Hard Times
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 foreknowledge, 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 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 lore; thinking no innocent and pretty
fancy ever to be despised; trying hard to know her humbler
fellow-creatures, and to 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 gray and
cold.