smoking; as if that were the

signal that they might approach.

“Your thervant, Thquire,” was his cautious salutation as they passed in. “If you want me you’ll find me here. You mustn’t mind your thon having a comic livery on.”

They all three went in; and Mr Gradgrind sat down forlorn, on the Clown’s performing chair in the middle of the ring. On one of the back benches, remote in the subdued light and the strangeness of the place, sat the villainous whelp, sulky to the last, whom he had the misery to call his son.

In a preposterous coat, like a beadle’s, with cuffs and flaps exaggerated to an unspeakable extent; in an immense waistcoat, knee-breeches, buckled shoes, and a mad cocked hat; with nothing fitting him, and everything of coarse material, moth-eaten, and full of holes; with seams in his black face, where fear and heat had started through the greasy composition daubed all over it; anything so grimly, detestably, ridiculously shameful as the whelp in his comic livery, Mr Gradgrind never could by any other means have believed in, weighable and measurable fact though it was. And one of his model children had come to this!

At first the whelp would not draw any nearer, but persisted in remaining up there by himself. Yielding at length, if any concession so sullenly made can be called yielding, to the entreaties of Sissy—for Louisa he disowned altogether—he came down, bench by bench, until he stood in the sawdust, on the verge of the circle, as far as possible, within its limits, from where his father sat.

“How was this done?” asked the father.

“How was what done?” moodily answered the son.

“This robbery,” said the father, raising his voice upon the word.

“I forced the safe myself over night, and shut it up ajar before I went away. I had had the key that was found, made long before. I dropped it that morning, that it might be supposed to have been used. I didn’t take the money all at once. I pretended to put my balance away every night, but I didn’t. Now you know all about it.” “If a thunderbolt had fallen on me,” said the father, “it would

have shocked me less than this!”

“I don’t see why,” grumbled the son. “So many people are employed in situations of trust; so many people, out of so many, will be dishonest. I have heard you talk, a hundred times, of its being a law. How can I help laws? You have comforted others with such things, father. Comfort yourself!”

The father buried his face in his hands, and the son stood in his disgraceful grotesqueness; biting straw: his hands, with the black party worn away inside, looking like the hands of a monkey. The evening was fast closing in; and from time to time, he turned the whites of his eyes restlessly and impatiently towards his father. They were the only parts of his face that showed any life or expression, the pigment upon it was so thick.

“You must be got to Liverpool, and sent abroad.”

“I suppose I must. I can’t be more miserable anywhere,” whimpered the whelp, “than I have been here, ever since I can remember. That’s one thing.”

Mr Gradgrind went to the door, and returned with Sleary, to whom he submitted the question, How to get this deplorable object away?

“Why, I’ve been thinking of it, Thquire. There’th not muth time to loathe, tho you muth thay yeth or no. Ith over twenty mileth to the rail. Thereth a coath in half an hour, that goeth to the rail,

‘purpothe to cath the mail train. That train will take him right to Liverpool.”

“But look at him,” groaned Mr Gradgrind. “Will any coach—” “I don’t mean that he thould go in the comic livery,” said

Sleary. “Thay the word, and I’ll make a Jothkin of him, out of the wardrobe, in five minutes.”

“I don’t understand,” said Mr Gradgrind.

“A Jothkin—a Carter. Make up your mind quick, Thquire, There’ll be beer to feth. I’ve never met with nothing but beer ath’ll ever clean a comic blackamoor.”

Mr Gradgrind rapidly assented; Mr Sleary rapidly turned out from a box, a smock frock, a felt hat, and other essentials; the whelp rapidly changed clothes behind a screen of baize; Mr Sleary rapidly brought beer, and washed him white again.

“Now,” said Sleary, “come along to the coath, and jump up behind; I’ll go with you there, and they’ll thuppothe you one of my people. Thay farewell to your family, and tharp’th the word.” With which he delicately retired.

“Here is your letter,” said Mr Gradgrind. “All necessary means will be provided for you. Atone, by repentance and better conduct, for the shocking action you have committed, and the dreadful consequences to which it has led. Give me your hand, my poor boy, and may God forgive you as I do!”

The culprit was moved to a few abject tears by these words and their pathetic tone. But, when Louisa opened her arms, he repulsed her afresh.

“Not you. I don’t want to have anything to say to you!” “O Tom, Tom, do we end so, after all my love!”

“After all your love!” he returned, obdurately. “Pretty love!

