Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0060/00606.txt

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$Unique_ID{bob00606}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Hard Times
Chapter V}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{mrs
rachael
dear
bounderby
sparsit
come
never
pegler
sissy
night}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       Hard Times
Book:        Book The Third: Garnering
Author:      Dickens, Charles

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 Rachael, 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 - "

     "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 are 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 gas-light 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 it
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, muffing 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 the 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 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
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 year 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, O 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?