Hard Times
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 years 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, Oh, 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 connexion 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 gray 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 VI
THE STARLIGHT
THE 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 over-arched 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 has 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 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.