Leaving old Bounderby to himself, and packing my best friend Mr Harthouse off, and going home just when I was in the greatest danger. Pretty love that! Coming out with every word about our having gone to that place, when you saw the net was gathering round me. Pretty love that! You have regularly given me up. You never cared for me.”

“Tharp’th the word!” said Sleary at the door.

They all confusedly went out: Louisa crying to him that she forgave him, and loved him still, and that he would one day be sorry to have left her so, and glad to think of these her last words, far away: when some one ran against them. Mr Gradgrind and Sissy, who were both before him while his sister yet clung to his shoulder, stopped and recoiled.

For, there was Bitzer, out of breath, his thin lips parted, his thin nostrils distended, his white eyelashes quivering, his colourless face more colourless than ever, as if he ran himself into a white heat, when other people ran themselves into a glow. There he stood, panting and heaving, as if he had never stopped since the night, now long ago, when he had run them down before.

“I’m sorry to interfere with your plans,” said Bitzer, shaking his head, “but I can’t allow myself to be done by horse-riders. I must have young Mr Tom; he mustn’t be got away by horse-riders; here he is in a smock frock, and I must have him!”

By the collar, too, it seemed. For, so he took possession of him.

Chapter 8

Philosophical

T

hey went back into the booth, Sleary shutting the door to keep intruders out. Bitzer, still holding the paralysed culprit by the collar, stood in the Ring, blinking at his old

patron through the darkness of the twilight.

“Bitzer,” said Mr Gradgrind, broken down, and miserably submissive to him, “have you a heart?”

“The circulation sir,” returned Bitzer, smiling at the oddity of the question, “couldn’t be carried on without one. No man, sir, acquainted with the facts established by Harvey relating to the circulation of the blood, can doubt that I have a heart.”

“Is it accessible,” cried Mr Gradgrind, “to any compassionate influence?”

“It is accessible to Reason, sir,” returned the excellent young man. “And to nothing else.”

They stood looking at each other; Mr Gradgrind’s face as white as the pursuer’s.

“What motive—even what motive in reason—can you have for preventing the escape of this wretched youth,” said Mr Gradgrind, “and crushing his miserable father? See his sister here. Pity us!”

“Sir,” returned Bitzer, in a very business-like and logical manner, “since you ask me what motive I have in reason, for taking young Mr Tom back to Coketown, it is only reasonable to let you know. I have suspected young Mr Tom of this bank robbery from the first. I had had my eye upon him before that

time, for I knew his ways. I have kept my observations to myself, but I have made them; and I have got ample proofs against him now, besides his running away, and besides his own confessions, which I was just in time to overhear. I had the pleasure of watching your house yesterday morning, and following you here. I am going to take young Mr Tom back to Coketown, in order to deliver him over to Mr Bounderby. Sir, I have no doubt whatever that Mr Bounderby will then promote me to young Mr Tom’s situation. And I wish to have his situation, sir, for it will be a rise to me, and will do me good.”

“If this is solely a question of self-interest with you—” Mr Gradgrind began.

“I beg your pardon for interrupting you, sir,” returned Bitzer; “but I am sure you know that the whole social system is a question of self-interest. What you must always appeal to, is a person’s self- interest. It’s your only hold. We are so constituted. I was brought up in that catechism when I was very young, sir, as you are aware.”

“What sum of money,” said Mr Gradgrind, “will you set against your expected promotion?”

“Thank you, sir,” returned Bitzer, “for hinting at the proposal; but I will not set any sum against it. Knowing that your clear head would propose that alternative, I have gone over the calculations in my mind, and I find that to compound a felony, even on very high terms indeed, would not be as safe and good for me as my improved prospects in the Bank.”

“Bitzer,” said Mr Gradgrind, stretching out his hands as though he would have said, See how miserable I am!

“Bitzer, I have but one chance left to soften you. You were

many years at my school. If, in remembrance of the pains bestowed upon you there, you can persuade yourself in any degree to disregard your present interest and release my son, I entreat and pray you to give him the benefit of that remembrance.”

“I really wonder, sir,” rejoined the old pupil in an argumentative manner, “to find you taking a position so untenable. My schooling was paid for; it was a bargain; and when I came away, the bargain ended.”

It was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy, that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter. And if we didn’t get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there.

“I don’t deny,” added Bitzer, “that my schooling was cheap. But that comes right, sir. I was made in the cheapest market, and have to dispose of myself in the dearest.”

He was a little troubled here, by Louisa and Sissy crying.

