Hard Times
Coriolanian eyebrows and shook her head, as much as to say, ‘The great
know trouble as well as the small. Please to turn your humble eye in My
direction.’
‘I ha’ paid her to keep awa’ fra’ me. These five year I ha’ paid her. I
ha’ gotten decent fewtrils about me agen. I ha’ lived hard and sad, but
not ashamed and fearfo’ a’ the minnits o’ my life. Last night, I went
home. There she lay upon my har-stone! There she is!’
In the strength of his misfortune, and the energy of his distress, he
fired for the moment like a proud man. In another moment, he stood as he
had stood all the time—his usual stoop upon him; his pondering face
addressed to Mr. Bounderby, with a curious expression on it, half shrewd,
half perplexed, as if his mind were set upon unravelling something very
difficult; his hat held tight in his left hand, which rested on his hip;
his right arm, with a rugged propriety and force of action, very
earnestly emphasizing what he said: not least so when it always paused, a
little bent, but not withdrawn, as he paused.
‘I was acquainted with all this, you know,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘except
the last clause, long ago. It’s a bad job; that’s what it is. You had
better have been satisfied as you were, and not have got married.
However, it’s too late to say that.’
‘Was it an unequal marriage, sir, in point of years?’ asked Mrs. Sparsit.
‘You hear what this lady asks. Was it an unequal marriage in point of
years, this unlucky job of yours?’ said Mr. Bounderby.
‘Not e’en so. I were one-and-twenty myseln; she were twenty nighbut.’
‘Indeed, sir?’ said Mrs. Sparsit to her Chief, with great placidity. ‘I
inferred, from its being so miserable a marriage, that it was probably an
unequal one in point of years.’
Mr. Bounderby looked very hard at the good lady in a side-long way that
had an odd sheepishness about it. He fortified himself with a little
more sherry.
‘Well? Why don’t you go on?’ he then asked, turning rather irritably on
Stephen Blackpool.
‘I ha’ coom to ask yo, sir, how I am to be ridded o’ this woman.’
Stephen infused a yet deeper gravity into the mixed expression of his
attentive face. Mrs. Sparsit uttered a gentle ejaculation, as having
received a moral shock.
‘What do you mean?’ said Bounderby, getting up to lean his back against
the chimney-piece. ‘What are you talking about? You took her for better
for worse.’
‘I mun’ be ridden o’ her. I cannot bear ’t nommore. I ha’ lived under
’t so long, for that I ha’ had’n the pity and comforting words o’ th’
best lass living or dead. Haply, but for her, I should ha’ gone
battering mad.’
‘He wishes to be free, to marry the female of whom he speaks, I fear,
sir,’ observed Mrs. Sparsit in an undertone, and much dejected by the
immorality of the people.
‘I do. The lady says what’s right. I do. I were a coming to ’t. I ha’
read i’ th’ papers that great folk (fair faw ’em a’! I wishes ’em no
hurt!) are not bonded together for better for worst so fast, but that
they can be set free fro’ _their_ misfortnet marriages, an’ marry ower
agen. When they dunnot agree, for that their tempers is ill-sorted, they
has rooms o’ one kind an’ another in their houses, above a bit, and they
can live asunders. We fok ha’ only one room, and we can’t. When that
won’t do, they ha’ gowd an’ other cash, an’ they can say “This for yo’
an’ that for me,” an’ they can go their separate ways. We can’t. Spite
o’ all that, they can be set free for smaller wrongs than mine. So, I
mun be ridden o’ this woman, and I want t’ know how?’
‘No how,’ returned Mr. Bounderby.
‘If I do her any hurt, sir, there’s a law to punish me?’
‘Of course there is.’
‘If I flee from her, there’s a law to punish me?’
‘Of course there is.’
‘If I marry t’oother dear lass, there’s a law to punish me?’
‘Of course there is.’
‘If I was to live wi’ her an’ not marry her—saying such a thing could be,
which it never could or would, an’ her so good—there’s a law to punish
me, in every innocent child belonging to me?’
‘Of course there is.’
‘Now, a’ God’s name,’ said Stephen Blackpool, ‘show me the law to help
me!’
‘Hem! There’s a sanctity in this relation of life,’ said Mr. Bounderby,
‘and—and—it must be kept up.’
‘No no, dunnot say that, sir. ’Tan’t kep’ up that way. Not that way.
’Tis kep’ down that way. I’m a weaver, I were in a fact’ry when a chilt,
but I ha’ gotten een to see wi’ and eern to year wi’. I read in th’
papers every ’Sizes, every Sessions—and you read too—I know it!—with
dismay—how th’ supposed unpossibility o’ ever getting unchained from one
another, at any price, on any terms, brings blood upon this land, and
brings many common married fok to battle, murder, and sudden death. Let
us ha’ this, right understood. Mine’s a grievous case, an’ I want—if yo
will be so good—t’ know the law that helps me.’
‘Now, I tell you what!’ said Mr. Bounderby, putting his hands in his
pockets. ‘There _is_ such a law.’
Stephen, subsiding into his quiet manner, and never wandering in his
attention, gave a nod.
‘But it’s not for you at all. It costs money. It costs a mint of
money.’
‘How much might that be?’ Stephen calmly asked.
‘Why, you’d have to go to Doctors’ Commons with a suit, and you’d have to
go to a court of Common Law with a suit, and you’d have to go to the
House of Lords with a suit, and you’d have to get an Act of Parliament to
enable you to marry again, and it would cost you (if it was a case of
very plain sailing), I suppose from a thousand to fifteen hundred pound,’
said Mr. Bounderby. ‘Perhaps twice the money.’
