Hard Times
man, and why did he not come back?’
Where was the man, and why did he not come back? In the dead of night
the echoes of his own words, which had rolled Heaven knows how far away
in the daytime, came back instead, and abided by him until morning.
CHAPTER V
FOUND
DAY 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 Rachel, 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 I—’
‘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 bed-time. 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 to-morrow 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’re 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
to-morrow, 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 in
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, muffling
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 up-stairs. Mr. Bounderby looked
more astonished than hospitable, at 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
at 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