“Pray don’t do that,” said he, “it’s of no use doing that: it only worries. You seem to think that I have some animosity against young Mr Tom; whereas I have none at all. I am only going, on the reasonable grounds I have mentioned, to take him back to Coketown. If he was to resist, I should set up the cry of Stop Thief! But, he won’t resist, you may depend upon it.”

Mr Sleary, who, with his mouth open and his rolling eye as immovably jammed in his head as his fixed one, had listened to these doctrines with profound attention, here stepped forward.

“Thquire, you know perfectly well, and your daughter knowth perfectly well (better than you, becauthe I thed it to her), that I didn’t know what your thon had done, and that I didn’t want to know—I thed it wath better not, though I only thought then, it wath thome thkylarking. However, thith young man having made it known to be a robbery of a bank, why, that’h a theriouth thing; muth too theriouth a thing for me to compound, ath thith young man hath very properly called it. Conthequently, Thquire, you muthn’t quarrel with me if I take thith young man’th thide, and thay he’th right and there’th no help for it. But I tell you what I’ll do, Thquire; I’ll drive your thon and thith young man over to the rail, and prevent expothure here. I can’t conthent to do more, but I’ll do that.”

Fresh lamentations from Louisa, and deeper affliction on Mr Gradgrind’s part, followed this desertion of them by their last friend. But, Sissy glanced to him with great attention; nor did she in her own breast misunderstand him. As they were all going out again, he favoured her with one slight roll of his movable eye, desiring her to linger behind. As he locked the door, he said excitedly:

“The Thquire thtood by you, Thethilia, and I’ll thtand by the Thquire. More than that: thith ith a prethiouth rathcal and belongth to that bluthtering Cove that my people nearly pitht out o’ winder. It’ll be a dark night; I’ve got a horthe that’ll do anything but thpeak; I’ve got a pony that’ll go fifteen mile an hour with Childerth driving of him; I’ve got a dog that’ll keep a man to one plathe four-and-twenty hourth. Get a word with the young Thquire. Tell him, when he theeth our horthe begin to danthe, not to be afraid of being thpilt, but to look out for a pony-gig coming

up. Tell him, when he theeth that gig clothe by, to jump down, and it’ll take him off at a rattling pathe. If my dog leth thith young man thtir a peg on foot, I give him leave to go. And if my horthe ever thtirth from that thpot where he beginth a danthing, till the morning—I don’t know him?—Tharp’th the word!”

The word was so sharp, that in ten minutes Mr Childers, sauntering about the market-place in a pair of slippers, had his cue, and Mr Sleary’s equipage was ready. It was a fine sight to behold the learned dog barking round it, and Mr Sleary instructing him, with his one practical eye, that Bitzer was the object of his particular attentions. Soon after dark they all three got in and started; the learned dog (a formidable creature) already pinning Bitzer with his eye, and sticking close to the wheel on his side, that he might be ready for him in the event of his showing the slightest disposition to alight.

The other three sat up at the inn all night in great suspense. At eight o’clock in the morning Mr Sleary and the dog reappeared: both in high spirits.

“All right, Thquire!” said Mr Sleary, “your thon may be aboard- a-thip by thith time. Childerth took him off, an hour and a half after we left here lathe night. The horth danthed the polka till he was dead beat (he would have walthed, if he hadn’t been in harneth), and then I gave him the word and he went to thleep comfortable. Then that prethiouth young Rathcal thed he’d go for’ard afoot, the dog hung on to hith neck-handkercher with all four legth in the air and pulled him down and rolled him over. Tho he come back into the drag, and there he that, ’till I turned the horthe’th head, at half-path thixth thith morning.”

Mr Gradgrind overwhelmed him with thanks, of course; and

hinted as delicately as he could, at a handsome remuneration in money.

“I don’t wan’t money mythelf, Thquire; but Childerth ith a family man, and if you wath to like to offer him a five-pound note, it mightn’t be unactheptable. Likewithe if you wath to thand a collar for the dog, or a thet of belth for the horthe, I thould be very glad to take ’em. Brandy and water I alwayth take.” He had already called for a glass, and now called for another. “If you wouldn’t think it going too far, Thquire, to make a little thpread for the company at about three and thixth ahead; not reckoning Luth, it would make ’em happy.”

All these little tokens of his gratitude, Mr Gradgrind very willingly undertook to render. Though he thought them far too slight, he said, for such a service.

“Very well, Thquire; then, if you’ll only give a Horthe-riding, a bethpeak, whenever you can, you’ll more than balanthe the account. Now, Thquire, if your daughter will excuthe me, I thoud like one parting word with you.”