‘There’s no other law?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Why then, sir,’ said Stephen, turning white, and motioning with that
right hand of his, as if he gave everything to the four winds, ‘’_tis_ a
muddle. ’Tis just a muddle a’toogether, an’ the sooner I am dead, the
better.’
(Mrs. Sparsit again dejected by the impiety of the people.)
‘Pooh, pooh! Don’t you talk nonsense, my good fellow,’ said Mr.
Bounderby, ‘about things you don’t understand; and don’t you call the
Institutions of your country a muddle, or you’ll get yourself into a real
muddle one of these fine mornings. The institutions of your country are
not your piece-work, and the only thing you have got to do, is, to mind
your piece-work. You didn’t take your wife for fast and for loose; but
for better for worse. If she has turned out worse—why, all we have got
to say is, she might have turned out better.’
‘’Tis a muddle,’ said Stephen, shaking his head as he moved to the door.
‘’Tis a’ a muddle!’
‘Now, I’ll tell you what!’ Mr. Bounderby resumed, as a valedictory
address. ‘With what I shall call your unhallowed opinions, you have been
quite shocking this lady: who, as I have already told you, is a born
lady, and who, as I have not already told you, has had her own marriage
misfortunes to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds—tens of Thousands
of Pounds!’ (he repeated it with great relish). ‘Now, you have always
been a steady Hand hitherto; but my opinion is, and so I tell you
plainly, that you are turning into the wrong road. You have been
listening to some mischievous stranger or other—they’re always about—and
the best thing you can do is, to come out of that. Now you know;’ here
his countenance expressed marvellous acuteness; ‘I can see as far into a
grindstone as another man; farther than a good many, perhaps, because I
had my nose well kept to it when I was young. I see traces of the turtle
soup, and venison, and gold spoon in this. Yes, I do!’ cried Mr.
Bounderby, shaking his head with obstinate cunning. ‘By the Lord Harry,
I do!’
With a very different shake of the head and deep sigh, Stephen said,
‘Thank you, sir, I wish you good day.’ So he left Mr. Bounderby swelling
at his own portrait on the wall, as if he were going to explode himself
into it; and Mrs. Sparsit still ambling on with her foot in her stirrup,
looking quite cast down by the popular vices.
CHAPTER XII
THE OLD WOMAN
OLD STEPHEN descended the two white steps, shutting the black door with
the brazen door-plate, by the aid of the brazen full-stop, to which he
gave a parting polish with the sleeve of his coat, observing that his hot
hand clouded it. He crossed the street with his eyes bent upon the
ground, and thus was walking sorrowfully away, when he felt a touch upon
his arm.
It was not the touch he needed most at such a moment—the touch that could
calm the wild waters of his soul, as the uplifted hand of the sublimest
love and patience could abate the raging of the sea—yet it was a woman’s
hand too. It was an old woman, tall and shapely still, though withered
by time, on whom his eyes fell when he stopped and turned. She was very
cleanly and plainly dressed, had country mud upon her shoes, and was
newly come from a journey. The flutter of her manner, in the unwonted
noise of the streets; the spare shawl, carried unfolded on her arm; the
heavy umbrella, and little basket; the loose long-fingered gloves, to
which her hands were unused; all bespoke an old woman from the country,
in her plain holiday clothes, come into Coketown on an expedition of rare
occurrence. Remarking this at a glance, with the quick observation of
his class, Stephen Blackpool bent his attentive face—his face, which,
like the faces of many of his order, by dint of long working with eyes
and hands in the midst of a prodigious noise, had acquired the
concentrated look with which we are familiar in the countenances of the
deaf—the better to hear what she asked him.
‘Pray, sir,’ said the old woman, ‘didn’t I see you come out of that
gentleman’s house?’ pointing back to Mr. Bounderby’s. ‘I believe it was
you, unless I have had the bad luck to mistake the person in following?’
‘Yes, missus,’ returned Stephen, ‘it were me.’
‘Have you—you’ll excuse an old woman’s curiosity—have you seen the
gentleman?’
‘Yes, missus.’
‘And how did he look, sir? Was he portly, bold, outspoken, and hearty?’
As she straightened her own figure, and held up her head in adapting her
action to her words, the idea crossed Stephen that he had seen this old
woman before, and had not quite liked her.
‘O yes,’ he returned, observing her more attentively, ‘he were all that.’
‘And healthy,’ said the old woman, ‘as the fresh wind?’
‘Yes,’ returned Stephen. ‘He were ett’n and drinking—as large and as
loud as a Hummobee.’
‘Thank you!’ said the old woman, with infinite content. ‘Thank you!’
He certainly never had seen this old woman before. Yet there was a vague
remembrance in his mind, as if he had more than once dreamed of some old
woman like her.
She walked along at his side, and, gently accommodating himself to her
humour, he said Coketown was a busy place, was it not? To which she
answered ‘Eigh sure! Dreadful busy!’ Then he said, she came from the
country, he saw? To which she answered in the affirmative.
‘By Parliamentary, this morning. I came forty mile by Parliamentary this
morning, and I’m going back the same forty mile this afternoon. I walked
nine mile to the station this morning, and if I find nobody on the road
to give me a lift, I shall walk the nine mile back to-night. That’s
pretty well, sir, at my age!’ said the chatty old woman, her eye
brightening with exultation.
‘’Deed ’tis. Don’t do’t too often, missus.’
‘No, no. Once a year,’ she answered, shaking her head. ‘I spend my
savings so, once every year. I come regular, to tramp about the streets,
and see the gentlemen.’
‘Only to see ’em?’ returned Stephen.
‘That’s enough for me,’ she replied, with great earnestness and interest
of manner. ‘I ask no more! I have been standing about, on this side of
the way, to see that gentleman,’ turning her head back towards Mr.