Hard Times
‘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 would’n
ha’ suspect’n me. But look up yonder, Rachael! Look aboove!’
Following his eyes, she saw that he was gazing at a star.
[Picture: Stephen Blackpool recovered from the Old Hell Shaft]
‘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 and 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, and what her
brother sen and done to me, was one, and that there were a wicked plot
betwixt ’em. When I fell, I were in anger wi’ her, an’ hurryin on t’ be
as onjust t’ her as oothers was t’ me. But in our judgments, like as in
our doins, we mun bear and forbear. In my pain an’ 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, an’ 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 yo please.’
Louisa returned with her father. Standing hand-in-hand, they both looked
down upon the solemn countenance.
‘Sir, yo will clear me an’ 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 mak no
charges: I leave none ahint me: not a single word. I ha’ seen an’ 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 VII
WHELP-HUNTING
BEFORE 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
to-night.’ 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—to-morrow.’ 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 gray 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 lodging?’
‘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 had 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 anxious
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