Louisa and Sissy withdrew into an adjoining room; Mr Sleary, stirring and drinking his brandy and water as he stood, went on:

“Thquire, you don’t need to be told that dogth is wonderful animalth.”

“Their instinct,” said Mr Gradgrind, “is surprising.”

“Whatever you call it—and I’m bletht if I know what to call it,”—said Sleary, “it ith athonithing. The way in with a dog’ll find you—the dithtanthe he’ll come!”

“His scent,” said Mr Gradgrind, “being so fine.”

“I’m bleth if I know what to call it,” repeated Sleary, shaking his head, “but I have had dogth find me, Thquire, in a way that

made me think whether that dog hadn’t gone to another dog, and thed, ‘You don’t happen to know a perthon of the name of Thleary, do you? Perthon of the name of Thleary, in the Horthe-Riding way—thout man—game eye?’ And whether that dog mightn’t have thed, ‘Well, I can’t thay I know him mythelf, but I know a dog that I think would be likely to be acquainted with him.’ And whether that dog mightn’t have thought it over, and thed, ‘Thleary, Thleary! O yeth, to be thure! A friend of mine menthioned him to me at one time. I can get you hith addreth directly.’ In conthequenth of my being afore the public, and going about tho muth, you thee, there muth be a number of dogth acquainted with me, Thquire, that I don’t know!”

Mr Gradgrind seemed to be quite confounded by this speculation.

“Any way,” said Sleary, after putting his lips to his brandy and water, “ith fourteen month ago, Thquire, thinthe we wath at Chethter. We wath getting up our Children in the Wood one morning, when there cometh into our Ring, by the thtage door, a dog. He had travelled a long way, he wath in very bad condithon, he wath lame, and pretty well blind. He went round to our children, one after another, as if he wath a theeking for a child he know’d; and then he come to me, and throwed hithelf up behind, and thood on hith two fore-legth, weak ath he wath, and then he wagged hith tail and died. Thquire, that dog wath Merrylegth.”

“Sissy’s father’s dog!”

“Thethilia’th father’th old dog. Now, Thquire, I can take my oath, from my knowledge of that dog, that that man wath dead— and buried—afore that dog come back to me. Joth’phine and Childerth and me talked it over a long time, whether I thoud write

or not. But we agreed, ‘No. There’th nothing comfortable to tell: why unthettle her mind, and make her unhappy?’ Tho, whether her father bathely detherted her; or whether he broke his own heart alone, rather than pull her down along with him; never will be known, now, Thquire, till—no, not till we know how the dog findth uth out!”

“She keeps the bottle that he sent her for, to this hour; and she will believe in his affection to the last moment of her life,” said Mr Gradgrind.

“It theemth to prethent two thingth to a perthon, don’t it, Thquire?” said Mr Sleary, musing as he looked down into the depths of his brandy and water: “one, that there ith a love in the world, not all Thelf-intereth after all, but thomething very different; t’other, that it hath a way of ith own of calculating or not calculating, whith thomehow or another ith at leatht ath hard to give a name to, ath the wayth of the dogth ith!”

Mr Gradgrind looked out of window, and made no reply. Mr Sleary emptied his glass and recalled the ladies.

“Thethilia my dear, kith me and good-bye! Mith Thquire, to thee you treating of her like a thithter, and a thithter that you trutht, and honour with all your heart and more, ith a very pretty thight to me. I hope your brother may live to be better detherving of you, and a greater comfort to you. Thquire, thake handth, firtht and latht! Don’t be croth with uth poor vagabondth. People mutht be amuthed. They can’t be alwayth a learning, nor yet they can’t be alwayth a working, they an’t made for it. You mutht have uth, Thquire. Do the withe thing and the kind thing too, and make the beth uth: not the wurth!

“And I never thought before,” said Mr Sleary, putting his head

in at the door again to say it, “that I wath tho muth of a Cackler!”

Chapter 9

Final

t is a dangerous thing to see anything in the sphere of a vain blusterer, before the vain blusterer sees it himself. Mr Bounderby felt that Mrs Sparsit had audaciously anticipated him, and presumed to be wiser than he. Inappeasably indignant with her for her triumphant discovery of Mrs Pegler, he turned his presumption, on the part of a woman in her dependent position, over and over in his mind, until it accumulated with turning like a great snowball. At last he made the discovery that to discharge this highly connected female—to have it in his power to say, “She was a woman of family, and wanted to stick to me, but I wouldn’t have it, and got rid of her”—would be to get the utmost possible amount of crowning glory out of the connection, and at the same

time to punish Mrs Sparsit according to her deserts.

Filled fuller than ever, with this great idea, Mr Bounderby came into lunch, and sat himself down in the dining-room of former days, where his portrait was. Mrs Sparsit sat by the fire, with her foot in her cotton stirrup, little thinking whither she was posting.

Since the Pegler affair, this gentlewoman had covered her pity for Mr Bounderby with a veil of quiet melancholy and contrition. In virtue thereof, it had become her habit to assume a woeful look; which woeful look she now bestowed upon her patron.

“What’s the matter now, ma’am?” said Mr Bounderby, in a very short, rough way.

“Pray, sir,” returned Mrs Sparsit, “do not bite my nose off.”

“Bite your nose off, ma’am!” repeated Mr Bounderby. “Your nose!” meaning, as Mrs Sparsit conceived, that it was too developed a nose for the purpose. After which offensive implication, he cut himself a crust of bread, and threw the knife down with a noise.

Mrs Sparsit took her foot out of her stirrup, and said, “Mr Bounderby, sir!”

“Well, ma’am?” retorted Mr Bounderby. “What are you staring at?”

“May I ask, sir,” said Mrs Sparsit, “have you been ruffled this morning?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“May I inquire, sir,” pursued the injured woman, “whether I am the unfortunate cause of your having lost temper?”

“Now, I’ll tell you what, ma’am,” said Bounderby, “I am not come here to be bullied. A female may be highly connected, but she can’t be permitted to bother and badger a man in my position, and I am not going to put up with it.” (Mr Bounderby felt it necessary to get on; foreseeing that if he allowed of details, he would be beaten.) Mrs Sparsit first elevated, then knitted, her Coriolanian eyebrows; gathered up her work into its proper basket; and rose.

“Sir,” said she, majestically. “It is apparent to me that I am in your way at present. I will retire to my own apartment.”

“Allow me to open the door, ma’am.” “Thank you, sir; I can do it for myself.”

“You had better allow me, ma’am,” said Bounderby, passing her, and getting his hand upon the lock; “because I can take the opportunity of saying a word to you, before you go. Mrs Sparsit,

ma’am, I rather think you are cramped here, do you know? It appears to me, that, under my humble roof, there’s hardly opening enough for a lady of your genius in other people’s affairs.”

Mrs Sparsit gave him a look of the darkest scorn, and said with great politeness, “Really, sir?”

“I have been thinking it over, you see, since the late affairs have happened, ma’am,” said Bounderby; “and it appears to my poor judgment—”

“Oh! Pray, sir,” Mrs Sparsit interposed, with sprightly cheerfulness, “don’t disparage your judgment. Everybody knows how unerring Mr Bounderby’s judgment is. Everybody has had proofs of it. It must be the theme of general conversation. Disparage anything in yourself but your judgment, sir,” said Mrs Sparsit, laughing.

Mr Bounderby, very red and uncomfortable, resumed:

“It appears to me, ma’am, I say, that a different sort of establishment altogether, would bring out a lady of your powers. Such an establishment as your relation, Lady Scadgers’s now. Don’t you think you might find some affairs there, ma’am, to interfere with?”

“It never occurred to me before, sir,” returned Mrs Sparsit; “but now you mention it, I should think it highly probable.”

“Then suppose you try, ma’am,” said Bounderby laying an envelope with a cheque in it, in her little basket. “You can take your own time for going, ma’am; but perhaps in the meanwhile, it will be more agreeable to a lady of your powers of mind, to eat her meals by herself, and not to be intruded upon. I really ought to apologise to you—being only Josiah Bounderby of Coketown—for having stood in your light so long.”

“Pray don’t name it, sir,” returned Mrs Sparsit. “If that portrait could speak, sir,—but it has the advantage over the original of not possessing the power of committing itself and disgusting others,— it would testify, that a long period has elapsed since I first habitually addressed it as the picture of a Noodle. Nothing that a Noodle does, can awaken surprise or indignation; the proceedings of a Noodle can only inspire contempt.”

Thus saying, Mrs Sparsit, with her Roman features like a medal struck to commemorate her scorn of Mr Bounderby, surveyed him fixedly from head to foot, swept disdainfully past him, and ascended the staircase. Mr Bounderby closed the door, and stood before the fire; projecting himself after his old explosive manner into his portrait—and into futurity.

Into how much of futurity? He saw Mrs Sparsit fighting out a daily fight, at the points of all the weapons in the female armoury, with the grudging, smarting, peevish, tormenting Lady Scadgers, still laid up in bed with her mysterious leg, and gobbling her insufficient income down by about the middle of every quarter, in a mean little airless lodging, a mere closet for one, a mere crib for two; but did he see more? Did he catch any glimpse of himself making a show of Bitzer to strangers, as the rising young man, so devoted to his master’s great merits, who had won young Tom’s place, and had almost captured young Tom himself, in the times when by various rascals he was spirited away? Did he see any faint reflection of his own image making a vain-glorious will, whereby five-and-twenty Humbugs, past five and fifty years of age, each taking upon himself the name, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, should for ever dine in Bounderby Hall, for ever lodge

in Bounderby Buildings, for ever attend a Bounderby chapel, for ever go to sleep under a Bounderby chaplain, for ever be supported out of a Bounderby estate, and for ever nauseate all healthy stomachs, with a vast amount of Bounderby balderdash and bluster? Had he any prescience of the day, five years to come, when Josiah Bounderby of Coketown was to die of a fit in the Coketown street and this same precious will was to begin its long career of quibble, plunder, false pretences, vile example, little service and much law? Probably not. Yet the portrait was to see it all out.

Here was Mr Gradgrind on the same day, and in the same hour, sitting thoughtful in his own room. How much of futurity did he see? Did he see himself, a white-haired decrepit man, bending his hitherto inflexible theories to appointed circumstances; making his facts and figures subservient to Faith, Hope, and Charity; and no longer trying to grind that Heavenly trio in his dusty little mills? Did he catch sight of himself, therefore much despised by his late political associates? Did he see them, in the era of its being quite settled that the national dustmen have only to do with one another, and owe no duty to an abstraction called a People, “taunting the honourable gentleman” with this and with that and with what not, five nights a-week, until the small hours of the morning? Probably he had that much fore-knowledge, knowing his men.

Here was Louisa on the night of the same day, watching the fire as in days of yore, though with a gentler and a humbler face. How much of the future might arise before her vision? Broadsides in the streets, signed with her father’s name, exonerating the late

Stephen Blackpool, weaver, from misplaced suspicion, and publishing the guilt of his own son, with such extenuation as his years and temptation (he could not bring himself to add, his education) might beseech; were of the Present. So, Stephen Blackpool’s tombstone, with her father’s record of his death, was almost of the Present, for she knew it was to be. These things she could plainly see. But, how much of the Future?

A working woman, christened Rachael, after a long illness once again appearing at the ringing of the Factory bell, and passing to and fro at the set hours, among the Coketown Hands; a woman of a pensive beauty, always dressed in black, but sweet-tempered and serene, and even cheerful; who, of all the people in the place, alone appeared to have compassion on a degraded, drunken wretch of her own sex, who was sometimes seen in the town secretly begging of her, and crying to her; a woman working, ever working, but content to do it, and preferring to do it as her natural lot, until she should be too old to labour any more? Did Louisa see this? Such a thing was to be.

A lonely brother, many thousands of miles away, writing, on paper blotted with tears, that her words had too soon come true, and that all the treasures in the world would be cheaply bartered for a sight of her dear face? At length this brother coming nearer home, with hope of seeing her, and being delayed by illness; and then a letter, in a strange hand, saying “he died in hospital, of fever, such a day, and died in penitence and love of you: his last word being your name?” Did Louisa see these things? Such things were to be.

Herself again a wife—a mother—lovingly watchful of her children, ever careful that they should have a childhood of the

mind no less than a childhood of the body, as knowing it to be even a more beautiful thing, and a possession, any hoarded scrap of which, is a blessing and happiness to the wisest? Did Louisa see this? Such a thing was never to be.

But, happy Sissy’s happy children loving her; all children loving her; she, grown learned in childish love; thinking no innocent and pretty fancy ever to be despised; trying hard to know her humbler fellow creatures, and beautify their lives of machinery and reality with those imaginative graces and delights, without which the heart of infancy will wither up, the sturdiest physical manhood will be morally stark death, and the plainest national prosperity figures can show, will be the Writing on the Wall—she holding this course as part of no fantastic vow, or bond, or brotherhood, or sisterhood, or pledge, or covenant, or fancy dress, or fancy fair; but simply as a duty to be done,—Did Louisa see these things of herself? These things were to be.

Dear reader! It rests with you and me, whether, in our two fields of action, similar things shall be or not. Let them be! We shall sit with lighter bosoms on the hearth, to see the ashes of our fires turn grey and cold.

The End